Plus Eight Six

Don't Go To Patong

2011-02-03T23:34:00.000+08:00

Patong is the most annoying place I have ever been.

After a week on Ko Yao Noi, I returned to Phuket’s Bangrong Pier, where three cab drivers gathered to pick up the sucker farang and deliver us to the airport or our beachfront hotels. The cabbies had apparently split up the island into territories — only one would go to Patong, and the others just pointed to him. When I asked how much, he invited in the office to “check the price sheet.” This is an old trick: upon entered I would immediately be assailed by a swarm of activities and transportations vendors trying to make up. “Just tell me the price,” I entreated. He wouldn't budge from 1000 baht (about $35) so I tentatively made my way on public transportation, at the cost of about 90 baht ($3).

On the bus, I overheard the usual how-long-have-you-been-here conversation. One party was an Australian on a quick holiday, but the other was an American who had been around for 25 years — astoundingly, in the same hotel room. “The people have changed — both the Thais and the farang. The quality of people is different. The reasons why they are here are different. This place is rotten to the core.” Had I been a party to this conversation, I certainly would have asked why he still lived here.

Approaching my hotel, the Ashlee Centra, right across the street from (sigh) the Hard Rock Cafe, I knew that this was not the Thailand I wanted to be in. Patong is a sprawling tourist ghetto teeming with overpriced and touristy restaurants, souvenirs, tailors, and sexy massages. The beach is awash with white plastic chairs, packed together like sardines, rentable for 300 baht ($10) per day.

Someone accosted me at every storefront I walk by. Tailors greeted me with a faux-friendly handshake attempt and “nice to meet you boss! You want a suit? Why you not want a suit?” Every restaurant frontman shoved a menu in my face. Masseuses, undeterred by a polite “no thanks,” awkwardly stroked my arms to try to lure me in.

Avoid eye contact… avoid eye contact…

Amazing how this can all pop up just because of its proximity to a stretch of sand that, amongst the pantheon of Southeast Asian beaches, can hardly hold its own. Clearly the beach is, at this point, secondary.

After a quick dinner of mediocre Indian food, I headed over to check out the scene at Patong’s terrifying Bangla Road. Living in China I have seen my share of sketchy bar streets — Shanghai’s old Tongren Lu comes to mind — but this dwarfed them all. The bars were variations on a theme: they all served undoubtedly watered-down cocktails and were with hyperaggressive bargirls clearly prepared to use any means at their disposal to help part you from your baht. This being Thailand, some of these bargirls had Adam's apples and suspiciously large hands. Some bars had names like “Diablo A-Go-Go,” admirably typeset in the real Diablo font, or “Suzy Wong’s Ass-Smacking Fun.” Clearly this was a place were even trademark lawyers feared to tread, or maybe they had so much ass-smacking fun once they got there that they forgot why they came.

A half hour and a thousand solicitations later, I walked back to my hotel (alone!) and called it night. The next day I lounged by the rooftop swimming pool at my hotel and waited to be whisked me off to the dock at Khao Lak, far far away from all this.

Ko Yao Noi: Where Pretty Much Nothing Happened

2011-02-03T22:05:00.000+08:00

Sunrise from my bungalow

Eight days on Ko Yao Noi can pretty much be summarized as: nothing really happened.

I had no intention on this trip to cram in as much stuff as possible, in the usual helter-skelter American vacation fashion much ridiculed by Europeans, Israelis, and Aussies, who tend to take their vacations in month- or year-long increments. After nearly a month of travel to Michigan for Christmas, then San Francisco, then Bangkok for a few excellent but not-exactly-relaxing days, it was time to just kick back.

Ko Yao Noi is a little island off between Phuket and Krabi. It has beaches and gorgeous scenery, but remains relatively un-touristy. Certainly tourism has left its stamp there: all the nice beaches and viewpoints are surrounded by hotels, shacks offering climbing and kayaking tours, and relatively pricey restaurants (US$3 for pad thai, egad!). But all in all, the tourism industry seems almost an afterthought and, crucially, hasn’t greatly corrupted the residents or the culture, who mostly seem to live their lives as they would if we farang weren’t there, especially if you wander more than 100 m from the perimeter of the island. This is the diametric opposite of, say, Patong, where any remnant of actual culture has been traded away for a farang Disneyland with hawkers who ask US$40 for a $2 towel but will take $8, Indians selling identical poorly-made suits, and ladies selling, well, everything.

My first hint that something was different was on the long-tail boat from Bangrong Pier on the island of Phuket to Ko Yao Noi's Manoh pier. After a few days of having to negotiate with tuk-tuk and cab drivers and basically wary of being ripped off at every turn, I foolishly jumped on the boat without even thinking to ask the price. The boat left shortly thereafter, and I immediately realized my mistake and smacked my head. I expressed my predicament to a German fellow on the boat with me. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You get on the boat, and then they tell you the price. This isn’t that kind of place. It’s not Patong.” And indeed it was not. There were no hawkers, no go-go girls, no negotiation, no rip-offs. There was also apparently no crime, which is a good thing considering that my bungalow was less secure than Woody Allen’s character at the beginning of Play It Again, Sam.

Also on that boat was an Englishwomen who had come to Ko Yao Noi a few weeks ago to marry her long-time partner and enjoy a honeymoon in one fell swoop. (She still called him her “partner” — “husband” sounds so stilted, she said, and fiancé is even worse, and sounds so feminine besides!) They had planned to move around a little bit, but having discovered Ko Yao Noi they saw little reason to leave. They had stumbled on a little island near Ko Yao Noi sea kayaking, and decided it was an ideal place for a remote beach wedding. They hired some locals to clean it up — they set up a pavilion and some decoration — and had a banquet at a restaurant in Ko Yao Noi, open to anyone who wanted to go. Posters inviting the masses were still stapled to every telephone pole on the island when I arrived.

I stayed at Tha Khao Bay View, a little “resort” consisting of seven bungalows up on a hillside on the east side of the island. The bungalows a family operation — a daughter, mother, grandmother, and a few in-laws, I think — who were friendly almost to a fault. The open-air bungalows, at 700 baht or US$25, were very no-frills — just a queen bed with a mosquito net in a room, a balcony, and an attached bathroom.

I shared my bungalow with some sort of solitary wasp or hornet that had burrowed into the wood of the balcony railing — an enormous fellow that could best described as a flying Vanagon with a stinger. I alerted the proprietors to its presence, but they told me not to worry. “It no sting. If you put hand over hole, it sting. So you no put hand over hole, OK?” I wondered if anyone had ever actually tried covering the hole with her hand. “I try use chemical. It not come, then it come.” Fair enough; you can’t always bend nature to your will, especially if nature is capable of eating your house. I resolved to refrain from putting my hand over the hole, and instead just thought of the creature as a eccentric and annoying but generally harmless neighbor. This worked well enough.

Sunset from the pier

My typical day on Ko Yao Noi can be summarized as follows: Awaken at the sunrise, since the bungalow’s sheer curtains don’t block any light; admire the panorama for a moment and fall back asleep. (One day I actually managed to stumble out of bed at 6 a.m. and snap some photos. Then of course I stagged back to bed and slept for another few hours.) Eat breakfast, often at Sabia Corner, a group of bungalows and restaurant run by an Italian woman who bakes fresh bread. Slather on some sunscreen and sit on the beach and read. Have a light lunch of pad thai, spicy squid salad, or something similar. Order a mango shake from Pasai Seafood, sit in the hammock, and read more. Go for a sunset run. Get dinner at La Luna (a surprisingly good brick-oven pizza joint) or one of the many cheap Thai restaurants on the island. Do a bit of writing and flip through the flashcards on my iPad for new Chinese words/characters from the day’s reading. Go back to my bungalow, watch a movie, and fall asleep.

