Son of Shenzhen Zen: Beijing Bahdahbing (guest appearances by Hua Hin Hoo-Hah)

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown

2011-12-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

I can't forget it, which is why I'm returning in about 10 days. Today I had my last VA appointment with my cancer surgeon, a lovely, skillful and thoroughly professional Kashmir-native female surgeon, Dr B.

I've had a small crush on her since the beginning, mostly fascinated by her accent, dark eyes, caring but objective bedside manner and the careful way she must tweeze her eyebrows. As she examined my stoma (what's left of my colon poking through my stomach) and pronounced it "lovely" and certified my surgical wound as healed (as if I had anything to do with either of them) I focused not on my surgically mutilated midsection, but on her eyebrows and imagined watching her tweeze them carefully preparing for a night out away from the VA hustle.

"Good luck in China!" she said cheerfully. "But if there are any complications, you know where to find us."

Uh huh. I told her I'd done my homework for cancer care and ostomy supplies in Beijing and said I was glad to meet her despite the circumstances, gently shook her hand and left hoping I'd never see the place again, though her gentle Kashmir lilt and eyebrows will stay with me forever.

Got to think forward. Bob Marley, himself a cancer casuality, was earworming through my head, "Exodus, movement of Jah people" ... along with Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross.

Back at my sister's place she'd gone through one of her physician prescribed amphetamine day-off cleaning frenzies and inadvertantely thrown out a white garbage bag I stow my clean clothes in onto the curbside trash. This did not deter me either. I simply hacked her hands off with a machete and rescued the clothing before the garbage truck swung through and then I began trolling through emails.

There are few job interview possibilities, nothing rock solid yet, but I will prevail even it's writing copy for incomprehensible pirated Chinese IT supply catalogs. And a nice email from C. A rare treat. I told her I'd be staying in Beijing temporarily in the apartment of an elderly widow of an American communist journalist who'd elected to make China his home after the revolution.

He's a lesser figure than Edgar Snow but, like Snow, one whose memory is still honored by the PRC. For this he also served a few years in jail during the Cultural Revolution but emerged saying he'd learned from his mistakes. Whatta tool, I think. But I'm not him and can't imagine what he was thinking except he'd prefered hard time in China to returning to live in the USA.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but part of me understands it in an odd way.

Loan Me a Dime

2011-11-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

I was in the backseat of a car cruising from Skaneateles, NY courtesy of my ‘cancer buddy’ a woman I’ll call E, and her husband G who had graciously taken me out on a short daytrip beyond the rancid boundaries of Syracuse for an afternoon and early evening of life on rarified side of the Finger Lakes.

G is a blues fanatic and was tuned to a satellite blues station that due to some kinda cosmic blues miracle started playing ‘Loan Me a Dime’ a neglected 12:45 masterpiece by Boz Skaggs and slide guitarist Duane Allman and a horn and Hammond B3 and piano section on loan from God.

It’s a bittersweet song, and just a tad dated but it holds up and surpasses the years in a way. Boz pleading for a dime for a pay phone to call his ‘old time used-to-be, little girl’s been gone so long it’s worrying me.’
G and I briefly riffed on updating it, “Somebody loan me a cell phone…” but soon forgot about it and fell into the groove.

I know that feeling too well. How many ‘old time used-to-be’s’ have I moronically drunk- dialed for dismal results? Better let the song say it instead.
It was a farewell, too. Since coming to Syracuse and meeting E and G courtesy of one of my oldest colleagues and best friends, M, who is E’s brother, we’ve daily talked daily since, what? Maybe March? I’ve never talked so often and regularly to even a wife or girlfriend that I recall. It’s heartening.

We talk about our days and trials and chemo and blood tests and asshole doctors and nurses and the good ones too. The empty sympathies received from peers, acquaintances and the heartfelt ones too. And sometimes about relatives and no cancer talks at all, though it’s the reason for our bond. I know her now better than I do her brother, I think, weirdly thanks to this scourge.

It’s probably the last time I will see them before returning to China next month. But if so, it was a good sendoff. E and I will still call daily til the miles and phone rates interfere. In the meantime, somebody loan me a dime….

My Generation

2011-10-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

I never intended this to be a “living with/surviving cancer” blog, of course. Since the breakup with C I'd posted on several Chinese-western lonely hearts sites all focused on new love, new opportunities and accentuating the positive. I just wonder though how many people, western and Chinese alike, present themselves in a totally honest manner.

Prior to my cancer surgery, I used to smoke, though I ignored confessing to it when my first lovelorn notices were posted. Drinking too much sometimes? Guilty as charged. Two marriages and a few broken relationships before advertising my desirable single status? Also guilty of withholding evidence, your honor. Maybe not worth mentioning initially, but it’s significant baggage I carry and I think some weight any potential new partner would want to consider.

There’s the crucial age difference, also. I’m 59 this month and most of the Chinese women I’ve been with or am just friends with are a decade or more younger than me. I’m puzzled by this – but have also figured out that I often have more in common culturally and socially with a newer generation of Chinese than ones closer to my age.

I wish it were different. But growing up in the Cultural Revolution as the older ones did while I simultaneously grew up in the pampered western “Youthquake Revolution” were completely different experiences and sent us to different futures and reference points in which we’ve only really partially connected within the last 20-30 years.

While I can talk about the Grateful Dead, Chinese my age may talk about how grateful their parents and grandparents were not to be dead due to the Cultural Revolution.

But it works both ways. I’ve got a lot of down time now healing from surgery and waiting to return to China and recently decided to do something useful that I never did during my previous 7 years in China – I’m taking Chinese lessons.
A no-brainer, but I’m a slow learner, I guess.

My tutor is a late 20something Shanghaiese video art graduate student at Syracuse University – a patient understanding teacher besides being a cutting edge artist. Her works range from an ongoing documentary about a blind 5-year-old girl in Shanghai and satiric Chinese social commentary to a meditative performance art piece inspired by Japanese monks that was filmed in Holland.

Our time together allows me to concentrate on something other than my own woes and has led to some talks where she told me her filmmaking may be creatively/genetically linked to a grandfather who was a Shanghai movie maker in the ‘40s and later until the Party clamped down. Among his early acquaintances he told her casually was a budding actress in the early Shanghai movie clique, Jiang Qing, later better known as Madame Mao and the demonic force behind the Cultural Revolution, which eventually led to her grandfather’s professional and creative downfall. There were other, less historically significant players in his film group, all notable talents at the time whose memories and works have long since been lost.

“Wow,” I gushed. “You need to record his memories. As many as he’ll let you. It’s important. Sit him down, get him comfortable, get it all documented. There are so many stories out there and his generation (he’s 85) is dying fast.”

She seemed politely neutral though. Agreeing to be agreeable but I sensed it was territory she didn’t want to tread, whether it for his comfort or other unspoken reasons.

And it’s not my place to push it, just to work on mastering the four tones.

Jerusalem

2011-09-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

C just called from Jerusalem to ask how I’m doing with my cancer.
There. There’s a sentence – a thought, a concept – I could and would not have imagined a year ago.

She’s now working for the Israeli consulate in Guangdong Province and – since I met and wooed her and we later parted – has traveled almost more in the almost 10 years we’ve known each other than I have in my 58 years.

Oh. The cancer. That’s a whole new country, too. One no one should have a visa for. A terrorist state. Not sunny Jerusalem, where she said, laughing a little, that locals were asking to be photographed with her. “Chinese are everywhere in the world, but not so much in Israel, I guess.”

“Now you know what it’s like to be a foreigner in China,” I said, recalling the countless times I’d posed with Chinese tourists for photo and video shots waving and smiling, white hairy arms around smooth shorter shoulders.

She mentioned an Asian classical musician who’d held a concert near her hotel who was advertised in a yellow dress. “I’m wearing yellow today. Four people have complimented me on my ‘performance’ and asked for my autograph.”

I avoided details about the colon cancer. Kept it vague. I’m on the mend, I just said. Getting better and hoping to be back in China by the end of the year. Didn’t mention the bag I shit in now and how I can’t recall my last erection, and the gauze packed surgical wound crossing my belly aches continually looks like a ragged combat zone.

It’s new territory after years of feckless and occasionally responsible living. Completely unexpected, unwelcome, of course, and nothing like the fund raising ads I see of cheerful ordinary and famous people holding signs saying things like “Cancer, you’re out!” I’m still in the “Cancer, what the fuck?” stage. I can do nothing but wait.

I try to block it all out for a minute and instead imagine eating oranges in Jerusalem with my ex dressed in yellow, nudging her a little to sign some autographs.

Doctor, doctor, gimme the news....

2011-06-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

Been back in the ‘Cuse for awhile now between a lifegiving trip to NYC with some GT ex employees and a new China pal whom I met in Syracuse but who wisely has relocated to El Manzana Grande.

While there I felt rejuvenated despite spending money out the gazoo for basic lodging. Trips to the Museum of Sex, random encounters with Hare Krishna Parades (amazed they still exist) with grinning, chanting multiracial devotees hauling 30-foot pagodas like human oxen in a Cecil B. DeMille production down the street with friendly cop car escorts as an Austin BBQ fest competed with a Hamburg-era early Beatle tribute band playing….then a Puerto Rican Independence Day parade.

Plus Chinatown with a fabulous meal, walks to see all the "dissident" Chinese papers reporting what is under wraps there and a worthwhile sweaty trek for Taiwanese “bubble tea” for dessert… all in all, amazing slice of another life and lives past, especially after gaping at the incredibly lovely Persian waitresses at dinner and irresistible Dutch models in our cramped hotel elevator, I could’ve slept on looks alone and happily woken up dead the next day.

Reality hits hard on the budget Megabus back when one whacked out passenger kept hassling me for hours about whether I was a “professor” or not and mercilessly haranguing his hapless woman between pandering to a young fat white kid enjoying his hiphop and patronizingly dubbing him as “DJ Get It On.” Finally ditched the ride at the Syracuse station to confront a gaggle of harmless, slow, inbred Amish clogging up the entrance.. Hmmm. Slam, bam new reality zones.

Now the waiting is the hardest part, as Tom Petty famously sang, and it’s true whether you’re love, waiting for a drug delivery, an interview, a bus or taxi, an open bathroom, meal, job offer, whatnot and in this case it’s a firm date for my surgery. That may be settled tomorrow, Friday. Between few appts at the VA to renew scrips, what I’m waiting for is a cut me open and let’s get this deal done and send me back to China.

Dipatches from the medical front

2011-04-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

My immersion the VA system has its bright sides. Most of the female staff with the exception of the Asian Indian staffers speak somewhat like they're out of "Fargo" typecasting and are as relentlessly cheerful.

Two incidents today gave me some grim joy. The first was an elderly cranky guy with a prostate procedure on the books who wanted reassurance that he wouldn't be immobilized for longer that 24 hours because he was in charge of NASA and the Federal Security Agnecy -- both of which he had originally "established." He was reassured that his duties would be covered before being wheeled off to lahlah land, but not before good naturedly warning a nurse who greeted him, "Hands off, toots! I'm spoken for."

The second came after I was being discharged for a test (negative) to see if my colon tumor was "communicating" with the bladder. "What are they talking about?" I asked the surgeon. "Invading Poland?" Apparently not and as the nurse was giving me my discharge orders she noted "No sex for 24 hours" No problem, I thought. A strange distant concpt anyway, this "sex."

Free Ai Weiwei and Wen Tao

2011-04-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Most of you outside China readers have never heard of Ai Weiwei, but he’s an “activist” of sorts and artist and cat and animal protection force who was recently detained while trying to board a flight to Hong Kong to Taiwan on April 1 for unspecified “incomplete departure procedures” and hasn’t been heard from since.

As a snide and largely incoherent editorial in my former employer Global Times tried to point out: “Ai Weiwei likes to do something "others dare not do." He has been close to the red line of Chinese law. Objectively speaking, Chinese society does not have much experience in dealing with such persons. However, as long as Ai Weiwei continuously marches forward, he will inevitably touch the red line one day.”

I guess he has, though no specifics have been revealed to date. It is troubling and mysterious in more than several ways. He is an older, large plump man with a full head of grey hair and respectable beard, easily recognizable which is why as he was being squired through the Global Times newsroom by the assistant managing editor, a rat phlegm-brained self-serving cretin with at least one in-house mistress who worships at the altar of GQ, several of us foreigners stopped to make a point of meeting and greeting Ai Weiwei, a wry wise, and pragmatic man, some to have photos taken with him.
I stuck with simple conversation, thanking him for coming and asking him what he thought of GT. “I like the youthful energy,” he said. “Many youth, but we need more experience,” I replied. And then we made a bet on which one of us is older and he was swept away by Mr GQ.

Why he was there remains a mystery and where he is now is a larger one. To further complicate the mystery, a former GT reporter fired for tweeting excerpts of a staff meeting and who has gone on to become an assistant to Ai Weiwei has also been snatched. His name is Wen Tao. For a full gist of the “official” take on Ai Weiwei check this out http://en.huanqiu.com/opinion/editorial/2011-04/641187.html. And if you’re googling him in China I guess you already know what my freelance journo friend D said, “everytime I input his name my computer behaves like its got a hedgehog in its innards.”

Celluloid Heroes

2011-03-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

At loose ends and in medical and employment limbo now, I've picked up some freelance editing work from China, specifically a last minute, rush job editing Chinglish synopses for an "ethnic minorities film festival" in Beijing.

For those who've been in China awhile, the movies are no surprise.

It's an effort to showcase the "benevolent ethnic diversity" policies exercised by the Chinese Communist Party/Han majority regarding the official 50something "ethnic minorities" living there, largely the (troublesome, sensitive) Tibetans and Muslim Uhygurs.

Minorities in general are still publicly showcased as "colorful," "warm-hearted" simple and naive folks who like nothing better than to sing or dance in their "traditional native costumes." Kinda like the happy Negroes and Indians in the US before the Civil Rights Movement.

There's also the obvious simplistic political propaganda angle in these flicks, particularly the ones after the 1940 "Liberation" when as late as the mid-50s movies were still being made about nefarious anti-CCP "spies" (all named "Mr XXXX") thwarted by earnest minorities with the supreme aid of Han comrades.

I've mucked my way through nearly 60 by now and believe me, most end with someone crying with joy despite losing loved ones who frequently fall off cliffs.
Submitted are a few samples for your enjoyment

08、Mongolian Ping Pong (Mongolian)
Production: Kunlun International Film & Media (2005) Color
Script writer: Ning Hao
Director: Ning Hao
Photography: Du Jie
Starring: Huricha Bilige, Dawa, Geliban

When Bilige finds a mysterious white ball floating in the creek, he picks it up. It feels a bit hard and also a bit soft. It is a little transparent too. What is it? Is it the long lost Night Pearl of the grassland? Bilige and his two friends start exploring the secret of the white ball. Grandmother at her spinning wheel recognizes it as the Night Pearl, while on the screen in the open air, the white ball also becomes a golf ball…

After these encounters, they finally learn that the white ball is called a ping pong ball and it is a "national sport!”

So, like legendary heroes they decide to return the ball to the State. They start with great dreams towards the east where the sun rises. After they fail to return the ball, they then disagree about who it belongs to. Their fathers get the boys together and solve the problem using traditional Mongolian friendship -- dividing the ping pong ball in half.

13、The Turpan Love Song (Uygur) Color
Script writer: Zhang Bing
Director: Jin Lini, Xierzhati
Photography: Mulati M
Starring: Aziguli Rexiti, Mulading Abulimiti

Anaerhan, a beautiful, vigorous young tour guide, is good at singing and dancing. One day, she is robustly performing for tourists when she receives a call from her brother.

She runs to the road and stops the guests who are going to make a marriage match for her sister, Kangbaerhan. Her moving performance persuades them to go back home.

It turns out that her 34-year-old sister still loves her ex-boyfriend Kelimu, who is an armed police officer and always away from home living in an army tent. On the way back to the city on the travel agency bus, Anaerhan comes across an emergency where Kelimu is repairing the road and a reporter is holding Kelimu’s son, Tuerxun, who is mute following a sudden car accident.

Kangbaerhan hardly meets Kelimu again when she dies of leukemia. Anaerhan understands her sister’s love and happens to know that Tuerxun is an orphan adopted by Kelimu. She takes him back home and formally announces that she will be his mother. Her mother, Halike also understands her daughter’s kindness and treats Tuerxun as a grandson.

During an accident, Tuerxun loudly shouts: "Grandpa!" and later with his restored language ability takes a cup of water to Anaerhan, saying, “Mama, have a drink…” which moves Anaerhan very much.

In the fall, Anaerhan enters the armed police camp and the soldiers stand up and call for her brother-in-law as she bursts into tears.

001. Victories in Inner Mongolia (Mongolian)
Production: Northeast Film Studio 1950 Black and White
Script Writer: Wang Zhenzhi Director: Gan Xuewei Photographer: Du Yu, Li Guanghui
Starring: Yun Cun, Bai Dafang, En Hesen, Fang Hua

During the Liberation War, a Kuomintang spy named “Mr. Yang” sneaks into a banner (an Inner Mongolian military unit) in Inner Mongolia, conspiring with his assistant Tusulageqi to dethrone Prince Daerji in order to collaborate with the Kuomintang government.

At the same time, Su He and Menghebarter are delegated by the district government to establish a Communist democratic regime in the nomadic area. Menghebarter’s younger sister Wuyunbilege, and Dundebu, Prince Daerji’s herdsman, are lovers, but cannot marry because of obstacles set up by the prince.

Dundebu hates Han people and suspects Menghebarter of betraying his own nationality. But after conveying the Communist Party’s ethnic policies to Prince Daerji and Dundebu Su, He wins their trust, and his protection of Dundebu’s mother in a rain storm further dissolves Dundebu’s hostility.

Mr. Yang, hiding in a Lama temple, commands Tusulageqi to go to the Kuomintang Commission to deploy troops for aid and Dundebu is angered when he sees Wuyunbilege being molested by Mr. Yang.

Soon the nomadic area is surrounded by danger. A gang of troops sent by Tusulageqi kills Menghebarter as he rides away for aid. Tusulageqi urges Dundebu to assassinate Su He, but Dundebu discloses the plot to Su He.

Mongolian-Han joint troops led by Su He arrive as the Kuomintang troops march into the prairie.

The Kuomintang troops are wiped out, Dundebu catches Mr. Yang alive, Tusulageqi is arrested and Prince Daerji stands at Dundebu’s side as he joins the People’s Liberation Army while the crowd cheers.

002. People on the Prairie (Mongolian)
Production: Northeast Film Studio 1953 Black and White
Script Writer: Hai Mo, Malaqinfu, Li Guanghui, 特•达木林
Director: Xu Tao Photographer: Wang Chunquan, Fu Hong, Li Guanghui
Starring: Wurina, En Hesen, Chao Lu, Shu Hai, Zhang Juguang

Sarengewa, an Inner Mongolain herdswoman mutual-aid team leader honored as a Model Worker for two consecutive years, is in love with Sangbu, another mutual-aid team leader.

Mr. Baolu, a spy, plots to destroy the mutual-aid teams by persuading Sarengewa’s father Ziyire to quit the team.

In a snow storm, Mr. Baolu cuts a rope on the herd fence and releases sheep and horses. In her effort to save the animals, Sarengewa falls off a cliff with her horse, but luckily Sangbu comes to her rescue.

After the storm while Sarengewa is vaccinating injured animals, Baolu poisons a well killing more than 20 sheep and blames it on Sarengewa. At the Model Worker election some complaints are raised about the dead sheep incident on Sarengewa’s team.

After the meeting, Sarengewa sees Mr. Baolu acting suspiciously on a hill slope and finds the prairie on fire. She rides through the smoke to catch Mr. Baolu and the League Chief joins others in extinguishing the fire. With the help of Sarengewa and Sangbu, the police round up a handful of spies, including Mr. Baolu.

At a Model Worker awards meeting the League Chief commends Sarengewa for her great contribution to the prairie.

Singing the blues

2011-03-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

My new situation is taking some adjusting and a slow mental toll. I initially figured I'd be here three weeks, max, and now three months seems optimistic given the unexpected cancer diagnosis.

I'm family and houseguest both in a home where I feel often like a social anthropologist observing my sister, her husband and their 18-year-old son interact - "N., the graybeard alpha male whose interests center primarily around Youtube, Facebook, drug legalization, Argentinian tango and the 'stupidity' of politicians and religion quietly affirms his authority, while A., his long-suffering mate and primary source of hunting-gathering currrency exhibits occasional distress regarding 'working, going back to school, doing the taxes, their son's college applications, the laundry and the grocery shopping list...' Their offspring, M., seems however unusually well-adjusted and much like Jane Goodall's first breakthrough physical contact with a chimpanzee, he and I have bonded over the Keef Richards autobiography."

Meanwhile, I'm trying not to interfer with the daily routines and rituals but also knowing my presence is affecting a delicate choreography the three had long established before I dropped \like a disease ridden freeloader into their daily lives.

Then I got an e-mail from a Chinese friend in his 50s whom I've known since I first arrived in Shenzhen. He and I had been exchanging thoughts on our situations; his American wife and mixed race daughter have both abandoned him for the USA and he's also had some ongoing health problems.

Here's a recent one. It all kinda put my situation in better perspective.

Justin:
Last month one of my friend's wife try to introduce her close friend to me after she learns that I am single. My friend lives in Fuzhou and we know each other for years. I do not know too much about his wife. They both are in their second marriage. It is not my friend's ideal, so I ask him to let me talk to his wife in phone. I am older than both of them, They are in their forty something.

First she keeps telling me how good is her girl friend, who is over 40 but still looks like in 30 ......
Then I told her, since I am your husband's good friend. I have to tell you all the truth,

First of all, I have no money, no saving, no house under my name, no property.......)
(this statement destroy the first line)
To knock the second wall, I continue

Second: My health is in a shaky condition, I have to take high blood pressure medicine every day, My neck spine has problem, the connections of my neck spine will lose the right position to cause balance problem and I will pass out from time to time.

I did pass out 2 times. Pass out will not kill me, but the sudden pass out will result in an accident. The first time is 2004, after the first pass out, I can't even stand up to walk, I can only sit there and move around very slowly, If I try to walk then I can't keep my balance. After a week, the phenomenon is gone.

When I passed out in front of (my wife), it scares her to death. She thought she is losing me. At beginning, I do not know it was caused by neck spine. The phenomenon just come and go all the time for years.

I also did not pay attention on it. It is like driving an old car. You know the old car has problems all the time, so I just did not feel well all the time.
Until one day, the phenomenon came back so I check in a small hospital to get a IV. It happens that the Dr. has nothing to do so he spent more time on me. After his serious check, he told me, "Maybe your neck spine causes the problem, not the middle ear, ( for I thought it was the middle ear has problems for years)" so I took x-ray.

The pictures shows is normal problems.
According to western way, I should have a surgery. It is risky and I can't afford it for I have no insurance and never have.

The Chinese way is to use a needle to penetrate into my neck to some extent and shake the needle to hurt me. The more hurt I got , the more cure I have. It will just last a few seconds. How much pain you can take it, it depends. Then Dr. will pull out the needle and press a vacuum cup to suck the blood out from the needle hole. To take how many needles. it is all up to you. He will charge the same any way.

To make my money worth so I always take the most I can take. Of course, if you are in a weak condition, he will not give you so many needles. Usually I will ask at least 5 to 6 needles.

After the needles and sucking some blood out then I feel much better immediately, The pain and the pressures on neck decrease a lot , even my eyes can see more clear. Then he puts a few band aids on my neck, It looks ugly.

This is not a hospital place, this guy works in home, A small apt in a village. this village is full of young hookers. Every thing is illegal in the village. the hookers are illegal business, the buildings are illegally built and the treatment is illegal too.
At first, I went once in a week for about 6 times. Now my condition is under control, because I know the pass out is caused by neck so I know how prevent it.

I stop going there, first, it is too expensive, he charges 200 RMB for every visit. if I want the needle in other place, he will ask more.

Second, he is an old man, his hand is not steady. I worry if he can hold the needle good every time. what if he miss and neck is a very sensitive place.
Now I go to the official hospital to get the therapy, they do not use needle, they press my neck . The treatment is not so effective as the needle but it is more safe and cheaper. Every visit is 60 RMB. Now I just have to watch my neck and if I do not feel well, I go to the hospital at once.

Except the neck spine, I continued telling her, I have to wear a mask to sleep every night, the mask connects to a air pump machine.Because I have the sleep disorder. It is sleep Apnea. I do not know it is CSA or OSA , any way, I have to wear the mask to sleep.

The most terrible thing I am afraid of is no power. If the electricity suddenly be turned off, I will be forced to wake up for no air. What if I can't wake up again. Remember my nose surgery, it does not work so I still have to use the machine to get to sleep.

There are other small problems, I do not bother to tell her, I only have 2 teeth left on upper jaw. I had 5 teeth pulled last year from upper jaw. I just have a new denture with 13 teeth on it after new year. It only cost me 1007 one thousand and 7 RMB. This is a killing price, no one believe it. Any way, next time I meet you, I will open mouth to smile to you.

Most of the time my dick is in coma. Of course I will not tell her .
After my confession, she become speechless.

I am thinking, if I give the story to Opera, her reaction will ask every one to pray for me.
So I would rather meet Jerry Springer, he will give me something to rock hard.
The other problems are too small to mention it.

No one wants to stay in a sinking boat. I have no life insurance, no property....., every day life looks like a ugly picture. under this condition,Of course (my wife) and (daughter) want to leave. No one wants to sink down with you, it is normal and acceptable.
This is my attitude: My loneliness and sadness are not shareable.

On the other hand, their departure is a relief to me. I am sad but easy.
One morning a moron called me, he wants to threat me , ( the other way is to say you win the lottery). In the phone, he threaten to against my family then I began to laugh , laugh very loud.

That is the best part of my tragedy. I have no fear already.

P

At least I have all my teeth, no needles in my neck and legal cheap medical care, though hookers might be nice... Others have urged me to get out and meet people but lacking a car and job at the moment, I'm not really feeling like prime socializing material, though I've worked out an honest opening line.

"Hi! I'm Justin. I'm here for colon cancer treatment at the VA and living with my sister. I'm unemployed with dwindling savings and dependant on her and my marginally employed bro-in-law for transportation! Wanna do lunch sometime?"

Back in the USSA

2011-03-04T20:18:00.000-08:00

To condense a long story, I came back to the USSA for hernia surgery at the Syracuse VA hospital (my sister lives here so I can stay with her and the VA is good, not like in "Born on the 4th of July") but was urged to undergo some other tests that "men and women over 50" should do and I hadn't and it turns out I have colon cancer.

Who knew? I didn't - no symptoms, overt, at least - which is a good thing as it is still in early stages I guess. So I wont start shopping for a designer virgin Spanish calf skin Rolling Stones colostomy bag yet.

Anyway, Im gonna be here for a few more months at least with stints at another va facility in fabulous Albany for chemo and radiation etc. My unintended tour of upstate NY continues...

At least there are good herbal connections here so I can use those to stave off the nausea. No medical m here.

And I didnt have to undergo what is literally called "an occult blood test" - no idea what it is but it was briefly mentioned and I imagined a dark hooded and shrouded "Balthazar, Lord of 10,000 Demons" coming into the examining room with candles to shove a crucifix up my ass while reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards or something.

So it goes...be well and eat lots of fiber, my friends.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2011-02-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

Reason No. 317 Why China Will Never Be a True World Power
All dialogue guaranteed verbatim

I was waiting at my apartment for my China Air ticket back to the States to be delivered today when my phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Is this Mr Peter Justin Mitchell?"

"Uh...yes. Justin Mitchell, anyway... Who is this. please?"

"This is China Air. You have a ticket delivery today?"

"Yes."

"I am very sorry. We cannot deliver today."

"Oh? Really? Why not? What is the problem?"

"Um...(silence) How to say? Our delivery bicycle is broken."

Just Like Starting Over

2011-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

It was Wednesday February 2, Chinese Lunar New Year (Year of the ‘Wabbit) and I was at J’s apt with her husband, big brother, his girlfriend, an aunt and two uncles to for a traditional new year dinner.

Television was playing the CCTV New Year Gala – this year heavy on saluting migrant workers who’ve built these cities, if not on rock ‘n roll, on sweat, tears and blood and disenfranchisement, though you wouldn’t know it by the upbeat song and dance numbers – but no one was really watching.

It was only the second time in my years here that I’ve spent a traditional New Year’s night; the first was in Shenzhen where a “host family” – a wealthy, raving alcoholic I dubbed the “Strawberry King” because he apparently controlled the entire Guangdong Province strawberry trade at the time and who I later learned had been nabbed for corruption – and his long suffering wife and 16-year-old daughter hosted me.

That visit ended the next day when The Strawberry King began showing me his massive cognac collection and (presumably illegal) WWII-era Japanese shotgun and rifles. Guns and alcohol, I thought at the time. Not a good mix.

This was low key. Food – succulent fish, beef, and vegetables – was laid out when I arrived, though one uncle was “hiding” as J put it in a bedroom as I arrived.

“Where’s your other uncle?” I finally asked.

J smiled a little. “He is scared. He is hiding in the bedroom. He has never met a foreigner before.”

“I’m not here to loot the Summer Palace. Ask him to come out, please. I’d like to meet him.”

Who emerged was a stout, short grizzled guy of indeterminate age, though graying a bit in a buzz cut and what appeared to be a uniform of some kind. He smiled shyly. I smiled back and we shook limp hands and exchanged nei-hou’s.

He sat next to me on the couch and through J I learned he was working in BJ as a security guard after retiring many years ago from a grain distribution factory during the years when rice and other grains were rationed.

“So, his family perhaps got some extra grains?” I asked. She translated and they both laughed. “Yes, maybe,” she replied.

During dinner he and the other uncle broke out homemade “wine” (baiju) – more like white lightning steeped in ginseng and I joined them as J’s more urbane husband sipped some Great Wall red.

Toast followed toast as he almost simultaneously carved up a fatty succulent ginger flavored pork hind passing portions on to me saying how he never imagined he would meet a foreigner. Photos documenting the occasion followed and then he was on the phone telling friends and relatives he’d met a foreigner.

It was bittersweet for me, though, a closure that had repeated a beginning when I first arrived here and I was fresh to meet Chinese and seemingly they me.

What was really weighing was the fact that I’d just been let go at Global Times two days before, contract not renewed due to circumstances involving a delusional, power mad American charlatan, apparatchik Chinese chicanery, miserable management and my equally miserable misreading and mishandling of the whole situation as it unfolded and ended. I have several new employment possibilities, though none certain, nothing is here, and am returning shortly to the US briefly to regroup and re-enter.

I left with handshakes, loose hugs and smiles to a motel J had booked for me near her apartment to hole up as Chinese New Year blasted in. New Year doesn’t ring in here. It is a non stop barrage of artillery shells packed with paper instead of shrapnel that thunders throughout four nights and thuds and sputters during the days.

A few of the motel staff were laying out a 10-15 yard long line of high voltage fire crackers at the entrance like army machine gunners as I staggered in. I stepped over it just as the fuse was lit, hit the elevator, hit the sack and cried.

Sleep in heavenly peace

2010-12-26T01:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve been here so long now that Christmas in China is no longer a novelty. Just a reality, though events like my office Christmas party – scheduled at 7pm on Christmas Day (!) and featuring no booze, warm soft drinks, bananas, weird nuts and a staff fashion and talent show –and no Santa, but two people in large Bugs Bunny costumes (Year of the Rabbit coming up) still kinda makes me yearn for office parties gone by.

