You ain't yet seen crowded.

I'll be trying over the next while to put some random unused photos to good use. We really need to go out and do some real travelling again, because I'm not sure how much entertainment I can milk out of some of these (there are reasons I haven't posted them before). This particular batch is from my cell phone, which is my camera of last resort, as the quality is low.

Contrary to its reputation, not everywhere in China is crowded, and even crowded places are not so all the time. However, if a tide of humanity is ever going to sweep over and drown you, it will be it may well be in the aisles of the Auchan grocery store. It is actually a French chain that got in early when Chinese consumers started to have a little money. Although the more traditional market streets are still thriving, Auchan attracts huge crowds. They don't always appear to actually be shopping. Last year (before we were here) during the big freak snowstorm that virtually paralyzed all of China, the poor crowded in and milled about all day for shelter from the cold.

The store was already huge, but in December, an entire interior wall was opened up for a major expansion. It is now, hands down, the biggest store I have ever been in, and that includes American mega-stores like Bass Pro Shops. Amazingly, it can still be completely packed. When it is, it feels like an entire shopping mall of shoulder to shoulder humanity.

By contrast, there is another French chain here, Metro, that is more of a warehouse store, which caters to restaurants and businesses. It requires a membership, but most of the expats have one through their employers. It is, unsurprisingly, much less crowded, although not useful for regular grocery shopping. We don't go that often, as it is on the wrong side of town for us. However, it is one of the few places in town that I will buy meat. I have made it a point to observe how they are handling and storing the meat in most of the shops around here. Suffice it to say, I haven't liked what I've seen.

Back to the crowd topic. Here is a comparison of Auchan on the left, Metro on the right.

Notice how the people just sort of blend into each other in the distance. Now imagine that you can see the same thing 360 degrees around you. Remember that a typical camera can't capture distance and depth very well. You get the picture.

This China project is good for a few years, but I intend to save enough money that, when it is over, I can go live in a nice, quiet rural area.

Monday Miscellany

I'm thinking of abandoning my post naming schemes, because I don't always post often enough to avoid having a chain of the same titles. I'll stay with it for tonight, however. Here are various pictures that didn't make it into any previous posts.


Our Christmas tree and Santa spread. Christmas photos were supposed to be Lee's blog topic, but she has waited too long and lost her privileges.


The kids with some Christmas morning treasures, which was actually held a few days late due to our Hong Kong trip (which was where we bought all of the presents anyway).


These were for sale all over Hong Kong, but I've never seen them in Mainland China. Click on them for a good look. I'm not sure what that has to say about cultural differences. I didn't visit the homes of any locals, of course, but dare I imagine convenient underwear dispensers on bathroom walls?




These are from a few months ago, on our very first foray into Shanghai. This is in the area known as the French Concession (or the "Former French Concession" for those who are sticklers for their anti-imperialism vocabulary). In other words, it was the part of the city that was on long term lease to the French government during the days of empire.

In their day, the concessions all had "extra-territorial rights", meaning that within their boundaries, the laws of China were superseded by the European laws. Today, that is held up as an example of the humiliation of China, and therefore a rallying cry among ardent nationalists. I really do sympathize, but the fact is that even the local Chinese did their best to keep themselves under European jurisdiction, rather than face the arbitrariness (and brutal punishments), of the Chinese Imperial courts.

In any case, this area of the city really does look like a blend of France and China. It is quite pleasant.

China News Story: don't dis' your mistress.

Okay, so it is a tragic tale, but just try reading it without laughing. This short little story has got it all: sex, money, revenge, deceit, humiliation, greed, stupidity, suicide, murder (attempted), all around strange behavior (they all took a vacation together!?), and finally, a heaping helping of just desserts.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Post Script: March 2nd. I'm following some leads that indicate that perhaps you can make this stuff up. There are rumors that this story is a rumor. My skeptism started with the notion that they all got in the car together for some sort of group outing, which is a very hard scenario to imagine. Who would ever think that a major news outlet could fail to check its sources and run a story just because they hoped it was true? I am shocked! shocked I say!

I'll keep you posted.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

Beware of random grumpy sheep.



