The sound of no hands clapping

I’m back in Guangzhou for meetings. Always with the meetings. The wheels of commerce turn forever forward.

It’s one of the most tired travelogue set pieces – a foreigner finds himself at an outrageous banquet and is corralled into doing something ridiculous and wacky on stage.

Last night I went to my colleague’s outrageous going-away banquet and was corralled into doing something ridiculous and wacky on stage.

Life imitates hoary clichés …starring me!

For this farewell fete the office staff organized a 4-hour extravaganza comprised of a fourteen course dinner, heart-felt speeches, harmonica performances, singing competitions and a prize segment I’ll call “Whitey sings your Cantonese pop favorites.”

The contest worked like this. I stood up in front of the 200 or so dinner guests on a stage wearing headphones and holding a microphone. The DJ would play a Cantonese pop ballad on the headphones. I was then meant to sing it to the audience. The first table to guess what I was trying to sing won points. The team with the most points won a prize. It wasn't meant to be complicated.

Originally my boss was designated to be the star in this feature, but when the DJ came to him he simply pointed at me and said, “You’re up mate!” Luckily I have few problems with making a spectacle of myself especially when I’ve been given implicit permission to do so. I bounced up on stage and put on the headset.

I screamed into the microphone, “Hello GuangZHOUUUU! Are you ready to ROCK!?!” By their total silence I assumed everyone was sufficiently ready to rock.

The DJ then played a pop song on my headphones. In typical Canto-Pop style the performer sang in shrill high-pitched tones only audible to certain non-human mammals. At first I tried to imitate the singer, actually singing what I thought were words. I think it sounded like I was trying to give a speech in Dolphin.

No guesses. Silence.

Then I just sang the words to other songs for comic effect. “Yes, I’m proud to be an Americaaaannnn, where at least I know I’m FREEEEEE….”

No one got the humor. Silence.

Then I just started humming along to the song. This was the way to go. Everyone started screaming and raising their hands. A woman guessed correctly on the first try. People applauded. I was saved.

I had to perform five more songs. I kept with the humming technique.

China needs coasters

I went to Ikea on Saturday. Since this is the zillionth time I’ve moved apartments in the past 10 years, I’m an old hand at buying incidental tchotcke crap from the world’s favorite Swedish meatball emporium.

Do I need a “Horst” or a “Stronker?” Oh, I’ll just get both! And that’s a good price for a “Groggy!”


It was the typical Ikea experience, an inpenetrable maze designed to dead-end at every turn into a stack of cheap, mind-numbingly mundane household items. The thing that made this trip unique was, as everything, China.

There are 1.3 billion people in China. 1.29 billion were shopping at the Shanghai Ikea on Saturday afternoon. Most people weren’t actually shopping. A trip to Ikea is entertainment, a Scandinavian “Tomorrowland.” It’s a place where the average person can peer into a future of economic prosperity, mindless consumption and 37 different styles of drink coasters. Plus they have a slide and that ball area for the kids.

The checkout line was like the queue for the lifeboats on the Titanic. People were fighting and screaming. A woman was crying. Icy cold water was up to my knees (okay, not really.)

Somehow I survived. I’m sure I’ll be back next weekend. I need some more stuff from Ikea.

Improbable things on mopeds

I took this photo at about 2PM today in Xintiandi, a neighborhood not too far from my own. It’s the first in a series of photos I will call “Improbable Things on Mopeds (and Bikes.)”


My next photo series will be entitled “Young Chinese Guys with Hair Like Pat Benatar.” I expect it to be a 42 volume set. Stay tuned.

Delayed

DING DONG DING DING.

Robot lady voice: “Blah blah blah blah C-Z-SAN-ER-QI-LIU blah blah blah blah. Xie xie.”

Now in English.

Robot lady voice: “We regret to announce that flight C-Z-3-2-7-6 to …SHANGHAI… will be delayed. The new departure time is …WILL BE ANNOUNCED LATER. Thank you.”

Does robot lady really “regret?” She’s not selling me on her sincerity. Something tells me she feels nothing. Something tells me she’s a piece of software purchased from the lowest cost vendor and she’s not sentient and therefore existentially unable to give two shits about my delay of three hours and counting.

Why am I being apologized to by software? I find the pretense demeaning. At least the robot lady could say: “Attention passengers. The flight is delayed. The departure time is …SOME TIME BETWEEN NOW AND THE RAPTURE. Please feel free to …TAKE THE BUS. Don’t blame me because …I’M JUST …A …MACHINE. Thank you.”

DING DONG DING DING.

