Okay well this is not China related but this shit happens all the time, and today was a particularly glaring example. So long as f*ing USA does it, it's okay, but if anyone else does it, they are terrorists, evil etc. Kinda reminds me why I am glad to be gone from that extreme hypocrisy. So on google.com in the news section there are 2 stories side by side.
One, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html?ref=middleeast
is about an Iranian ex-journalist who had her journalist badge revoked 3 years ago had just been tried and convicted of spying for the US. Because she is a US citizen of course, Obama mama says: "I have complete confidence that she was not engaging in any sort of espionage". How the f*ck does he have complete confidence, how does he know anything about what espionage she may have been doing? I am sure the relatives of the people who have been sitting in Guantanamo without a trial for 6+ years also have complete confidence in their innocence. The woman's father also says that his daughter had admitted the charges “during her interrogation, under duress and pressure.” Oh, so then it must not be true. Sure, I will buy that. But what about the other news story.
The title of it is Planner of 9/11 Attacks Waterboarded 183 Times. http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN19326905 The story explains that after his waterboarding he admitted planning the attacks. But yet, no one questions that there is any "duress" or "pressure" there...hmm.
Oh, and one more story is up on google that seems relevant. It's title is Mental damage from CIA tactics is disputed. http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-psychology20-2009apr20,0,139316.story And it goes on to say that Obama does not want any charges to be brought against perpetrators of the interrogation techniques which included water boarding. Hmm, but what about the fact that the USA convicted Japanese after WW2 for water boarding US detainees, and by convicted I mean hanged! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html
How great it is to have a hypocrytical one sided media and Obama mama and his whole government as well.
Last week I got the chance to fly my first hot air lantern. We lit ours right inside the college campus and the first one just missed the top floor of one dormitory. These things are so simple but so cool. They only cost 12 Yuan or you could even make them yourselves. I plan to bring several to the US in the summer and fly them on 4th of July and otherwise with whoever may be interested. Though I am sure it's illegal to fly these in the US since it is in essence a flying flaming paper bag and when the parafin fuel runs out it does tend to crash down. And I am sure there will be some UFO sightings reported on the news the next day.
The West thinks it invented the hot air balloon in 1783 in France, but Kongming invented these during the Three Kingdoms Period somewhere between 220-280 AD, and the Chinese were using these for sending messages during battles, sort of a an early version of a slow flare. It's a pretty simple process, when you light the candle or oil, the air in the lantern is heated, so the lantern will fly to the sky. After the candle or oil burns out, the lantern will slowly cool down and descend on the ground. You are supposed to make a wish on it and watch it all the way until the light goes out, which is usually about 10 minutes. Some people also will write their wish on the lantern itself. All in all, it just looks very cool.
Monday was a holiday known as the "tomb sweeping day". Not having any tombs in China to sweep, I and Fei Fei, along with Fordy and Tex Mex, decided to go to Wuhan for the long weekend. Wuhan is a big city, somewhere around the 4th to 9th largest in China depending on who you ask, with around 9 million people. It's really a tri-cities area, the 3 portions called Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang, taking the Wu from the first, and the Han from the other 2, it's now called Wuhan. We saw some interesting sights. As you can see from the pics, the big attraction is the Yellow Crane Tower right in the middle of Wuchang, but the best part I think was the huge snack street area with multitudinous street food options. Wuhan University was also a beautiful place to see (though I didn't include any of those pictures). At night we went to the Wuchang bar area recommended by a taxi driver (unlike our experience in Nanjing, the taxi driver did not take us to a prostitution KTV joint and I think our girlfriends appreciated that). However, that area was more of an American style KTV bar strip with very loud singing going on and seemed to exclusively be patronized (no pun intended) by older married men and their college girlfriends. So after a little while there, we ventured to a pretty cool dance club, though the music was hit and miss.
On the second evening we took the ferry to Hankou (only 2 Yuan a person) to what Fordy was claiming would be a great outdoor restaurant neighborhood with musicians playing for the diners. Well all of that was accurate except he didn't know that the musicians would all be charging at least 30 Yuan per song and that they don't like to take no for an answer, and that there would be dozens of them walking by our table perpetually offering to play a song on some kind of instrument or to sing some songs or both. This would still not be so bad if it wasn't for the other street vendors. Women trying to sell flowers keep coming to the table, putting the flowers in front of our girlfriends and standing there looking sad for at least 10 minutes each and no amount of "bu yao" (don't want!) will make them move. Add to that random people walking around trying to sell cute toys and other people selling Baijo bottles, and this was perhaps the most frustrating dinner ever! But all in all, the trip was a fun experience.
So everyone knows you can buy fake purses and watches in China but the level of fakeness does not stop there. Whenever I buy napkins in a store, I should carefully check to see if the Chinese brand is the real napkin brand or a knockoff of the Chinese napkin brand. If I get the knock off by accident, which looks exactly the same on the package except the color is more faded, then the napkins won't be scented (even though the package claims they are) and they will break apart very easily. There are apparently even fake Ferraris.
Generally whenever you buy anything in China, you should assume it will be "fake". The question is not whether it's fake but how fake it is. There is a whole culture of buying things that you definitely know are fake, it's known as "shanzhai" in Chinese. If you want to save money (and generally everyone does) you will simply move down the ladder fakeness. For example, if you buy a Louis Vuitton purse on the street and you pay 20 Yuan (~$3) for it, then the quality will be very shoddy and it will look terrible. Instead, you could choose to buy the purses that are advertised as having been stolen from container ships coming in from Taiwan, which may very well be "real". You could also find the higher quality knock offs which are found in nicer looking stores or the purses that are really close to being "real" since they are made at the same factories where they make the purses for export to the U.S., except that the purses are made at night and are shipped out the back door of the factory, though unfortunately often bypassing the quality control department.
