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So now I give a lecture
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Feb. 1st, 2007 @ 12:04 am
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After months of thinking about and planning on attending some upper crust law school, I've finally come to the conclusion: I need $50,000+ in debt like I need a hole in my head.
My whole premise behind attending a brand-name law school was that it would give me more options. The conventional wisdom says: if you graduate from one of these institutions, the world is your OYSTER! After some careful consideration, I realized that any "freedom" offered by attending such a school is illusory. What choices do you REALLY have if you're choked in debt even before you find employment? Obviously, you'll need to take the highest-paying job you can find just to work off that debt -- which does, indeed, mean making certain sacrifices. But these are not sacrifices that are made to save for retirement; rather, they're sacrifices made simply to break even.
Lawyers I've talked to indicate that the reputation of the school you attend becomes unimportant after 5 years, after which you'll have established a professional reputation. That means that any money you invest for the higher prestige school would have to be paid back (with interest) within a year or two if you plan on financially outperforming someone who graduates from a "lesser" school with a lower starting salary and minimal debt.
I remember some months ago reading an interview with a law school student at a prestigious school. His thoughts? "Why worry about borrowing money? There's no doubt that you'll pay it back..."
Whoa. What an idiotic mindset. This mentality is precisely what's wrong with most Americans' financial health. And I do mean to say MOST Americans: the statistic is that the average household's credit card debt is somewhere around $8000. CREDIT CARDS, for Christ's sake! Don't those people charge over 20% interest? I've also been reading about how, in the latest round of real estate overexhuberence, many idiots bought speculative houses on variable rate home equity loans and now find themselves owing more on the houses they purchased than what they're currently worth. Ouch.
So, the University of Florida's law school is starting to look like a promising option. With a low in-state tuition ($7000 and change), I think this school sounds like a winner. Who cares if its provincial and the career services people can't help me beyond finding a job in the southeast; I'm willing to wait things out until I can get a job in the area of my choice.
GO GATORS! |
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Plus ça change...
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Jan. 8th, 2007 @ 09:12 pm
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"To yield is to be preserved whole. / To be bent is to become straight. / To be empty is to be full. / To be worn out is to be renewed. / To have little is to possess. / To have plenty is to be perplexed. / Therefore the sage embraces the One / And becomes the model of the world."
Make-up. The founder of Revlon famously called it “hope in a jar.” A friend once counseled me that all cosmetic products are essentially made from the same, inexpensive chemical ingredients. The rest is all marketing.
And yet the Chinese, the good consumers they are, have embraced modern cosmetics en masse. One friend’s mother has a special discount card at a luxury department store because she drops thousands of RMB during her makeup expeditions.
The woman in question is sixty years old but holding fast to illusions of youth. She’s pleasantly plump, so the skin in her face has yet to sag. Dye is added to her hair to retain its black luster. Every day, she applies various miracle creams to preserve the integrity of her skin. But one can believe they are successfully fighting Mr. Gravity for only so long: by fits and starts, her face will take on the quality of an aged person.
Life is death: there’s a fact that’s hard to swallow. We require oxygen to live; oxygen, in turn, contributes to a host of chemical reactions, some of which sustain our life and others that damages our cells and thus form the core of the aging process. Every pant is one breath towards our ultimate, unwilled self-destruction.
Cosmetics offer a solution at odds with Taoist principles. Rather than finding a solution in harmony with the situation (To be bent is to become straight), skin cream purchasers fight a farcical battle with time they can never hope to win.
I thought about this while riding in the elevator up to my gym. Exercise, by contrast, stands as a true embodiment of Taoist principles in action — or at least it can be. In exercising, a person may accept the nature of his body and its biological processes and work to strengthen it. Rather than attempting to cloak the signs of the body’s inevitable decay as makeup does, a person can embrace decay while simultaneously working to slow it as much as possible.
Taoism intrigues me because it advocates an approach to life that I admire. I hope this story illustrates what I find so interesting about this philosophy. |
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More dietary considerations
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Jan. 7th, 2007 @ 07:49 pm
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I can’t get over how good the food is in China. Or, rather, how bad the food is in the United States.
