Star Trek, marriage brokers and dissidents in the park

Gman and I went to see Star Trek at the Xintiandi theater yesterday and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Star Trek has been in the theaters in Shanghai for three weekends now so the crowd at 11:30 am on Saturday was a bit thin. The movie was in English with Chinese subtitles. While the Chinese government only allows 12 US movies in to the theaters every year this is a most unusual month because Terminator, Wolverine and Night at the Museum are also playing alongside Star Trek. I think if the producers of Star Trek would put a Chinese character on the bridge of the USS Enterprise they could assure unfettered access to the Chinese mainland market. But that might open up a new can of worms. Beijing might insist that the Chinese character be of a higher rank than the Japanese Sulu. Is the Chinese character from the mainland, Taiwan or Hong Kong? Better just to leave things as they are.

In the afternoon I stopped by People's Park where I mingled with the parents and marriage brokers that congregate in a corner of the park and advertise their children or clients on sheets of paper. They are looking to arrange marriages. The advertisements and inquiries focus on income and education. No one is looking for a poor daughter- or son-in-law.

As I wandered I spotted an open bench in the park, a vary rare sight indeed, so I sat down. Within a few minutes Mr. Wu sat down next to me and started talking to me in good English. He had been an English teacher in Beijing but after participating in the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989 he had been put in jail for over 10 years and hasn't been allowed to teach again. Every time he gets close to getting a teaching job his record as a political dissident kills his opportunity. For close to a decade now he has lived off contributions from family members. He said he was 58 years old but he looks like he is in his eighties. He looks like he's been through a lot of hard times. He didn't have much of anything good to say about the Communist Party. For about an hour he explained government corruption and the Chinese prison system to me. When I became aware that there were a couple of clean cut middle-aged people walking back and forth nearby and glancing at us in an irritated manner I became concerned for his security. The watchers paced back and forth for ten minutes exchanging glances with each other as if they were trying to decide what to do. I decided I'd better move on and hope Mr. Wu wasn't in trouble.

Hard to Blog these days

Apologies for not posting much lately. China recently cut off access to all blogger and blogspot websites again. This time they even cut off access to the blog administration URLs so I couldn't even write anything on my blog. It's only by using a VPN service that I can get around the block to update my blog.

Every year just before the June 4th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre China starts tightening up on their control of the Internet but this year the controls have been tighter than at anytime in the last four years. It's probably because we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of the 1989 massacre that China is especially sensitive. We aren't supposed to remember the massacre and we aren't supposed to mention it.

Star Trek Logo

China's space agency must be populated by Trekkies because their new logo is a pretty obvious amalgamation of two Star Trek logos.

No salt or white bread/rice please!

I'm sitting in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop in Shanghai reading a story about the salt survey just released in the US. Seems that it confirms what we all suspected - we are getting way too much salt at the restaurants we eat in - up to 4 times too much. Red Lobster, shame on you!

As I type this I'm looking at the remains of an egg-salad sandwich in my peripheral vision. It's at least as hard to get something healthy to eat in Shanghai as it is in America. Local Shanghainese dishes are too oily and sweet and have too much MSG. The Western food eateries are not that much better. Even salads come loaded with creamy dressings - and no, they won't serve without the dressing - must make it up in huge vats the night before? The sandwich I tried to eat was 70% white bread. Try to find whole wheat bread in Shanghai and you'll spend all afternoon. The so-called "whole wheat bread" in the supermarket looks a lot like brown-tinted white bread.

It's as if all the food companies and restaurants on both sides of the ocean were involved in a conspiracy to kill us. If you read the recently-released book "Why Do We Overeat?" like I'm doing now you have to accept the fact that the restaurants aren't really trying to kill us - it's just that we are collateral damage on the way to their profits.

Mexicans Being Rounded Up in China

China has reportedly started rounding up Mexican tourists and visitors and forcibly quarantining them even if they are showing no flu symptoms. The Mexican Ambassador to China was denied access to some of his citizens being kept in a Beijing hotel and the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs has lodged protests with the Chinese government over the treatment of its citizens. James Fallows reports that one family was rounded up from a 5-star hotel at 4 am and detained at a hospital. Meanwhile, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reports that the Mexicans are thankful for all the help China has given Mexico.

Odd that China would try to win Mexican hearts by giving Mexico $5 million to fight flu and then erase the good publicity with the negative press they are receiving by indiscriminately rounding up Mexican passport holders in China.