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