This is a menu item from one of our favorite restaurants. It is regional cuisine from Western China. There are two different restaurants that we go to, and both are excellent. The regional food here in Jiangsu Province is heavy on the fish, which isn't bad, but also heavy on the oil and sugar, and we don't like it too much. However, this Western Chinese stuff, which has come here with the western migrant workers, is seriously good food.

Much of Western China is Muslim, and this cuisine represents that influence. It is heavy on the lamb and mutton, and has spices similar to Arabic foods. During my time in France, I developed a taste for Arab food, but as some of the dishes are also heavy on the cumin and chili peppers, this stuff also help assuage the family craving for Mexican food. It ain't quite the same, but it's close enough to scratch the itch (there are some "Mexican Restaurants" in Suzhou, but let's not go there. Literally).

They also have another menu item known as "impertinent sheep", but I don't have a picture of that one. When it comes to taking menu pictures, I'm a bit shy ("sheepish?"), because Chinese waiters and waitresses really hover. Actually, that one may be from our other favorite restaurant. Honestly, I'm not sure, as some of the restaurants seem to have previous editions of the menu still in circulation, so I can't always remember what I've seen where. If that isn't confusing enough, remember, as I've said before, that we don't actually know the names of our even our favorite restaurants. We have therefore dubbed this one "The Camel Restaurant", as it has a lighted yellow camel above the entrance.

My guess is that that other sheep is "impertinent" because that is a synonym for "saucy". So, with the Chinese penchant for bizarre literal translations, the mutton with sauce became the impertinent one. At least that one has an explanation at all, because I have no idea why this one is so irritable.

The best part (other than the food itself), is that we can feed the entire family at this outfit for about 15 dollars. We go every Thursday.

Putting the "Fire" in Fireworks

Some of you may have caught this on the news. On the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration (15 days after it began), fireworks set off a devastating fire in a Beijing hotel. The hotel was under construction, which limited the loss of life to one unfortunate fireman. It could, have course, been much, much worse. As everything in this country is built by migrant workers, they always have housing on the job site. They live in these distinctive white and blue modular buildings. Sometimes, I have seen those buildings set up within a highrise building itself while it is under construction.

Here is some YouTube video of the fire.

I would like to clarify that when I wrote about the thrill of the Chinese fireworks in a celebratory tone, I was not blind to how dangerous such a pyrotechnic free-for-all can be. There is, despite what I implied, something to be said for having safety regulations. The Chinese (and Asian) obsession with fireworks is nearly psychotic. One other example is a particularly tragic/absurd incident that occured in a nightclub in Thailand. Who on earth doesn't realize it isn't a good idea to set off fireworks indoors? According to some reports, they were actually set off on a dinner table!

I'm not going to commentate on it further, but I will refer to a few links here. The first is from James Fallows, one of the editors of The Atlantic Monthly, and a resident of Beijing. It is his picture that I borrowed above, and I'll link you to his blog post here. His blog is wide ranging, but often includes really interesting commentary on China. As for the fire and fireworks, I'll just second what he has to say:

"it might be hard to believe that they set off a major building fire if you haven't seen how much ordnance is set off; it's all too plausible if you have"

Amen to that.

From his blog, you can follow out some additional links that give some other insight as to how the Chinese are reacting to this incident, which is quite interesting and enlightening.

Monday Miscellany

My weekly (when I feel like it) round up of random photos.

Lee and I out on a day that was so much colder than it looks.

A very suspicious little boy, who kept walking backwards so he could keep his eye on us.

A sunset projected onto rocks through a lattice window.

An old man with a hand-cranked cycle.

Jellyfish in an aquarium in Hong Kong.

China in the News

I'm going to start a new recurring feature, which will be a selected news article about China, with commentary from me. Click for the story: Shopping 101: China's Consumers catch on.

Summary:
Upon purchase, new apartments in China are an empty concrete shell. All amenities and improvements to that apartment are then up to the purchaser, and choosing what to buy for that apartment (and what to buy in any other situation) is extremely difficult for the Chinese, who have no previous experience with a consumer culture. That difficulty is multiplied with every single other purchasing decision they need to make, until they are overwhelmed.

