Goodbye, Shanghai.

Detritus of an in-room buffet.

Somewhat fittingly, I spent my last night in Shanghai at the Regal Beagle with some friends, some take out (courtesy of Shanghai Sherpas, of course) and every bottle of mini-bar wine we could conjure up from the W+K dorm block. Although there are tons and tons of things I didn't get around to experiencing in Shanghai, spending it in my room with my buddies was the perfect end to this leg of the adventure.

Leaving the city, Wednesday morning.

On my way to Phuket, we had a layover in Bangkok for about 5 hours. We were hanging out in what I like to think of as the "vacation terminal" with flights mostly headed to the south of Thailand. Everyone's happy, tan, scantily clad. But I decided I should reevaluate my assessment when I saw this:

Yeah, not so much.

I'm in Phuket now, doing absolutely nothing. I could not be happier. At the moment, there's a massive downpour, with waves crashing in, wind blowing and vacationers heading for the indoors, but yesterday and the day before were absolutely picturesque. I read an embarrassingly trashy novel without a hint of shame. And so what if I paid $20 for Jackie Collins!?!? It was so worth it.

We leave here tomorrow afternoon, heading back north to Bangkok for one night. I'm sure it will be...interesting.

xoxo

Don't complain.

I went out for a really great dinner with two of the most recent Portland arrivals (Lis and Dani), Cal (of sing-along fame) and Marci on Saturday night and had one of the best meals in recent memory--really fresh, spicy Thai food. Afterwards we went outside to the garden bar for a nightcap, which is where we found these two:

Does this count as sleeping together on the first date?

This wouldn't be so alarming if this couple was a) not on a date, b) homeless or c) really drunk. But they didn't appear to be any of the above. Just tired. Or really boring. It was hard to tell. In my un-subtle attempts to get a photo, I did manage to wake them up. They can thank me at the wedding toast.

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Final update.

In perhaps the least inspiring storyline of this blog, I feel compelled to update you all on the construction site near my office. So, here you go. A cement wall has gone up in recent days...or rather, recent nights. During the day, the workers sleep shirtless on mats in the alley to avoid the heat, which really only makes sense. It's damn hot.

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I'll miss you, Element Fresh.

It's Monday afternoon, which means I have less than two days before hopping a plane for a Thailand and then home. Wherever that is. I feel like I've been gone a thousand years. In a lot of ways, this trip has been one of the best I've ever taken. I've met great people, seen a lot of the country, laughed, done some good work and just generally learned a lot. I've also semi-lost my mind, so that's good too.

Ah, China.

China-cidal.

I have been refused rides by four cab drivers today. I have no idea why.

On the way home two nights ago my cab driver was cursing to himself for at least half the ride before speeding off before I could properly get out and close the door. He was angry because one of the main roads was blocked off by police and all of the side streets were stop and go. My 5 minute cab ride home turned into 20 minutes of angry muttering, followed by the unceremonious dumping off, which was then followed by a very mysterious man in my elevator with a secret service-esque ear piece who got off on the 13th floor.

I cannot explain any of this.

This is Marci.

Although Marci cannot explain any of this either, she has managed to keep me sane. She has taught me about foot massages, pointed out that my masseur looks like Chucky from Child's Play, convinced me to stop in Thailand on my way back to Portland, encouraged me to speak more slowly to my office-mates, and given me Tiger Balm for all 500 mosquito bites below my ankles. She also cracks me up by saying that nothing sounds appealing at our quadri-cultural breakfast buffet. Mind you, options range from cocoa crispies to pickled vegetables to miso soup to fresh waffles to steamed dumplings to sausage to beans to salad to canned peaches to yogurt to cheese to made-to-order omelette's to fried rice...you get the point.

Good times and yeah, Marci!

Squint if you have to. It's a mobile chicken coop.

I have 4 whole days left in China before leaving for Thailand on Wednesday. I must say, I am ready. My nerves are fried, my hair looks bad, I almost staged a sit-in in an uncooperative cab tonight...It's getting dicey and I'm beginning to succumb to "China Rage" with greater and greater frequency.

But no matter the minor inconveniences, I will truly miss things like this:

Cover page of China Daily.

For those of you without the ability to read 5 point font, the caption reads as follows: "Cooling-down measures. About 4,000 buses with no air-conditioning have been equipped with buckets of ice since yesterday in Chongqing Municipality. The temperatures in the city have been hovering around 40 C in recent days."

