Predictably Irrational

Whenever I handed out a sheet that had a regular picture, its inferior version, and another regular picture, the participants said they would prefer to date the "regular" person—the one who was similar, but clearly superior, to the distorted version—over the other, undistorted person on the sheet. This was not just a close call—it happened 75 percent of the time.

This is the problem of relativity—we look at our decisions in a relative way and compare them locally to the available alternative.

But guess what happened. Once salaries became public information, the media regularly ran special stories ranking CEOs by pay. Rather than suppressing the executive perks, the publicity had CEOs in America comparing their pay with that of everyone else. In response, executives' salaries skyrocketed. The trend was further "helped" by compensation consulting firms (scathingly dubbed "Ratchet, Ratchet, and Bingo" by the investor Warren Buffett) that advised their CEO clients to demand outrageous raises. The result? Now the average CEO makes about 369 times as much as the average worker—about three times the salary before executive compensation went public.

Consider this: if I asked you for the last two digits of your social security number (mine are 79), then asked you whether you would pay this number in dollars (for me this would be $79) for a particular bottle of Côtes du Rhône 1998, would the mere suggestion of that number influence how much you would be willing to spend on wine? Sounds preposterous, doesn't it? Well, wait until you see what happened to a group of MBA students at M I T a few years ago. What were we trying to prove? The existence of what we called arbitrary coherence. The basic idea of arbitrary coherence is this: although initial prices (such as the price of Assad's pearls) are "arbitrary," once those prices are established in our minds they will shape not only present prices but also future prices (this makes them "coherent").

When I got back to my office, I analyzed the data. Did thedigits from the social security numbers serve as anchors? Remarkably,they did: the students with the highest-ending social security digits (from 80 to 99) bid highest, while those with the lowest-ending numbers (1 to 20) bid lowest. The top 20 percent, for instance, bid an average of $56 for the cordless keyboard; the bottom 20 percent bid an average of $16. In the end, we could see that students with social security numbers ending in the upper 20 percent placed bids that were 216 to 346 percent higher than those of the students with social security numbers ending in the lowest 20 percent (see table on the facing page).

Two groups bidding on willingness to hear a noise: one group gets 10 cents, the other 90 cents. When asked to bid once more, the 10 cents group were willing to listen to the sound again for a lower price than 90 cents people.

You're walking past a restaurant, and you see two people standing in line, waiting to get in. "This must be a good restaurant," you think to yourself. "People are standing in line." So you stand behind these people. Another person walks by. He sees three people standing in line and thinks, "This must be a fantastic restaurant," and joins the line. Others join. We call this type of behavior herding. It happens when we assume that something is good (or bad) on the basis of other people's previous behavior, and our own actions follow suit.

It seems then that instead of consumers' willingness to pay influencing market prices, the causality is somewhat reversed and it is market prices themselves that influence consumers' willingness to pay.

So what happened when the "customers" flocked to our
table? When we set the price of a Lindt truffle at 15 cents and
a Kiss at one cent, we were not surprised to find that our customers
acted with a good deal of rationality: they compared
the price and quality of the Kiss with the price and quality of
the truffle, and then made their choice. About 73 percent of
them chose the truffle and 27 percent chose a Kiss.
Now we decided to see how FREE! might change the situation.
So we offered the Lindt truffle for 14 cents and the Kisses free.
Would there be a difference? Should there be? After all, we had
merely lowered the price of both kinds of chocolate by one cent.
But what a difference FREE! made. The humble Hershey's
Kiss became a big favorite. Some 69 percent of our customers
(up from 27 percent before) chose the FREE! Kiss, giving up
the opportunity to get the Lindt truffle for a very good price.
Meanwhile, the Lindt truffle took a tumble; customers choosing
it decreased from 73 to 31 percent.

Copenhagen

The two major breakthroughs are so far:

1. Saving the world's rainforests: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) => an income scream to countries with the poorest emissions, part of the Clean Development Mechanism => can function either as a "get out of jail free card or an income stream"

2. Clinton leads charge - 100 billion dollar fund - to create pot for developing countries.

Newsweek: "In November, I met with an executive at one of the private-equity firms that has sprung up in Beijing. He talked up the firm's investments in energy software and mobile communications. But exporters? He wouldn't touch them."

While trade has rebounded from its lows, the volume is nowhere near its peak. In September, the combined total of U.S. imports and exports was 24 percent below the level of July 2008. Countries stung by the sudden drop-off in demand from foreign buyers have realized that they can no longer simply export their way to prosperity. (China's exports fell 23 percent between August 2008 and August 2009.) Smart investors are channeling resources to companies that produce domestic goods for domestic markets.

Why the split? Turns out that Morales, for all his fire-breathing rhetoric, governs with far more discipline. Both he and Chávez have nationalized key industries, but while Chávez blew his windfall on poorly focused social programs, Morales has been a model of fiscal austerity. He built up enormous reserves; made smart investments in infrastructure, electricity, and microfinance; and diversified trade to depend less on the U.S. So while Venezuela is suffering from blackouts, water shortages, and double-digit inflation, Bolivia is growing faster than at any point in the past three decades. Now, that's downright radical.

Conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the MacArthur Foundation, the study found that three quarters of Chinese pointed to environmental problems such as climate change as a major threat to China's security, while 67 percent cited water and food shortages, and 58 percent said internal separatists. Only half of respondents thought the U.S. posed a security threat, and 45 percent still worried about Japan (though the survey indicated that would change if Japan were to acquire nuclear weapons). The other big regional players--India, Russia, and South Korea--were seen as relatively negligible risks.

