The Sincere Late Night Man

He seemed like a very nice man. I only spent a few minutes with him, and only over the phone, but Tom Snyder gave me the sense that he meant it when he told me to have a very good day.
I'm sad to see TV anchor and host, Tom Snyder, pass away from leukemia today.

I watched him on late night tv and listened to him on his radio program for years before I had the pleasure of being interviewed by him. Like most radio interview programs his staff had done the pre-interview a few days earlier to make sure I wasn't a lunatic and could talk. But when he interviewed me a few days later, about a book I had written, he was far and away the best interviewer I had experienced. It was just like talking with an old friend. He's been described as the most sincere TV anchor ever - and that's how I felt when the interview was over.

Pinballs and Starfish - On Being Centered

I have a very good friend that is, as I write, taking a very hard, very important, career-determining test on the other side of the world. I have no doubt that he'll do well but just as I went through the same ordeal a few years ago, I offered him some advice to "get centered" before he walked into the day-long test. Getting centered is something I've always done before an important test, interview, or other choke-inducing event.

When I was in college I would always walk over to the Student Union basement and play a game of pinball just before I took a test. Just a few minutes alone with the kinetic metal ball calmed my thoughts and relaxed me enough to, as Powdermilk Biscuits allow, get up and do what needs to be done.

When a pinball machine was not handy, and this is increasingly the case in a digital age, I resorted to music. Certain songs do it and others don't - and I'm not sure why. Todd Rundgren's "Just One Victory", Moby's "Dream About Me", and Richard Bone's "In Japa" are my favorite centering tunes.

How do you know when you are centered? Different people have different ideas of what it is but one thing is true, you won't understand it if you haven't been there. One characteristic of centeredness is peacefulness. When you are centered you feel peaceful. You have no conflicts causing stress, your mind is clear, and your body is relaxed in a way that really feels good. Everyone arrives at this point in different ways - it's important to experiment until you find your way.

Places can play an important part in centering. For me, each city or region has a special spot that helps me achieve the peacefulness I seek. In my hometown it's a spot on the pedestrian bridge over the river. In Shanghai it's a little-known nook overlooking the Huangpu. In Washington DC - it's a corner of the Pavilion Cafe in the Sculpture Garden on the Mall. Just being in certain locations can create that centeredness.

Thinking certain thoughts can also put you "in the spot". If I can sit quietly and visualize the vastness of the universe and my own occupation of a tiny speck in that vastness - I can get there. Rereading Loren Eisley's "Unexpected Universe" and his story of the starfish caster will do it.

Another characteristic of centeredness is confidence. You feel able to handle any circumstances. The last characteristic of centeredness is harmony. You feel like a part of everything that was, is and will be.

Coin of the Realm

I was talking with an acquaintance last week when he pulled out a coin for me to look at. It was a U.S. coin dated 1785, a well worn but still beautiful specimen. He told me he found it at the Gold Market in Shanghai - a place I had not heard of. "How much did you pay for it," I asked. "US$1,000", he said. "And I paid US$1,000 each for two others. Only problem is, they are fakes." He then explained that he had taken them back to the US, thinking they were genuine, and was offered US$5,000 each by a collector - if he had them graded by a professional coin inspector. The grader then gave him the bad news, they were all counterfeits. It had cost him $400 for the grading so, all told, he was out $3,400 and some unscrupulous coin dealer in Shanghai's Gold Market had made a tidy profit.

To my untrained eye, the coin looked genuine. When I was younger, I collected rare coins and enjoyed visiting the coin and stamp stores looking for interesting finds from around the world. But with Chinese counterfeits of almost any valuable product - including old U.S. coins, flooding the world these days, I'd have to think twice before paying much for a coin. It would be interesting to know to what degree conterfeits are to be found in coin shops in the U.S.? According to this website fake US silver dollars from China are common - especially on e-Bay.

Living the Looney Tunes

Shanghai is full of hazards, clotheslines hung across sidewalks at neck level, taxi drivers that think pedestrians are traffic cones, bottomless pits in sidewalks - but I never thought I'd fall victim to Wile E. Coyote in China. The comically ineffectual predator must have been lurking around the corner when I walked briskly by today on my way to lunch on Beijing Lu and planted my foot firmly on a large banana peel. I zoomed down the sidewalk, limbs flailing wildly as I tried to keep my balance. When I realized I'd slipped on a banana peel I had to laugh at the cartoonish absurdity of it. I've managed several decades without slipping on a banana peel. But you can't count out anything in Shanghai. Will anvils fall out of the sky next? Beep beep.

Would You Join Me for Tea?

If you understand HOW news gets into the newspapers in any given location you'll understand what that news REALLY means. For example, in my home town of West Peavine, the newspaper simply steals stories from other newspapers in Greater Peavine and reprints them without investigating whether or not the stories are true. In this way, a lot of bad information gets passed around from newspaper to newspaper until the unsuspecting public begins to believe the story's spin - "how could something so widely reported be wrong?"

The largest newspaper in Peavine is so bad, so fundamentally bad, that the Columbia Journalism Review once called it America's Worst Newspaper - explaining that it operated like a newspaper in reverse. "It actually sucks the intelligence out of the reader."