One of my personal goals for the trip was to get a bit more active, and so I did. Tooling around the island on my Honda Wave 100 cc scooter and laying on the beach did not exactly get the heart pumping, so nearly every day in the cool sunset air, I went for a 5–6 mile sunset run. Sometimes I set off directly from the bungalows and looped along dirt roads running through rubber plantations, or from the west side of the island, taking in the sunset at this random pier set amongst fish farms.

In eight days, there was barely enough variation in my schedule to be worth a mention, except maybe for few hours of easy sea kayaking (to the island here, the site of the wedding mentioned earlier). I kayaked out a few hours before sunset, watched the sunset from the island, and kayaked back under the stars. Unfortunately the tide had gone way out so the last 50 meters involved dragging the kayak through a swampy, mucky mess. Thank God for mandals — had I been wearing flip-flops, they would have been lost for good.

About a week later, I decided it was time to move on. I did a bit of research, found a liveaboard dive trip leaving for Thailand’s premier diving spots in two days, booked a hotel in Phuket, and told the resort owners I would be checking out the next day. Onward and upward! Well, in my case, onward and downward, about 30 meters.

Another fortnight, another post

2011-02-03T00:02:00.000+08:00

Yeeks, 15 days and nary a post. Sorry to keep you in suspense, my devoted readers, all four of you (my parents, maybe my sister, and possibly my future self trying to remember what the hell I did for two months in Thailand).

Lest I forget even the very basics, here’s the Cliff Notes edition of the last two weeks, to be followed by some details later.

A total of eight lazy days on Ko Yao Noi at the Tha Khao Bay View.
A long-tail boat back to Phuket, and a single night in Patong, which is quite possibly the most annoying place I’ve ever been. I was curious what this infamous capital of the Thailand sexpat and seedy-beach-bar scene was like; now I know and I never need to go back.
Four blissfully mosquito-free days and fourteen dives aboard the West Coast Explorer IX, cruising the Similan and Surin National Parks and earning my “I'm on a boat!” Foursquare badge at long last.
Another 24 hours on Phuket, this time in much classier and quieter Surin Beach (staying at the Benyada Lodge), obediently expelling nitrogen from my bloodstream before flying to prevent decompression sickness.
An evening flight to lovely Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. I’ve been in Chiang Mai for three nights so far — two at Na Thapae hotel, and one at Portico 21 next door after Na Thapae couldn’t extend my reservation. I’m writing this from Neighborhood, a Belgian beer bar (I have a knack for finding these) in the chic Nimmanhaemin district of Chiang Mai near the university. Most likely I’ll stay tonight and one more night, and then head on to Pai and maybe Chiang Rai.

And now for some details, as I continue sipping on my Rochefort 8…

Eat, Pray, NOT

2011-01-18T12:04:00.001+08:00

Could it be that I am already nearly a tenth of the way through my Amazing Southeast Asia Adventure? It seems that I could! Today is Day 5 of 60, and while it is a bit late to start a trip log, better late than never and better now than later.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to experience or write the next Eat, Pray, Love as about twenty people suggested upon hearing that I am taking a two-month leave from work. This is an important, boldface-worthy point. I didn't like the book. I wouldn't like the author if I met her in person. I probably wouldn't like the movie. I will not be played by Julia Roberts (ideally, it would be Matthew Broderick, but realistically, probably the bitter guy from Sideways with the receding hairline). I most likely won't be visiting any countries beginning with the letter "I." I will not be taking a vow of silence, although I suspect it would be much easier for me than Elizabeth Gilbert. I am not seeking self-redemption — OK, maybe I am a little bit, but not in the arms of Javier Bardiem, more likely in the arms of a Thai ladyboy (just kidding, mom).

I'm writing this from a restaurant/bar called La Luna on the eastern coast of Ko Yao Noi, a little island east of Phuket. I wandered in last night and downed a few excellent margaritas, and the owner/chef/bartender, Romano, ordered me to return to try the wood-fired pizza made from ingredients imported from Italy. So here I am, waiting obediently for my "Romano's Chili" pizza. I have eaten plenty of excellent Thai food, but hey, variety is the spice of life, and hopefully the occasional respite from the literal spice of local cuisine can be excused.

Let's start at the very beginning — four days ago, on January 13, I took a noon-ish flight from Shanghai to Bangkok, arrived and met a coworker's friend, Kitty, for dinner at Taling Plang in Central World and a drink at the bar atop the Centara Hotel. Kitty, like me, is an over-orderer, and we stuffed ourselves with various dishes including a delicious steamed squid with lime and chilies. Kitty thinks that she can eat spicier food than I can — we’ll have to see about that.

The next day, I slept in, and hit Bangkok's only must-see tourist attractions: the Grand Palace, and Wat Pho, home of “Reclining Buddha,” the world's largest representation of a superhuman couch potato. I also stopped at Wat Arun, which in Thai means “Temple of Dawn,” so I hope the spirits are not angry that I watched the sunset there rather than the sunrise. I met Kitty again and her very nice friends (Ari, Charlie, and Jane) at Soul Food for a delicious pan-Thai dinner and a refreshing vodka/lemongrass cocktail. Everyone except me went home, and I stayed behind and chatted with the chef (Jarrett) and his wife Candace, who also lived in Shanghai for a time, and moved away just as I arrived two and a half years ago.

The pizza has arrived. It is, as promised, quite good. There is something refreshing about being able to get a decent pizza even in this fairly obscure place. Or maybe it's a hint that perhaps I have not strayed far enough from the beaten path (new rule for travel in Asia: if you can get a decent pizza, you're not anywhere interesting).

Day 3: I went for an early-morning jog, then Tom Sam Paradise for Issan food for lunch, then at Charlie's advice wandered around Lumphini Park and Silom Road, parked at a Starbucks to plan my next destination, and headed on to the Chatachuk Night Market. I wandered around there for a few hours, stopped for a drink at Viva (an "alternative" bar suggested by Jarrett), and headed to Chinatown for a street-food dinner and then a drink at the Londoner Pub, which purports to brew the only cream bitter in Asia.

Day 4: a late-morning AirAsia flight from Bangkok to Phuket, a 300-baht taxi ride to the pier (pretty sure I got ripped off there), a 110-baht boat ride from Phuket to Ko Yao Noi, and a 100-baht ride in the back of a converted pickup truck to the Tha Khao Bay View bungalows. My bungalow is a spartan little one, set on a hillside with a nice view of Phang Nga Bay. I ate a late lunch, checked into my room, and drove aimlessly around the island on my rented moped trying to become less white. I succeeded in becoming much more red.

At night, I jogged down the east coast of Ko Yao Noi. After a shower, I headed to a festival at the local school featuring students dancing, and students' parents singing absolutely godawful karaoke. I grabbed a largely unmemorable dinner at the food stalls (well, the chicken skewer dripping with some sort of tasteless but texturally revolting orange glop was memorable, but not in a good way). Afterwards I enjoyed the aforementioned margaritas at La Luna.