Fasting unto death

A case of a single man effecting change: K. Chandrasehkar Rao fasting unto death to create the Telegamara state...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/world/asia/11india.html?hp

Moby Dick

Randy sent me a chapter of Moby Dick. The following is an excerpt:

"

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome’s accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;—not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.

But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain” (i.e. even while living) “in the congregation of the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar."

Some pictures from Tibet

On a plane home

:((((((( majorly.

Some anecdotal evidence as to why one should be paranoid about the media (yes, even the NYT you latte-sipping, tree-hugging, pinko-hippie terrorist)

Tibet got a lot of attention last year due to the 3/14 riots. The international media was up in arms. Human rights activists called for a parallel human rights torch relay as a mockery of the Olympic torch relay. From what one could decipher from the news media, it seemed like a classic Elves vs. Orcs tale. The Chinese were unequivocally wrong.

The following are a couple of conversations I've had with Tibetans and Han Chinese. This isn't necessarily the truth about the situation in Tibet, but it does make the picture a bit more nuanced, something I never read or heard about while watching the news coverage in the US:

1. A Tibetan girl selling maps for money noted that the riots was basically the result of "the Dalai Lama messing around." The Dalai Lama is enlightened, yes, but he is also the political leader of Tibet. So that means he isn't just some religious guru that transcends the politics. Rather, he gets right into the dirt as well.

2. Monks and religious leaders live in the nicest conditions, far above those inhabited by ordinary Tibetans. Tibetans are deeply religious, so this is understandable, but I think this has led to sharply divergent views on Tibetan within Tibetans. It seems that the monks are the ones who deeply oppose government rule, not ordinary Tibetans. Monks require children to not talk to PLA soldiers or accept their food.

3. Not all PLA soldiers are heartless monsters. One was practically begging for a tourist to put out his cigarette in the Potala Palace compound for the sake of protecting the sanctity of the palace. No one wants violence.

4. Han and Tibetans get along. I believe that if it wasn't for the government and it wasn't for the monks, there would be no conflict. Its not ethnic, but political.

5. Despite all this, repression of religious freedom is real. Soldiers are everywhere.

6. If the Chinese propaganda ministry (I don't use propaganda ministry negatively here because that's what it is along with the White House press secretary, etc.) wasn't so stupid, China would have a much better public image in the world right now. They don't understand that press freedom actually helps them because reporters would then become more understanding.

7. Most of the participants of Tibetan riots, according to several people, were Sichuanese Tibetans, who are considered a separate group from Tibetans from Tibet.

Sky burial

There's something incredible about being kilometers up in the sky and the clouds so close that you can just reach up and wiggle your fingers to have them touch you. Being high makes you want to go even higher. That feeling pushes itself until you're not just with the clouds, but surging and flying past them. All you want to do is climb every mountain around you and then after that, climb even higher.

It would be wrong to ignore the fact that the sky burial was most likely borne out of practical considerations: the lack of fuel source for cremation, or the rockiness of the ground, preventing in-ground burial. But I'd like believe to some degree that it also encapsulates that wish to fly straight up into the sky after a lifetime of being so agonizingly close.

The burial goes like this: the corpse is cut into tiny pieces by Tibetan specialists. Bones and cartilage are ground into a pulp and mixed with yak butter and others. It is all left on a mountaintop, where vultures and elements wear the body down until ideally nothing remains. The birds and the wind carry every piece of the body into the sky. Some sources say that it is a final act of compassion to the rest of the world, giving alms to the birds. At the same time, it perhaps also reunites the body with that which resides just above it.

Either way, its a practice that as far as I know only exists in Tibet. There's a sort of perfect sense to it that is awe inspiring.

Anyways, what is it about retrospective romanticizing? There was hardly any reflection while I was in Tibet - only afterwards.

Undisputed Fact

Tibetans are the friendly people.

Chengdu

Just a few more words about what Chengdu has been like since I'm in this hotel and I have internet access:

So we haven't made it to Tibet because we don't have original copies of documentation from the Chinese government authorizing our entry into Tibet. Luckily, for once, it seems that things are on track. We had Lhasa ship the original documents for about 5 USD and we received it in about six hours. We are set for tomorrow if everything goes as planned.

The driver of the hotel shuttle from the airport to the aforementioned hotel was interestingly in cahoots with every single business in town, it seems. In fact, while driving the hotel shuttle, he recommended for us to to go to a different hotel. "You know, don't tell my bosses, but my friend has a great hotel that you guys can live in. Its cheaper and bigger for sure."

Later on, we asked him to recommend a good place to eat local Sichuan food. He maintained that there was no good place to eat around here since it was the boondocks, far away from Chengdu proper. We asked him to take us to the airport instead. We drive for a while and he pulls over in front of a little restaurant. "Oh yeah, this place is great, my friend owns it." Good man.

After dinner, we walked to the airplane cargo service to pick up our documentation. The cargo service involved walking down a narrow, unpaved road for about 45 minutes or so. We got a rickashaw man (friendly guy) to carry us about halfway for 4 yuan, which is a measly amount: 70 cents. We saw people digging through trash on the way back for copper to sell or other odds and ends. We wasted about 1000-2000 yuan the past three days.