Like the one at the Denver Press Club where my newspaper's aging married-with-children editor got sloshed and tried to express his heartfelt Christmas wish by sticking his tongue down the throat of a startled and shocked 20something clerk.

He should've been canned, but cuz he was corporate he was kicked upstairs shortly thereafter and mostly wasn't heard from since.

The most moving Christmas Eve Ive had was shortly after the mother of my best friend died. I hadn't been to a Christmas Eve service before or have since but it was important to him and it was their church and another tender way to remember her.

We drove back afterwards talking about his mom through a very light Boulder snowfall, moon shining brightly and rounded a curve to see a doe standing by the side of the road, not startled, just being there as if it had been placed by Disney central casting as the white flakes fell around its tawny lithe body.

“It's a miracle,” he said. I'm not sure why he said it, but I felt it. He pulled over, stopped and doused the headlights as we watched it gracefully amble past before disappearing into a nearby cemetery.

Christmas Eve this year was a bit more surreal if you're old enough and politically ironic. A Chinese friend had an extra ticket to Swan Lake featuring a troupe from totalitarian post-Soviet bloc rogue state Belarus and the venue was the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square in the auditorium where the Chinese Communist Party National Congress normally meets.

Our seats were like school seats, each with a desk slot to hold important papers and not enough room to stretch or even doze comfortably. Ours were about 65 yards from the stage and probably normally occupied by a midlevel provincial boss of a State-owned toxic chemical and infant formula company. Not bleacher seat, not A-list, just mediocre. Like the performance.

When we emerged it was bitter cold, but clear and moon-swept and Chairman Mao's wax corpse was slumbering peacefully in its mausoleum across the wide street where 21 years and 6 months before things weren't as beatific.

Silent night, holy night...

Crosstown Traffic

2010-11-22T03:36:00.000-08:00

Despite its mega subway system and buses, dependable transportation and Bejing are not synomous, My apt is about 2 miles frm the nearest subway stop which would dump me about a mile away from the mighty Global Times.

I've spent many months trying to decode the taxi matrix system to and from work but still it's a mystery.

Just when I think I've cracked it, everything changes and Im standing as a frozen loon feebly trying to flag down cabs with no success, frozen, standing and waiting thinking: "This is not forever. Really.I will wake up warm in my bed tomorrow no matter how long I stand here."

Winter is closing fast. Not the best time to be standing like a human Popsicle waving creaking and doing my best hitchhiker moves, which is why I made a deal recently as I was when a grizzled three wheeled motor cabby pulled up and recognized me as a sucker who once paid about three times the going rate to take me from my apt to work.

Fair enough. He knew where I lived and then began a plan. After I clambered in I phoned Chinese fluent/Global Times rock writer James Tiscione, late of NYC and Tucson, to see if he could seal a deal with Mr Motor Trycycle pick me up at 7pm Sunday-Thursday for a ridiculously inflated daily rate.

It worked well for four nights til the fifth as we were doing the death ride through crowded commuter traffic and pedestrians (vehicles rule over all people and over each other depending on size; a three wheeler only outranks a walking human or bicyclist) and he tried to squeeze in front of a bus.

Three wheelers are typically powered by worn lawn mower engines and strung together only with industrial rubber tubes, duct tape and faith.

Bad move. It went into slo-mo for me as I watched the bus loom. I've only been close to apparent death once before when a Denver hitchhiker pulled a gun on me and it was the same feeling this time: "Ok, this is where it ends. Sorry for messing up what I did and hope I did some good and will miss you Julian, forgive me for picking up this mofo, etc."

It was also a weirdly peaceful easy feeling. Accepting that my time had come and I couldn't prepare, but it was how it will be. I hope that's how it might be for many and maybe there is a brain chemical that mercifully kicks in to cushion it.

Enough shaky science. In this case, the earworm went from Jimi Hendrix's
"Crosstown Traffic" to "Hear my Train a' Comin' " and morphed into "I hear my bus a'comin' to squash me like a bug" and braced for the impact as the three wheeler managed to turn sharply and only scrape the behomouth bus. What followed was pure Two Stooges.

Lurching to keep steady and escape, three wheeler sped up to maximum 5 mph mower speed and I thought we were outta there, scattering pedestrians on sidewalks and bike lanes alike.

No way. Bus man, ignoring his primary directive to move passengers reliably and on time, braked suddenly to a halt, jumped out and in completely crowded commute traffic overtook us on foot and squared himself in front of the three wheeler hands on the hood. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Obscenities flew, bus man pounding on the three wheeler til my crosstown driver turned the cab off and emerged for what I thought might be a street fight.

Pedestrians and bored bus passengers emerged for the showdown as more traffic piled up behind us.

It was short and ultimately comical. Both frothed at one another, bus driver forcefully pointing to what appeared to be an invisible paint scrape and three wheeler ranting about bd's bad driving. Then as I thought I'd just better find another ride home, three wheeler takes a small wad of cash outta his pocket and hands it to bus driver who grins and gets back to his appointed rounds.

Three wheeler then comes back to his cab to ferry me unstably over sidewalks and against one way traffic as usual for an otherwise uneventful night in Beijing.

Thing One and Thing Two

2010-11-21T01:13:00.000-08:00

Unlike the usual modest and hesitant Chinese tap, the knock at my apartment door Saturday night was firm and forceful. It's either an unexpected expat or the Public Security Bureau, I thought as I eased the door open to find...

Two small Chinese women bearing plastic bottles of what looked like spray cleaning fluid. They didn't speak English, or I Chinese so I just stared at them as they tried to make themselves understood.

The next minute they were in the room like the Cat in the Hat's Thing One and Thing Two headed straight for the kitchen where they began furiously spraying my stove fan vent, rubbing it with a rag and babbling as I babbled back, “What the hell are you doing? The cleaning lady was already here. Who are you? Why are you cleaning my stove? Leave, please! Go home!”

Finally, I phoned a native speaker, coworker J, and described the situation.
“Two women. They look like migrant workers and are furiously spraying cleaning stuff all over the stove. I have no idea who they are or why they're here. The stove was already clean!”

I handed the phone to Thing One who spoke at length to J while Thing Two went to a wall light switch and began to spray and scrub grime from around the panel, all the while grinning and gesturing to me to notice how white and bright it was becoming.

Thing One handed the phone back to me and J explained that they were “authorized by the apartment management office” to demonstrate and sell the amazing multi-use spray cleaner.

(Note: This is the same apartment management office that can't provide reliable hot water service on a regular basis. Yet they can authorize strangers to invade your living space to randomly spray cleaning fluid.)

“How much?” I asked. “I just want them to leave. I will pay them to leave!”
We settled on two bottles for 50-yuan ($7.50) but emboldened by their unexpected success Thing One and Thing Two were ecstatic and trying to push more products at me until I more or less gently body blocked them out the door.

Games People Play

2010-10-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

A younger US expat pal and coworker, JT, and I were walking on what passes for a sidewalk across from one of Beijing’s newest flashiest shopping malls recently when I almost stepped on several migrant construction workers who'd been laboring on one of the endless upscale apartment project nearby.

Weatherbeaten, weary and deeply tanned, they were squatting and playing and kibuttzing over a crude strategy game they’d thrown together on the walk on the early cool Saturday fall afternoon.

It was a chalk-drawn chess or checkers type square with pebbles and brick shards as one group and freshly broken twigs as the other. (Insert obvious cultural/ social irony detail here: at the same time, less than 100 yards across the bustling road jammed with late model BMWs, Audis and upscale Chinese autos, about 200 or more white collars and others were lined up; status and tech-hungry weasels salivating to buy the new iPhone in a mega Apple store.)

“Ask them what they’re playing, how it works,” I urged him. He’s wickedly fluent in Chinese, part of the New Blood Literate and Fluent Educated Foreign Sino Squad that will eventually (and justifiably) replace Fossils Like Me in China’s 21st century foreign job and social networks.

He bent down and, in what I assume was cool and polite Chinese, asked.

“He says, ‘ground chess,’’’JT replied. “But I think he’s being a little sarcastic Told me to stick around and watch and I’d figure it out.”

We declined but I began musing. “Julian!” I shouted to my son, though he is in Colorado and was presumably blissfully deep asleep at the time. “Sorry, but I can’t get you the newest Xbox for Christmas. But, hey! Here’s the new ‘Chinese Migrant Worker Play Station!’

"A piece of chalk, some rocks and twigs packaged in a nifty plastic bag endorsed by the China Intangible Cultural and Social Heritage Academy of Social Sciences.

”Also included is a half used pack of Dubao (“Derby,” one of the cheapest and foulest Chinese cigs. See: unfiltered Chesterfield or Old Gold) and two stained, sweaty small blue or blue and black camo caps for the complete migrant experience.

"Plus a ‘Seven Chinese Migrant Worker Secrets to Sleeping Anyplace, Anytime and in Any Position –From Horizontal on Hand Rails to Doubled Up Like a Fetus on a 9-inch Chunk of Broken Parking Barrier at the Height of Rush Hour!’”

There was admiration overall. For starters, JT and I could imagine few, if any, US construction workers playing ‘ground chess’ or any other strategy game – makeshift or otherwise - on their down time. “Pound down the beers chess,” maybe. But otherwise…nah.

The gift that keeps on biting

2010-09-06T01:51:00.000-07:00

News reports, including one in the rag I toil for, indicate you're coming to China soon to sell newly minted Chinese million and billionaires on the idea of philanthropy a la the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

As CNN recently reported, “but the fear of being seduced into giving up part of their fortunes might have scared some of the tycoons away from a dinner that the crusading US. billionaires are hosting in Beijing this month.”

That's because they're afraid of being put on the spot for donations with no promises of anything back, as in stock tips by Buffett or IT tradeoffs from Gates. And there's the strong numerology factor as well. No one would be ponying up millions or thousands or billions of $250 or $400 (god forbid $444) but more probably something with a lot of 8s if they were so inclined. That part is good, but don't hold your breath.

And giving for giving for givings sake simply isn't part of the culture here. I have some small experience in this matter – less than trivial actually, given what the Gates-Buffett Brigade (both widely idolized in China) are trying to do, but allow me to pass it on.

My first experience with public donations other than the money I give to beggars – and am usually chastised for doing so by Chinese companions – was at China Daily in 2008 shortly after the Sichuan Province earthquake. Foreign staff was alerted that their presence and donations were anticipated at the paper's large greeting hall.

Like most notices of these kinds, there was about a 10-minute deadline, followed by 60 minutes or more standing around, picking our noses before anything happened. We were lined up and as cameras were readied, pointed to a box that said “Earthquake Donations” in the middle of the hall. Single file we each dropped 100 yuan or whatever into the box.

The next day there was a color picture and small story on the bottom of Page 2 showing me and a couple other hapless barbarian employees dropping bills into the box under a headline that read something like: “China Daily Foreigners Care About China too.”

We made jokes among ourselves about where the money was really going as in the “Sichuan Cadres' Massage and Party Girls Fund” and left it at that, though, big surprise, several officials have since been put on trial for embezzling some of the charity money.

Fast forward to April this year at Global Times and another earthquake in Qinghai Province (with a heavy Tibetan population) and a“donations right now!” alert went out on our email system.

I was asked to marshal foreigners for support and could only do so half-heartedly knowing their mostly justifiably skeptical thoughts on where the money was really going. I did my best, threw in 250 yuan and forgot about it until the next day when posted on a company bulletin board was a complete list of every employee, foreigner and Chinese alike, and how much they'd given.

I saw I had donated slightly more than other “foreign experts,” and slightly less than my Chinese “bosses” but had preferred that my donation was anonymous. And I couldn’t imagine why the list had been so public. Hit me with the idiot stick. Turned out that I asked a few Chinese reporters I learned that the “donations” were compulsory (on top of their already underpaid salaries). Some had had to borrow from others just to make a minimal 50-yuan “contribution." It was a shame system, basic CCCP management style 101.

I also got smiling quiet questions about why I gave 250 yuan. “I dunno,” I said. “It was what I had and I needed enough left over for cab fare and dinner. No significance."

“Do you know what 250 means in Chinese?” asked one. “No. But probably nothing that will do me any good,” I replied.

Turned out that somewhat like 4 (sounds like death and is "inauspious" like 13 in Western countries) 250 also can be construed, if read in a certain way, as meaning “imbecile." Was I trying to make a clever point? That I'm an imbecile for giving or the company is an imbecile for asking?

“Uh. No. Neither. Honestly. You know my lack of Chinese. After 7 years here, I still can't ask for directions for the toilet. How am I gonna know the significance of 250? Like I said, just gave what I did and hopes it helps.”

I got a sly “we know better" smile in return and waited for the next disaster. As anyone vaguely familiar with international news knows, it was not long in coming.

Floods and mudslides of Biblical proportions followed as they do every time here this year. And the company email for donations was even quicker, though I'd been mercifully spared of having to beg my fellow westerners for money.

Still I shelled out something I hoped wasn't a double meaning amount and begged the clerk in charge of donations to keep my name and other foreign employees anonymous. None of us liked the exposure. Giving is a personal thing. We don't need our names on it. Just don't use it for happy endings and baiju for corrupt officials, thank you.

Wrong call. Two mornings later several Chinese coworkers greeted me, “You gave XXX! How generous! More than some of our leaders!”

WTF? There it was again – names, amounts all on the bulletin board again. I went into Ugly American overdrive to one sensible Chinese pal who tolerates my fits. “Loss of face!” I finally sputtered. “In the west, we can choose whether or not to have our names publicized if we give donations, whether it is $1 or $1 million. I do not want my name associated with what I have given. Just put 'Anonymous Foreigner' or something.”

Amazingly, after all the time it usually takes to settle issues – minor or huge – here, the list was taken down within 30 minutes and every foreigner who gave was listed as “Anonymous Foreign Expert.”

I'm not expert by any means, still learning after all these years, but be careful what and how you give and stay away from the sensitive numbers.

Love and Tenderness

2010-05-18T02:15:00.000-07:00

A Chinese colleague of mine, T, who is in his early 30s and from Hong Kong told me recently about a visit he'd just made to a Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor for consultation about his arthritis and the doc’s surprising prescription.

“He did some checks and then asked me whether I'm married,” T said. “I said, ‘no,’ and then he asked, ‘How often do you do it with your girlfriend?’

“I said I don't have a girlfriend. Then he asked about masturbation. Later he explained that according to Chinese medicine, kidneys are related to the bones and that ‘doing it’ is like exercising your whole body, which is beneficial to your kidneys.

“And finally he said: ‘Get a girlfriend.’”

“TCM prescribing TLC,” I told T. “I like it!”

Rings of Fire

2010-05-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

Summer's here and the time is right for busting barbecues in the street in Beijing and other civic-minded localities. I was sitting at a very small table on very precarious chairs near a friend's apartment very early Friday morning sharing some cold Tsingtaos and generally solving the world's problems as we watched the late night/early morning bbq crowd ebb and flow around us.

Many neighborhood corners in Beijing and Shenzhen and other cities sprout instant ‘cue stands after dark when enterprising men and women throw some charcoal and wood on metal trays or inside a circle or rectangle of bricks, fire it up and start cooking chicken, corn, meat-you'd-rather-not-ask-about and sundry other edibles for midnight munchies.

As the smoke and smells of smoke and grilling meat drifts from the makeshift pits, men, women and children start squatting or pulling up cinder blocks and munchkin-size stools to eat, drink, gossip, play cards, argue and laugh often until 2 or 3 am.

Scorched sidewalks and trash greet the rising sun, shortly after which the female street cleaners - clad in baggy jumpsuits and some with oversized umbrella-like hats but almost always with some manditory feminine touch like a colorful scrunchie or sequined bow for their tied-up hair - sweep up the debris with brooms often larger than themselves, leaving only the scorch marks.

As Jeff and I watched from the three makeshift stands doing business near us, a large blue city government-looking van pulled up and disgorged three poker faced guys in blue uniforms and wearing what appeared to be oven mittens.

It was the cheng guan (municipal inspectors) or BBQ SWAT team as I like to call them. Many of these unlicensed food sellers and their crafts and jewelry counterparts often pay off scouts to give them advance warning of a coming bust. I’ve seen an entire small bridge or underpass market sweep up its hundreds of wares into large blankets and scatter within 40-seconds only a few minutes before the cheng guan arrive in, but tonight the spotters were MIA.

Silently and quickly crack bbq busters each sprinted to a stand, reached down and jerked the cheap aluminum metal trays of burning coals from under the grills and spilled the glowing embers on the sidewalk. They charged back to the idling van clutching the trays, tossed them inside and - wheels screeching as the driver ground his gears - left as quickly as they had struck.

Mission accomplished. Chalk up three unlicensed bbq stands that wouldn't be threatening Beijing society anymore - or would they?

Except for a profound "holy f*ck" from me and a "did you bloody see that, mate?" from Jeff no one else said a word before, during or after the raid - except for one cook who appeared to be asking someone where he could find a new tray for his coals. The bbq stand owners simply swept the remaining burning coals into individual piles, found new trays (another griller had a stash in a garbage bag, apparently for just such emergencies), shoveled the coals on them and resumed grilling.

Fifteen minutes later the same van pulled up from the opposite direction and the boys in blue repeated their work. As before, the owners stood by, waited until the coals were dumped and the van left, swept up the burning debris, found new trays and kept on smokin'.

Another 20 minutes passed and the mobile bbq prevention squad struck once more with the same results.

Jeff and I were - as the Brits say - gobsmacked and also amused at the charade. Emboldened by Tsingtao courage, we had loudly booed the blue meanies and flipped them off as they ran to their van clutching the illicit trays in their government-issued oven mitts for the third time in 45 minutes, but no one else even seemed to notice or much care.

"I'd hate to see those guys take down a crack house or meth lab," I remarked. Everyone else around us simply continued cooking, eating and gabbing. Just another small nightly ritual drama in which everyone from the BBQ Strike Force to the vendors and customers knew their roles and performed them flawlessly.

Last Waltz

2010-05-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

After a year and a half since I’d last been there, I recently flew to Hong Kong for a three-day weekend with several missions in mind.

I needed break from Beijing where spring still seemed like a work in progress – or a fickle woman; warm, coy, flirtatious one day and an unforgiving ice-blown hag the next.

Farewells were on the agenda, too. Hamish, a young New Zealand pal with whom I shared a lot of beer and music and loose talk while I’d been living in Honkers was relocating to the US – Austin to be exact – with his Chinese-American girl friend.

And there was C to see – someone with whom I'd shared more than five years with until time and distance dictated otherwise. She's since found someone else (a mouth-breathing troll, but hey, everyone can’t be me) and some – forgive the term – closure was in order and she agreed to a friendly meet and greet.

There were also a few ex-coworkers from the Standard to check in with, including CY, a feisty Honkers native fighting hard against lymphoma. Despite pushing deadlines to frustrating extremes, she’d been a tough rare reporter who pushed her sources even harder and it had been a sad shock to hear of her illness. People like her aren’t supposed to get cancer – they’re supposed to chew it up and spit it out. And apparently that’s what she’d been doing.

“You look great,” I told her sincerely. Despite a couple chemo treatments CY hadn't lost her hair and seemed beatific, radiant even, surrounded as she was by five friends in her tiny apartment.

“When this is over you have to market the CY Miracle Cancer Beauty Diet!” I told her. It got the intended laugh and I hugged her and wished her well before hooking up with Hamish at a nightclub, Grappa’s Cellar. It was Hamish’s last Honkers gig – he was overseeing a multi-band lineup as a promotion for the magazine he was leaving and he and his girlfriend had their hands full.

I watched bemused as a Chinese electronica geek played remixes on his Apple laptop and then hit a button to pump out For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield. It was Stephen Stills singing, nothing unusual in the mix, though maybe the bass was jacked up a bit. Still, the crowd – mostly 20something expats and Honkers hipsters went mildly wild.

How weird, I thought. Maybe I should quit journalism and just sit in my living room and have people pay and cheer to watch me play a bunch of 1960s-70s Greatest Hits collections and call it cutting edge.

The next act was a real band – guitars, drums, live vocals, a post-punk group called The Yours, with a front man Jack Leung described on one website as a “visual merchandiser” who is the “outré-cool frontman of The Yours, and by day he dresses the windows of some of the city’s swankiest stores.” There was nothing outré-cool about Jack that night. He and the band were clearly trashed.
“You hate us and we hate you!” he yelled at the audience before launching into a jackhammer rhythm that quickly disintegrated into…well, here’s Hamish with the play-by-play.

“They had already had their time on stage earlier in the day, during their scheduled 5:30 pm set. They were playing to a smaller crowd, and I think they wanted a chance to play in front of more people, so they rushed the stage after S.T's set.

“I got up there and asked them to get off. They wouldn't budge, so I went to their friends – who were in the band due to take the stage at that time – and asked them to help me get them off. They still wouldn't budge, so I went back to the stage, by which time The Yours were already launching into a song.

“I thought, ‘Okay, one song. Let's watch them closely and hope nothing goes wrong.’ If Jack showed any signs of attempting to trash the stage again, I was going to get up there and stop him. And then fucker did.

“I thought, 'Right, I gotta get up there.' I grabbed his guitar just as he was attempting to attack an amp. He was so hammered he tripped over a couple of mic stands, taking them down with him. Meanwhile, the incensed sound guys, who owned the equipment Jack was fucking up, rushed the stage.

“While Jack was having a second attempt at one of the amps – and while I was gently encouraging the others to get the fuck off the stage – one of the sound guys got to him and hurled him from the stage. That was, I think, the most dramatic part.

“Meanwhile, one of my friends held back another sound guy who was intent on pummeling the crap out of Jack. If he got to him, the gig would have turned to mayhem. As it happened, we managed to ride the thin line between mayhem and relatively harmless rock 'n' roll run.

“Later, the frontman for the last band for the night, got up and said, "I know now why they're called The Yours. Because they don't fuck up their own equipment; they fuck up yours."

The next day was my D-Day with C. Or C-Day, I guess. She met me in a small Thai restaurant and bar in Wanchai and, damn, if we both didn’t begin to sniffle and tear up a little as we talked.

It had been more than eight months since she’d called me in Beijing from Shenzhen to tell me she was seeing another guy, although the signs some months before had not been auspicious. Terms of endearment had suddenly dropped from her text msgs and e-mails and communication was increasingly one-way - Beijing to Shenzhen, and since then I’d gone through the usual stages of grief: denial, anger, more anger, more denial, depression, rage, psychotic rage, disastrous rebound serial dating, arson and plotting insane revenge involving blow torches, pit bulls and his genitals on my successor.

But five years was a long time together – longer than many marriages – and now it seemed right to close the book and move on gracefully.

We spent some hours talking, walking, dining, watching her shop, reminiscing, going to Hamish’s goodbye barbecue and by midnight we were having farewell drinks next to the neon splashed sidewalk at another Wanchai bar.

“Just one kiss for old times,” I asked.

Then a song started in the bar – I don’t know it, but wish I did now because it would become our swan song.

I took C in my arms and we danced on the sidewalk as others looking for the heart of a Hong Kong Saturday night flowed past.

One last kiss, slow embrace, pan back and fade to black.

Baby, it's cold inside

2010-04-13T02:48:00.000-07:00

I’d barely stepped into the shower in my unheated 40-degree apartment (commie government central heating was turned off several weeks ago because Marx-Lenin, Mao and President Hu Jintao all say it’s officially “spring” i.e. “warm weather”) and was anticipating the warm spray when … dribble. Drip. Blip. Nada.

Turned the spigot to “cold” and the near-frozen spray rushed out, forcing me to take a trembling, hasty, hypothermia-inducing shampoo and “whore’s bath” (armpits and groin only.)

I’d paid 100 yuan for “160 tons” of the hot stuff some months ago, but the supply appeared dry. China wants desperately to be regarded as a modern nation and, according to the recent constantly sprouting billboards, is “striving earnestly” to make Beijing a “World City” by 2020.

But I gotta say: “Hey, a country that treats hot water as a precious separate commodity ain’t gonna cut it except as an overdressed jester on the world stage despite how many “taikonauts” it ejaculates into space or Olympic gold medals it harvests with underage slave prepubescent athletes. And your plumbing? Bwah!

“Five thousand years of so-called civilization, inventing gunpowder and the compass, blah-blah-blah. The Romans did plumbing right 2,000 years ago and in 2010 I’m in a nation where even the capital city public cold water taps don’t work and signs urge toilet users to throw their paper away after wiping for fear of jamming the pipes. And, by the way, when was the last time I needed a compass and gunpowder to take a hot shower or relieve myself?”

Forgive me. I digress. The next step after checking for frostbite was to insert the “water card” into the unreadable grime encrusted water meter jammed under the sink and hope to mystically recharge the supply. What was I thinking?

Phone calls were made and 40-some minutes later I’d trudged half a mile in the wind to the apartment management office located in a bunker in the most inaccessible area possible in the complex where, thanks to more phone calls for translating help from my friend, J, I learned I needed to pre-pay for more tons of hot water and to buy a new water card for reasons that even she found inexplicable.

“I argued,” J said. “I said it is not your fault. But still you must pay.” She sighed. “I do not understand.”

“I love this farking country,” I replied gritting my teeth and cursing myself for all the irrational ill will I’d once had for the Public Service utility and water company in Colorado. We’d had some occasional issues, sure, but they’d never cut off my hot water or power or urged me to spread disease by tossing used toilet paper around public restrooms.

I surrendered the equivalent of half a month’s pay for a Chinese migrant worker to a sullen girl in badly permed orange hair and a sweatshirt that said: “Ferverent, Robust!” and slouched in an overstuffed chair and waited for the apartment bureaucracy to slowly grind out a new card and water supply for building 11, entrance A, room 208.

However, back at the apartment the new card failed to generate any joy – robust or otherwise. More calls were made to patient J who was able to get a maintenance worker over who also couldn’t conjure up any hot water hoodoo and left with my new card and promise to return with yet another one.

He made good, but Card III didn’t work either and I was soberly informed that the entire water meter is “broken” and it would cost me about US$50 out of my pocket for a new one. What choice did I have? The concept of “tenant’s rights” isn’t even a dim work in progress here so I paid and a day later played under the warm spray.

After all this loathing and fears of turning into a truly Ugly American, however, I found ultimate solace when a Chinese Hong Kong friend, S, who had just relocated to Beijing, met me for lunch and began telling me about her newest apartment problem. Last week it was cockroaches. This week it sounded extremely familiar.

“I suddenly have no hot water,” she said. “And my landlord said I must pay for 200 tons of it in advance as if it is some kind of valuable resource.” I perked up. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t crazy and the more she told me the better I felt in this new chapter of the Beijing Hot Water Support Group.

S is a business writer and a hell of an investigative reporter as well and after hearing the landlord out, did some in-depth investigating of her own. Ultimately she found herself cutting a covert deal with a low level employee of Beijing’s People’s Hot Water Affairs No. 12 who sold her 600 tons – enough for her and roommates until 2015, perhaps – for the price of 400.

By S’s reckoning the landlady had inflated the price by 200 yuan – but this way the landlady was cut out of the deal, the hot water employee skimmed some water and got a cut and S got more water and saved about 400 yuan.

“The landlady is corrupt. The hot water boy is corrupt. They are all corrupt!” she said.

“Now you’re part of the corruption, too,” I reminded her, smiling

“True,” she said. “But I’m also learning how business is really done in China.” She sighed. “And now I know why Google really left China. Hackers, censorship and probably hot water problems, too.”

Animal Farm

2010-03-21T04:57:00.000-07:00

I’m a proud father, but have only a select few select “funny cute son” stories to bore listeners with once we’ve reached the swapping family tales zone.

To save time, here are the punch lines: “Why you CLYING?”
“Father?” “Yes, son.” “I want to kill you.”
“Dad, what’s a clitoris?”
“Skorky changed colors!”

I have no cute personal pet stories, though I’ve had plenty of them, which is all by way of backing into a blog entry about my cat. Actually, my third cat in China.

People without children who tend to substitute pets for kids evoke the feeling in me that says: “gee, if you weren’t really someone I liked, I’d urge you to adopt or engage in increasingly vigorous intercourse to spare me hearing for the 27th time about the hilarious incident when you donned your rubber gloves and hip waders to give your pony-sized “Newfy” an enema in the bath tub.” (True story).

Anyway, I’m on my third adopted cat here. The last one given to me with all her trust before she had to leave China came from a Russian woman who then returned unexpectedly a month and a half after the adoption to find I’d let it escape (by accident, I swear!) and then spent nearly a week castigating me, crying, and printing and pasting up trilingual “missing cat” notices with color pictures and dragging me out after hours to search the apartment area’s floating feral cat population and field phone calls in Chinese about possible sightings.

The search did not go well though I’m assuming he’s still on China’s Most Wanted Lost Animals list in Chinese, English and Russian. So it was out of guilt, perhaps, that about a month and a half ago I heard pitiful crying outside my window on a (strike up violins) snowy Beijing night and found a half starved long haired frozen filthy orange and white cat crouched beneath a dim light, brought her in and set her up with the left-over litter, food etc that her predecessor had left behind.

She immediately made herself at home, gained weight and became a yowling love-starved monkey cat who also began pissing randomly in my sandals at night while I was in bed to show her gratitude. And yes, I was indeed ecstatic to put my feet into a puddle of cold cat piss while trying to stumble to the bathroom at 3 am with her winding around me feet and wailing like a banshee in heat.

“Want to go back outside in the snow and starve, you thankless tub of pissing furry guts!?” I’d scream at her as I squirted pints of “Mr Muscle” house cleaning disinfectant on my feet while multitasking on the toilet.

It was only this weekend with the assistance an unusually patient Chinese cat loving friend, S, that I finally decided to haul JCat or Gato as I alternately call her to a nearby non-English speaking vet for a thorough shower, shots and neutering. I’d been to two Chinese vets before.. One in Shenzhen where the vet was apparently trained on large farm animals whose spaying technique nearly killed the cat C and I had adopted. The other was with the Russian woman in Beijing, a thoroughly modern place run by a Chinese Canadian animal lover, but unfortunately way too many kilometers away for easy back and forth feline maintenance.

So I went with the local “Beethovin Beijing ILovePet Animal Hospital” a short distance from my apartment. I’d originally discovered it as the nearest source of the Most Expensive Cat Litter on the Planet and can’t say I was overly optimistic about the chances of getting the cat cleaned, claws clipped, immunized and neutered in one shot, but had delayed long enough.

Still under the distant glow of a Boulder style vet service (efficient Dr Takashi and her faithful animal loving young assistants Tiffany and Dylan) I bundled JCat/Gato into a cat carrier and with S’s assistance flagged down a feline phobic cabbie that nearly didn’t take us. He wanted the cat in the trunk or no ride, til I finally put the box on my lap, clutching it in a near fetal position.

At the vet things began to unravel fairly quickly. The “Tiffany” in my mind had been replaced by a a 14 year old sullen migrant worker who looked as if she’s prefer to eat the cat as much as clip its nails and wash it. A 30-pound Akita stuffed into a cage for a 20-pound animal yelped and barked incessantly near us, only adding to the general chaos as S, me, and the misanthropic teen struggled to hold down the squirming terrified cat.

Long story short. After a number of mishaps, including a nasty three inch scratch that drew blood across my left ring finger and palm (“Do you want a rabies shot?” S said the vet asked me. Sure, and gimme a kilo of swine antibiotics too, please) I agreed to have JCat/Gato knocked out for her beauty treatment and shots after signing a form that said there was “one chance in a thousand that the cat will die” and I wouldn’t sue for damages.

“Foreign or Chinese knock out medicine?” was the next question.
What’s the difference? Chinese is 30 yuan and it takes them longer to wake up. Foreign is 100 yuan and they wake up faster. I took the foreign option, she got the needle and then lurched around on four splayed quivering legs hissing at imaginary dog demons until she collapsed, just as a new customer came in with an unleashed lap dog that began sniffing and barking at her hairy prone carcass.

