June 2005

June 29
True Blue kitten
Last night, I was headed to True Blue, the foreign bar, to meet some people. As I appraoched the door, a tiny kitten jumped out of the bushes as if it were about to pounce on me, but stopped short and just stood there looking at me. A few minutes later, my sister came and it did the same thing to her. We were amused and headed into the bar.



About ten minutes later, a thunderstorm came out of nowhere and it started pouring rain. Alex and I decided to save the kitten, so we ran outside, grabbed the kitten from the bush and brought it inside the bar. Now, in China, it is perfectly normal to see kittens and cats in bars, stores, restaurants, shops and any other place that would be shut down in the West for having animals. But, this is China, and I guess cats serve the practical purpose of killing small rodents. So, the owner of the bar was perfectly happy to let the kitten run around at will. At one point, we even had most of the bar looking for the thing.



Anyway, this poor little kitten has a weird tumor/birth defect on its stomach, so I think that was a pet that was turned out of its home - it had been hanging around the bar for two days apparently. So, I decided that next Monday, if it's still alive, I will give it a name and a bath.



I'm going to go check on it tonight....



2:19 AM

June 28
Summer is here
MSN Spaces has finally decided to let me change the font, background colour and formatting!

Well, summer is offically here. How do I know? Is it the soaring temperature? Is it the humidity? Is it the 200 highschool students forced to study English in my school for the next two months? No. In China, summer is marked by the beginning of several months of random power outages caused by the power company trying to save energy, or perhaps make extra money taking bribes to keep the power on.

Either way, we were sitting in Provence the other night, eating our dinner, and the lights went out. I always enjoy a candlelit dinner, but with no energy, and thus, no A/C, the candles were melting faster than they could burn.

The owner of the restaurant was pretty good about it. He apologized profusely and thanked whatever deity is legal here that all of the customers were regulars and would be coming back. Then he drank two bottles of red wine, or so he said, and had Jackson - an English teacher and the General Manager - make us up some free cold drinks. We wanted ice cream, but the cook wouldn't let Jackson open the freezer. The hard part came when we tried to split the bill six ways with no computer. Good thing Mr. Lee is good at math.
8:48 AM

June 25
Chinese job of the week
This week's job of the week winning entry comes from Stacey in Tai'An, Shandong province. In Tai'An, they have floor fanners - people who take fans and wave them about over the floor in order to dry it. I haven't seen this in Wuxi - because we mop the carpet instead.

Actually, I'm developing a friendship with the carpet mopping lady. She doesn't speak any english, or any mandarin for that matter, but that's okay, she has a nice smile, when she doesn't show her teeth, or sneer at you for walking on her freshly mopped carpet.

2:23 AM

June 21
Pizza Hut
Alex and I went to Pizza Hut for lunch today. It's a little on the expensive side for China, but it's safe and air conditioned and they have an English menu. Anyway, one of the menu items is a self serve salad from the salad bar. For 25 yuan or something like that, you can fill your salad bowl once. We happened to get seated beside the salad bar, so we had the entertainment of watching a party of four attempt to eat their entire meal on salad from one small bowl.

They started by filling the bottom of the bowl with coleslaw and salad dressing. Then they carefully laid a bed a of lettuce, followed by a neat row of tomato. After that came the fruit, which was stacked in such a way that the pieces fit together tightly. At this point, a second person came over to help. Then they started filling in the cracks of the structure with cucumber and carrot slices and used something that looked like hummus as a form of cement. Then they put something in the centre that might have been cottage cheese. Next came another layer of garden salad, and they repeated the above. Soon, all four of them were working on it in order to keep it from falling over.

The whole salad building process took about ten minutes. At the end, two of them carried the salad very carefully back to the table and the four of them spent the next fifteen minutes eating it. I have never seen such an intricate attempt to abuse the self-serve privilege. But, seriously, how cheap can you be?

1:50 AM

June 18
Alex is blogtastic...
I've imported my first friend! Okay, really my sister Alex is visiting me for the summer, and she has finally arrived. Now, she's sitting around my office being bored until I find her a job. But, at least I'm not alone anymore.

She arrived here on Tuesday the 14th of June. I went to the airport to meet here. Her flight was early, so I thought I'd missed her, but actually, she just spend an hour tryng to confuse the customs official.

Anyway, after several hours of waiting and travelling, we arrived back here to Wuxi and now I'm blogging her. This is my pointless blog entry.

11:23 PM

Chinese Job of the Week
This week's winner comes from Shanghai, on my trip to get my sister from the airport and bring her back to Wuxi. The job of the week is the person whose job is to hang out the window of a small bus holding a sign and yelling at whoever is waiting near the stop in order to establish where the bus is headed and whether or not it should stop for passengers. Generally, we just glue the sign to the bus and stop at the bus stop, but this is way is better because it gives someone a useless job. Congratulations bus sign holder on your victory!

