we wimpy westerners

Rats are an often-noted issue here in Chengdu. Especially recently--perhaps the rodents are feeling the crunch of the economic crisis as well--it seems many of my friends have been complaining about rats scurrying around their apartments.

While I've had rats in my apartment walls for quite some time, they don't seem to come inside, so I let them be. In our office, however, it's quite a different matter. They make quite regular appearances, staging late-night races with each other around the second floor, sliding up and down the Internet cables as if it's a fire station in here, and leaving presents* everywhere.

They ate a small cactus I had bought days after I brought it to the office; the other day, I arrived to find they had been nibbling on the soft foam bun-shaped (and scented) keychain my friend had given to me as a present, although I could hardly blame them as every human who passed by it also instinctively held it to his/her mouth. I confess, I also could not resist taking a bite (before the rat did).

Of the four of us who work in here on a regular basis, three of us are, to varying degrees, afraid of coming into contact withe the creatures. So far, we've managed to catch two of them, one with a glue trap (most of the glue-trap attempts failed miserably, catching only fur and feces), which we had to ask the hired cleaners to carry out, and the other after our intern spotted one scramble into the trash can and called our dear designer to come smash it with a stick.

Yesterday, we were having a coffee in a restaurant whose name I shall not mention when I swore I felt something move under the cushion I was sitting on. I decided it must have just been the cushion so I did nothing about it; but then I felt it again and again. After five or ten minutes of this, finally I stood up and proclaimed something was moving under me. One of the girls in the group chimed in, "Yeah, I hear something!"

So we turned to the waiter, who was watching the whole scene, and said, "There's a rat here!"

"有," he replied, affirming our fears.

Naturally we all jumped up and ran to another table.

Not long after, the boss, who we know quite well, came in.

"Hey, you have a rat in here!" we started yelling.

"I know. It opened the fridge the other day and nibbled on the cheese," he replied casually.

"What!? Opened the fridge?" We didn't believe it.

"Really! It did!" And then he went to the back and pulled out a piece of gnawed-on cheese to prove it.

Later I was skeptical. The boss is quite a prankster, and I wouldn't put it past him to carve out a piece of cheese to make it look like a rat had eaten it just so he could tell us that story.

The next day, we were in the office when the boss starts calling my coworker's name.

"What?" he asks.

The boss starts coming up the stairs to the second floor where we work. "Was it him you saw yesterday?" he starts asking.

Just then he comes into view. In his hand, he's got a cage, with a decent-sized rat in it. We all start yeeking and eeewwwing and heebie-jeebie-ing. "Was it him?" the boss asks again, chuckling and pointing at the rat, whose tail and claws are curling out between the bars of the cage.

I like how the boss, owner of a successful, nationwide chain of restaurants and internationally published photographer, is calmly carrying around a cage with a rat in it--even chuckling at it, or us--and planning, he says, to take it out back and drown it in a few moments while we're sitting here freaking out about the idea of a rat being in our presence.

*Thankfully, I have no idea where this photo was taken.

link time!

Came across a number of interesting posts today that I wanted to share (or, if nobody's reading, at least preserve for myself):

TIME has a couple of stories on international and transracial adoptions, a topic I generally find interesting. China is getting more selective with just who can adopt their orphans, and apparently some Americans aren't very happy about it. Too bad for them, the article reports, more or less.

The transracial adoption report I didn't find as compelling. Didn't agree with much of the sentiment expressed by the interviewees, but at least somebody's finally acknowledging that letting white people adopt non-white babies just might impact how those babies view themselves later in life, and a whole spectrum of other things.

On a completely unrelated note, this post of 45 portraits created out of typefaces is pretty much the most awesome thing I've seen in a while--and I've been lately accused of never crediting anything as awesome.

Lastly, an enjoyable post for 80s fans, Justice fans, and typography nerds--a breakdown of the fonts and logo inspirations used for Justice's DVNO video. If you read the comments, you'll find a link to the blog of the maker of the video, who writes angrily about this post. Drama battle between the French artiste and the geeky font blogger, ha.

forty years

The stories fade so fast, don’t they?

Over a lifetime, they’re forgotten. In three generations, they’re gone.

I vividly recall in my mother’s version of the story, she escaped to Hong Kong. The verb was always the key part.

My father, in his secondhand version of the same story, said that she smuggled out to Hong Kong, on the bottom of a boat.

I thought she got to the U.S. by plane. My sister, then an attorney fresh out of law school, in her write-up of the account said she sailed.

“Plane,” my mother scoffed when I asked her. But to Hong Kong was by boat, and to the port where they departed from Guangdong was by bicycle, a porter-boy transporting her mother and younger brother on the rear rack and my mother, then 8, on the frame in front of the seat. Four people and all their possessions in the world, on one bicycle. 1959.

1999. I ride a magenta bicycle, gloriously free from the weight of passengers. I remember, I arrived by plane. It was only five years ago, and it’s my own memory. If I forget I still have the e-mail from the e-ticket I booked to remind me, somewhere in my account. The early days were recorded on a Livejournal account and in numerous e-mails to friends and family. Later I kept a Word-document diary. I’ve always been one to write things down.

