Moving.

While I've, admittedly, been bad about blogging regularly, this has largely been due to the unavailability of blog services over the past half year. Recently, the blog service WordPress opened up, and I decided to make the switch.

The new blog is available at:
http://heinbockel.wordpress.com

I've now got my hands on a new computer and a dedicated proxy service, so I expect to update with some regularity. See you there.

Blood Alley

Old Hollywood movies have a distinct naive charm to them that grants filmmakers significant license. "Blood Alley," from 1955 is such a movie. Hollywood couldn't make this movie today, but not only for the obvious reasons of yellow-face, racism, and sexism. Today, this movie couldn't be made because Hollywood is increasingly reliant on international markets. Recently, "2012" has been a great success here in the mainland, largely because of its positive portrayal of China. But "Blood Alley," a major release from the beginning of the Cold War, is a curious anti-communist movie that could never make it to China, an emerging market Hollywood takes very seriously.

The movie itself is simple: an old China hand Merchant Marine (John Wayne) is busted from Chinese prison and brought to a village where he pays for his freedom by captaining a ferry of villages in a daring escape to Hong Kong. Somehow Lauren Bacall's Cathy Grainger, a woman who lives in the village with her absent, drunk father, manages to fall in love with him. I should add that she falls in love with Wayne's character, Wilder, despite his assertion that he's got "dames all up and down the coast" and a strange incident in which he slaps her in order to make her angry so he can then inform her of her father's death. Oh, old Hollywood!

While the movie is kind of banal, the curious way it flips classic depictions from communist propaganda on their heads, even if the film may not have done this intentionally, is notable. In Shanghai, there is a fascinating gallery of old propaganda posters that I've had occasion to visit twice. 60 years after "Red China's" founding, 50 plus years after this film's release, and 30 years beyond it's initial opening economic reforms, we have more insight into the early years of the PRC via such galleries. The reversal of depictions of various characters in these works of propaganda make "Blood Alley" a more interesting film, retrospectively, than it should be.

First and foremost in the film are Wilder and Grainger, Westerners come to China who become heroes to the people. In 1955, propaganda would have a typical Chinese villager believe that Westerners were greedy, hideous cretins. While Wilder's anti-communist sentiments may have originated in the selfish motivation of lost business and imprisonment, by the end of the movie he has come to side with the villagers, the "bleeding heart of China."

Likewise, the portrayal of the Feng family, villainized as the village's communists, are desperate, selfish people. While the other villagers, fleeing communism for capitalist Hong Kong form a tight, supportive community, the communist Fengs stay apart and indeed try to poison the villagers. The family's patriarch is obese and wears fine garments while other carry him across mud. In any Chinese film, Feng is an archetypal "capitalist roader." The Chinese soldiers, rather than being valiant, strong heroes, are also awful: one attempts to rape Grainger.

The film is commendable for its mostly human portrayal of the villagers and for not giving Wayne a little Oriental plum blossom girl in pigtails and a flowered qipao (at least on screen). However, Susu the maid speaks in awful pidgin (we get it, she likee likee very much) and several Chinese characters are played by white actors. As intentionally bad as Susu's English is, every other character in the movie's Chinese is unintentionally just as bad. This movie is worth watching just to see John Wayne take Mandarin Chinese behind the shed and give it the Old Yeller treatment.

For me, as a China person, this film was an interesting watch and a fun way to spend an evening. But most people will probably pay more attention to Wayne's and Bacall's lack of chemistry and treat it like the middling, goofy old Hollywood action film it is.

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 Hardware Store

Shortly after waking up today, I started thinking of the best way to spend my three day weekend. (China marks today, May 1, International Labor Day, as a national holiday) Looking about my apartment, I was discontented with the more or less bare walls and decided to take action. With visions of grandeur, I went off to the hardware store and the intention to embark upon an art project that would drastically change the decor of my apartment.

While the art project itself is still in the envisioning stage, I knew that to get what I wanted I would need a big canvas made of wire screen. This project will, you see, involve of papier mache.