11:12 PM

June 15
MSN Agreement with China
Apparently, in order to appease China and, well, make money, Microsoft has agreed to censor any politically charged words from all MSN spaces and profiles. I'd tell you what these words are, but I can't use them on this page, or won't be able to when they implement the policy, so we'll see what happens to this page. I've edited a few things already, not that I'm acquiescing. I might move my blog elsewhere on the internet, a site which allows me to acknowledge reality. Unfortunately, that might mean that I won't be able to access it because it might be blocked in China, or else China might require that all blogs that can be viewed in China be registered or else blocked out. We can't have the Chinese thinking or learning about thier history, after all. They might realize that this system sucks. God I'm glad to be Canadian.

Thus, in thanks to our forefathers who realized the value of rights, I'm posting an album of places where you can do whatever you want. I'm excluding the US, because they condone both Microsoft and its stupid deal and George Bush and his war against sex and Iraq.

Let me know if I've missed any.

Oh and here's a link to a news story about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1506601,00.html

3:42 AM

June 10
Chinese Dragon Boat Festival
Today is the Dragon Boat Festival and the festival where people throw sticky glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river. There aren't actually any dragon boat races here. Apparently, only in Beijing and Hong Kong. So, basically, there are more dragon boat races in Canada than here... but, here there are real chinese in the boats...

As for the rice thing - here's a blurb that I stole from a website that stole it from the US PRC Embassy website, which is no longer displaying that information on the page, in favour of telling the US that Bush said relations with China are good enough:

"It is generally believed that the festival originated to celebrate the memory of the ancient patriotic poet Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan, a native of the State of Chu during the Warring States Period, repeatedly offered his king proposals aimed at forestalling political corruption. Subsequently, slandered by treacherous court officials, he was sent into exile by the same king he had tried to help. In 278 B.C., the capital of the State of Chu was lost to its enemy the State of Qin and Qu Yuan drowned himself in despair on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Aware of the tragedy, the local people living beside the river went out in their boats to try to find his corpse. Every year thereafter on this day people continued to row dragon boats on their local rivers in memory of Qu Yuan's life and death, throwing sections of bamboo filled with rice into the river as an offering. Legend has it that someone once met Qu Yuan's spirit on the bank of the river and was told: 'The food you have given me has all been taken away by the dragon. Hereafter, you should wrap the rice in bamboo leaves tied with five-colored thread. These are the two things that the dragon is most afraid of.' Thus, people began to make zongzi, glutinous rice wrapped in a pyramid shape using bamboo or reed leaves. Today, zongzi is the traditional food for the Dragon Boat Festival still eaten in memory of Qu Yuan."

It should be noted that the rationale for giving Qu Yuan rice is so that the fish will eat the rice instead of Qu Yuan's perpetually rotting corpse. But, hey, it's tradition. Also, glutinous rice, which sounds disgusting is actually really good. It tastes like rice with sauce. Though, it's hard to digest, so you can't eat too much.

10:27 PM

Chinese Job of the Week
This week's award goes to the group of people who have spent the last week protesting out in front of Wuxi Commericial Mansion - the department store attached to my office building. Now, when I say protesting, I mean protesting in a country where opposing the government is verboten. So, by protesting, I mean that the three hundred of them were just standing or sitting around the entrance so as to obstruct and inconvenience anyone nearby. The story is (and that's all I have, because when you protest in China, you don't actually tell anyone what you're protesting about) that this group of people had been employed until recently, when the store laid off everyone over the age of 35 in favour of younger and thus lower paid employees. Chinese stores have a habit of employing a lot of people at low wages to stand around and do essentially nothing. You see this any time you walk into a department store and there are more staff than customers and you still can't find anyone willing to help you find anything. They're always too busy doing nothing.

So - this group of people wins the award for being just as useful unemployed as they ever were when they were working.

10:24 PM

Rogue fruit h0re (stupid msn) and the Japanese Restaurant
First, the Japanese restaurant. There is this japanese restaurant across the street from my apartment in the designer mall. The restaurant is called Ichibanya. It's big, almost always empty and filled with a bunch of Chinese staff, who hate working there, but like getting paid and don't know the menu in any language. Actually, the food was quite good, the tempura was light and the sushi was decent. The prices were okay, considering it's in the designer mall. But, my favourite part about this restaurant, aside from the fact that it's open late, and always empty, is their slogan: The Sheet Iron Bums the Menu. The greatest part is that I don't know whether this is Chinglish (ie something that was poorly translated from Chinese to English) or whether this is Jachinglish - something poorly translated twice. I've been thinking about it and from what I can figure, this might have something to do with grilled food, although I wasn't aware that they served such a thing. Any guesses? Let me know.

Okay, second story. Last night, a friend of mine and I were headed home to have excellent Cajun food, when all of a sudden, a fruit whore on a tricycle with a huge box full of mountain berries came tearing down the sidewalk. I should explain my use of the term fruit whore. I only misspell because msn is trying to censor me. Apparently, it's okay to use perfectly accepted words in the body of this entry, but not in the title. On my profile I have to do the same thing because I used the word "is" right before I used the word "hitler" and if you put those words together, it's unacceptable. Stupid msn. Anyway, in Wuxi, and probably other places in China, almost all of the produce is brought into town by the farmers in the middle of the night to vegetable and fruit markets. Middlemen or "fruit pimps" as I call them, will buy up whole truck loads of whatever and then distribute the produce among a bunch of poor people on large tricycles with boxes mounted on the back for the fruit. Then they stand on every street corner and proposition anyone walking by who looks like they have money. At the end of the day, they head back, settle up with their pimps and start the whole cycle over again.