The pizza is done. I kind of want another one, but I will restrain myself.

Today, day 5: I happened to wake up momentarily at about 6 a.m., saw a gorgeous sunrise out the window of my bungalow, thought “that's nice,” and then rolled over and went back to sleep. (I'm pretty sure the only way I will ever see a sunrise anymore is if it's visible from my bed.) I woke up for real at about 9:30, had a breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions and homemade bread at Sabia's Corner, and then spent the day sitting on the beach, swimming, and reading.

I just ordered a panna cotta with mango and amaretto, highly recommended by Romano, who as it turns out has a day job as a carpenter. Sounds like a busy life — not exactly what you think of for a Westerner living in a tropical paradise.

Tonight: went on a glorious jog on the west side of the island. I left on my moped from my hotel (on the east side of the island) around 5 p.m., wearing running gear, figuring that I would stop at some point on the west side of the island and go on a 5-mile-or-so run somewhere with a view of the sunset. I ended up driving just about as far northwest as you can without very advanced moped-ing skills (I saw two Thai guys disappear with ease up a very very steep rocky path on a scooter; I would probably disappear off to the side of the path before long).

The panna cotta has arrived. It is simple but delicious. I think I would frequent this restaurant if it were in Shanghai.

Back to the run: I dismounted the scooter and headed north for a bit on a path that ended at a nice viewpoint after a thousand feet or so, then turned around and ran south, hoping that I could find a nice place to watch the sunset when the time came. Fortuitously, right about 3 miles south and just as the day's sun was its final throes I stumbled upon a path leading to a long pier jutting into the Andaman Sea. I followed it, to the shouts of a throng of surprised girls yelling "farang! farang!" — "foreigner! foreigner!" — and sat on the dock and absorbed an amazing, 360º, all-encompassing sunset. I returned to the path and ran back to my moped in the moonlight to a backing track of frenziedly chirping insects punctuated by the cries of children playing, the occasional oncoming scooter, unseen animals scurrying aside the road, and crackling electric lines overhead.

The run was, unfortunately, also punctuated frequently by whiffs of fish shit. Turns out there are a lot of fish farms on the west side of the island, which may explain why there are no resorts there, or perhaps vice versa. Buy wild, folks!

Drinks ordered tonight: margarita, caipiroska, margarita. It's 10 p.m., and about time to hit the road before I am tempted to order drink #4 which would probably disqualify me from being a responsible moped driver, if there is such a thing. Tomorrow: kayaking.

Blogging from 34,000 Feet

2010-09-07T13:26:00.001+08:00

After about nine months of radio silence on my blog, and a stream of requests from family and friends about whether I have called it quits as a blogger, I’ve decided that maybe it’s time for another post.

This marks my first time blogging — or being online, for that matter — on an airplane, thanks to Gogo. A combination of FlightAware, Google Maps, Zillow, and Yelp! inform me that I am currently 34,000 feet above 12 Hickory Lane, Algonquin, Illinois (a 3-bedroom, 2-bath single-family home valued at $166,000) and that there is a darling little steakhouse just 0.8 miles to the northwest (well, and six miles down). Wow, I am bored.

I’m currently in the middle of a 17-day trip from Shanghai, first to Michigan for five days over Labor Day to visit the family, and then to San Francisco to work for about a week and a half. I recently noticed that this is the first time I’ve visited home and felt that five days was too short. This is probably due to some combination of not having been home for more than a year and a half (I met the family in Hawai’i for Christmas last year rather than going to Michigan), truly glorious late-summer weather, an itinerary chock-full of activities, and a new member of the pack who seemed to add a dose of sanity to the proceedings.

Highlights included:

Meeting my sister’s boyfriend for the first time. After five days of thorough investigation, the only thing I could find wrong with him was that he once attempted to wear a red shirt with an orange jacket, so I have tentatively granted approval for him to continue to date my sister.
Eating my mom’s lasagna. My mother and I seem to have an unspoken agreement that there will be a constant supply of lasagna at hand throughout the duration of any trip home.
Seeing the recently completed 450-square-foot addition to the house my parents have owned for 30 years, rendering the living room totally and wonderfully unrecognizable.
Running in the Arb. Sure beats the treadmill in my apartment complex.
Going to the Royal Oak Arts, Beats and Eats festival. Admittedly it is a bit of a stretch to call a street festival packed to the gills with shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrians, tacky art, and roving bands of gun-toting idiots a highlight, but on the bright side we didn’t stay long.
Wandering around Franklin’s Art in the Village, which had much more breathing room, much better art, and presumably far fewer gun-toting wackos than aforementioned Arts, Beats, and Eats.
Raspberry picking at Makielski Berry Farm on a clear, cool, gorgeous day.
Making fettucini, ravioli, pesto, heirloom tomato salad, and raspberry buckle from scratch from ingredients we bought at Detroit’s Eastern Market, the berry farm, Alcamo’s, and about eight other places. Efficient, no; delicious, yes.
Grilling steaks, asparagus, and peaches. It’s amazing how much better a $5.99/lb. American steak tastes than a $43/lb. one in Shanghai.

One hour and a few distractions later, I am now smack dab above the Genoa Municipal Airport in Genoa, Nebraska, a couple of hours shy of SFO and a few more hours shy of a quesadilla super suiza at El Farolito. Drool…

Dreidel Rules for Programmers

2009-12-15T13:52:00.004+08:00

As the title of the long-running and not-terribly-well-reviewed off-Broadway show says, My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m In Therapy! OK, I’m actually not in therapy, but the rest is true, which makes me an erstwhile Catholic and an “ethnic half-Jew.” This means that as a kid, I hunted for both Easter eggs and the afikoman, and both strung Christmas lights and lit the Hanukkah candles. If memory serves, there was one year where we insisted on 20 days of presents, 8 for Hanukkah and 12 for Christmas, although of course it was getting down to tube socks near the end.

In Shanghai, folks seem to be much more interested in the Jewish half. Christianity is perceived to be an acquired trait, an artifact of your upbringing — there are plenty of Chinese Christians, after all — but being Jewish is in your genes.

Jews are nearly universally admired here. First of all, they are considered to be good with money, in a 致富光荣 (to get rich is glorious) sort of way with none of the negative connotations sometimes associated with Jews in Western culture. In fact, relatively prosperous and business-oriented residents of the city of Wenzhou are sometimes called the “Jews of China.” Read into that what you will.

Jews are also considered to be exceedingly diligent and hard-working, hence this conversation snippet which has happened to me nearly word-for-word nearly a hundred times during the typical getting-to-know-you small talk in Chinese:

Them: Are you a religious person?
Me: I grew up as a Catholic, but I don’t practice anymore. My mother and sister are still practicing Catholics, and my Dad is Jewish.
Them: Oh, you’re Jewish! No wonder you’re so smart!

The minor holiday of Hanukkah is almost totally unknown here amongst those who haven’t lived overseas. There is a Chinese word for Hanukkah, 光明节 (“bright light festival”) or sometimes the phonetic 哈努卡 (Hānǔkǎ), but no one knows it; there seems to be no Chinese word at all for menorah or dreidel. I figured that it might be neat to contribute a little Jewish culture to our Shanghai office, so for our weekly Friday get-together I ordered some latkes and sufganiyot from an Israeli-owned Mediterranean restaurant, along with a menorah, candles, 50 dreidels, and 250 pieces of Hanukkah gelt from the Shanghai Jewish Center minimarket. An Israeli friend came over to sing the blessings in Hebrew, and a Jewish coworker recited the English translation.