Subject matter aside, the staged-ness of the photo is priceless. And the guy in front who wouldn't play along?!?! I love him.

With that, I am off.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Bra shopping and other weekend adventures.

So, Briana challenged me several weeks ago to go bra shopping and to report back on it. I passed a classy-looking lingerie shop on Sunday while out shopping, remembered the challenged and decided to duck in.

I should have known it was going to be an adventure when she grabbed my boob to determine which size bra I wore (I am illiterate and mute in lingerie stores, too), then selected several bras for me to try on and followed me into the dressing room. Mind you, the dressing room was the size of a small coat closet. Yet another sign that this was going to get uncomfortable. I'll spare the embarrassing details (yes, it gets much more embarrassing than this) and just tell you that the whole experience gets filed under "Different". Definitely, definitely different.

Briana, I hope this makes you happy.

And friendly, too!

On this same shopping trip I wandered into a shoe store and happened upon these beauties. (I realize that by posting pictures of gold sequined shoes that I am drifting towards boring the hell out of anyone who is reading this. But, still.) I found these puppies for right around $12 and I couldn't resist. They were on super-sale and only had my size. My giant-ness has finally paid off...in sequins!

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I just got back from work tonight and discovered that neither of my phones were working. (Here at the Regal Beagle, we have phones on BOTH sides of the bed.) So I went to the bathroom (site of the 3rd phone in my 400 square foot room) and called downstairs to alert the authorities. They sent a very lovely engineer to come fix the problem. I have no idea what he did, but he did it swiftly and it did not involve me looking like a total ass for just not properly hanging up the phone (or something else obvious). I tried to get a picture of him, but he ducked out before I could swing it. So here is his back instead:

Try not to be too engrossed in the excitement of this post.
I'm exhausted. I apologize.

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With that, good night.

Same/Different, take 3.

I've been a very neglectful blogger this week. It's not that China has ceased to amuse me (I'm not sure that's possible), it's just that work has really picked up, on both sides of the ocean. All that said, I am feeling a little stumped for funny commentary. Sometimes you just need to be here.

So, here's the next best thing to you being here. Another round of Same/Different:

Different.

I have seen a lot of Chinese men in their underwear. This is not because I am some sort of hussy. Rather, it is because Chinese men insist on wearing their underwear on the street. And on their scooters. And in their stores. It is everywhere. (I'm working on getting a photo of this. I feel like a pervert pointing my camera at some old dude in his boxers.)

Strictly Business.

But perhaps even more popular than the "just my boxers" crowd is the "sensible pajamas" contingent. This group includes both men and women, young and old, pedestrians and motorists.

For those of you who are interested in joining in on the fun, there are only a few requirements to belong to this hip crowd: First, the pj's must match, top and bottom. Second, you must be utterly un-sexy. Third, you must not acknowledge that you are in your pj's. In fact, as far as you're concerned, you're wearing Prada. Like this guy:



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I hate to admit it, but this next one gets filed under Same:

Good lord.

Tails are wrong, and they should be stopped. And yet, they persist. I can't help but this "we" started this...and now look how out of control it is? A tail in China?!?!?

And as much as I hate to say it, this is not the only tail in China. In fact, I saw a 20-ish girl sporting a bob + tail combo, just this morning. The mullet has a strong presence amongst the fashionable, and you've already seen the abominable perms sported by both men and women.

Which leads me to the conclusion that here in China, bad hair = good hair.

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This one's easy.
Same. Big Blue Sky = Happy Day.

I took this shot on my walk home yesterday. As some of you may have read, a big typhoon rolled into the southeast coast of China today, killing 100+ and forcing well over a million to evacuate. Scary stuff. (Is this a good time to mention that you should all go see An Inconvenient Truth if you haven't already? Well, you should.) I'm not certain, but I think the blue sky and billowing clouds were courtesy of said typhoon.

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Different.

I hope you already wrote your poem.

Remember that pile of rubble from a couple of weeks ago? Well, this is that same pile of rubble. Except it't not much of a pile anymore. It has actually looked like this for over a week, but I keep forgetting to post this. Can you believe that? Where did the old building go? It's pretty amazing how quickly things change around here. Truly, truly overnight.

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In the case of mysteries, I don't think Same/Different applies:


I took this picture surreptitiously as I walked home the other day, without looking at the view finder. I was hoping to get a clear shot of a family who lives in a little lean-to type of structure in the field of rubble pictured above. What I got was this, which I think is a person's head under a towel. But I'm not sure. Anyhow, it's a little strange. Enjoy.