Come back in an hour, we were told. S and I repaired to a nearby Chinese fake German tavern that played bad synthesized Irish music and had some drinks while she told me about two friends of hers who had lost animals to bad vets – in the United States.

“Time to go back,” I finally said.
“Aren't you worried she'll be dead?” asked S.
“If I’m lucky, yeah...” I muttered still clutching a bloody napkin to stem my bleeding palm.

She wasn't dead but I did get an unexpected shock. The vet talked earnestly to S for what seemed like 10 minutes and then both laughed.

“It seems your 'she' cat is a he,” S told me. “Can't you tell the difference?”

"If you gotta warrant, I guess you're gonna come in"

2010-03-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

Getting to work efficiently at about 9 am is never a sure deal from where I live. The nearest subway stop is about a mile away and taxi service is spotty at best. When I moved in about two years ago, there was a harmless, makeshift cab stand outside the apartment complex, but it was -- in classic inexplicable Chinese decision making style designed to make daily life just a little bit harder -- shut down about four months later.

I've since cut a deal with a group of three wheeler cab drivers, as in: "I pay you an ridiculous transportation fee to further the stereotype of foreigners as gullible rich suckers in exchange for one of you being out here between 9-9.30 am to take me to work in one of your rickety sputtering, wobbling death traps."

That works about 70 percent of the time. It didn't this morning and I'd already surrendered one taxi to a cranky granny and her grandchild. "Yeah, sure," I said when a slick black Honda pulled up and the passenger window rolled down to reveal another foreigner asking if I wanted to share his illegal ride to work.

The driver, a young chubby Chinese guy said 15 yuan (usual taxi rate is about 10-12) and I climbed in the back.

Similar to the old NYC gypsy cabs, unlicensed "black taxis" are rife in Beijing and were outside my Shenzhen apartment too. They generally charge a little more and I've used them many times with no problems, until today. Most of the car owners aren't from Beijing, but from small villages outside the capital who have bought the wheels with communal funds gathered by their relatives and friends to whom they remit most of what they make to pay off the loan and support their families.

About 15 seconds after I closed the door the driver began to turn to get towards the main route - bam!
A white sedan stopped in front of us, blocking further progress. No collision but the "bam" came from four plainclothes cops seeming leaping outta nowhere and hitting the black cab's hood and truck with their palms. Doors were opened without our assistance and we were rousted out. Me and the other passenger weren't in trouble, but the driver was.

He and I watched as the cops began flashing IDs and jabbered sternly at the melancholy driver, who I imagine was already saying goodbye to his livelihood and cool ride -- undoubtedly to be confiscated and turned into an "official" cop car or as a gift to the chief to give to his mistress or superior -- and wondering how he was going to pay whatever the hefty fine would be.

A cop came up to me, flipped open his ID wallet and barked: "I am police!"

"You are?" I asked, pretending to scrutinize the photo and Chinese characters. "I don't know. I cannot read Chinese."

"This is not taxi!" he said, his finger jabbbing at the Honda.

"I know," I replied, thinking on my caffeine-deprived feet. "He's our friend." I pointed to the driver who was surrounded by three other cops, looking resigned. "He takes us to work every morning. All of us work in the same area, right?" I looked at my foreign comrade and he nodded.

"Yes. Our friend, he's our friend," he said. "Our ride-to-work friend."

"FRIEND?" the cop replied. "What is 'friend's' name?"

I had to give him some points for that and began rummaging through my tattered mental Rolodex. "Uh..Li! Mr Li!" I replied giving him the most common Chinese surname. He went back to the driver, conferred for a second and damn if his name wasn't Li.

The subterfuge didn't last long, however. Further improvisation on my part failed to square with my old pal Mr Li's answers and my commuter impaired companion and I were left to find another way to the Central Business District.

"Damn," he said. "I just wanted to get to work."

"Maybe we should've just offered the cop 30 yuan to take us," I replied.

Mud, blood and beer

2010-02-07T01:35:00.000-08:00

“So what keeps you in China?” asked M, a 20something American (Erie, Pennsylvania) coworker, university certified Sinophile (and unlike me who after 5 years still can’t count reliably to 10) who is also wicked fluent in Chinese spoken and written.

I hadn’t been complaining, He was just curious. It was about 2am in a cut-rate drinks bar called Smuggler’s in Sanlitun, a largely expat, though not exclusively so, shopping, eats and adult beverages area in Beijing.

“Hmmm,” I mused, “Employment in a business that’s going down the tubes in the US. US creditors. The IRS. My Shenzhen girlfriend til she … never-mind-don’t-wanna-talk-about-it and…uh, knowing all sorts of cool, and sometimes off the rails mad batshit foreigners and Chinese. And nights like tonight. Better than movies.”

Smuggler’s is barebones with large wooden tables, benches, garage sale chairs and frequently reeking, vomit stained clogged toilets in the men’s room. It’s got a loose British theme, decorated as it is with large reproduction posters of random UK sporting events – “Football match, Swinesbury Tottenspur v Earl on Higglesbottom at Lord Marlsborough IV Greenswiddle Pitch, Shepherd’s Bush” – circa 1930something, old London subway maps, and the odd art school student painting of someone who might be either Keith Richards or just a mental patient’s self portrait.

Late weekend nights it’s often packed with a healthy mix of mostly Euro-trash and yup-scale Chinese, and that night had been especially fruitful for “chaos- and hilarity-ensued” alcohol-fueled incidents.

There were four tables in our area amd the fun began at one kitty-corner and comfortably out of bottle swinging range where eight burly male Chinese (non-orthodox) Muslims were celebrating a birthday party with many, many beers.

All seemed jovial, according to my friend who was randomly translating their loud, occasionally ribald male bonding jokes until seemingly out of nowhere one guy grabbed an empty Tsingtao bottle by the neck, swung it across the table and hammered it firmly into the chrome dome of another celebrant.

Yes, there was blood. A lot of it. And though the bottle didn’t break, some beer glasses fell and shattered on the scuffed, muddy floor as the partygoers began trying to wildly restrain the assailant while others began pressing napkins to the stunned victim’s forehead in a largely vain attempt to stop the blood spouting into the spilled beer and broken glass on the floor.

“Eww, nice one,” I commented as we watched the scrawny small Smuggler’s waiters (no bouncers, they) struggle to maintain order as the injured guy began slurring that he didn’t need to go to a hospital for what appeared to be an at least 25+ stitches gash.

We never figured out what sparked the sudden assault and no cops arrived as half the birthday celebrants began hustling the bottle swinger out, followed by another group propping up and pulling his staggering victim behind him.
Waiters began mopping and sweeping within five minutes it was as if nothing had transpired.

Twenty or 30 minutes later, two stylishly dressed and groomed men, one late 20s German and the other perhaps mid30s North American sat at the table next to us, locked eyes passionately and began talking excitedly in English, fingers fluttering just on the edge of bitch slapping. It was like tense foreplay, hard to tell if they wanted to suddenly kiss wildly, beat the bejeebus outta each other, or both.

“Kinky stuff,” my pal observed drolly. An Outkast tune on the sound system was cranked too loud to hear what they were discussing until the North American rose to shove and topple his Germanic Boytoy back-on-floor, ass-up in his chair.

Boytoy upped himself slowly, slipped briefly on his spilled beer, righted himself and confronted his swain with “I vill hit you hard!” before shoving back. A shove and half-assed punching match began between cries of “I love you! I hate you! You are my leader! I respect you but I vill hit you very hard!”

Damn, I thought. Where’s an HBO series scouting crew when we need one? Their table tipped over, chairs too, more broken beer glasses until I finally went to another room full of glottal drunken Euro accents and collared a Chinese waiter to come establish order.

He wasn’t too successful as the amateur Passion Play Lite kept playing. “I never said that!” “Oh yah, you did!”

Finally I roared in my best Colorado barroom bellow: “Take it outside!”

They did, but not before Boytoy rose on his toes to yell at his retreating partner: “You are, you are … (pause, draw breath to propel heatseeking Mach 12 in-your-face, whop-ass missile insult) SO STUPID! VERY STUPID!”

“You know,” I told M as we rehashed the havoc. “If I was back in Boulder at this hour, I’d probably either be bored in a Denny’s or asleep worrying about paying the cable bill. This is live, international and it’s free.”

Broken English

2010-01-18T01:53:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of turning Chinglish into English as a "foreign native English speaking polisher expert" are the times when the material's garble mystically morphs into prose that could be passed off as quasi-Bob Dylan or James Joyce genius.

More often its just a soundalike vocabulary or grammar slip as in a story about a ferryboat "collusion" rather than collision Or "From a distance the village looks like a piece of silver as many stoned houses makes the village look shining far away." The writer meant "stone houses," of course.

"Cold and worm dishes offer various specialties." Although, yeah, worm vs warm may not be such a stretch given the stereotype of (particularly southern Chinese) eating everything but the table legs at a banquet). Or "The colorful cultures of ethnic groups also add lust to the city." I think the writer mean "luster." Or maybe not.

And there are the times when the writer reaches for her or his trusty Chinese-English dictionary that was last updated in the 1970s by Russian editors. Overwriting is common as in this description of a charity fund raiser, not an orgy. "The evening was characterized by vibrant atmosphere ventilating godlike excitement as guests enjoy the coming together of friends."

Some may be awkwardly phrased but, yeah, you get the point. "Some netizens hold a similar understanding that 'Happiness is the feeling a cat gets when it is eating a fish; it is the feeling a dog has when it is enjoying meat, and it is the thing Ultraman feels when beating monsters!'"

And this from a description of an "ethnic minority" dance that could pass as square dance calling with a little tweaking. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—crash your neighbor's crotch and then going on to the music: one two three four five six seven.

"The more hard a guest of Primi minority was crashed on his crotch, the more warm welcome he received in our village. Three Primi young people dancing with their five Yi ethnic counterparts in the last program Dance of Crotch Crashing for the special performances of Guarding the Forest.

Outdated or terms so obscure that I can't tell if they are real or not often pop up as in "Venezuela has been declared territory free of analphabetism." I looked up analphabetism and found, no it has nothing to do with unusual sexual practices but is a real word that means illiteracy. How analphatbetic did I feel then?

A colleague of mine, James Palmer and I were discussing this recently and he came up with the "Is it James Joyce or Chinglish?" test Here's a sample Pick Joyce or Chinglish for each selection. No Googling allowed.

A.The creating cabin called as time tunnel. B. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. C. He is easily taken apart from his hometown fellows when he makes some utterance. D. Wonder what kind is swanmeat.

A and C are Chinglish. B and D are Joyce.

In that spirit I offer the Dylan (who will bestow Beijing with his Bobness on April 4, thank you jeebus!) or Chinglish? quiz.

A. With 100 eyes of 100 Hamlets, the mountain crawls under the paintbrush of 100 artists. B. His hindbrain hit by electricity as he orders four treasures. C. The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face. D. With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel,if he needs a third eye he just grows it.

A and B are Chinglish. C and D are Zimmerman.

Them sometimes it becomes near-poetry, or perhaps inspiration for a children's book. "Now the Changsha Zoo is selling tiger's whispers which raises citizens' curiosity. Some Chinese characters written with chalk on a blackboard in the zoo says, “There are some tiger’s whispers for sale, and specially for drivers and children.”

He meant "tiger whiskers" but I think tiger whispers is much better, 'specially for drivers and children. I'll take two boxes, please.

Nothing Changes on New Year's Day

2010-01-05T02:50:00.000-08:00

Worst New Year Eves ever – two in China.

1.Camp Casey, Tongduchon, South Korea, 1975. Pull frozen lonely guard duty at a 2nd Army Division ammo dump where I ring in the New Year politely defending “Freedoms Frontier” from a wizened mama-sans offer of “No 1 girl give you No 1 sucky-sucky good time.”
Resolution: Report for sick call and fake flu when assigned to guard duty on a holiday.

2.Louisville and Englewood, Colorado, 1989 Big fight about nothing in particular with soon to be ex. Displaying what can only be described as “remarkably poor judgment” I impulsively seek comfort by ingesting a dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms after domestic dispute and before we go to a party hosted by a couple I dont much care for. Spend evening ignoring wretched spouse, watching people’s faces melt and viewing MTVs Aerosmiths Rockin’ New Year with hosts’ 13-year-old son who periodically appears to catch fire.
Resolution: Get divorced before New Year. Restrict mushroom use to non-hallucinogenic salads and Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup.

3.Shenzhen, China, 2005. At 8:30 pm C impulsively decides we aren't going to a posh hotel overnight party affair for which Id already booked reservations and paid a deposit. She cites no particular reason, except “I don't have anything to wear,” switches on a Chinese TV soap opera and pouts in icy silence. I walk out without speaking and take a bus back to Hong Kong where the New Year arrives in a Wanchai bar amid forced revelry and Thai and Filipina hookers. At some point I drunkenly hit on a “lady boy,” realize my mistake and wake up guilt-ridden, depressed and alone.
Resolution: Buy C a new dress or prepare to scrutinize gorgeous flirtatious women carefully for Adams apple and stubble.

4.Beijing, China, 2010. At 1:38 am following a pleasant party sponsored by my employer at a cutting edge nightclub, my companion and I are preparing for bed at her place. My cell phone beeps with a text message alert. I open it and read New Year terms of extreme endearment from another woman of whom my gracious hostess was unaware until she “accidentally” looked over my shoulder and “accidentally” read the message. Emotional chaos and ill feelings ensue. Nobody's fault but mine. Resolution: Honesty is the best policy, especially when it comes to romance.

Away in a stranger (land)

2009-12-21T00:40:00.000-08:00

While the novelty of Christmas in China has pretty much lost its sheen – the sight of Beijing noodle store clerks in red and white elf and Santa hats no longer bemuses me – I gotta say there are some moments.

An outdoor bike repairman who fixes tires and adjusts gears and cables near my apartment in the coldest weather recently strung some scrounged silver and gold tinsel around his portable worn wooden work table. A nice touch and if I had a bike I’d mess it up just a little just so he could fix it.

There was also a 10 or 11-year-old Chinese boy skateboarding slowly in my apartment lobby while sawing away on a wincingly bad version of Jingle Bells on his violin as his father shot video for gawd knows what purpose. If he'd been a dog it would have been excellent for one of David Letterman's old Stupid Pet Tricks. Nonetheless, I watched for about 10 minutes and left happier than when I'd arrived.

Another are my newspaper’s plans for a holiday party, to which only three foreign staffers that I know of have been formally invited (as in told specifically where and what time it will be.)

I am not one of them and I not miffed. I know we are welcome but I've long since learned Chinese protocol when it comes to foreign employees frequently simply does not include niceties such as clear invitations that give us time to plan. It simply never occurs to them just has it never occurred to me that spitting on a public bus is perfectly normal and hygenic behavior. We're just supposed to suck the info up via telepathy or osmosis and then jump at the last minute.

But most of us won’t be jumping anywhere except to our own makeshift expat gatherings or on a flight back home as the party is being held after sundown on Christmas Day at a far distant hotel and – due to skinflint budgetary concerns – will be lacking booze and food, though I’ve heard rumors of “free fruit.”

Mmmm, mmmm. “Hand Santa baby another brown apple, a wrinkled saggy Mandarin orange and a couple of those gratis grapes, won’tcha my little Sino-elf?”

“Who holds a Christmas party on Christmas Day?” asked one American rhetorically. Indeed. But it's not just any Christmas party. Dozens of Chinese employees have been roped into learning traditional Sino song and dance routines (none having to do with the holiday, which isn't officially recognized, of course) – many on their days off with no overtime – in order to bring cheer and reflected glory to their benevolent leaders.

“I did not go to university to dance like someone in the North Korean mass games,” remarked one slightly cynical reporter. “But I need this job.”

She had just emerged from a large conference room as deadline loomed where instead of working on the next day’s stories, she and three other reporters had been frantically rehearsing steps, dips, sways and bows as an instructor hired for the occasion clapped and counted “one, two, three, four … again!” in Chinese.

The irony of a newsroom on deadline being used for choreography purposes for a foreign holiday in an atmosphere where the staff is frequently harangued to “work harder, work longer!” wasn't completely lost on her.

“Dance longer! Dance harder! And make deadline too!” I replied. “Merry Christmas!”

Riding with the King

2009-12-13T01:53:00.000-08:00

"Doing Burger King for lunch, join us?" read the text message from a US pal Jeff last Saturday. A frisson of excitement - almost erotic - ran through me as I read it.

Unlike ubiquitous McDonald's and KFC, BK has yet to really crack the Chinese market. There are only two in Beijing - one in the airport and another in the Xidan area of Beijing, an hellishly packed shopping mall zone the size of Lichtenstein that in my mind is sort of like those 14th century maps that showed unmapped regions containing sea monsters, dragons and cyclops reading: "Here be dragons."

My mental Beijing map that includes Xidan says the same and shows demon eyed Chinese shopping 'bot zombies crushing anyone and anything underfoot for space and bargains at a Levis outlet as multiple PA systems compete at 170 decibels in the aural equivalent of water boarding.

So I have avoided Xidan and others like it since coming to Beijing, unlike Shenzhen where C - for whom these mall plague zones are like oxygen - would often lure me under false pretenses that I'd rather not admit to buying into at this point. But the thought of a real Whopper and BK onion rings seemed irresistible. Hell, I'm told some expats here used to make pilgrimages - a fast food Haj - to Beijing International Airport spending more on taxi fares than the meals to indulge themselves in fatty greasy Flame Broiled Goodness.

Done, sealed, delivered see you there,I told Jeff. I was one my way to the Promised Land after, what? maybe three years since I'd last snarfed a Whopper Jr for the equivalent of about $112 at the Hong Kong Airport. Outside Xidan craning up at the multiple malls, I looked in vain for what Jeff had told me was the "Joy Center" complex while disco versions of Christmas carols cranked like hell's own anthems and I tried to squeeze into as small a space as possible for an overweight guy in three layers of winter clothing in order to avoid the shopper tsunami.

Jeff finally located me on a pedestrian bridge where he said later, "it looked like you wanted to jump." Close, yes. But the King called.

Inside on the third floor Jeff yelped, almost trembling: "No line!" His Chinese girlfriend rolled her eyes and patiently explained to me, "Last time we were here the line was out to here..." pointing toward a vista that went from BK to electronic equipment, luggage, sportswear, weird stuff no one really buys and eventually where dragons be.

Order made, settled in and inhaling the Whopper (or huangbao "Emperor Burger" as it's translated here) and rings suddenly I felt at peace with it all. The grease felt oh so right at the moment. It was almost with regret that I wiped it off my mouth and cadged another onion ring from Jeff.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

2009-11-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

A slightly rewritten version of an upcoming Turkey Day column in Global Times.

Thursday marks the seventh Thanksgiving I've spent in Asia, my fourth in China and one for which I’ve never felt more like a thankful 21st century Pilgrim.

Observing this oldest of American holidays overseas has ranged from barebones to bizarre. Barebones was South Korea, 1974 while semi-horrified I watched a wet market poultry butcher dispassionately take a live chicken (turkeys being as scarce as their teeth), behead it with a cleaver, briefly boil it, then pluck it and singe the pin feathers off with a blow torch seemingly before its scrawny legs had stopped flopping.

Until then it had scarcely occurred to me that all chickens didn't originate frozen and wrapped in plastic labeled “Tyson” with a blue United States Department of Agriculture stamp.

Bizarre was Hong Kong Thanksgiving 2005 in a restaurant called California where celebrants were served by Chinese waiters and waitresses dressed as Pilgrims and Indians like large children in a school pageant.

But between the extremes it's been the Chinese people and friends who've guided, taught, scolded, loved, comforted and aided me through the more routine days for whom I am truly grateful.

This generous cornucopia of souls includes an elderly Shenzhen beggar with mangled paralyzed legs and his tale of woe neatly chalked in Chinese characters on the sidewalk outside my apartment for several months. I could not read his story, but his stoicism and situation moved me enough to make small daily donations as my two healthy legs took me to work every morning.

He never said a word until one morning I saw something new on his sidewalk testimony. In simple flawless English were two sentences thanking and wishing – presumably me, as there were virtually no other foreigners living in the area – a long life and happiness.

There was also the neighborhood shop keeper who took time on American Independence Day to scrounge almost 25 minutes though his insanely packed storage place to give me clandestine fireworks left over from Chinese New Year to help me properly celebrate July 4 the USA way.

Unsung Lei Fengs also include a busload of Shenzhen passengers who stopped a thief from slitting my pack back, and in a united civil show of force evicted him sans the pocketknife he’d tried to use. When one of my rescuers offered it to me, it looked surprisingly familiar, perhaps because the thief had slickly picked it from my pocket before trying to use it on my bag.

I owe a debt of thanks also to an 81-year-old Canadian missionary educated Chinese obstetrician and gynecologist who humbled and amazed me during a random encounter on a hot Shenzhen summer night when he spontaneously and flawlessly recited Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Lincoln’s masterpiece was, he told me, one of the memories that had sustained and inspired him while he’d been confined to a corpse cluttered morgue for five years during the Cultural Revolution.

A dignified aging hooker fallen from privilege who shared her glory days one lonely night telling me of the pride she still felt at being 17 and “the second best girl Chinese chess player in Beijing” also taught me more about life, survival, changes and circumstances.

Close at heart are my Chinese “sisters,” coworkers and “foreign babysitters” in Hong Kong and Beijing who helped a hapless American get back into the several apartments from which he’d carelessly locked himself, loaned him the laptop on which this was written and brought him tea, sympathy and soup when he was ill while asking, "do all foreigners live like pigs?” before cleaning the place up.

Others have eased the way in other ways, such as wild Rose, a Hong Kong reporter with a penchant for sipping codeine-laced Madame Pearl’s cough syrup while regaling me with tales of her Beijing childhood as her father smiled to himself while preparing and serving us The Best Duck Soup on the Planet.

Gratitude goes also of course to C, the Dandong girl who, until the distance and time drove us apart (and she cut out my heart and stomped on it! - whoops, that's another column), gave me several years of smiles and sanctuary on the 20th floor of her Shenzhen apartment with an unlikely romantic balcony view. Despite the smog and the sounds of the pile driver pounding out a new subway stop below, it remains one of the most blissful vistas I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it was just the wine we shared that Thanksgiving evening.

Soldier Boy

2009-08-13T03:36:00.000-07:00

My cell phone text msg read: "I'm in PLA hospital, receiving drips. Outside soldiers r drilling, singing 'strength is iron, strength is steel.'"

It was from a coworker whose bout with tonsillitis had laid her low for a few days. Being a mostly traditional Chinese woman albeit with some western education and exposure, she'd taken the usual route of having her ailment treated with a mix of "Traditional Chinese Medicine" (hot cupping, unspecified herbal treatments) and an expensive IV drip (100 yuan or $14.60 a shot) that delivered saline solution and supposedly reduced her fever.

The IV drip culture at Chinese hospitals is enormous, so much so that there are drip junkie hypochondriacs who repeatedly haunt the wards where dozens upon dozens of people lie on identical gurneys getting their fix of saline solution medicinal bliss. A perceived cure-all and definite moneymaker for the hospitals, it was 40 yuan a fix when I first arrived and us now hitting 100 at the exclusive People's Liberation Army hospital in Beijing

I've never had one though the few times I've been unlucky enough to have to use a Chinese hospital I've been urged to lie down and get pinned for everything from a small cut (4 stiches) on my forehead to a stomach rash.

But I digress. It was the comfort she took in hearing soldiers drilling outside the ward as she was trying to recover from a 101 or so degree fever that intrigued me.

I was a very reluctant member of the US army ('72-'75, 2nd Army Division, Signal Corps, Camp Casey, ROK) and no stranger to saluting, standing at attention, at ease, drilling and chanting inspiring patriotic basic training ditties such as, "If I die on the Russian front, bury me in a Russian cunt, one-two, three-four ... " and "I don't know but I've been told, Eskimo pussy is mighty cold, count-off, one-two.."

But I and most vets thankfully left that behind long ago. I've also been a civilian patient in a VA hospital, but the closest I came to any quasi military presence there were a couple of friendly American Legion members who distributed silver dollars and crossword puzzle books to patients on Easter.

As I told my coworker, the idea of soldiers drilling outside a hospital ward gives me the creeps. China's different, of course. The PLA is part of the nation's fabric and children are taught how to march in orderly lines beginning in kindergarten. It's cute and also a little scary to see. Many college and high school students have compulsory military training - normal stuff for them. Just part of the deal.

The affection for military culture might also be explained through the entertainment propaganda mainline. While movies and TV shows about Mao's armies defeating the Japanese and Chai Kai-shek's nationalist forces are abudant, the People rarely if ever lose and if they do it's only a temporary setback until final victory is won. Losses are little known here such as China's own debacle in Vietnam in a bloody, brief border war in 1979. The PLA had its arse handed to it by the NVA, though the nation claims "victory" when the war is mentioned at all.

There is no Johnny Got His Gun, MASH, Catch 22, Apocalypse Now,Born on the 4th of July, Full Metal Jacket or even Hogan's Heroes equivalent ... only noble victory and clean quick deaths for the common good.

I spared her my half-baked "China needs its MASH" theory and sent a message wishing her well though still saying I had the heebiejeebies with the idea of soldiers chanting revolutionary slogans outside a hospital ward.

"Cultural difference," she replied."We Chinese like our soldiers. Their marching and chanting boosts morale and enhances bonds with civilians. It instills strength and inspires us to recover soon."

Me? I'd rather watch Apocalypse Now, which I did after that exchange. She's back at work now, though. Score one for the healing power of the PLA.

Watching the Detectives

2009-06-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

About 12 days or so ago I first noticed two clean-cut looking young guys hanging out on the second floor of my apartment. I'm in room 2008 and they didn't seem to belong to any room, though I rarely seen my neighbors and initially didn't pay them any mind. My door lock is secure (more on that later) and aside from my passport there probably isn't much anyone would care to steal even if they did break in.

But when I nearly stepped on them as I opened the door to the stairwell where they were sleeping on a shared cardboard flat one morning I began wondering who they were and why they were making themselves at home - even if conditions were cramped.
They were neatly dressed in casual summerwear and kept their staircase condo tidy -- but they never seemed to leave.

Morning, noon and night at least one was there if the other was absent, presumably making a bathroom or food run, though I had no clue where they'd find a nearby toilet and sink except in one of the apartments.

Lacking enough Chinese to ask, "Who the hell are you and why are you living in the stairwell?" I could only wonder, as well as ponder why apartment security staff hadn't booted them.

My mood changed, too, from curiousity to irritation at having my way blocked through the stairs by their dozing forms. One evening I hurled a classic Anglo-Saxon ephithet at them as I clambered past, and was met by blank stares. Then one said tenatively, "Hello?"

I laughed and asked if he spoke English. No, and that was all I would know until a Chinese pal I'll call SJ was visiting three days ago. "Hey, do me a favor and ask these guys what the fark they're doing here," I asked her as we side-stepped them coming up the stairs. "They've been here for about 9 or 10 days, nonstop. They never leave. I'm dying to know."

A lengthy conversation began, punctuated at one point by one of my new neighbors who took out a long document in Chinese with a lot of numbers on it and jabbed his finger at one of the numbers repeatedly as his voice rose.

SJ turned to me after a few minutes of conversation and explained.
"They are enforcers," she said. "To have a debt repaid." The document was "proof."
It turned out the occupant of apt 2006 across from me (whom I've never seen) had bilked someone else out of about 500,000 yuan ($73,000) and they'd been hired at 2,000 yuan ($300) apiece to squat there until they nab him and/or the money.

I kept asking questions. How did they go to the toilet and stay clean? What did the apartment staff think?

They smiled and said they used an apartment employee restroom on the ground floor and that the security and cleaning staff were sympathetic to the point that the pair were receiving occasional food handouts. Yes, it was boring. Still 2,000 yuan was a lot of money and jobs weren't easy to find in their native province, Sichuan -- home of the catastrophic May 2008 earthquake.

We shook hands and after SJ left I went down to a local shop for a few groceries and bought two cold cans of Nanjing beer for the debt collectors.

The investment paid off two days later when I came home found my key didn't work in my door. A latch was jammed, making it impossible for the key to catch and turn.
My new enforcer friends heard my curses and fumbling and emerged from their half-square meter luxury nest to see what the problem was. Thanks to them, an apartment security guard showed up, who in turn called a locksmith who jimmied the door open for 240 yuan ($35).

I paid him off, pulled two more cans of Nanjing out of my fridge and took them to the baking stairwell. "Xie, xie, thank you, thank you!" they said.

No, thank you. It's good to have connections, even under the stairs.

I read the news today, oh boy…

2009-06-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

Overseeing my paper’s Weird China (China Mosaic) page is giving me a very skewed look at Chinese life and journalism, I fear.

People routinely fall, jump or are pushed from high apartment windows or balconies only to miraculously survive.

Most street cleaners and trash collectors who find ATM cards with passwords for accounts holding hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan routinely return the cards and are grateful for a $50 reward or simply a heartfelt thanks.

Many rich single women want a husband who will only be faithful and hardworking, and will pay for one if necessary.

China has a slew of miracle animals and agricultural products. Gold eels. Transparent frogs. Four-legged ducks. Rats the size of small vehicles. Trees that bear 12 kinds of fruit. Cats with “wings.”

Criminals are unbelievably stupid. They typically flee the scene to the nearest police station believing it is a public restroom or bar. Or they argue loudly and publicly over their ill-gotten gains and how to split up the proceeds – usually outside a police station. Or they ask a cop to settle the dispute.

Corpses are commonly mixed up in funeral homes, resulting in outraged mourners who discover that “grandfather” who died peacefully at home at age 103 has morphed into 22-year-old woman who flamed out in a motorcycle accident.

It’s a typical collection of tidbits gathered from Chinese newspapers and websites that due to my inability to read Chinese are chosen by reporters who translate the candidates for me and await my verdict.

A typical session goes like this: (all dialogue guaranteed more or less verbatim)

Me: Okay, what’ve we got today?

Reporter: This is a story about a 3-year-old baby who fell…

Me: Stop! Let me guess. Fell 9 stories out of an apartment window but lived because a policeman who was chasing a stupid criminal stopped to catch it, right? Then he grabbed the stupid criminal because he hid in the police car?

Reporter: No. It was 17 stories. The baby hit a soft tree.

Me: No more falling people stories. I’m putting an embargo on them until further notice. Next?

Reporter: A man has lived on mothballs and baiju (traditional high octane Chinese liquor) for 18 years.

Me: I like it. A lot. Next?

Reporter: The government has established standards for the perfect panda.

Me: Like what?

Reporter pauses, reads carefully: “The perfect panda must have round lips, a mild temper, have a clear division of black and white fur, be outgoing, capable of entertaining people …”

Me: Does he have to be a Party member?

Reporter (puzzled): No. Animals cannot be Party members. Except in Animal Farm. But why?

Me: Never mind. Just a joke. Ok, we’ll use it. With a picture of a perfect panda. Next?

Reporter: A criminal robbed an old woman and then ran into …

Me: No!! Wait. Don’t tell me. A jail cell, right?

Reporter: No. Another old woman’s home who was the mother of the village police official and …

Me: No. Next…

Reporter: A man has been hunting 18 years in the mountains for a large monkey man monster in …

Me (excited) : Bigfoot! A Chinese Bigfoot! YES!

Reporter, puzzled again: The man does not have big feet, he is …

Me: No, no. I mean does the monster, never mind. We’ll use it. Now, you got any UFO stories?