Afterwards, of course, we played some dreidel. No one (including me — it’s been a while) knew the rules so I typed them up. In addition to a plain-English version of the rules derived from this, since we are all propeller-heads I typed up a pseudocode version (PDF) that goes a little something like this:

#
# Dreidel Rules for Programmers
#

# Initialize
account = {}
for p in players:
  account[p] = 10        # Give player p 10 coins
pot = 0                  # Pot = Middle of the table

# Triggers
on account[p] == 0:      # Whenever you're out of money,
  p.leave_table()        # you lose
  del players[p]
on pot == 0:             # Whenever the pot is empty,
  for p in players:      # Everybody puts one in the pot
    account[p] -= 1
    pot += 1

# Gameplay
while len(players) > 1:
  for p in players:
    # Go around the table
    switch p.spin(dreidel):
      case נ:  # Nun / nisht
        # Do nothing
        break
      case ג:  # Gimel / gantz
        # Take the whole pot                               
        account[p] += pot
        pot = 0
        break
      case ה:  # Hey / halb
        # Take half the pot
        account[p] += round(pot / 2.0)
        pot -= round(pot / 2.0)
        break
      case ש:  # Shin / shtel
      case פ:  # Po / peh (Israel)
        # Put one in the pot
        account[p] -= 1
        pot += 1
        break
      default:
        throw “That's not a dreidel you’re spinning...”

We all agreed that the pseudocode was much easier to follow than a prose version of the rules. Unless you spend most of the day with your nose buried in code, you might not agree.

I circulated this internally to the Jewglers mailing list (really!), and a few sharp-eyed readers pointed out serious bugs. The original version lacked case פ and so threw an exception when played with Israeli dreidels. It also had while players instead of while len(players) > 1, meaning that at the end there was just a single person playing alone in an infinite loop. Hopefully there did not exist some player p sitting alone in the cafeteria playing all weekend, although presumably he or she could eat account[p] down to zero and thus leave the table.

Finally, someone pointed out that the language needs to support element deletion during iteration. I hereby decree that my invented language (פthon) does support element deletion during iteration, and furthermore does so in accordance with the rules of dreidel.

Quack is the New Gobble

2009-11-26T12:50:00.002+08:00

This year my family will be 7000 miles away from me on Thanksgiving, but I get to make up for it by celebrating it three times: tonight (Thursday) with a friend and her friends, tomorrow with my Chinese teacher and her housemate and friends, and Saturday at my place.

Here's the invitation I sent to a small group of friends inviting them to dinner on Saturday night.

Take a minute to think what the world would be like if America didn't exist.

It would be a very different place. The world's most annoying tourists would be the [insert nationality here], not us. There would be no Ford Model T, lightning rods, revolvers, Astroturf, or Google. No Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Elvis, or Woody Allen. No George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld or Sarah Palin (it's not all bad) but no Lincoln or JFK or Roosevelts either. No peanuts, no chocolate, no tomatoes or potatoes.

But most importantly, if America didn't exist, we wouldn't be eating goddamn turkey for Thanksgiving.

The modern turkey is an abomination. There's a reason we only eat it once a year: its meat is dry and hopelessly bland. It is bred to be huge and thus nearly impossible to cook evenly. It is also bred to yield as much white meat as possible — the part so dry that it is edible only slathered in gravy or chopped up and tossed with mayo. In fact the domesticated turkey is so unnaturally misshapen, so lumbering and unwieldy and front-heavy, that males cannot properly mount females and require human intervention to pass their unfortunate genes on to the next barely edible generation. All together now: ewwww.

Which brings us back to our main topic: if America didn't exist. The Pilgrims would have boarded their Mayflower, sailed right past where America would be, past the sea monsters that lived at the edge of the world, and instead of Plymouth Rock their first port of call would have been China. Perhaps, I venture to say, they would have spent the winter of 1621 in Beijing, where instead of turkey the the natives would have treated them to a First Thanksgiving feast of tasty, crispy-skinned roast duck.

To celebrate this delicious alternative reality, we would like to host a turkey-free "East Meets West" Thanksgiving feast. Instead of turkey, we will bring in some Beijing roast duck from Quan Ju De, prepare the delicious sides that are the real star of the show anyway, consider the many blessings we are grateful for, eat and drink until we burst, and then collapse in a sated stupor on my couch and watch movies.

(Don't take it personally, Mom: I really do miss the combination of a drumstick, your stuffing, and a ladle-full of gravy. Now if they would only breed an all-dark-meat turkey...)

Plus Eight One, Part II

2009-10-04T17:43:00.002+08:00

More trip report:

10/2 evening: went out with some Couchsurfers. First: Donguri for dinner: okonomiyaki with octopus and wasabi, and salt and sesame seed. Then to Monte Bello a few drinks, and to World for dancing.
10/3: a tofu set lunch at Tosuiro. An incredibly rich and creamy sesame tofu with a touch of wasabi on top; tempura, not only the usual veggies but also an excellent tofu tempura; tofu skin served with grated ginger and tiny purple bean sprouts, dipped in a soy-based sauce; a tofu soup; tofu served in a wooden electrical appliance that cooked the dish right at the table; rice with Chinese yam and quail egg, pickled vegetables, and miso soup; and soy-milk pear ice cream for dessert. All for the spectacularly low price of something like $25; I ordered the lunch set, but it seems that they threw in most of the courses from the full dinner set. Barring a miracle, this will probably be the best value of any meal on the trip.
10/3: The "Philosopher's Path," including the Konchi-in, Nanzen-ji, and Kotoku-an temples. Sadly I didn't make it to Ginkaku-ji until after closing time, so I had to admire it this one from outside.
10/3: Dinner at Ponto-Cho Uan, recommended by the Lonely Planet. An elaborate, eight-or-so course kaiseki meal. Tasty but not mindblowingly so.
10/3: Live music and DJs at Metro.
10/4: Lunch at Kisoka-An Kawamichi-Ya: homemade cold soba in the usual dipping sauce, served with excellent tempura, and a side order of nishin (poached herring).
10/4: More temples: first Kinkaku-ji, a garish gold-plated temple on a lake. I was underwhelmed by the scenery, and overwhelmed by the huge throngs of Chinese tour groups. On to Ryoan-ji (currently under renovation). which has a very famous rock garden that allegedly looks like "a tiger crossing the sea with her cubs," which is something I was not aware that tigers frequently did. In any case, no amount of squinting transformed the garden's 15 rocks into anything resembling tiger cubs. Perhaps rock gardens, like humor, do not translate across culture.

Tonight: dinner, and probably a quiet night in (my first so far). Tomorrow to Ohara, a little town north of Kyoto where there is not much to do except stare at the mountains.

Plus Eight One

2009-10-02T16:28:00.006+08:00

Each year on 10/1, all of China goes on holiday for a week. Of course I wanted to travel somewhere, and I'm told that traveling within China is a terrible idea (since the transportation systems are all clogged with Chinese folks visiting home or traveling), so I booked a ticket to Kyoto, where I am now, for 10 days. It's a nice respite from the bustle of Shanghai.

