Hot Yoga

I know... it sounds like some sort of strange karmic porno... but fear not! It's just a bunch of sweaty people sitting in a hot, dark room and trying to bend their bodies in unnatural - one might even say unholy - ways.

Yes, Nancy and I, in an effort to preserve our girlish figures and get, ahem, beach ready for the summertime, have joinged the nearby EastFitness Club and signed up for hot yoga twice a week.

I had my doubts... but, like the crazy bald guy on Bizarre Foods, I've resigned myself to trying pretty much anything. And, I have to say, it's been a pleasant surprise. Well... kind of. Mid-way through, my body begins screaming in protest at the positions I'm forcing it to pretzel into. That's a given. But being instructed by a tiny girl with an incredibly soothing voice (even though I can't understand it 90% of the time) in a room of ~40 in which I'm usually the only guy.

The brain usually tells the body to shut the hell up and take it like a man.

It's relaxing, and excruciating, enlightening, and exhausting... all sandwiched together... on sourdough, of course.

(CW)WC Out.

the freckles in our eyes are mirror images

Bureaucracy and You (A Citizen's Guide)

Walking back to my apartment this afternoon - Chez Chris, if you will - I couldn't help but notice that a local policy had been enforced today. That is, no longer were the poor tenants of local businesses allowed to cover what amounts to their "back storage space" with metal sheeting and use it as their home, too. I noticed this because, well, said metal sheeting was littered all over the ground along with bits of brick, mortar... and who knows what else.

Now I could very easily turn this into a human interest tale - "the poor residents had their homes taken away" - but c'mon, that's too easy. I don't reach for the low apples... often. No, I'd rather focus on the rather silly nature of this decree.

Xialüpu, the area I live in, is not what we'd call an especially nice place to live. Were one so inclined, he could even say without too much of a stretch that the area is just this side of slum. I'll elaborate: it is several square kilometers of squat (>7 stories), drably uniform, enclosed cement squares - I mean apartments... tres Soviet.

This area houses the lower middle-class portions of society, including teachers, day workers, night workers, and foreign teachers who recieve their housing through their respective places of employment. Inside these domeciles lies an electricians/plumber's nightmare. Wiring that is faulty, wiring that simply doesn't work, single circuit-breakers powering half an apartment, water that mysteriously turns colors every few weeks.

Outside is really no better. The tiny courtyards are littered with trash all the time - a product of people who's life philosophy is "IMBY" (That's NIMBY, but without the N). What passes as a dumpster is, in fact, a tiny house-shaped enclosure with no way of closing or sealing off what is casually hucked in its general direction. This, of course, is compounded by the fact that these trash recepticals are picked through every few hours by men and women with pointy sticks. These people sift through the garbage, seeking their own form of buried treasure, and then leave the rotting remnants scattered all over the side walk.

The trash-sifters are close ecological cousins to the street-yellers. I've document this curious species before, but I think a refresher course is in order. They roam the streets in packs - along with sewer rats, semi-feral dogs, and abandoned cats - warbling their utterly incomprehensible crys of "really good prices for cans and bottles" for all to hear. All the time. Every day. No matter how hard you try to not hear them.

I'm not complaining... or at least, I'm not writing this for the direct purpose of complaining (though it is a fringe benefit). I'm merely trying to paint you a picture of the community I reside in.

So were these sheet-metal abodes kind of ugly? Yeah. But an eyesore worthy of the local government's full attention in lieu of any other of the multitude of issue I've listed? Ha!

The reason this is being "fixed" and not anything else? Anyone? Anyone? Oh come on, didn't anyone do the assignment?! The answer is "cost."

It's not a Chinese thing. It's a bureaucracy thing.

(CS)WC Out.

Aren't we all holding pieces of dying ember?

Pølitíqüe Åméricân

It's getting tiring listening to - or rather, reading - the toxic sludge that's continually spewed from the mouths of the frothy-mouth acolytes of the Religious Wrong. Not surprising, not enraging, just tiring. 66 days (more or less) into his Presidency - oh, who am I kidding, they didn't even wait 66 minutes into it - the Republicans just can't wait to blame Obama for the ails of the country, and not having immediately fixed them with his divine powers.