Oh, did I mention this announcement is repeated for every delayed flight at least once a minute? Did I mention every flight is delayed because of torrential rains? Did I mention the announcement is REALLY LOUD? DID I MENTION THAT?

I arrived at the airport with such great expectations. Have some dinner. Relax at the gate. Maybe catch up on some reading. I’m reading “Cosmopolis” by Don DeLillo. It’s about a billionaire and his malaise and paranoia and AMERICA and other big social and literary themes. Don DeLillo uses lots of elliptical language and cerebral metaphors. I don’t get it. I think I’m too stupid.

DING DONG DING DING.

I was hijacked at the entrance to the airport by a guy on an electric cart – the kind used in the States for old people and the morbidly obese. As the world’s newest, most fully-realized hyper-capitalist society this electric cart was reserved only for me, a foreigner with money. Take a hike fatty!

Like most of my transactions here, action precedes agreement. My baggage was loaded on to the cart and I was driving away before I could croak out “I don’t know if I need a….” The driver whipped across the infinite expanse of the GZ airport, plowing through mobs of Chinese travelers before screeching to a halt at the front of the check-in line. He walked past the dozen or so people in the queue and shoved my passport and ticket into the agent’s face. I had a boarding pass in about 30 seconds.

Not bad for 20 yuan. Yay for being a horrible foreigner. Now all I needed was a martini, pith helmet and monocle to look even like an even bigger white asshole. Maybe we could put little American flags on the electric cart. And the horn could play “Dixie.” And I could have a tuxedoed midget riding beside me to do my bidding.

The driver jumped back into the cart and we accelerated toward the security check. We were doing about 30 mph through the concourse toward the domestic gates when I noticed something. A security guard was running after us. I tapped the driver. “We’re being chased. I think you should pull over.” He didn’t understand. I pointed at the rent-a-cop hoofing down the corridor.

The driver hit the breaks. We slid to a stop on the highly polished floor.

The security guard was joined instantaneously by two compatriots, all looked about 16 years-old. Their uniforms were one-size-fits-none. One of the guards took my bag off the cart and then they took turns holding it. The driver looked bemused.

“Too heavy.” One of the guards asked to see my ticket. They gathered around to inspect it. After a moment. “Too heavy,” he declared again. “Go back and check.”

Good lord. “You know I’ve never been stopped about this bag before and I travel all the time and I know it fits in the overhead bin and…”

The driver rolled his eyes and gave me a crooked smile. Under his breath, “Money.”

What’s the customary bribe to a 16-year-old security guard in the Guangzhou airport? The guidebooks don’t say. I only had 100RMB notes and I didn’t think he would make change. I slipped him a Chairman. (That’s my new lingo for the currency.) In my few brief experiences with petty pay-offs in China, the extortionist invariably feigns surprise when you actually hand him money. It’s this “who me?” expression of innocence that I find to be the only truly irritating part of the transaction.

I suppose I should feel outraged but I don’t.

I can’t blame them. They’re poor and scrounge for a living on the bleeding edge of the new prosperity. Every day it’s an anonymous, non-stop parade of moneyed travelers laughing and smiling and chatting on cell phones, oblivious to the peasants in ill-fitting uniforms watching them as they pass through the concourse to destinations far away from the unceasing grind of Guangzhou.

Smartly-dressed women push carts of shopping bags with designer brand names. Tubby kids in short-pants get pulled along as they whine or screech or stare hypnotically at portable video games. Guys in suits smoke, lug laptops, pull roller bags. Everyone is going someplace except for them.

Deng Xiaoping said “Let some get rich first.” Fuck that noise.

They spot me. An idiot pigeon being squired around the airport on an electric litter. Easy money. To them it’s a week’s wages. For me it’s 12 bucks and a wacky anecdote. Fair enough.

If I were them I would have shaken me down for more.

DING DONG DING DING.

The flight was choppy and unpleasant. The back of the 757 smelled like a toilet. The only food was in a tiny bag labeled “Aviation Snack.”

I finally made it home around 3AM, too exhausted to sleep.

Hong Kong, May 20

I have my camera attachment now. Here are a few snaps from last Saturday's walk around Hong Kong.

The view from my window

Andrew Sullivan writes a blog for Time magazine. He asked his readers to take a photo of the view from their window and send it in. It's a fascinating thing really - a moment in time captured by dozens of people around the world.

I got my picture published! It's the view from my hotel room in Guangzhou, May 23rd at 8:37PM.

Back in Guangzhou

I made it back to Guangzhou this morning about 9:30AM. It’s hot and rainy and humid and smoggy today. Walking around outside is an experience akin to chain-smoking in a steam room. Everywhere on the streets are giant cockroaches in various states of being squished.