Research

So I haven’t written about my research at all. That’s because my research really just involves buying ever flavor of Chinese ice cream there is and spinning around in circles to prove to passerby that I, in fact, will never get dizzy (to the Charles Kao, Friedman Family Travel, and Summer Environmental studies: I have been hard at work comparatively analyzing mode transportation shifts in urban landscapes). Here are just some very preliminary thoughts before I finally start writing my reports and papers:

For the past two months, I’ve been in Shanghai, China and surrounding Jiangsu province conducting research on Chinese attitudes towards different modes of transportation and their consequences, from widespread smog to the growth of a wasteful consumer culture to the exacerbation of class differences. I surveyed around 1000 students, conducted interviews, and read a constant stream of news stories about cars and public transportation.


One thing for sure: the Chinese want cars. Chinese consumer demand recently surpassed that in the US and the car craze is evident in pretty much every publication. In my survey, most students expressed strong feelings to buy a car as “as soon as they were financially able.” According to a recent Chinese news piece, whereas the “big three” items a bachelor needed to find a wife in the 1980s were a bicycle, a washing machine, and a television set, the big three that a single dude needs today is a car, a house and over 10,000 yuan monthly (now you know, eligible bachelors and creepy nerdy white dudes with Asian fever otherwise known as all my friends!). Interestingly, according to the survey, more people expressed strong feelings for a car in Shanghai as opposed to the smaller, less developed Zhenjiang.
All of this has widespread consequences. People know it too. But despite a high degree of concern expressed for global warming, acid rain, air pollution, and more, the concern did not ameliorate the desire for a car. It’s also important to remember that most people living in China today have experienced firsthand what poverty is and wanting a better life is only natural. I came into the project vehemently opposed to private car ownership but have somewhat revised my views. Cars are a novelty, a luxury that many people have envied for decades. Before people start getting on bikes or returning to public transportation en masse, a culture in which most people have experienced the novelty of driving a car is must already be present.


I maintain my love for public transportation, however, and I think that the gradual replacement of public transportation with cars will result in subtle, but important effects on living in cities. For example, public transportation is one of the last truly public places, where the rich mingle with the poor and people are forced to watch and interact with each other. The white-collar car driver goes to work enclosed from the rest of society, works in his high-rise building, and then returns to his isolated, high-rise apartment. It’s a sad living and with my first long experience with public transportation, my environmentalism increasingly has become a means towards understanding how modern life as a whole can be improved.

Bad times

I'm sitting in the hotel in Chengdu right now. Why? I have no idea. I should be hiking the Himalayas and half the way into becoming a sherpa right now. Unfortunately, I'm sitting in here in the Detroit of China (just kidding, its actually a really cute city full of pandas...pandas pandas pandas) watching my dad watch TV (watching us?).

What was supposed to happen on our way to Tibet was an overnight train to Beijing for a day and a night, followed by a flight to Lanzhou in Gansu province for three days, and then an overnight train to Lhasa. What happened instead was 1. Missed our flight to Lanzhou and had to buy another ticket, 2. Missed our train to Lhasa and had to buy a plane ticket from Xian to Chengdu to Lhasa instead 3. Realized that we needed original copies of our approval by the (sic) Everything is Super (sic) Tourism Bureau of Tibet and thus missed our flight to Lhasa and had to buy another ticket, finally followed by 4. Sitting in a hotel watching my dad watch the TV watch us. How the hell did we only hit 1 out of 3? Determination and guts.

Anyways this whole fiasco has been 太腐败了 (which means too corrupt...originally meant to refer to the government, its now used in every day language for everything, from a bad situation to taking your friends out to a good meal)...but as they say, Sherpas Never Give Up. And damned if we do. Its now or never (or, like a year). Its Tibet or bust.

Video update extravaganza

Because like most teenagers writing blogs with the sole purpose of striving for some semblance of maturity, I am too dumb and too lazy to persist.

From China

We went to Hangzhou for a while and rode bikes from a bike sharing program around. It was the best single day in China so far. Look at my dad ride that bike! Now that's classic.

From China

This was a fashion show I saw on TV in Nanjing involving women wearing vomitted on dead animals. I'm sorry I have the writing maturity of a ten year old.

From China This was the solar eclipse in Shanghai. Too bad it was raining the entire day but it was still pretty sweet to see the sky turn entirely black for five minutes. No worries though. I sacrificed some dumplings to summon back the sun. Who knew that sacrificial offerings could be so delicious?

Chinese blogging

I've been reading a good amount of Chinese blogs lately and I'm set to write for ChinaSMACK soon (google it!). This is something I just read:

After a particularly gut-wrenching description of the death penalty:

"

This becomes a matter of social prioritization. In the United States, a death penalty inmate can file appeals with free legal representation. The process may take 10 years and tens of millions of dollars before all appeals are exhausted. This is the same government system that is being slammed for failing to provide adequate social services to large numbers of socially vulnerable people. There are many more poor and desperate people in China who need help.

This is not helped by the fact that the detailed statistics and cases are treated as national secrets in China. It is alleged that more than 10,000 executions occur each year. The media provide the details on a small number of cases, but they are the most notorious cases such as mass murderers (e.g. Ma Jiajue). This is a deliberate strategy in that anyone who objects to the death penalty in principle will find himself seeming to defend evil incarnate instead. This is the same strategy that is used in banning Internet sites (e.g by highlighting the most obnoxious pornographic sites) and books (e.g. by highlighting the most repulsive pornographic novels). Meanwhile, there is no sense of how many innocent people might be executed each year.