And then when he - with amazing speed - actually did begin doing things to fix the economy, they gathered on the bandwagon to sing his doom once more. Their ululations could be heard on mountaintops and riverbeds... a haunting cry not unlike the sound of scraping a mis-tuned violin across a dirty chalkboard. Their current melody - all sung in the kind of harmony that would make the deaf cringe - is that it's ok to want the President to fail. This, of course, was first promulgated by The Big Fat Idiot himself.

But it's no longer just the Papa Bears and Harpy Queens of the world who are saying this. Apparently, in an effort to appease His Rushness, several mainstream Republicans, namely the "Conservate Mister Rogers" Bobby Jindal and Mr. Law & Order Fred Thompson who piped in supporting his position. Sorry, but weren't these the same people telling me a little while ago that not supporting the president in a time of crisis was tantamount to treason? That you're either with us or against us? It's not that I buy into that line at all (I don't), but the blatant two-facedness of it, the boldfaced politique of it all is really quite depressing. For 8 years, nothing but "love it(him) or leave it" to now hopping up and down shouting doom and hope of, in effect, protracting and even worsening the recession. All in the name of a few cheap political points and short term gain; the gain of next quarter, next paycheck, next news cycle, or next election at the expense of the country's longterm stability.

(CS)WC Out.

The DJ never has it

The Lighthearted Side of Teaching

A couple of weeks ago, I had a lesson with my Oral kids involving telling and retelling jokes. It went rather well, save for the last class which - no matter what I do - always looks like they're on the verge of falling asleep. I've learned just to ignore them, as a unit.

As a homework assignment, though, I told them they had to deliver by the next class: 1 Chinese joke translated into English.

It worked...kind of... a lot of them were just jokes. Nothing Chinese about them... but they're still funny, and they still served my purposes.

Here are some of the highlights (grammar mistakes and all... I think it adds character):

Snake Talk
Two snakes were crawling along when one snake asked the other, "Are we poisonous snakes?"
The other replied, "You're darn right we're poisonous! we're rattlesnakes. Why do you ask?"
To which the first replied, "Because I just bit my tongue."

. . .

The Bear and The Rabbit
There was once a bear and a rabbit that hated each other. One day, they found a genie in a lamp who said he would grant them each three wishes. The bear went first and he said, "I wish to be the only male bear in this forest." And he got his wish. The rabbit said, "I want a motorcycle helmet." And he got his wish. The bear went up and said, "I wish to be the only male bear in the Unite States, and all the rest to be female." And he got his wish. The rabbit said, "I wish I had a motorsysle to go with that helmet" And he got his wish. The bear said, "I wish I was the only male bear in the world and all the rest were females." And he got his wish. It was the rabbit's turn, and he said, "I wish the bear was gay."

. . .

A farmer wanted to kill a chicken tomorrow, so he fed the chicken and said, "enjoy your supper, this is your final dinner." Next day, the chicken has died with a posthumous paper near him which said, "I have eaten the rat poison, you can never eat me, I am not a chicken easy to tangle with."

. . .

Soldier: Commander, we got a telegram from the Senior Officer just now.

Commander: OK: It must be an urgent task. Read it to all members quickly.

Soldier: Because of your silliness and disability, the fight is in a total mess. You're a pig!

Commander: This is a secret telegram. Try to interpret it.

. . .

One day a psychiatrist comes to see one of his patients singing lying in the bed. He thinks it is pretty good because the patient may come to normal. So he sits there to watch the patient singing. He enjoys the song. Suddenly, the patient turns his face against the bed. The psychiatrist is curious and he asks: Why do you do that? The patient answers: How damn stupid you are! The A side is finished so I turns to side B!

In between sips of Coke

An Early Morning Tea... and photos

I was invited, along with the rest of the Department of Foreign Language, to go to a Tea-Fest of some kind. It was apparently a bazaar for all the teas which had been picked so far... early-season teas, which are sweeter and softer in flavor.

Well, since the others were going, I decided to wake up and meet them at 9:30 today (Saturday)... not ridiculously early, but still...

The tea garden (think beer-garden) itself was interesting if a bit rainy. Fortunately, all of the distributors had the forethought to set up tents. Unfortunately, there was some sort of marionette play about tea being performed through amplifiers. And when the shrill, nasally, grating singing voices of the traditional styles - styles designed around being heard clearly from far away with amplification - are pumped through a set of concert-huge speakers cranked up to 11... well, winces of pain, covering of ears, melting flesh, et al were sure to follow.

