China Segment

My wife got the idea a few weeks back to check out a Shanghai Sharks game this season. I hadn’t been to a basketball game here in probably five years. The buddies I went with before have long since left China, and I guess I just never paid much attention to the local Chinese Basketball Association.

However, things have changed. The hapless Sharks of five years ago are now a strong team with super-charged fans. We went last Friday night, and though it was just a regular season matchup with Tianjin, the fans were pumped. They played Queen’s “We Will Rock You” twice before the game even started! There were quite a few scalpers outside, and only about 50 or so empty seats during the game. Cheer leaders fed the frenzy, and volunteers gave out inflatable batons that people whacked together to make some seriously loud crowd noise.

The venue itself has changed since I last saw a game, as has the team. The Sharks now roam Pudong, which I took as a bad sign at first. Banished to Pudong? That can’t be good. Nevertheless, with a relatively new arena right next to a football stadium, the team’s (relatively) new diggs are pretty decent. It’s a lot brighter inside than the old crap-factory Shanghai gymnasium that they used to play in. I remember a rather dull facility with people dressed like they were attending a politburo meeting. The crowd cheered, but the team sucked. Quite a few seats were empty. Now however, the fans are young and ready to make some noise, and the arena’s atmosphere is much better.

The seating is typical in that there is absolutely no legroom, quite similar to the buses in Shanghai, but it’s really like stadium seating with each row a lot higher than the previous one, so unless you’re behind Yao (an owner of the team now), you’ve got a good view. Curiously there are few seats at the ends of the court, and the ones they have are quite a ways back from the action. In case you’re wondering, the Shark Tank (they don’t call it that, but they should… not sure if they know about the San Jose Sharks), is nominally named 源深体育馆, Yuanshen Arena. Though officially located on Yuanshen Road, it’s actually on 桃林路, Taolin Road. I guess they state it that way so that everyone knows to go to Yuanshen Road station (line 6 just one stop from Century Avenue) in order to get there. Take exit 3 and turn right, and follow the crowds and scalpers.

The Sharks are having a successful season so far. The key reason why are three foreigners on the team and a couple of hot-shooting local boys. John Lucas (#1), a smooth shooting guard is the key to the offence, along with #33 Garret Siler, who gets down low, powers his way through the post, and loves to dunk. #23 Zaid Abbas is another fantastic player who does the rebounding, hustle work and defense. He was in foul trouble the game we watched, but has all the fundamentals. The local Chinese on the team are a mixed bunch. A couple had moves, and two or three can really shoot, but there were some rather lame players as well. #5 Meng Lingyuan 孟令源 (a starter for some reason?) can’t shoot at all and was playing rather dirty the other night, including a completely fake flop during a dead ball situation. #3 Yan Xingshu 颜行书 from Taiwan drew laughs from the crowd for passing the ball away when completely free in the key twice, and for his awful free-throw shooting, despite the two girls behind us gushing over his looks. All told however, they’re a good team.

The Sharks are not quite Sharks, however. Their new team name is 上海玛吉斯, Shanghai Majisi, which is the name of some Thai company that either owns most of the team or has some sort of sponsorship deal. (Online websites have conflicting claims over whether Yao owns the team or only a part of it.) It’s rather lame hearing the announcer chant “Ma-Ji-Si, Ma-Ji-Si” while the mascots are still sharks, and the team logo says ’sharks.’ Actually that was one of the stranger features of the CBA game. After a player scores, the announcer tries to lead the crowd in a short little chant of their name (surnames in the case of foreign talent, full names for Chinese). I thought I heard him make a sort of choking noise before a Tianjin player took a free throw. And quite often during play he was leading the chants of defense. Odd, but it kept the crowd rocking.

The Sharks dominated almost from the start and it was clear that their big men are very good, at least the starters anyway. However, aside from Lucas, they really have nothing going on at guard. He was on a roll and eventually scored over 30, but the Sharks wouldn’t have much bite if he ever got into foul trouble.

It was a good time, and worth the 40 kuai for our second-cheapest-class tickets. Not many home games left in the season, but we’ll try to go back for another.

Feds

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With the Expo looming (85 days on the sign I saw today), the construction that has consumed most of this fair city will soon cease. The air will clear up a bit, spring winds will come forth, and for about seven months between May and October Shanghai may actually become a livable city.

I think the climax of the construction must have happened around October or November. Since then many major projects have wrapped up or are in the finishing stages. Make no mistake; there is still a heck of a lot of work being done to roads, subways, new buildings, landscapes, etc. Everywhere the air is full of particulates not just from cars, but from cutting metal, plastic and glass, dust from cement mixers and sulfur from welding torches. Everywhere I go I can smell something in the air, and it’s not sweet spring dew drops. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost a year of my life having lived through some of this city’s worst growing pains since October 2003. My lungs have taken in awful quantities of construction-related pollution that this city has never bothered to admit is a problem. Nonetheless, I chose to be here, so I’ll have to live with it. But when people ask me if I would stay here and have a child, my answer is more than easy. Same reason I won’t have one in Mexico City or Cairo.

Shanghai will still have more and more re-development which means more construction. I call it redevelopment simply because most of the construction going on is the replacement of older housing stock with newer apartment towers. Unfortunately a great deal of what I see being built, to this day, are low-quality housing that is nothing but concrete, often not reinforced (as some designers recently told me). These buildings are meant to last 20 or 30 years, when they’ll be torn down and a newer, more modern building will be put up. (I’ve mentioned something like this before.) It’s extremely inefficient, but perhaps necessitated by Beijing’s (and Shanghai’s) promises of growth and quick results.