When I tell my first roommate, Ruiqi Aixinjueluo, royal descendent of Manchurian child emperor Puyi, the story of the journey, she frowns. Why do you say “escaped?” she wants to know. That’s what it was, I say.

It must be strange to hear. When Ruiqi studied in the U.K., she came back. And here I am.
--
That's my draft for the Joy Luck Hub/Snub contest Hyphen has posted to their blog. If anybody's reading this, let me know what you think. I think the end gets rough, so I'll probably play around with it a bit before posting it to them.

DJ U☆HEY? feat. Nadja－LOST IN TOKYO(Original Mix)

and then we have this one, from the sound of it, i'm guessing from the 90s, and i'm guessing a european girl. she's professing her love for a "japanese boy" since "without him [she's] lost in tokyo." well. how the tables turn, although it's still pretty weak. and i can't stand this music.

Italo disco - Peter Randell - Lost in Tokyo

Lectric Funk - Shanghaied

eurasian relations, part 2: 80s pop-culture analysis

last year--er, in 2007, rather--i posted some ridiculous euro disco music videos, including this one by the confettis. today while revisiting the italodisco genre on youtube (i can spend hours--days--years, apparently checking this stuff out), i came across a few more gems that seem to indicate something less than charming about the views of european (males?) toward asian women.

peter randell's "lost in tokyo" (linked here and embedded below--sorry, don't know how to operate this blog properly) finds a traveler wandering through tokyo in the wee hours of the night, unable to find his way back to his hotel. (i'll admit, this bit resonates with me--i had a similar experience my first night in shanghai, minus the whole failed attempt to be picked up by a prostitute bit.) the longer he wanders, it seems, the more he's lost, when finally "a strange woman" beckons to him, and having nowhere to go the hapless young chap follows her. even though he can't understand what she's saying to him, he "knows what she wants." the weary sojourner just wants to sleep, but somehow she persuades him to follow her to her apartment. as soon as he informs her that he's lost his money, however, he's "back in the cold night." not too eventful, in the end.

which brings us to 'lectric funk's "shanghaied", which tells the story of a man tricked by a "dragon lady ... strolling down in chinatown." she approaches him on the street, and what do you know? takes him up to a "strange hotel." central to her image are her silken gowns. she gets the poor victim charged up, feeding him "demon potion"--and of course he wakes up in a dirty alley to find all his possessions gone. since they're in chinatown it seems this poor fool doesn't have even the excuse of the lost-in-tokyo guy, who's on foreign soil.

irreverent pop music from generations past, perhaps, but still worthy of some analysis, i think. have we come much farther, 30 years later? a gander on discussion forums for expats in asia would lead me to believe otherwise. how many threads have i seen warning other foreign men the evils of golddigging, passport-seeking chinese women. (but, of course, their sex appeal is literally irresistable.)

then again, if you ignore the unflattering portrayals of asian women communicated in the lyrics, the songs are pretty fantastic. well, personally, i quite like the 'lectric funk one; the other, not so much.

chinese new year 2009

well. it's the start of a new year. i always like the lunar new year since it comes a few weeks after the gregorian/solar/western/whatever new year, so in case you haven't stuck to your new year's resolutions, or your year just doesn't feel like it's off to a good start, there's a second chance just down the road.

tonight marks my fifth new year's day in china; the first, the change from 2004 to 2005, was spent in shanghai dodging fireworks and firecrackers all the while battling an MSG-related heart-racing episode. this year, although it was the first i've seen when fireworks are legal within the second ring road in chengdu, was much more tame. sure, fireworks were going off within a few feet of our noses, but the air wasn't entirely filled with smoke. and a couple hours later, i looked out the window and saw that it was snowing--the first snowfall of the season (and honestly, hopefully the only one).

for some reason tonight i had the craving for noodles, and given that almost every restaurant is closed at least today, tomorrow, and the next day, if not longer, i suddenly had the thought to buy some fangbianmian. "convenient noodles," if you're to translate it directly, are what are known to americans as ramen--the dried noodles that come in a styrofoam or paper cup which all you have to do to "activate" is pour water on and let sit for three minutes. so i bought some. this is the first time in years i've even thought to buy some, let alone actually buy them. i didn't know if i would even be able to find any vegetarian varities--i certainly hadn't purchased them since turning vegetarian around two years ago. but i did; they're sweet-potato noodles, actually, and i'm eating them now. and i have to say, they're not that bad. although i probably won't be eating them on a regular basis, no.

anything else of note? not really, other than the dating scene in chengdu still sucks. it's been years since i've been remotely interested in anybody, and now i feel like i've been chasing white boys all night, and for the last several months, to no avail. what's up with that. in theory, i'd date chinese guys. in theory, there'd be lots of options at my disposal. but theory doesn't seem to coincide with reality, at all, at least in this case. it's cold. i'm going to crawl into my bed, where my friendly electric blanket--my most reliable best friend for the past five years and certainly, at 30 kuai, one of my all-time best purchases--awaits my cold hands and feet.