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Happy Friday, y'all. I'm off to M on the Bund tonight. Tres chic!

An auspicious day.

I had incredibly good luck down at my hotel bar tonight. (And no, I don't mean it that way.) My friend Marci and I decided to head down there with our laptops for a change of venue and a quick meal. I'd heard that our lounge singer, Dave, was fond of Billy Joel and Elton John medleys, so I was looking forward to many a ballad of the unattractive piano man as accompaniment to my weird vegetarian food and quantitative data analysis (ick).

But things turned out even better than I imagined.

(My apologies for the near-black video. Digital camera + desire to be discreet = crazy dark video. I am not a videographer, in case you couldn't tell.)

Mysteries of my Orient.

A floor tile at the Peking Duck restaurant I went to on Saturday night.

In any other place it may seem strange or unusual for a semi-famous restaurant to feature well-known, lovable cartoon characters as a design motif. But I'll chalk that up to a difference in taste and leave it at that. However, try as I might, I really can't get over the fact that this is a restaurant famous for its DUCK. Hello? Anyone? I don't think this is the vegetarian in me. I think it's the sane person in me.

After almost three weeks here, I've decided that this is reason enough to love China. Totally unselfconscious ridiculous-ness at every turn. Which brings me to my next gem...

Leaving Huey, Dewey and Louie and heading to the Tiger Beer party on Saturday night (fun, BTW), we saw this sign along the side of the road:

Being illiterate rocks.

Is the cop reprimanding the man-powered cart guy for looking so beat-down? Is he admiring the softness of the scooter-guy's sweater? Is he telling them both to have a nice day and try not to work too hard?

I will never know, because I am an illiterate foreigner.

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I went to the USA vs. China exhibition game in Guangzhou last night. Before arriving, Guangzhou was described to me as "China's armpit" as well as "China's Miami" (insert smart ass-ness here). Gray-ness and more soupy humidty greeted me at the airport. It was a joyous reunion.

From the 8th row.

I had a great time at the game. The enthusiasm of the Chinese fans was remarkable...in that it was totally delusional. Despite being down by 40+ in the fourth quarter, the crowd went wild; banging inflatable yellow tubes together, clapping and shouting with each bucket. I'm not sure if they actually thought there was hope of winning the game ("Three minutes left, and we're within 40! Exactly where we need to be!"), didn't care who won but were looking for an excuse to bang the yellow inflatable tube-things together, or if they were simply being polite. Whatever the answer, it was a good time.

It was a really quick trip, and I caught an early flight back to Shanghai this morning.

Guangzhou from a cab, very, very early in the morning.

10 ways to say "sour milk".

Don't mess with my Cocoa Puffs.

My half of the conversation:

"Hi, I just ordered some cereal, and the milk you brought me is sour.
The milk you brought me is bad.
The milk in my cereal is rotten.
The milk is sour.
Rancid!
Old milk.
Not good.
It's bad, not good, rotten.
Sour, rotten, not good, bad!
Please bring me new milk.
Yes.
Thank you."

(I admit that "rancid" may have been a bit of a vocabulary stretch, but, as you can see, I was running out of rudimentary adjectives.)

Off to explore the 'Hai.

Good day, sunshine.

I had to go to the front desk when I arrived back at my hotel in Shanghai last night to ask which room I was staying in. I could have told you that I was room 1618 in Nanjing or 752 in Beijing, but I couldn't remember where I lived in Shanghai. Once I got a new room key (which I didn't actually need, I just needed to know which door the key I had opened), the bellhop insisted on helping me upstairs with my bags. When he opened my door and saw my books and clothes strewn about, he looked at me with alarm in his eyes and said "You already check in?!" Like I was nuts. Which I am.

This same thing happened to me in January with corporate housing; fresh from several weeks of travel, two bags in tow, lost in my own hallway. A proud moment, for sure.

It's this sort of thing that makes the people who love me worry and chase after me at airports to make sure I zip my purse and tell me 47 times to be careful. But I digress.

First day back in Shanghai was really, really nice. I walked to work, I didn't feel lost. I bought a Coke Light, I knew where the vending machine was. I printed out some emails, the printer was already hooked up. On my way home I recognized the smell of the noodle shop, pondered the prices at the outdoor dress "shop" and pushed through the congested sidewalk to walk at my own pace. It's the little things that tell me I'm finally getting my sea legs here in Shanghai.