White Wedding

2009-05-30T03:57:00.001-07:00

A China pop quiz.
What features a radio controlled helicopter, the Star Wars theme, a harmonica, a magician, two lounge singers, an emcee from the "China Coal and Mine Troupe" dressed like an Elvis imitator, a dose of Confucian filal piety and about 200 guests?

1. A wedding.
2. Birthday party
3. A company retreat/team building session.
4. Funeral

If you picked No 1, you're a winner! You win a carton of premium Hongtashan (Red Pagoda Hill) cigarettes (gifts to the male attendees). If you picked 2, 3 or 4 you receive our consolation prize - two cartons of Hongtashans!

It was my first Chinese wedding and easily the most bizarre and entertaining nuptial event I've attended, though a New Age one outside of Sheridan, Wyoming where the thoroughly white bride and groom recited vows based upon their "bear totem clan" is a close second. It was also the earliest - held at 11 am on a Friday.

But the bear totem wedding had no radio controlled helicopter flying in to the Star Wars theme to deliver wedding rings to the groom who almost fell down in his rented white tux trying to catch it. Nor did the bear totem groom wait solemnly while the wedding's emcee -- a second string CCTV cross talk comedian and graduate of the China Coal and Mine Troupe named He Jun who was dressed like a sequined Elvis imitator presented him with a mysterious slim long case that contained ... a harmonica.

"What the fark?" I mouthed to the only other foreigner there - a British pal, Danny, who'd been shanghaied into being a best man, based he suspected on a combination of his good nature and "exotic" skin color. He's a black guy. "I think it might've been a token thing," he said wryly.

But I digress. The groom, call him B, put the harmonica to his lips and wobbled through a shaky rendition of a vintage and still popular love song, The Moon Represents My Heart made famous here by the late Teresa Teng, a Taiwanese pop singer.

I'd have preferred some James Cotton or Magic Dick blues harp, but whatcha gonna do? I'm only a guest here and the 22 year old recent college grad standing next to me was sobbing into her already soggy tissue and looking repeatedly at her empty ring finger, yearning,I guess, for her turn at the altar with a toy chopper ring delivery system.

The tender 60-minute outdoor windblown ceremony also included a band of four young, leggy women in knee high suede boots and hot pants "playing" a flute, two violins and a portable keyboard to pre-recorded music, as well as frequent sound effects from a real keyboarist who hit the "boiiingg!" sound button to underscore every corny punchline from the emcee.

Gotta admit thohgh that I got a bit misty eyed when the bride and groom both knelt before their mothers and told them how much they appreciated their love and care. It hit a sincere and very traditional note that even the corny murmuring ocean sound effects didn't diminish.

In the banquet hall the levity continued. A magician entertained with some "Magic 101" stunts (interlocking rings, wand-into-flowers, etc) but closed out with a great finale of transforming a newspaper into a live squirming 8-inch grass carp that he threw into a nearby fish tank. Turning fish wrap into fish. Not a bad trick and I left with free ciggies and a gleaming hunk of carved jade won in a Lucky Wedding Draw.

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

2009-05-25T03:18:00.001-07:00

It was one of your basic "why do I ever whine?" moments.
I was outside Beijing Children's Hospital on a Friday goodwill mission with one of my Weird China team reporters, Jenny Song Shengxia. The sun was beginning to set and the grounds of China's largest and finest children's hospital were crowded with needy parents and sick children, some camping out on a patch of barely functioning grass in front of the hospital. Two small shops selling gaudy oversized Mylar balloons and other colorful geegaws supposed to raise the spirts of sick children were doing some business.

We were there to give a 1,000 yuan ($145) donation collected from some Global Times coworkers to a remarkable father in need.

Zhang Yonghong is a 36-year-old dwarf with paralyzed legs. But he's really not the needy one. It's his 1-year-old "glass bone" daughter, Tianyu, who suffers from a disease I'd never heard of before helming the Weird China page - Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). OI is an incurable – but treatable – genetic disorder also sometimes known as Lobstein syndrome, in which sufferers have weak bones prone to breaking easily.

The dad, daughter and mother, a quietly beautiful shoeshine worker, traveled more than 1,000 kilometers from Xi'an to Beijing in their crude but effective homebuilt three wheeled mobile home that Zhang designed and set up with hand controls so he could steer and brake.

Jenny had written a story on him for the paper and his last ditch effort to find help for his daughter in Beijing, whom her mother was nursing as the father talked with us from the vehicle's small rear cab/bedroom. I sat in his wheelchair outside to get at eye level with the family as Jenny translated. Under the vehicle was the Zhang family's laundry in a plastic tub, a half full package of budget detergeant and a couple of cheap suitcases. Two tiny goldfish swam in a sealed small plastic globe -- something he'd probably bought for little Tianyu.

A crowd gathered as we talked - about 15 people, some just curious, others hoping to attract our attention for help. Zhang, who worked in Xi'an as a decorative paper cutter and - ironically - an amateur suicide and helpline counselor for people with fewer problems than he seemed to have -- said he hoped to stay in Beijing and find new work.

The Chinese mainland doesn't do well when it comes to its handicapped citizens. They're essentially invisible; a source of shame or naive curiousity, unlike Hong Kong where it's not uncommon to see blind people walking the streets and subways, families with a Down syndrome child and wheelchair navigators. The Beijing government pays lip service to the handicapped at appropriate times - such as when the Paralympic Games followed last year's Olympics.

And while celebrity gimps such as the son of late leader Deng Xiaopeng, Deng Pufang who was paralyzed from the waist down after being thrown out (or jumping) from a Peking University dorm room during the Cultural Revolution are wheeled out as shining examples, guys like Zhang are essentially nonpersons unless they make their own way.

I admired the way he'd rigged his little motorhome to drive and asked how he'd done it. He said he'd just "thought of it" and had built three others for some other partially paralyzed people who'd paid for the equipment and his labor. I asked about his driving license. He dodged the question. Handicapped people aren't licensed to drive in China, and he clearly didn't want to discuss how he'd driven so far without legal problems.

Meanwhile Jenny was also patiently listening to two different tales of woe from other parents with sick children. I told her maybe we could find some way to connect Zhang with someone in Beijing interested in making vehicles for guys like him, even if its illegal for them to drive. She translated again and his face lit up. I don't know if that's going even be a starter - but it was an idea he liked and could hang on to for awhile.

Four dead in Ohio (and a few hundred more in Tiananmen)

2009-05-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this - all 3.7 of you - you're probably doing so from outside China where blogspot and blogger once again have offended what Danwei.org calls the "Net Nanny" and have been blocked. Cut and paste www.danwei.org and go to "Blogger.com blocked, but not the Washington Post" for a more succinct explanation.

I'm using a proxy server to post - not unusual - and to access other blocked sites, some of which such as YouTube have been in the black for a couple months now. (I can get my subversive Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Daily Show fixes!) The "word on the street" (i.e. rumor, expat logic plus past experience), says Beijing is blocking sites and will block more due to jitters over the 20th anniversary of June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre as well as the country's 60th anniversary founding on October 1. Look for relief after October 1? We'll see.

In the meantime, our paper - State owned as it is - has said internally that it is considering running "something" on June 4. That would be very unusual. Plus or minus, any mention would be almost revolutionary as the date usually passes without note - part of what another journalist has aptly termed China's called "collective amnesia" regarding the bloodshed.

An example. A British coworker has a wallpaper pic on his office PC of Tank Man, the picture of the lone, unknown Chinese citizen holding nothing more than two shopping bags as he stands off a PLA tank. It's arguably the most famous late 20th century photo of China - outside of China. But it draws no notice by Chinese colleagues, 99.9 percent of whom have never seen it and there's no context, nothing specifically "Chinese" about it viewed on its own. And it's not as if it's "banned" here. If I type "Tank Man" into Google images, I get a fair amount of them. But there's a cultural and educational gap that, as much as pro-democracy types both inside and outside of here would like to smooth over in terms of "if they see it they will understand" logic that just doesn't jell. If our image is of Tank Man, the one they remember is what they've seen in the classes that touch briefly on the subject - a picture and brief film footage of a PLA soldier on fire as he struggles from a tank torched by protestors' Molotov cocktails. Different tank men.

Another UK journalist friend here less than a year summed it up. We spoke yesterday after he'd interviewed journalism students at China's most prestigious university, Peking University, about June 4. He was puzzled that they didn't care and didn't seem to want to know anymore than what little they did. No reason why they should, really. They're the post-'89 generation, their education has been regimented and they owe their positions as students at PKU through privilege and some talent at memorizing test answers and lmost of all ook forward to careers through the same outlets despite China's climbing unemployment figures. They're gonna risk it by crying over June 4 to to a foreign journalist? Not likely.

In the meantime, here is a repeat of a column I wrote in Hong Kong about the same syndrome, four years ago. Not much has changed.

Except for what Associated Press called ''tightened security'' around Tiananmen Square, the 16th anniversary of the massacre of course passed unnoticed last Saturday on the mainland. In Shenzhen the sky was spitting intermintent bursts of acid rain – an appropriately gloomy mode if one was seriously contemplating June 4, 1989.

I had managed though, to cobble together a minor memorial of sorts in the form of a thoroughly unscientific poll and guarded discussion at a congee restaurant with four young English speaking Shenzhen professionals. They were all 13-to- 15-years-old when the June 4 Movment bloomed and burned. Just a little older than I was when John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and a tad younger than I on May 4, 1970 when four American students were slain by Ohio National Guard troops at an anti-Vietnam protest at Kent State University.

''Four dead in Ohio,'' sang Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in what was possibly the last true American folk song hearkening back to the original spirit of tunes as breaking news. It was written, recorded and released to radio – and, shades of China, banned by some stations – within three weeks of Kent State.
Comparisons between May 4 and June 4 however are admittedly a stretch at best. Possibly thousands, including soldiers, died on June 4 and unlike Kent State no galvanizing protest song or photo of a 14-year-old runaway girl, arms outstretched and keening over the dead body of student Jeffery Miller was allowed to sear the tragedy into the national consciousness.

But there is the Tiananmen Tank Man photo. One of Time Magazine's Top 100 photographs of the 20th century, but not even bubbling under the Top 200 in the PRC, the last century or this. That's where I began the discussion after some nervous jokes by them about making sure our dining area wasn't bugged and that I wasn't recruiting for the Falun Gong.

''No one is very comfortable talking about this,'' said Sally (a psuedonym, as are all the names), a 27-year-old sales manager for a Sino-US joint venture company. The others, two women and a man, nodded.
I described man vs tank photo and asked if any of them had seen it.
"Maybe," said Louis, 30, a telecom engineer. "I am not clear about it. I have seen so many world-shaking photographs.''

Li, 30, a project manager who has lived in Shenzhen for seven years, was equally vague. "I am not sure."
Sally had seen it but shrugged it off as '' interesting.''
Dani, 29, was the only one who had traveled extensively outside China, including a year in Boston. "I know that picture. It is very powerful. I also watched a VCD in the US called Tiananmen. I know now that the government hasn't told the full truth because they want to cover up their crime.''
Would it surprise any of you that the man and tank picture is one of the most famous photographs of China ? More foreigners know it than they do Deng Xiaopeng.

''I am not surprised even if I don't think I know it,'' said Li. She was pragmatic. "It's like we know more about pictures of the Statue of Liberty than George Bush.''

So does June 4 have any meaning for you?

''Absolutely. It has a profound meaning. It let us know how corrupt the goverment is,'' said Dani.
Others disagreed.
"I think it was the price of trying to explore a new success. But we need to forget the past and be a bright future," said Louis.

Li, like the others, did remember radio and TV accounts at the time but still found it hard to understand what, exactly, the demonstrations were about.

''I didn't understand it then or even now. Why did the students have to bleed and parade and how come so many PLA were killed? What were they trying to fight for? I still don't understand or want to know, really.''

Sally had mixed feelings. ''The students used their blood to educate people, to try and encourage other students to do more democratic demonstrations. But after it was all over the fact that people who were there weren't able to get good jobs scared other people. I used to teach English to an older man when I was in college. He told me he couldn't find a good job in China because he joined that movement. He had to immigrate to Canada.''

It was at about that point that I thought back to a conversation I'd had with Annie, a Chinese ex-coworker of mine in Shenzhen who had been at Tiananmen Square in June 1989, though as an observer, not as a demonstrator.
From her perspective it sounded like the demonstrations were - until the soldiers began slaughtering the students - more of an excuse to party, with calls for democracy almost an afterthought.

"I left just before the trouble," she said. "My friend did not feel well and I went back to our university with her. "
But why did you go to begin with?
"I am curious about many things. I like to watch and listen. It is why I like being a reporter. I went just to watch. There were no classes, everyone was there. It was also very romantic ... is that the right word?" She laughed self-consciously.
I don't know. What do you mean, 'romantic?'
What Annie described was the frisson familiar to anyone who has spent an extended, intense period of time in a hot house environment with others bent on the same mission, whether it's producing a play, working overtime at the office or trying to overthrow a government.

"Many students fell in love there. They got engaged there. Some shouted to get married right there." She laughed again. "Some of us said these romances would not last. None did."

Did you see the Statue of Liberty?, I asked referring to the homemade, crude replica that the students had constructed.

"Of course. It was a little ugly, do you think?"

I laughed and said I liked the spirit, I said. Any American who saw it understood and applauded the spirit.

"Of course. It was very symbolic."

She seemed lost in thought then she said: "The day after the deaths, it was so quiet on our campus. No one talked. We knew something terrible had happened but no details. Silence everywhere. Empty classrooms, empty rooms, empty canteenl. No one could talk about what happened. I rode my bicycle to Beijing University because I wanted to see what it was like there. It was quiet, too. I looked up at some windows and I saw new white flowers. White flowers at windows and balconies. Do you know what that means?"

No, I don't.

"White is our color for death."

I briefly described Annie's experience to the four and they were vaguely interested, though unimpressed. She must have had good connections to have her present job was the consensus. What all but Dani agreed on was that June 4, 1989 was China's business, not the outside world's.

"It is all the people's business,'' she said, looking a little embarrassed at being the odd-person out. ''I will tell my children about it. The full truth.''

''It is only our business, China's business,'' said Louis. "I would not tell my children because I don't know the full truth. It is well known that the full truth of history is often not easy to know. So perhaps it is better to say nothing than to be wrong.''

It's Showtime!

2009-04-22T01:11:00.000-07:00

The April 20 debut of my newest wagemaster, Global Times was, in a word, anti-climatic or even underwhelming - though not without a lighter side or two.

Some members of the foreign staff, including me, got last-minute invites to the paper's official "launching reception" in a Sheraton hotel ballroom where 200 mostly Chinese Commie Party VIPS mingled with a sprinkling of embassy staffers drawn largely from some of the "..stan" countries and other powers such as Albania and the Maldives. Entertainment included a dozen female drummers and a lip-syched Peking Opera performance combined with lithesome, highly choreographed dancing girls whom I mistook for professionals until I was told by a Chinese reporter that they were all also reporters from the Chinese language Global Times.

"What? No way! How much overtime did they put in to learn that routine?" I asked. "They're beautiful, but it's not exactly what they went to university to do, I imagine."

"They were not paid overtime for that," he told me. "They 'volunteered.'"

I tried to imagine the outrage of reporters I'd known in Colorado if they'd been asked to 'volunteer' to be dancing girls for a company gala and winced at the thought.

Unintentional entertainment also came in the form of the taped intro music for the Major Commie Party Hoodoo Guru Editor of People's Daily, our editorial mothership. The strains of what I swear was a remix of '70s TV show themes began that morphed The Love Boat with what sounded like the Starsky & Hutch theme, or maybe a porn flick - lotsa cheesy wah-wah pedal effects - and brought him to the speaker's podium.

The next morning I began getting e-mails that added to the excitment from pals in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Beijing saying they'd seen me on national China TV news in a puff piece about the new GT.

A savvy American coworker found a link on the Sinocized version of YouTube. I'm the myopic fat headed foreigners about 40 seconds into it. To view, cut and paste. The autolink function isn't working now. Enjoy.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XODYwMDc5NjA=.html

Photos by Bernice "The Bern Unit" Chen

Working for the Clampdown

2009-04-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Content restrictions and control at my new employer seem to be increasing the closer we get to launch date April 20, though it's really turned more into a game than anything serious.

There is a blanket edict that any stories on North Korea or Darfur will be "positive" - giving rise to some jokes among the foreign staff about travel features like "Pyongyang: Playground in Paradise!" or "Delightful Darfur! It's more than starving flyblown refugees!"

Over on the Weird China desk ("China Mosiac") where we continue to harvest stories of hero animals, witless whacky crooks and romances gone rotten, our assigned censor has been axing pithy items that portray "superstition" or "put China in a bad light," or are "disrespectful to leaders" (a sculpture made of Mao badges) though under the "disrespectful" mandate he was unsuccessful in killing a reference to Barack Obama's "schnozz." The mundane item was about a Chinese woman who'd had a botched nose job and was being teased by others who said it resembled Obama's.

The Yiddish baffled the censor, of course, and overall he was leery of appearing "disrespectful" of a world leader. I assured him that Obama makes jokes about his ears and I doubted he'd be offended if, in a one in a trillion chance, he happened to be reading a dummy copy of Global Times that referred to his schnozz. "The Jewish vote is crucial to his support," I said after explaining what Yiddish was.

The censor has also begun submitting his own stories and I've been able to do some quality control myself. I spiked two that were less than subtle attempts at portraying Taiwan as uniformly yearning to be embraced by Benevolent Beijing. But our attempt at changing the page's name from "China Mosaic" to something a little more lively was recently quashed.

"Weird China" is a non-starter, of course, but another foreigner had suggested, "This just in..." - not bad, I thought, and I lobbied for it. It was taken under advisement and after about 10 days I asked what had happened.

"It was turned down," one of my Weird China reporters confessed. "Not suitable."

"Why?" I asked. "They didn't get it? It's a journalism cliche, but appropriate for the page. It's no prize winner but better than China Mosaic." She was silent and then sighed.

"They discussed it and finally think you are trying to promote yourself," she said quietly.

"What? How?" I couldn't see it at all.

She sighed again, paused, then cleared her throat. "'This just in.' Just-in. Justin."

The Cat Crept In

2009-04-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

I saw the notice taped to a window of a coffee bar and sandwich shop in my neighborood, "Cat Needs a New Home" and thought, why not? It gets lonely sometimes in my latest neighborhood and C and I had had some fun a few years ago with a white female stray we'd adopted in Shenzhen and named Gato.

This one is "Figo," an overweight orange short hair previously owned for six years by a Latvian woman, Marina, and her son, who'd named him after Luis Figo, a Portuguese soccer star I'd never heard of til meeting his feline namesake.

"Figo you do not know of?" Marina asked incredulously. I just shrugged and said, "I'm American" and let that suffice. Our general ignorance of and indifference to soccer is well known in expat communities where the game's international appeal otherwise brings nations together for riots, stampedes and white knuckle matches that end 0-0.

Marina's son is in college in Germany now and as a new vicitm of the world econoomic crisis and China's collapsed textile export market Marina has to leave China without Figo, who it became quickly clear is virtually more than a son to her. There's no real cat pet culture in China yet, but she took me to a small international veterinary clinic to finish a round of shots for him - the "Rolls Royce Premium package" as the clinic manager described it while getting all my particulars.

Marina also wanted Figo's ears examined, convinced as she was that they were infected. The vet found nothing but finally worn down with Marina's increasing level of hysteria ("So red!" she said loudly, pointing to Figo's healthy looking pink inner ear and scrutinizing a clean, puss-free Q-tip the vet had used to probe for an infection) the doc gave her a small tube of what looked benign topical cream and told her to swab it on twice a day with a Q-tip. Then came a stranger request.

"You can measure cat blood types?" asked Marina. The vet explained that, yes, cats have blood types but finding out what they are is a long and very pricy procedure. "I vant to know vhat blood type is Figo," Marina grumbled. "For to tell his personality!" Some in Japan, Korea and China believe a blood type is like an astrological sign and I guess Marina was hoping it applied to cats as well. She was not only a hypochondriac for her cat but a seer.

They parted Sunday night when I met her outside my apartment as she walked lowslung and mournfully with her collection of cat gear and Figo zipped up in an oversized cloth satchel. She looked like an Eastern Europoean refugee and was weeping.

"I feel I have betrayed him!" she told me between sniffles. I felt genuinely bad for her and a Chinese friend with me simply looked very puzzled. ("It is only a cat," he told me later. "A very nice cat. But not a child.")

"It will be okay," I told Marina, patting her on her broad back - while thinking, "it's not like you're putting him on a cattle car to Auschwitiz or a restaurant in Guangzhou..."

Celluloid Heroes

2009-03-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

A Chinese English teacher I met recently had been asking if I'd be a "guest lecturer" for one of her morning university classes at the China's Central Academy of Drama.

"You can pick any topic," she said, "and talk for an hour or more." I'd done this before in Shenzhen and can barely talk for 5 minutes, much less an hour, about anything of interest. Previously I'd dodged the time line by rambling for 20 minutes or so and then asking for questions - a technique that never fails to fail here as students are taught specifically not to ask questions, though pleading and offering 20 yuan to the first questioner usually worked.

I floated the idea and she told me what I already knew. "They won't ask questions." But she offered to show me her school, from which many of mainland China's film stars and directors have graduated and added that "Julia Roberts will be coming to speak on Tuesday. Maybe you can attend too?"

Julia Roberts? Yeah? "You know, the big mouth movie star," she said. I knew, I knew and while never really a huge fan, the idea of crashing a talk by her in Beijing seemed intriguing. And, hell, I liked her in Erin Brockovich, Nodding Hill and her Tess Ocean role in Oceans 11 and 12, so yeah, sounded like a plan.

My first surprise was that the vaunted Central Academy of Drama was in a place I hang out frequently after hours and I'd never noticed. So much for my "trained observer" skills. It's in the middle of a popular tourist and Chinese yupster hutong (alleyway community) called Nonlou guxiang, otherwise chock full of small coffee/tea bars, mostly low key booze bars (including Beijing's smallest, a 12 square meter place aptly named "12sm")snack shops, clothing, ceramic and gift stores and some homegrown yoghurt stands.

I'd seen the academy, of course. It's hard to miss squatting comparitively large among the smaller buildings aand residential courtyards, but also gated and locked I'd assumed it was some minor bureaucratic tumor and not paid any interest.

We got there on an early Saturday afternoon, the teacher walked through a side entrance and suddenly we were inside. I'd imagined something grand - babe-olicious heartbreakers like Zhang Ziyi (Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha) and Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell my Concubine, Curse of the Golden Flower, Miami Vice (!)had trod these floors with their golden feet. And what floors they were. Dingy concrete, worn small classrooms, all cast in a feeble 20-watt glow. It looked like a very tired middle school. Photographs of famous alums were along the walls at eye level, none autographed and all looking as if they'd been taken by a bargain photog at a Sam's Club.

I looked in vain for pictures of Zhang Ziyi or Gong Li and then heard the teacher calling from around a corner. She wanted to show me the poster for Julia Roberts' appearance.

"See," she said, pointing. "Julia with the big mouth." She pointed to a Chinese character poster with several French movie titles and a picture of a woman with a large mouth named Juliette. French actress Juliette Binoche. Like Julia Roberts, she's won an Academy Award (English Patient)and they probably could swap dental records, but ... no.

It's a family affair

2009-03-22T00:56:00.000-07:00

Scene: 10.30 am news meeting to determine possible stories for the next day. Although it isn't a true paper yet, we're running the newsroom as if it was - sort of like a haphazard community theater dress rehearsal that never ends.

International news team leader Li reads from a usual list of suspects..."China launches economic zone in Egypt, Yao Ming wax figure in Mdm Tussands in NYC, NATO to send 4,000 troops to Afghanistan, Frtizl incest verdict and (pause, beat) we're planning a full page related to that called 'Incest Around the World.'

Chinese team leaders nod approvingly while I almost spew bottled lemon green Nestea Ice Rush outta my nose. "Uh, wait a minute. Please. An entire PAGE devoted to what? 'Incest Around the World?"

Li: "Yes, we have found four other international cases. Very interesting. Germany, Australia, UK and South Korea." He hands me a two page printout labeled "Incest Around the World" where, sure enough, our intrepid international team has harvested four cases ranging from what one might generously call "accidental" (siblings didn't know they were related); "consensual" (father-adult daughter; siblings); to unspeakably vile (retarded girl raped by three uncles and 87-year-old grandfather.) And all neatly divided by country (map graphics too!), relationship and "background."

One world, one dream, I think darkly. It's a small world after all...

"Mmmm, wait a minute," I say. "This is, er, uh, (falling into Chinglish-speak) how-to-say? tacky. No, worse. It's just simply tastless. Very bad taste."

"Bad taste?" responds a Chinese senior editor. "No. It is not bad taste. It is news. International news!"

I plead the case again and a Chinese former China Daily colleague begins to back me with the verdict finally falling in favor of universal bad taste.

Later, my son emails me after I've described it to him.

"I've always wanted to know about incest in countries other than my own," he replies. "Doesn't everyone?"

Strange Days

2009-03-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

Among my more enjoyable duties at this erratic work in progress newspaper (debut April 20) is a daily conference with two late 20something Chinese women responsible for a page with the working title "Weird China" - though that'll change.

The concept is simple and ripped from what will be the competition which has a popular page called China Scene, a collection of short offbeat stories culled from Chinese language papers and the Internet - many of dubious origin which involve freakish animals, wacky crooks, jilted lovers, medical oddities etc and some that are clearly urban myth.

"A naughty thief surnamed Liu in Guangdong was nabbed by police after his third foot got stuck in the window of a rare pets store where he was attempting to steal a minature unicorn for his bearded girlfriend who had dumped him ... " kinda sums it up. And with my previous work at Weekly World News behind me, I'm a natural.

The Weird China page editors, who I'll call X and Y, are almost painfully earnest about their mission and bring pages of notes and print outs in Chinese with candidate stories.

"What have we got today?" I asked yesterday.

"A cow," said X. "It jumped from the truck taking it to being killed for meat."

"Good for it," I said. "So what happened?"

"Authorities found it and shot it."

"Umm, no. No. Anything else?"

"Hero snake," Y said solemnly. Then she was silent, waiting expectantly for my verdict. X also looked hopeful. (Besides the cow story, I had recently killed several they thought were naturals, including one about a "man who was curious to see the gay person life. Then he meets the gay person who takes him to a hotel. He drink some wine and feel funny. Then he wake up and all his money is gone. He said he does not like the gay person life.")

"Okay. Hero snake," I replied. "That's good. Promising. What kind of snake? Where? Why is it a hero?"

"Hainan province." she replied. "It is very loyal and brave." Though the story reeked of myth - a boa that a man had rescued 11 years ago from a road injury has fought off burglars, rescued the man's son from a swift river current and returned 48 days to the man's home after he set it free because it was too big to feed ... A typical day for Lassie, sure. But a snake?

"I don't believe it," I told Y. She looked crestfallen. "But we'll run with it."

Learn from Lei Feng: Cap Your Rig

2009-03-06T01:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, March 5 was a minor holiday in China - Lei Feng Day. The "Fengster" as the Danwei.org blog refers to him was an otherwise unremarkable soldier who was turned into a revolutionary icon of Maoist China for his supposed selfless devotion to the people. In his own words, the man who supposedly spent his free time studying the works of Chairman Mao and darning his own and other people's socks wanted to be nothing more than a selfless "revolutionary screw that never rusts."

He died not as a martyr or hero, but ingloriously when a truck accidently backed into a power pole that fell and crushed him at 22. Unknown to the western world, Lei Feng was, until Mao declared the "Learn from Lei Feng Campaign" on March 5, 1963, a nobody, a cheerful everyman and orphan who made the People's Liberation Army and the Communist Party his family, as recorded in books assembled after his death supposedly from his diary, statements and deeds – “After Liberation I Had a Home, My Mother was the Party” and “Bitter Recollections and Sweet Thoughts.”

Even in the bold new China of money and stock market IPOs, he continued to serve - as in a 2006 an online Lei Feng video game (players collected gold tokens for performing good deeds and darning socks in order to "visit" Chairman Mao) and a navel gazing Lei Feng blog in which he "wrote" about his own legend.

“In March of each year, lots of people start to study me. This kind of thing has gone on for years and years. Sometimes, when I'm helping other people, I'll unconsciously think to myself, ‘I'm learning from Lei Feng,’ and feel a sincere joy. Sometimes I'll forget that Lei Feng is really me. Me, learning from an even higher me. Sometimes this problem baffles me.”

So it baffled me a bit when coworkers gave me a "What the hey?" looks when I wished them "Happy Lei Feng day". Most laughed. The Fengster, who fascinates me - I've got a kitschy poster in my bedroom, Barry White would be proud - is a joke to most who grew up on his legend in primary school. In fact, children are supposed to observe Lei Feng Day by helping old people across the streets. A recent Chinese language news item told of a delegate to the current gathering of the annual government rubberstamp legislature who wants the Fengster declared as a "national heritage" by the United Nations and is under the deluded belief that he's so revered that his portrait even hangs in West Point to inspire cadets. As if we didn't have enough of our own hero soldiers, few of whom were slain by power poles.

"Oh, you know so much about Chinese culture," one coworker said politely when I did the Lei Feng day greeting. I assured him that what I know about Chinese culture could be stuffed in one of their tiny tea cups with room for a family of six. "But why are you interested in Lei Feng?"

Part of it is his kitsch value, no question. Typically pictured in his winter issue PLA floppy ear flaps hat, he is presented as a cross between a Boy Scout and Mother Teresa. And there are reoccuring attempts to modernize him - both offcially and otherwise as was done by a Shanghai novelty company in 2006 that was selling "Learn from Lei Feng" condoms. It should be noted that Lei Feng died a virgin. At least that's the official line. And his condoms were pulled from the market following objections originally spurred by an outraged mother who found a tin of them along with an "Official Horndog" certificate in her teenage son's school backpack.

I interviewed the company's spokesman (courtesy of C's translating skills) for a story I wrote at the time for Asia Sentinel and when pressed about the logic of using Lei Feng's virginal visage to sell rubbers, he had a prompt reply. "Lei Feng would have supported safe sexual conduct and responsible family planning, I believe. And our condoms are stronger than his socks. He would not need to repair them."

Image courtesy of Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages

"Pubic" enemy gets fair 'warming'

2009-02-25T00:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon I received this e-mail.

Subject: To warm you Monday, February 23, 2009 10:48 PM
From: "Wang Xie"
To: XXXXX (me)

Michel,

This to notice you that your name has been flied with China Pubic Secreitry Bureau to watch for blog.

Regards,
Wang

Presumably, it's from the same scrotum-breath troll featured previously. But I gotta hand it to him. The Chinglish is flawless, including "Michel" for Mitchell and "Pubic" for "Public." But as a pal more versed in China, blogging, trolls et al than I noted when I forwarded it to him for amusement and scrutiny replied: "(It's) a troll who's ... typing Chinglish one-handed because his "Pubic Security Bureau" is busy keeping his microdick locked down. Don't take it personally -- his email address suggests he does a lot of trolling of this type."

Bombs Away, Dreambabies

2009-02-19T23:31:00.000-08:00

It was one of those "only in China" moments. I had been invited by a senior editor for a Feb 8 Sunday afternoon and evening "New Year firecracker viewing" with his wife, 10-year old son and some of his pals who included two he described as a "China Supreme Court justice" and "head of the China Press Association" (I took the titles as loose translations, though who knows?) to Zhuo Zhuo, a small town about an hour outside of metropolitan Beijing.