A quick trip report, mostly for my own recollection:

9/30: Arrived at Hotel Sugicho late, 11:30ish. Went to a nearby bar called "Diva" for a bowl of pasta (coincidentally making this the second of two visits to Japan where my first meal was pasta) and a pint of Bass.
10/1: Laid-back day. Slept late. Grabbed pastries at a nearby bakery. Went downtown and wandered around (particularly to Nishiki Market), ate a tempura dinner at Yoshikawa, met up with some Couchsurfers, and went to an Irish Bar (The Hill of Tara).
10/2: Slept late (again... must stop doing that). Ate lunch at Izuju (found on the Kyoto Foodie web site). Visited the nearby Yasaka Shrine, the all-too-popular Kiyomizu temple (including Tainai Meguri), Kennan-ji (much more pleasant, and a very cool huge ceiling mural of two dragons). I was soaked from the rain, so I headed back to the hotel. Will be heading out to the weekly Couchsurfing meeting in a little while.

More later!

My MacBook Has a New Baby Brother

2009-09-12T19:05:00.002+08:00

I finally succumbed to the Netbook craze and bought an Acer 1810TZ. It's a little on the big side for a Netbook, but it is still really light (3 pounds), and much faster and less ridiculous-looking than the dwarfish 10”-screen ones.

Unfortunately, the UI is all in Chinese. I think I may have figured out how to switch the UI to English (it’s not “officially supported” in Vista Home), but I’ll be installing Linux anyway, so I don’t think I care too much.

The most interesting part was the process of actually buying the thing. At 4150 RMB = US$600, this is to date the most expensive thing I’ve bought on Taobao, China’s version of eBay (and where the vast majority of e-commerce seems to take place). Since the store offering the lowest price and highest credit rating is physically located right near Xujiahui, only about two subway stops away, I just went over to the address provided by the seller to pick it up.

I expected to end up in one of the many electronic markets within blocks of the subway station, but instead I found myself in a residential complex in a tiny seventh-floor apartment. A gutted 1-bedroom where nobody actually lives serves as an office/pickup center for the four employees of this Taobao shop. I guess in Shanghai zoning laws are enforced about as strictly as the hygiene laws.

“Don’t worry,” they assured me in Mandarin, “we’ve been in business for a long time.” Alrighty then.

In the China e-commerce would, the Taobao credit rating is king, and the funds are held in escrow for up to a week until I confirm that the product is satisfactory (if I complain, there is a dispute resolution process) so I did not, in fact, worry. I paid up, and all seems well so far.

Unfortunately, as I am typing this now on my company-issued MacBook, its new little brother seems stuck in a reboot loop, telling me that “Updates were not configured correctly. Reverting changes. Do not turn off your computer.”

On the bright side, at least it’s telling me that in English.

Rant of the Day: Aetna

2009-09-02T23:53:00.006+08:00

We just switched insurance companies at work, to Aetna. I wanted to find out some useful information like how much money I can spend on contact lenses each year and what the co-pay is on Viagra (kidding… I already have enough contacts) so naturally I went to the members web site.

It turns out that the web site contains lots of pretty PDFs like

“Do You Have Other Insurance?” (please please use it not us!)
“Claim Explanation of Benefits” (404 not found)
“Envíe un Mensaje a Servicios a los Miembros” (yo quiero uno burrito de carna asada, por favor)
“Understanding Diseases, Conditions, and Medical Care” (respectively: things I don’t want to catch, symptoms of those things, and what Aetna will probably refuse to pay for if those things happen)

but no information that would be actually useful such as aforementioned contact lens limit and Viagra co-pay. So naturally I sent a “secure email” to member services asking for this information. The response in my mailbox:

For your protection, the content of this message has been sent securely by Aetna using encryption technology. Please double click on the attachment labeled securedoc.html to begin the process of decrypting your message.

By clicking the "open" button you will be offered the opportunity to download a small application (applet) that will enable you to open the message directly on your computer (c: drive). If you cannot, or choose not to download the application click on the link labeled "here". This option will allow you to open the secure email without having to download anything to your computer, but may result in slower retrieval of your secure message.

Oh really? Thanks for the "opportunity" to open an application sent as an email attachment; how ironic that my insurance company would like to give me a virus. Why yes, I do in fact choose not to download the application, so I think I’ll just click on the link labeled “here,” which takes me to a page that says:

You do not have the software necessary to view the document. You must have Netscape Communicator 4.79 or higher or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.00 or higher.

Netscape? Communicator?

The 20th-century analogue: I go to a bank to check my account balance, but as it turns out I do not have the car necessary to use the drive-through window (I must have a Chevrolet Chevelle or newer, but not newer than a Ford Pinto). But if I like, I have the “opportunity” to give them the keys to my car, my ATM card, and my PIN number, and they will drive it across town to the bank headquarters, check my balance, and probably bring my car and ATM card back in the same condition with no money missing and no popcorn on the upholstery, really, they promise.

And this is just to try to figure out what my benefits are — Lord knows what will happen when I actually try to use them. Can we just let the government run health care please already? Could they really be that much more incomponent?

Young and lovely

2009-08-31T23:49:00.009+08:00

Over the past few days I have been interviewing Chinese teachers. This endeavor has really reflected the Chinese affection for process: every school wants to first spend an inordinate amount of time picking books and lesson tracks and HSK levels when all I want to do is meet a teacher. Anyone job interviewer worth his salt knows that how you think and behave is a zillion times more important than which books you’ve read, but these guys all seem to think their curriculum is more important than their personnel.

Item! One school (that really seems to want our business) sent a teacher for a trial lesson. She was fine, but not all that charismatic, so I candidly wrote back to the coordinator, rather diplomatically if I may say so myself:

My feedback is that she seems quite good, and very competent, although not quite as engaging or enthusiastic as our previous teachers.

The response:

1) How is your previous teacher? Are they young and lovely.or old and experienced?
2) When is good and convenient to send another teacher to you?

Well yes, I suppose the previous teachers were fact in their early twenties and easy on the eyes, but I didn’t mean to imply that the interview process needs to have a swimsuit competition phase. Perhaps I should just ask to see a line-up instead of a trial lesson to save everyone some time?

Anyway, they’re sending another teacher. We’ll see what happens.

Chinese People Love Woody Allen

2009-08-30T17:51:00.005+08:00

Ask me who my favorite moviemaker is, and I won’t need to think at all before answering Woody Allen. (The pre-Celebrity Woody Allen, that is.) What appeals to me about this short, balding, awkward, average-looking, nervous, bumbling man who, through his intelligent, cynical, neurotic, hyper-literate, observational, self-deprecating shtick, invariably ends up with a girl way better and better-looking than himself? If you don’t catch my drift, then you probably aren’t too familiar with me, my sense of humor, or the current location of my hairline.

Humor is naturally very culture-sensitive, and Chinese humor is very very very different than American humor. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that while most Chinese people may not have ever heard of Woody Allen (notwithstanding Match Point, which may as well have had an entirely different director from the pre-Celebrity days) they are quite receptive to his old-school humor. I have screened Annie Hall, Zelig, Play It Again, Sam, and the like quite a few times here — I can watch those movies again and again — and Chinese people invariably like them.

Possibly it’s selection bias. The sort of people I hang out with and watch movies with may just happen to be the sort of people who would especially appreciate the self-deprecating humor of a short, balding, awkward… uh, see first paragraph.