Thus, I marched though the doorway and down aisles of porcelain toilets and various other decorative fixtures to the "raw materials" department. With rough dimensions of the project in mind, I first set about converting from standard measurements to metric. At this point, I can convert from Farenheit to Celcius well, as well as miles to kilometers and pounds to kilograms. However, other units of distance, such as inches to centimeters or feet to meters, is still a bit beyond what I can do. In the end, I simply ended up spreading my arms and asking "How many meters is this? This is how wide it should be." After a short discourse, what I wanted was clear and it became time to bargain. Not really knowing the price of wood, screen, nails, and staples, etc., I doubt I fared well. I think in the end, I probably netted free delivery. However, not having any tools of my own, my position to negotiate the cost of having it all put together was rather weak.

None of this is very noteworthy. Outside of the bargaining, it had been up to this point a rather typical American hardware store experience. Then, the assembly began and suddenly I was in China again.

People who have not been to China expect it to be a crowded, noisy place. And, of course, it is. Here in China, we foreigners also enjoy groaning about the annoying Chinese cultural nuance of basically ignoring strangers- unless, of course, that stranger is doing pretty much anything. Naturally, as assemblage of this canvas frame began, what seemed to be half of the store crowded around us to wonder outloud "What is the laowai (a slang term for foreigner) doing?" And so there I was, instructing the store worker as per my specifications while a peanut gallery of smoking Chinese men proffered their own advice and made jokes about how the store worker should make me pay even more.

While this all sounds annoying, it was actually rather fun. The hardware store felt kind of like a circus. As tired as I am of being so regularly the focus of the center ring, the atmosphere was jovial enough that I could laugh with them throughout the afternoon and the experience lacked almost all of the frustration that typically comes with trying to get anything done efficiently here in China. Next time, however, I will bring a bargaining partner.

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.

Not So Sure About This Place

A new beauty salon opened up next to my apartment complex recently. I'm not sure they're going to stay in business, though, with the kind of... unconventional... services they advertise:

That was too good to not share.

Can Bud Selig Get Kicked Out of Office Already?

Bud Selig sucks. I mean, how can he always act so surprised about steroids in baseball when it is so obvious that he and the owners were complicit in all of this? If baseball really wants to move on past the steroid era, Selig has to go. And while we're at it, Don Fehr, the player's union chief, is a weasel, too.

These guys clearly don't really care about the integrity of the game, or the bad example they set by turning a blind eye to this cheating. Their reactions to the pressures from the media in dealing with this are blatantly just affectations, and are nothing short of nauseous. Today he announced that he was considering punishing A-Rod for his failed drug test six years ago. This is the wrong move for two reasons: 1) it was not against the rules to use PEDs when A-Rod failed the test; 2) there are 103 others who failed that year and evidently will not be punished.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the magnitude of the game's biggest star being nailed for this. He plays for my team, so it hits especially close to home. But it's incredibly unfair and unproductive to turn him into a scapegoat.

If they really want to send a message, they should release the other names and start making the rules prohibiting PEDs stricter. The costs of using PEDs has to outweigh the benefits of using them, and "the good of the game" is unfortunately not enough to stop players from juicing; the humiliation and official consequences of being caught need to be more intense to create such disincentive.

Baseball also has to expand the scope of these consequences. Players alone should not be punished. Coaches and owners should be punished, too. Even if they aren't aware that a player is cheating, if the consequences affect more than just the individual, he might think twice about acting inappropriately. Not only that, but baseball should make it a requirement that any player with paid endorsements must have in his contract a clause saying that being caught juicing will lead to an automatic termination of that contract. Again, it's all about taking away the incentive for these guys to cheat.

None of this will happen, though, as long as Bud Selig is in charge because he has no spine for it. He knows exactly how much he gained thanks to players using PEDs and is too reluctant to see it go. This is supposed to be a new era of change upon we as a nation have embarked. And as the American pastime (screw you, football), baseball needs a change in leadership.

