Lunar New Year/Spring Festival

As Sam unwittingly reminded me, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the whole idea of "Chinese New Year," forgetting that other Asian cultures (particularly Vietnam) also celebrate the lunar new year, especially for those of us that live here in China. That being said, Chinese New Year is probably one of the coolest holidays, not to mention one of the most absurd.

Take, for example, this article from china.org.cn about the wreckage left on the streets in the aftermath of last night, Chuxi (pronounced Chew She), which is essentially New Year's Eve:

About 30,000 sanitation employees in China's finance hub Shanghai worked through the night to sweep up some 1,200 tons of fireworks debris, left behind by revelers on Sunday evening as they welcomed in the Lunar New Year. -Xinhua News, via china.org.cn

1200 tons of debris! I can personally vouch for the sheer amount of burnt red paper that left behind. If you can forgive the camera-phone quality, take a look at these two pictures I took myself:

One of those comes from the street by where we ate dinner, the other is the entrance to my apartment building. That's a lot of firecrackers. I shudder imagining the environmental cost this holiday pays in the name of scaring off dragons. Most of the fireworks get exploded on Chuxi, it seems to me, but the holiday lasts fifteen days. I guess even then, firecrackers tend to get exploded all the time, anyway, so whatever.

Everyone knows, or should know, that I absolutely love fireworks, so there's no reason why I shouldn't have been totally stoked for this. And I was, believe me. But there are only so many times a man can take almost getting killed because someone didn't think it was really necessary to warn me they had just lit firecrackers a bit down the sidewalk. Or so many times a person can tolerate that unexpected "Oh, no! Did they cross the Straits?" panic when woken at 8:30AM by explosions. As my friend Ivan puts it:

" I am in a country where the setting off of bigass fireworks in the street by private, unlicensed individuals (such as myself) is not only legal, but socially encouraged."

It's not that the fireworks are really a problem, and for the sake of getting a full night's sleep at night, I assume that people take precaution. However, there's something to be said about not exploding fireworks in the middle of a busy street, where they'll burst just meters (that's kind of like a yard for you all back in the States) from the glass windows of a tall building.

Over the coming weeks, we've got more holiday to celebrate. Friday is the Money God festival, Sunday is the birthday of the common man (when people traditionally count their age up another year), and the Sunday after that is the Lantern Festival. I'll be eating a lot of dumplings...

Oh, right...

So remember that bit about China maybe possibly sort of kind of beginning to feel the economic crisis thing? Yeah, that's definitely happening. Yours truly has been busy not posting blog entries over the past few weeks because I've been pulling a James Woods and trying to experience what it means firsthand to be affected by an economic crisis. Notes:

1) Having no money in your wallet or everyday-use bank account is bad.

2) Bok choy soup and rice is a surprisingly tasty meal, now that I've had enough practice making it this month.

3) Taking the bus is less of an adventure when you have to do it. On the other hand, it's now "effortlessly" green to do so.

4) Seriously, having no cash on hand is awful.

Just before embarking on this research, I was blessed enough to have a visitor here in Shanghai. This made for a really good opportunity to be a tourist. Too often, I think, we don't take the time to actually check out the stuff around us. Just thinking about the list of places I haven't been in New York is a headache, let alone the places I haven't been here in Shanghai. So, even though this last week might have been partial inspiration for my "research," it was probably worth it. Skyscrapers, gardens, temples, pedestrian streets, and a super cool "museum" definitely helped me close 2008 on a high note.

2009, however, has already been interesting. Work is picking up. Imminently, I'll be taking on a whole new batch of responsibilities as the company plans to do some "spring festival cleaning". (Chinese New Year is called the Spring Festival here. So, it's actually a pretty good joke.) Plus, we have our big new service launching, TalkOnline. I've also made my way onto Chinese TV already, and as soon as I get a copy of the video, you can be sure you'll find it here.

Also, according to China Daily, the government sponsored English language newspaper, "China is about to enter a peak time for mass incidents..." That means riots and protests. So, that's exciting, right?

Anyway, 2009 is here and I'm planning to make it a good one. Now, who's going to join me?

Dodgeball

Time to rub how great my job is in all of your faces again.

Yesterday, I got to teach a class on dodgeball. The timing of the event couldn't have been better, either, thanks to that Iraqi guy. President Bush's surprisingly good ducking skills were very helpful in illustrating proper technique:

White Goodman: "Hmm. Oh, I don't think I'm a lot dumber than you thought that I think that I thought I was once."

It was pretty weird how nonchalantly everyone's been taking this. Most of us in the office reacted to the video with a shrug, as though we were all thinking "I wouldn't mind doing that, myself." But I was more surprised that my students, having grown up in an authoritarian society, didn't really find it surprising to see objects being hurled at our President. I expected them to treat the situation with some severity- what if shoes had been thrown at Wen Jiabao or Hu Jintao?- but maybe Bush really is just that poorly regarded.

Anyway, the actual dodgeball was activity was great. If you're curious, I proved to everyone that sidearm totally dominates.

Great Depression 2: The Reckoning

For many years, my friends and I have joked that sequels always seem to be called "Blah Blah 2: The Reckoning." We looked it up once and found out that there has actually never been a sequel with this moniker. Regardless, we've gotten a lot of mileage out of this joke. People are always talking about the Great Depression these days; even I've been trying to get a copy of "The Grapes of Wrath". So it's only natural that we might consider this current financial crisis, now officially a recession (retroactive to one year ago), a sequel of sorts. People playing fast and loose with their money leads to people losing their homes. An inept president unable to solve the problem, with a charismatic, visionary successor. It's all there.