There is the alternative of a life sentence in lieu of execution. In the United States, it will cost the state more than one million dollars to place a person in jail for life under standard conditions. This is the same government system that is being slammed for failing to provide adequate social services to large numbers of socially vulnerable people. There are many more poor and desperate people in China who need help. Jail conditions in China are significantly worse, so that sentencing someone to life in prison is cruel and unusual too.

I don't know what the answer is.

There will be those who think the answer is democracy, by kneejerk reflex. No, it isn't. Suppose you let the people decide on this: either you shoot the 10,000 people per year, or else you pay 100 yuan per year for their life sentences. How do you think they are going to vote? Shoot them. ASAP."

---

The Japanese

I met with a Japanese girl who is learning English and Chinese yesterday at a coffee shop. I walked around for about an hour in the sun trying to find out exactly where the coffee shop we were meeting at was located, sweating my ass off. I found it after a while and the typical cultural exchanges conversation ensued. We basically spoke through our handheld electronic translators. Regardless, cultural exchanges are always very fun. She was, actually, very attractive. I think things went well.

Later, I went straight to my uncle's house for dinner. The first thing my cousin's wife said to me was "God you smell."

The Line 8 Subway Incident

To get back home from a concert for local musicians (pretty good stuff, lots of Chinese hipsters whatever that means wearing fedoras), I had to ride the eight line.

Now, usually, the 8 line is very crowded and you'll be lucky to find a place to sit, especially if you are riding north at stops south of People's Square. So I went on the subway not expecting a place to sit.

I step on the subway. Four of the people seem very eager to get off as I get on and they are preceded by some sort of commotion. Fight? Maybe. Most people are standing so it seems there won't be any seats left but I scan the subway anyways. I spy three empty seats side-by-side. SUCKERS! I think...the line 8 riders sure are off their game today! So I take two strides to get to the seats to step in a pile of vomit.

WOO! THREE SEATS FOR SITTI...oh.

vom-on-foot

Anyways, it was around for another two stops much to a chagrin of countless passengers who thought they had lucked out. One really well-dressed lady stepped in it in her heels (score one for the working class!). The most heart-wrenching thing was when an older woman with her grandson ran towards the seats. And slipped. And fell. Why is there evil in this world?

It was cleaned up right at that stop.

Funny

Made in response to a car accident in which a rich merchant's son killed a poor university student http://www.chineseye.com/blogs/Street-Racing-Rich-Kid-Kills-Pedestrian-Netizens-Outraged-698.html

"Everyone be content, in China there are still people who will take care of things. If it were in America, the FBI would have long ago silenced/killed the victim’s entire family."

In jest. KBS forums...

Two good articles

These are two great articles. If I ever decided to write a short story or something, I'd write it as a whale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12whales-t.html?pagewanted=10

Nanjing

For the weekend, I decided to take a little trip to Nanjing, which is about a two hour car trip north of Shanghai. My uncle drove me there and made a one night detour at Yangzhou. Before I go on, a little about my uncle. He apparently has made a fortune from the air conditioning sector and the nursing home sector (apparently both are booming) and has friends who are among the rich and powerful in China. At about 6:00 PM he tells me we are going to dinner. What he did not tell me is that I was going to go eat dinner (and drink/watch others get drunk) with some of the most powerful local politicians and cadres around the area.

It was absolutely surreal. I did my best to play the American part by wearing my moccasin cap and doling out folkisms and proverbs about woodsmen and skunks or something. Well, not really, but they were amused by me. All Chinese seem to know three words, "OK" "Hello" and "No problem" (though I've been trying to introduce "No biggie" to the Middle Kingdom) and at one point during the night, they all started yelling OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK at me. The deputy general of the regional Communist Party was also insistent on high-fiving me. repeatedly I did not know what was going on. They were pretty nice as people. At the same time, I got this feeling that every single one of them was corrupt, though this is entirely unsubstantiated. Its not like anyone was restricting Uighur relgious freedoms or plotting to bomb America like the popular media might have us imagine, but it just didn't feel right to me. Might be more my problem than theirs though...

I arrived at Nanjing the following day to live with my cousin for a few days or so. Right when I stepped out of my car, my entire body, from my nostrils to my fingers, from my head to my toes, from my eyes to my nose, from right ear to my...uh...nostril, started dripping with sweat. This place is hot. Luckily, I brought my old track uniform and old-schooled fittysix and sligh'd it.

My cousin however already decided that it would be nice to travel outside. We slugged around to Sun Yatsen's memorial and then to the mausoleum of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. I've included some pics below:

"William James, father of American psychology, tells of meeting an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle. "But, my dear lady," Professor James asked, as politely as possible, "what holds up the turtle?" "Ah," she said, "that's easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle." "Oh, I see," said Professor James, still being polite. "But would you be so good as to tell me what holds up the second turtle?" "It's no use, Professor," said the old lady, realizing he was trying to lead her into a logical trap. "Charles Zhu can leg press a dank ton with ease," she replied.

"Now that I have the Cybertronian Matrix, I now have the power to eat any popsicle I want and create my own brand of Abercrombie and Fitch knockoffs!"

Pimp my ride

Later that night, I ate duck head. That's all I really have to say.