I can make this statement one hundred times, but its truth would not be apparent to those who haven’t ventured outside of North America.
We can point to systemic causes: the industrialization of the farm; the prevalence of convenience foods. As a Chinese friend once told me, “the sad thing about Americans is how rich they are — yet they have no idea how to eat.”
When I move back to the United States next year, the biggest thing I will miss is the food here. The wide range of ingredients and cooking styles in China is stunning. I eat better here on a daily basis than I might in one whole month in the States.
Today was no exception. I will now share my lunch and dinner with you; enjoy!
For lunch, we ate at a posh mushroom hotpot restaurant. Hotpot is a do-it-yourself cooking style. Uncooked ingredients are brought on a cart and you are responsible for cooking your own meal in a boiling soup stock. For our stock, we selected a mushroom broth with various medicinal herbs. (One joy of Chinese cuisine is the extent to which it is fused with the Chinese conception of the body and medicine; our winter hot pot was designed to increase our “inner fire” and so warm us up.)
Our first course entailed three varieties of mushrooms. After they were finished cooking, we fished them out of the boiling stock and ate them with a fermented bean paste. Our second course included baby bok choi and two varieties of tofu: tofu “skin” and frozen tofu. The latter is especially wonderful in hotpot: as the tofu freezes, it expands and becomes riddled with holes — really improving its ability to absorb liquid and flavor. We finished with a serving of thin whole wheat noodles.
For dinner, I ate at a small greasy spoon in the neighborhood. This restaurant’s specialty is a kind of stuffed pasta filled with freshwater crab meat. These pasta are served in two sizes, the larger kind filled with enough crab juice that you’re given a straw to suck it dry before chewing on it. I ordered three of the small kind as well as a bowl of noodle soup served with pickled bok choi. Delicious!
Just thinking about deli meat sandwiches, boca burgers, and overpriced supermarket vegetables sends a shutter up my spine. Perhaps now you can understand why. |
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Perfection
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Dec. 17th, 2006 @ 01:13 am
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Yesterday was one of those days that make me glad to live in Nanjing.
At dawn, the temperature hovered around freezing. The sky was clear all day, though, which meant the temperature warmed up to a comfortable 45F. Around 11, I went out for a hike on the mountain on the edge of town. I climbed for a few hours, munching on roasted chestnuts along the way. Once on the top, I made my way to my favorite little secluded spot with a stunning view of town. It was nice to see the panorama of the Nanjing skyline, though somnewhat disconcerting to notice the smog blanketing everything. But anyhow, that's life in the big city.
We took our dinner at the Italian restaurant. The owner is an abolute criminal with a tremendously bad reputation among the expat community — but seeing that his is the only Italian place in town, we really have no choice when we feel a hankering for pizza. The decor of the restaurant is tacky at best, and the food truly second-rate. Leaving the restaurant, I almost remarked that this kind of overpriced restaurant could only ever work in a town starved for "foreign" culinary options. But upon further reflection, I realized that most Italian restaurants I ever visited in the States were probably worse: I've just been spoiled by the quality of the grub in China.
Riding in the cab home, I was both glad about my experiences that day and happy about my circumstances in China. Yes, in the case of the latter, it all really does "boil down" to food. I just wonder how I will be able to handle the food in the U.S. when I move back there next year. I suppose the only option will be to cook for myself — a rather frightening possibility given how out of practice I have become. |
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New College?
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Dec. 10th, 2006 @ 12:54 pm
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McKisco knew what ideas were, and as his mind grew he ws able to recognize and sort an increasing number of them — but faced by a man whom he considered "dumb," one in whom he could not feel personally superior, he jumped at the conclusion that Barban was the end product of an archaic world, and as such, worthless...Being drunk, he rashly forgot that he was in awe of him — this led up to the present trouble he found himself in. |
| » Service! |
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I had dinner last night with two expat friends and two Chinese at a small local restaurant. It became all too clear to me, in the course of our dinner, how much Chinese and anglo expectations about service differ.
