Till, we Read
Round and Round My Neighborhood We Go

As the clouds gave way to sun this afternoon, I invited Right Heart for a stroll around our neighborhood. He responded to my SMS and I found him in the guqin shop.

Spring is happening. Birds' songs are more abundant and I opened the window to let them fill my apartment. I sensed a slackened pace on the busy streets of XuHui District, though I'm willing to admit that it was just our own simple moseying that slowed the scenes.

My goal for the afternoon was simple: find a street I'd never walked down before Right Heart had to attend lessons with his guqin master.

We ventured past the German brewhouse and I got my first whiff of cut grass. We entered and felt the various forms of foliage. I commented that I missed lawns.

Then we walked by the statue of Pushkin by the Thai restaurant and the nightclubs and neither of us could quite understand why the citizens of our district would erect such a monument, except that there were once a bunch of Russians here and they may have been Pushkin fans and--who knows?--perhaps Pushkin visited the area between the storms of hush and hubbub.

Then we walked by the Senior Citizens' University, an institution for aging bureaucrats and cadres--the more-than-equal equals of a bygone socialist age.

We turned on a road I'd never been down before and it was just like any other. The clouds of exhaust aggravated Right Heart's convalescing throat. The sky looked just as yellow on the clouds above Pushkin's head. We discussed going to the library tomorrow to look at architectural books.

Right Heart shares my dream. He wants to acquire land and build a house of stone and earth. Should dream take the formality of actually becoming, his dwelling will be in the Confucian style with a foundational meter of stone supporting earthen walls and a thatched roof, but with one exception--"a secret room--a bathroom with running water and a toilet," Right Heart said laughing. I told him I'd always envisioned mine made of straw and other reclaimed materials and that it would be heated by the sun, like the passive solar house my father designed and built.

We passed by a teashop. Its signboard was littered with the original complex forms of characters. My companion asked me if I could read them and I could only read the ones that were originally simple (that is, simple before the great simplification was implemented in the 1950s). He said they illustrated an old Chinese dream: "geng du." "Plow read."

He explained the cryptic saying. "It's the dream of ancient Chinese. Cultivate food during the day. After the sun goes down, drink tea and read."

We commented on the general decline of just about everything. He told me another saying, "ren wei(2nd tone) wei(3rd) wei(4th)," or "Man-made is luxuriant and false" (though I may be getting my weis confused).

Then something renwei caught our attention.

I had been barred from the Protestant church on Hengshan Road one wintery day and decided to try my luck again. I politely asked the man at the gatehouse if we could have a looka looka.

"What do you want to see?"

"The gardens are very pretty."

"There's nothing beautiful in here. The park at XuJiaHui is much better."

We stood there for a moment. A Chinese girl who'd slipped in behind us asked if we'd had any luck. The man glared at us and then went to the front door to secure the lock.

We headed in the direction of the bust of Pushkin.

The monument has three sides. One is in Cyrillic. The other two in Chinese. Assuming the Cyrillic is the same as the Chinese, two sides say that the disentorsoed effigy is indeed "Puxigen". The other gives three dates: Roughly (because I didn't write them down), they are: 1937, 1947, and 1987.

One date honors the park's mysterious founding, the second commemorates its reconstruction after the Japanese invasion and occupation destroyed it, and the third marks the year it achieved its current incarnation after being torn apart by red guards sometime between 1966 and '76.

Right Heart and I then parted ways and I returned home to type and share this record of my pleasant afternoon.

I looked up the characters of the old dream on the teashop signboard. According to my dictionary, it means "to work part time and study/teach part time. (of peasants)."

It was then that I realized I'm living this dream. Well, it's time to do my homework.

Sunkist "Nalencia"?
In Your Narrator's 'Hood, Even the Oranges Are Fake

Yesterday outside the music conservatory I bought a kilo of huge, juicy oranges. I got home, and before tearing into one, noticed the label. Aside from one glaring error, it completely replicated the Sunkist brand. It's just that the variety of orange was something I was unfamiliar with. Google was unfamiliar with it too.