Economics is the Dismal Science; Politics is Where it Gets Stimulating

Something I don't care for: frivolous government spending. Something I care for even less than that: politicians who act like it's a harbinger of the the apocalypse. Yes, folks, this is about the stimulus. And I'm not going to talk about the economics of it, really. It's borderline hackneyed to point out that tax cuts aren't particularly effective (and certainly not in this climate) or that the package probably isn't big enough. I'm fascinated by the political debate.

I just came across an awesome map of America over at msnbc.com. ("Interactive Timeline...") Take a look- I promise you'll feel blindsided, too. I usually read two newspapers a day, not to mention pickings from an assortment of other periodicals and blogs, and so it's not like I didn't know that unemployment was very high. But seeing it there colorcoded really hit me in the gut. Did you notice that the states with the senators complaining the loudest about proposed solutions seemed to have the lowest unemployment? (I'm looking at you, Nebraska) No wonder they seem so oblivious the urgency of this problem.

If people are complaining that Democrats are going falling back into their old ways instead of adopting a transformational approach in line with the style of the Obama movement, the same can be said for the cut and paste response from Republicans. Did you see the new RNC head on Fox saying that "government has never created a single job"? Never? How about my father's job? How about my great-grandfather's work a WPA mason during the Great Depression? The religious devotion to tax cuts among these people is truly ridiculous. Don't they realize they lost on that platform?

Sure, the stimulus bill probably does spend some money in the wrong places. But can we really say definitively what will and what won't help the economy? We call economics a science, but the practical application of it is nothing close. Moreover, most of this so-called wasteful spending doesn't seem very wasteful to me. In today's WaPo, columnist Steve Pearlstein notes:

[WSJ Columnist Daniel] Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and -- get this! -- $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What is most striking is how much 'stimulus' money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure," wrote Henninger. "This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus."

Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient. ("Wanted...")

I think he's right on target. Even if the spending itself doesn't save America (and I can assure you, it won't), what it will do is rebuild the fabric of our society. The New Deal didn't save us from the Depression, but it did give us modern American society- everything from bridges to libraries to parks to schools and beyond. It gave us the paradigm through which everything else has developed, and yes, that involves quite a few civil servants. So what?

If Republicans want something to worry about, I've got a suggestion. Did you know that construction is the least efficient industry in America? Okay, that one isn't surprising, either. Once again, though, the numbers behind it are pretty astonishing:

Every other industry has gotten more productive in the past half century – by about 22 percent on average. Construction has seen productivity fall by 25 percent. ("Trillion Dollar Barry...")

If we're really going to be spending so much money on infrastructure, then pols worried about spending should focus on making sure these projects finish on budget and finish on time. I guess they'd still be tilting at windmills, but since the election proved tax cuts are out of fashion, at least they'd be trying out something new.

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.

Commericials are Amazing

The Most Geometrically Delicious Food Ever

I don't know if they sell this in America, but here in China, KFC is making a huge push for a new dish. Out of love for country and out of China's insane love for KFC (it's by far the biggest, most popular food chain here) I've taken the liberty of helping them advertise with a free promotional spot on my blog:

While I'm sure the most accurate name for this would be the "Spicy Tender Beef Crunch Wrap", or something like that, the Chinese name translates to the "Spicy Tender Beef Pentagon". I- obviously- prefer that name.

Fast food is a really strange, exploding industry here in China. Right now KFC is far and away the biggest fast food chain here in China. They've got all sorts of dishes that they sell exclusively here, catering to Chinese tastes- many more than McDonald's does. On the other hand, McDonald's delivers and is open 24 hours. Burger King is more or less nonexistent in China outside of Shanghai, where there are nine restaurants or so. Recent reports indicate that's getting ready to change soon. There are lots of Chinese fast food chains, too, but they appear to lack the marketing savvy and general corporate ability of American brands. (I was forced to watch a CNBC special on McDonald's one Christmas Eve. Long story short, those people are evil geniuses who have it all figured out. The technology that they have is probably beyond that of our military, and it's all to make sure that a burger in New York tastes the same as a burger in Nebraska, which will taste the same as a burger in Shanghai.)

