Some more angst… But this time, from CHINA!!
I'm having a lot of fun here, and I'm pretty excited to be moving on, but right now I think I'm going to address some nagging shadows in my head. Rest assured, some funny/more interesting shit is in the works.
There are some things about Shanghai that have surprised me, either with the simple fact of them, or because of their simultaneous strangeness and familiarity. Every write-up, documentary, or travelogue that mentions China inevitably talks about its duality.
There is plenty of that in evidence here; Jing'an temple, one of Shanghai's major tourist draws, is an 1800-year-old temple tucked into one of the ritziest shopping districts on Earth, surrounded by Dolce, Gucci, and Rolex storefronts. I'm staying in a Marriot, but turn a corner and walk 50 meters, and there's a whole street full of guys in shacks jury-rigged out of old cardboard boxes and construction yard scraps, selling breakfast hot from a sizzling griddle to a jostling crowd of schoolgirls, laborers, matrons, and businessmen in Armani knock-offs.
As for myself, I'm finding it difficult to cope with the maddening confusion in my head. I have been telling all my friends how much I missed real conversation, since I had to make do with limited Chinese on my side, and at best the barest English on the other. But right now I'm sat one table away from an American and a German talking about hotel strategies, and I'm having the strangest, but undeniable, feeling of hostility.
Then I turn my attention to the other two nearby conversations -- the Chinese bartender and receptionist at the counter, or the two Chinese businessmen on my other side -- and I feel like I'm home, despite only being able to understand every third or fourth word. For all I know, they're discussing which type of rusty spoon would be most useful in removing my kidneys while I sleep tonight, but I derive the oddest sensation of comfort simply from the rhythm and melody of the language.
A mystery.
I had a conversation earlier today that might help me find some answers here. As I'm taking the day to relax before a trip to the boonies, I decided to visit the pool for a swim. I was the only one there, aside from a hotel employee who was just staring blankly at the floor. After a couple laps, we started talking. It turns out his job was basically to sit around and wait for me to leave. I asked if he was bored, and he explained that, well... kind of, but not really.
He applied the zhong (middle) in zhong guo (Middle Kingdom, i.e. China) in a way I hadn't heard before. He told me it also applies on a personal level; it's important for people to be zhong, or centered, in themselves. He couched this in terms of social harmony -- in a country as diverse and populous as China, for individuals to be content is really the only way to avoid excessive strife and conflict.
On a social level, this sounds a lot like the national party hotline or something. It's so much the antithesis of the Western way of thinking, where the idea is that you should decide what you want, then strive mightily until you get it. Governing people is so much easier when they're docile, so I can understand why this is such a well-perpetuated attitude.
On a personal level though, and applied rather more selectively, I recognize it as something I desperately need. Not to say I should be completely passive -- there's been plenty of that for me already -- but I should know when to be happy with what I have, so I at least have some kind of home base.
Anyway, there's plenty more to talk about there, but my interest in it can only really be maintained for so long. As for China's duality, I'm rather more interested in the common threads, those constants of Chinese culture that have survived the ravages of the more volatile tendencies.
That sounds a bit grandiose, I suppose, and it's fairly tough to do. So I'll just cop out, stop here, and try to stave off jetlag till some reasonable hour presents itself.
Day 3: Shanghai
:gps:Rm 1229 at the Courtyard Xujiahui::31.194447::121.430044:gps:
Well, here I am. Just stopping for a breather and a bit of breakfast... well, second breakfast. First breakfast was something akin to a giant potsticker I got off a street vendor who probably thought I was a retard.
Since I didn't already know what they were and couldn't read the Chinese sign, all I could do was point and say "I want one of those," merely shrugging and smiling at her questions in response.
It was worth it. I ended up going back and grunting some more for another one. All told, it was about 75 cents, and I spent fifteen minutes at dawn munching while I watched some tai chi students practicing sword-work in the shadow of a huge Catholic cathedral.
Incidentally, the beggars in front of the cathedral are the only ones yet who've spotted me straight off as an outsider.
Anyway, now I'm at Boonna Cafe just off Huaihai Rd, having an espresso and croissant with French jazz playing overhead.
Today will be a random walk through Shanghai; I really only have one place I need to hit, and that's a stall just off Nanjing Rd that apparently has the most kickass dumplings in town.
Pictures would have been forthcoming, but for some reason my card reader isn't working. Ugh.
Day 2
"I don't understand this. Positive. Connective. Beeg boy! U.S. Open. The best!! Aaaah. I don't understand!"
The person responsible for the above is sitting across from me in San Francisco airport's international terminal. He is Chinese, looks in his early thirties, with that combination part/bouffant haircut that is so inexplicably often favored by my people.
Every now and then a Chinese exclamation escapes him: "Gwai jao yi sun", Chinese for "Doctor who yells weird shit," has made more than one appearance. It's not impossible; he's wearing scrub bottoms and is leafing through what could be medical papers.
After about half an hour of this, he has apparently exhausted himself. He lets out a huge hitching sigh and collapses back into his chair. Head back, eyes closed, he punctuates his emotional departure with a sputtering fart, twisting first one cheek then the other off the chair to facilitate release. His feet twitch from side to side in their white trainers, like he's dreaming of a faraway foxtrot.