“Guangzhou is really a nice city. You just have to give it time!”

Smile and nod and smile and nod.

The work meeting that MUST HAPPEN TODAY perfunctorily got rescheduled for Wednesday afternoon. It’s for the better because I’m not feeling so great – a sour combination of a restless sleep, the mysterious grayish coffee-style swill I drank at the station and last night’s banquet-sized portion of super spicy Sichuanese chicken. Thankfully the train from Hong Kong featured the most modern, clean, delightfully scented sanitation facilities this side of a Calcutta flophouse.

I took the meeting cancellation as an opportunity to walk to the mall down the street for lunch. Everyone tells me it’s the nicest mall in Guangzhou, and when I walked in I agreed. It’s eight levels of a gleaming, air-conditioned, escalatored bourgeois rebuke to the communist ideal. There’s a G-Star store selling $120 jeans, a Lacoste shop and my new favorite shoe retailer, “Fortune Duck.”

The mall’s information kiosk is about the size of an aircraft carrier. I walked up to it to perform what’s become my own special personal ritual. I find something – usually a map or a directory – and then I stare at the jumble of squiggles hoping I might somehow deduce the characters for “Food Court.” Sadly, nothing.

I meandered around until I found a place that seemed okay, Guangzhou’s version of a health food restaurant. The menu listed two selections of pizza, the first with mango and the second with “Some kind of fruit.” There were puddings and yogurt dishes. Finally, there was a “sandwich.”

“What’s in the sandwich?”

Luckily the waitress spoke some English. “Pork,” she said. “And apples.”

For the uninitiated, pork is like the flour of China. Everything has pork in it. Dumplings? Pork. Buns? Pork. Soups? Pork. Stir-fried anything? Pork. Dim sum? Pork. Desserts? Pork. Pork? Pork. Pork. Pork.

At current rates of consumption I predict that China will convert to a wholly pork-based economy by 2015. The renminbi will be replaced by the “belly.” You heard it here first.

So I ate the pork sandwich with apples. It was delicious.

Guangzhou really is a nice city. You just have to give it time.

Honky Town

I arrived in Hong Kong via the train from Guangzhou around 9PM Friday night. Other than opening a bank account (accomplished), I didn’t have much of an agenda for the weekend. I envisioned two days of wandering around, bookstores and room service.

I stayed at the Jia Hotel, a rather tepid Philippe Starck-designed boutique. It featured the same banal Design Within Reach sample sale interior I’ve seen in various iterations around the world. Silver chairs. Over-sized framed mirrors. Couches with zany fabric patterns. A chaise shaped like a giant hand. A cushioned wheelbarrow.

Attention people of Earth! The standard design concept for boutique hotels is now officially tired. Please make a note of it.

The reception staff were creepy and overly solicitous. (“Thank you for allowing the kind use of your credit card.” Everything is perfect …on the ISLAND!) Bleary-eyed middle managers staggered about in pleated khakis trying to find the elevators in the near pitch black of the mood lighting. Enya warbled softly from some unseen sound system.

Thankfully, two words helped change my mind about the hotel. FREE CAKE! All you care to eat.

What to say about the city of Hong Kong? Wow? Super-tan-fabulous? Pretty fucking awesome?

Superlatives fail.

Overwhelming. Vertical. Heaving. Bright. Jam-packed. It’s like someone took New York, crammed all of Manhattan on to Sunset Boulevard, then took urban planning cues straight out of an Escher print. Tiny, narrow lanes abut 60 story towers. Sidewalks become stairs become pedestrian flyovers three levels up. And it wouldn’t be China if it didn’t have GIANTNEONSIGNSEVERYWHERE!!!

I went out on Saturday with the intention of going to the Peak, which is the highest point in the city and affords a spectacular view of the skyline. But it was hazy and overcast so I decided to spend the afternoon perusing books and magazines instead. Otherwise nothing exciting happened. I walked around a lot. I went to the gym. On Sunday I met a friend of a friend from Shanghai for dinner. All good.

Despite all the sensory delights of Hong Kong there was something I loved more than anything else. The locals refer to themselves as “Honkies.” Really. I walked around the city for two days confronted with amazing sight after amazing sight and all I could think was: “Honkies!” They call themselves “Honkies!” Laugh. Out. Loud.

In my head I imagined an entire city of 14 million people, all Mr. Bentley from The Jeffersons.

I took pictures but I don’t have my camera hook-up with me. I’m just posting something I found on the Internet. People seem to get agitated when I don’t add a picture.

