Remember The Time?

Since sometime in late spring- around Memorial Day weekend and certain unspeakable events that happened twenty years ago around the first week of June- just about every Western blog has been blocked, leaving me unable to post anything without the help of a good proxy filter. Avoiding China's Great Firewall is not very difficult to do, but it's often a nuisance. I've been using Facebook and Twitter- two other blocked services- with much less frequency than the nearly hourly use to which I was accustomed. Like many other expats here, I was hoping this would all just blow over as the summer passed by notable anniversaries that could be exploited by overzealous internet users. Unfortunately, since then we've seen a steady stream of major blog-worthy events, of which several gave the monitors of the Great Firewall more cause to keep the current bans in place.

I fell ill and was treated at a Chinese hospital, giving me valuable insight into the current American health care clusterf*ck.

Michael Jackson died, which was a bummer but ultimately not world changing. His influence lasts, but them man was essentially irrelevant.

Chaos and violence in Xinjiang Province. The western province home to a substantial ethnic minority has been in a state of unrest due to ethnic and political tensions that spilled over into violence this July. Twitter got blocked again in the wake of this. I spoke to a guy from Xinjiang I know recently about this. He said that things out there are bad, but that his people are treated well in Shanghai. I found this curious, since many Chinese people I've spoken to stereotypically talk about Xinjiang people in racist stereotypes.

Friends and I formed a band and have our first concert scheduled for Novmember 4, the one year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama.

More ethnic tension across China as stabbings involving syringes and ethnic minorities occur.

I started working a second job as I learned the true face of working in China. Don't believe what you've read in the NYT or AP regarding working here. They're aloof.

Soon, we will have a major holiday: the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Things should get ridiculous.

The Yankees made it back to the playoffs.

Keep alive.

Do I Know You?

Chinese New Year is apparently so crazy that it took me just over two months to recover. Whoops?

Notes:

• I got promoted (kind of): I am now no longer an "academic specialist" but rather an "academic supervisor."
• My oldest friend- at least in my recollection- came to visit China while she was teaching in Thailand. During her stopover in Shanghai, I built upon the lessons of my last guest and tried doing almost no touristy stuff at all. Instead, we tried out random restaurants I had always wanted to try, walked around, and went to the brand new Barbie store. The Barbie store was kind of like a girly Niketown, maybe. It's six floors, slathered in pink, and has an overpriced bar up on the top floor. That being said, it's actually really well decorated.
• More rock concerts, including the group Battles all the way from NY and Hedgehog from Beijing. Battles was outrageous, while Hedgehog was spoiled by the crowd of obnoxious Chinese hipsters apparently unfamiliar with deodorant and toothpaste, not to mention standard rock concert protocol.
• Wow, Bush administration, you just make it easier and easier to paint you as awful villains, don't you? Really? You waterboarded the same two dudes over two-hundred fifty times? I don't imagine I'd take too kindly to being tortured, but I suspect somewhere around the fortieth time, I'd start to be a little nonplussed by the whole affair.
• Baseball season is here! Go Yankees! The managers of my company are all from Taiwan, where baseball is much more popular than it is here on the mainland where you're lucky if people even know what baseball is. One of the managers, being from Taiwan, is a big fan of Wang Chien-ming and the Yankees. I don't think I'd ever spoken to him in the nearly one year of time I've been around him (between my intership and my current tenure) until he approached me after Wang bombed again in his second start to say "Wang Chien-ming..." while shaking his head. I took the chance today to approach him and do the same today, following Wang's third blowout.
• The weather's getting nicer, so I'm taking more opportunities to wander around as a pedestrian instead of as a passenger. It makes the city a lot more interesting, and it's amazing how much closer everything is than you might think。
• I'll officially be returning to the States, although only for two weeks, in June. So, start making preparations now.

And, just like that, we're back in business.

Rocking in the Free-ish World

Walking down the street at any given time here in Shanghai, you're bound to hear music blaring from a stereo outside of a small shop. Subway stations, malls, offices and more all play music constantly. Normally, I would love this. I mean, a world saturated with music should be nothing but awesome. Should be, I guess.

Music here in China is pretty much awful. Going through the evolution of music, as we Americans chart it out at least, China apparently skipped bebop, the blues, Chuck Berry, and Elvis. They've started immediately in the 1990s, just after grunge died. Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys rule here, and Chinese pop stars all emulate this nauseous sound. Talking to my students about what they listen to, they always reply "soft" music. When the Chinese media criticized the new Guns N' Roses album on the sole basis of its name and title track, they mentioned that many people think [rock music] is noisy, and thus don't like it. That reviewer was talking about old men who sit on their porches shaking canes at youth and pretty much anyone in China.

One of my explicit goals in coming to China was to spend two years teaching people how to rock. With that in mind, I went out to ZhiJiang Dream Factory on Saturday with some friends to see SUBS, the preeminent Chinese punk/rock band, and made a point of pulling random people into the mosh pit. Like basically all of the good Chinese rock bands, they come from Beijing, and they managed to skip all those early rock elements, too. Luckily, they somehow found the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, not to mention the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Video From an Earlier Shanghai Show

As great as this band is, and as fun as their concert was, I still insist that the best method to teach these people about rock is not total assault. Remember when Jimmy Page played in Beijing at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games and it was dead in the arena? Hard rock doesn't fly here, not yet. Thinking back on the evolution of rock, I think that the best approach is to take it slow. Show them more melodic, and less noisy bands, like the Beatles or the Beach Boys. It's rumored that Eagles are coming to Shanghai next year, and they'd be perfect for this task, too. (That goes to explain "Hotel California's" presence in almost every Filipino house band's set) I think if we break them in slowly, they'll get there one day. We can worry about the Guns N' Roses controversy all we want here, but let's remember that there was a time when Elvis was rebellious and controversial, too.

So, let's go, Shanghai. Let's bring out the golden oldies. I'm sick of hearing Christmas songs all year long just because people think the melodies are "nice."

The Opening Band, Out of Shanghai: Pink Berry

(Asian) Glow in the Dark

This monstrous blue blur is not a tragic explosion. It is, in fact, part of Kanye West's "Glow in the Dark" tour, captured via my totally inelegant cell phone camera.

Tonight, I got to see a concert I'll probably be able to talk about forever. Honestly, how often does one get to see the world's hottest pop act while overseas? Tonight's concert was rather short, but memorable. Kanye brought out all his hits, including this summer's latest "American Boy". He also, rather inexplicably, brought out Journey's greatest hit, "Don't Stop Believing". I've never been to a real rap concert before this, and I'm not sure how many more I'll go to. Having said that, Kanye's show had the coolest light show I've ever seen, and this was a stripped down version of what he did in the States. He did something I've always thought more artists should do, which is really coordinate a light show with the music.

As fun as this concert was, it also reminded me of a pet peeve: drunk white girls. Not that I'm hating on my fellow Caucasians, but drunk white girls have to be stopped. Take the one sitting next to me, for example. I'm sorry that you're clearly thirty-five and still single, but that's not an excuse to dress like an eighteen year old, and it's definitely not an excuse to act like a sixteen year old that got invited to junior prom. You should have learned this lesson a long time ago: you probably aren't a good dancer sober, and, after so many drinks, you definitely haven't gotten better. And, please, it's awkward for the rest of us when you sing along more enthusiastically during the parts when the black guy uses the "n-word".

That being said, this totally neon concert was a great reminder of everything that's awesome about this city: lights, action, energy, and completely international.