"Braaaaiins...BRAAAAAIIINS"

My cousin also happens to have a four year old kid and I've been hanging out with him. I'm not going to say he is hyperactive because, come on, that is so cliche you teenager babysitting some cousin who is trying to make conversation with friends. But he is pretty hyperactive. We went to go watch Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen the next morning, which is a huge hit in China for reasons that I am unawares. Somewhat complicating the matter for me was that it was in Chinese. Its not like it was intelligible in English before but try figuring out what the Chinese "Cyberticon Matrix of Leadership" means. Its damn well near impossible. I tried to make it out the storyline. As far as I know it involved giant robots fighting over something silly and then even bigger robots fighting and then Megan Fox.

I have now been listening to Michael Jackson's Black or White for four hours straight because my uncle's son is obsessed with him. Good stuff...over and out.

Living in Shanghai

I read the New York Times and occasionally blogs about Shanghai at night to keep myself occupied and at the same distracted from the fact that I am in Shanghai doing the same thing I would do at home. News is interesting. Sarah Palin, for example, resigned as governor of Alaska today. Pakistan had a revolution and is also a country. Sometimes, I go to the shopping centers and hope to meet someone at a shop that sells coffee or goggles or Happy Lemons or books or water. That goddamn lemon! He's so happy! Why is that? Why does he have to give me that mischevious wink and grin from ear to ear and give me milk tea with tapioca balls at the bottom for five yuan, flaunting his delicious drinks in my face? "You know, I hear this stuff may be unhealthy for you," I tell the girl next to me. "But they're so delicious," she responds.

The happylemon. The last thing you see before you die?

Data entry has been terrible. You just enter the same stuff over and over again and hope it will mean something. I went to a bar in the white person district today for the first time today, after I ate dinner with his family. He barely knows anyone from his family in China due to the ocean that separates them. I'm skeptical about the bars because they are for westerners and I can't get that old lady begging for money out of my head even though everyone says she's part of some evil mastermind beggars union plot to rig elections in the Middle East or something, and besides, going to bars is the same thing I would do back home anyways.

A crowded place

We talked for a while and watched rugby and then walked around. Chinese women beckon to us to enter bars and Chinese men offer "good massage parlors." Vee-ho Vee-ho wu zi zangheyning I speak in my Shanghainese and they laugh because they know I've already heard about their scamming, I guess from the fact that Shanghainese know about scamming, but actually, I only read about it on the aformentioned blogs and forums about Shanghai late at night. I assume they are Xinjiang ren, or Uighur muslims, because all my relatives tell me they are, and I wonder if I'm racist. Is racism even in existence in China? I don't know. We sit around for a while and talk about our hometown and high school and elementary school and old friends. I challenge him to find a beer that's below 15 yuan and so we walk around on our quest, not planning to buy, only to see if there's anything below 15 yuan. He thinks I'm joking but really I'm just extremely cheap and will note the bar for some other time in case I want cheap beer. I can't believe we spent 100 RMB tonight. We find a 15 RMB beer and chat with the hostesses. I tell them that I can buy a 5 RMB beer at a supermarket and they snicker and then turn their eyes away. Their boss tells them to go on because we obviously won't buy anything . We walk on. Things are good but its time to go. The taxi comes and we speed off and I start talking to the taxi driver about everything. He's a good man. Glasses, thin face, been in this taxi-ing business for 10 years now. He's angry that they force him to work every other day but force him to work from 6:00 AM to 1:00 AM on the days he has to work. We travel a million miles and millions of people pass by. He compliments me and says that its impossible to connect with most of the people he picks up from the bar district due to language barriers, but I'm the first in which he could talk to. He has another hour to go before he gets to go home. I get back home finally, and read the New York Times.

Student dorms in Zhenjiang

Poop

Apparently, the Chinese find the word to be as funny as I do, from my aunt to graduate students to random high school student I ate with at a Chinese "Texas Steak" fusion place.

If you think about it though, it is kind of a funny word. Someone mentioned that it was an onamotapoiea (I don't know how to speel that word and I don't care). How gross is that?

At my aunt's house...

...watching my cousin play up to six hours of the Sims 3 every day trying to fulfill his goal of getting his hot-shot sports star character to score with every single woman in Simtown.

Playing video games, I think, is the only therapy available millions of Asian kids every year. What would you do if you had to begin studying out of your mother's womb? There's no sense of community now that the city has exploded in its growth, simultaneously sending friends away and conveniently trapping one in his own private room, so hanging out is just too out of the way to happen. Kids are forced to memorize and regurgitate information that's tedious and completely uninteresting. Real psychological therapy isn't even an option. It reminds me of my own boring, lonely, really-into-math childhood. Hell, I'd choose being a Level 40 warlock over that life, no contest. Or a rich government bureaucrat.

One of the college students in Zhenjiang explained it to me well. After recalling some friends that had to drop out of school for playing too many video games, he framed it (at least in my mind) as almost as a race to escape from real life by either playing too many video games or by becoming ridiculously rich (by Chinese standards, anyways) as compensation for having their asses beaten by chemistry textbooks.

Anyways, maybe one of the reasons that the Chinese can be stereotyped for being selfish is because they had their childhood stolen from them.

And by later...

...I mean now. I'm in the "mood" now so I might "as" well continue "writing."

When tourists come back from Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, or some other major city, the naive, ignorant traveler will inevitably utter something along the lines of "But really, I was so surprised, China is just like New York" or "China is, in fact, not a third world country; the people are so wealthy."

In fact, venture forth in any cardinal direction away from the center of the city and you'll see that Shanghai and Beijing are not at all representative of China as whole. They are anomalies, islands surrounded by a sea of people that by American standards, remain very poor.