Possibly it’s the physical element. Woody Allen just… looks funny. You don’t even need to understand what he’s saying to appreciate the awkwardness and neurosis.

Possibly it’s some sort of Jewish-Chinese cultural overlap. For example, it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine recasting the stereotypical overbearing Jewish mother from Annie Hall with a stereotypical overbearing Chinese mother. (If I have offended any Jews or Chinese people reading this — sorry Dad — please just be patient, as I promise to offend everyone else equally over time.)

Possibly it’s just that Woody Allen’s humor, at its best, is so universal and cuts across cultural differences. Who can’t appreciate this soliliquy, from the very end of Annie Hall:

I thought of that old joke: this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”

Well, I guess pretty that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd… but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.

This is, in its way, fairly brilliant. It takes a joke that is on its face merely funny and turns it into a profound and perhaps even moving analogy which appeals to anyone who has experienced the irrationality, absurdity, and ultimately the gratification of love. And that, I imagine, includes you, regardless of whether you eat Chinese food every day or just on Christmas.

Shabi pee straight from the diving board

2009-08-26T21:59:00.023+08:00

This poem/essay has been making the rounds. It’s pretty funny in Chinese, so for kicks I thought I'd try to translate it. It conveys the characteristics of three different kinds of people:

Niubi (牛逼) translates roughly to “fucking awesome” — but more than that, it refers to people who are comfortable enough with their own fucking-awesomeness that they don’t really need to care what other people think. English definitely has no single-word translation, unless you consider “niubility” to have entered the English lexicon.
Zhuangbi (装逼) is a bit easier: the first character means “to pretend,” and “pretentious” or “poser” is a very natural translation.
Shabi (傻逼) is a tough one. The first character means “silly,” and as a whole the word might translate to something like “dipshit” for guys. As for the ladies, maybe it’s something like “clueless biatch.”

Oh, and that last character bi (逼) in all three terms? It refers to a certain part of the female anatomy, and is best understood as an intensifier, like “really fucking awesome” in English. This blog entry explains the situation better than I could.

While niubi is fundamentally untranslatable, I’m going to go ahead and translate zhuangbi as “poser” and shabi as “douchebag,” which means that I am about to type the word “douchebag” more in the next half hour than I have for the rest of my life put together (John Kerry’s Presidential campaign notwithstanding). Without further ado:

Niubi are few and far between,
Posers are pretty easy to find, and
Douchebags are everywhere.

Niubi just have one girl,
Posers have lots of girls, and
Douchebags have girls who have lots of guys.

Niubi don't care whether they drive or walk,
Posers won't settle for less than a BMW, and
Douchebags drive Buicks with Jaguar logos glued on.

Niubi drink Maotai,
Posers drink Chivas, and
Douchebags drink red wine and Sprite.

Niubi wear sneakers to work,
Posers wear suits to concerts, and
Douchebags wear designer clothes to McDonald's.

When niubi light up, their friends give them a light;
When posers light up, they use a match; and
When douchebags light up, they use a Zippo.

Niubi speak common Mandarin,
Posers smatter their speech with classical Chinese, and
Douchebags speak half Chinese and half English.

Niubis’ writing expresses their own personalities,
Posers’ writing expresses other people's personalities, and
Douchebags’ writing expresses whatever they heard on CCTV.

Niubi lead their own lives,
Posers imitate other people's lives, and
Douchebags poorly imitate other people’s lives.

When niubi pee in a swimming pool, they don't bat an eyelid;
When posers pee in a swimming pool, they hope no one notices,
but their lack of composure gives them away; and
Douchebags pee straight from the diving board.

You need to know niubi for a while before you decide they are niubi.
Posers seem like niubi at first
but after a while you realize they are posers.
Douchebags are douchebags straight from the get-go.

Niubi often poke fun at themselves.
Posers also sometimes poke fun at themselves
but only in the hope that others will suspect that they're really niubi.
Douchebags insist that they're niubi as soon as you meet them.

Niubis' greatest fear is that other people will call them niubi;
Posers’ greatest fear is that other people will not call them niubi; and
Douchebags’ greatest fear is that other people will call them douchebags.

Niubi know that they are niubi,
Posers are under the impression they are niubi, and
Douchebags have absolutely no idea that they are douchebags.

A poser who can admit that he is a poser
might someday become a niubi, but
A poser who has absolutely no clue that he is a poser
is dangerously close to becoming a douchebag.

In some situations,
douchebags can evolve into posers,
and posers can regress into douchebags.
In fact, a lot of the time,
the line between poser and douchebag is somewhat blurry.
But a niubi is forever a niubi.

After reading this,
Niubi and posers will likely classify themselves as douchebags,
And douchebags will typically think they are niubi.

Pasta machines, Pacemakers, and Penis Pumps

2009-08-26T11:45:00.008+08:00

I have recently started using Taobao, the go-to eBay-like e-commerce site in China. You can order just about anything, pay from your bank account (à la PayPal), and a courier delivers it wherever you like (shipping generally costs no more than a few US dollars) with a 7-day money-back guarantee.

The site is targeted to the local market, so naturally it is exclusively in Chinese. As such I have hit a few potholes on the road to becoming a good Chinese consumer:

Guitar Hero is 吉他英雄, not 吉它英雄. (Both are pronounced precisely the same, a transliteration of the word for “guitar” followed by the Chinese word for “hero,” but the second character is a different rendition of the nominative third-person singular pronoun. Whoops.) This set back my acquisition of Guitar Hero 4 indefinitely, since by the time I realized my mistake, everyone was out of stock.
My initial attempt to find a pasta-maker on Taobao failed. Turns out you need to search for 面条机, or “noodle machine,” instead of 意大利面机器, another conceivable way to write “pasta machine.” As a result, I bought two rolling pins which cost more than the pasta machine and burned about 15 party-guest-hours rolling pasta on a Sunday evening.

When discussing the pasta-machine Taobao experience with Anya, she initially read “pasta maker” as “pace maker” and asked if you could really buy pacemakers on Taobao. Naturally I tried. Turns out if you search for 起搏器 you get a page full of what I believe, based on an oft-quoted scene from Austin Powers, to be penis pumps. (“One Taobao receipt for a Swedish-made penis enlarger pump, made out to…”) Under certain circumstances I imagine this could make for some very awkward misunderstandings with your cardiothoracic surgeon.

Exploring my inner 意大利奶奶

2009-08-24T20:54:00.005+08:00

Yesterday, inspired by a recent visit to Issimo, where I ate decent fresh pasta for the first time in 8 months, Anya and I threw a pasta party at my place. Sadly, gone are the days when I could stroll through Davis Square to Dave's Fresh Pasta, pick up some noodles cut to order, and just spend the day cooking Sunday gravy. This is Shanghai, and fresh pasta is harder to find than a cab driver with well-groomed fingernails. Even the one speciality Italian market I could find stocked neither fresh pasta nor the ingredients to make it. Fortunately City Shop carries semolina flour, so we didn’t have to smuggle it in from Hong Kong.

I didn’t have a pasta machine, nor did the few department stores I looked in, and my initial misguided attempt to find one on Taobao failed. Against all odds, we decided to wing it, armed with nothing other than a rolling pin, a bamboo cutting board, and some Google search results. While I simmered the lamb ragù and Lily concocted the carbonara, a dozen guests (under Anya's direction) fromed countertop mounds of semolina flour, dropped in some eggs, then stirred, kneaded, rolled and rolled and painstakingly rolled some more, and finally cut some rustic-looking pappardelle.