I did get some free tea out of it though. Not bad stuff, either.

Part 2 of this post, as promised, are the few pictures I was able to get on the trip up to Shanghai. Unfortunately, my camera is on its last legs. Since it's on its death bed, I wasn't able to use it as much as I would've liked...

Let the music play on down the line tonight

The Rise of the Grass Mud Horse

It's not often you hear about the majestic Grass Mud Horse, nor about their victory over the evil River Crabs... but you will.

Here in the real world, the Grass Mud Horse - of course - doesn't exist. It's only online, in the virtual cracks between the Chinese Censors, that this rare, but growing animal exists, teetering on the edge of oblivion. This is because the Grass Mud Horse is a symbol - a symbol of the Chinese internet users', or "netizens" as they go by, growing frustration with the restrictive censorship that has a chokehold over their information access.

It's certainly a real issue. There are many websites that, when being accessed from China, simply do not exist. This has sporadically included the likes of Wikipedia, and news outlets which have "offended the Chinese people," along with the less controversially-blocked sites such as porn sites.

And this is where the Horses and Crabs come in.

You see, Chinese blogs are censored as well... fairly tightly. But this is primarily done through automated means. Enter the Grass Mud Horse... or as it's known in Chinese, the Cao Ni Ma (草泥马). Now, this might seem a pretty innocent meme... until you realize that the Grass Mud Horse is, in fact a homophone for the phrase "Go fuck your mother." (操你妈).

The Mud Horses' arch-enemies are the River Crabs, or He Xie (河蟹), which is another homophone for "harmonization." Harmonization, or harmony, is a catch-phrase for the Chinese government... "glorious and harmonious." It's been so over- and misused, though, that any reference (outside of official channels) to harmony or glory is almost certainly nothing but a jab at the very notion. In this instance, on Chinese websites, if the Censors find "inappropriate" content, they will delete it in the name of "harmonizing" the Chinese people.

You can start to see where this is going, right? The Horses fight (and win) over the Crabs.

It's a very interesting evolution; a new take on an old idea... and it's taking the internet by force. The Chinese Netizens have - thanks to the pecularities of their own language - created a system for dissent much harder to control.

From here, we'll see where it goes.

Je n'ai pas le temps de perdre la tí ªte

Shanghai, Shanghai!

As Nancy and I pack up and decide what to do on our free day (I'm lobbying for a stop at a Starbucks, among others), my parents on now on a train to - or rather, have already arrived in - the nearby-ish city of Suzhou to see... whatever there is to see there. I've never been, I can't say.

Out time in Shanghai has been great. Mom and Dad had as part of their package a private guide to show them (and Nancy and I) the sites. Couple that with the fact that Nancy already knows a great deal about the *off-tour* spots of the city (read: bars, clubs, nightlife, restaurants, etc), and we were almost guaranteed to have a great time.

It's been really fun seeing the parents, and also seeing just how excited they are at this trip. Dad's leg gets tired after walking around all day, and who can blame him? But still, you can see the excitement in his eyes and hear it in his voice. For him, well, both of them, this really is the trip of a lifetime. We've visited most of the great spots of the city, ate some delicious food (as well as some not-so-delicious varieties... Shanghainese food is traditionally a kind of sickly-sweet most of us can only take *just-so-much* of), and had a great time all around.

Since I work tomorrow, Nancy and I are heading back to Wenzhou this afternoon. Tomorrow, Nancy will pick they two traveling adventurers up from the New And Improved Wenzhou Airport and get them situated whilst I ply my skillz to pay the billz. We'll then see all there is to see of Wenzhou - of course, including the top of a massage table. On Tuesday, they'll come with me out to Chashan and I'll be able to relax and let mi padre do all the talking... so that'll be nice.

And the following day, I'll be forced to bid them a fond farewell as they head off to Xi'an (home of the famous Terracotta Warriors) and finally Beijing (home of...well, you know). I'm certainly expecting many picture from them. Though I have some (and will certainly post them ASAP) since my camera is only semi-functional, I let them take most of the pics.

Alright, since we're almost packed, chackout time is approaching, and my stomach is growling threats of armed insurrection if I don't feed it soon, I'll leave off here. One thing's for certain, though. The more I see of Shanghai, the better an idea it seem to try to get over here next year.

