Chris' Blog

Well,

My two-week roommate, Shayne, has returned home to his familiy in Ottawa. You may remember him from the picture of my living room. So now I’m all by myself.

Food Update:

Tried a few more things to eat: chicken stomach, dove, chicken heart, crawfish?, and I finally ate one of the small fishes that usually comes with lunch. Shayne tried some cow’s tongue, but I’d already had that in Alberta. I’ve got pictures of most of those. I also found a place with good hot and sour soup. It’s not quite as good as Chilli Hot Hot on 34th ave, but it’s sure a lot better than the slop they serve up in Ottawa. I had three and half bowls; srangely, no one else at my table had any. Oh well.

Pictures:

I had many responses from people that liked the pictures. I liked them too. Unfortunately the camera I was using belongs to my company and I have now returned it. I am considering purchasing one of my own, but it may prove difficult to find one that fits in my pocket, that doesn’t cost too much, and that I can use without Christine being completely disgusted that I’m using such inferior products. In the end, it might be more prudent to get a scanner, but around here there’s always something weird going on and Christine doesn’t always have her camera with at the grocery store or places like that. I do have one more picture of a dog. You don’t see that many around here (not like Ottawa where people keep Great Dane’s in their one bedroom apartment) and when you do they’re not usually too eager to pose for the camera, but I was able to catch one on “film”.

Cooking:

For those of you who were worried that I might not be able to enjoy pancakes here, have no fear. Although I was unable to find baking powder I used levened flour instead. And though I had no electric mixer (or proper mixing bowl for that matter) and as I discovered, you cannot mix pancakes in a blender, I was able to mix everything up using a wooden spoon. It was a good thing because I’d already invited people for a Sunday pancake breakfast. In the end, Shayne said they were the best pancakes he’d every had, although he also told me that he usually makes pancakes from mix, so you can only take that so far. But they were up to my demanding standards and there was enough left over for me to have pancakes the next day as well. Oh, and in case you thought that maybe I missed church because I was having people over for breakfast, have no fear again, because church is at 4:00 in the afternoon. Actually I missed church that day because I was really tired.

I still haven’t figured out what to cook here. We tried some frozen dumplings before, but they turned out to be doughy balls of oil. So far, I only know how to make stir-fry, spaghetti, and pancakes. Any help would be appreciated, but remember that I don’t have an oven, butter is expensive, the tomatoes are awfully suspicous, and I’m pretty sure that you can’t find Mrs. Dash.

Chinese New Year:

As some of you know, February frist was Chinese New Year this year. To begin with, I’ll explain how the holiday works here. I don’t know if New Year falls on the same every year, but this year it was a Saturday. The government gives everybody three days off, being Friday (New Year’s Eve), Monday and Tuesday. But, in an effort to encourage people to travel and spend more money every one gets Wednesday and Thursday off as well in exchange for working the following weekend. So, in short, I had Friday to Thursday off, and then I go back to work on Friday and work through to the following Friday. From what I understand they do something like this for a couple other occasions.

Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year. Mostly, people go to be with their families and often New Year is the only time families will be together as many people have moved to cities to work. Of course, some families have deliquent sons that haven’t seen their parents for longer than that. What my co-workers tell me is that usually you have supper with your family and watch the countdown on television. There’s one main show every year that is broadcast. The tv said that last year had 1 billion viewers. That’s more than Hockey Night in Canada. At midnight everyone lights off firecrackers and different places and families have their own customs and traditions. Unfortunately for me, the countdown show was not on the English channel, although it was well advertised. Go figure.

Throughout the day of New Year’s Eve you could constantly hear firecrackers. You can hear firecrackers just about every day, but on this day they were constant. At about 8:00 pm I heard some very loud banging. After about the tenth bang I decided to investigate. I went to my bedroom window and opened the curtain and was blinded by fireworks. I live on the 21st floor, which by some strange coincidence is the exact height that the shells were exploding. I’ve seen fireworks from below before, but never from the side. Now, the window of my bedroom is at the back of the building and faces another building which I believe is identicle to this one. I’m not the greatest at judging distances, but I’m gonna say that the two building are about 100 feet apart but I suspect that it might be less. So some guy on the ground is firing shells 200 feet into the air between buldings that are less than 100 feet apart. The sound was deafening while I was at my window; burning shrapnel is hitting the sides of the buldings. It was pretty cool. You’ll never see that in Canada.