After a lot of mao tai (Chinese rocket fuel) toasts and food with the deputy mayor and his entourage, we piled into various vehicles in a ramshackle caravan and police escort that lead through most of Zhuo Zhuo's blighted areas - a large aluminum factory that seems (or seemed, it appeared to be shut down, but possibly on hiatus) to be the town's main industry, to a large open field. It was pitch black as we pulled over to the side of the road and our hosts began unloading many crates of high octane fireworks.

I'm not really a pyrotechnic freak and after a month of near-Baghdad/Beirut combat night shellings in Beijing (the worst was to come with the New Year burning of the new CCTV hotel/convention annex) all in the name of "traditional Chinese New Year" fun, I had been getting weary (and growing deaf) amid the revelery. But as I watched and dodged the rockets and low-end mortar shells for awhile on the roadside perhaps it was the mao tai in me, but I got into the spirit and began pulling bricks of small ariel shells out of the boxes, tearing the wrappers off like a kid at Christmas and lighting multiple fuses.

I tossed one brick like a grenade into field, then quickly stumbled back as the shells went whistling horizontally at me and the others. One of our hosts pulled me aside and said something in Chinese. My editor translated: "Don't throw them! Stand them up!" Okay, okay. Sorry, sorry...

The fire fun continued however to the point that me and the man identified as the Supreme Court justice and I were good naturedly squabbling over the remaining brick o' explosives about 10-minutes later. I diplomatically surrendered it, handed him my lighter and mused briefly imagining tussling with the likes of John Roberts, John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas or maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg over a remaining fistfull of M-80s in a vacant lot in a depressed Pennsylvania factory town on July 4 ... as his Chinese honor lit the fuse and the rockets screamed.

(Note to faithful readers, all 3.4 of you. It is with sincere regret that I've switched the comments to pre-approval mode. It grates on me as a supposed advocate of free speech and all that, but recent contributions by an anonymous troll or two have forced the change. I continue to accept constructive brickbats and corrections (Jaxxson, you reading this?) but nothing from malformed stalkers.)

Holiday in Cambodia

2009-02-05T22:00:00.001-08:00

There are two older Chinese retired journalists working here temporarily as writing and reporting coaches, in addition to my rapidly aging American self. Pleasant, quiet gentlemen fluent in English and, until yesterday, both were otherwise a mystery to me.

The younger of the pair wandered into my office late in the afternoon and began chatting, asking me where I was from in the US and after about 8 minutes of me explaining where Colorado is and that, no, it's not near the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas, he told me he'd had two journalistic highlights in his career. One was a month spent as a guest columnist at a small Washington state newspaper in the late 1980s where some curious residents asked him questions like "Do Chinese men still wear pig tails and women bind their feet?" He laughed. "I am still in contact with some of them now. Some have even visited me here and discovered there are no more pig tails and women have normal feet."

The other high (or low)light was a month spent in the Cambodian jungle in the '80s profiling Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I gaped. It was like meeting someone who'd hung out with Hitler ... or Mao.

"Pol Pot? You MET Pol Pot? A month in the jungle with POL POT?" He nodded and went on to say that his story had been killed by authorities upon his return as "too sensitive" as he'd also reported on the Killing Fields.

He descibed Pol Pot as "normal sounding, even pleasant" and grimaced a little before making mention of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" phrase. I urged him to find his old piece or notes and write it again but he demurred, saying they had all been lost and then apologized saying he had to leave for another reporter training session.

One way ticket to China: $576.00

Taxi fare to work: 23 yuan

Working for the Communist Man: My soul

Meeting an unassuming elderly temporary coworker who spent a month with one of the 20th century's most notorious butchers: Priceless

Pol Pot image from Ksilks.com

Old Brown Shoe

2009-02-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

I've recently begun a new adventure as the first foreigner hired for a new State-owned English language paper in Beijing - something of a mixed blessing.

Its Chinese language version is somewhat nationalistic, some would say jingoistic,and the parent company and publication, People's Daily, makes Fox News look like National Public Radio when it comes to, er, flag waving. Nonetheless I've been assured my new Commie Overlords are serious about giving China Daily a run for its formulaic, stale and hidebound State money and realize the way to get some foreign readership and serous journalistic respect is not to always completely bend over and beg for more, sir.

I've also never worked for a start-up paper of any ilk and four days into it I'm certainly not regretting it. We've already had a little test of how much the proverbial editorial envelope might be pushed and so far, so good. Currently I'm helping train about 60 young, mostly green reporter candidates in the mysteries and vagaries of western journalism and one of the training exercises has been having them write stories on deadline based on what they can find in the Chinese language press and online western sites.

Two recent assignments included bong-sucking Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps and an overview of Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao's recent visit to the UK, which ended on a somewhat undignified note with a protester at Cambridge heaving a shoe at Wen as he was giving a speech. Shades of Dubya, of course. I asked my Chinese editors if the shoe heaving had been mentioned in the Chinese media and my question was met with a throat clearing and an embarrassed half smile. Which is Chinese for "no, not really."

"George Bush gets two shoes thrown at him and it's all over the place here," I said, not believing that I was suddenly getting my latent red, white and blue pride up. "Fair play at least for these exercises, okay?"

They agreed and the next day brought two surprises. Chinese media had finally reported - albeit cautiously - the shoe throwing and my trainees had brought in mixed results with their reports. A few had led with it as western media had done and others had submitted stories that barely mentioned it at all, burying it at the end with a brief mention.

Later I discussed the whole affair with seven of them, with one young woman in particular who was still puzzled about the differences. Her report had erred on the side of near-omission but she was truly eager to know "which system is better." She said the Chinese government style was needed in order to stem any social unrest. I replied that things seemed to be leaning now towards adapting a more open approach and asked what harm had been done in reporting it. "There was no unrest. If anything Premiere Wen came out of it respectfully."

"Is it necessary to report it though?" she asked.

"It was all over your Internet also," I said. "People were angry. Chinese students at the talk in Cambridge had yelled 'Shame on you' at the protester. China would have looked silly not acknowleding that it happened. It's no secret. No State secret." She still looked slightly uncomfortable but agreed I had a point she hadn't considered.

I brought up the Dubya example again and mentioned an online game some Chinese netizens had created where players could rack up points throwing shoes at Bush. She and the others smiled. I did too remembering how I'd only scored a few points when trying it.

"No Prime Minister Wen online games, I know, and that's alright. But now the shoe is on the other foot," I said. "It's a Western saying."

2009-01-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

Military Madness

I watched the "changing of the walkie-talkies" for the last time at China Daily today. On February 1 I report to my new "danwei" {work unit) where the guards have real guns, not walkies-talkies.

One of the first sights that greeted me when I first reported to work 11 months ago was a quasi-military garbed security guard* (see comment by Jaxxson below) at the gated entrance standing like a Buckingham Palace guard in a visored cap that made him look like a 3rd world generalissimo. (In winter they switch to black furry Russian style headgear) I've worked at one other paper on the Chinese mainland, one in Hong Kong, a brief stint a Voice of America in Hong Kong and six papers in the US - while about half had security guards, none had soliders. About 40 yards from PLA guard No 1 was his counterpart standing at the door. Both had ramrods-up-their-spine postures and stared blankly straight ahead, but I quickly figured out that they weren't as trained as the UK counterparts when I saluted the gate guard and he cracked a smile.

Closer inspection showed too that these are likely 19-20 year olds, probably fresh off some rural farming area and eager to make a break to the big city. They shove each other and giggle while walking in line their camo fatigues carrying basins of dirty laundry to and from their barracks inside the China Daily building.

Another light relief at China Daily was at 10am and 4pm when the guards changed; marching in lock-step to salute and formally hand off, not or rifles or pistols, but walkie-talkies.

At other designated times inside this bastion of liberty and information, pairs march precisely down the halls in white combat helmets and clipboards to ensure lights are on or off and that most exits, including fire exits, are locked.

"Helmets? Why do they need helmets to check doors?" another foreign worker asked me as we watched them solemnly and crisply make their appointed rounds.

"I'm wondering why they need to lock the fire exits in formation," I replied. "We have one open exit on the first floor. One exit to the stairs per floor and all others are locked on all six floors. No sprinklers anywhere. It's a death trap in a fire."

"Communism," he chuckled. "One dies, we all die together."

It's cute and odd and also initially a little chilling to work in a quasi military newspaper environment as an American civilian, but ulimately it becomes normal. None of the Chinese coworkers see it as strange, of course.

Then I paid a visit to my next newspaper here and noted that the compound it's in is a quasi-fortress, the size of a small Nevada, Wyoming or New Mexico town. A seige mentality. Completely surrounded by blocks and blocks of wall and guarded at all four north, south, east, west gates by soldiers with - not walkie talkies - but pistols. My "handler" as I refer to the woman who recruited me and guides me in and out of the compound found my observation rather boring but expressed surprise that China Daily's guards aren't armed.

"What if there is trouble?" she asked.

"From who? What?" I asked. "Angry readers? Not allowed. All China Daily readers are happy!"

I talked with her later about the differences between how China views its military and the US. While it's a given that US citizen support the troops, there's also always a line between the two worlds - civilian and military. In China military singers and dancers are routinely a part of many variety shows and one of the most popular female singers for the middle aged and older generations is a woman named Song Zuying who routinely dresses in a naval officer's uniform bedecked with ribbons as testimony to her former service with the Chinese People's Liberation Army Naval Political Department Sing and Dance Troupe.

Song is also widely rumored to have served her country as mistress to ex-president Jiang Zemin. As my handler and I dished about Song and the former prez I asked, "Where did she win all those ribbons and medals? She never saw any military action."

She giggled and covered her mouth with her hand momentarily. "For action in President Jiang's bed, of course."

2009-01-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

Meet the Beatles

"And who is this?" The question came from Dorothy, a 40something Chinese woman I've become pals with after she helped me with a communication problem at the Beijing airport a few months ago. She was at my apartment scrutinizing my coffee table swamp of CDs, DVDs, books, New Yorkers, empty beer cans, dirty cups and used dental floss. After examining CDs by Nirvana, Metallica, PJ Harvey and an old kickass Boulder bluegrass group, Town and Country Review, Dorothy focused on the Beatles' Revolver.

"Beatles, you know - the band? Rock and roll. English band?" I said. "Very famous." She looked a little puzzled. I pointed to a framed photo on my wall of me interviewing Yoko Ono in Denver circa late '80s. "Her? You know her. Yoko Ono. She was his..." I pointed to the John drawing on Revolver, "Japanese wife."

"Oh!" she said. "I know. So sad. Yes, he is dead, yes?."

"Yeah, unfortunately. But this was the band he was in before." Then she made the connection, (apparently the phonetic translation of Beatles in Chinese means "messy hair", though I'm not gonna swear to that) and asked me to play the disc. John, Paul, George and Ringo aren't exactly well-known here as many of their potential audience would've been trying to make revolution as Red Guards rather than singing it at the time. And the Beatles were decidedly not among the first western pop artists officially sanctioned in China - John Denver and the Carpenters have that honor.

I can't remember the last time I turned someone on to the Beatles, other than my son when he was about 4 and even then he preferred George Thorogood's Bad to the Bone, the Byrds' Chestnut Mare and Mr Tambourine Man and Aretha Franklin's Respect over virtually anything by the Fabs. (Last summer a 22-year old American intern informed me that he'd "recently decided that the Beatles were actually pretty good" - a remark which had me supressing the urge to tear his lungs out through his sphincter.)

Listening to Revolver's 14 tracks - long since taken for granted - with a novice was almost like hearing it the first time in 1966 at my friend Chris's home on Columbine street in Boulder. Ehh, well, maybe not that great but hearing it through her ears and what she was picking up on was very fresh.

Song by song - Taxman through Tomorrow Never Knows - she was praising harmonies, solo vocals, instruments and themes (I'm Only Sleeping, Good Day Sunshine, Got to Get You Into My Life, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, And Your Bird Can Sing in particular) and asked me if she could borrow it to copy, along with the sleeve. "That's John, that's Ringo, Paul, that's George..."

She left my place clutching Revolver and singing Good Day Sunshine kinda off key but with some decided verve, even though it was dark and about 9-degrees Farenheit. Maybe time we'll take a drive on Abby Road.

Image from boingboing.net

2009-01-08T22:28:00.000-08:00

Change

Change often comes suddenly and without notice, questions or explanation here. In my first few months in Shenzhen I lost my bank. One week it was there, the next no trace, only a sealed over enormous cement slab where it had been. It took me about a week to find that it had relocated about three blocks away. Perhaps a notice had been posted in Chinese. And maybe none at all. The latter is as likely as the former I've long sinced learned.

About five months after coming to Beijing I had some midnight noodles and a tepid beer in a barely lit, grubby 24 hour noodle shop across from my apartment. It was part of a small group of private businesses, among them a small fruit, produce and tobacco shop, a pirate DVD setup, a ramshackle barbecue stand, and a liquor store where a 14- or 15-year-old daughter of the owner used to take some glee from uncorking the occasional bottle of cheap Chinese red plonk for me because I lacked a corkscrew at home and could never seem to find one to buy. I'd make an exaggerated "plop!" sound when the cork sprang free and she'd giggle - a small pleasure for us both. The noodle shop had no real appeal other than 24 hour service but it was cheap and reliable. About 13 hours after finishing my last noodle meal, I emerged from my apartment and looked across the street to find it was all gone; as if a noiseless bomb had decimated the block. No noodle shop, no liquor store, no fruit or barbecue, no 14-year-old wine steward. She'd been replaced with strange migrant workers gutting the buildings.

The day after Thanksgiving I received an email notice from what passes for my employer's Human Resources office telling me that my contract, which expires in February, would not be renewed. The explanation - a steaming heap o' dung about reallocating resources despite my "valuable contributions" to China Daily etc - made no sense from my point of view. I'd been a near-model worker. Versatile, on time, met deadlines, minimal tantrums, eager to help out and had been asked to give writing and reporting seminars on my own time, something I enjoyed.

When I protested politely I was told that the decision was final. A "Committee" composed of no one I'd heard of except one Indian editorial lickspittle stooge called "Master R---" by his Chinese handlers had decided my fate. None of "The Committee" were my editors, supervisors or had any first hand knowledge of my work. The decision was final. Kafka came to mind but the HR woman hadn't heard of him and seemed surprised that I would question The Committee's decision.

In past weeks two Chinese reporters sitting near me have disappeared with no notice. One day there, the next gone. Had The Committee decided their fate? Were my job woes viral? No one was saying. It was as if a Chinese Scotty had beamed them up or they'd been suddenly dispatched to the countryside to feed pigs or be fed to them. I finally ran into one in the elevator and asked her where she had gone and why. She named a department in the building unconnected to her journalism degree and interests and shrugged when I asked her why. I still have no idea where the other has gone.

Though sudden, the changes have not been all bad. The noodle shop was replaced by a 7-Eleven which in a glorious holiday miracle, opened for business on Christmas Day. Say what you will about the evils of sterile corporate globalization, I'll take a spacious, clean, brightly-lit 24-hour fresh sushi, fruit, beer, saki, broiled chicken, dumplings, toilet paper, razor blades place any day over the cramped, 40-watt, tepid beer and cigarette butts-on-the-floor alternative. Though I still miss the teenage oenophile.

And I have a new gig pending helping launch a new English language paper in Beijing. I'm the first barbarian my soon-to-be employers have ever hired. Kind of a Marco Polo of 21st century Chinese journalism ... well, yes, I exaggerate. Let's just say it could be the beginning of a great adventure or blow up suddenly with no explanation. Just ask The Committee.

2009-01-07T01:23:00.001-08:00

The Party's Over
As I was finishing draining today's Chinglish swamp of sentences such as "The evening was characterized by vibrant atmosphere ventilating godlike excitement as guests enjoy the coming of friends" (describing not an orgy but a charity dinner) when my cell phone rang.

I noted it was C in Shenzhen, said a cheery "hello dear!" and was greeted with her deadpan question: "Do you want to quit the Communist Party?"

"Uh, well, I kinda work for them but I'm actually not a member," I replied before quoting Marx (Groucho, not Karl): "And I wouldn't join any club that would have me." She laughed and then repeated it solemnly. "What's that about?" I asked.

She'd just received a long recorded spam spiel on her phone in Chinese that opened with the question and then went on to describe what she described "all the horrible things the Party has done" before instructing the listener. "If you want to quit the Communist Party, punch 4. If you want to quit the Communist Youth League, punch 3. If you want to quit the Young Pioneers, punch 2."

C's a long-lapsed Party member, but is no fool either and hung up. Me, I was real curious and probably would've punched 2 because I was burning to know why 6- to- 10-year-olds (Young Pioneers) would be also targeted. The call was long distance and probably originated with a Fal*n g*ng group in Hong Kong or Taiwan - the *F*L*G* (sorry about the asterisks folks, a weak attempt to throw off Party Internet spybots, even a whispered mention of said cult is a Huge No-No here)and like all Chinese mobile phone users her name is registered with her number so while listening was no harm, showing interest would be inviting trouble and a possible visit from authorities.

"C'mon," I teased. "Weren't you curious? 'Punch 2 to quit Young Pioneers'! Punch 3 to quit Girl Scouts! 'Punch 4 to quit Hitler Youth!' I love it. C'mon!"

"Maybe a little," she laughed, "but not that stupid curious."

(Image from Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages. "Paying Tribute to the Uncles of the People's Liberation Army" 1965)

2008-12-18T23:56:00.000-08:00

Deck the Great Hall of The People

The novelty of Christmas in China is beginning to wear off. After about four of them it's all a blur of Chinese clerks in synthetic red and white elf hats, badly decorated fake trees, bizarro Christmas carol combinations on the PA systems (Feliz Navidad, or Mamacita, donde esta Santa Claus?, followed by Handel's Messiah - isn't that an Easter song? - Joan Jett's version of Little Drummer Boy, Herman's Hermits' Kind of a Hush (Big time wha..huh? for that) and the gawdawful Jingle Bells barking dawgs is a real life example.

Nothing much shocks me about it now, though I was shocked to learn that while all foreigners at my current place of employment will get New Year's Day off, Christmas Day will be bad business as usual. Nonetheless, in our grand lobby the other day the janitorial and "hot water jug hauling" girls were given a reprieve from their usual numbing duties to decorate the 8 foot faux tree.

It was kinda cute and funny. None had obviously done it before but they'd seen TV shows perhaps, had a step ladder and about 12 tons of decorations and lights all piled indiscriminately into two packing crates. Lights went on last, just after the decorations and the glittery garlands and tinsel. This caused some problems, most notably after they wrapped the base of the tree in what amounted to a small circular wall of garlands and tinsel that was so thick they couldn't get close enough to start putting up the bulbs from the bottom. So they began tossing ornaments up at random. Some stuck, some rolled off and a few bounced off and broke on the floor. "Hit the dirt! Incoming Santa!"

The guy on the stepladder was doing fine, though he worked pretty much on one side until the weight made the tree begin to tilt. All in all though it was a laudible effort though there's a troublesome bare patch that I'm almost physically itching to guerilla decorate everytime I pass it.

But I resisted the latest urge and going home now to listen to a homemade mix a pal sent me for my first Chrismas here. He entitled it "Merry Christmas from the Bottom of a Bottle." The title kinda says it all, lots of bittersweet stuff like Elvis' Blue Christmas, The Pretenders' 10,000 Miles, Joni Mitchell's River, John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over) and my homegrown fave: Nitty Gritty Dirt Bands' Colorado Christmas.

Merry Christmas all.

2008-12-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

Requiem

It's been a bad week to be overseas. First came the grim e-mail news that an old friend and fellow reporter Tom Fogarty,with whom I'd had my first fulltime news job at a Lincoln, Nebraska paper when the Pony Express was still operating, had died three weeks after he'd been diagnosed with cancer.

Heartbroken in Beijing doesn't begin to describe how I felt. Tom was one of the most honest people I've ever known and one of the funniest. As was noted so aptly in his Lincoln Journal-Star obit, "Fogarty told stories for a living. He told them when he wasn’t working, too, and very well, because he couldn’t help himself."
He was the original good guy; someone his friends and family felt would always be there and thoughts of seeing again in person when I return to the States were always there.

Grieving via email doesn't really cut it and as I sniffled, blew my nose and blubbered as quietly as I could at my desk as Chinese coworkers tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, I briefly considered hopping a plane back to the States for his memorial service in DC (he'd last worked at USA Today) or funeral in his hometown of Omaha. Friends here didn't know him, of course, and grieving alone made it all the lonelier as I read the several hundred tributes and memories others had posted on a website for him.

"Something is maybe wrong?" one reporter finally asked softly. "Maybe your health is not so good?" She meant well, but I mumbled something about bad news and kept my head down and the tissues coming. Then came an e-mail of what appears to be another death. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where I worked for about 14 years, is on the auction block with all signs that it will probably be shut down after it's sold.

It's no secret to all who knew me that my exit from there was not exactly amicable, but as I shuttled through a RMN online slide show of the staff getting the bad news I saw a few familiar faces and all looked like they'd been collectively kicked in the stomach. Though I was no fan of the paper's top management, that had nothing to do with the talents and just plain good souls who continued to work there. It's for them and the dying craft of American print journalism that I felt so sad.

"Hey, no news jobs in Denver? Got some openings here in China," I wanted to say. "Working for commie bureaucrats is not very different than Scripps Howard..." But what sane person would pack up to go halfway across the planet to a place where they don't speak or read the language to find work?

Photo: Lincoln Journal reporters Thomas A Fogarty (right) and Mitchel Benson smirk at the transparently underhanded shenanagans of the Nebraska State Legislature in Lincoln circa 1980.

2008-11-27T23:16:00.000-08:00

Cold Turkey
Yesterday was my fifth Thanksgiving in Asia, and aside from one in Hong Kong that featured Chinese waiters and waitresses dressed like elementary school pageant Pilgrims and Indians, perhaps the most memorable.

I had an invitation from a British woman, a longtime China expat who often hosts a Thursday night spaghetti bolognese spread at her apartment, but I told her it would be my treat this time courtesy of take-out from a pretty damn fine eatery in Beijing called Steak and Eggs, an American style diner run by a Canadian from Florida. Or something like that... Others invited included two French guys, a Canadian woman, two Spanish women and an Austrian couple. All "pilgrims" to China, though I regretted the fact there was no one from India to be the token Indian or, for that matter, any Chinese.

I ordered the basics: a roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and a pumpkin pie with my hostess supplying wine, potatoes, veggies and a couple bottles of honest-to-gawd "Karl Marx Champagne." We marveled at the concept, a one of a kind find she said when asked where to get more. The bubbly was pretty much what you'd expect, though it did help us cast off our social chains after a few glasses, and the label alone with a fine drawing of Mr Das Kapital was worth it.

Struggling with an 18-pound bird and fixings and 16 oz can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce in my leather jacket pocket into her 5th floor place, I greeted the guests: "On behalf of the United States of America, I bring you our national holiday feast! I give thanks to Pamela for hosting us and you for joining us."

Questions followed as the Canadian woman carved the bird. The origin, what we do in the US now, etc. "Then after hosting the Indians and giving thanks, the Pilgrims gave them smallpox infected blankets in gratitude ... Oh, it's usually a low key day to gather with family, eat, give thanks for the 15-year-old daughter not getting pregnant, get drunk, watch football on TV - no, not soccer! - and fight with relatives."

"It sounds very much like our Christmas," sighed a French guy. "The food, the drink, the fighting ..." He sounded almost homesick.

2008-11-18T01:22:00.000-08:00

Wedding Bell Blues

I was at a western style Beijing cafe a few evenings ago with a 29 or 30 year old Chinese woman I'll call L who politely interrupted our conversation about editing her resume to take a cell phone call. A rather lengthy one it turned out, and in Chinese, but I could tell she wanted it to end long before it did.

"Do you mind if I ask who that was?" I asked.

"Oh, just some man asking me to marry him," L replied casually.

"Do a lot of guys propose over mobile phones here? No wonder there are 1.3 billion of you. So romantic!"

She laughed. "My parents' friend recommended he call me. I've never met him. Only on Internet. And I think I am not interested. I just want to be polite. I don't want to marry, but my parents are very worried."

Nearing 30, L has a lot of company here. Single, professional, educated, ambitious but with parents and relatives pulling as many strings as possible and putting the pressure on to get married and pop a grandchild. Now. Not later. I know four other women in similar situations - and it's not like there aren't a lot of men.

Men outnumber women due to China's one child policy, combined with a traditional preference for boys - something which has also contributed to its shadow export industry, baby girls. Know any American famiies with adopted Chinese babies? Odds are overwhelming that the children are girls; if it's the rare boy he was or is suffering from mental or physical disability.

But as a few picky and looking single Chinese women have explained to me it's akin to what a gal pal once said of the situation in Alaska. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

I explained that to L who laughed, repeated it twice slowly and then wrote it down with a Chinese character translation. She isn't looking but has friends who are but are equally frustrated.

"One says she has two, how-to-say. suitors. One is very nice but only wants to be a calligraphy teacher." She laughed again. "Very cultural but maybe not a good profession in the 21st century. The other has a good job but a mother who is like his queen. My friend does not want two mothers or bosses."

We talked some more then her text msg beeped. L flipped the phone open, scrutinized it and winced a little. "It is my 'new husband' again," she said. "His goods are maybe a little odd, I think."

2008-11-10T21:04:00.001-08:00

And I Bring You Fire (safety)

Fire continues to flicker as a theme here at the mighty Chinese news compound where I labor. In June (see: Working Class Hero, 6/22) I recounted my "heroism" in dousing a motorcycle battery electrical fire with only three cans of 3.6% Yanjing beer and more recently we had another hot incident involving a first floor apartment occupied by a New Zealand intern who was at bar when a cell phone call alerted him to the fact that his first floor apartment was on fire.

Damage was confined to a lot of smoke damage after a plugged in, but empty, unused water cooler that had been in his living room since he arrived had zapped, undoubtedly due to substandard electrical wiring. The cooler and a back pack next to it melted down and many of his clothers were uncleanable after the fire department arrived, broke a window and sprayed the place down.

The group responsible for foreigners here, though, would have none of the "substandard wiring" explanations and grilled him mightily about the cooler. It was unauthorized.
When had he bought it? Never bought one. It was here when he arrived. Was he sure he hadn't bought it? Yes. Trick question - how much did you pay for it? I DIDN'T BUY ONE. YOU DON'T PAY ME ENOUGH. Did he use it regularly? Never used it once. Why was it plugged in? It was like that when he arrived. Etc, etc.

Nonetheless, though he wasn't booted or punished, an awkwardly written email and paper copy along with photos of the smoke damaged apartment and warnings in Chinese were posted throughout the area warning that "due to extreme carelessness by a foreigner a fire becoming danger to life" and reminded us to unplug all our appliances before leaving the rooms.

More worrisome was the fact that another foreigner on the 9th floor had smelled smoke and begun running throughout the halls breaking all the fire alarms and looking for extinguishers. The alarms didn't work, nor did others he tried on lower floors before realizing the fire truck was arriving (alerted, we learned later by a security guard returning from a long noodle and tea break). And there are no smoke alarms in any of the apartments. An email to this effect was sent to our Foreign Affairs department which replied that the pyrowhining barbarian was simply wrong.
1. All alarms work.
2. Fire extinguishers are working and plentiful
3. A special unit of the Beijing Fire Department is on vigilant watch to deal specifically with fires at the aparmtment complex and will respond quickly in each and every incident.
4. A "fire safety" demonstration will be held at an uspecified time and place to further reassure us.
Not mentioned were the lack of smoke alarms in our rooms. That's harder to deal with because they can't pretend they work or exist so - obviously from their point of view - it's not an issue.

The whole thing was more or less forgotten until late last week when we were summoned to the front parking and entrance area for the demonstration. It was held entirely in Chinese, though rough translations were available for those who couldn't get the idea of the term "Chinese fire drill."

About 12 extinguishers were lined up beside seven men in blue jump suits and white hard hats. We listened for about 20 minutes of unintelligible safety yammer and watched in awe as the lecturer pointed at one junior fire safety cadet in safety goggles who ceremoniously removed a manhole cover with a crow bar, gingerly picked up an extinguisher, pointed it down into the manhole, slowly pulled the extinguisher pin, looked away and squeezed gently.

'Pfffft!' went the foam. A very short, soft burst and the extinguisher was whipped back and handed to another guy in goggles and a hard hat.

"Ahhhhh!" went the Chinese onlookers. "Giggle" went the foreigners. The process was repeated several times as a photographer documented it. Then a foreigner was selected. Me, in fact, perhaps due to my past rep as a fire extinguishing hero. Lacking three beers, however, I donned the glasses as instructed, pointed the extinguisher down pulled the lever hard, yelling "Yaaahhhh! Die fire" as the foam spewed like berserk cotton candy.

"AHHHHHHH!" went the Chinese. "Nice one, dude" said an American coworker. The extinguisher was taken from my grasp rather quickly and the lecture was over.

The lesson? "In case of fire, remove manhole cover..."

2008-11-04T23:23:00.000-08:00

Obamatastic

Chinese reaction to Barack Obama's historic US presidential victory went from mildly curious to ecstatic in two offices on the third floor of China Daily newspaper Wednesdy noon after the lone American employee on the floor went to the Holiland pastry shop on Huixin Dongjie street and bought two 64 yuan (US$9.35) victory cakes.

"Here," he said smiling and distributing tiny plastic forks and paper plates as CNN's election coverage boomed in the background from a TV hanging from the ceiling. "From Obama! My new president."

The Chinese staff laughed, grinned, looking up from the rice, pork and spinach dumplings, fish heads and "Jew's ear fungus" lunches they'd been scarfing from their tin and plastic lunch pails and clustered around the cakes.

"Really? From Obama? He won? Your new president? Thank you! Thank Obama!" one said.

"Well, not really from him. Me. But I pay American icome taxes with my Chinese salary, so it's kind of my tax dollars at work for you," I said. "Consider it my part to futher international relations and do my part to help stem the global financial meltdown."

Meanwhile my cell phone text message alert was beeping non-stop. Victory bonding messages from one Canadian, two English citizens, three Chinese and two other Americans from Beijing to Shanghai and Shenzhen on the Hong Kong border were flowing in. "Yabbadabba doo!" "PARTEEE!" "He won! He won!" "Congratulations on your country's good sense!"

"It's cool and weird," another American pal in Jakarta, Indonesia texted me via Skype. He'd been watching CNN too. "How could this have happened?. It's like an unbelievable dream watching people celebrate a black American president."

2008-10-15T02:35:00.000-07:00

"...like a beggar going door to door"

Sunday morning brunch in a north Beijing dumpling restaurant. "Road," my quirky Chinese pal who calls herself that because "life is a journey" has been helping me find a new charger for my cell phone in between badgering me to let her tutor me in Chinese lessons.

"Be the best person you can be, professor!" Road commands between bites. She knows nothing of the old US Army recruiting ad, but she's a natural and always on a self-improvement kick, mostly for herself but often for me whenever she gets the chance. "I hope you can understand China better from learning Chinese. And I can teach you because, because ... I am how-to-say? How-to-say? A genius!" She grins and laughs self consciously. No lack of self esteem there. "Yes. I think. Am I?"

I smile, nod and look outside, attention drawn to the sunny, autumn sidewalk where a tall, weathered, and solemn looking extremely weather-baked old man with a large high quality brown leather satchel and a nice black leather jacket met my eyes, then opened his mouth wide and pointed emphatically twice inside it. An elderly woman dressed in a tasteful modest embroidered black and white dress, with silver hair pulled back tight in a bun - obviously his wife - sits on the pavement beside him in a near-fetal position, rocking back and forth and wailing, though I can't hear through the glass.