The good news is things will get better, and it’s already started. Even if it all revs up again after the Expo moves on to the next location, it’ll never be this bad again. I hope. I for one am glad the construction climax seems to have passed and am already enjoying small slices of quietude on a few streets here and there. Usually Spring Festival is a great to time be in Shanghai (save tourist and shopping hot spots like Nanjing Road and The Bund) because it empties out. There are about six million workers in Shanghai who were born somewhere else, and most of them go back home for the holiday. I’m not sure if some high-priority projects that are behind schedule will continue to be worked on during CNY, but if they’re important enough they might. Regardless, it should be a good time to walk around and begin to relish my last months living in this wonderful city. I’ve already been taking advantage of some of the new subway lines (numbers 7 and 9 pass nearby the official residence of China Segment) and the added green space may actually start helping my poor, damaged lungs.

Happy to be in Shanghai (despite my many posts cursing it),

Feds

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Just out for a stroll in pajamas.

The eternal debate about why Shanghai residents wear pajamas outdoors continues unabated… many of us have given up asking, but every new foreigner to Shanghai thinks they have it figured out. I’ve asked many locals and they seem to have different answers. I think I’ve seen it in other cities, but I’ve also been told it’s a fairly local phenomenon. Send word if you’re getting the jammie show in another city (or country).

Let’s run down the possibilities as to why people in Shanghai wear pajamas. Many of the following answers contradict each other, while others could overlap. I personally don’t support any of them. In no particular order:

-no money for more clothes, also leading to the habit of many Shanghainese to where the same outfit two or three days in a row before washing them
-with a large migrant population, the locals want to express that this is their ‘hood; it’s gang colors, pajama style
-laziness, as in too lazy to change… yet a vast majority of the time they’re wearing underwear beneath, and in the winter, long johns and what look like sweaters under the jam jams…so…
-laziness again, as in too lazy to do a load (laundry)
-they’re thinking of pajamas as just any other form of clothes, despite the Chinese word 睡衣, shuĭyī, which literally means ’sleep clothes’)
-fashion statement
-a lack of self-awareness when it comes to looks
-comfort
-a shout out to the world, ‘I can do what I want!’

Regardless of the reason, wearing pajamas in public certainly sends a message to other people. As a Canadian, I generally see it in a negative light. The only people I’d see doing something similar back home were students on campus, and it wasn’t exactly silk, polka-dotted stuff. Pajamas are for sleeping in, and that’s it. I’m assuming that people who wear them outdoors also lay around the house in the same way. It doesn’t seem as if a person is a productive type when they can’t be bothered to put on something else. And in a country where tops and pants can be purchased for 20 rmb, the lack of clothes argument doesn’t really work. Of course Chinese people see it in a different light, and some of the above reasons are ones that have been mentioned to me. Some are embarrassed by it, some don’t care, and some do it themselves. I guess it’s just another example of how the stodgy, proper British gentleman of Holmes’ day would be shocked at how care-free and comfortable the Chinese can be and how they present themselves to the world. Their norms are different from the Anglo ones I’ve inherited.

Feds

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So I finally went to see a crosstalk (相声) performance a couple weekends ago. Let’s just say it was entertaining for those in the audience who are native Mandarin speakers, hilarious for those who understand Shandongnese (山东话), and not so hot for the dumb laowai who got dragged there by his wife.

I did understand about 50% of one act, but otherwise was pretty clueless. So I focused (between day dreams) on their body language, the rhythm of their art, and the surrounding atmosphere.

It was typically Chinese. Or, let’s say, far more Chinese than going to watch a movie at a cinema. The theater we went to is 乡音书院 on Nanjing West Road near Shimen Road, down a small lane. It’s not grandiose, and as soon as you step inside what looks like a normal sort of old building, you’re at the back row of seats. Outside food is allowed and even encouraged since there are little arm tables between every two seats. The crowd munched on sunflower and watermelon seeds and sipped on tea for at least the first half of the performance. The rooms smelled of the seeds, and the last 45 minutes saw a lot of people going to the bathroom on the left side just beyond a curtain. Cell phones rang and people answered or excused themselves, and messages were sent. It was so much more relaxed than the nazi-run movie theaters where nothing is allowed to interfere with enjoyment of the movie. (I criticize but do prefer that style.) This was what I feel to be Chinese style relaxation and entertainment, full of food and drink, sounds and distractions, and comfort (except for the relatively hard seats). It’s the complete opposite of spartan, disciplined Anglo-Saxons sitting with correct posture, denying themselves food, and never speaking a word, while clapping at the appropriate times and in the prescribed form.

On the other hand, about 30 minutes into it, the dildo sitting beside me opened up a package of duck neck (鸭脖) and proceeded to noisily chow down on it for the next hour or so. What the fuck? I hate the smell of duck neck. What’s the thought process connecting performance art and neck eating? Or would he and his girlfriend necking have been worse? No, the necking wouldn’t have diffused into my nostrils, while his love-making to that duck neck did.

The performance itself was mixed. There were three solo performers who came out and did storytelling, timed against a beat they created with wooden blocks that they would rattle together. Anyone know what those things are called? Anyway, one old guy even did his in Shandongnese, so most of the audience didn’t understand it. About three people laughed on occasion, but I’m sure most people drifted off into dreamland as I did. Apparently crosstalk used to be a solo thing and then developed into a team comedy. The solo guys alternated with crosstalk teams of two men, each doing about a 15-minute bit. They seemed to all work with the same formula of one main speaker or protagonist, with another as a foil or questioner. The lead would speak his points while the other (sometimes acting dumb, other times ruefully inciting the other) asked, answered or prodded on with short comments like “yes,” “of course,” “why,” “no way,” etc. (是的， 当然， 为什么， 不可能， 等等) The main speaker made outrageous claims or told funny stories about different people with the assistance of his sidekick.