(CS)WC Out.

your uncle was a crooked French-Canadian

An off-topic moment

I keep up with the news. Religiously. To the point that if my coworkers want to know something about something happening in the world, they just ask me. More times than not, I can tell them something relevant.

That being said, I've noticed a disturbing trend. I'd like to think it's my imagination, but evidence seems to be to the contrary. So, at the risk of sounding like a raving Dutchman (see: Geert Wilders), here goes...

Where the hell are the moderate Muslims? Where? For years, I've told myself - as well as the raving zealots of the reactionary American movement - that the radical, fundamentalist, West-hating, self-destructive, xenophobic, totalitarian branch of Islam was an extreme minority. I believed this - and don't get me wrong, that belief if still alive, if ailing - because I had been told it over and over, but also because it is very difficult for me to believe otherwise. It's a possibility that I have issues wrapping my mind around to think that the mujahadeens might be anything but an extreme perversion of the prophecies of Muhammad, which only those who truly had lost all reason could take stock in.

Added to that is the fact that we as the West have done our fair share in making...how can I put this... un-friends in the Muslim world. But then I see things like this:
Killing Will Go On Despite Darfur Charges
Pakistan Hunts Cricket Attack Gunmen
Somali President Bends to Rebel Demand for Sharia Law
Iran Attacks Hollywood Over Movie 'Insults'
and on and on and on

Granted, the news media thrives on reporting violence, disturbances, and well...news. Not even I would read the CNN article titled "1.8 Billion Muslims Go About Business, Live Lives." But still, you'd think after more than 7 years of a war on radical Islam, moderate protest, indigence, or defiance of the totalitarian facets of the Muslim society would, in fact, be newsworthy.

Instead, all I see is ongoing outrage throughout the Muslim world every time someone criticizes the religion, death threats leveled (and sometimes carried out) against those who offer the criticism, and the continued spread of extreme Islam throughout northern Africa, southeast Asia, and even western Europe. This while, all the while, these same states and agencies continue to extol the sins, evils, godlessness, and ultimate doom of Western societies with impunity from self-conscious, apologetic, and appeasing Westerners.

Don't take me the wrong way, I know they're out there. And I know that most of them are doing the boring CNN story: simply living their lives. But it's difficult for me to understand why, at a time when the news on Islam throughout the world gets darker and darker, they wouldn't be just a little more vocal in saying, "Hey, we're not with those guys!"

I don't know. I think it's just depressing.
(CW)WC Out.

Saturn comes back around

Knocked Flat

Though I still can't quite nail it down, I'm pretty confident that I got a bad case of food poisoning yesterday... probably from the Indian restaurant down the street. I think it was a case of undercooked chicken... damn those Indian chickens...

I won't go into the details - I'm sure enough of you have dealt with a similar situation before - but suffice it to say, apart from occasional frantic sprints to worship the porcelain god I was totally unable to get out of bed, walk around, or really say much of anything except the odd moan of pain.

This, on top of weeks now of a persistent cough, and bouts of just feeling really, really bad... I'm beginning to feel like I must've done something wrong in a past life.

I had to call my school at 7:00am to inform that that I couldn't have my class today because I literally couldn't move enough to get dressed. Fortunately, they (they, being Xiaoxian) were quite understanding and explained that I'd simply have to arrange for another class with my students some other day. Sucks for them, but ultimately it's fair. Throughout the day I got occasional text messages expressing heartfelt, but poorly-worded sympathy, and suggesting over, and over, and over again that I should try the ultimate Chinese cure-all: hot water.

Apparently there is nothing that it can't fix. They drink it all the time... and I get sick more often than them. Maybe they're on to something....

Nancy has been more than helpful. Her innate "caretaker" personality fully came into its element with me feeling just-this-side-of-death, and I've gotta say, it was pretty awesome to have her around :) She also took this opportunity to put her (delicious & very clean) Chinese cooking skills on display. I ate it as I was able... which has been slowly these past couple of days.

I'm happy to say that a combination of Chinese and Western medicines, Nancy's care, and bedrest have left me feeling much better (albeit still kind of weak) today, and I'm anticipating getting back into the classroom tomorrow to finish out my week (if for no other reason than I don't wish to add to my extra classes :/).

But man! I can't remember the ast time I felt so bad... I hope that's the last time, at least for a loooong while!

(CS)WC Out.

Don't trust me, trust yourself