The restaurant we visited is fun by a family. The boss is quite talkative and the waitresses are playful. The atmosphere is quite similar to that of a small diner in the States; it's the Chinese equivalent of the small greasy spoon where the waitress asks you, "Can I pour you some more coffee sweetie?"
At one point, one of my middle class Chinese dining companions expressed his disgust that we weren't provided with all the superfluous plates and condiments typical at a more expensive restaurant. So, he asked the waitress to bring some in:
"Hey, could we have some small dishes?"
"What for?"
"Well, you know, little ones for vinegar and things."
"You want to have some vinegar?" [The waitress puts her hands on her hips and gives the man a mock-surprise stare. In Chinese, this is sentence also means 'You want to be jealous?']
Of course, my dining companion didn't think it was all too funny...
Later, we were having a conversation about different coffee houses in town.
The unanimous opinon of the Anglo party was that, while one coffee house had excellent coffee and a stellar atmosphere, the service was too stuffy. The waitresses all had their makeup carefully applied, and they spoke to customers in only the most subservient tones. When they left a table to fulfil an order, the would click their heels together ever so slightly. Even when they came to replenish your water, they would say, "Excuse me sir, I've come to refill your glass." The waitresses were children dressed up like mechanical dolls. It was all a little too much.
The other cafe, we agreed, had bad coffee but much more "friendly" service. The waitresses spoke a little more coarsely and didn't pile on the makeup quite so much. They were just frumpy Nanjing people.
Our Chinese friends had a different take. They felt the attitude of the servants in the first place was much better.
Dec. 10th, 2006 @ 02:00 am
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| » We're trying the Chinese way this time... |
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A cold has been going around Nanjing, and I caught it. I try hard to be sanitary, but the chopsticks in the school dining hall are not safe to use -- you have to reach into this box to grab them. And who knows what hands have been in there before you.
The nature of my body is this: if I catch a cold, I'll get a sinus infection. I know the routine so well now it's almost numbing. Last winter, I had a continuous sinus infection for a month or two. No fun!
This time around, I've decided to take a different approach and use Chinese medicine. There is one herb -- Chinese skullcap -- which is supposed to be great at treating this difficulty. Last winter, I took several courses of antibiotics -- but never took them long enough for them to do any good.
When I went to the pharmacy today, the clerk tried to sell me a nasal steroid and a decongestant. When I mentioned that I'm interested in trying an herbal remedy, she noted that "Western medicine only cures your symptoms; Chinese medicine gets to the root of the problem." So, we scrapped the decongestant and stuck with the steroid and Chinese medicine. Let's hope this winter works out better!
I just took my first bottle of the stuff. It tastes like they use licorice root, which is very soothing for your throat. My head feels a little better already.
Dec. 6th, 2006 @ 11:56 am
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| » New attractions in Nanjing. |
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I made the rounds last night with an expat Austrialian, hopping as the kangaroo does from one watering hole to the next. We visited two music clubs, one with a desperately out-of-tune rock band and a 25RMB cover and the other with regulars singing the Chinese equivalent of Frank Sinatra.
Rhys told me, in all his internet-searching, he was able to locate a bar famous for its "pole-dancers, midgets, and transvestites." Another bar allows patrons to pay to cry on the shoulder of its cocktail waitresses, and yet another promises that you will have the opportunity to yell at and insult your hosts.
Who knew Nanjing had such a delicious side?
Nov. 26th, 2006 @ 12:07 pm
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| » Shanghai'd |
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I have returned to Nanjing today 1000 RMB poorer but carrying sacks of fabric purchased at Shanghai's bizarre bazaar of silk, wool, cotton, and mildly disturbing synthetic blends.
Throughout the law school application process, I promised myself that I would have some clothes made after I finished with everything. So immediately after pressing the "send" button yesterday on my electronic applications, I hopped on a train to Shanghai to go fabric hunting.