"Road, look. Beggars? But their clothes...so nice. Too nice."

Most Chinese beggars look the part, sometimes with a maimed baby or child or their own limb to emphasize their plight. These two look as if they'd come straight from CCTV central casting as a dignified country couple. A middle aged woman stops, drawn by the old man's plea, looks at his keening wife and gives him about 10 yuan.

That is rare too. I've given to beggars but rarely recalled seeing any Chinese do the same. Road's response explained why.

"They are maybe, how-to-say, not true? False. False beggars. I see TV and newspaper stories, many beggars have much money and are not poor."

I wonder, while trying to avoid the old man's gaze as he stops panhandling and comes to the restaurant door where a manager approaches him. I think he is going to be thrown out, but the manager listens to whatever the pitch is and heads for the kitchen while the man shoots me another pleading look and rejoins his wailing wife outside.

"Where are their children?" Road asks. "If they are not false beggars, maybe their children can help?" I wondertoo, thinking about another Chinese friend who'd recently confessed to me that she was frequently short of money because she was paying off her father's constant gambling debts. "Why?" I asked her at the time. "Just stop." "Because it is my duty," she told me. "I must."

Another passerby doles out a few yuan and then the manager comes with a plastic bag containing about eight dumplings for the old man who bows slightly in gratitude and takes it to his wife who has stood up and stopped her sobbing.

"If they are fake, it's a good act," I say. "You know Oscars, Road. Movie awards?" She nods. "They should get one."

The begging couple has apparently left, and Road and I exit heading for a pedestrian overpass when I hear sobbing on my left and see they'd only relocated out of my sightline. I can't bear it anymore. "Ask him what is wrong, please, Road."

A short exchange follows as the wife keeps moaning. "He says his son died in the (May 12) big Sichuan earthquake and these are almost only clothes," Road says soberly. "No home. It is gone too. No family."

I open my wallet and gave him 12 yuan, nod at the wife, turn with Road and leave. "You give too much money, I think, professor. Too much," she says scolding me a little. "Maybe not true."

"Yeah, probably, But if it is true ... who knows?"

2008-10-07T02:39:00.000-07:00

Safe as Milk

This one goes out to a reader in Iowa whose been bugging me to update. There've been a lot of problems with Blogspot and combined with my chronic slothdom, it's been a near-fatal combo.

So, I was drinking a cold refreshing glass of Chinese milk the other day as I watched continous reruns of China's first space walk and flag waving along with 24/7 flag waving repeats of the same Beijing Olympic highlights and I began to feel a little queasy.

"Can we change the channel?" I whined to C. "I'm not feeling so good and I don't know if it's the milk or what we're watching. Doesn't China know the Olympics are over and that space walks have been routine for decades? If I didn't know better I'd say this was a calculated government effort to divert attention from the bad milk deal. It hasn't been a great year here overall."

I was back in Shenzhen at our apartment for the country's week long October 1 National Day holiday.

"That milk is safe," she assured me. "I saw it on the Internet. The Chinese government and scientists say it is."

Or maybe one of the astronauts brought some back. One Internet comment I'd seen translated concerning the milk disaster wished them well and asked them to bring back some "moon milk."

"Oh, then it must be true," I replied trying desperately to quash any hint of sarcasm in an attempt to keep the love light flickering. "Especially if Chinese officials and scientists say so. Tell me again what Chinese scientists have done lately, or in the last 100 years?"

I'd noticed that since the tainted milk scandal that has killed at least 4 children and brought one major dairy manufacturer to the brink of bankruptcy and is threatening more than 20 other poison moo juice firms, that the once suddenly bare dairy shelves are slowly being refilled with brands I'd never seen before ("Pink Fun Milk Monkey!"). These strange brands were all presumably cleared by the same authorities who'd so expertly dealt with a similar bad milk problem that sickened more than 200 infants two years ago.

"This Pink Fun Milk Monkey stuff isn't bad, though, except for the 'funky flavor chunks'. What's up with these?"

"Tofu, all natural," she reassured me. Here try some of this Wild Jew's Ear fungus! It was on sale at Jusco! All natural!"

2008-09-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

Moonstruck

"Gee, but it's good to be back home," I mumbled to myself like some half-wit Paul Simon imitator marveling a little at the irony of coming "home" to Shenzhen where I'd spent a considerable portion of three years after first arriving in China. In a combination of impulse and romantic gesture, I'd flown south 1,200 or so miles from Beijing to Shenzhen to be with C during the Mid-Autumn or "Mooncake" Festival over the weekend.

Lovers are supposed to gaze at the full moon on the 15th of September to see a princess, Chang'e, and her jade rabbit who've been exiled there waiting for Chang'e's husband/lover to visit once a year from the sun. There are multiple versions of a somewhat incomprehensible legend and a plethora of mooncakes, China's version of the fruitcake, to mark it.

The myth - which explains why the Chinese see a rabbit on the moon, rather than the man westerners see - involves Chang'e stealing a pill for eternal life from her husband. She is then either exiled or flees to the moon with a rabbit. Questions to Chinese friends about why she ripped off her husband (they are ''happily married'' in the versions I read) and why she took the rabbit with her and what happened to the magic pill were met with shrugs.

"I had a pet rabbit when I was a little girl,'' one told me in a sort of non-sequitor. "But my uncle ate him.'' One version of the story has the rabbit pounding out herbs to remake the eternal life medicine immortalized by mooncakes.

Much like the Halloween and Christmas geegaws that begin slithering into the US supermarkets in early September, stacks of elaborately packaged and sometimes outrageously expensive mooncake gift boxes began filling Chinese grocery aisles in early August.

Mooncakes are a culinary atrocity - as dense as iridium, usually the size and shape of hockey pucks, greasy and fried in pork lard and often stuffed with as many as four duck egg yolks, red bean paste and lotus seeds. They also have the half life of plutonium, approximately 2,400 years. (One I choked down for a Mooncake festival two years ago is still lodged in my upper colon, according to X-rays that continue to baffle researchers at the Mayo Clinic and the US Food and Drug Association.)People give them but rarely eat them which was the quandry C found herself in as we prepared to go to a Sunday Mid Autumn Festival barbecue hosted by a friend of hers.

C had an enormous promo gift box from a gazillion star Shenzhen hotel stacked with glitzy wrapped mooncakes. Neither one of us wanted any of the mooncakes or the tiny ceramic tea pot that came with it and she was anguishing over whether to take it as a "gift" or give it to someone else.

"No one you know eats them," I said. "Why bother giving them? Or if we must at least let's take a bottle of wine."

"You cannot bring mooncakes and a bottle of wine to a Chinese party," she said firmly as if explaining to a cretin why it's impolite to urinate on your grandmother's shoes. Though tempted, I didn't go there. We haven't survived four years together with long separations by niggling over obscure points of Chinese party etiquette.

Suffice to say we were drinking the wine several hours later at the party, a rooftop affair that kind of encapsulated the State of Modern Urban China. The hostess was a divorced single mother living on the ninth floor of an apartment with no elevator. We should have hired sherpas to stagger to her door. She was throwing the party with her ex-husband with whom she's still close, and her job as a marketing manager for an Chinese-Australian alligator meat company apparently pays her enough to afford the flat screen plasma TV covering her living room wall.

Her parents and ex-in laws were playing mah jong in one room as the rest of us ate barbecued meat, vegetables and fish (no gator meat, though) and listened to remixed old school hip-hop - (Who Let the Dogs Out melded with Chinese pop - an unholy though amusing combo) and watched the little kids shoot each other with plastic guns that screamed, "FIRE" when the trigger was pulled.

I was still wondering how the hell someone makes a living selling alligator meat to Chinese (though they'll famously eat "anything", I've never seen it here) when C nudged me.

"See the moon? See Chang'e and the rabbit?" she said. Sure enough, through Shenzhen's polluted skies it glowed until a cloud covered it.

"Oh, no...She's hidden now," I said.

"Her lover is visiting now," she said. "They need some privacy."

I took the hint, we thanked China's 'gator meat empress and left.

2008-09-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

The Bargain Store

Part of China's obsessive effort to put its best face forward for the Olympics(or what it assumed to be its 'best face') was, in addition to closing down select live music clubs, installing air-to-ground missiles outside the Bird's Nest and Water Cube and "security watch" retiree block captains on every street corner, evicting the homeless etc, was a crackdown on vendors pushing pirate merchandise.

It was remarkably successful. My trusty local counterfeit DVD mom n pop shop was torn down overnight with the owners gone as if they'd never existed. Ditto for elsewhere throughout many parts of Beijing. My son in Denver had been extolling the glories of Dark Knight and Iron Man, neither of which has been released here, though I knew I'd normally have been able to score copies easily so we could bond. So much for family values. Ditto for pirated Olympics merchandise which was seemingly non-existent also, to the dismay of many visitors who'd hoped to save a few bucks on souvenirs.

But last Sunday it was clear to me that Beijing is slowly getting back to normal. I was near the old American Embassy area, outside a French bakery and a Friendship Store when an elderly woman with a stuffed rucksack approached me and began her hustle.

"You want Olympic watch? Hat? Olympic sock?" She began pulling a treasure trove of bogus Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) merchandise out of the sack. An Olympics "Rolex" commemorative pocket watch, "Nike" Olympics socks in four colors, enameled pins, baseball caps in three colors, phony fuwa (Smurfs on mescaline) mascots, DVDs of the opening and closing ceremonies ... everything but Michael Phelps autographed Speedos.

I eyed the merchandise, especially the baseball caps, and asked about more DVDs. She signaled to a guy I assumed was her husband who hustled over with copies of, yes, Dark Knight and Iron Man.

Praise jeebus and all the fake Fuwa! The Pirate Olympics Closeout Sale had begun. Some intense bargaining followed and I left with five hats and my desired DVDs for 60 yuan, or about $8.75, went home and slid Dark Knight, to find it had been seemingly shot underwater by a palsy victim with a North Korean Super 8 camera. Buyer beware. But Iron Man rocked and I've got some friends who'll look spiffy in the caps.

2008-09-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

Just the Two of Us

Western musical acts are no longer novel in China since a bouffanted George Michael and Andrew Ridgley of Wham! (Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go)baffled 15,000 Beijing youth and their connected cadre parents in 1985, so when I happened to see an ad last week for an Al Jarreau, George Benson "Just The Two of Us" concert, it just kinda came and went with me.

Though I once faked admiration for Benson in a telephone interview with him about 25 years go, I was never a fan and usually slept through or threw a shoe at whatever device was playing Masquerade or Greatest Love of All. Al Jarreau I respected, but not enough to pay to hear him.

Then I was offered four free tickets to their show by my curious Chinese editor who'd received them from the concert hall, the Beijing Exhibition Theater. "They are famous?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," I assured her sounding like Voice of America. "American jazz and soul legends. In fact, I interviewed George Benson once."

"Oh!" she gushed. "Perhaps again? Today? For our paper? He will remember you, of course!"

"Mmm, no, unfortunately," I said. "It doesn't really work like that and it was a long, long time ago. (Pause) But thanks for the tickets!"

I found an musically opened minded US expat pal, Dave, to accompany me and gave the other two to a young Chinese reporter I'll call Wang who'd once asked me for a primer on American jazz and blues.

The best I could do at the time was hand him a stack of CDs, write down some names and pray the CDs got back to me undamaged. Not like when I did the same for another novice Western rock Chinese fan who'd returned my Zeppelin, Neil Young, Beatles, Stones and Nirvana discs 6 months later looking and sounding as if they'd been used as chew toys for weasels. To add unintended insult to indifference he told me the only songs he'd liked were Heart of Gold, Yesterday and As Tears Go By. "All others are too CRAZY! ... Do you have California Hotel and Every Shing-a-Ling?" (His decomposed unidentified remains were found 8 months later with a Carpenter's Greatest Hits disc jammed up what remained of his left nostril ....)

But I digress. Wang, a somber, wry fellow who rarely shows emotion, thanked me sincerely and I promised to check back with him after the show to see how he'd fared. Dave and I found the hall and joined a crush of mostly young and middle aged Chinese being squeezed through one of about 20 entrances and a security check.

"What's with the metal detectors?" I asked. "It's not like we're going to an East Coast vs West Coast, 2Pac vs Suge Knight kinda deal."

"I dunno," Dave mused. "I hear Benson and Jarreau been dissing (sickingly cute mainland China female pop idol) Han Xue, saying she puts out for Tibet separatists...This could get ugly."

The show was pretty damn good, though I can still die perfectly happy if I never hear Summer Breeze or Greatest Love of All again. Still Jarreau and Benson (when he bothered to play guitar rather than croon) had the hall jumping, such as usually undemonstrative Chinese audience do, unless commanded and then about half a beat off the rhythm.

I spotted Wang as we left to beat the post-encore rush. He was sweating and grinning, clapping happily off rhythm and ectastic. I leaned into his ear and said: "Well? How is it? You like it?"

His grin got larger. "F..F..F-f-fu###ing GREAT!" he yelled.

I smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. My job was done.

2008-08-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

The rockets' red glare...

Feeling pretty good at seeing The Home of the Denver Broncos, Invesco Field/old Mile High Stadium on CNN's Obamapalooza coverage in my Chinese Communist Party subsidized apartment this morning, I got to work a little early and asked my Chinese colleagues if they'd mind if I watched The Speech on the office TV.

"I have to listen to your boring leaders and bureaucrats on TV in the office all the time," I (only half-)joked. "Give me an hour or so of American TV with a charismatic, young politician who doesn't lecture in a shrill incomprehensible monotone ... please?" I also lied and said I wanted to spot my son in the crowd (he couldn't score a ticket) and when I noted that I have a cousin who works for the Obama campaign (true) who I had seen (blatant lie) on CNN already. I haven't seen her, but did see her father in the Pepsi Center on Tuesday briefly in a crowd behind Wolf Blitzer, so maybe it was kind of a half-truth. But family comes first in China and the TV set was activated.

"Is he the president yet?" one asked me. I sighed a little, after having gone through the US Presidential Election Process for Dummies Exercise with another coworker earlier, but skipped the tutorial and said, "No, maybe after the election in November."

They laughed at the 27 or so times or so Obama thanked the 80,000 faithful when he hit the stage, especially when I finally added "enough with the xie-xie" (Chinese for thank you)and urged him to get on with it. Interest on their part, though, flagged noticeably shortly thereafter until the end when the fireworks and confetti flew.

"His daughters?" said one. "We never see our leaders' children."

"So, what did you think," I asked her. She'd shown a modicum of interest in the LoveFest. She was silent and then said something in Chinese to a friend that drew some giggles.

"What? What did you say? So what did you think?" I repeated.

"I said I thought the fireworks were only so-so," she replied. "Not as good as the Olympic ceremonies."

2008-08-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

Whole Lotta Love

Just a distinct sense of relief that the Beijing Olympics are finally over last night, coupled with a spasm of joy at seeing Jimmy Page's wizened visage wailing on his Gibson atop a double decker bus as I watched the closing ceremonies on a large flat screen beamed outdoors in a small, sweaty hutong (alley neighborhood) with a gaggle of Chinese and sprinking of foreigners.

"Who is that old man playing a guitar?" asked a 20something Chinese woman standing next to me as we sipped lukewarm Tsingtao beers, batted mosquitos and ate watermelon slices.

"Jimmy Page," I said. "A famous English rock musician. Sort of like your Cui Jian (the first Chinese guy to play homegrown rock here, circa 1986). But older, and more controversial and popular in his time, perhaps."

"Nobody listens to Cui Jan anymore," she said.

"Too bad. I bet he knows this song, though," I replied as Page ripped through an 8-minute lyrically neutered version of Whole Lotta Love to the joy of rockin' foreign fossils like me and the bafflement and indifference of most of the Chinese around me. A camera shot panned a group of high level Chinese bureaucrats - including former president Jiang Zemin in his clownish oversized spectacles - trying their best to look like they comprended Jimmy Page. David Beckham, who was also prancing atop the Magic Bus, yeah, but a former Satan-worshipping, druggie, multi millionaire white bearded guitar player? Who let him into the country?

"Yeah! Zep RULES!" shouted a Canadian. I dropped a watermelon rind high fiving him and started talking to an ABC (American Born Chinese) woman who was hosting the block party.

"I'm glad to see this," I said. "You know London has enough self confidence and style to host Games without worrying about controversy and micro-managing every detail. No worries about blocking the Internet or boasting that they've installed air-to-ground missles next to Buckingham Palace or Wembley." She agreed, but added that the edge of tension that had accompanied the Beijing Games had also made them what they were.

"All part of the mix," she said. "It's what keeps me here. You, too, I bet."

I couldn't disagree.

2008-08-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

Obamapalooza

I was leaving work when one of the Chinese women in our "Foreign Affairs Department" (i.e. glorified babysitters for foreigner employees) passing me in the hall, stopped, took a breath and said, " Justin! Congratulations!"

"Uh...oh, thank you, I think," I replied, trying to sort through my shattered memory files (What had I done? The last time I was congratulated by anyone from Foreign Affairs it was for putting out a motorcycle fire with three cans of beer about 3 months ago, surely this wasn't about that again). "For what?"

"Obama is your new president!" she said, beaming at me.

"He is? What? No, no," I said. "The election isn't until November."

She was puzzled. I was even more, and thought perhaps she'd mistaken some news about the Democratic National Convention for Obama winning the election. But the convention doesn't begin until Monday. Maybe he'd made a veep pick? Who knows? He and McCain are non-news here, anyway, during the Olympics and most Chinese I've talked with about the election still think Hillary is in race.

As succinctly as I could I gave her a American Presidential Election Process for Dummies 101 explanation, skipping the part about the Electoral College - which I understand about as well as string theory - and repeated that November would be when the next US president is selected. I resisted the urge to say something like "The Party's Standing Central Committee will select him based on the harmonious will of the proletariat.." and thanked her again.

She nodded, clearly only slightly less confused than she'd been when I'd told her he wasn't president yet and left, presumably to go tell her colleagues that the weird Americans clearly have no idea who their new leader is.

2008-08-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

A 110-meter trail of tears

Work, such as it is, came wheezing halt Monday morning as the staff and one "foreign expert" (me) gathered in front of a TV to watch the 110 meter hurdles competition in the Bird's Nest at 11.40am. The draw was Athens gold medalist Liu Xiang, on whose buff shoulders rested the weight of 1.3 billion Chinese (of which almost 91,000 were in the stadium) not already satisfied with China's nearly 40 golds.

It was obvious as Liu - whose image is plastered throughout the nation endorsing seemngly everything from tea to appliances -gingerly warmed up and stalled as long as he could before settling into the starting blocks that he was one badly hurting puppy - something I commented on a couple times in a concerned tone. My remarks were met with silence until one staffer said rather curtly: "Nothing is wrong! He will win. He must!"

Face is all in China and I diplomatically gave my coworker some by shutting my barbarian yap until seconds after the starter's gun went off twice signaling a false start (not by Liu) and he tore off his competitor's tag and slowly limped off the track.

"F%%er!" yelled the fellow who'd assured me of Liu's victory. That was extreemely uncharacteristic - unlike their foul mouthed foreign expert, my office mates rarely swear and when they do it's in Chinese. Meanwhile the TV cameras were following Liu's disgraced trail behind the scenes in the Bird's Nest where he sat down, head in hands. The Chinese blogosphere exploded shortly thereafter, many defending him buit others calling a "coward" and worse. "I will slit the throat of him and his coach!" read one translation. "He has disgraced the Motherland."

You'd have thought he'd urinated on the Chinese flag and wiped it on President Hu Jintao's face.. When tempers had cooled and the tearful press conferences concluded, I asked the coworker who'd cursed Liu what the deal was. China has so much talent to be proud of - lithesome diver Guo Jingjing, some hunky badminton guy I'd never heard of, but who'd also been a media darling for 15 minutes the day before, and many others. Why put it all on Liu? In the end it's all only a game - not life and death.

"If Michael Phelps had not won eight gold medals, people in the United States might be disappointed, but they wouldn't threaten to kill him," I explained. "Liu did his best. He was hurting badly. Why further injure his leg only to lose anyway?"

"Some people lost a lot of money," he said. "Some paid 10,000 yuan (nearly $1,500) for a ticket to watch him. Now maybe a ticket is worth 100 yuan." It wasn't just about money, though. He continued.

"Many Chinese think the Olympics this time is a chance to show their abilities and new wealth to the whole world. That's why we put so much money and preparing to the opening and are trying to win many, many medals. So they put on even more pressure than usual.. Ater you have been poor for decades or more than a century, you have to prove everyone you are no longer weak.."

Liu was not weak, I said. He was injured, it happens to many athletes. My coworker nodded.

"China is getting better," he said and went on to tell me about a Chinese Olympic athlete who had "only" won 3rd place in a previous Olympics in the 1980s or early 90s. "When he returned, some people had thrown rubbish and garbage at his home. I do not think that will happen to Liu."

Indeed not. A day after his fall from national grace, a creative marketing whiz at Nike - with whom Liu is signed - engineered a quick turnaround. A full page newspaper ad in China Daily shows a somber, half-shadowed but powerful looking Liu with the slogan: "Love sport even when it breaks your heart."

2008-08-13T06:22:00.000-07:00

All Along the Watch Tower

About 8 hours after it happened I went to Beijing's 13th Century Drum Tower, next to another popular tourist/historical site Bell Tower, with a female British freelance journalist pal who speaks fluent Chinese to try to get some more info on the fatal stabbing of Todd Bachman, the Olympics US volleyball-related tourist killed over the weekend during a visit to a popular Beijing tourist sites.

The Bell and Drum towers are magnificent nearly identical watch towers still in an area of Beijing not demolished in favor of shopping malls or apartment complexes. Either raised a question, however. The knife-welding murderer was described by Chinese press as a depressed, divorced, unemployed sort-of lone gun, er, lone knife man who supposedly jumped from the top of the Bell Tower in a suicide dive after killing Todd Bachman, wounding Bachman's wife and their Chinese tour guide. Looking at the towers, though, begs the question that due to the overhanging Chinese swallow roofs jumping from one roof would take you perhaps 8-10 feet to the next one. Unless the killer was an an off-duty Chinese Olympic swan diver able to leap over the lower roofs or acrobat who rolled over the first roof to the next and down again, it wouldn't be an exactly easy fall to your death. Conspiracy freaks, have fun!

One of my favorite BJ hangouts after dark is the Bell and Drum bar and cafe, a small and intimate spot very near the new death zone with the finest, largest hamburgers in the Middle Kingdom with a rooftop view. Watch your step, though, descending after burgers and beer...a very steep staircase under the influence.

Todd Bachman's death shocked the bjeezuz outta me when I first saw the crawl on CNN Intl TV a few hours after it happened: "American murdered at Beijing Olympics." China is nothing if not safe, expecially for foreign barbarians. I've felt more threatened going a block or two from my old Colfax Avenue work site at the downtown Denver Rocky Mountain News at midnight to a public parking lot then lost in translation and location in Beijing at gawd knows where at the same time or later.

Calling a pal on-duty at the largest Chinese, English-language newspaper for which we work for more info did little good. The paper is on currently on unrelenting full-court press "One World, China's Dream" coverage and had naturally sent no one to do any first-hand reporting, instead reluctantly relying on the brief and incomplete, also State-owned Xinhua press service report that was buried on page 5. (Meanwhile, three days later a story about the murders of 2 Chinese grad students in Newcastle, England was part of our front page news. Subtle Message? It's all safe and glorious in China, but you venture outside and are Chinese you're doomed!)

Here's a small sample of what I heard through translation when I arrived with my Brit friend to poke around at the Drum Tower hours after the death. A Chinese crowd was plentiful and talking amongst itself, but not easily to outsiders. No trace of splatter from the supposed sucide killer. Meanwhile a group of drunk German Olympic tourists were videotaping themselves singing Happy German Ubermench Soccer and Beer Songs in the plaza between the towers.

British journalist Chinese-speaking pal to neighborhood old guy: "Excuse me, uncle, did you see or hear anything about the foreigner killed today?'

Old Chinese neighborhood guy: "Nothing happened, except what you see on TV. Why do you ask? What country are you from?"

Fluent Chinese Speaking Brit pal : "I am from England, I am just curious if you or anyone here saw or heard anything and might tell me more."

Old Chinese neighborhood guy : "You are from England? Why do you care? The dead man was an American."

One World, One Dream, indeed...

2008-08-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

One World, One Dream, Many Beers

Lacking a ticket to the Olympics opening ceremony didn't mean one couldn't get into the spirit and Beijing had plenty of choices last night - from home TVs to packed parks with giant screens.

I chose something in between at the invitation of a Chinese-American conceptual video artist named Elaine W. Ho, who is, oddly enough, originally from the bleached blonde Wonder Bread Dallas suburb of Plano ("I couldn't wait to get out of there," she told me when I expressed shock and awe at her roots.) The outdoor hutong (traditional Beijing alley community) where she held the viewing party was tens of thousands of miles and several cultural light years away from Dallas, of course, though it had a certain universal community spirit where even language barriers melted away as the warm beer, Coke, herbal tea, watermelon and China's Olympic pride flowed.

"Hang out with Granpa Wang and the neighbors in the fresh air, enjoy drinks, snacks and a sporty sized LED projection from a store window front," her invite read. Granpa Wang turned out to be a jovial real guy - not, as I'd originally imagined, an Elaine W. Ho artistic concept; he is perhaps in his early 50s, pot bellied in a sleeveless T-shirt, shorts and the unofficial hutong godfather/community leader/fixer and as it turned out something of a gambler. Granpa Wang was delighted to welcome the four white guy foreigners who joined the 18 or so locals to watch the 3-hour broadcast seated on tiny stools or on magazines and newspapers on the alley way.

The only drawback was the inability to see the fireworks exploding all over the city, our view obscured as it was by the roof tops and rather removed location, though we could hear them and cheer as we watched the broadcast pyrotechnics. screen. Grandpa Wang was particulary impressed at our Canadian pride. At least two of the foreigners were Canadian and several of the Chinese were either Canadian citizens or had gone to school there. When the Canadian team finally strode waving into the Bird's Nest procession, one of our number whipped out a giant Canadian Maple Leaf flag and began waving it to our cheers. "Go Canada! Go Tim Horton's! (a popular Canadian coffee house chain)," I screamed, wondering also what kind of person happens to have a large national flag on him. "Got the American one?" I asked. He laughed. "No, just Chile and Estonia," he replied.

George W Bush was seen on the screen and I began booing. Grandpa Wang asked through a bilingual Chinese woman why I was being disrespectful to my president. "Oh, just because I can," I replied and then asked what he thought of Obama. He wasn't exactly sure about him - or even who he is - though he did say he admired Hillary Clinton and wondered if she might be our next president. Not wanting to explain the whole American primary system in the middle of a Chinese alley Olympics party after three large Tsingtao beers, I simply said she'd withdrawn and left it at that.

We left after the torch was lit by what appeared to be a Chinese quasi-Spider-Man athlete and Granpa Wang pressed my hand and invited me back anytime. I'd lost a bet with him on who would light the torch. I'd put 30 yuan (roughly $3.50) on the idea that one of the Sichuan earthquake orphans would do it and Granpa Wang had said it would be the Spider guy. I forked over the money as unseen fireworks exploded above and he thanked me, grinning and shaking my hand. "He says come back he will make soup and duck and have many beers with you," my temporary translator told me. "He also wants to bet that China will win more gold medals than the USA."

"Tell him 'thank you, xie xie '" I said. "I am happy to lose to Granpa Wang once already. Two times would be too much happiness."

Note: Top left photo by Elaine W Ho from her website at http://www.iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter.org/encountersleftovers/blog_encountersleftovers.html

2008-08-07T00:59:00.000-07:00

Games People Play
The 2008 Beijing Olympics begin tomorrow with the gala opening ceremony scheduled for the auspicious time of 8.08pm on the eighth day of the eighth month. No, I don't have a ticket for - they're very hard and expensive to come by, though I have a $50 ticket for the bronze medal men's volleyball final on virtually the last day of the Games. I came by it through sheer chance and paid face value and am expecting what? Perhaps a nail-biter between Ecuador and East Timor ...

Otherwise, Beijing seems slightly hyper, almost edgy as the big day approaches though not as the New York Times recently reported it in inflamatory tones as being like a "fortress" and drawing absurd comparisons to the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution when describing the elderly retirees in their red and yellow "Security Volunteer" armbands sitting on curbside stools presumably looking for potential troublemaker, dissidents and "splittists". The ones in my neighborhood barely glance up from their playing cards and newspapers as the foreigners walk by.

Incidents getting major play on CNN and BBC such as the two Brits and two Americans who have been booted out of the country after climbing up two light poles near the Bird's Nest stadium and attaching two enormous "Free Tibet" banners yesterday afternoon have received minimal attention here aside from a stern short account about their expulsion in the rag for which I toil. That's more than I expected when two pals from work and I were out last night talking about it (we agreed that the protesters were morons, albeit athletic ones; "freeing" Tibet is a non-issue with 99.9% of Chinese) as the paper generally ignores anything remotely controversial and is instead fond of quoting officials saying with presumably straight faces that the smog enveloping the capital most days is "not pollution" but "natural conditions caused by excessive heat."

Two nights ago another group of coworkers and I went with a rumor that an opening ceremony dress rehearsal at the Bird's Nest stadium would include fireworks. Fueled by foolishness and perhaps a little beer, we took two taxis that found us stuck for nearly 25 minutes in a traffic jam seemingly miles from the Bird's Nest with only the faint blue glow of the other iconic structure, The Water Cube visible through the darkness and (non)pollution. We bailed from the taxis and joined crowds of mostly Chinese also milling about seeing how close they could get. Not far, as it turned out. Police guards and young, polite Olympic Volunteers barred any progress despite me flashing my press ID card. I might as well have shown them my Boulder Public Library Card or Sam's Club card.

2008-07-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Fame
A few nights ago I was at a random birthday party for a person I don't know. Not uncommon in the relatively small China expat circle, though mostly I'd greeted and spaced out the birthday person as the night wore on.

Cut to a small cafe a few steps and a million cultural miles between the authentic Texas 'que spot where we'd been celebrating (lotsa worn Tejas cowboy boots, iconic Phillips 66, Lone Star, Route 66 signs nailed to the walls, plus great fajitas, burritos, margaritas etc) where I'm talking to a very young, small and stylish 20something Chinese guy who'd been with us who starts telling me how much he appreciates, Dylan, Hendrix, the Fabs, Stones, Doors and other prehistoric Western bands I've never heard a Chinese guy his age mention before.

"Jimi Hendrix wonderful," he said. "Play guitar with his tongue. I love to see Jimi Hendrix at Monterey California"
"His teeth," I corrected him. "Played with his teeth. Not tongue. But go on, please."

"Bob Dylan's voice, not so good, really. But his spirit very very good. 'How many times can a young man die...' Answering in wind, yes? Jim Morrison! Doors! 'The End'. 'Father, yes son, I want to kill you. Mother I want to fuuuuaaagh you'. Powerful. Too much. But good, I like. The Big Cat (Elvis) too. 'Love me tender..' "

As I urged him on - names like Pink Floyd, the Byrds, Gram Parsons, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, throwing them out like aged fading wrinkled confetti, I also noticed some waitresses eyeing him, pointing and tittering madly, hands reflexively across their mouths in traditional Asian style for females giggling. Then two women customers approached our table with paper and pens in hand.
They wanted his autograph which he signed quickly, politely and returned to our rock 'n roll seminar.

"Uh, are you famous or something?" I finally asked.
"I am in a band," he said simply. "We will be in the United States next month."
I know a small time promoter and publicist in LA and offered to hook him up.
"Thank you. No, we have okay."
Who is this guy, I thought? The answers in China were universal after only a few questions.