I have to say that my wife and her friends enjoyed most of the show and had a good time. I survived and lived to tell the story of it. I thought it was very interesting, particularly the fast rhythm and teamwork between the comedians. As a Canadian I suppose I should mention that Dashan does crosstalk, but I’ve never seen him perform. It reminded me of course of Abbott and Costello and others comedy teams, but of course with the uniqueness of China. And these guys never got rattled! People in the audience left for the bathroom, answered phones, ate, and sometimes even made comments. One boy about ten years of age was quite excited by the whole thing and kept adding lines of his own to what the comics on stage were saying. Without breaking their timing, one of them shot back a funny comment meant to get a laugh while dissuading the boy from continuing. It worked. I’m sure they’d dealt with tougher situations before with hecklers but it was neat to see how they took it all in stride.

Anyway, if your Chinese is really good, check it out. Can’t hurt. Tickets were 35 yuan a piece. Otherwise, maybe just check it out on TV. And don’t forget BYODN: bring your own duck neck.

Feds

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The other night I was teaching at a company whose offices are on the 9th floor of a building. We finished up at around 7:30 pm. This being a formerly state-owned company, everyone had long since cleared out and gone home. Likewise for most of the other offices in that building except for a bar/KTV club that operates a few floors above. When we went to exit, we found the doors leading to the elevators and stair wells locked from the inside (both being located in the center of the building, with offices occupying a ring around them). No one had any sort of keys, and besides, we were on the wrong side of the locks. The security guards (保安) had come and locked up as per their usual routine, not hearing us as we were far off in a room with the door closed. One of the staff called down to the front desk and the guy came up quickly, apologizing, but saying he saw no one around and didn’t hear us.

An easy mistake, to be sure. But I wondered what we’d have done if there had been a fire. And how many other office buildings are like that, with locks that security personnel are responsible for but that regular staff cannot use. The newest nicest places all have key cards, but those kinds of buildings are few in Shanghai, and surely many cities in China do not have them. I can see why things needed to be locked up, and especially with a bar in located in the same building. But being trapped inside an office tower didn’t exactly sit right with me. The North American in me though of law suits. The Westerner thought of ’safety first.’ The Chinese influence on me thought that it was a perfectly fine system, just administered wrongly by the guard. It happened the next week as well. Obviously the system needs a bit of re-thinking.

It reminded me of other places I’ve worked where the company was located on one floor, but rented some space on another. To save time (elevators are hideously slow in Shanghai) I would take the stairs, but often the doors to the other floor would be locked, in the middle of the day, so no one could get in from the stairs. Being a firefighter would have to be a really frustrating job in this country. Fire doors are routinely blocked or propped open. Most buildings (including those in my in-laws’ brand new apartment compound) do not have sprinklers or smoke detectors. Commercial buildings, oddly, are better equipped that residential buildings with these ‘modern’ features, along with fire extinguishers and axes. Better to save money and records than families and memories.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen any extinguishers or axes in my 20-year-old apartment building. Nor sprinklers, smoke detectors or fire alarms. Makes me all the more scared that they just changed the building over to natural gas. (It’s not the gas that scares me but the workmanship on the pipes, etc.) We actually have a pipe that simply sticks out of our apartment into the hallway for the fumes from burnt gas to vent out. Mandated by the gas company in fact. Nice, fresh source of carbon monoxide. Mmm, fresh CO. The hallway is on the outside of the building (as are many in non-centrally heated Shanghai buildings) and the windows are always open, winter or summer. A rainy day, however, might be a good time to avoid breathing in to deeply if someone goes to close all of them. Smells, air and noise seep through the cracks around our door, windows and old oven vent quite easily. Never even heard of house insurance in China, though if we were going to be here longer I’d be looking in to it. Glad I’m moving out in 6 months.

Filed under ‘unsafe’ tag.

Feds

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Well it’s been a few years and my stomach seems to have developed a fierce fortitude to most of what Chinese food will offer. But that didn’t stop me from getting violently sick in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Me, the official wife of China Segment, and some friends went to eat hot pot at Three Travelers’ Hotpot (三人行骨头王火锅). What the English name does not imply that the Chinese name states directly is that this place is the ‘King of Bones’. “What?,” you say? Simply put, the specialty is a massive hot pot that comes with a ton of pig leg bones, with part of the meat on them. Good for cooking soup, and certainly great for a hot pot broth. However, these bones are not just for stock. Straws are given in the napkin/wet hand towel/toothpick/chopstick set everyone gets in order for guests to suck out the bone marrow.

Now I had tried this once before, long ago, several subway lines ago in fact, when I had first come to Shanghai. Long ago enough that I’d forgotten what the taste was like. Forgettable I suppose. Since the others at our table were partaking (most were Chinese) and making many a joke about sucking and balls (we had a few meat balls in the pot as well) I figured I’d give it a try.

Yuck. Not for me. Something like I imagine old semen to taste like, except with less taste because it’d been boiled. Or slightly adhesive guck. It wasn’t horrible, nor was it anything I’d ever order intentionally again. So sucking one bone was enough for the night. The balls were better tasting frankly. Fill in your own jokes.

Anyway, by 3am I was feeling so woozy that I couldn’t sleep. I finally got up at 5:00 and threw up. With force. Then went back to bed, only to repeat on the hour about 4 times. I couldn’t sleep lying down because my stomach was so uncomfortable. I had to arrange pillows so I could sit up. By 8am or so it started to go out the other end. I was more or less either sleeping or expelling for half the day. When my stomach started to settle I began to drink more water and got out the 脉动, a sports drink in China that’s mostly water, but stocked with vitamins and sugar. I figured that was a good IV substitute. The wife was demanding I eat something and cooked me rice porridge but I waved her off for a few more hours. The bowels were quite upset and my abdominals hurt from puking. I ate a little bit of gruel later on and drank some apple juice. The next day, after going easy in the morning, I was already on to pizza for lunch. Not the best idea, but I needed something with flavor.