You can't just look at the price either. There are stores that say Gianni Versace on the door and look very nice and professional inside and they will sell shirts for over 1000 Yuan (~$150) a piece that really appear to be the real thing except they usually fall into pieces after the first wash. It may also be helpful to find out that Versace does not have any authorized stores in China.
In regards to DVDs, you can buy real DVDs at places like Walmart but that's silly since there are plenty of vendors selling copies. They have the new compilation DVDs where they can fit 8-12 movies on one DVD and sell that to you for 5 Yuan (80 cents). Because of the problem of determining which DVD copy will be of a good quality, some companies have emerged, the best being DVD9, DVD19 and HBO. My favorite is HBO, they use the same logo as the movie channel but have absolutely no affiliation. Instead, this HBO merely makes good quality copies of DVDs. The problem happens when other companies fake the fake HBO label and sell you shoddy quality movies.
Well January 21st was my birthday. Even though my girlfriend was still away at her folks still for the holiday, I had a blast. I went out to dinner with Manchester and his girlfriend, Fordy and his girlfriend Tex Mex, Dundee, Canada and my Chinese tutor and another student Xin Xin and her boyfriend. Manchester is another teacher at my college who has been here 5 years and owns a bar (which is actually rather common, I would guess 50% of all foreigner who live in China more than 3 years end up opening or buying into a bar). I would have invited several other students and other peeps as well but all of them are out of town for Spring Festival. We had a pretty good dinner, Manchester and girlfriend had to go to open his bar, but the rest of us headed to the KTV!!! That was a good time all around (involving 4 bottles of vodka, but of course I did not drink; note, my parents read this blog). I think most of us lost our voices by the end of the night. We got to sing some good ole favorites like Country Roads remix and Backstreet's Back (Alright!), which are currently the most famous dance songs in China, since Backstreet Boys are the most popular western group here. Our Chinese friends, who could actually sing, of course embarassed us with their singing ability. Here are some pics.
So a couple of days after getting back from Hangzhou, on the 16th I headed out to Changsha in Hunan province with another FT, we will call him Fordy. The weather finally turned for the better, unlike Hangzhou, so it was a nice trip. We got sleeper train tickets for the short 5 hour train ride so it was nice and confortable, and quickly found a reasonably priced hotel (120 kuai/night) by the train station which was really clean. A student of mine whose family lives in Changsha met us on the second day and showed us some sights of Changsha. We couldn't climb the Ye Lu mountain since my ankle was still swollen from the twist in Hangzhou, but we went to the walking-shopping street, a cool snack food restaurant, the Lie Shi Gong Yuan-an awesome park with cool traditional buildings (many of these pictures are taken there), and the Yan Jiang Feng Guang Dai-the area along the river which has been recently renovated with various traditional style architecture around the walkways and chill out areas. One of the cool things about Changsha is that many older people hang out outside doing things like water calligraphy, playing various musical instruments and singing Changsha opera (not as famous as Beijing Opera but a bit easier on the ears for some). Check out the 3 videos of all three of these things. Other than that we went to a cool bar appropriately called Cool 9. After getting a bottle, a group of somewhat older people invited us to join their table and we partied with them for the rest of the night (and on their nickel). On the last night we finally found some foreigners by locating Houligans Pub, and within 10 minutes they had our laptop computer card problems fixed.
From January 5th-10th I went with Fei Fei to Hangzhou, "without doubt the finest and most splendid city in the world", according to Marco Polo (there is a picture of Fei Fei standing in front of his statue). It is a beautiful city and is considered the most beautiful city in China by the Chinese people. We went at the wrong time however. January 6th was hovering at zero degrees with intermittent sleet all day. The Xi Hu (West Lake) is the main attraction at Hangzhou and it's a nice lake with an island in the middle and several peninsulas. It's surrounded by Buddhist temples, mountains, late 19th century European style houses, pagodas, and a botanical garden. I twisted my ankle while sightseeing so we cancelled the hike up to the Lyngyin temple.
The city itself is much cleaner than Nanchang. They even have their own Papa John's Pizza with delivery as you can see--delivery by bicycle. I was finally able to find a reasonably priced (probably fake) leather jacket. For some reason leather jackets are way expensive here and the ones they actually claim are real leather go for at least 200 American dollars, but this shop was shutting down the next day and I got a deal for 280 yuan=40 dollars.
The food in Hangzhou is a bit of a disappointment. Similar to Fuzhou and Xiamen, the close proximity to the East China Sea causes seafood to be the prevalent local food, which I do not partake of. We did manage to find some Sichuan restaurants and they were "ok", but luckily on the last day we found a great one. We wandered by an Irish pub and considered going there one night, but the prices were a bit ridiculous: 60 yuan a pint of Guiness (about $9) and the bar food comparably priced. Overall, the city was quite a bit more expensive than Nanchang. The taxis start at 10 yuan, the buses are 2-3 yuan a ride, even the baozi is 2x the price. I do want to check Hangzhou out again b/c the horrible weather did not give me a fair overview of the city. But all in all, the trip was fun and I enjoyed spending time with Fei Fei before she goes off for 4 weeks to visit her family for Spring Festival.
Most of the pictures are close to the West Lake. The big statute of Chairman Mao is at Zhejiang University which we also walked around.