Now I’m back in Guangzhou where it seems like I’m the only Honky.

Typhooey

Lucky for me the typhoon never made it to Guangzhou. The only effect it had was to somehow blow the thick layer of smog from the city -- creating the most eerily beautiful day in the history of post-industrial southern China.

I'm off to Hong Kong tonight.

Hello, my name is...

It’s been several weeks now, but I have a new name. I’m 柯翱. It’s pronounced “ke1 ao4.” Apparently it’s supposed to sound like “Karl” – but I think that’s stretching it.

During my first week in Shanghai the office manager Jenny told me I should select a Chinese name for my business cards as well as a couple of permit documents. Since my Chinese naming skills are somewhat rudimentary, I told the administrative assistants to select a name for me.

After hours of heated discussions in Chinese, they came back to me with: 柯翱.

“Okay. What does it mean?”

More heated discussion in Chinese.

Apparently the first character is a fairly typical surname (Chinese names start with the surname.) The given name was a bit more difficult to explain in English, so Jenny wrote down the meaning for me:

“Feral Bird.”

I guess when you’ve lived your life with the last name “Cluck” – anything is considered an improvement. But given the opportunity to select a new name, I thought I might try for something a bit more aspirational. Also, for me, the poultry thing was totally played out.

“That doesn’t sound very inspiring.”

“It’s a very good name,” Jenny defended. All the office ladies nodded in agreement.

I asked them to look it up in the dictionary and show it to me. I thought something might be getting lost in translation.

Jenny showed me in the dictionary: “To take wing, soar.” Oh, now that’s more like it. It’s still vaguely a bird reference, but soaring is better than clucking.

For awhile it seemed a pivotal life moment, an alternate identity, a fresh start. I was soaring, majestic, fantastic 柯翱 – my new name.

Predictably, soaring is followed by crashing. A few days later I showed my new name to my Chinese teacher. She smiled in amusement and remarked curtly, “This is a name only a foreigner would have.”

It's still better than either of Gwyneth Paltrow's stupid kids.

Typhoon Pearl

"Typhoon Pearl" may sound like a frozen fruit cocktail from T.G.I.Friday's. Actually it's a killer tropical storm headed right now toward Guangzhou.

In other news, I'm meant to be travelling to Guangzhou tomorrow at 8AM. More later.

Where am I?

I called for food delivery tonight. Luckily some enterprising person has created an English-language service that will pass along your order to the Chinese-speaking people at local restaurants. It's called "Sherpa's."

As soon as I placed my order (chicken tikka masala, vegetable samosa) I realized I don't actually know my address. My house is in an alley so there's no exact street name. All the mail is addressed in Chinese.

"My address? I don't know." I felt like a total moron.

I looked at the rental contract and, alas, that was also in Chinese. I almost called my landlord, but I thought "Where do I live?" would be a transcendently stupid question.


I know the character with three lines means "3" (duh) and the zero means, in fact, zero. I think the next one is a six? I also know it's off Xiangyang Road.

Someone (David Y., David E., Todd?) please help. If I can't order delivery I'll starve. Really. 

Schwätzt Du Lëtzeburgesch?

My landlord Euan graciously invited me out to dinner with him and some friends after he stopped by the house yesterday to help organize the installation of my TV.

A group of us met at a pan-Asian fusion place near Xujiahua called “Oriental.” It was a multi-culti expat assembly – a German guy who spent his childhood in Hong Kong, his nominally British girlfriend (“I’ve never actually lived in the UK.”) who grew up in Malawi, Saudi and Bahrain, an incredibly charming Australian/Chinese woman working for a steel company, a couple of ABC entrepreneurs and a recently arrived university grad who just started a job in the Shanghai consulate for Luxembourg.

“What language do they speak in Luxembourg?”

“Luxembourgish.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.”

I always thought Luxembourg was just a pinpoint on the map whose sole purpose was to be a geo-political punchline. Now I found out it was a country with its own language. It's like Jersey City had its own dialect.

The German guy chimed in: "The petrol is much cheaper there than in Germany." Surely a point of patriotic pride worthy of inclusion into the Luxembourg national anthem.

Apparently Luxembourgish is a pastiche of Flemish, German and French. Though she was a citizen she didn’t speak Luxembourgish, but as a new employee of the government she was encouraged to take lessons.

“Where do you find a Luxembourgish teacher in Shanghai?”

“On the Internet.”

Of course.