All in all a short, quick experience with food poisoning. I’m pretty damn sure it was the pig’s bone marrow, but perhaps I didn’t fully cook something else in the hot pot. One other guy got sick. I wouldn’t completely fault the restaurant, and it gets good reviews, but I won’t be going back for the memories any time soon. Shanghai has plenty of good restaurants. And street food, which apparently doesn’t make me sick.

Feds

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I may live to regret writing this, but I’m calling out the police of Shanghai, of all China. Everyday more people needlessly die in this country because the police do not enforce the law. Traffic accidents are easily preventable, yet they do nothing. Cars, motorcycles and pedestrians break laws right in front of law enforcement officers with no fear of the consequences. People who have no business driving a vehicle are given licenses. The result is that one of the safest societies in the world to live has become lined with scenes of death and injury. The police are negligent in their incomprehensible failure to stop this. They know their failure to act costs lives. I would have said they are criminally negligent except for the fact that the numbers of traffic accidents and related deaths has been going down by about 10% per year recently. The stats show improvement, but when I walk out the door and see flagrant violations of the law everywhere, people getting knocked to the ground, near crashes everywhere, I see senselessness.

China leads the world in traffic accidents and deaths. Of course it has the largest number of people in the world, but let’s face it – not everyone owns a car, and hundreds of millions in the countryside will never own a car or motorcycle. China admits up front that its death rate on roads is worse than anywhere else. Here are the numbers I dug up – if anyone has a place where they’ll all assembled neatly, please let me know.

2001: Accidents 754,919; Deaths 105,930
2002: Accidents 773,137; Deaths 109,381
2003: Accidents 667,507; Deaths 104,372
2004: Accidents 517,889; Deaths 107,077
2005: Accidents 450,254; Deaths 98,738
2006: Accidents 378,781; Deaths 89,455
2007: Accidents -around 320,000 Deaths 81,649
2008: Accidents 265,204; Deaths 73,484

In 2004 the WHO noted that 600 people died in China every day from traffic accidents, and an estimated 45,000 were injured daily. It was the leading cause of death for 15 to 45 year-olds. This doesn’t have to be so. According to the WHO: “Reducing road injury is not difficult… road crashes and injuries can be effectively prevented through implementing simple strategies such as safety belts for adults and children, legislating and enforcing speed limits and drink driving statutes, and increasing the visibility of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. (See here.)

To put some of this into perspective, in 2006 there were 89,445 deaths in China due to traffic accidents, while there were only 48,433 in the United States, where there are far more cars, though far fewer bicycles and scooters. The horrible flooding during 1998, a massive catastrophe in China, only caused 3,656 people to die. Yet every month far more people die needlessly from traffic accidents and it is not labeled a ‘catastrophe’ or ‘disaster’.

A study done in the journal Traffic Injury and Prevention claims in its abstract:
“There was an apparent increasing trend of traffic-related injuries in Shanghai from 1987 to 2003 with the rate of growth in motorization. The average rates of annual increase are 3.59% in fatalities (from 7.78 per 100,000 population to 14.18 per 100,000 population) during the period. Pedestrians were the most common type of victims (29.6%), followed by bicyclists (25.1%), and motorcyclists (24.1%).” This means that it’s insanely dangerous just to walk to the bus or ride your bicycle or motorcycle to the store. Combine this with construction sites and the danger from walking past them (from falling materials and the crap we have to breathe) and Shanghai starts looking worse than Johannesburg, Rio or Detroit. However, the study’s prediction that the trend would continue and the number of deaths and accidents would keep increasing has not come true. 2010 will be a safer year than 2003 even though there are more cars and more people in the same amount of space.

This past year the media in China focused on a two-month long campaign against drunk driving and overloaded trucks (yes, they still do mass campaigns in China), and recently the big issue has been large trucks such as cement mixers driving too fast, not shoulder checking and plowing into bicycles, cars, etc. That’s all well and good – these problems need to be fixed. Large vehicles think they own the road and unfortunately act like it. And drinking too much at dinners and then jumping into the car are maybe as common here as back in red-neck country. But these are still small parts of the larger issue. Driving skills in China are horribly low, driving culture is only in embryonic form, and the police, for the most part, stand idly by and watch the carnage.

The problem isn’t just cars. Actually they obey most ‘major’ traffic rules like stopping for red lights (though it varies). The worst drivers are those with motorcycles and scooters, and of course the notorious bicycles. All of them seem to figure they have their own laws. All three of them come up on to the sidewalks, and not just to park. They run red lights, go the wrong way down streets, use roads they’re forbidden to, never EVER yield to pedestrians, and generally make intersections a laughable sight. Stop lines mean nothing to them. It’s like some minister traveled to the West, saw these lines on the streets, ordered them to be painted on the roads in China, but forgot to explain to everyone what they meant. And seat belts? Only drivers seem to wear them. (And I remember when that was a new enforcement of an old law back in 2003.) Passengers rarely do, and many taxis don’t even make them available in the back seats. I’ve seen mothers with no seat belts on, holding their babies on their laps in the front seat - delusional, ignorant mothers who think that somehow in an accident they could actually protect their child. Instead they will crush it against the dash. Can’t we stop this?!