Anyway, so I was walking home and one of these fruit whores ran into me as he was trying to escape from some police officer. The edge of the wooden box of his tricycle caught on my pants and basically ripped them right off me, so that my left leg and ass were hanging out. The ugly woman behind me laughed, but she doesn't have any teeth, so I think we're even. So, now, I'm in China and my pants shortage is even worse, because I'm not a size zero. It may be a while before I can get another pair of jeans. This is a lot more heart-wrenching that it appears.

5:43 AM

June 04
June 4
In memory of this date in the year of 1989, I have posted a few photos many Chinese have never seen, are scared to see, don't want to see. They don't know the numbers, they don't know the reasons. They just don't talk about it.



1:59 AM

Random Restaurant Woman
I went to the maple leaf last night - that's what I call the small hole-in-the-wall restaurant behind my apartment whose chinese name translates to something with maple in it. Normally, I just order one of the few things that I can say and then go back to my apartment, but as I went to sit down, an older woman ushered me into the seat beside her. She reminded me of the woman pictured in that famous wartime propaganda poster flexing her bicep (I've put it below), except older - definitely a worker though.

Anyway, she was sitting there with her bottle of baijiu or maotai or some other form of overproof liquor they drink straight here, and a glass. She didn't speak more than a few words of English and not much Mardarin, for that matter. We were able to exchange names and I gave her my buisness card. I was a little worried about her trying to stick me for the bill, but she insisted on paying for my meal as well, which was 6 yuan.

Now, she ordered some kind of bowl of big red soup with something that looked like a cross between duck skin and squid and tripe. She insisted that I try it and kept putting more and more on my plate. Actually, it was quite good tasting, but a little chewy. I ate a fair amount, because I didn't want to offend her, so I missed out on eating the dish I had ordered, which I was kind of looking forward to. But, overall it was a good experience, though I should probably be more careful about who I eat with.



1:51 AM

Chinese Job of the Week
It's Saturday again in China, so that means it's time to announce the winner of the Chinese job of the week award. Really they don't get anything, just recognition.

THIS WEEK'S WINNER IS:

The many men employed in parking lots to help people with parallel and back in parking, because, even when driving a tiny VW or Citroen, it's still an impossible feat for anyone to park a car. They have the job of standing in the way and making hand signals to let you know when you've gone too far

I'm really not sure if the award should go to the parking guys, or the many drivers who manage to own cars and still remain incapable of parking them, but owning a car is not a job, yet.

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June 03
stupid msn... elevator story
Msn is a stupid whore. Ok, I'm just mad because I wrote this whole thing and it decided to eat it and not save it. The I tried it again and it ate it again. Or maybe I should blame China. I'm not sure.

Anyway, elevator story. Have you ever been on an elevator and looked at the sign that tells you the maximum number of people that the elevator can hold, and then calculated that it was unlikely, if not phyiscally impossible to ever put that many people in an elevator? Well, it isn't in China.

The Chinese view it as more of game, really. When the elevator doors open, they herd onto the elevator in order not to be the last one on - otherwise, the alarm goes off and the elevator won't move until someone gets off. It's kid of like Jenga - where you compete to see who's the last person to add a block until the whole thing comes crashing down. It's all very funny.

Now, I live about a 9 minute walk from the school, though generally it takes twenty minutes to get there with the elevators. I do understand that there are over a billion people here - but tell me why we have four elevators and we only use two? They're trying to save electricity... it feels like something from Ayn Rand.... oh, wait, communism, I forgot.

But, in defence of the Chinese elevators, when you can get one, they are very smooth and very quick, assuming you don't have to stop at every floor.

Anyway, that's my story. I should be obvious by now, I don't plan to put anything terribly serious on this blog, though I do intend to post about my various adventures.



11:57 PM

June 02
Stacey and Dave outsmarted China!
I'm not sure if this is blogworthy or not, but I'm excited. In China, the governemnt censors all websites and blocks those it feels are detrimental to communism. This, of course, is very frustrating to anyone who wants to read news or email. Some websites are blocked out permanently, like BBC World News, and some websites are only blocked out temporarily because they are displaying something bad that day. Sometimes the government shuts down personal home internet services for a few days while they check through all your email and viewed webpages to make sure you're not a spy. But for the most part, it's just inconvenient. Hotmail and msn messenger will occasionally go down for a week or more at a time, and the Chinese government hates google, at least, it did until google decided to open up an office here and invest some money in China. Funny how that happens.

Anyway, I would just like to congratulate Stacey and Dave for finding a way to access blocked out sites. But, I can't reveal their secret in the event the government decides to read my blog.

12:11 AM