Three stories of fabric hustlers is any clothing lover's fantasy. More interesting than the various (LOUD) patterns of imported Thai silk was the process of bargaining with the booth tenders. In one dramatic moment, I stared down a cashmere vendor.
"I give this fabric to Shanghai people for 260RMB/m!"
"200"
"How can I give it to you for that little?"
"Look! I'm giving you ALL of my money!"
"Ok, let's be friends here!"
I might have spent an ungodly sum of money on material to make an overcoat, but at least I will be wearing cashmere this season. How many people do you know who can say that?
* * *
When I told my Chinese friend that I was going to have some clothing made, he noted that only "unemployed, middle aged women" have their clothing made in China. It turns out that the service is popular with foreigners as well. At the fabric market, I spotted an inordinate number of dapper French people and perky American flight attendants having new duds done.
This whole weekend, I have been living and breathing cloth. Before leaving Nanjing, I checked out the local fabric market — where unemployed middle aged women DO shop to make cut-rate clothing — as well as several upscale department stores. The purpose of the exercise was to get a feel for fabric — what I like, what I hate, what's cheap, what's chic. While I was in Shanghai, too, I spent a lot of time scrutinizing the clothes of passers by. My conclusion? In China, at least, you can have clothes of much higher quality made for you at a cheaper price that those of what you find in department stores. Taking a closer look at what people were wearing, I was disgusted by the cheapness of the fabrics.
Welcome to late capitalism, folks! The sheer number of fabric mills in China and the diversity of their output ensure that fabric here is cheap and plentiful — and on par with anything you'll find in the ready-made clothes section of your shopping mall. Labor is so cheap in China that having clothes done for you by the local tailor costs only a song. Why, then, do the locals prefer their Labels?
Middle class Chinese are tremendously insecure about their status in the world. Only a few years ago they were lining up to use those coupons to buy oil and rice with the rabble from the factory. Now they need a way to differentiate themselves from the spitting, ill-groomed masses. Enter the automobile (preferably some expensive Teutonic import) and the Louis Vuitton bag!
The Bund, in Shanghai, is a district filled with art deco skyscrapers left over from the last economic boom in the 1920s. One thin strip of buildings along the Shanghai riverfront contains upscale restaurants and fashion outlets such as Cartier, Armani, and their European ilk. Immediately behind this facade of luxury are run-down tenement buildings, cheap motels, and seedy brothels. I ate my lunch in one of those fancy riverfront buildings today, and from the window I could see an old man in a Mao suit hanging his laundry outside to dry.
Affluent Chinese are crazy to prove that they're anything but that man in a Mao suit. Their real pain is that they can never escape him. With an army of the poor surrounding them, the only option is to buy a recognizable brand name and wear it proudly. Leave the bespoke clothing to the tourists and the poor.
Nov. 19th, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
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| » It's getting colder now... |
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Summer has finally ended in Nanjing. With daily highs hovering in the 60s, it's time to put on our jackets and enjoy the crisp fall air.
I've promised myself that I'm going to have some clothing made as soon as I finish my law school applications. While I'm not entirely sure of what I'm going to have done, the goal is to walk away with some new winter clothing.
To tell you the truth, I'm quite drawn between two looks I would like to explore. On the one hand, I would like to have some leisure suits made with funky fabrics and exaggerated cuts. On the other hand, I would like to try having impeccibly tailored mod suits that create that "clean" look — those thin ties paired with close cropped, medium-length sideburns. It's so hard to choose! And for the overcoat — do I want a modest take on the trenchcoat or a more edwardian wool creation — but with fake fur along the collars?
I know I could go half-and-half, but the reality is, if I throw my resources in two directions, I won't be able to do either look well.
Anyway, after I'm done with my applications this week, I can start focusing on my tailoring plans. The first step will involve a trip to the Shanghai fabric market, which is rather legendary among the Nanjing expat community.