Pedestrians can be assholes in China too. They jaywalk constantly, and because of this Shanghai gives older people without work (laid off by state-owned companies when they were made private?) jobs as traffic assistants. Their job is to stop pedestrians from jaywalking, but also from standing in the bicycle and car lanes instead of the sidewalk. That’s right, the Chinese Cletus needs to be told to stand on the sidewalk. They literally stand two or three feet from the curb, impeding traffic and making vehicles swerve, particularly on roads like Beijing Road in Shanghai, where there is no bicycle lane or shoulder. ‘Peasants from the countryside,’ you say? No, no. Some of these people are young and educated. But true, the majority are scratching themselves, spitting, and picking their ears with their keys. It fits. But back to traffic.

China didn’t even have traffic laws until 2004. Until that time there were simply traffic regulations, said by Wikipedia to be vague with light punishments. Much of Chinese law until the 1980s and 90s was fuzzy until you dug into the regulations. But in 2004 the new Road Traffic Safety Law took effect. It is a modern law, modeled on those of other countries, with higher fines, point systems for drivers and compulsory vehicle insurance. It gives rights to pedestrians, as in almost all cases, an accident between a motor vehicle and a person is said to be the fault of the driver. It was a large step forward.

As for the right of way, the comments in Wikipedia almost made me laugh out loud – funny because it’s true I suppose. I’ll only quote that “most Chinese drivers’ understanding of this concept is markedly different from those in societies with a strong tradition of the rule of law.” This is a rather light assessment. Chinese drivers are generally selfish and inconsiderate, especially the older ones. They come from a generation of people who knew that if you weren’t first in line for food and waved you ticket or money in the face of those dispensing it, you might not get any. They are the same people who push to get on buses and simply don’t give regard to others in the way. This type of driving style naturally causes problems. Fortunately, younger people in China are generally not like this. They have much better driving manners and are likely to let you in if you’re trying to merge, or even stop to let pedestrians cross.

Also when an accident occurs, neither party will move their car. They stand and argue about who was wrong, then bargain on compensation. Mr. Wiki continues: “when a collision occurs between two vehicles it is almost always resolved by the payment of money by one party to the other on the spot, with or without any admission of fault. After initial indignation or recalcitrance, one or both parties will demand financial compensation. It is supposed that either party considers the socio-economic status and occupation of the other, and the desirability of saving face. Eventually one party will relent, and they will bargain down to an agreeable amount of compensation.” Foreigners in this kind of situation are at an extreme disadvantage, since they are assumed to be well-off, and also assumed to have little knowledge of Chinese law. Essentially a shake-down ensues, with the police often involved to get their share of the cut. This is why I don’t drive in China. All of this haggling can take time, and naturally for drivers in China, they have no regard for the traffic glutted behind them. The situation is getting better as police are encouraging drivers to take photos with their cell phones from various angles, then get the cars out the way if possible.

For a pretty good article on driving and owning a car in China, see here.

So what are the police doing to stop all of this nonsense? I see them sometimes giving out tickets, but more often than not it appears that the drivers are trying to talk their way out of it. Why would the cop even listen? You saw them breaking the law, most traffic laws are strict liability types, so give them the ticket and tell them to shut up. Most of the time I see police officers being reactive, not pro-active, excepting of course the recent campaign on alcohol and overloading, when they had checkpoints set up at various points of city. Maybe we need more police and fewer of the useless neighborhood security guys. Police are more expensive and need more training, to be sure. But we need people out there with authority, not those pathetic traffic assistants who have nothing more than a whistle. Those guys stop pedestrians from stepping off the curb, but don’t even blink as scooters race past through red lights.

I’d like to say that decent, strict, tough driving schools could be the answer. It would help with cars, particularly the new drivers who are so terrible and cause so many accidents. Hell, it would be nice if all drivers had to go through the whole program, instead of paying to get their license like a student of mine claimed she did several years ago. However, what about the bicycles and scooters that have no licenses and apparently need none? Everyone in China learns to ride bikes as kids, and they learn bad habits from their parents. They swerve into car lanes, don’t shoulder check and generally just get in peoples’ way (along with riding so slow I can almost walk as fast).

What is the solution? A total crackdown? Shanghai alone would need 100,000 cops on patrol to even try. I try to imagine early street scenes in America with drivers all over the place, poor roads, immigrants right of the boat walking down the middle of the street, horses, carriages and carts mixed in and I get a sense that things here in China can change too. But those anglo-gentlemanly manners the U.S. was initially blessed with are not present in China. It’s push-push, me first driving style. The typical response from locals is that “China/Shanghai has too many people. That’s why traffic is bad and we have so many accidents.” Bull. That excuse is used for every ill in the country. It’s lame and out of date. Shanghai has a state of the art road system that is constantly being upgraded. But I see roads like Hengshan Road where there are two lanes of traffic going both ways, no bicycles allowed, yet a lone rider goes on to the side of the road, then cars in the right-hand lane swerve around it into the left lane, the cars in the left lane swerve into the on-coming lane, and the on-coming traffic must squish together and try to avoid pedestrians errant kids running out on to the roads, drivers who stop suddenly or lane-surf. ARRggghh. It makes me grind my teeth just thinking about it.

More work needs to be done, and the police should be spearheading it. People need to be educated, no matter how stubborn they are or how much they protest. Enforce seat belt laws, have mandatory baby seats for young kids, enforce laws and regulations for bicycles and scooters. Enforce, enforce, enforce. China has enough laws. Time to fulfill of Jiang Zemin’s promises of the 1990s that China would be a country with the Rule of Law. I still don’t see it. I understand this is part of a larger quest in a country that very recently was ruled by whim. The police are up against hundreds of millions of people who either don’t know the laws or refuse to follow them. They need support, training and funding. But so far they’re dropping the ball.

I can’t stand it. I’m serious, I don’t want to be like Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” and suddenly lose it. I already walk through cross walks aware of scooters, bikes or motorcycles coming at me, yet I don’t give way like the other pedestrians if I have the right of way. I make them stop, then yell at them that they’ve got a red light. I’ve had a few bump into me, but nothing bad enough to injure me yet. I just don’t see how this can be happening all over the city non-stop. Where are the police? Get out of the dumpling shop 饺子店 any start policing!

