going to see them tonight. props to City Weekend for this video.
Monthly Archive for November, 2008
That’s some food from Yunnan. Any Chinese reading who can identify that? I didn’t really understand the lady’s explanation. Kinda tastes like flan, and only RMB1 for a big bowl.
Back on that shanghai grind and new plumbing problems cropped up in my life. first the pipe under the sink burst open, leaving water all over my kitchen floor patiently waiting for me to return from work. Then, for the last few days, the city has been emptying the sewers on my street, scooping with large baskets attached to ten foot wooden poles during morning motorbike cluster-fuck rush hour. As i waited for the crosswalk to change tonight, a bootleg pickup truck carrying six bulging, toxic-avenger looking barrels stopped right in front of me.
So after the longest Friday in a long, long time, which included everything from discussing media bias after watching a documentary on Zimbawae in my international relations class, sitting through a two-hour meeting discussing the not-givin’-a-fuck-attitude many of our boarding students hold, and understanding the financial crisis better over dinner with a Taiwanese businessman, I’m enjoying a German beer I can’t pronounce from the Japanese supermarket. And delivering a long overdue[/awaited] update.
Big up to whoever reads this in Bolivia and Ukraine. Google Analytics, holla.
Lots of music in Shanghai lately, including a band I’ve wanted to see for a long time, New Pants, coming to Zhi Jiang Dream Factory tomorrow. First though I gotta drop something from B6, who killed it at Shelter last weekend for his album release. I guess it’s minimal techno, which I never really knew about until three weeks ago.
B6 - Fiction City
Also, as I tire of straight 4/4 beats, hip hop, electro, etc. I gotta flip it to something different. The Chemistry of Common Life from Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up fits that need.
So I said I wouldn’t go out tonight, but then I listened to some KMD and compromised on blogging then going out.
This guy really wanted to sell me a toy helicopter that appeared broken. As he mumbled in his local dialect, shaking the remote control, twisting the toy through the air like a child, I remained polite, smiled, nodded, and feigned amazement.
I re-upped on music today, and I’ve got so much to post this week. I used to listen to Deerhunter’s Cryptograms constantly, but I kind of forgot about them when my old hard drive crashed. They just released a new album, Microcastle, and it’s really, really solid. Here’s three of my favorite tracks.
Deerhunter - Never Stops
Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
Deerhunter - Agoraphobia
Remember, right-click save. Der.
One of the rawest sights I’ve seen in my two years in Asia. At a market on a dusty dirt road in Dali Old City, next to stands selling socks and grinding chilis into powder sat a straight up outdoor dentist office. They offered to clean my teeth, and though we didn’t talk much (also extremely camera shy), it appears they also perform transplants, and possibly root canals. No antiseptic in sight.
Ahh it’s the last day in Yunnan. Never made it to Lijiang (mostly due to reports of hordes of Chinese tourists stomping about), didn’t actually climb the big mountain, or ride the horses that fall down in the rain, tossing their passengers into piles of rocks. I saw vans of Chinese tourists shuffling around from one site to another like the youth clicking through an iTunes playlist. With only three days here, I thought it best to just relax, eat cake, wander around the villages, and get massages. Had a really awkward massage last night, as the two women massaging us could not control their laughter about something.
It’s really a beautiful place, but it’s at the critical mass stage of development, with all the locals used to the tourism dollars, new buildings going up, old ones falling down. I don’t believe Dali can have the same charm in three or four years. It’s now breakfast time.
(Translated from Chinese)
Me: “Do those spiders bite?”
Old Man: “No..no no. Don’t worry”
[some pause]
Old Man: “But they’re poisonous.”
Me: Poison?
Old Man: “Yes. Poison. [pauses again] So don’t eat them.
About five-hundred spiders hung overhead, clinging to the webs they weave throughout the power lines in the small village by the lake. I tried not to look up as we cycled through the narrow alleyways, full of broken bricks, walls painted with Mao slogans, and an unusually large number of small-breed dogs.
Times like that really make me wonder what the fuck I’m doing in Shanghai. Here I can lay in an open field, surrounded by local farmers tilling soybeans and mountains all around. In Shanghai, I’ve just got parks where the police scream at me for sitting on the grass. Like a warm bed on a rainy morning, Dali compels people to just..stay a while. Perhaps a long while.
Of course this is impossible now, with work and all, but at the end of the year, I might use my savings to just come here, practice Chinese and eat good food for a few months. I still haven’t encountered a bad meal.
Other random conversations/observations:
Also in one of those small villages yesterday filled with locals getting haircuts and butchering meat in the street, a large, cramped tub of fish sat next to a stream. One particularly gully fish tried to escape his fate at the dinner table, and flopped about until he actually lept out of the water, landed on the concrete, and tumbled into the stream. All the locals ran to the stream, and one man beckoned with his hand for me to join in the fish-hunt. Hunched over, the man reached in and grabbed the fish as the crowd erupted in claps and laughter.
I spoke with the barista at the hostel this morning about the pros and cons of Dali.
Me: “This place seems too perfect..there must be some negatives about Dali.”