While I do have an Italian grandmother, I am not personally an Italian grandmother, so I was a little apprehensive about how this would turn out. Especially when you’re “going commando” without a pasta machine, there are a dozen things that can go wrong. Fortunately, none of them did! The consistency and thickness of the noodles turned out just right, thanks to some fierce quality control by Anya, who now credibly insists that she was an Italian grandmother in a past life, and Zach, who sent more than a few still-too-thick pasta sheets back for re-rolling.

Our hours of effort were ultimately rewarded with ten glorious minutes of fressing away at steaming bowls of pasta… and four huge baggies of left-over noodles. Turns out 15 people can full up on a few pounds’ worth of noodles, not the six-plus(!) pounds that I take the blame for originally calculating.

I’ve since figured out the right incantation to use to search for pasta machines on Taobao — 面条机. There’s one on the way; hopefully next time will merely be a one-hour pasta-making sprint instead of a four-hour pasta-making marathon.

David made some spectacular chocolate truffles, creatively flavored with numbing Sichuan peppercorn, chili pepper, green tea, and ginger. We finished the night off with a very animated game of Cranium where the winning charade was, appropriately, “all-you-can-eat buffet.”

My Week of Thirty

2009-08-20T22:23:00.006+08:00

The process of turning 30 has been a long, gradual one. Well, come to think of it, I suppose all in all it took 30 years, but I was referring just to the birthday part.

Friday: a double-birthday-plus-housewarming party hosted by a friend and co-worker, replete with a shot-glass roulette wheel, countless baijiu toasts, an icing fight (I'm the blurry dude in the photo), and drunk fun with fireworks. Afterwards we went to the Melting Pot, where we had the second food-fight of the night. This time it was peanuts. ("Thank you all CHILDREN for throwing peanuts at me. I felt so loved! and I found a few in my bra when I got home last night. HOW WONDERFUL!!!!" — anon.) I ended the night with a vodka martini that was not really recognizable as a vodka martini but was still sufficient to knock me on my ass.

Monday: two of my favorite things in Shanghai. Dinner at Korean barbecue at Ben Jia, one of the very few non-Chinese restaurants here where quality is on par with what you can get in the US. Afterwards, Belgian brews at Kaiba, a malty, hoppy oasis in the Shanghai beer desert which teems with Budweiser and Tsingdao (a.k.a. Chinese Budweiser) and Harbin (a.k.a. northeastern-Chinese Budweiser).

Yesterday: Another (much smaller) birthday dinner at Noodle Bull, which has cheap and excellent hand-cut Taiwanese-style noodles, and also one kind of broth that takes shockingly like my mom's beef soup, although my favorite is the spicy-sour flavor. Of course, my favorite flavor of anything is the spicy-sour flavor.

Today: Completely unrelated to my 30th birthday, I had a very rare treat, a good Italian meal in Shanghai: pappardelle in lamb ragù at Issimo. The noodles were fresh and pleasantly bite-y, and the ragù was luxuriously lamb-y, and it was served with actual Pecarino Romano and not that crap in the green plastic bottle. Shanghai is chock full of mediocre Italian food, so I have mostly avoided it since moving here, but this place was actually worth going back to.

Romantic Middle-Class Dating and Networking Party

2009-08-19T12:12:00.007+08:00

Next week, we're having a work offsite to the lovely 东方绿舟, a.k.a. "Oriental Land." Unfortunately, we are presumably doing some sort of team-building activity rather than accepting one of the park's many "Favorable Offers" which include — what's this — a Romantic Middle Class Dating and Networking Party?

Nice! Bourgeoisie only; upper class and lower class need not apply. Finally, an opportunity to Romantically Date and Network, without having to rub shoulders with all those working schlubs and blue-blooded snoots that have always made it so hard in the past to find that special someone at a random amusement park in the middle of Songjiang.

I will make sure to bring one or more of these items to prove my middle-class status. I'm pretty sure I can find an Asian girl with bangs around here somewhere.

Grey Goose, Tea, and Bacon: A Housewarming Adventure

2009-08-16T17:39:00.006+08:00

Two and a half months after moving into my new apartment, I decided to throw a house-warming party, which also served as a going-away party for Alicia, our Chinese teacher, who is headed off to NYU to study. While certainly no match for the parties of my youth, it turned out to be something of a rager, at least considering how thoroughly boring I usually am.

One highlight involved some ill-advised partygoers plying our new Chinese teacher with copious amounts of Grey Goose, enough that she ended up in a rather bad state. I pointed out to an onlooker that, seeing as she was emptying her guts into my trash can two days before even teaching a single class, she perhaps lacked a certain "moral authority" that might be expected of a teacher. I didn't think she would even hear me, but she showed remarkable spunkiness by lifting her head out of the wastebasket, screaming "shut the fuck up," and then burying her head back in the trash can and proceeding to puke for another half hour. Good times, even if it did make for an awkward first lesson the next day:

New Chinese teacher: Use the idiom 乱哄哄 [filthy] in a sentence.
Me: After you puked in my apartment, it was 乱哄哄.
New Chinese teacher: A+, smart-ass.

Another highlight: the cops came. This was only the second time the bacon has busted in on a party I've thrown, the first time having been about ten years ago in Berkeley. This turn of events was not totally unexpected, and the police seem to be largely powerless here anyway, so it's not too big a deal. A guest mentioned that they were nearby, so I went downstairs to meet them.

The scene in one act, with all dialogue in Chinese unless otherwise noted:

(Cut to a dark hallway on the ground floor. The silence is punctuated by the volcanic snoring of an apneatic neighbor. Two officers approach.)

Me: What's the problem, Officers?
Officer 1: Do you live here?

(I suddenly realize that it would be rather convenient not to understand what they are saying. Ten-second pause.)

Me (English): Sorry, I don't understand.
Officer 1: But you just spoke in Chinese a second ago.
Me (English): Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying.
Officer 1 (to Officer 2): He understands me, I know it!
Officer 2 (to Officer 1): I know! He just spoke Chinese! What's going on?
Me (English): Sorry, what's the problem, Officers?
Officer: Do you live here? Who lives here?
Me (English): Maybe we could discuss this in a civilized manner over some of your glorious country's delicious traditional liquor? Would you like to do a shot with my new Chinese teacher?

(This goes on for a while. Little progress is made. Eventually, they make it clear that they want to go to the source of the noise, so I escort them to my apartment, where Alicia meets us at the doorway.)

Alicia: What's the problem, Officers?
Officer: The neighbors are complaining that it's too loud. Who lives here?
Alicia: Oh, he does. You can just speak to him in Mandarin.
Officer (to me): I thought you don't speak Chinese?
Me (to Alicia, in English): Um, Alicia, I think you forgot that I don't speak any Chinese.
Alicia (to me, in Mandarin): Oh, your Chinese is good enough to...
Me (to Alicia): No, really, I don't speak any Chinese.
Alicia: (flash of understanding) Ah, I see.
Officer (to me): Where are you from?
Me (in English): I don't understand.
Officer (to me, really slowly): Which. Country. Are. You. From?
Me (in English, after ten-second pause): Ah. Mehr. Ih. Ka.
Officer (repeating after me in English, without understanding): Ah. Mel. Ee. Ka.
Officer (to Alicia, increasingly annoyed): What the hell country is he from?
Alicia: America.
Officer: Is he here for study or work?
Alicia: Work.
Officer: Which company?
Alicia: [name of rather well-known Internet company that I work for]
Officer: (Face brightens) Oh, that company! They're great! I just saw [name of rather famous and popular president of our company's Chinese division] on TV yesterday. He's really smart. (To me) OK, just go upstairs and tell everyone to be quiet and we'll leave.
Me (in Mandarin): OK, I'll go upstairs and tell them to be quiet. Thanks, Officers!