All this has put quite an interesting perspective of my environmentalism and my anti-consumerism. I can see why consumer culture is so important in China. For the first time, people know what wealth means because it is tangible and can be easily seen in all the major cities, even though the vast majority do not and most likely cannot experience this wealth. Still, this is enough for most people to make wealthiness and a comfortable life their life goal. It is a driving force, perhaps the single most powerful motivation for 1.6 billion Chinese. Anti-consumerism, without a baseline consumer culture, when most people have never had a taste of a comfortable life, is not a valid philosophy; rather, it is hating the poor.

Take Jiangsu University in Zhenjiang. Jiangsu Province is one of the most rapidly developing areas in China and its average living standards are high above the national average. Zhenjiang lies right along between the famed Shanghai-Nanjing corridor, which has become a shining example for how the rest of the country should develop. As a member of the elite class from an elite nation, I was quite proud of my ability to withstand cold showers for a week, my abstaining from air conditioning, and my expert and intimate knowledge of squat toilets. Extreme, I thought. In fact, this is one of the most developed areas in China. My amenities are above average.

Knowing this, quite frankly, I would never want to live like an average Chinese lives.

In one sense, anti-consumerism is a concept that can only arise after development is complete. Psychological revolt to privilege and the status and wealth it brings is in fact the highest privilege possible. Only the rich and the most privileged can really turn their back on this stuff because they can easily gain it back. As truly the most privileged .0001 % in the entire world, I am of course no exception. Though there are many aspects of consumerism in China that can be tweaked, modified, and improved, consumerism in China is necessary evil, a stage that is needed in order to reach a higher and more enlightened stage of development.

Back from Zhenjiang

I haven't updated my blog in a while, though this isn't due to a lack of effort. Rather, it seems that no matter where I go, my Yale VPN becomes banned after one usage.

The solution I think is Starbucks, in which I may freely browse as much blogspot, wordpress, Google scholar, and gay porn as possible.

I left Shanghai last Saturday to come to Zhenjiang, which is smaller, more rural, etc. I've been
hanging out with a couple of graduate students. They have been teaching me crass Chinese words and I they...

I had my first intimate moment with a squat toilet the other day and it is one of the hardest things to do ever. Your knees become so sore and you have to clench your teeth to avoid falling in, but luckily I am sculpted like a Greek god. Apparently, back in the day, toilets were just one giant pit. One of my friends said that every Chinese kid who grew up in the countryside has had at least one experience where he fell into the toilet, which actually means a giant pit of poo. Also apparently, this place is famed for its beautiful women. Do you see what I did there? That is called juxtaposition in the literary world.

I enjoyed my time in Zhenjiang and I will write more about it later.

The beginning of consistent posting

After two weeks of on-and-off VPN access and trying to go through proxies such as MYSPACEATSCHOOL.com, it seems that, finally, I will be able to write consistently in this blog. Three cheers!

Now, to begin, I'm in Shanghai conducting research on Chinese attitudes and perceptions towards private car ownership and its consequences, particularly those regardingthe environment and urban development. Right now, I'm in the "survey" stage. The other two stages will involve interviews/observations and statistics from the government. To make the sample as random as possible, I planned to interview students. The problem is that once I got to China, I realized that classes would end in two weeks and so, I've been hustling to the max trying to get things done. Didn't really occur to me that Chinese students got a summer break...how foolish! Furthermore, because I was planning to do this at another university as well, I will also need to go back and forth between Shanghai and Zhenjiang, which is about an hour north. It looks like I will be pretty busy in June with little to do in July. So all in all, much hustling.

Well not really. I've actually been wandering around aimlessesly much more than to not feel guilty about. Despite my attempts to fit in as a native Chinese, people can still tell I'm foriegn. As I exit the train station at the People's Square (which is ironically the most capitalist, ritzy place in all of Shanghai and possibly all of China now), several people have come up to me and immediately practicing their English on me as if I had blonde hair, a stupid hat on, or was wearing a fanny pack. I asked some of them how they knew I was foriegn. They played it off pretty well at first..."you just have a foriegn aura to you" (can you be any less specific?), "you had english on your shirt" (well so does everyone) until finally the truth came out, 鼻子好大阿! which translates to "Whoa your nose is huge!" Well YOU, miss, have stupid hair and probably also have weak arms. You know, on my last trip to China, a fortune teller once told me that I had a "money-making" nose and my mom says she really likes my nose. So there.

As for the living situation, I have currently run back and forth between my various uncles and aunts. As anyone who reads wikipedia might tell you, China has a population of 10 billion people and as wikipedia might tell you once more, through a series of complex equations, on average everyone has 8 uncles and aunties in China. As a mere mortal, I am no exception to this rule. The first week or so, however, all my uncles and aunties combined forces to quarantine me at home due to 1) H1N1 and more likely 2) My general bumbling stupidity at anything practical. Pretty understandable.

Perhaps the unifying theme no matter where I am living (or where I go so far) is the fact that everyone I see wants me to get fat. I am not joking in the least bit here. I quote from my aunt directly:

"I just want to see you get fat. If you come home and have gained weight, I think my responsibility to your mother has been fulfilled."

I eat almost four dinners a day. Its revolting. More on this later. Eventually this blog will become a vehcile for me to rant about waste and consumerism - basically, what I usually rant about.