Later we went to a bar in Xuhui. It was a concession-era home turned into a sleek nightclub space packed with foreigners and rich Chinese. I didn’t stay out too late. I had intentions of getting up early and going to Ikea today, but when I got up this morning the weather was too beautiful to squander it in an endless indoor maze of crap home furnishings.

Instead I had some breakfast, got the satellite TV hooked up (50 full channels of wacky game shows, costume dramas and completely inane sports like womens’ badminton) and then sat on my upstairs terrace and reviewed some of my Mandarin homework. It was, in every way, a good day.

Fun foods

Chicken feet, duck tongues and pork entrails are one thing -- but some of the food here can only be explained through photographs.

There's a pastry at my lunch place called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bacon," a lemon-flavored version of Lay's Potato Chips and a fast food place called "Dog."

I heart China. 

Eh, it's me.

I went out a couple of weeks ago with a few people from work to a club called "GOD." Rather than a crass overpromise, apparently the name is derived from the initials of the proprietors.

Someone from the office emailed this to me. I ended up on their website.

I'm flattered I guess.

Dashanzi

During my trip to Beijing Andy and I went with some of his colleagues to Dashanzi, a formerly industrial neighborhood that’s been converted into a hopelessly HOT-HIP-NOW international epicenter of contemporary art. It’s a surreal urban mix of stripped down warehouses turned into white space art galleries, painfully trendy t-shirt boutiques and then some actual factories manufacturing an assortment of the most inane products imaginable.

How inane? We peeked into a factory that was making automatic tennis ball machines shaped like army tanks. Oh yes, I have a picture.

The crowd milling about the streets of Dashanzi matched the environment. Benelux Eurotrash, nouveau riche Chinese and dollar-a-day factory workers. Everyone was smoking and looking at everyone else with the perfect mix of amusement, envy and contempt.

Luckily the quotient of obnoxious, ugly Americans in fanny packs was quite low. I tried to fill the void by loudly beginning every comment and observation with “Well in America, where we have FREEDOM…” I think the people in my group found this funny the first few times. I still find it endlessly hilarious. And I wonder why I’m single.

I found some of the artwork interesting – technically and conceptually. Most of it, however, simply defied parody and fell into the “I majored in semiotics at Brown and my parents never understood me when I was growing up in Darien so now fuck them I’m a video installation artist and my work is about the oppression of woman within the hyper spatial construct of contemporary neo-colonial cultures and blah fucking blah” category.

Indeed, I witnessed a performance by a man who made tea out of his own blood and then served it to the audience. He did this in a room surrounded by photos and paintings of his ass in various iconic locations around the world. Oh, and someone was playing a mandolin.

Call me a philistine, but mainly I just aspire to own artwork that matches my couch.

I’ve attached some photos of the “art” or art. I’ll let you be your own critic.

Bags of Mannequins

Friday, April 28th around 12:45 PM. Bags of mannequins on the street near my house.

I finally found a place that out-weirds even me.

Incidentally, isn't "Bags of Mannequins" a great name for a punk band? 

Happy May Day

Happy May Day everyone. I've been on vacation so I've been away from the blog.

I hoped that China would celebrate the holiday with zealous patriotic spectacles like marching bands, nuclear missile displays and high-stepping soldiers parading in columns with rifles and bayonettes while the Beloved Leader stood on a balcony waving to the unwashed masses and denouncing the Great Satan.

Instead it was mainly ice cream, picnics and department store white sales. Although instead of our traditional summer holiday hot dogs people here seem to enjoy various meats on sticks, including squid, something that looks like but is not squid, and roasted pigeon.

My friend Andy is in Beijing for work so he came down last Saturday to visit and hang out. We did the Shanghai tourist circuit -- had dinner on the Bund, walked through the markets at Fangbang Road, went up into the Jin Mao Tower and on. He helped me move my bags into my new house and agreed it seems "very authentic."

On Thursday morning we flew to Beijing and did the same sort of thing. The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and some other notable attractions. We decided against visiting the Great Wall because, as a public holiday, it would have been packed a thousand miles end-to-end with locals wearing matching baseball hats on package tours being corralled by guides screaming into bullhorns. Also, I think Andy was unwilling to listen to me endlessly amuse myself with, "This is a great wall! Not just "okay." Great! What a great wall!"

The picture above is Andy at the Forbidden City. They're renovating EVERYTHING in Beijing for the Olympics, including this site. They put the image of one of the temples on to the nets covering the scaffolding -- thus my artistic photographic effect.

There's more to write about, but I'm tired and want to relax. I just bought 9 DVDs for seven dollars so I think I'll watch a movie and then go to bed.

Has anyone seen "V for Vendetta?"