Posts (page 2)

The Chinese calendar is based on the moon, but a lunar month stands at 29.5 days, slightly shorter than a month of the solar variety.  Does this slightest of discrepancies gum up the clockwork over time?  You bet.

So, they slip in an extra month every so often to make up for lost time.  Sly dogs.  And to think that you Western leap years only have an extra day!  You guys are puny.  Chinese leap years probably whirlied you in high school.

This year is one of those years that will have TWO Chinese new years.  The next one won’t have any.  The kicker is that Chinese people are so superstitious, they are rushing to get hitched this year for double the karmic donuts.  The next, pastry-less year is absolutely to be avoided.  So powerful is this dogma that it forces stores everywhere to strategize around it.

You might have heard that the Chinese market is tricky to newcomers.  This here’s a prime example.  How easy would it be for an unwitting bridal shop to enter the market next year and flop ?

This gem just in from the daily clippings:

"Flying egg" beats down female staff at Auchan.

Yesterday afternoon, Auchan’s Zhongyuan store performed a "flying duck egg" drama. Miss Tong, a passer-by staff was hit by a box of duck eggs and went in coma. The one who caused the injury was one of the sales promoters from the supplier. These two sales promoters were arguing and throwing egg at each other at that time; the female victim suffered skin cut and swell at the back of her head.

This entry had to come sooner or later.  It’s about the proverbial elephant in the room.

To a large minority of the locals here: You guys are assholes.

Thank you, ladies on the street corner, for waking me up with your high-pitched screeching.  I never knew wrath could pierce those high notes or waft as high as the eleventh story.  The content of your argument could not be more trivial.  Stop hitting each other.  See a counselor.

Thank you, subway brats, for forcing your way into the subway car before its occupants get out.  It’s uncivilized when there are empty seats to be competed for.  It’s dribble-running-down-the-chin, beany-wearing idiocy when there aren’t.  Next time, do us all a favor and force your way through those guard doors even earlier, like before the train pulls up to the podium.

Thank you, street vendor, for glaring and pointing randomly when I ask you for directions.  I could understand the hostility if you were down on your luck, but I just saw you hooting and hollering with your buddies.  I can’t believe I thought you were pointing meaningfully.  You’re an abomination of human reproduction.  The next time I encounter your unheathen ilk, I will bitch slap them where they stand, even as their deceitful pointer fingers remain extended.

Thank you, old dude, for saying to your daughter, “I don’t understand, why would you bother to go out of your way to help other people?”  I cry for you.  I cry for the circumstances that made you this way.  Every time you draw breath, a fairy dies.

Thank you, drunken hotel guest, for screaming “服务员 (Hey room attendant)!” at me while I was waiting for the elevator.  I didn’t think you were talking to me, so I didn’t turn to face you.  You then took the liberty of getting right in my face and bitching me out in your local dialect.  Your bespectacled friend had the common sense to realize that hotel employees don’t wear jeans and green t-shirts; that’s why he was tugging nervously at your shoulder.  No one likes you.  Return to the butt that spawned you.

All Chinabound flower children, wear a raincoat and grow your hide a little thicker.  There's a chance of acid showers.  Stay sweet, even though the mojo's a little sour.

A timid young woman enters the subway car.  Her eyes scan the walls frantically for a map.  She turns timidly to the old man sitting beside her.

“Excuse me, I’m so sorry.  I want to get to the People’s Square.  Is this the right train?” she squeaks.

“Of course not!  Are you stupid?!” the man squawks smugly with his arms firmly crossed.  “This is line 4.  Line 4 goes in a circle around the city.  The People’s Square is in the dead center of town.”

“Oh… I’m so sorry.”

“The People’s Square, hah.  Only Line 1 and Line 2 get to the People’s Square.  Are you some kind of outsider?”

The girl runs off the train as the old man watches, an amused smirk on his face.  I’m headed to the People’s Square as well, but I could have sworn this was the right train.  Should I jump ship too?  A fat piggy in his twenties sticks his head out the door.

“Miss!  Come back!  This is the right train.”

It’s too late.  The girl is out of earshot.  The wrath of Zeus possesses him as he turns lividly towards the old man.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“She doesn’t even know that Line 4 doesn’t go to the People’s Square!  It’s line 1 or 2!”