So it was only natural today that, upon opening up the New York Times this afternoon, I could not help but burst into laughter seeing the title of a story.


That's right folks, Great Depression 2: The Reckoning is here.

Or, at least, there. I've yet to actually meet someone really worried about the effects of the crisis here in China. We read in the news of the big steps the government is taking to spur domestic spending in the face of declining exports, but nobody seems to really be too nervous. People here are pretty big savers, and using a credit card is rare. From that side of the crisis, people here are in good shape. The bigger problem is simply the wake from other economies, and even that will affect other parts of China much more than Shanghai.

So, anyone looking for an escape... I've got a spare bedroom.

What the World Needs Now (Besides Love, Sweet Love)

With Christmas rapidly approaching (Pearl Harbor Day!) and the deadline for getting packages off to me in time for the holiday almost here, I figured I'd make a little list of things that would be nice.

Before I begin I should note that, despite the title, Burt Bacharach related things are always, always appreciated. Having said that, here's another totally neat list to check out.

1. A world-wide indoor smoking ban. I know my reasons for this are rather selfish- I'm tired of coming home reeking from cigarette smoke- but I think it could only be beneficial to our society at large.

2. Some winter wear. Shanghai is cold and windy.

3. New York Jets, do your thing. Wouldn't hurt if the Spiders kept it up, too.

4. Throw pillows, and maybe a little living room rug.

5. Maybe a road bike. Then again, it's really cold and a bike would be awful.

6. Anything. It's the thought that counts.

Get cracking, my international Santa Clauses.

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

Thanksgiving

About a bajillion years ago- relative to my own existence, at least- the Pilgrims and the Indians celebrated the first Thanksgiving. They had yet to become Native Americans at that time, so you can get over it now: I'm calling them Indians.

Anyway, back to the story. Then we went and killed most of them, stole their land, and sold the rest firewater. Which reminds me: the economic downturn means we should spend more time with friends and family, and a nice bottle of wine goes great with that. I recommend a little place called Post Wine and Spirits in Larchmont, NY.

Right, so the story. Somewhere around the time of the War of Northern Aggression, legendary human Abraham Lincoln began the movement to mark the occasion of our first Thanksgiving with annual wildly inaccurate pageants and family dinners. On this day, we count our blessings and take part in our two great American pastimes: forgetting the baseball is our national pastime and eating too much.

This year, because I couldn't bear to spend another cherished holiday watching the Detroit Lions lose, I moved to China. Here, I estimate that 99.9999% of 1.3 billion people don't even know the Detroit Lions exist. For those of Americans living abroad, however, Thanksgiving is still a fairly important occasion, and agree it is totally worth it to go out of our way and order an already cooked turkey from a hotel restaurant or supermarket.

Having set the scene, my holiday begins at 8:15 AM. This might come as a surprise to many of you, but this is an hour at which I am, by and large, unaccustomed to waking. All the same, my neighbors chose to eviscerate all hope of having a nice post-Thanksgiving Eve-revelry sleep by making the bold decision to use a power drill, a power saw, and a hammer for the hour following this wicked wake up call. Throwing up my hands, metaphorically since I'm actually trying to suffocate my ears with the pillows, I lied in bed thinking about how lucky I am to be in China.

Cut to the early evening. It's 6:30 PM and I've just left work early. The subway is crowded, which means it's actually not bad tonight. Usually it is absurdly crowded. I've got the new Guns N' Roses record on my iPod, which is a ridiculous sentence phrase for several reasons. It's illegality here in China is the reason I'll highlight.

I just lost my train of thought imagining how I would look wearing Slash's hat, so I'll just skip to the white meat and mashed potatoes of the story. The holiday was spent nicely at a friend's place, where we had a traditional Thanksgiving feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and curried tofu. (There were a lot of non-Americans there, and they felt compelled to bring something. Silly Canadians.) We did the hokey thing and went around saying what we were thankful for, and we all lied and said our friends. But it got me thinking about what I actually am thankful for, so here it goes:

1. I am thankful for my family, who are wonderful in every way- especially their support and understanding. I am thankful that they are smart, sociable, moral people who have done their damnedest to make me so, too.

2. I am thankful for my friends, who are still really cool and who totally miss me, but would be mad at me if I came back early. I am thankful that they are all doing their thing, too, so that we can compare notes.

3. I am thankful that I found a job. Economic crisis, my left foot. I am also thankful that it is a job I enjoy, working with people I like.

4. I am thankful that I have this opportunity to travel the world and follow my dream.

5. I am thankful for Barack Obama winning. Particularly, I am thankful for Sarah Palin losing.

6. I am thankful for the Internet making most of what I do feasible.

7. I am thankful that I finally finished reading Cryptonomicon. As awesome as it was, 1100 pages is really just too long. Which is why the next book I'm reading will only be around 800 pages.

8. I'm thankful to the peoples of Spain and France for having languages that I found totally abhorrent in seventh grade, forcing me to capriciously choose Chinese as my language of choice. Since hypothetical situations are poor arguments, however, we will not go ahead an imagine the alternate reality in which I spend my adult life on the French Riviera as a successful importer-exporter/secret agent. "Will not," I said.

And that's it. I hope you all had a great holiday, too.