Chinese newspapers do the same thing of course - there are many lazy journalists here too. But what sets the newspapers here apart is the government control and influence that determines what people read - or don't read. You can actually learn a lot by noticing what is NOT in the papers. A lot of bad news doesn't get into the papers here - and if it does finally hit the headlines, there's a reason.

Take this story that appeared in the Shanghai Daily for instance. It's about the police closing down a tea house that ripped foreign tourists off. To expats in Shanghai this article will elicit a chuckle. Everyone living in Shanghai knows that this scam is out in the open on Nanjing Road's pedestrian street. Certainly, the police know about it. As a foreigner you can't walk down Nanjing Road without numerous young women approaching you and asking you to have tea with them. What happens next, the presentation of the outrageous bill, the touts that scare the foreigners into paying, the unconcerned police that take the report, has been all over the Internet for years. If the Shanghai Daily didn't know about it they've had their heads in the sand for years. So why is this particular incident, out the hundreds that have happened before, both reported and cracked down on? Because in this case, the angry Frenchmen who paid about US$1,000 for tea, went to a local paper and some energetic, possibly brave, reporter or editor wrote about it. Once it's in any paper, no matter how small, then the police and the larger media must make a show of doing something.

Let me predict that within a week the same scam teahouse operator will be back in business in a different location under a different name - doing the same thing. And no official will lift a finger and the Daily Disappointment won't write about it. So, for the long term, you travellers out there, don't accept invitations to tea from pretty young ladies on Nanjing Street.

Kitchen Confoundential

I had a wonderful vegetarian meal at the Vegetarian Lifestyles restaurant near Westgate Mall today. This is the best Chinese vegetarian eatery in the world - the vegetables are crisp and colorful and the mock meat dishes are light and tasty. The people that run this restaurant, and the other two sister restaurants in Shanghai, do it because they have a mission - to show people that meat is not only unnecessary for health but for taste as well. It's also a relief to eat somewhere that can be trusted.

That can't be said for many eateries in China, especially one dumpling eatery in Beijing that hit the headlines today because a reporter for CCTV caught it serving dumplings filled with cardboard to unsuspecting customers. The whole thing was caught on video as the undercover reporter asked the boxer short-clad proprietor why his dumplings tasted like cardboard. "Because it is cardboard," the owner said in a momentary lapse. Then he explained that he soaked cardboard in caustic soda, chopped it up, added a pinch of MSG and a dash of "some fatty meat" and, wallah! Tasty "Pork" Buns in Caustic Sauce! Let this be a lesson. If the manager of the dumpling stall is walking around in nothing but boxer shorts check for soaking cardboard behind the counter.

Carry It Forward

I think it's important to learn one new thing everyday. Some days just don't quite measure up though and I have to go back over the last few days to see if I accidentally learned two new things on a single day. If I can find a superfluous learning experience I can carry that forward and apply it to a day on which I learned nothing. Today was just such a day. Searching my memory I recalled that yesterday I learned that a pregnant goldfish is called a "twit". It may not sound like much, but that'll do.

The Opposite End of China

While I try to hold down the eastern part of China this blogger is blogging from the western part of China. The Opposite End of China is a eye-opening insight on the Muslim part of China.

Caveat Emptor

I read an article in the International Herald Tribune last week that a study by China revealed that about 20 percent of the foods and goods on the shelves of stores in China are defective or substandard (ie. bad). My own experience bears this out. Last week I bought a standing fan from the Carrefour but once I got it home I discovered that the housing was cracked from end to end. The patio umbrella I bought a month ago has developed several defects and won't stay open in wet weather. What is puzzling is that China-made products I bought in US stores didn't fail nearly as often as the China-made products I buy in China. I would presume that this is because the US retailers have more stringent quality control demands than do retailers in China. Poor packaging is also a reason. When goods are packaged for export they are simply better boxed and protected.

Returning damaged goods in China is also much more difficult than in the States. Most small retailers simply won't take returned defective items. Even Carrefour, the French retailer in China, makes it an unpleasant experience. When I took the fan back I had to stand in front of a "service" counter and fight for the attention of one of the uninterested young clerks. At the same time I had to fight to keep other unhappy customers from getting in front of me in the non-existent line. People here simply don't know what a queue is and are brazen about shoving right in front of others trying to wait their turn. They will literally reach right over you and shove their cash or papers in front of your face.

But there's always a drama that either complicates things or brings a bit of entertainment. When I was returning the fan there was a lady trying to return some bras. She was shouting at the clerk and the clerk was pointing at the return policy on the wall and simultaneously going about some unrelated paperwork. The other two clerks were just staring at the hysterical customer and ignoring the rest of us trying to get their attention. Once I finally got ones attention she took my receipt, told me to go get a replacement fan and then come back and try once again to fight through the crowd and get someones attention. The entire transaction took me over an hour. And this is at one of China's leading retailers. Ah, the life of a consumer in China!

I can also believe that at least 20 percent of the food is substandard. I've never gotten sick as often as I do in China. Almost monthly I'm laid low for a few days with some sort of food poisoning. But looking on the positive side - I'm accumulating a collection of bacteria that should eventually make me invincible - if I can live that long.