Barista: [after contemplating] “The sun. It’s too spicy.”
Me: “Umm..what do you mean. You can’t exactly say that in English.”
Barista: “What you mean? If you go out, maybe twelve o’clock, with t-shirt and shorts, after a few hours, your skin - gone. That not spicy?”
Just ate some banana oatmeal with the sounds of pool balls smacking and one-day old puppies crying in the background. After a three-hour flight, a four-hour bus ride (which felt like sixteen, due to the kind of time-expansion I haven’t felt since I was six, in the backseat of my parent’s car traveling somewhere an hour and forever away), a city bus ride with a driver who refused to talk to me, and a hour of wandering around trying to find a hostel, I’m at The Jade Emu hostel - a fine place to get some thinking done.
Note to whoever published the Wikitravel guide on Dali - list addresses for the spots you recommend. That way I don’t have to interrupt some creepy old German guy’s walk to the red light district so he can point me toward my hostel. I’ve never seen so many KTVs on one street.
I haven’t had a bad meal since I left Shanghai. So far highlights include bridge cross noodles (more on that later), Yunnan coffee brewed in some sort of glass globe, chocolate cake, apple pie, and some sort of Japanese concoction with rice on the bottom topped with a raw egg slow-cooked by sizzling pork + sauce on top, garnished with bean sprouts.
And it’s all insanely cheap. We ended up at a rather eclectic restaurant/hostel last night, sat around a bonfire talking with a Japanese guy and an Iranian guy about the scene in Dali. They told us that one can rent a three-story house here for RMB10,000/yr. Wild. My apartment in Shanghai costs RMB3000/month. The Japanese fellow also told me about the forty-four hour boat ride from Shanghai to Japan, which I’m definitely doing in February.
Just got a bike so I’m off to the mountains. Clean air… no one speaking Shanghainese.. trees! Ahhhhh.
About to fall into a deep sleep hole, partially wake up, and let my body do the taxi/airplane routine. I used to avoid sleeping before flights as a rule, but having missed planes and trains, I shoot for at least five hours. I’m picturing this rather painless though, unlike zombie-strutting across Hong Kong Island at sunrise to catch a 8:30 flight in Shenzhen. Or leaping out of some hotel in Beijing, thirty minutes before my first domestic train trip in China, with no Mandarin skills or anything else besides a train ticket. After slamming the receiver on the three wake-up calls I insisted on when I burst into the hotel at near 8:00 a.m.
But that was long ago. So ideally i’ll find the reset button I’m looking for in Yunnan. Ride some bikes, pet some tigers, and eat a lot of goat cheese, a Yunnan speciality. Going to try to stock up on some real coffee there. I’ve seen Yunnan coffee in Shanghai twice, perched upon the shelves of Japanese grocery stores with offensively high price tags, e.g. 400g of “Blue Mountain” beans for RMB1100 ($161.76). I’m not sure where the goddamn Blue Mountain is, but I’m gonna look into it and potentially slang some coffee.
Here’s a song and a poem.
Black Moth Super Rainbow - I Think It Is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too
Charles Bukowski - The Soldier, His Wife, & The Bum
One of my dreams came true today. I got to use a Japanese electric toilet. The kind with nine extra options that regular toilets lack, like “hip wash, “heat-dry,” and “for ladies.”
It’s that time again. I’ve been in Shanghai for two months straight now and though I love the city more and more, it’s time to get out of town. Probably going to Yunan on Monday or Tuesday for the week, flying into Kunming and going to Dali by bus hopefully. The cook at the ma la tang spot I frequent comes from there so I hopefully I can get some good advice. He said a lot of people out there speak the local dialect so hopefully folks understand my Mandarin.
Good China article in the new Atlantic. Peep. Heavy Wikipedia-drift going on right now…reading about the Andijan massacre. Time to go.
Over the last two days, I’ve interviewed numerous non-Americans about the election. Probably by tomorrow I’ll have the podcast edited (RMB200 digital recorder from xiujiahui quality). Most of the Chinese and Europeans I spoke with view the Obama victory positively and enthusiastically, but it didn’t distract any of them from the main issue in the world - the financial crisis.
One Spanish guy I talked to maintained that America shoulders most of the blame for the financial crisis, specifically by lowering interest rates to try to reduce our massive debt. All the Germans I spoke with seemed enthused. I’m about to get the lowdown from the French. It’s hard talking to most of the French people in Shanghai, as they often consider not speaking their language subhuman.
Looking for English-speaking Chinese one day, I just hung out at the XiuJiaHui Wall Street English (a corporate English training center) and approached people walking out. Eventually my friend and I found ourselves seated at a roundtable drinking free coffee, interviewing about twelve young-professional Chinese. They’re psyched about the win, but want to know how Obama will fix the financial crisis. The world economy depends heavily on America’s trade deficit with China, and if this keeps happening, the relationship will sour. They all agreed economics is the biggest variable in the American - Chinese relationship. Also, they’re miffed about America selling weapons to Taiwan and want to know how Obama feels about this.
More soon.