Nov. 13th, 2006 @ 01:41 am
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| » The Chinese character |
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The other week, I rounded a corner and came across a sad scene: a group of men were kicking two women who were rolling on the ground. A crowd of some thirty onlookers had gathered to watch the scene. The crowd was obviously strong enough to stop the men from assulting the women. But did anyone help?
At English corner last night we were discussing the Chinese character. I brought up this incident, and my students agreed that the situation was qutie plausible. The Chinese mentality: don't interefere in the affairs of strangers — it might bring you trouble or cause you to lose face.
Yesterday, a large group of drunken folks going home after a dinner party joined me in the elevator. One woman said, "Hello! Well, look at this foreigner, we must say 'hul-ooo'" They speculated about my nationality. When one person suggested that I might be American, my new tipsey friend shouted, "But he's not fat!" As we spilled out onto the street, I went to hail a cab. The group decided to help me, with one man standing in the middle of the street pointing at a cab to pull over and the woman screaming for the car to stop.
What a contrast in behavior!
Nov. 3rd, 2006 @ 02:24 am
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| » On radishes and people |
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Nanjing people are called radishes by their fellow Chinese, an epithet given them by virtue of their collective personality: the Nanjingese are known to be bad with money and quite warm-hearted. Of course, I fail to understand how these qualities are in any way connected with radishes. Oh, those inscrutable Chinese!
I had an experience yesterday which I think illustrates the Nanjing temperament.
I went to pay for a newspaper I had picked up at a newsstand:
"Oh, but that will be 2 yuan."
"But I thought it was 1."
"See? You grabbed two."
"Oh, how embarassing."
"You're grabbing wasn't the problem. The newspaper is too thin! Yes, that's the problem! Come back next time!"
Oct. 29th, 2006 @ 11:56 am
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| » Lines |
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THIS MORNING:
While waiting in line to buy breakfast, a man cut in front of me and blew cigarette smoke in my face. I asked him, in Chinese, if he knew what the term "waiting in line" meant; I didn't get any answer.
The people of mainland China don't like to wait in line. While it's very common to see people standing in something that resembles a line, there's always some wiseguy that cuts in front -- and none of the people in line seem to care.
For a while, I conformed to the mainland way of doing things. When I saw a line to get on the bus, I would always outfox the other people trying to get on so I could board first and find a seat.
When I went to America and behaved this way, I remember getting a good talking down. It was at a food fair in Berkeley, and the crowd was very granola. Because of the throngs of people, it often wasn't clear who was in line where. I remember walking to the face of the counter, Chinese-style, with my money and hand and my order in mind. Suddenly, a woman wearing a sport-fleece coat and a bicycle helmet came up and laid down the law for me. What typical, American assertiveness!
Later, when I was in Hong Kong, a similar thing happened. I was confused about where my bus was, and I suddenly discovered that I was standing beside the front of the long line I needed to be in. So, in true mainland style, I attempted to gently fold into the queue. The woman at the front of the line said something to me, but instead of the typical American aggression, I got:
"Oh yes, why don't you get on the bus first?"
This was said with no sarcasm whatsoever. Pointing out the incorrectness of my action would only cause me to lose face, while ignoring the infraction in Hong Kong (where lines are the custom) might have caused her to lose face. Some quick thinking on her part ensured that neither of us did. What incredible politeness!
Since then, I've tried to be conscious of the line thing. Several times, I've sarcastically wondered aloud, when someone blatanly cuts in line, "What does 'wait in line' mean?" It's fun to observe people's reactions.
Oct. 21st, 2006 @ 04:03 pm
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| » Breakthrough |
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On Thursday, I enjoyed a real breakthrough with my Chinese.
As I was waiting for my class to begin, I leafed through a textbook left on the podium. The introduction was written in Chinese with English words interspersed. As I scanned over the page, the English really jumped out at me within a sea of characters. But as I looked closer, I noticed that I actually recognized all the Chinese characters surrounding the English words. So, I looked to the beginning and proceeded to read the whole first page of the introduction before the bell rang. This was my first time picking up a book written in Chinese and understanding what it had to say.