Anyway, back to the spicy tender beef pentagon. Chinese people really like mayonnaise, which I find tragic since mayo is gross. The spicy tender beef pentagon has lots of mayo in the salad half of the filling. The other half is the spicy tender beef, which is sliced thin and coated in spicy tender beef sauce and sesame seeds. It is then put into a crunchy taco shell, before being wrapped into a tortilla.

I heard mostly negative reviews of this sandwich before I finally got around to trying it, but I couldn't resist such a geometrically significant food. Frankly, I can't imagine anyone being able to do so. The sandwich isn't as awesome looking as the ads (expected, I guess):

Forgive the plating, but it's fast food people.

Mayo aside, this was not a bad sandwich. And, since I had coupons that gave me two free fried chicken legs with it, I was doubly excited.

In conclusion: eat it, Sherri King, former superintendent of the Mamaroneck Union Free School District, and your awful graduation speech that was ostensibly about life but essentially about not eating fast food. Because I will definitely eat this sandwich again.

Timeline: Nov. 5, 2008

Because I live in Shanghai, I live half a day ahead of the action back at home in the States. Here's the recap of how Election Morning went.

6:45 AM: Alarm goes off. I'm ready to kill my supervisor, Jaret, with whom I'll be heading over to Malone's to watch it all unfold.

8:00 AM: The election party is well underway. Polls start closing as breakfast gets served. I pickup a cool Obama poster that will soon be the first bit of wall decor for my apartment.

9:00 AM: Second round of polls. Obama takes the lead from McCain. The entire bar is pro-Obama and, even this early in the morning, the place goes wild. We're all also totally confused by a) CNN's insistence on using hologram technology, and b) Wolf Blitzer's continual insistence that "these are real votes we're looking at."

9:30 AM: Sonja arrives, soon to be followed by Clemon. The bar is filling up, still rocking for Obama.

10:00 AM: Next round of polls, and Obama's lead becomes commanding. It feels like a Saturday night at Malone's. Soon after, John King more or less proclaims the night over and the place goes ballistic.

11:00 AM: Round four. As this hour goes on, we start really doing the math. It's now just a countdown to noon, when the West Coast will make it all official. We've got two more compatriats that have joined us at our corner of the bar.

12:00 PM: Explosion of jubilation and relief. It's all finally over: eight years of confusion and two years of diligent attention to current events, done in an instant. CNN gets turned down and the PA turns towards Stevie Wonder. It's now actually a party. The gang's now buying rounds of Budweiser to celebrate. I notice everyone in the bar is breathing very, very deeply.

12:30 PM: McCain concession speech is very gracious and the whole bar kind of develops a soft spot for old guy.

1:30 PM: Obama addresses 240,000 people hanging out in a park, not to mention we millions around the world. Malone's totally freaks when he address "those watching from beyond our shores."

2:00 PM: Jaret and I get back to the office, still in total disbelief. Every breath I take sounds like a sigh.

5:00 PM: Work moving very slowly. It's all still surreal.

7:30 PM: Teaching goes really well, but it's clear that I'm totally out of it.

9:30 PM: I'm on the subway, headed towards the Bund to meet up with my high school girlfriend. She's in Shanghai on a trip.

10:15 PM: We're at Glamour Bar for the official Obama victory party. Lots of foreigners, and they're all ecstatic. They're serving "Obama-tinis" and "Change We Can Believe Ins".

Nov. 6, 2008

10:00 AM: Wait, did yesterday really happen? This distance is really making it not feel real.

This has been such an incredible past few days. It's amazing how much support Obama has here among the expat community. I've met exactly one person that supported McCain, but we're pretty sure he's in the CIA, anyway.

I've spoken about my incredible love of country before, but, as of Wednesday morning, I've never loved it more. Feeling the excitement of a whole community rallying behind Obama was really special.

(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.

And you thought my friends had time on our hands...

I'm pretty sure this is in China, too, so not only is it a cool video, but it's kind of relevant.