Coming to Shanghai's AIDS:
Into the Bowels of the City's CDC


I skipped oral Chinese and extensive reading class today to work on some projects. First item was to finish the draft of an article I'm writing about guqin culture in Shanghai for the local monthly English mag, That's Shanghai. The editor liked it, she did! Next was to meet with one of the directors of government AIDS prevention efforst in Shanghai.

The guard at the gate of the CDC campus was very skeptical of the blond in the Michigan baseball cap (your narrator, of course) who came marching into the gate looking for Vice-Prime-Important-Person So-and-So in the mid-afternoon heat. But after a few phone calls and a some stern looks, he told me to come along and started in with the old "your Chinsese isn't so bad" and "how long have you been in our China" sort of banter.

He took me to the end of a long, dim, puke green corridor to the messy office office of the Vice-Prime-Important-Person. While I waited for Mr. So-and-So to return, I began to imagine that maybe the rest of China's regulatory/health/civil society organs resembled this one, and that maybe five years down the line there will be enough inspectors to ban two-stroke engines and other sources of unease in a Shanghainese's daily life. I--on the run from standardization--had found just the sort I've been so sorely missing...the non-corporate type. The public good type. The utilitarian, working to avoid catastrophe type.

Mr. So-and-So was very pleased to hear my plan. He said that even though the central government has given priority to HIV education, there aren't enough city resources (and willingness)to cover everything the first year. This year it's educating "all of the city's "misses", second priority are I.V. drug users, third is the 4 million+ migrant worker population. They're the ones who keep the "misses" in business. Last on the list is the "same sex love" population because "that problem isn't so serious". Or, read between the so-and-sos and we get the truth: no one knows how serious the problem is. And society as a whole isn't really ready to face the facts.

Ah well. At least the government is. Thank you, Big Other.

The CDC will print the ecduational information my comrades and I collect, edit, and design. Plus they'll give us condoms. Not the flavored ones DKT will give us (banana, chocolate, mint, etc--8 in all) but condoms still the same.

In all, a productive day. And since I carried around a translated copy of "Charlotte's Web" on the bus to the other side of town (hong qiao..blah) to the CDC, I figure that, with the interviewing I did, I got enough oral and extensive reading experience to make up for what I missed in class.

Stay tuned for a final draft of the educational skit I'm writing.

And for a lowdown on what's happening in your own life, detach from the web. Do it now! Before it's too late!

Until next time...