"You met HIM?" C screamed over the cell phone as if I'd met the Lord of the Universe. "Please, give me his phone number! I want to meet him when I come back to Beijing"
"You met HIM?" a coworker asked. "Congratulations! That is very good! Very, very good! Congratulations! We are proud of you!"

His English name is "Luke" - Chinese name Lu Gengxu - and he is one half of a duo popular with late 20s early 30s Chinese music fans. That's him on the left holding an award he and his singing partner received at a Chinese music award show. Kinda like I'd been shooting the shite with Justin Timberlake, perhaps, without knowing it. The duo is Shui Mu Nian Hua, or "Water & Wood" in rough translation.

Postscript: I was at a Chinese friend's home the next night and happened to mention I'd met half of Water & Wood and asked to hear any tunes she might have. She was thrilled and happily cranked up a song. I sighed inside as the middle of the road pap/pop Sino-syrup began flowing. I was about to go into diabetic collapse.
"Jimi, Jim, Mick, Bobs Dylan and Marley, and Floyd almighty forever forgive hin" I thought. "Luke, I have your number. But you need a career, not my stone age musical advice. I'll save my thoughts. Meanwhile, play on brother, play on."

2008-07-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

Night Moves
An element that never fails to delight me is watching Beijing after dark. It's a bit how I imagine American communities must have been before TV and the Internet and suburbia sealed us all inside, though of course China doesn't lack for the plug ins. Still, on a hot summer night one can easily walk slowly through a park or neighborhood and see people - young, old, fat, thin, and in-between strolling and talking, comparing notes, laughing, occasionally arguing, gossiping, flirting, eating, drinking and generally passing time. It's a mostly slow, gentle urban rhythm that pulses according to the humidity and heat (slower if it's steamy, slightly faster otherwise...)

There's even a resident crazy guy; a harmless middle aged, clean, casually dressed, short plump fellow with one of the ubquitious tiny snuffling long haired lap dogs that seem to be standard issue for most pet owners here. His is white and on a long leash.

The local loon keeps a regular schedule, I believe. At least he can be seen regularly between 7-8pm daily outside my favorite area grocery, next to the same light pole and across from a small food stall with a line of people eating and waiting to buy barbequed beef and chicken on wooden sticks. He talks loudly to himself, gesturing frequently and passionately and the passerbys and loiterers seem to pay him no mind, just letting him be. I've tried making eye contact and even greeted him in Chinese once or twice but the talking man just keeps on talking until it's time for him and his dog to go elsewhere.

Last night a group of us found another kind of community bond in a large park and bar area called Houhai, a ring of eateries, shops, tourist stands and nightclubs around a man-made lake, one end of which had at least 100 or so older and middle aged couples dancing to recorded tunes on a hot Thursday summer night. Foxtrots, waltz's, even some Bollywood tunes - a sweet festive scene. Some in finery, a few others like older men in wife beaters, shorts and sandals. On the sidelines younger men kicked a badminton shuttlecock around like a hackey sack, one adroitly doing behind-the-body kicks everytime, nailing it.

We watched for awhile and then a Bollywood mix got the best of me. I spotted an stout older woman - obviously a looker in her prime and still carrying herself with all the elegance she'd once had, dressed like a glitter gypsy in a ballroom gown. She began dancing by herself til I glided up in my flipflops, T-shirt and cargo pants and began spinning her gently around, guiding the best I could in my less-than-suave footwear. She didn't miss a beat the entire time and bowed, hands clasped together in the traditional Chinese way when the music ended.

My coworkers were flattering. "Nice white guy dance moves!" said 20-year-old, Z. "Way to bust 'em. Didn't know you had it in you." And a bald, older Chinese man who'd been watching came up and shook my hand. "Wonderful!" he told me. "Please join us tomorrow night. Thank you! You are a true egg!"

"An egg?" I was puzzled. Son of a turtle egg is a base insult in Cantonese and I wasn't sure how this was meant.

"Yes," he said. "White on the outside but yellow inside. Chinese yellow! You have a Chinese soul." Z - a Chinese-American woman - and I laughed. We knew "banana", for "white" Asians, but never the reverse.

"Yes, thank you," I told him. "I am the egg man."

2008-07-08T01:52:00.000-07:00

Do the Tighten Up
According to the large red countdown board outside my place of employment it's 30 days until the Olympics begin. Despite China's hopes for blue skies for the opening ceremonies and beyond and its loudly trumpeted anti-pollution measures (as well as rumored urban-mythical "weather control machines"), the last month has seen mostly rainy, smog-ridden, humid, phlegm colored days and starless nights, though Sunday night a group of us leaving a goodbye party looked up and gaped at a stunning sight. A star! Two stars! Well, maybe they were planets, nonetheless it was a welcome vision.

My neighborhood and areas elsewhere throughout Beijing are seeing a notable increase in police, albeit the unarmed variety, and foreigners with stories of being stopped for passport checks by both plainclothes and uniformed cops are becoming common. At the airport new "special police" armed with machine guns are roaming in twos throughout the three terminals in order to "enforce the existing security force's capacity to deal with emergencies in the airport," says an unnamed airport security droid. Most of the airport users, according to China Daily, feel happy and safer with black uniformed, nervous-looking 19 and 20-year-old acne-scarred males toting loaded machine guns in a crowded public venue, but somehow it doesn't make me feel anything but slightly queasy.

A Canadian software engineer who has been living in a largely foreign populated compound in north Beijing for several years told me that he and others there are now required to sign in and out. "It's a bit crazy," he says. "The guards and I know each other by sight - I've lived there longer than some have worked there. But we have to play the game. I generally sign something like "Mickey Mouse" "Osama Bin Laden" or "Tim Horton" (a popular Canadian coffee house chain). They can't read it anyway and it gives me a little lift."

It's not just foreigners. A 27-year-old Chinese woman surnamed Shen and who goes by the self-dubbed English name "Road" ("Because life is a journey," she says) is a front desk manager at a 3-star hotel about 2 kilometers from the Bird's Nest stadium. She said she and other employees in the area will be required to show newly issued Beijing Olympics-related ID cards as of July 15 in order to enter the area to come and go from work.

"I don't know what hotel guests will do," Road said. "We are not even fully booked. I took this job hoping to meet Olympic tourists. I enjoy talking with foreigners and practicing my English, I was hired because I am the only one who speaks English. But we have no foreign reservations and Chinese tourists are not so many now."

The visa situation for some foreigners already here or hoping to come also remains troublesome, despite repeated "assurances" by the foreign ministry that the visa restrictions are "unchanged" and "not designed to deter visitors or people doing business in China". Meanwhile, China's tourist numbers were down for the first 5 months of the year, though the official blame was put on factors other than the visa clampdown and the country's oldest trade fair, The Canton Trade Fair, reportedly saw its first decline in visitors and exhibitors in decades.

Like the USA in the post-911 era China is using the overreaching "terrorist" label and boogieman to include the "Dalai Lama clique/Tibetan separatists," so-called Islamic separatists in western China and just about anyone who might be suspected of putting a blemish on the Olympics.

Still there is some levity amongst the muck. Witness Ou Zhihang, a southern China TV host and photographer who has posted a series of photographs on his blog at http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4d1b21a90100a6as.html of him doing nude pushups in front of assorted Chinese landmarks, including the Bird's Nest. I don't know how he got that close without an ID, though ...

He calls himself the "Pushup King" and says: "I love my body and homeland. I use my small body to do pushups for exercise and to 'talk' with these large miraculous and world famous landmarks."

Comments on his au natural pfitness tourism campaign range from "You've f*cked every scenic resort, is that what you mean?" and "Good body, bad brain" to "Pictures are shocking, but we support you."

2008-06-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Working Class Hero
Never underestimate the power of the Chinese gossip underground. Faster than the Internet, I got a taste of it recently as I was leaving the office.

"Justin! Justin!" yelled a woman I'll call S, who works the paper's "Foreign Affairs Office" - essentially a group of Chinese assigned to babysit newly arrived "foreign experts" and help any others (like myself) when we can't do something like mail a letter, blow our nose or tie our shoes.

I froze. Sometimes it's not an entirely good thing when Foreign Affairs comes to you instead of vice-versa.

"Yeah, how can I help?" I said turning on the charm offensive.
"You are the HERO!" she said.
"Huh? Why? What?"
"The fire! You extinguished the fire. With BEER!"

Oh, that. It had happened the early evening the day before. I'd stopped at a corner shop for three cans of beer for a guest arriving later and as I got to my apartment I saw a literal pillar of flame coming from the battery-engine compartment of a small motorbike parked with dozens of bicycles at a rack. Two Chinese guys were watching it dispassionately.

Ignoring them, I ran to the apartment's security office to find ... no one. Running back I recalled the beer cans in my backpack and began popping and pouring and jumping back from the flames until the cans were dry and the fire was a sputtering low sizzle. Then one of the Chinese men came over and made a half-hearted effort to spit it out.

Two expats appeared on the porch of an adjoining apartment and I yelled at them to get someone or something other than a 12 oz can of Yan Jing to help me douse it completely. One returned with a fire extinguisher and almost threw it at me.
"Here, dude," he said. "I have no idea how they work."

This was the fun part. I pulled the pin. squeezed the lever and began furiously hosing foam over the smoking bike. When the fire was out, I picked up my pack and wandered back to the store, wondering if the bike owner might reimburse me sometime for the beer.

Between then and S's "you are the HERO" gush, I wasn't aware of anyone I knew seeing me in action, but obviously word had spread quickly of the valiant beer-touting, fire fighting foreigner.

"Aw, it was nothing," I told S.
"No," she said. "It was very kind. Three beers for the fire! I will write a letter. Perhaps you will be a Model Worker!" (China Daily awards this honor every 3 months or so; it's sort of a hangover from the old Commie work unit model and one I occasionally mock light heartedly)

"A working class hero?" I asked her, quoting the old John Lennon song. "Cool. That's something to be. Do I get new beer?"

2008-06-18T22:07:00.001-07:00

I Can See for Miles

I was with seven other work colleagues on a Sunday tourist excursion, gazing in awe and exhaustion from the heights of the Great Wall at the miles of forest below and beyond - all wrapped in the pollution gauze of greater Beijing - when one voice broke the spell.

"It smells like bathroom," she said. Well, yes, I guess the particular vantage point we were at did have a faint urine aroma, but though the Wall has been rebuilt repeatedly and the stretch we were on had some home grown tourist stops (including a live camel ride), Ming Dynasity restrmooms weren't part of the deal. Even the under-construction area our two hired drivers had parked in had prominent restroom signs which just proved to be a tease as the facilities themselves - pledged to be done by the Aug 8 Olympics - were still not done and we thought the whole area would be lucky to be done by the London Olympics in 2012.

But it was ultimately a good thing. It was my first time at China's premier tourist attraction and I'd been dubious after hearing tales of sections swarming with sweaty foreigners trudging and puffing in herds. The site we wound up at was virtually empty and still pristine enough despite the heavy machinery, mud, piles of yellowish dirt, trucks, Beijing Olympics signs and security goons to allow one to imagine it as it might have been in its heyday defending against dreaded Outsiders. Now it welcomed five barbarians and three more or less natives. We were like kind of motley UN group - a black guy from England; two white American dudes; four women: Korean-American, Canadian-Chinese, American-Chinese and China-Chinese; and an India Indian fellow.

Wimp and geriatric that I am, I fell back and chilled with three tourist-trap lady vendors in blue and white headscarfs and their camel after three very steep, long flights. The others including one in 4-inch heels (she'd come straight from a job interview) went into the clouds and returned and, like me, pay too much money to be photographed astride the two humped Mongolian camel. We declined the opportunity to pay more to dress as fake Mongols or PLA soldiers, though one of our group donned a faux Mongol helmet that made him look like a Star Wars extra. No picture of that immediately available, but seven of our group can be seen in our glory above.

We'd begun at the Ming Tombs, another historic area but one that has been so restored that it's sterile. Note to self: No more Ming Tombs. It's essentially an large cold, barren industrial gray basement down 87 zillion flights of steps in which rest several enormous red wooden packing crates.

The day ended on full stomachs of "nong jia fan," or farm-style food, for an early dinner. The family home cafe had virtually no running water, but included chickens pecking in the yard as the homegrown source for eggs and meat, and plenty of fresh vegetables from their garden. We tore through 10 dishes and five fried salty pancakes stuffed with green onions and bemoaned the fact that next year at this time Ma and Pa Wang's Diner will probably have been replaced by a McDonald's.

2008-06-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

Watching the Detectives

My State-owned "foreign expert danwei" (work unit) apartment borders a large, affluent middle and high school, much like my Lucky Number flat did in Shenzhen. Monday-Saturday I'm usually awakened to the sounds of announcements, 1980s Jazzercise Lite calesthentics, the martial bombast of the Chinese national anthem (Mondays only, thankyoujeebus) and, if I'm looking down below with a can of cold "Mr Bond - I'm young ... I'm coffee!" from my ninth floor balcony, the sight of hundreds of students in blue and white track suit uniforms lined up in small-to-tall rows overseen by assorted teachers in street clothes.

I've watched them long enough to have picked out a few individuals - notably the miscreants or misfits, the slower fat kids, a few cliques who torment a nerd or two, and the ones who just listlessly go through half-hearted motions in the "naughty child" back rows as teachers circle making an equally half-hearted effort to correct them.

This weekend while C was visiting for the first time since I've arrived in Beijing, trained observer that I am, I saw that classes weren't appparently in session on Saturday. While returning with a load of groceries and passing the school I saw the entrance was blocked off with crime tape saying "Police" in English. Parents were gathered for about two blocks sitting on curbs and in chairs outside restaurants looking hot and stressed while chewing up thousands of sunflower seeds, swilling water and fanning themselves with advertising leaflets that had suddenly materialized thanks to pamphleteers taking advantage of the new concentration of humanity.

Cop cars blocked off the street for several blocks and from my balcony vantage point I noted another police vehicle in school grounds along with several other "official" looking autos and vans.

"Shit," I thought. "Someone's been killed." Thoughts of Columbine - on which I'd done some freelance reporting on in Colorado - came back, though no students here have access to even pellet guns, much less M16s. Most murders are knife or hatchet jobs, like the 7 people just killed in Tokyo, news of which was also on my CNN-Asia channel as I watched the school. My immediate response was to call someone at the paper to tip them off to mayhem in our backyard, but put it aside recalling how Chinese crimes usually aren't reported until the 'perp(s)are arrested, detained or sometimes until after they're executed.

With my imagination at full throttle, I awaited for C to return from an errand she'd also been running to see if we could hit the street to talk with some parents. About 5 minutes after she arrived, I looked out again and saw the children were all streaming out of the school, being greeted by what looked like very relieved parents.

"Look," I said. "They let the kids out. Cops must be done questioning them. Let's go down and see if anyone will tell us what happened."
She peered down and didn't reply for a minute.
"What is the date?" she finally asked.
"June 8," I replied. "Why?"
"There is no murder," she said, smiling a little at my ignorance. "It is the national college test day."

Oh. Yeah. Never mind. "Black June" is how a Chinese colleague in Shenzhen once described the annual nationwide test - a sort of mega Sino SAT that asks you everything you learned from K-12 and for which kids are primed beginning early in this rote education system. It often determines an entire future career and social path and the pressure to excell is enormous - so much so that the suicide rate reportedly skyrockets in China among students during this period.

"But why the police cars? Why do they block off the street?" I asked C.
"To preserve order," she said as she was explaining to a Certified Moron why it wasn't a good idea to stick your hand into a working blow torch.
"What? Why? Who is going to raise hell at an SAT test?"
"I don't know," she said. "It is always how it is done. Like with our teachers, we do not ask why."
Photo from AP Photo by Elizabeth Dalziel

2008-05-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

Fakin' It

"What did you think of the story in our section by Xiao Xing?" a reporter asked me. I drew an immediate blank. To my eternal shame and mortification after four years in China I still have the recall ability of a wilting house plant when it comes to remembering most Chinese names unless they have an "English name" attached to them. (One of the first tests C gave me after we'd more or less become an item was one day to casually ask me if I knew what her Chinese name was. Heh. I kinda mumbled a reply that sufficed, yet did not immediately inspire her confidence in my undying devotion and long-term memory capabilties.)

"Uh...which story?" I asked, still flailing for a clue or cue. "It was by me," he said. I was still somewhat clueless as I couldn't remember his byline but now remembered one of his stories I'd edited. I waited for the punchline.

"Xiao Xing is not my name," he finally said, smiling.

"Er, yeah. Right," I said. "Anyway, it was a good job. Solid, flowed well, was easy to edit. No jargon. " I was honest there. He's one of our best reporters and is a second generation staffer. His father, now retired, was a chief editor.

"So, why the fake byline?" I asked. "You guys can do that?"

He's also modest and said he'd used a pseudonym because the story had been generated by a press release. "It was a rubbish story," he said. It wasn't apparent from the content, at least to me, and it had even had some less-than-positive things to say about an industry issue on his beat. Overall it was quite balanced, informative and not the usual sycophantic lick job some editors and reporters here regard as "journalism."

I told him I didn't think it was rubbish at all and said I didn't think a fake byline was needed. "You want to see a rubbish story?" I asked. "Look at this on page one."

It was a report about an issue here that's troubling many foreign barbarians. The Chinese government has cracked down on its visa regulations, essentially making business and tourist visas much more difficult and expensive to obtain. I have a half dozen friends or acquaintances currently in limbo wondering if they're still going to be here in the next month or two. Some have been working in China for several years and none can be remotely described as a "security risk."

The rubbish story I referred him to quoted a high level govt wanker at length as saying that the visa policy has not changed an iota. His quotes were completely unchallenged and whoever wrote it had essentially served as a stenographer. No foreigners were quoted, though a vague reference was made to the American Chamber of Commerce-Hong Kong's "allegations" that the policy has indeed changed and it's a problem.

"It's lies!" I said, beginning to froth a little. "Complete garbage."

He read it without comment and then laughed. "This reporter also knows it is rubbish," he said. "Look. This is a fake byline too."

Shore 'nuff. Same surname: Xiao, though the given name was different than what my friend had used. Then he explained the code to me. "Xiao" means young but it is essentially also the equivalent of America's "John (or Jane) Doe." He said reporters who feel they're reporting crapola will often use "Xiao-whatever" for stories they're not exactly thrilled to be writing or even feel are dishonest. It's not exactly a fullblown protest, but it's a statement nonetheless.

"We are not new to this," he said. "You know, my father's generation did it also and the press was much more controlled then. My father told me they used a term that means 'boring' for the same reasons."

2008-05-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

The Sound of Silence
The Chinese government declared 3 days of official mourning, which included 3 minutes of silence across the nation today (Monday) beginning at 2.28pm - the time the quake began last week. Drivers were asked to to honk their horns at the same time and disaster sirens were also scheduled to wail, which I feared would jar the solemn mood and wouldn't sound too much different than a routine Beijing traffic jam .Nine people in our department stood before two TV sets ticking down the time towards the moment and silent footage of the disaster.

Out a window I could see construction workers in blue jump suits and yellow hard hats standing across the street atop office buildings, most also with hands folded and heads bowed. The horns began howling, while the sirens keened above them and it was as if the entire country was suddenly weeping simultaneously. Two female coworkers dabbed their eyes and I also began choking up.

Three minutes later it ended. True silence for a seconds except for sniffles and the televisions, then the jackhammers, saws and drills at the construction sites began their barrage again.

"So sad, too sad," one reporter whispered, a little embarrassed at her tears.

"It's okay." I said. "Everyone is sad."

Like the US post-911 much of China's Netizens have been trying to find meaning in what it is being called the worst year in the country's history - though none mention the famines in the late '50s or the Cultural Revolution years.

But with the crippling snowstorms of January, unrest in Tibet followed by what they perceive as international insults and humiliations as the "sacred flame" of the Olympic torch made its journey outside the Middle Kingdom, a horrific train crash and now the earthquake, and the Internet is abuzz with material that is familiar in its own way to those who've pondered the coincidences of JFK's and Lincoln's assassinations ("Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln; both had vice presidents from southern states named Johnson..."); the cryptic BS of a fake Nostradamus couplet foretelling the collapse of the Twin Towers, or the "holy cross" or "eagle" or "Satan" seen in smoke or cloud formations etc.

Here it's about numbers: add up the dates of the snowstorm (1-25), the Tibet riots (3-14) and earthquake (5-12) individually and you get "8" - normally an unusually auspicious number for Chinese and the reason the Olympics will kick off on 8-8-08 and why it costs more to get a phone number with multiple 8's.

The five tooth-achingly cute cartoon character Olympic mascots called "Fuwa" - sort of more exotic, colorful Smurfs - are also now seen by some to be harbingers of China's recent miseries. Representing a fish, panda, swallow, Tibetan antelope and Olympic flame those seeking significance in coincidence see the panda as an earthquake warning, as the ravaged area is also home to China's endangered giant panda population; the Tibetan antelope ... well, you can figure that out; ditto for the Olympic flame; the swallow is seen as emblematic for the "kite city" of Weifang in Shandong province where China experienced a deadly train crash last month.

The remaining one is a fish symbol or "water," which online doomsayers suggest could indicate pending horror in the Yangtze River.

Some Taiwan TV stations are also blaming the fengshui of Beijing's new "Bird Nest" Olympic stadium saying it has "interrupted the pulse" of a giant dragon said to lie beneath the country. And there are sincere efforts, saccharine - glurge, really - ways of finding some online comfort, like this poem which C translated for me and is choking people up throughout the country.

For the children of Wenchuan who have died in the earthquake

Hurry child, grab mommy's hands

Child, tightly grab mommy's hand

The way to heaven is too dark and mommy's afraid you'll hit your head

Hurry, tightly grab mommy's hands, let mom go with you

Mommy, I'm scared that the road to heaven is too dark

I can't see your hands since the fallen walls stole the sunshine away

I will never again see your loving gaze

Child, you can go to the road ahead

You will have no sadness, no endless homework, or your father's scolding

You must remember daddy's face and mine

In the next life we will walk together again

2008-05-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

All Shook Up/I'm Still Standing

Lots of e-mail traffic lately about the recent China quake in Sichuan province, all from US pals wondering if I'm okay. I was in the mighty China Daily office in Beijing on MSN chat with C when she told me about it late Monday morning from her non-news related Shenzhen workplace. Meanwhile, in a major Chinese media nerve center, my coworkers were seemingly oblivious to it for about another hour until someone switched on a TV.

Reports that it was felt in Beijing were puzzling to me, until I realized that "Beijing" covers an area - urban and rural - of several hundred klicks. But, no, the earth did not move for me in Beijing and I guess it won't until C is able to get here. Unlike Burma where the aid is at best trickling in due to the xenophobia and paranoia of the country's military junta, China has responded openly and seemingly as best it can. Premier Wen Jiabao who has become China's go-to guy when it comes to showing up at disasters to publicly console victims and urge calm (several years ago he also was photographed and filmed "bravely" shaking hands with an HIV-postive Chinese citizen) has been busy being quoted as telling injured children that "Be brave, Grandfather Wen Jiabao is here" etc.

Yesterday the foreigners at China Daily got an in-house e-mail and paper memo about a "Memorial service" and aid donation opportunity in our lobby. We straggled down at 4.45 as we'd been asked to and found organizers still nailing up enormous blowups of our front pages for the last two days: "The day the earth moved" and "Race against time" in front of an oversized red metal donation box. Some went outside in the rain to smoke under overhangs and others milled about in the lobby waiting for something to happen. I'd imagined maybe some candles and at least a moment of silence and a speech of some sort followed by the opportunity to quietly slip some yuan into the box.

No candles, no moment of silence, no moving speech. Instead we were shepherded in front of the box to form a line as photogs gathered facing us. Then the China Daily honchos were photographed smiling and pushing 100 yuan bills (about $6) into the box. Next came the foreign staff, a bit embarrassed at the photo op. I slipped 100 in and later joked that I wondered how much of the cash would wind up in the Sichuan province officials' "Karaoeke, Massage and Maotai Relief Fund."

"Be careful what you say," one Chinese colleague said, laughing a little. "Because you will be on the front page tomorrow. They will want to show how China Daily foreigners care about Chinese people."

Well, it wasn't page one, but page six with the caption: "Staff from China Daily make donations yesterday. The newspaper collected 200,000 yuan." My boss was thrilled. I guess I'd made my section look good. Another coworker told me it was auspicious that I had worn a red shirt to do this, but noted a little gravely that the background behind me was black - a symbol in official Chinese govt photos that the person is no longer in favor.

I messaged C, who said she had also been photographed giving money at her workplace for a Chinese language paper in Shenzhen. A nice coincidence and while she looks a little stiff in her pic, she's easier on the eyes.

2008-05-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

Godzilla
I'm picky about my T-shirts and one I favor is black with a small green stencil-like profile of Godzilla grabbing a jet which I found at a Hong Kong rock festival about three years ago. It carries no message or real significance, I'm just a Godzilla fan, so much so that I was thrilled many years ago when my son named our cat Godzilla, or 'Zilla kitty.

China has no T-shirt culture. Few if any wear T-shirts signifying any band or social message they favor, mostly it's just knock off designer logos, Chinglish ("History is trouble disease," "Herpes Later," "My best bear is business fashion Rambo") or naive fashion crimes like the Hong Kong grandmother in a pink number with a cartoon cat saying "Lick My Pussy!", or the 9-year-old girl in one of my early Shenzen English summer camp classes who showed up one morning with a bright orange shirt with black lettering. It was a reproduction of a briefly great record label in the late 70s, early 80s called Stiff and sported their slogan: "If it's not Stiff, it's not worth a fuck." I explained that while I was a Stiff label fan, this wasn't probably what she or her parents wanted to her be wearing if they understood it and she was told to either sling her backpack around her front for the day or go home and change. She chose the latter.

But while I can wear T-shirts of Johnny Cash flipping the bird and draw no response, Godzilla is mostly good for questions here. A coworker, about 6 months pregnant with a U2 "Boy" t-shirt stretched over her belly asked me recently: "Why is the lizard eating a plane on your shirt?"

"It's Godzilla," I said. "A Japanese movie monster very popular in Japan and the US. You don't know Godzilla?" Silly question. I already knew 99.7% of mainland Chinese are Godzilla deficient.

"Why do you like him?" she asked.

"He's an icon," I said. "A bad guy, a good guy, all powerful. Like Elvis, sort of. You know Elvis? The King Cat?" (King Cat is the Chinese term for Elvis)

"The King Cat is a lizard monster?"

"No, no...Godzilla is Japanese. A movie monster, a giant dinosaur from an atomic accident. My son loved him. I guess you could say he's a symbol of Japanese aggression, maybe." This is territory Chinese are sadly very familiar, even those like her with no first hand knowledge.

"I hate Japan," she said flatly. I decided to change the subject. "But you're a U2 fan? Cool Irish rock band. Very, very famous. I'll give you some of their music if you want? The singer is a big Dali La..., never mind ... But see? U-2. Named after an American spy plane?" I said pointing at the band name. "It's from an old album of theirs called Boy."

She gestured at the picture, a black and white portrait of a very young blond boy.

"I like the picture," she said. "And the T-shirt is comfortable even if it is advertising an American spy plane."

2008-05-02T07:08:00.001-07:00

La Marseillaise

I've no strong feelings - cheese-eating surrender monkeys, Freedom fries or not - regarding the French, but just as in the post-911 hooplah in the USA they've become villified temporarily in China. In some ways it's very familiar. In 2005 another foreign target, the Japanese, were the targets of government sanctioned protests due to a flap over Japanese school history textbooks (distributed to about 1 or less of percent) of the schools involved, according to Japanese sources) that glossed over or simply denied the Rape of Nanjing; as if China doesn't gloss over it's own history, 20th century or earlier (didja know that Tibet and Taiwan have eternally been part of China, Didja know that Tienammen Square June 6 never really happened except as a distortion of foreign media? Etc etc...)

But the pending Olympics have China squirming. The exalted "sacred flame" (as State media in an officially aetheist republic refers repeately to the Olympic torch) relay around the world has meant a loss of face where freedom of expression and publicly rude behavior are legal.

France has taken the brunt of the outrage after a spunky Chinese monoplegic Disabled Olymics female wheelchair fencer defended the torch against a Tibet protester and Paris gave the Dali Lama honorary citizenship. The xenophopic nationalist mix has also extended to a "ban CNN" movement(available only at high end hotels and non-Chinese residences) after one of its trash talk commentators, Jack Cafferty, upped his ratings and CNN's in general for outbursts calling Beijing "goons and thugs". So with not lot of places or opportunities for young Chineso vent at anytime, foreigners they only have an abstract sixth-hand concept of are always a safe target.

Thus, a national boycott of Carrefour and France in general has been called for, beginming April 15 and peaking May 1-5. Early May not so conicidentally also coincides historically with early 20th century Chinese uprisings over foreign devils, Asian and caucasion alike.

Amd after covering anti-Japanese protests a couple years ago in Shenzhen during early April (the bottom pic is from that, PLA soldiers keeping order and standing in as frames for C) where I watched impassioned Chinese youth calling their pals on Japanese-made cell phones to urge them to boycott Japanese products and taking pictures with their Japanese cameras and video to document their pattriotism as Shenzhen cops rode security on Hondas, I had to wonder ...

Talking to C and others I've met who were thrilled to be excused from classes in 1999 to protest a US attack on a Chinese embassy in Belgrade I had to wonder some more. C says she and her clasmates were simply happy to get out of the day, donned their govt issued headbands and hoisted the premade "USA die" banners and signs but had no target in their college town except a McDonalds where they normally loved ot eat if they had enough money. Nonetheless, they stood outside Evil Mickey D's and shouted at hapless fellow Chinese who worked and/or ate at the local representation of US imperialsm.

Meanwhile, a Chinese guy I know told me a very similar story about his college town and the demonstrations, except they had no McDonalds or KFC at the time on which to vent their outrage.

"So, we if we saw someone drinking a Coca Cola we would shout, 'Throw down that Coca Cola!'" he told me. "It was silly. But very nice to be out of school for the day."

The largest French target in China is the French version of Wal-Mart, Carrefour, which I'd never been in until coming to Beijing. I've gone twice since arriving, both times during boycotts that began on April 15.

I'd lost the written directions for a taxi and had to ask another coworker who initially stalled out of concern for my safety. "They will beat you!" she said.

"No, I don't think so," I replied. "Oh, and in the address can you write, "Please take me to Carrefour because I want to buy food for the Dali Lama?" She laughed nervously. "You are only joking, maybe?" I assured I was and thanked her for the simple "Carrefour" address, instead.

Bottom line, god bless the French. The cheese, bread, wine and produce selections are top notch and currently, thanks to blind Chinese nationalism, my local Carrefour was decidedly less crowded and, according to other foreign barbarian interlopers who have been there in pre-antiFranco hysteria times, checkout lines decidely shorter. Today the cops had even blocked off direct vehicle access to mine to keep (non-existent) protestors out and inside at the wine and liquor area a young Chinese woman repping for a French wine brand urged me to buy a bottle of Chantelle Des Vins sauvignon blanc. I'm normally a boring California wine red guy but I'd just seen Sidweays for the second time on a pirate Chinese dvd and was feeling frisky.

"You pronounce that well," I said. "Sauvignon blanc.' Better than me. I'll take two. Vive la France! Please now can you direct me to the frozen Freedom fries aisle?!