I went upstairs and asked my guests to play a little game where everyone remains perfectly silent for five minutes. Most people obliged, except for the second-drunkest person present (after the new Chinese teacher of course), who naturally shrieked at the top of her lungs. Eventually she quieted down too, and the cops left. I haven't been evicted yet.

The next day, the neighbors (who seem to genuinely like me, at least during daylight hours) all disclaimed responsibility for having called the cops.

There were actual highlights at the party too. Alicia instructed her students to prepare "performances" for the party — Chinese people love performances. One coworker sang a song, and one conducted a Gongfu tea ceremony. I performed a popular, tongue-twisting rap song about the sheer awesomeness of the Chinese language. Sample lyrics (I kid you not): "We've been toiling for years practicing English pronunciation and grammar. How about this year we switch places, and make them roll their tongues and even the score?" Good stuff.

三十而立

2009-08-16T17:14:00.002+08:00

Yup, I'm about to turn thirty. Turns out the big three-oh is as big a deal in China as back home. Whenever I tell someone I'm about to hit this milestone which marks, with (apologies to history's wittiest drunk) not quite the beginning of the end but perhaps the end of the beginning, they always say the same thing: 三十而立. Roughly translated, it means "at thirty, I was firmly established." The whole shebang, from the Analects of Confucius:

吾十有五而志于學，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳順，七十而從心所欲，不踰矩．

A translation:

When I was fifteen my aspiration was to study. At thirty I was firmly established. At forty I no longer harbored any delusions. At fifty I knew the Mandate of Heaven. At sixty my ears were atuned. And at seventy I could follow all the desires of my heart without transgressing.

Wow, do I not feel firmly established. However, I am quite curious to find out what delusions I am harboring, and what exactly Heaven is Mandating me to do. Check back on this blog in ten and twenty years for updates.

We are the Borg. You have not been assimilated.

2009-07-11T13:46:00.004+08:00

A coworker visiting Shanghai yesterday asked me, “So let’s say you fall in love with China and stay here. Do you think you could ever assimilate?” My answer: assimilate, yes. Integrate, no.

My Mandarin, while by no means good (and a long way from fluent) has gotten to point where I can pretty much lead my life without using any English, so I do that as much as possible. But 95% of the time that I interact with a Chinese person in Mandarin for more than a few sentences, and maybe half the time only a single sentence or even a “hello,” the topic of conversation becomes how strange it is that I am speaking Chinese. This exchange repeats itself almost exactly a few times per day: “Wow, your Chinese is really good! How many years have you lived here?” “A bit over a year now.” “How can that possibly be? You're really 厉害!” And believe me, my Chinese is not really good.

This cultural hyper-awareness extends beyond language. Whenever I do anything that is considered characteristically “Chinese” as opposed to Western — whether it’s ordering xiaolongbao, singing karaoke, or eating crayfish at a street-side stand, there is a constant sense of amusement that I am a non-Chinese person behaving in a Chinese way. To me, I'm just going about my life, but to Chinese people it’s just not normal that I happen to be going about it in much the same way they would. Of course this sense of surprise and amusement fades away once someone knows me well, but I know it’s still there.

So, basically, unless my Chinese gets a whole lot worse and I stop eating street food, nearly every first interaction I will have with anybody will be largely defined by the fact that, yes, I really am a non-Chinese person speaking Chinese or, um, “acting Chinese,” whatever that means. If you’re a Chinese person in any multicultural Western city, you can assimilate: your English becomes nearly perfect, and you start eating brunch, and no one bats an eye at how strange it was that you just ordered your pancakes in perfect English. That sort of integration will never ever happen to me, not even here in the most Westernized and multicultural city in China.

Exotic Animal

2009-07-03T14:23:00.003+08:00

Here in China, I often feel like an exotic animal, what with folks staring at me all the time. We white people are by no means rare in Shanghai, but still, if you are a foreigner and you go to the Watson's on the corner and start scanning the shelves for your favorite brand of deodorant, the employees will gather around and watch you look. If you ask where the shampoo is in Chinese, the whole store assembles to see the show. It's similar to the way that I might watch baboons grooming each other at the zoo: the baboons think it is completely boring, but I find it fascinating.

However I never feel as much like a caged exotic animal as I do at work when the occasional large group of "workplace tourists" take a tour of our famed (and overwhelmingly Chinese-staffed) offices in People's Square. I hear murmuring outside, and when I look up I literally see a bunch of Chinese folks pressing their faces to the glass, pointing at this strange and presumably lost animal that has somehow integrated himself into a foreign habitat, a baboon living among the humans. I have taken to acting as strangely as possible whenever this happens, first saying 大家好 ("Hi, everyone!") and then spinning crazily around in my office chair, or pacing about the office like a mad scientist talking to myself. They came all the way to the zoo - might as well give them a show.

Take that, environment

2008-06-24T21:58:00.003+08:00

After dinner I stopped by the Watson's to buy some shaving gel and found that most Shanghai stores have started charging for shopping bags. It’s a pittance, to be sure, but apparently their scheme to clean China up two grams of plastic at a time is working, since I just carried the container home in my bare hands.

As I was about to pass through the subway turnstile in People’s Square, a guard stopped me and rather animatedly communicated that I was not permitted to carry such a dangerous flammable aerosol product into the station. Lord knows what kind of devastation I could wreak with it. So I just took a cab home. Take that, environment.

Come to think of it, I suppose that a ban on aerosol deodorant could explain a lot about the olfactory condition of the Shanghai subway.

Oh.

2008-06-24T21:54:00.003+08:00

So it turns out that lǘròu is donkey meat. This calls into question my strategy of ordering food in restaurants by pointing at some random dish on the menu and then looking up the translation later.

At least I knew enough to steer clear of the “deer whip.”

Unexpected housekeeping services

2008-06-11T18:48:00.006+08:00

No, not that kind of unexpected housekeeping services. Get your mind out of the gutter.

One morning shortly after I moved in, I found that my tiny washer/dryer combo decided to leave some laundry slightly damp after a drying cycle. I just threw the clothes on my bed, expecting that they would dry during the day and I could take care of them after work. That evening, to my pleasant surprise, they were sitting on my dresser, neatly folded. Coolio.

I recent discovered another unexpected housekeeping service: lily stamen removal. Anyone who has ever gotten lily pollen on their clothes or knows how difficult it is to remove. Apparently the housekeeping staff knows this too, because on Monday they meticulously snipped all the pollen-bearing stamens from the flowers I had bought over the weekend. Smashing.

How far can I push this? Can I leave a chocolate chip cookie recipe on the kitchen counter and return home to the aroma of freshly-baked cookies? If I scatter my receipts and a blank 1040 on the kitchen table will I get a refund check in the mail a few weeks later? Will a corpse left in the bathtub find its own way to the bottom of Suzhou Creek? Time shall tell.