The sound of fireworks and firecrackers continued to grow until it crescendoed at midnight. As I looked out my window I could see fireworks over the tops of other buildings across the city. I had asked earlier if there was going to be a fireworks show somewhere. He said that there was no organised central show. Now I know why. I ventured out to the balcony where by now the smoke was rising. There were flashes of light coming from everywhere and all you could hear were explosions. I considered going down to the street, but was a little afraid to be hit in the ear with an exploding firecracker. I watched for a while longer and went to bed to the sound of firecrackers. It was almost like rain on a roof with lightning bolts once in a while.

The next day I went outside to find as I’d expected the street covered with the red paper from all of the firecrackers. A few million people walking on that and it’ll be ground into the pavement in no time.

Media:

China is run by a centralised government. Although in recent years the economy has become much more free, previously, from what I understand, people were assigned credits for food or the price was fixed. Now the market determines the prices. Other areas, especially the media still controlled. Although I agree that censorship is a good idea, I’ve never been able to agree with anyone else as to what should and shouldn’t be censored. Go figure. It’s interesting to watch the news because it is quite different from back home. Recently, the first airliner to fly from mainland china to Taiwan was really big news. Now, this story is big news, but what was interesting was that there was no story about the history between mainland China and the island of Taiwan. In Canada, the news always tries to get underneath the story and find whatever will make it more interesting and more emotional for the viewers, but that was completely left out, and in this case there would be lots of talk about. Sports is alwas funny, because it involves soccer, ping pong, and the Chinese guy that plays in the NBA. “Yesterday, ‘that Chinese guy’ (I don’t know his name), helped his team, Orlando? defeat so-and-so by scoring 12 points for a 132 to 121 win.

The internet is also screened by what is called the Great Firewall of China. Pornographic sites or sites that say bad things about China are generally inaccessable. It’s too bad (well not too bad that they block those sites, but others that don’t appear to have a reason) because now that I’m in China I could really use an online translator. Like when I want to look at internet access packages that I could get (instead of using dial-up) because altavista.babelfish is really good and it’s free, and it’s blocked. I could use it in Canada when I didn’t need it, but now that I do I can’t.

Advertising is also a little strang. Ads often show white people and/or rich people doing things that the average person doesn’t do. Either many ads are targeted at only rich and/or white people or they are trying to create the image that these are the things that average people should be doing or that the average people should buy. I’m no psychiatrist, so I’m not going to spend any more time contemplating that. The last funny media thing is that playboy.com is inaccessable to Chinese (I have not verified this) but Playboy is a very big brand here. They sell purses, children’s shoes, you name it. I wonder if the people know from whom they are buying (I almost ended that sentence in a preposition!).

So far:

China is a land of extremes, as I think most places are when compared to Canada. The standard of living between the rich and poor is far greater than anything I’m used to. People begging here often are missing limbs or have deformities. I believe that an average wage for an unsilled labourer is about RMB 1 000 ($ 200) per month. Consider that the apartment that I live in costs RMB 4 300 per month and that in my building many people own cars like BMW’s. In China all imports are quite heavily taxed. Imported vehicles have about 100% extra tax. So say a $50 000 BMW would cost you $100 000 or RMB 500 000, 50 times times the yearly wage of an average worker. Crazy. I’ve included a picture of the place across the street from my building. They’re doing some demolition there which involves three or four guys with sledge hammers. I believe the project is scheduled to be completed before the World Expo in 2010, which is good as it gives the people that live in the house at the bottom right hand side of the picture to find a new place. Please don’t interpret my humour for lack of sympathy. Emotional people look at history and cry; intellectual people look at history and laugh. You can guess which kind I am.

If anything I’ve realised that out of the 6 000 000 000 people in the world I am very lucky to be among the 5 ten thousandths of a percent whose passport says Canada.

To Come:

I’m not sure if there will be too much happening for a while. I plan to get around Shanghai some more, but Shanghai is a more modern city and there’s probably not too much more to say about it than has been already said, although I shall see. Once Christine arrives (I’m counting the days, metaphorically speaking) we plan to see more of the country: Nanjing (the former capital of China, only 300 km away), Beijing (present capital, formerly called Peking where scrumptuous Peking Duck is from. I had Peking Duck the night I proposed to Christine at Andrew’s Cafe. I mean I had the duck at Andrew’s Cafe. I proposed at the Gazebo next to the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.), The Great Wall of course, maybe Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet…There are so many places with so much history; it will be hard to pack it all into one afternoon. Of course it will be very interesting to see how China develops over the next few years. Things are changing very quickly and China promises to be a major world power (itself, of course, powered by coal burning power plants; I shudder to think) and many exciting things could be happening while we’re here, so we never know what to expect.

That’s enough:

I’m tired and hungry. Feel free to reply with questions or comments in about two weeks when you’ve finished reading this monster.