Update from Australia

Free Wifi is surprisingly difficult to find in Sydney but I finally found one in the McDonalds near our hotel on "The Rocks". It's been a busy few days in Sydney so far. We took a boat out to follow the start of the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and that was quite a watery traffic jam - but as I wasn't driving it was ok. We did the zoo yesterday and saw all the exotic sleeping animals. Only the Laughing Kookabura seemed to be very energetic. Today we took the ferry to Manly and hiked to North Head, the cliff that overlooks the entrance to Sydney Harbor.

The most striking thing about Sydney is the clean air. The buildings, moon, everything on the horizon is so crisp and clear it almost hurts the eyes to look at it. But it's great to breathe.

Merry Christmas from Downunder

Merry Christmas from Shanghai !

It's Cold!

Wow is it cold in Shanghai today! It is below freezing this evening and very damp. It isn't snowing like it is up north in Beijing but this doesn't seem right for a city I always thought of as almost tropical. As I look out my window at the palm trees in our compound I can almost feel their pain. The evergreen tree outside the bedroom window, all done up in blinking blue Christmas lights, is leaning sideways - the star atop it glowing weakly.

A Day out in Shanghai

We decided to go downtown Saturday to have lunch at a vegetarian restaurant on the Nanjing Street pedestrian street. As the cab climbed onto the gaojia, or overhead expressway, we were shocked by the view of the city before us. The skyscrapers were like trees in a foggy swamp. The pollution was as bad as I've ever seen it. One could barely make out the outline of 30-story buildings just half-mile away. We sat in stunned silence for the 30-minute trip to People's Park.

The government here tries to pass this heavy smog off as fog and mist. That may be true at times but not mid-day on a cold and dry day in December. This was nothing other than overwhelming air pollution. When I lived in LA I thought I knew what smog was but there's no comparison. And it's no coincidence that the members of the family are all suffering from respiratory problems. It looks like another trip to the doctor on Monday.

Once we arrived at the pedestrian street we made our way to its other end, much like pinballs crash their way through the obstacles on the pinball machine. Bouncing off of a mass of pedestrians going every which way, trying to avoid miniature trains that ram their way through the dense crowd, and counterfeit watch and bag salesmen and women. By the time we reached the 8th floor restaurant our nerves were frayed.

The staff at the restaurant looked oddly sullen. The waitresses were sleeping at a table and the owner seemed unusually despondent. We asked what was wrong and she told us this was their last day of business. When asked why, she was reluctant to explain and seemed on the verge of tears. Something about the government wanting the building for something else she mumbled.

We stopped at Coldstone Creamery for a pick-me-up and G-man pointed out hair in the buckets of ice cream to the clerk - whereupon the clerk plucked the hair out without removing any of the surrounding ice cream. On the way back home we enjoyed the company of the third rude taxi driver of the day. All three of them refused to speak to us and mumbled what didn't sound like compliments in Shanghainese. Maybe they were just complaining about the smog.

Meanwhile, for an unknown reason, China has decided to block the online New York Times. As James Fallows points out here this accomplishes little other than to annoy expats and signal that the country is not yet ready to join the big leagues.

We are taking a break to Australia next week and sorely looking forward to it.

Microscopic What?

I have a friend that recently went to an eye doctor in Shanghai for treatment of an eye infection. The eye doctor diagnosed the infection as being caused by air pollution and to my friends increasing discomfort explained that Shanghai's air was full of coal dust, rubber bits and microscopic human fecal matter. I understand the coal and rubber but I want to know how the fecal matter gets into the air? On second thought, maybe I don't want to know. But that explains the funny taste of the air.

Tonight I was at a reception in the 50-story Bund Center looking out over Shanghai's skyline at dusk. Tall skyscrapers marched in lines down the parallel streets and disappeared into a fog in the mid-distance. The smog gave the metropolis a yellow, post-apocalyptic feel. I've seen this scene a thousand times from different vantage points atop Shanghai's skyscrapers but now I see it in a new light - a microscopic fecal matter sort of light.

Nanjing Road

China Eastern Airlines' Onboard Judicial System

A good friend of mine had an interesting experience a few days ago while flying back to Shanghai from NE China on China Eastern Airlines. He was awakened from a deep sleep by a stewardess that told him that there was a serious problem. "The woman seated behind you says you broke her eyeglasses with your seat," she said. My friend was puzzled because his seat was still in the full upright position and he hadn't moved it during the flight. "You need to pay for her eyeglasses," the stewardess told him. My friend, let's call him Francois, explained that he hadn't moved his seat and could not have broken her glasses and wasn't about to pay for them. The stewardess insisted that Francois give her his namecard and phone number so she could give it to the eyeglass woman so she could seek reimbursement. When he refused the stewardess left and the co-pilot came back and talked to the woman behind Francois and then returned to the cabin. Then the stewardess returned to tell Francois to prepare himself for trouble because the police would be called as soon as they landed.

Fortunately, there was no trouble as Francois left the plane but the whole incident was unnerving as well as puzzling. The stewardess took the word of the eyeglass woman and tried to extract money from my friend during the flight, dismissing his explanation outright. Was it a scam or was China Eastern Airlines just overstepping its authority? My friend said that if he really had broken the woman's glasses he probably would have helped her out but I can't help but wonder how someone could possibly have their face so close to the back of a seat that even normal seat movement would pose a threat. I suggested to my friend that he should have complained about the lady behind him repeatedly slamming her face against the back of his seat.

Sometimes in China one cannot avoid conflict, even while sleeping on a plane.

DMZ Confrontation

This experiment in a non-violent confrontation on the Korean DMZ is worth a look. Click here.

To Serve and Protect

Foreign companies in China often complain that the police here rarely crack down on counterfeit products but one thing you can really count on the police to do is crack down on fake police.