Yup... I'm on my way.
Day 0
The tension here is palpable.
My immediate fate is in the hands of a bleached blonde woman, her features growing stark and haggard in the blue-white glare of a computer screen at Gate 39, Terminal 2, Lindbergh Field Airport in San Diego.
One and a half hours ago, I sauntered up to the near-empty gate and unshouldered my pack onto a seat by the desk.
Clearly, getting a standby seat on this jet should be no problem. The whole place is empty. And anyway, who in their right mind wants to go to Atlanta at 10:40pm on a Wednesday night? The blonde's attitude exuded cheerful confidence, and I brushed aside any lingering, anemic traces of standby travel anxiety. This time tomorrow, I'd be snacking on soup dumplings in Shanghai, leafing through train timetables to plan the next leg of my trip.
Over the next hour or so, my confidence steadily erodes under an onslaught of ticket holders marching up to the counter. Upgrade requests are turned away, apologetically; the first-class cabin is full. Seat changes are set aside provisionally; the flight's bookings look like they're pretty tight.
Now, brushing stray peroxide strands from her face, this Fate who has effortlessly metamorphosed over the last hour from Clotho to Atropos, clips off that last thin, shining thread of hope as she picks up the intercom.
"Attention passengers traveling to Atlanta on Delta Flight 1048, we are in fact slightly oversold" -- this last word spoken with a slight lilt, as if it were a slightly worn inside joke among all of us old friends -- "and we'd like to ask any volunteers to come forward to give up their seats in exchange for a hotel tonight, and a voucher for future travel."
A death knell if ever there was one.
But still, I'm not quite ready to believe it; there she is, still standing there, and here: look at my bag, it's all packed. Look at me, I have all these slips of paper with times and destinations written on them. Eventually, I edge my way up to her brushed stainless altar, and sheepishly ask if there's any hope left for us sinners.
She asks my name as a matter of form, then offers up some words of comfort, clearly false, and obviously modulated by corporate policy to defuse customer anger: "Ohh, I'm afraid not. It looks like we didn't get any standby passengers on this flight at all."
It's a terrible shame for her efforts at commiseration that I saw her assign seats to four standby passengers a couple minutes ago. No big deal; if I was too low on the list, I was too low on the list. I don't need a shoulder at Delta to cry on, I just want to know what I need to do from here.
Anyway.
This kind of travel's new to me, and in retrospect I should have realized that the stability of my outward itinerary was much more significant than my return.
So now I'm left with the choice between trying to snag another standby to Atlanta over the next couple of days, cooling my heels there until Saturday when I stand a decent change of stepping onto a plane bound for Shanghai, or simply eating the cost of an outward bound ticket at retail, and begging my friend to get me on standby just for the trip home, instead.
The choice, essentially, is between a cost in risk and inconvenience -- if I can't get on the Saturday flight, my next chance to get to China will be Monday -- or one in currency. I know that, on a smaller scale, this will be a dilemma I face daily on this trip. I always imagined I would absorb these with aplomb; spending an unexpected day in some rural backwater while engineers scrape bits of exploded water buffalo off the front of our train, or tapping away a few days on my computer, waiting for the rains to slacken enough for me to venture into the hills.
In mid-stream like that, I'm certain I'll be vastly more willing to put up with the tribulations of the road rather than buying my way out. But I've been looking forward to this trip for so long, this first step proving to be a stumble has me reaching for my wallet already. I just want to get a move-on, already.
So far, my costs are only in time and dignity. I've canceled my hotel room in Shanghai for now, so I'm not paying rent on an empty room, but so far I've spent a half hour and several hairs' worth of melanin trying to persuade a nice girl at the Courtyard Shanghai named "Kitty" to talk to the concierge about holding the package I mailed to myself there.
Really, I am limited in very little but funds. I have a gap of about 3.5 months ahead of me, and I don't really have any dignity anyway, so it doesn't matter how I spend it.
I should let that inform my decisions, but I'm not certain if I'll take my own advice.
Costco “Plain” Soy Milk
Having been raised drinking the stuff from time to time, I like soy milk. One thing people have to understand about soy milk... it doesn't fucking taste like milk. Much as we might love to believe it, soy milk doesn't taste good poured over corn flakes. It doesn't taste like cream when you get it in your coffee. It's basically liquid tofu.
Judging from the various ways in which vegetarian/vegan culture has tried to jam tofu into every conceivable crevice of their sad, anemic diets (cubed plain onto salads? Shaped and seasoned into steak and turkey? Come on, people), it doesn't really surprise me that soy milk has likewise been bent to requirements it cannot readily fulfill.
This is fine. I don't buy the stuff, because I just drink milk. Just like how I don't crumble plain wet cold tofu onto salad, because, well... I know how to cook, and I like my food to taste good.
If other people like it or need it, that's great. But call it what it is. If you're selling "PLAIN" soy milk, it shouldn't fucking have cane sugar and vanilla in it just because you think you need to make it taste like something that goes with Cap'n Crunch.