Finally, I’m going to leave a link to another page on this website where I’ve copied the sections of China’s Road Traffic Safety laws that I think are most pertinent to the post here. There are interesting differences between the laws for motor vehicles, non-motor vehicles such as bicycles and scooters (defined in article 119), but many similarities. Essentially they all have to follow traffic lights. Wouldn’t know it from walking around on the streets, would you? Battery-powered bicycles (what I call scooters) are not to exceed 15 km/h (article 58). Haha to them, that’s awfully slow. There are many interesting provisions about accidents, liability, and the powers of police officers.

Drive safe, and keep that head on a swivel when you’re crossing the street. You can’t trust anyone to stop, no matter what the laws are, the sign says, or the light indicates.
Feds

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I guess I should comment on Kai En English Training School shutting down since I taught there for about four years. I knew the founders personally, and worked there both when it was small and the big schools like EF were just arriving, and later when it was on the way down.

So it’s toast, and while the end was sudden, perhaps with Brian leaving with his family in the middle of the night, the demise took about a year and a half. Sad thing, really. I think it comes down to the big schools moving in with large budgets, advertising like crazy and prepared to take losses. Small schools like Kai En can’t really compete with them. It had its niche, but even when it expanded from two to four schools the whole thing was botched, half-hazard, and quasi-legal. It had a decent teaching system, but never achieved its potential. FASHION

Ken and Steve had been out of the picture for a long time. They were on the board of directors and met once in a while about it, but essentially since the founding of Chinesepod, Kai En had become Brian’s own personal fief, which I’m sure is the way he liked it. But Brian rightly knew he wasn’t a businessman, and wanted a CEO to help grow the school and expand. Unfortunately he chose a horrible person to steer the ship. Alex came in around mid-2008, precisely when sales began to drop, and though he couldn’t be blamed for long-term trends, it seems like he sped up the fall. He had helped expand another business into a China-wide enterprise before it collapsed, and Brian somehow thought that counted for experience. DELICIOUS

Anyway, the schools were mostly empty during fall and winter 2008-9 and though that happened normally it seemed like it was far worse. A lot of nights at the Zhejiang branch it was just me and one other guy teaching. So the rents were wasted and there weren’t a lot of new faces coming in. The school in Yangpu had always been a dud and the new one in Gubei didn’t have many classes. Already students were starting to ask me if Kai En was in trouble. Any teacher who didn’t see this coming was deceiving themselves, though it’s hard to blame people who got caught at the end. Management blamed it on the world-wide financial crisis, though I thought that was bullshit. Maybe some white-collar type students were worried about their jobs in Shanghai, but by and large they got through unscathed and had money to spend on English training. FAMOUS

Kai En got through SARS, when they had to shut down for weeks and had 0 revenue - certainly they could get through this. The big problem was that after Spring Festival 2009 came and people were flush with cash, things didn’t really change. My own idea is that the massive advertising of EF and other schools was finally wearing through Kai En’s little word-of-mouth network, and the big schools’ spread into smaller neighborhoods was giving them reach. Ken had been the face of Kai En for many years, and his disappearance from the marketing (replaced by Brian) hurt the brand. Ken used to be everywhere included a lot of TV shows, and that helped Kai En immensely - everyone knew about him. His migration to the air waves of Chinesepod really hurt Kai En. The market has moved on from those early days: Disney’s here for the kids, Wall Street for the rich, and EF and New Oriental for just about everyone else. CONVENIENT

So there were no sales and the WEAK attempts at trying to jump start them didn’t go anywhere. There was a plan to give teachers these discount cards that we were supposed to hand out to potential students. As if we’re sales reps. I really meet people on the street and ask them if they’re interested in studying English… conveniently and famously. I’m sure Brian and Ken did that at Judy’s Two back in 1996. Most English teachers are here for one or two years and the only locals they meet are the ones who work or study at Kai En. As far as I know not a single one of those cards was ever returned to a PRO (the sales staff now called Course Consultants, like they’re actually consultants). So sales stayed weak into summer 2009. There was some other half-baked plan to quasi-franchise with schools in, say, Sichuan, who could license the Kai En name and logos and get a fully trained teacher from the school. Kai En would train the teachers (Brian was particularly fond of his teacher training team) and then send them out to the sticks. Like I said, half-baked and it never went anywhere. Think the CEO was in charge of that one. I VERY LIKE

Brian had been looking for investment for a while and after getting told to fuck off for the nth time finally figured out that Kai En looked like a mess from the outside. It was a JV with some sort of Chinese group, which as a partner wouldn’t agree to anything that Brian, Ken and Steve proposed. So they always kind of did things behind their partner’s back. Nothing unusual in China I suppose. But all the big schools are limited companies that are defined as training companies, not schools per se, so legally they look more attractive to investors – thus New Oriental’s big stock market splash. Brian called me into his office in 2008 to ask me if I wanted to get them some new lawyers and try to fix up the mess. Legally they were a little shaky, but no worse than most businesses in this country, and with a little bit of work it all could have been made to look quite attractive since Kai En’s brand was pretty solid still. His plan was to attract investment in order to expand, particularly for Kai En corporate to be able to cover companies like INTEL that have offices all over the country. PROMINENT

So long story short the company was bleeding money for at least a year and never got any additional investment at all. I heard about 3 weeks ago that Steve and Ken had left – Ken to Taiwan and Steve to England. I had known that Steve and his wife were wanting to get out of China but this seemed very sudden. I was told that Brian, Ken and Steve were personally liable for the company’s debts. Kai En was not a limited company. That’s what really fucked the whole situation up, and it’s why students were left stranded with no school a day after signing up and teachers found the doors closed on pay day. Yup, that’s right – it ended classy. HAVE A GREAT SHAPE

