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.

The First Two Weeks

It's hard to believe that I have already been here in Shanghai for two weeks. To a large degree, it seems like I haven't had time to relax since I got here. I've now had my first full week of classes and two weekends to explore. Everything has been great so far.

As I've walked around, I've noticed so much. This city is very busy- there is always something to see, something to do. One of the first observations I made was how vertical everything is here. Many of the small local neighborhoods have been demolished to make room for massive, identical apartment complexes. At home, I've been known to lament the rise of "big-box" stores, franchise restaurants, and boring suburban developments. I hate the Targets, Wal-marts, and Olive Gardens that are slowly making every town in America exactly the same. I hate that the local driving range is going to become a neighborhood made up of 20 houses from the same exact blueprint. I hate that I have to drive all the way to Eastchester or White Plains to find a decent record store because they've stolen all the business from the little guy.

Here in Shanghai, though, this process has been taken to a completely new level. My apartment complex has three buildings; they all look exactly the same. Ditto for the complex across the street. On the ride from the airport to the CIEE office, I felt like I was watching the Flintstones- the same background passing by over and over. Here, it is like the Pete Seeger song they made us learn in Mr. Goldberg's class plays on repeat. They're all made of ticky tacky and they all really do look just the same.

One thing I found interesting, however, was that only residential buildings had this monotony. Shanghai is developing a prominent skyline, and I think it is very indicative of the nature of modern priorities here that only commercial interests have unique attention paid to design.

Then there's the issue of brands. In my neighborhood alone, there is a Papa John's, a Pizza Hut, two "Hello Pizza"s, three KFC's (two of them in the same mall, mind you), two McDonalds, two Starbucks, and a Dairy Queen. And those are just the ones that I've found. There is also an "Grandma Wu's" fast-food dumpling restaurant, and a place that we've began affectionately calling "Kentucky Fried Mao", because it is essentially a Chinese KFC, with a Chinese colonel and everything. Ticky tacky, ticky tacky.

There are, of course, other problems to this. The rapid building results not only in a cookie cutter city, but in a faulty mold. To the best of my knowledge, most of these buildings are constructed without insulation or central air. Consequentially, they waste a lot of energy with individual air units for each room that have to work extra hard. There is the issue of eminent domain, and many more that are for different times. I'm supposed to be learning about many of these in my classes, and will probably discuss them at a later date.

It was recently announced that the official population of Shanghai is 18 million people, and with the large migrant population, the actual population is surely much larger. It is growing quickly, too. While the construction might be necessary, I think it is also a bit of an autarkic cycle- the development encourages more people to come, which results in a need for even more development. I also think that history will look back on this development unfavorably.

Ticky tacky, ticky tacky...

(And now some pictures...)

You might notice that the umbrella is sponsored by Coca-Cola.
Underwear hang drying from people's windows.

Fighting City Hall

Recently, I took the absurd action of going to Village Parking Court with the intention of contesting an unjust- at least in my own opinion- parking ticket. Instead of having my fine thrown out or even reduced, I was shown swift and vicious justice.

Normally, I would not spend my time on such a trivial matter. Frankly, I usually have better things to do, even if I could save some money by going to court. These are not ordinary times anymore. Two weeks ago, I was heading in to work at the wine shop and found a strong lack of available parking spots. I made my way to a side street where I've parked legally many times before. Apparently, the Village decided to remove some valuable parking spaces for the new year. Getting rid of parking spaces is inconvenient, but bureaucracy strives for more than that. To really lay it on thick, DPW decided to leave the old sign indicating "One Hour Parking" up and simply placed the "No Parking Here to Corner" sign on the same signpost right below the old sign. (All of this is for an area only large enough for one car- not for a whole street) The signage was (and still is) vague enough that I incorrectly assumed the Village intended for drivers to not block a nearby driveway. I parked and went to work, where I was immediately informed by a co-worker that I was parked illegally. When I arrived at my car, not five minutes after parking, Officer Vasquez was ticketing my vehicle. While she was writing, I struck up a conversation with her and she told me that, in fact, many people are very confused by the poor signage. She felt that I should go contest my ticket.

I arrived at Village Court half an hour early. With me were two pictures of the ridiculous sign situation. However, the Judge would have none of it, and quickly informed me that signs- good or bad- were not her concern and that I still had to pay the fine. She added that I should bring up my problem with the sign to the Traffic and Parking Commission if I cared that much. Resisting the urge to tell her that I didn't come to court as a concerned citizen, but as a cheapskate, I left scowling. (Incidentally, despite her hasty decisions, the judge did not make it home in time for "Ugly Betty" anyway.)

While I'm sure that the Village's judge is from an educated law background, I was reminded of a series of articles in the New York Times from 2006 about the State of New York's terrible local justice system. As it turns out, it is not a requirement that a municipal judge in New York knows anything about The Law, and so it happens that many justices, in fact, know nothing about The Law and act accordingly. While my opinions about our Village Justice's professionalism are skewed by trite bitterness, many New Yorkers do have legitimate grudges against bad judges.

The reason I bring this up is because China's judicial system isn't much different from this. Several nights ago, PBS ran a documentary about all of China's negatives. The film focused on the bad environmental situation and the rampant poverty. It also touched on China's legal system. In China, judges do not- and often are not- trained in legal matters; they are civil servants under the People's Republic of China. The documentary made the argument that often times, regardless of the actual law, cases are decided by unprofessional judges influenced by the short term goals of the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, there is no "rule of law" in China such as we have in America. According to the documentary, unlike the American system where generally the law is the law no matter what situation is, Chinese law generally places the rules as subordinate to the desires of the judge and the government. The film, as well as other sources I looked at after viewing the documentary, have pointed out that this is less and less frequent as China prepares for a new era of subjugation to international norms. As China finds itself more active in world bodies such as the UN and is preparing to enter the WTO, it is slowly moving towards domestic governance more in line with the rest of the modernized world.

But while that happens, I'm going to have to find out when the Parking Commission meets...