“Line 4 is the only way to transfer to lines 1 and 2 from here!”

“So?  That’s not my problem.”

“Why’d you let her get off the train?!”

“I didn’t tell her to get off the train.”

“You should have stopped her, you stupid old goat.”

The young man dashes off the car.  Fortunately we’re at the starting terminus of the fourth line and the train’s thrown anchor for the moment.  He returns thirty seconds later with the young lady in tow.  Never a nobler deed have I seen on the subway.

There is altruism in Shanghai.  A girl silently picks up litter while she waits at the bus stop.  A janitor overhears that I’m looking for a gym and draws me a map.  Cops are incredibly civil, even when awarding traffic tickets.  Of course, benevolence flows freely among acquaintances.  I’ve been suctioning free rides and local advice off my friend Lei like a remora on a filet mignon.

It is much rarer to see altruism extended towards strangers.  Confronting an idiot on the subway and chasing after a lost woman takes guts.  When you see these acts of kindness you drink them in.  If you don’t, the negative juju will crack your spirit.  But that's for another post.

I am the ugliest duckling in the retail pond.  I’m not so sure if I’ll become a swan.  I’ll be happy if I turn into some kind of fluffy chicken.

Every aspect of my personality is being challenged; I could not have picked a job more opposite than the previous.

Where once my face was soldered squarely to a monitor, it is now in discussions with business partners and consultants.  I have to be socially sharp.  I have to be charming.  I must shine the conversation to a scintillating sheen.

In tech the grunts hold the exclusive keys to certain knowledge, so there are many times when they run the show while the managers take notes.  Here, it’s pretty obvious who plays pitcher.  They’re the ones doing the screaming.

In IT, salesmen would tell lies that we’d have to cover for.  Clients came in all the time with must-fix issues.  An endless stream of tasks came cascading ever downwards like a waterfall that had bad TexMex for lunch.

FroggyMart, on the other hand, doesn’t give me shit to do.  I don’t have any fires to put out; in fact, it is my explicit duty to start some constructive ones so we can have some innovative competitive advantages.  I have to be downright solicitous if I don’t want to shrivel up and die.

Wow!  When’s the last time you heard of a solicitous techie?  I wonder what this place will do to my personality.

The locals don’t seem to have any sense of ownership of the maglev here.  I even met one who had no idea it existed! 
Maybe that's because the Germans built it.

Or it's because most locals have never taken it.  It may be fast, but it’s a simple two-stop gig from the dingleberry of Shanghai to the airport, which most of them will never have the luxury of needing.  The kicker is that it’s just as expensive to go by taxi, so you may as well stash your jank in the trunk and laugh all the way to the bank.  You can pity the overburdened donkeys who weave their way through subway transfers, baggage in tow.

But do take the maglev if you get the chance.  Banked turns thirty feet off the ground will suck the adrenaline out of your glands.  Opposing trains will woosh by at a relative velocity nearing that of sound.  That red LED odometer, spiraling ever upwards towards unbelievable heights, is borderline erotic.

Just know that the maglev is more like a Disneyland ride for foreigners than a true means of local transportation.  In fact, Siemens has lost major kuai on the maglev since it opened, thanks to low ticket sales and many unforeseen technical issues.

China was taking careful notes during the construction of the first maglev.  Now they're kicking Siemens out and tackling the next maglev solo.  How sheisty is that?  I love it.

Oh Shanghai.  Thou art fully modern.  When the hell are you going to popularize personal checking.

I put down a deposit on my apartment today, equivalent to two-months of rent, IN CASH.  The highest paper denomination here is the equivalent of a twelve-dollar bill.

So there I was, withdrawing money five times from two different ATMs over the course of two days, nervously stuffing wads of redback into my laptop bag while people in line eyeballed me suspiciously.

Do you have any idea what it feels like, going down the street with that much loot on you?  Do you have any idea how many times I glanced nervously at my bag during soccer practice last night?

And here I am now, at a private, pre-arranged location, opening a briefcase with close to 150 Chinese Benjamins for you, my landlord, to count one by one.  How illicit does this feel?  I don’t know whether to expect your signature on the lease or a gunnysack of cocaine, fished out of your pajama pants.