It sounds like the owners saw the writing on the wall and had time to sell their homes and get their families out before Kai En officially went bankrupt. Debts were due and there are stories of gangsters looking for money. I’d heard that the Chinese mob or some kind of loan sharks might be involved, but who knows. Frankly, I could see the Bank of China using the personal touch of hired goons. But then banks here don’t loan to small businesses, so I really don’t know who had been helping Kai En out with cash flow over the last few months. HAVE A TRAVEL

Brian stayed till just about the end it seemed, and he called a meeting to say that 2, maybe 3 schools would soon close. An investor was in the mix to save the school, and suddenly everyone was paid their salaries for October, apparently even Chinese staff, who had been treated far more horribly than the foreign staff over the last few months. Labor bureaus had been called and helped to put pressure on Kai En to pay up or open their books, and there was even some sort of sit-in a couple months back. I had gotten out July 31st, but had to fight tooth and nail to get paid, even screaming over the phone to the head of finance and going there and practically threatening her. I managed to get everything except about 2,000 that they had tried to weasel out of. When I called HR the other day, the poor girl stuck there to deal with much of this (HR head Michelle smartly got out at least a half a year ago after being with the company almost from the beginning), she said that Brian’s phone had been off for a few days and that since the next day (the 15th of December) was payday, most staff were starting to think it was the end. A lot of them didn’t show up the next day, and the teachers and students who came found classes had been canceled. Someone called reporters and it was on the 6 o’clock news (which comes on at 7 here). MODERN

So last Thursday or Friday, or perhaps even sooner, Brian quietly shut off his phone, got his wife and baby girl and got the fuck out. Probably his smartest move in a long time. Hope he sold his house. I can imagine one bitter man, there. Ken and Steve certainly have investments in Praxis (offshore, of course), and I figure Brian does too, but they still can’t ever come back here. It’s a story out of China’s Wild West, which was actually China just 10 years ago. A China that those guys, especially Ken and Brian knew well, but probably thought they’d never be a part of. Kai En’s closing is just like those gyms that take memberships one day and are closed the next, with the owner safely in Hong Kong. But I seriously doubt Brian had a suitcase full of cash. There was no cash to take. There were stories about the CEO and the head of finance fleecing the company but it couldn’t be proved. That poor wreck of a finance girl left the company about 2 months ago, but I figure because of stress, not stealing. I think it never would have ended so ugly if it had been a limited company. The owners would have stuck around and notified staff and students in advance that things were going under. “COLLEAGUERS”

Well, that’s it. A pathetic ending for a company that was ahead of its time and was a pretty cool place to meet people back in the day. There were some great characters. When I went back to work there in 2008 it had obviously changed, as had Shanghai, and though I met some great new ‘colleguers’, the warning signs were everywhere. Seems like a hell of a long time ago that I stepped into class at Kai En for the first time… with no TEFL and no experience, circa 2003. Thanks for that, Kai En. It was many people’s first job in China, and I met a lot of wonderful locals through the school. Strange to think of it not being around to poke fun of. SUITABLE

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Putuoshan 普陀山 is a fantastic place to go outside Shanghai if you have about 3 days to spare. Despite the name, Putuo Mountain is actually an island with several mountains on it, off the coast of Ningbo. It is known as one of Chinese Buddhism’s four holy mountains (四大佛教名山 - see here), along with Wutaishan 五台山, Jiuhuashan 九华山, and Emeishan 峨眉山.

My wife and I went to Putuo at the end of the National Day holidays. Since most people already had to be back in Shanghai and other cities for work on the Friday and Saturday, the island wasn’t busy at all. There were a fair number of tour groups full of retirees, mostly women, but not many others besides that. We even found ourselves alone at a pagoda that was about 99% completed nearby Huiji Temple. Peace at last in China - a difficult find.

The main sites on Putuo are Puji, Fayu and Huji Temples, and the massive statue of Guanyin at the south of the island, all of which are very nice. Puji has a wonderful lotus pond in front and some peaceful gardens around it. Fayu has more impressive buildings and Buddha statues, plus a place to eat with the monks. Huji is on the far side of the island from the harbor and is a little longer to get to, but the gondola ride gives nice views and the temple itself is nice. Behind it is a species of tree imported from Burma many years ago, but which is now extinct except for this one tree. Unfortunately we didn’t read about that tidbit until we’d already been there and missed it. Ugh. But the best place we found was the cliffs nearby the Purple Bamboo forest, inside the grounds of a small temple. When the winds and tides are right, the waves battering the cliffs are magnificent. Small wonder it was a place of many suicides by distraught monks in the past. Currently a sign orders people not to jump to their deaths, surely to great effect for those who even notice it on the way to offing themselves on the rocks below.

No self killing

The main sites of Putuo are not all there is to the island. The beaches are great, though it was too cool for us to do anything beyond walking along the water’s edge. More interesting were the small nunneries and monasteries spread about along the hikes criss-crossing Putuoshan. We actually ate with the monks at Fayu temple, vegetarian fare of course, for 5 RMB. It wasn’t glamorous, but tasty, simple food. A lot of tourists spend time taking pictures of rocks around the island that have words carved into them and painted bright red. A little kitchy, I’d say, but not too touristy.