Commentary:
Some weeks ago I began to notice that there are a lot of these vacant unimproved apartments here. Yet so many new buildings are under construction. Even an amateur economist can clearly see all of the classic signs of a dramatic oversupply. Within the strange brew of government planning and free-for-all capitalism, clearly the residential real estate market is not being subjected to conventional market forces. I don't know whether the costs of these projects is being carried by the government, the developers, or various investors. Actually, I don't have any idea how they finance major construction projects here at all. I do know, however, that the oversupply must be costing someone out there some big Yuan. It doesn't seem a very smart way to do business, but since the Wild West free market U.S. economy managed to dramatically overbuild its own housing supply, which is a of course one part of our current economic catastrophe, we clearly don't have any useful lessons to impart.

Two interesting anecdotes to accompany this train of thought. First, a young teacher we know was befriended by a local Chinese woman. The young woman invited the teacher to her apartment, where she lives with roommates in one of those unimproved concrete boxes, with not a fixture in the apartment other than a single toilet. Still, the Chinese woman said to her that it was "the best place I've ever lived". Things like that help foster the uncomfortable sense of "First World Guilt" that I think occasionally haunts all Westerners here (including me).

Second, a few weeks ago Lee and I noticed some activity in two of the vacant apartments, one above the other, across the way from us. It was after dark, and there were clusters of workmen in each of the two apartments, and all of the surrounding apartments were dark. The group above were inspecting the floor. The group below were inspecting the ceiling. Then both groups got out mops and buckets. It doesn't really qualify as a story, I guess, but it was a really funny visual image.

I'm rambling. Back to the article, and to my real point. I have expressed previously how annoying it is that the Chinese will pay so much attention to what we are buying in stores. They look, they snoop, they stare, they talk. And they buy... once in a housewares store, Lee approached a display of dishes. A woman was standing there trying to select some cups to buy. In her hands she had a couple possible selections. Lee approached the display, and confidently chose some porcelain mugs. As she left, she saw the woman replace the items she had in her hands, and select the exact same mugs that Lee had purchased. What really makes the anecdote revealing to us is that the woman had been holding items that were much more typically Chinese (they had cutesy cartoon characters on them, as do half the products in this country). Lee, on the other hand, chose the only mugs that were plain white porcelain in a simple design. Score one for the diffusion of American tastes in China. I'm remembering right now that a woman did the same thing to me when I bought some bread in a grocery store, literally watching me and then picking the exact same product. Score two. If I do that enough, maybe there will be more bread here that doesn't taste so sweet.

This article gave some interesting perspective on all of this. According to the author, shopping for consumer goods is overwhelming for the Chinese, who are only in the last few years really having a variety of products to choose from, and drowning in all of the advertising and marketing that go with them. They face hundreds of choices, and don't know where to turn to get real information. That, if you ponder it, is terrifying.

I used to do some activities related to this sort of thing back when I taught high school economics (which I will be doing again next year). Basically, I would get students to tell me what features they were looking for in the products they bought or wanted to buy; typically, I centered the activity on purchasing cars. Invariably, they cited appearance and quality as what they wanted in a car. Then, I would coax them into realizing that they really had no idea how to judge those things. They deferred to the mass opinion to judge the appearance of cars (just as well, since the entire purpose of having an attractive car was to impress others). Quality, on the other hand, they judged strictly by brand name, because in the end, few if any of them (or me) was in any position to accurately assess the quality of a car on our own. We all tell ourselves that we are making informed decisions, but most of the time what we are really doing is stirring together a mix of brand awareness, advertising, rumor, habit, and what some relative once told us, and calling it knowledge.

So now, try to imagine that you know absolutely nothing about cars, but you are about to spend several years worth of salary buying the very first car that you, or anyone in your family, has ever owned. All the while, salesmen, advertisers and marketers are descending on you from all sides, and they know full well that you don't have a clue. Now multiply that to everything else that you need to shop for. It is enough to give me nightmares, and thinking of it that way makes me a lot more sympathetic to the Chinese following us around in stores. Western consumer culture, and all of the variety, features, competition, marketing, advertising, pricing, ad infinitum, have come crashing down on a virgin population, and they are completely overwhelmed. The fact that they will look to random Westerners for shopping advice shows how desperate they are. The irony, of course, is that we are ourselves sometimes looking to them to figure out what we should buy (although I certainly hope we are more subtle about it).

Shop 'til you drop indeed.