2008-04-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

The road goes on forever

Two days after returning from the US following my father's death I was in a corner shop at about 7:30pm having the predictable language difficulties with the 17-year-old clerk who spoke no English and the fossilized barbarian who, though he has lived in China for more than 3 years, still lacks the basic linguistic skills to clearly count to 10 in Chinese without clerks and onlookers collapsing in manical laughter.

The amount in question was more than 10, however and a malfunctioning calculator came into play. Enter: "Road", a young Chinese woman bundled to the eyebrows against temperatures that were probably about 65 degrees Farenheit, though I've also given up trying to convert metric nonesense to Normal Measures as well as any serious attempts to learn how to count in any other language but Spanish.

"Can I help?" she asked. This was before had given me her self-appointed English name. She straightened out the accounting problem, pronto, and then began babbling nonstop to me with a mix of the usual non-intrusive questions such as "where are you from, how long you stay, how old are you, why do you have so many disgusting liver spots on your hands, why are you so fat, how many wives do you have, what do you do, how much you pay for rent. and didn't I see you on YouTube with the lifesize Latex schoolgirl doll and a sheep" questions.

I was kinda charmed. Not in a romantic way but it is rare to have a random Chinese civilian not involved in the tour, service or bar trade - especially in cosmopolitan Beijing - take any kind of seeming unsolicited interest in a foreigner. And I was admittedly bored and lonely. She asked about jobs at China Daily where I work and I took a leap and invited her back to my apartment to talk some more. Not what you're thinking...

There she told me the reason for her name ("Life is a journey") and launched into a slightly fractured and unsolicited account of her life and times ("My love story, do you want to hear?" "Sure, everyone has one or more, what's yours?" I replied) and series of jobs since arriving here about 3 years ago. She works as a hotel maid - very unusual for someone with her language skills - is largely self-taught but has a year or two of university and her best professional years so far seem to have been selling insurance in the developing - some would say primitive - Chinese insurance trade.

This brought on a string of Norman Vincent Peale-type Power of Positive Thinking slogans she had learned as an insurance trainee, albeit slightly skewed in translation. Example: "Change your thoughts and you change the world" became "Change vorld (difficulty pronouncing w's) with happy think" and "Go forvard with bus sign" which I finally realized was "Go forward using the plus sign." Why she quit or was fired wasn't clear but she said she has found new life as a hotel maid in a 4-star hotel where she hopes to meet "many foreigners for Olympics."

As my Olympic skills are limited to record setting times with the TV remote and clicking off porno sites at work when I realize my boss is standing behind me, what she wanted from me wasn't clear. It still isn't except I agreed to let her do some tour guiding, shopping and to clean my apt for a slightly above average minimum wage. As Neil Young sang, a man needs a maid, as well as a tour guide and personal shopper.

True to her word, Road took me on the weekend to Tiananmen Square complete with an outdated Chinglish tour book from which she began to read until I gently asked her stop. "But I am your guide," she said. "It's okay," I said. "Just getting here is enough." You know how visiting landmarks often results in a "it's way smaller than I thought" scenario - Dealy Plaza in Dallas, site of JFK's assassination comes to mind, as does Graceland, the White House and a return to Mrs Pollard's room in my 6th grade classroom - lemme say that T-Square, better known to aging westerners as the site of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations and massacre is Gi-farking-gantic.

It is unbelievably huge and on this Saturday packed with a small city's worth of Chinese tourists and hawkers. As I ruminated on the ghosts of dead protesters and what scumwads such as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger must have thought in 1971 being ferried to the imposing Great Hall of the People in a Red Star limo along a road large enough to contain a small African nation, Road and I were snagged by a thirtysomething guy who told me he wanted my opinion on whether the art he was displaying would appeal to "Americans who want to learn to paint like Chinese."

It was a thinly veiled sales pitch, but I played along and ultimately gently told him that most Americans didn't want to learn to paint or draw anything that didn't involve glitter, glue guns, spray cans or broad stroke Magic Markers - something that I think couldn't be achieved by taking "35 years" to learn to painstakingly paint "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy in Qing Dynasty Sprngtime".

2008-03-30T05:34:00.000-07:00

Refugee

Two takes on the Tibet protests from two sides of the world.
Syracuse, New York, March 25, 4:15 pm
"Can you believe it?" asked the jewelry designer and gift store owner as I was browsing for something to bring back to C. We'd been talking about China, Tibet and India, the latter where the store owner travels frequently. "The university is going ahead with a group tour to China next week. And with all that trouble going on! It can't be safe."

"You mean Tibet?" I asked. "The Tibet protests?" She nodded.
"No, it's no problem in China unless you're wearing a Dalai Lama T-shirt or tattoo on your forehead," I said. "The average Chinese has no idea what's going on there. Or that anything is going on. Websites are blocked more than usual, even YouTube. The little news there that is running the same State-approved mangled English short story every day about 'March 14 Dalai Lama Clique violence of riotous beating, looting and arson in Lhasa' but I doubt if most Chinee even notice or care."

The store owner had Tibetan censorship problems of her own, though. She was also in a quandry over whether or not to hang some colorful orange and yellow Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags at the entrance to her store in a show of solidarity with the Tibetan 'splittists' as the Chinese media calls the protesters.
"My landlord," she said. "She's, she's ..."
"She's an agent of the Chinese secret police?" I asked.
"She's picky about what goes up here," she said. "She might want them to taken down."
"Christ," I said. "People are getting killed and their heads caved in this week over symbols like those flags. Go ahead, wave your Dalai Lama freak flags high. Landlord be damned!"

She laughed self-consciously. "Silly, I know," she said. But when I left the flags were flying, and while I doubt anyone in Tibet or China could feel the juju they were nice to see snapping against the cold, azure Syracuse sky.

Beijing, March 30, 10:30 pm
A freelancer journalist friend of mine, D., and I are in her apartment with an honest to gawd Tibetan "separatist" - a potential political refugee - I'll call P. D found him several days ago through a peaceful observance by Tibetan students at a university in Beijing. I have glommed along hoping to learn some more about the situation in Tibet and maybe get something worth publishing outside of China.

P looks as if he's straight out of central casting as a noble Tibetan independence leader - achingly handsome with long black hair tied in a pony tail, he's about 34 and looks something like an American Indian. He's also a bit nervous, twisting the beer bottle D has given him between answering our questions about Lhasa when the protests began. P was a tour guide with two German tourists in tow when the protests hit Lhasa - something he learned about when the temple he'd taken his tourists to was suddenly "closed." He'd returned the pair to their hotel then watched unbelieving he says as young, rioting unemployed Tibetan men began trashing and burning Chinese businesses with no initial opposition.

"I cannot believe there are no Chinese police or army that night," he says. "Only TV people. I think that the China government wants the trouble to show on TV later." And indeed the very footage has since been broadcast on TV and in news photos here.

P's not fan of the Chinese and says he has made a point of signing documents in Tibetan rather than Chinese as a low form of protest. He was unable to return to his apartment quickly and two days later when he did he found it and others near it had been forced open and tossed. He has Dalai Lama pictures and literature (banned in Tibet) in the apartment. Those were untouched though some other items - jewelry particularly - were missing. Neighbors told him Chinese police had been through.

He returned to the tourist hotel and his German clients who were itching to leave. He shows D and me a form they'd filled concerning his service giving him mostly 5's on a scale of 1 as worst to 5 as best, but added that they were "Most very disappointed not to see temples and to spend all time in hotel."

Take that, Tibet Tourism Association

P decided it was time for him to leave also. He's heard of, but not seen, cold blooded shootings by Chinese troops and police and was worried about his fate if he was traced to the Dalai Lama pictures in his apartment. "I have seen some people arrested," he says. "I see Dalai Lama in India before. I hear him. This is not his way. Too crazy now." Two bus rides, a van and a train have taken him roundabout and covertly to Beijing where he's now drifting from Tibetan restaurant to Tibetan restaurant on charity, solidarity and friendship.

He shows us a doctored Chinese passport with his real picture, a fake name and expired visa stamps from Vietnam and Czech Republic. P hopes to get a real visa for the Czech Republic using the bogus passport and then go to perhaps Poland, Belgium or maybe Ireland. After that? Who knows, he says. "I cannot go back Tibet now," he says. He finishes the beer, twists the bottle again before putting it down and fiddles with the 18 wooden prayer beads on his left wrist. D and I walk him through the narrow houtong district to a main street where he can hop a bus.

2008-03-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

Centerfield

Wrote this for another site after going to the first Major League Baseball game in China on Saturday - Dodgers vs Padres.

While it didn’t have the impact of the fabled ping-pong diplomacy that helped China and the United States normalize relations in the early 1970s, the first Major League Baseball game played in the Middle Kingdom on Saturday was notable for several, albeit lesser, reasons.

The debut tilt between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in 50-degree temperatures under blue skies before a near-sellout crowd of about 12, 200 consisting of perhaps three fourths curious Chinese and one fourth expatriates and tourists was played to a 3-3 tie.

The phrase “kissing your sister” came to mind as the announcer proclaimed: “There will be no extra inning in today’s game” in English and Chinese, though it’s likely virtually none of the Chinese natives understood the sullied implication of a “tied” baseball game.

“No extra innings? That’s outrageous!” yelled one New York City native amid a chorus of scattered boos from similarly outraged purists. On the other hand, recalling a long ago 19-or more innings 2-1 snooze fest between the Colorado Rockies and the Chicago Cubs in Denver years ago, I was somewhat relieved.

The concession supplies were sporadic and limited but you couldn’t beat the prices. Much of the pre-game speculation among expats centered not on the starting lineups but on whether beer and hot dogs would be available. Even foreigners who didn’t know a double play from double vision understood the concept of a relaxed afternoon at an outdoor stadium, beer and foot long with mustard in hand.

Long lines at the concession stands didn’t guarantee a thing, however, as many waited patiently for make-believe hot dogs, hamburgers and Mexican tacos courtesy of a fake Western Beijing restaurant chain only to find nothing but peanuts when they got to the head of the line. “I finally hijacked a supplier,” said my seatmate upon returning with three “tacos” after a 2-inning absence. “Saw the guy toting boxes of these to the food stand and just stood in his way and shouted politely at him until he sold me three.”

Beer was plentiful however and – unlike every MLB stadium in the United States – extremely cheap at about US $1.50 for a 12 oz can vs $6.50 for 8 ounces of low alcohol froth. Some enthusiasts were buying beer by the carton and toting the boxes back to the stands with no apparent ill results.

Security was tight and heavy, but ultimately friendly. As one onlooker, an American named Nick Frisch quipped between explaining arcane concepts such as “RBI,” “bunt,” “sacrifice fly” and “infield fly rule” in Chinese to his polite but uncomprehending female Chinese companion: “We've already gotten used to KFC, Starbucks and McDonald's. Now, maybe the juxtaposition of PLA uniforms and baseball is something we'll get used to as well."

Despite the martial overlay provided by the PLA, the atmosphere inside the field was indistinguishable from a minor league game in the US, except the fans were more polite – applauding and cheering virtually every foul ball - and there were no bizarre promotional concepts like a 2003 “Ted Williams Popsicle Night” (first 500 fans received a free popsicle) sponsored by an Arizona minor league team after the announcement that the late-baseball legend would reportedly be cryogenically frozen in nearby Scottsdale.

Taunting the outfielders – an honorable baseball tradition in the US – was also notably absent, and much love was shown by and for “The Swinging Friar,” the Padres’ portly mascot as well as a clutch of bare-bellied, red and silver spangled pom-pom swinging Chinese cheerleaders.

There was sporadic organ music with the traditional “Charge!” ending supplied by a few knowing fans, and canned music between plays ranged from the Who, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Jerry Lee Lewis and Beatles to hip-hop. The traditional seventh inning stretch rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was, sadly, a non-starter in our 88-yuan ticket section where only five expats rose to belt it out as the rest of the stands looked on bemused and puzzled.

"In general overall the ballpark had a good feel," Padres manager Bud Black told Associated Press. "The between innings entertainment was not unlike what we have in the States." Yes, except in the States you don’t have hostesses with large prop cards explaining the between-innings entertainment to the fans.

While both Dodger manager Joe Torre and Dodgers vice president Dave Winfield had promised “front line players” and “we’re not going to give you a bum roster” at the original January press conference touting MLB’s China debut the reality was different, though few seemed to notice or care.

Padres closer Trevor Hoffman was perhaps the biggest name, though his skills weren’t needed Saturday. Asian faces were few though LA’s Korean pitcher Park Chan-ho lasted 5 innings and LA shortstop Hu Chin Lung, a Taiawn native, received cheers simply for his name every time at bat.

Unlike Japan, Korea and Taiwan, baseball is virtually unknown in China though according to MLB historians an American named William Henry Boone formed the Shanghai Baseball Club in 1863. Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel reportedly played exhibition games in pre-Revolution China and MLB further asserts that baseball was the “unofficial game” of Mao’s troops during civil war, though it was banned and forgotten during the Cultural Revolution.

MLB is hoping to eventually find the same success as the NBA and Yao Ming, though it may be a long march. The reverse is true in the United States. Cricket’s first international game was played in the United States in the 1840s for instance and the silence there since has been deafening. Ditto for major league soccer despite occasional infusions of international talent such as Pele in the 1970s and more recently David Beckham.

So what success can baseball expect in a nation where ping-pong and badminton stars are the norm and playgrounds are packed with children playing soccer and basketball with nary a field of dreams in sight?

There are an estimated 100,000 children’s groups learning the game in China, and a sprinkling were on hand Saturday all in team sweat clothes and uniforms.

“Very good to see it with real players in real life, not on DVD,” said one coach – a Korean named Chung Hyop-cho who lives in Beijing and works for a Chinese youth baseball club, the Horses. “My boys have learned something I hope. Maybe the next Yao Ming of baseball is here today.”

Barring that, a sudden archeological discovery of a Paleolithic ballfield in Xi’an or perhaps terra-cotta catchers and outfielders that prove that China “invented” baseball might be the answer.

2008-03-16T00:58:00.000-07:00

So Begins the Task

I’ll be back in the States late next week on a bittersweet mission. My 84-year-old father, John D – for David – Mitchell, is quite ill and my son and I are traveling from our two homes – he in Boulder, me in Beijing – to meet in Syracuse, NY to be with him, my sister, her son and husband.

I don’t want to say it’s to say goodbye but that sums it up. It’s a time I’ve dreaded since coming to China – always in the back of my mind with every occasional phone call I’d make and the irregular short hand-written letters he would post to me in Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Thailand.

My mother died about 12 years ago, suddenly though not unexpectedly and the initial shock helped numb the loss for awhile. In my father’s case it’s been a slow decline though nothing drastic until the last couple weeks when increasingly worried e-mails from my sister brought it home that soon we’d only have each other and our respective two boys.

I owe him more than I can even imagine – good and bad. Argumentative, gruff, opinionated, sarcastic, overbearing as well as loving, intelligent, witty and low key to the point that in his later years when visiting me for extended periods I’d joke with friends that it was like having a giant mutant cat living with me – I’d leave for work and return 9 hours later to find him more or less in the same position, contently reading seemingly not moving an inch since I’d left.

Together we’d sit comfortably silent for hours in each others’ company sipping bourbon and listening to John Prine, Bob Dylan Hank Williams, Django Reinhardt, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Willie Nelson, et al, or just reading and still understand each other perfectly in the silence.

Our last big road trip was a leisurely three day drive northwest from Colorado through Wyoming to the Little Big Horn battlefield on the Crow Indian reservation in Montana. I told a girlfriend at the time that he and I had driven for hours without saying a word.

“Nothing!” she said, aghast. “How can you stand it? Not a word?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We just don’t need to. It’s all understood somehow.” She didn’t get it, compulsive talker that she was and maybe that’s part of why it eventually didn’t work out with us.

I’m in journalism (and also Asia) because of – and perhaps in spite of – him. He was a feared and respected journalism prof at the University of Colorado and Syracuse University and years later when older colleagues in Denver learned he was my father the reaction was pretty much identical.

“I’m sorry, but I originally thought your father was kind of an asshole,” one said laughing. “But I deserved it. He was the hardest and best teacher I ever had.” Tell me about it. When I was in the army in Korea he would send letters I’d sent him back to me with grammatical and punctuation corrections in red ink – just like the students who paid tuition for the same abuse, er, lessons at CU and Syracuse.

The remarkable detail about him is that he never had a father himself. His mother – my grandmother Maxine – was something of a nonconformist in the roaring ‘20s, so much so that my dad was a product of an affair she had with her married college English prof, supposedly after their eyes met as she recited a passionate rendition of Captain, My Captain, Walt Whitman’s ode to Lincoln.

She was largely absent later after leaving school to have him, with sojourns to what sounded like some kind of ur-hippie Isadora Duncan inspired modern dance commune in the Great Lakes, leaving him in the hands of unnamed relatives or friends of friends.

“What did you eat during the Depression?” I asked once.

“Air sandwiches,” he said evenly. “Bread with nothing on it. Mustard if we were lucky.” He said he and his fellow students spent 2nd grade writing their names hundreds of times at the behest of a teacher who sounded as if he had a drinking problem.

But he abided, raised two children, did his best with my complicated mother who also had her, shall we say, “issues” and cried on the phone when he called me to tell me that they were divorcing. It was the first, but not the only time I heard him cry.

The second time was many years later after I’d tracked down details of his biological father that included the amazing coincidences that he’d been a journalist after leaving the Kansas college where he’d procreated my father and that during his undistinguished but solid career as a wandering Midwest reporter had worked at the same newspaper as I later would in Kansas City.

The information also included a name and home phone number for a man who was my father’s biological half-brother.

“Do you want to try calling him?” I asked. Dad had been thumbing through the photocopied papers and a 1960 obituary I’d collected that included the first pictures of his father he’d ever seen; there was one from a college yearbook that also featured a group “Quill Club” photo with his professor “father” and 21-year-old college sophomore mother together.

His eyes began to get wet, he sniffled uncharacteristically and I looked away. “No,” he finally said. “They didn’tcare for me then ... ”

I hope it’s not too late to tell him I still care.

2008-03-11T04:23:00.000-07:00

Faster Pussycat! To the Library

One of the burning issues consuming the Chinese public at the moment is a public debate over whether or not to recycle school textbooks.
About five or so provinces have tried to start a textbook recycling campaigns for the new semester that aims to reduce paper use and raise students' awareness of natural resources preservation.

According to the State media if all the textbooks in China were reused for five years, the country could save an estimated 225 billion yuan (31 billion US dollars) not to mention saving countless trees that otherwise would have needlessly died doing their part in spreading the word that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.

But reaction, as they say, has been mixed – in some accounts downright hostile. Cited most often are “health concerns.” (Notably absent in the stories is the fact that the entire publishing industry in China is state subsidized and if “new” school books weren’t pumped out annually the industry would take a serious hit.)

This quote is typical: "Recycled books may carry harmful germs from previous users," contended a father in southeastern Fuzhou City. "I prefer to pay for the new textbooks since they are not that expensive."

I know. I know. This from a country – despite its pending Olympic gloss and glory – still largely synonymous in many foreign minds with terms such as “SARS,” “bird flu,” “toxic pet food/dumplings,” “public spitting,” and “filthiest public toilets in the Third World.”

I wondered if this concerned father had, say, considered the school library or, even better, the actual cash he prefers to spend on hygienic textbooks. Pull it from your wallet, sir. Look at that wrinkled, smudged 20 or 10 or 100 yuan note. Consider how many fingers have handled it before you and where those digits were inserted before the money was passed to you … Now compare that to one schoolbook probably reluctantly opened and thumbed through by a single student as few times as possible.

What was the last school textbook transmitted disease anyway?

As someone who grew up with used textbooks from first grade through university the brouhaha is virtually incomprehensible to me. There was even a remote sense of archeological discovery where some of the previous owners had signed their names.

“The same book as Julie Worley’s older sister? Her fair hands actually touched these same pages! I will never wash mine again…”
“Rick Daily had this? He can read?”

I tried asking some Chinese colleagues about the issue and it was clear as one put it that it is also a “cultural issue.”
“We don’t like anything old or used,” he explained. “It means we are poor.”

“Yeah, maybe, I can sort of see that though it doesn’t bother me,” I said, absently mindedly fingering the 2-year-old patch on my 8-year-old jeans and wondering how I was going to make it the end of the month on 800 yuan. “What about the idea that it’s what’s inside the book is more important than what it looks like on the outside?”

Another Chinese coworker laughed. “If you could read what is inside our textbooks, perhaps you would agree that a pretty cover has more value.”

2008-03-03T03:14:00.000-08:00

Axis bold as love
It's been Commie manna from heaven since I've arrived in Beijing. In addition to almost stepping on the Cuban ambassador to China's shoes, I had my first face-to-face with real live North Koreans - one third of Geo W Bush's "Axis of Evil."

Portrayed largely in the news and travel accounts I've read as robotic American-loathing xenophobes it was at at the North Korean Haitanghua Pyongyang restaurant in Beijing where I learned if I couldn't paint the town red, at least I could paint it a tasteful beige. The invite came courtesy of a former Standard coworker, D, a British woman now working as freelancer based in Beijnig.

I was jazzed. Throwing diplomacy and common sense ot the wind, I donned my counterfeit Ralph Lauren stars and stripes shirt - usually reserved for July 4 - and after a convoluted taxi ride was deposited at the door of Pyongyang Lite. Outwardly it appeared to be like any other semi-upscale South Korean restaurant - no garish portraits of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, for example - though closer inspection of the water bottles revealed the contents were supposedly drawn from North Korea's near-mythical Baekdu Mountain, the same location that Dear Leader's father was allegedly born after a rainbow and swallows foretold his coming.

The waitresses all spoke fluent Chinese as well as very limited English ("thank you") but I compensated with my even more limited Korean. The Uncle Sam shirt did draw attention - though not hostile, merely curious. Upstairs were karaoke rooms where the women, all attractive and in their 20s, also entertained for higher fees.

According to an article in Asia Times Online the restaurants are a revenue source for North Korea and draw a mix of curious South Koreans as well as foreigners like us eager for a glimpse of a semi-forbidden culture. That night we only saw a happily drunk South Korean couple and occasional gaggles of badly dressed, hatchet faced North Korean businessmen and/or aparatchiks with DPRK flag lapel pins irregularly emerging from the upstairs karaoke dens. They gaped quickly at D, me and our two Aussie pals and kept walking as we all gaped back. The waitresses all went to "the finest universities in Pyongyang" - sort of like going to the best junior college in Hibbing, Minnesota? - and then are sent to China as entertainers and waitresses. A wise career move? But it ultimately beats starving in the North, I suppose.

Our Miss Kim, (left, in psuedo-air hostess uniform) told us she had one unspecified day off per week, liked to shop and had no cell phone. This after both D and I had asked for her number. In very bad Korean I told her she was pretty. In passable English she thanked me and then repeated that she had no phone. Get the message? Yes, we see. But she smiled graciously and I felt I'd accomplished, hell, maybe as much as the NY Phil and 6 party talks in reducing tensions. At least she didn't seem to think that all Americans were stone cold killers, merely harmless old goats in garish shirts.

2008-02-28T02:14:00.000-08:00

Unbearable lightness of Beijing
Whew, but it's good to be back home. Five days in Shenzhen's smog cooking for C while she was at work and generally hanging out was my initial reentry - an easy, welcome glide back into a better reality.

"That's very nice," she said contentedly as I diplomatically agreed to forgo viewing Apocalypse Now for the 187th time in favor of her watching Sleepless in Seattle for the 6th time. The things you do for love. Then on to Beijing where I'm more or less comfortably settled in a spacious company apartment, scarfing down commie party subsidized Chinese eats at the danwei (work unit) cafeteria - spicy garlic shrimp, pork ribs, rice and spinach tonight - and meeting new expats whose idea of a good time isn't getting wicked drunk and blitzing around nude on a motorbike.

I like what little I've seen of Beijing so far. Unlike Shenzhen's Blade Runner glitz the area I'm in reminds me some of tiny bits of Brooklyn, not all brownstones and charm but settled, bricked and humming comfortably. I've had twi diverse surprises. The first was literally bumping into the Cuban ambassador to China, Carlos Miguel Pereira Hernandez, in the company elevator.

"Congratulations on Raul, sir," I said slavishly after apologizing for nearly stomping on on his mirror bright black shoes. A name tag for a press conference he and a couple other diplomats were attending here identified him. I've never met a Cuban diplomat before - the closest I've come was my high school Spanish teacher and cross country coach who was a Cuban refugee with dark, bitter connections to the Bay of Pigs, or so he inferred at the time.

"Thank you," the Marxist plenipotentiary to China replied before asking me where I was from. This gave me pause, US relations being what they are with Cuba. I chose to hedge my reply.

"Norte Americano, senior," I said brightly, "A little pueblo called Boulder," - inferring, maybe, possibly Canada - is there a Boulder in Canada ? - before deftly stepping off one floor before my designated exit.

The other was more personal, file it in the small world category. Turns out one of my new foreign barbarian coworkers graduated from CU two years before me and knew several of my old buds at the Rocky Mountain News, including an unforgettable character and columnist named Gary Massaro (he's the guy pictured in the Che beret, not the ambassador). The Gary Massaro Experience is hard to define but it makes me smile even more than 10 years since I last basked in it.

I rolled Massaro's name around on my tongue while grinning like a brain spazzed idjit. "Ah Massaro, Massaro. Damn, yes, he's still writing his 'Gary's People' column I believe," I told my new buddy as we bonded over Buffs football and Massaro lore. "He's a legend. Now even in Beijing. As he so deserves to be."

2008-02-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

Time of Your Life

Well, yeah...another abrupt departure from one foreign clime for another. This time the plan is to relocate suddenly from Hua Hin's balmy 80 degree seaside skies to Beijing's 20-degree polluted muck and teeming masses. "It's like you've been planning a prison break," one coworker said. Indeed. The details of getting out have been complicated. Normally, I'd feel kinda squeamish (or perhaps squeamishier ?) about pulling what they call a "runner" here but I firmly believe a jury of my peers who have worked for this outfit would not convict me.

I'll be in Beijing for the Olympics which could be excellent, I'll be in the same country as C and we're hoping she can move up north so we're together again in the same domicile.

I leave behind the usual bag of mixed feelings. Good friends I've had, good friends I've lost along the way, etc. but mostly I've been missing C too awfully much and for some reason China also, as chaotic as it is. "Heaven ain't bad," to quote Townes Van Zandt, "But you don't get nothing done" - which sums up Hua Hin on a good day.

On the getting something done side I've lined one young Thai woman who was working at Faulty Towers up with another better job opportunity, so I feel I've done my small part for US-Thai Foreign Relations besides filling the bar and sidewalk meal vendor coffers with baht.

On a bad night it's been getting worse to the point that I genuinely fear for one pal's life and have quit hanging out in general after about 9pm, preferring to retreat to my Apocalypse Now style suite and read rather than watch him ride his motorbike nude through a stack of Thai delivery pizzas. ("By their dead you shall know them...by the trail of smashed pizza boxes, also") I wish him well but don't really wanna be here when the hammer finally falls.

A new blog to be determined later. Catchy titles incorporating "Beijing" anyone? I'm running on empty with that one. Suggestions appreciated.

2008-01-26T02:33:00.000-08:00

Road Runner

"I flunked my Thai written driving test today," T, one of my coworkers confessed early Friday evening. It was beer o' clock and we were bitching about work at "Eva's Krug", a small homemade Swedish beer and food garden of sorts very close to work. "Eva" is the Thai wife of the Swedish owner who has retired here on generous Swedish medical pension for a "bad, oh, very! bad back" to grow a stringy blond ponytail, wrap himself in sarong and cook Scandinavian noodles and offal in thick sauces with 17 syllable names for other Swedes who can find the place. Though we are non-Nordic interlopers, we are tolerated because of beer o' clock Fridays.

Flunking a Thai driving test would seem impossible. Though the Thai drivers are nominally more skilled and more disciplined than say, mainland Chinese motorists or a 10 year Congolese child soldier on crank, they aren't up there with the automotive greats, like, oh perhaps, Bobo the Circus Bear Scooter King.

Being callous wannabe Alpha males on beer we hooted. "Sign him up for the Thai Expat Hall of Shame!" I suggested. "Along with K." K is not a coworker, but an English expat with no visible means of support, a Thai wife and bad alcohol habit who recently gained local ignoble status by having the bejeebus kicked outta him by a "katoi" or ladyboy whose new breast job he'd foolishly derided.

T took our taunts well, though and began describing the test questions. There were 28 (in English) and he had to answer 24 correctly to pass. He'd missed five however and described several of them.

"One asked which vehicle is illegal to drive on the road. 1: A farm vehicle. 2. A vehicle with no windshield. 3. A stolen vehicle 4. A tank."

"So what'd you pick?"

"I see farm vehicles and cars with no windshields all the time. A stolen car is obviously a wrong answer. So I picked a tank."

We snorted again. He'd been here longer than several of us, is on his second Thai marriage, speaks semi-fluent Thai but even I knew that after something like 18 military coups since 1950something, it's obviously legal to take the wife and kids on a spin in the M60 Patton to Phuket or wherever the hell you want as long as it's not across the Burmese, Cambodian or Laotian borders. The right answer? No windshield.

What else? "This one even you guys would miss, I think. 'When is it illegal to drive? 1. After consuming alcohol. 2. When you are speeding. 3. As you are having a heart attack and going to hospital.' "

Like him, we assumed alcohol. No. If you believe the test you can get blind drunk and speed - but don't do it during cardiac arrest or you'll be under arrest.

His wife had joined us and laughed when we told her why we were messing with him. She'd taken the test too and had passed with only one wrong answer. We asked how she knew the tank answer was correct. "So many tanks, so many governments," she said. "Tank is law. Can drive anywhere no problem."

2008-01-11T01:11:00.000-08:00

Milk Cow Boogie

"I gotta run," said a new coworker, an American guy recently arrived from Cambodia. "Gotta send some money to my girlfriend." We were on the patio of our rented office - an older, cool home in a residential soi of Hua Hin. It was about an hour til quitting time Friday afternoon, another slow, warm and soporific kinda day. I was taking a smoke break between editing the usual titillating stories about aluminum production and sales lawsuits involving Norway, Russia and one of the 'Stanizan countries.

Either that or something filed by a breathless Indian freelancer on an obscure provincial clash between rival political factions in which only surnames and initials were used and that ended with an obscure joke made by a "puckish wag" from Uttar Pradesh about a "rascal" from Uttarakhand. Ha. Ha. Jolly, jolly!

"What's the emergency?" I asked. "The bank is closed. Do they have Western Union in Cambodia?"

They do, he said. But, you see, he had to wire her money immediately so his girlfriend could buy a cow for her mother. Now. At the Phnom Penh airport.

I had one of those "I've been overseas too long" moments when I realized that it seemed perfectly normal for a coworker to leave the office early to wire money to his girlfriend so she could buy a cow for her mother at an airport. And I thought I was on the cutting edge of exotic girlfriend gift fulfillment territory when I bought several grams of birds nest for C's grandfather at a Hong Kong Chinese pharmacy...but a cow. This was a whole new zone. I tried to imagine buying a cow for either of my ex-mothers in law or C's mother. No. Especially Selma, my West Hartford, Connecticut Jewish ex-mother in law.

"You know," I said. "You'll need your passport." Western Union - and banks here - won't wire money elsewhere for foreigners without passport ID.

"Shit," he said. "It's at home." His place is about 10 kilometers from the office and , like me, he walks or uses motorbike taxis. He sighed. "She'll think I'm not sending the money now cuz I don't love her."

"Relax," I said. "Cows don't spoil overnight. Text message her. Tell her you'll send it tomorrow. The cow will keep. It's not every guy who gets to buy a cow for his girlfriend's mother, you know. Savor the moment."