Luckily, though, there is a gym close by, which I have gone to exercise several times. Interestingly, the idea of GETTING SWOLL AS SHIT has arrived in China. The owner of the gym, who is there every day, is definitely one of the more interesting characters I've met. Picture your favorite middle-aged professor, friendly, intellectual, smiling. Now picture that head on a body of a fucking gorilla. Like 500 pounds, 6 foot 4. Now put a working-class wife beater on him and some long, super-classy chinos and imagine him deadlifting 900 pounds of iron in a shoddy, Soviet Union-1950's-style gym, asking people if they are tired yet and sometimes poking your obliques to check their rigidity and swolleninity.

All in all, I am immensely happy to be back here. I am attached to China. I love seeing my family, I love Shanghai and Zhenjiang, and coming back has just solidified my longing for this place to permanently be a part of my life.

Anyways, I'll be writing about my adventures and observations throughout the summer. Take a look when you can and send me links to YOUR blog.

A shiny new buick...

...busted (the pics are for my "research")

The People's Square, hang-out for hipsters, expatriates, and the extremely wealthy

Construction: can be seen everywhere

The view from my house...

...unfortunately is the only thing I've really been seeing the past few days. Well, to be more specific, it turns out all colleges close before June 20th or so, so I have to get the random survey (read: the bulk of my research) done these first three weeks. Didn't see that coming. I also realized I don't even know how to speak Chinese. It looks like the next month and a half, though, will be much further.

I arrived in Shanghai last Wednesday. My mom's sister and her husband came to pick me up in a brand new car amidst nearly hundreds of identical looking cars at the airport, something they were obviously proud of (both their specific possession and the more general car environment). I wrote tons of notes during my myriad trips in cars, in public buses, and walking around about how cars can destroy communities, how they promote a consumer culture, how they are a secret race of robots from the planet Zernoth bent on enslaving the human race, blah blah blah. Well actually no. I thought I would be unequivocally negative about cars, but actually, my view on cars has somewhat changed. I'll devote a couple of blog posts solely to cars later but do you really want me to rant this early in my blogography? Maybe. I'll go ahead and say no, though.

Meanwhile, I've spent way too much time in this tiny room pretending to do work than I should be (the JE library all over again), but things are really starting to roll now.

For now, some pics of the view from my window (its a neat little district! No annoying foreign hipsters, distinctly Chinese, etc.):

Map

View Environmentalists in a larger map

I started a new blog called Environment Time. Like most names for environmentally-related things, its got a bad name. But its so bad that its almost good. The above is the first post.

Please please please if have anything cool to post environment-wise, the login name is environment@yale.edu and the password is greenyale...let 'er rip!

Lastly, I will update my this blog tenfold tonight. Honest to god.

How will I ever compete...

...with all my friends' blogs?

Testing

Ha-ha! Take that, great firewall of China!

To my friends: if I don't come back, you know what happened!

Two words to not confuse in China

薪水: salary

xin1shui3

精髓: essence, sperm

jing1sui3

The case for working with your hands

Under conditions of estranged labor, man no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions.

A great great great article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?pagewanted=1

The Krampus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companions_of_Saint_Nicholas

In certain traditions, one of Sant-y Clause's companion is the Krampus.  The Krampus, instead of bringing gifts, and even subjects certain misbehaved young girls to "birching."  Servant Rupercht is analogous to the Krampus.

I quote from Wikipedia:

"In parts of Austria, Krampusse is a scary figure, most probably originating in the Pre-Christian Alpine traditions. This figure by local tradition were typically children of poor families, roamed the streets and sleddinghills during the festival. They wore black rags and masks, dragging chains behind them, and occasionally hurling them towards children in their way. These Krampusumzüge (Krampus runs) still exist, although perhaps less violent than in the past.

Today, in Schladming, a town in Styria, over 1200 "Krampus" gather from all over Austria wearing goat-hair costumes and carved masks, carrying bundles of sticks used as switches, and swinging cowbells to warn of their approach. They are typically young men in their teens and early twenties and are generally intoxicated. They roam the streets of this typically quiet town and hit people with their switches. It is not considered wise for young women to go out on this night, as they are popular targets.

In many parts of Croatia, Krampus is described as a devil, wearing chains around his neck, ankles and wrists, and wearing a cloth sack around his waist. As a part of a tradition, when a child receives a gift from St. Nicolas he is given a golden branch to represent his/hers good deeds throughout the year; however, if the child has misbehaved, Krampus will take the gifts for himself and leave only a silver branch to represent the child's bad acts. Children are commonly scared into sleeping during the time St. Nicolas brings gifts by being told that if they are awake, Krampus will think they have been bad, and will take them away in his sack. InHungary, the Krampusz is often portrayed as mischievous rather than evil devil, wearing a black suit, a long red tongue, with a tail and little red horns that are funny rather than frightening. The Krampusz wields a Virgács, which is a bunch of golden coloured twigs bound together. Hungarian parents often frighten children with getting a Virgács instead of presents, if they do not behave. By the end of November, you can buy all kinds of Virgács on the streets, usually painted gold, bound by a red ribbon. Getting a Virgács is rather more fun than frightening, and is usually given to all children, along with presents to make them behave.

It is unclear whether the various companions of St. Nicholas are all expressions of a single tradition (Knecht Ruprecht), (since various texts, especially those outside the tradition, often treat the companions as variations of Knecht Ruprecht), or most likely a conflation of multiple traditions. Traditionally, Knecht Ruprecht would sometimes be portrayed as being Black African, like Zwarte Piet in the Benelux. However, over recent decades this became regarded as offensive by some.