After class, I saw several of my students chatting in the hallway. I joined them and ended up talking with them for about 20 minutes -- in Chinese. And while I didn't speak as fluently as I would like to, I was still entirely comfortable. My progress exicites me and really motivates me to study harder.
Oct. 14th, 2006 @ 12:09 pm
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| » Love is like a bottle of gin... |
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Really, it isn't. But last week, I had my students listen to the Magnetic Fields song "Love is like a bottle of gin," and afterwards I had them write their own poems on the subject. As an example of what I wanted, I scrawled the following on the chalk board:
Love is like a garbage truck
Some people leave when it pulls up
Some think the smell is sickly sweet
and others think, "what a splendid treat!"
One man's trash is another's treasure;
let's make haste and get together!
Oct. 9th, 2006 @ 12:48 pm
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| » If Hong Kong is the Jewel of the Orient... |
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... then Shanghai must be its armpit.
I took a brief trip there with a few friends during my vacation, and I have to say that there's not much to see.
Shanghai is an overgrown version of every other Chinese city I've ever visited; as such, all the bad qualities of Chinese cities are amplified.
The place is filthy. The air is toxic. The traffic is unbearable. The city sprawls for miles and miles, identical buildings as far as the eye can see.
Disgusting.
The only interesting buildings were those left over from the colonial era. There were some really incredible office buildings and apartment houses to see in the Bund district. Only the buildings along the river have been restored, while all the gems on the side streets behind the Bund are in a state of decay. It was fun walking behind the glittering Cartier building to find the usual collection of brothels and run-down apartment buildings in the back alleys.
I was rather disappointed with this visit for another reason that had nothing to do with buildings or even smog. Right now, the Party is conducting a purge of "corrupt" officials; but since Party officials are by definition corrupt, the real purpose of the purge is arrest members of the Shanghai coterie who backed previous president Zhang Zhemin and hence consolidate the power of today's parties that be. During my visit, I was really hoping to see some people getting taken down in public, but no such luck. Perhaps if I had gone to restaurants charging 10,000 RMB per plate I could have seen something...
I look forward to travelling in the countryside again during my next vacation.
Oct. 7th, 2006 @ 09:37 am
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| » Nanjing days, Hong Kong nights |
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I've been in a strange mood since returning from Hong Kong.
So it's a city-state. But not. The food is really good, and everything is just so organized.
I wonder if authoritarian, colonial rule is what is takes to produce tidy, efficient governments. Anyway, that's what seems to have happened in Hong Kong. Imagine this: on public transit, there are little stickers encouraging women to report any sexual harassment they might have endured...
Yes, it's the nanny state with a vengence!
Funny that British colonial rule is indelibly associated, in so many minds, with democracy in Hong Kong. Compared with the greasy-fingered scoundrels in Beijing, I'm sure the old regime was downright benevolent. Still, the contradiction is something to live and chuckle with.
So HK is clean, HK is well-lighted, and HK is fashionable. But is it still "China"?
The following incident should answer this question definitively. Before leaving the city, I spotted a small shop where many men were working feverishly to disassemble typewriters and recycle usable parts. The disassembly itself was accomplished by banging the typewriters on the pavement while the men themselves squatted "mainland-style" without the use of a chair. They may wear perfume — but they're still Chinese!
Oct. 3rd, 2006 @ 04:54 pm
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| » Vacation bingo! |
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After spending two months on vacation, I'm about to enjoy another week of state-sanctioned time off.
It's all luck, really. The central government here dictates three vacation weeks for everyone in the country. People in education are fortunate because, one month after returning to work, they're rewarded with a week of paid holiday.
Of course, the real disadvantage of this scheme is that all of the middle class Chinese toodle around the nation at the same time, bottled green tea drinks in one hand and cameras in the other. The lines at tourist attractions are incredible. Oh well: I'm dedicated to making the most of this situation.