That brings me to another feature of Putuoshan: the half-assed Buddhists everywhere. There were certainly a lot of devout, pious people. Yet most of what I saw was people doing various things for good luck, not out of any idea of karma, dharma or attaining nirvana. One example was tossing coins into large incense burners that sit in front of the temples. They have several levels, and supposedly the higher the level that your coin lands into, the better your luck will be. Imagine wild scenes of religio-tourists tossing coins up from all angles at these burners, and coins falling everywhere. People came to pray, burn incense, then chuck garbage from ice creams or plastic bottles all over the place. There was also a lot of superstitious touching of specific idols and statues. But then where is the line between superstition and religion? I’m really not sure, but at tourist sites like Putuoshan, there’s going to be observers like me, the devout praying in front of Buddha and Guanyin and actually focusing on it, and those paying lip service; a kind of mix of tourist and pilgrim. At least there weren’t any nude sunbathers. One neat thing was a sort of Buddhist version of tourist T-shirts. Some pilgrims brought or took cream colored cloth to the temples and got them stamped, with really cool looking seals of the temples. Status? Something to show off on judgment day? A little weird, but very cook looking stuff. I asked for a tattoo of the same design, but was politely (of course, they’re monks) turned down.

One odd feature of Putuoshan was the night life. There was none. Absolutely. Rachel and I ate at 6 one night at a great vegetarian restaurant near Puji Temple. When we got out of the restaurant at around 7:15, everything was dark. There were just a few lights around the temple grounds, but all the shops were shut except for one quickie mart. When we got out onto the road back to our hotel, we discovered that not only had the minibuses that cruise around the island - very conveniently picking people up and dropping them off at various points - shut down for the night, there weren’t even any street lights on the main road down to the coast! Total, complete, 100% darkness along the road, except every one or two minutes when a car would pass by. Despite the fact that we were going the right way, the wife was scared and wanted to go via the shortcut we’d taken several times before already down the hill, rather than take the road, which I viewed was safer. We turned back, but when we got to the stairs cut into the hill, despite restaurants and homes all the way down, there were no lights there as well. What is with this place? It’s not like it was 2am. And don’t they want people safe? We had to feel our way down the steps, which was kinda fun in a way, but totally not part of the 160 RMB that we had to pay to get on to the island. What did that pay for? At least we weren’t drunk - the restaurant was true to the Buddhist-veggie-dry spirit. Spirit. Get it? Lame.

One more slightly odd feature was in our hotel room. Despite being on the beach and fairly clean, the room felt like it should be for escorts and hookers. The bathroom was separated from the bedroom by a glass wall, with just an open doorway. The counter prevented one from being watched while answering nature, but as we discovered, the mirrors of the closet let one see in from the right angle. Showering was pretty much in full view until the steam interfered. So it was good and bad at the same time. The hotel is new, so maybe they haven’t figured out the whole fall from grace, human shame thing, but it really is pushing the no-privacy-in-China stereotype too far.

One of the best things in Putuoshan is the seafood. Mussels, clams, oysters, snails of all sizes, shrimp, squid, scallops and fish were everywhere, along with a few other things whose names I don’t know. Restaurants put tables outside, so when the weather is good, this is the place to be. Careful about the restaurants you choose. Some hotels have good ones, while others are way overpriced. One place on the ‘hill of no lights’ actually wanted us to choose seafood first before they’d tell us prices for vegetables. They wouldn’t give us menues and we had to negotiate on the price. Fuck that. We walked. Lunches are tough, there aren’t exactly any KFCs or coffee shops. There’s nothing even close to Western, which is good in a way, but makes lunch a slow, sit-down kind of meal unless you just eat stuff from the convenience stores. Oh yeah, there is A LOT of dried seafood. The dried squid is fantastic, and I’m speaking as a guy who doesn’t exactly stand in line for dried fish. It’s really fresh, and makes for a good, healthy snack. Oh God, I feel so Chinese.

One thing that reminded me of what a good place Shanghai is: spitting. There were a lot of people from different places in China and there was a tremendous amount of horking and spitting. I realized Shanghai has improved a lot in that department over the last few years. I also live in Xuhui district now, so that helps too. Putuo Island is a peaceful place, but for those hideous sounds emitting from people. Be forewarned, but do go; it’s a nice break from the city.

Feds

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After pretty much begging my wonderful wife for one more year in China, this is it. It’s my final year in China, so I better enjoy it. Since coming here in 2003 I’ve had the pleasure of calling Shanghai my home, while also bashing it fairly consistently. I’ve had a lot of good times and a lot of lost time. Where did all those years go? The lost time I can’t account for really bugs me. What did I do in 2005, I wonder, beyond (some) work? There was some bowling, I remember. But in all this time there’s not a lot that I’ve accomplished. I certainly haven’t traveled nearly as much as I’d anticipated, I’m still not fluent in Mandarin (though starting to catch on a little with Shanghainese), and I haven’t done ’stuff’ - i.e. projects like this blog, another blog here, one here, and a travel website here, the video show that died, and another that didn’t get started. I started a few things over the last couple of years, but haven’t followed through enough.

This post is turning into a pep talk. Which it most certainly should.

Well, that’s it. I’ve got one more year in China. Actually 10 months, it really took me too long to write this. Actually today is my Chinaversary - the anniversary of the day I got on a plane and started this adventure. Now there’s only one year to achieve as much fluency as possible, study everything I can find on China, take pictures and video of all the cool stuff, manage to keep in shape, and then grab the wife, take the last month or so here and see as much of this great country as we can.

Doesn’t seem like that will be too difficult, but eating, drinking and sleeping seem to take up a lot of hours. If anything, the last year or so has been encouraging. From last September to this past summer I worked, took four courses online, actually did my taxes for 2006 and 2007 (a major accomplishment since I’d never done them on my own before) and even had a bit of a social life.

This sort of non-couch potato activity should be praised and fostered.

I need to make some sort of list - a big ol’ to-do list. Although mostly it will be a to-go list of all the places I need to see before checking out of here.

Feds

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