It probably brought offense to people of the countries of Africa by implying that a 'dark skinned' man would be the bad guy, as Zwarte Piet is considered a silly helper of Sinterklaas. The French companion of St. Nicholas, Père Fouettard (the whipfather), is said to be the butcher of three children. St. Nicholas discovered the murder and resurrected the three children. He also shamed Père Fouettard, who, in repentance, became a servant of St. Nicholas. Fouettard travels with the saint and punishes naughty children by whipping them. In modern times he distributes small whips, instead of thrashings, or gifts. Knecht Ruprecht is commonly cited as a servant and helper, and is sometimes associated with Saint Rupert. According to some stories, Ruprecht began as a farmhand; in others, he is a wild foundling whom St. Nicholas raises from childhood. Ruprecht sometimes walks with a limp, because of a childhood injury. Often, his black clothes and dirty face are attributed to the soot he collects as he goes down chimneys."

Here in the US, Armchair commentators often complain about the lamentable characteristics of today's youth: immaturity, jadedness, privilege, laziness, etc.  I think it would be hilarious and perhaps contribute to some societal good if we reintroduced the Krampus.  Or even got rid of Santa Claus completely and just had the Krampus.  What was it that eliminated the Krampus and kept Saint Nick in the Western World anyways?  Could be different, s'all I'm sayin'.

Changes coming

Once I leave for China, I have to actually consider what I write.  Duly noted.

Rawls A Theory of Justice

I have been reading Rawls' "Theory of Justice" recently. What he writes underlies what I have always felt but could never explain or say smart things about.

For my own memory:

"Taken together as one scheme, the major institutions define men's rights and duties and influence their life prospects, what they can expect to be and what they can hope to do."

"One way to look at the idea of the original position, therefore, is to see it as an expository device which sums up the meaning of these conditions and helps us to extract their consequences. On the other hand, this conception is also an intuitive notion that suggests its own elaboration so that led on by it we are drawn to define more clearly the standpoint from which we can best interpret moral relationships."

"It seems reasonable to supposed that the parties in the original position are equal...obviously the purpose of these conditions is to represent equality between human beings as moral persons, as creatures having a conception of their good and capable of a sense of justice."

Some updates from finals

Hey.  Finals suck.

Wikipedia articles I've read instead of doing my work

1. Literary theory

2. List of minor characters in StarCraft

3. Bugachev Hoax

4. Jim Raynor

More to come.

The Jaw Ordeal

Someday I'll write a long, reflective story about this.  For now, I'll just write melodramatic blurbs:

1. The broken jaw: five hours of memory just out of my life, despite being conscious the entire time (or can consciousness be consciousness without memory?).  I don't know what happened.  Apparently, the lone witness saw the accident from the opposite end of the van, too, and thus, never saw the accident itself.  There very well could have been foul play.  A brillantly malicious plan in return for some slight from years ago?  An angry dean's fists of fury?  Who knows.  And just think, if that could happen here, it could happen EVERYWHERE.  It could be happening now.  Hours gone from my mind.  The present.  The past.  The future.  Nothing.  NOTHING!    

2. The broken bike: My best friend, my always loyal companion, most importantlya bike uniquely mine, the only bright spot in this chasm of darkness that is my life.  O!  Faithful "Le Grande," ye French bike made by an American company, made whole again with the help of an insane hippie with a fanny pack and a tool belt, ye infernal machine with a nonexistent braking mechanism and continuously slipping chains.  Gone.  Forever, banished to some junkyard, or melted down into scrap metal for some whore of a recycling company to splotch into some grotesque metal contraption deep beneath the sewers of New Haven.  Gone. without even a hushed fare thee well from the lips of my unopenable mouth. 

3. The school weeks: a lack of motivation.  Just thinking about it make me not want to write anything.

4. The removal: The most intense feeling I have had in recent memory.  Laughing gas and a spray-on numbing agent that tasted like bitter cherries and impending pain.  I opted out of localized numbing to prove my manliness.  This proved futile midway, when I started crying uncontrollably, screaming at first and then only whimpering near the end.  The Yugoslavian stuck the metal into my mouth, poking and prodding, luring me into a false sense of security, and then yanking in such a way that I felt part of my soul had been ripped out.  I could feel the blood accumulating down into the front pockets of my mouth so that if I turned, it streamed on to my face.  With the procedure finished, I sat up and just stared into space for a while.  I felt cleansed with pain.

At the very very end however, I noted to myself that I should write down all of this stuff on this blog so I could remember to write something later.

I broke my jaw

It fucking hurt.  I'm glad I'm alive though.

Now I have to deal with the loss of my bike.  Man, I loved that thing.  We had a fucking relationship.  Could've been sexual.  Who knows.

Seriously, that bike was my best friend here.

Events

Two events I went to:

1. Whiffenpoofs Concert, 20th anniversary edition: it was interesting watching old people sing, especially when the singing entails yodeling, but most of it was boring (sorry a cappella). Until Bobby, Izzy, and some JE crew handed me 40's. All smiles after that, yessir.

2. Winton Marsalis at Unity Church on the Green: he went through the history of jazz in an amazingly entertaining way that even a narcoleptic like me stayed awake the entire time. Actually, now that I'm remembering the event, that's not true because I now recall drooling on the pews. In my defense, though, I was very tired. What I mean to say is that I would have stayed awake if this was an average day (maybe).

Anyways, he was fucking awesome.