It’s Max!  It’s 林立丰!  It’s the international super-spy, master of disguise!  Is he Chinese?  Japanese?  Mauritian?  Martian?  Nobody knows!

He likes to stand innocuously at the street corner, blending in with his fellow Chinese.  They all look like innocent, law-abiding pistachios, but only he knows that underneath his pistachio shell… lies a cashew!  Not pistachio!

It is too fun!

Sometimes he encounters lost Mexican tourists on the subway.  They discuss their plight and scratch their heads.  All hope is lost.  They beckon to the friendly local in the green t-shirt and pantomime their woes with the aid of the subway map.  Out of this stranger come instructions in fluent Spanish!  They are surprised!  They are astounded!  Their mouths are shaped like little Os!

Surprise!

A young man orders a chicken sandwich.  The Burger King lady asks if he wants the value meal.  The young man has never heard the phrase “value meal” in Chinese before.  He stares at her with big dinner-plate eyes.  Is he still deciding?  Did he not hear her?  Is he Korean?  Is he having a stroke?

Who knows?!

*Chorus*
ABC Man, ABC Man,
American Born Cashew man,
Goes wherever the Chinese can…

We’re having dinner at a fine restaurant.   Nearby, a woman gives an old acquaintance a hearty greeting.  She pauses for a bit and sniffs the air, like a wolf on a scent.  Her eyes turn to steel and she turns on the poor man.

“Are you fooling around on your wife?”

The man hesitates for a split second.  Too late to bluff, he decides to raise the ante.

“Yeah.  She’s a great gal.  Would you like to meet her?”

“No, sorry.  That’s for you to deal with,” she laughs.

They carry on like old friends.  She’s not going to judge him, but she won’t be his accomplice in crime either.

“How did you know?” asks the man.

“This is the fifth, maybe sixth time you’ve come to Shanghai this year?   You have some business being here.  But not that much business.”

If it’s so plainly visible to a friend, it must be stark as daylight to his wife.  As we feast on pepper shrimp and melon soup, I imagine a middle aged woman picking up her kids from school in some distant Chinese city, trying to preserve her dignity between politically aimed smiles.

And if the statistics are right, that’s the fate of more than half of you out there.  I can bet a random woman on the street that her husband’s dallying with the daffodils and come out with even odds.  If she’s well-educated, my odds are even better.  Victims and perpetrators, half the lot of you.  Should you just forgive your future spouses now, before you know their identities?  Should you just forgive yourselves now, knowing what nature has programmed you to do?

I look at picture of myself with my girlfriend.  No one thinks they’re going to cheat when they’re honeymooning at 24.  I’m armed to the teeth with moral conviction and a desire to protect.  So is she.  Do we get a “Get Out of Fate Free” card?  Or do we have to toss the coin just like everyone else?

In Shanghai you can drink life straight from the fire hose.  People vent all kinds of emotion freely.  Laissez fair is the default rule on the streets.  China does not traipse around people’s sensitivities.

Shanghai’s disfigured frequent subway cars, advancing from individual to individual, rattling coins in a plastic cup which they hold in their one good hand.  Some commuters drop coin, others just shake their heads.  When it’s safe, they all steal glances at the beggar’s mangled form.

Fate is cruel.  This fact isn’t so visible in the States, but in China people will make pornography of their own birth defects for profit.  It makes sense on the rawest strategic level, right?  And so it is happens freely here, where social correctness holds no water.

I drop a coin into the boy’s mutilated hand, but I can’t bear to look at his face.  Half of it is burnt away.  I wonder why I give so freely to him when I resisted the bums in Harvard Square so adamantly.

Is it inconsistent to give to some beggars and not others?  Is it important to form a principle about whether you will give, or if you will not?  And if you will only give sometimes, under what conditions will you do it?

Maybe you have taken time to answer these exact questions.  But even if you do encase yourself in hardened moral armor for your next bum encounter, you may find it is as imaginary and irrelevant as the ambiguous philosophical ether you forged it in.  Maybe you’ll decide to give, but your next beggar will have an undue sense of entitlement that just burns your socks off.   Or maybe you’ll decide not to give, and you’ll meet a beggar like the ones I see on the subway.  You’ll gaze into the face of the dying and lose all reason before the visage of primal reality.