Nalencia pretty much sums up my neighborhood, which pretty much sums up many parts of today's China. Newspapers report that fake food labels are a big problem. Fruit vendors can charge more if their product is "imported." Crabs cost more if they come from a certain lake and have a certain sticker. Tobacco costs more if it comes in Marlboro skin.

Xiang Yang

I'm blessed to live two blocks away from Xiang Yang Market, the face of all this copying. Xiang yang is one of the largest open-air clothing markets in the city. It's an entire block of fake handbags, pirated DVDs, chincy Zippos, clothes, shoes, and anything else that's made in China--which is to say, the complete spectrum of consumer goods--just five minutes from my little alleyway. Lucky narrator of yours. Crap he doesn't usually want or need at one third the price and half the quality.

The best and worst introduction to the market is the one most tourists receive. It's the one I got six months ago. It's the one I saw repeated today while waiting for the bus.

A taxi pulls up, passengers exit (in this case a smiling Japanese couple), and the hawkers leave their sentry posts to engulf them. A swarm the size of a Donald Trump entourage interrupts all sidewalk traffic for a few seconds, the unwitting tourist(s) choose a guide, and go on about enhancing their DVD collection or whatever it is they came for. The hawkers go back to the old game of cornering people like me with crumpled up designer handbag catalogues and screaming "looka looka, watcha, bag, DVD...sex DVD?"

And this extends for blocks on either side of the market.

Authority Intervenes

A few months ago (late Fall '04) the Shanghai municipal government passed a regulation outlawing all name brand product sales outside designated shopping areas. For a few days, the market was quiet. There were probably semi-public burnings of confiscated merchandise, fines handed out, news items syndicated. Then the hawkers returned, this time extending further beyond the market. Like smacking a bowl of bacteria in a damp bathroom with a fly swatter, the handbags and their caretakers just multiplied and re-emerged in newer and more grotesque forms.

About a month ago, for a larf, a friend and I followed a hawker back to his lare. On an ordinary shikumen lane (stone garage door, a special arched doorway, Shanghai's old colonial-era architectural style), door after door opened to cramped two-meter high showrooms with trac lighting and "shop assistants" quick to leave their dinner table huddle so they could be of absolutely no use whatsoever. Before we knew it, my friend and I were en-mazed! (In a maze, as opposed to amazed). We were unable to get out, constantly being shown a closer and closer approximation to the real Prada, Gucchi, or Dolce & Garbonne item (should I care about spelling these brand names when the piraters often don't?). Finally, we made our way out to the alleyway, more doors opening for us, until we got got back to the sidewalk and the old handbag catelogues.

What's to be done? Nothing. Enjoy it.

The police roam my neighborhood in gangs, but the only people they usually harrass are the bums. The CD and US$3-a-bottle designer perfume vendors are too quick. They evade fines. Their stands are just cardboard boxes. Easily disposed of. Their shop windows are shabby suitcases (sometimes fake designer suitcases). One glimmer of ambulance lights and the whole line of them flits into the subway station or behind a bus stop ad. One pass of the subway guard and the lot of them send their fold up their cardboard and get their power walk on, like wild turkeys scattering to firecrackers.

Blessed are those who live in stinkcities, for they will inherit a handbag. A handbag with a shoddy zipper and a few typos, but a handbag nontheless. As for the next generation, I guess their inheritance is what we make of the present.

Any DVD requests?

A Message From My Webmaster
Regarding: An Interesting Search

Josh,

i was just checking my site log and saw that someone found your blog via a Yahoo search for

St. Patrick Day drunk girl pic

... no quotes, caps just as above.

just now, when i was testing it, your blog came up #6 :-)

interesting, huh?

Lozo

http://search.yahoo.com/search? fr=FP-pull-web-t&p=St.+Patrick+Day+drunk+girl+pic

Yes, quite interesting indeed.

"When shall I indeed, when with abusive words
addressed, not be displeased because of that;
and then again when praised be neither pleased
because of that? When will this be for me?"

--from The Verses of Arahant Talaputa Thera,
translated by Khantipalo Bhikkhu in "Forest Meditations"