That said, I'm going to Hong Kong! I'm excited about the possibility of frolicking among so much neon and smog. I'm most excited about the possibilities of Cantonese cuisine. A saying here goes that those people down south will eat everything that flies but an airplane, everything that moves on land but an automobile, and everything that swims except a submarine...
Sep. 24th, 2006 @ 08:57 pm
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| » City / country |
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Anthropologists note that, in developed countries at least, the distinction between city and country has all but disappeared. Hence on my trip to an isolated beach area in the Florida panhandle, I was able to eat "jet-fresh" tuna.
This, of course, is not the case in China and the rest of the developing world.
On Sunday, I took an expedition to a mountain in northern Nanjing along the Yangtze River. Almost immediately outside the old city gates, I saw a quick change in the character of buildings: Tall apartment buildings quickly gave way to squat domiciles flanked by small patches of cultivated land. Of course, this was an area of transition: one could see the crumbling remains of collective farm settlements among the new suburban sprawl.
This northern part of town abuts the Nanjing shipyards and as such has a dusty, industrial feel. Industrial because of all the smokestacks, dusty because of the open-faced mine on an adjacent mountain. What on earth, then, brough me to visit?
It certainly wasn't out of any love for container ships. No: I was hoping that a trip to the mountain would provide a nice, purifying dose of nature after all my scambling around the asphalt jungle of central Nanjing. My disappointing trip was yet another reminder that, in overcrowded China, the countryside is rarely "beautiful" unless its purposefully developed as a tourist attraction.
It occurred to me later that only an urban dweller could find such an excursion pleasant. On all my trips to secluded mountains here, I've been surrounded by locals eeking out a living coaxing vegetables up out of rocky soil. What is to love about starvation?
My trips to the mountains are made more comfortable by the foods I bring with me from the city purchashed with the money I earned there; by the plush transportation that takes me there with a minimum of hassle; by the knowledge that, after "roughing it" for a few days I can return to all my city indulgences after a while...
The difference between the experience of city and country people here is so remarkably different. I can immediately spot a person from the countryside with no difficulty. Their skin is a dark brown from spending their life out of doors. They are incredibly gaunt in comparison with their city cousins, even the poorest of whom now are a bit pudgy.
So, it turns out that I'm a city person after all. In a place like the U.S., of course, "city" has lost its meaning to the extent that life in rural Arkansas and central Chicago may differ, on a fundamental level, only in the level of ambient noise...
Sep. 4th, 2006 @ 07:46 pm
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| » A Chinese Affair |
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Some of you may wonder what good old fashioned Chinese intrigue is like. An interesting thing happened to my friend's building that I believe might serve to illustrate how situations develop in this country.
The building next door is a department store, but only the first two floors are let out. At the time of construction, the developer had neglected to install an elevator in a public area such that the top floors were inaccessible. Wanting to boost his revenue, the developer recently decided to build an elevator— in the bicycle parking area of my friend's apartment house.
Construction began by digging a large pit. No one in the building was informed of what was going on. Only after diggers severed the building's water main did anybody find out what was going on. Without consulting anybody, the developer had begun to construct an elevator shaft in the public space of my friend's apartment building.
A meeting was called the other day by the building's tenant's association to negotiate with the developer. Several tenants were absent. A rumor quickkly circulated that the absent parties had been paid 200RMB not to come; the leader of the tenant's association, however, interpreted their abscence signified assent to the developer's plans. This raised the further concern that the leader of the tenant's association was also under the influence of the developer...
The developer, meanwhile, promised to give each tenant 10,000 RMB in compensation for any lost public spaace if he were permitted to build his elevator. My friend expressed doubt as to whether, elevator or no, the money would ever materialize.
In a final touch, the residents of the building have begun to dump their trash into the pit dug for the elevator shaft. No bother that the trash will only be picked up by low-paid construction workers and not the evil developer. The mentality seems to be, "let's show them</>"
In the absence of any rule of law, the motto of this country seems to be — "everything's negotiable".
Sep. 1st, 2006 @ 01:30 pm
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