Ah, Shanghai.

Big news of the day: A bunch of us from the agency are going to the USA vs. China exhibition game in Guangzhou on Monday night. A really lovely gift and totally unexpected. Good times, good times.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Alone with everybody.

It's the name of a Richard Ashcroft album and a poem by Charles Bukowski, but it's also what I feel like in China. Which is not a bad thing, it just is what it is.

Instead of talking, reading or understanding what I hear around me, I observe. It's sort of beautiful, really. Isolating in one sense, expansive in the other. It just depends how closely I'm willing to pay attention to what I see and sense and intuit. At least half of the time I feel like the village idiot; laughter and nuance and niceties and deep thoughts and inane commentary all sounding the same.

In all of this blissful ignorance, I feel remarkably calm and grounded, able to function on my own terms without the self-consciousness that comes along with familiar surroundings and an (unjustly) assumed knowledge of what makes other people tick.

(Although I must admit that my assumptive nature has not left for vacation entirely-- I was pretty sure of what was going on when a woman looked at me, turned to her friend, then turned back at me, pointing, with her fingers forming big circles around her eyes. God bless the subtlety.)

With all this observing comes photo-taking, so here you go:

From the National Museum in Beijing.

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why there are night lights displayed at a museum. But, here you go. Night lights displayed at a museum.

Kitsch, anyone? Irony? Are we trying to be avant-guard? I'm afraid the answer to all of the above is "No, thank you. We'll take our night lights straight-up, please."

Beijing airport. More bad socks.

I'd give these a solid B+ in the "working sock" category for their aggressive constriction of the ankles. Well done.

Stairwell, Nanjing.

The first time I walked up one of these staircases- dark, dusty, empty- I didn't know what to expect on the other side of the door. And as I sit here, I'm still not sure how to describe the kids' homes.

Super clean. Really, really small. Modest. Austere. Precise. Well-loved. Bright. Nothing wasted.

Suffice it to say, I'm humbled.

From our final interview in Nanjing:
The bed/A door.

Earlier in the day I sat down on a kid's bed expecting a mattress, but landed on a very hard surface. Although that bed was covered in a blanket of some sort, I assume it looked a lot like this underneath; a door laid horizontally across a twin bed frame.

Off to work now.

And thanks for all the emails and comments. I'm so honored y'all are reading. XO

I really should have known.

From a kid's bedroom wall, Beijing:

Yes, you're probably right.

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I met a mostly toothless grandmother today while doing in-home interviews. And although we sat across the table from each other for an hour without exchanging a single word, I really liked her. I anticipate a long and fruitful friendship.

The kid on the right, with the arguably more unfortunate hair of the two, is her grandson. As you may have guessed, he is not the most athletics-driven kid. He's more interested in pissing his parent's off with his truly objectionable hair and mediocre grades. But, as always, the parent's have the upper hand. Until he gets his grades up, he isn't allowed to have a girlfriend.

Who thought this was a good idea? I want him fined.

God bless bad perms and teenagers.

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More camps tomorrow, then to Nanjing for a day. And then finally back to Shanghai Thursday night. I cannot wait.

G'night.

Same/Different, sing-along style.

Like a cameo, this Richard Marx.

Same: Being subjected to bad American love songs in public places.

I went for round two at the Silk Market today (not so fun this time) and got stuck there by a thunder storm on the way back to the hotel. So, rather than fight the throngs for a cab, Cal (my truly lovely coworker) and I decided to wait it out in a cafe and called the driver to come pick us up. (Love this whole 'driver' thing. Very nice.)

We ordered tea and were chatting when we both noticed the first few notes of a familiar tune-- Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting-- playing very loudly over the cafe's sound system. Which got us talking. Turns out this was a very popular song in China. In fact, Cal remembers is being played on the news, both morning and night, for a long time. Presumably this happened in the 80's, but I didn't verify. But either way, WTF?!?

Obviously, I am so jealous. Which brings me to the next phase of the exercise...

Different: While we are relentlessly subjected to cheesy love songs in elevators, grocery stores and dentist's offices, we are not so lucky (or so smart) as to add a little mood music to our daily horrors...err, news. We clearly have a lot to learn from this place.

And for those of you still reading (thank you, by the way), here is a clip of Cal singing along to our main man Richard Marx. Priceless.