Little Earthquakes and Memories of Shaokao

I awoke this morning, suddenly, after turning in quite early last night, with the lights still on. Seconds later, the room was shaking and the windows rattling. I looked at my cell phone--7 a.m. exactly. I suppose actually the quake started and woke me up, and then I realized it. It registered as 4.8 according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquakes website, and came just 24 1/2 hours after a 4.7 tremor which I did not feel.

Six months almost to the day after the May 12 earthquake, many of us are still somewhat jumpy about shaking and noise that might indicate aftershocks, and apparently for good reason, 'cos they just keep on coming. 

In other quake-related news, L.A. just held a drill to prepare for the event of a 7.8-magnitude shake; and in addition to Prince Andrew's recent visit to Sichuan, Donna Versace and Jet Li recently toured the quake site. I spoke with a Vanity Fair Italy writer who was in town to cover the event and get the scoop and got the impression that still, nobody really knows what's going on, and those who do are keeping their mouths shut.

On a completely unrelated note, I just ate some shaokao, a snack consumed usually by late-night partiers due to its omnipresence on Chengdu's streets between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., and loved by foreigners for its point-and-choose ease of ordering--sticks of meats, vegetables, tofu, mushrooms, etc. are laid out on the back of a vendor's cart, and customers can come up, choose the sticks they want, and hand them to the vendor, who proceeds to roast them over burning coals, adding oil, salt, pepper, MSG, and Sichuanese spices. I usually eat it about once a month these days because it's never been my favorite, although sometimes, like tonight, it really hits the spot. 

Like much of food culture in China, eating shakao is generally a social event, so as I sat on my miniature plastic stool by my lonesome at a shoddy chipboard table, I had nothing to do but reflect on times past--such as the time my then-roommate and co-conspirator Malice stole shaokao from the stand near our former apartment. We had come back late, probably close to sunrise, from the south side of town, and were starving. The only food around there at that time was shaokao, and so we made a beeline for the stand. When we arrived, the sticks were all laid out, but there was nobody to be found. After standing around for a while, shy and unsure about using our limited Chinese, we braced ourselves and tried to call out, the way the locals do when nobody is in sight. We called and called, to no avail. Finally, we grabbed a few sticks of mantou, laid some money on the table, and made a run for it, Malice trying to hold them under her coat lest we run into the wayward shaokao seller on the way. When we got home we collapsed in laughter. Perhaps we were a bit tipsy that night as well. Untoasted, the mantou wasn't very good, either.

Body Image; America, China; Western, Eastern

For some reason this is a topic I come back to in my head often. Over a year ago I posted on the topic, and today I felt compelled to post again for the first time in a long time as several circumstances have led me to think about my own body image, as a woman, as a Westerner in China, and how those ideas are influenced by the media around us.

There's some back story to all this, so bear with me. A few days ago, Prince Andrew made an appearance at the Chengdu Bookworm as part of a Sichuan earthquake-sympathy visit (I guess); Chloe and I were invited but rather than joining the mismatched-suit-wearing who's who wannabes hung out on the back sofa, whispering and fidgeting with our mobile phones like bad kids at a middle-school assembly. From this perch we couldn't really see or hear much of what was going on given the apparently failing soundsystem, but we could watch the royal highness's hired security guards, evidently as engaged as we were, picking out magazines one by one from the Bookworm's stash of imported publications for sale, carefully pulling out of their plastic wraps, flipping through them, replacing them in their packagings, and returning them to the racks. At first Chloe and I were observing this phenomenon in silence, giggling at their choices (Cosmo, Us Weekly), but then I started trying to imagine viewing the magazine through the perspective of a young professional Chinese man. 

The first thing I thought was how trashily the celebrities were dressed and/or presented. I assumed the guard, probably in his late 20s to mid-30s, was hoping to get a glimpse of some skanky Western ass, and given that goal, actually, the magazines didn't yield much fruit. Sure, the featured celebrities were dressed in barely-there getups, but there wasn't anything really remotely pornographic about the images. In contrast, you can find nudie magazines and DVDs in China, with sexually explicit photos on the covers, pretty much on every street corner, it seems, between the sex-toy shops and magazine and DVD stands. So on the one hand I thought the American actresses weren't wearing enough clothing; on the other, they were merely teases. 

Then I noticed another thing happening: After he decided there wasn't much of interest to be seen in the photos of the women, the guard started more closely scrutinizing the photos of the male celebrities featured. Then he chose an issue of Men's Health to check out. The cover featured a headless buffed-out man's body. He spent what I felt a fairly good deal of time checking out the abs. He seemed to be fascinated, perhaps admiring, comparing himself. It was at that point that I started thinking about how I'm not bombarded with the images of women that I am bombarded with in the States. I'm not sure that this is true for everybody in China but I'm guessing it might be--we don't have the dozens of gossip magazines awaiting us at every checkout line at every supermarket here, or the endless hours of celebrity-gossip TV programs (that I know of; on the other hand, I don't watch TV, so I could be wrong), and so forth. 

I read, many years back, an article that cited a study that found that women who spend 30 minutes looking at a fashion/beauty magazine felt significantly worse about their bodies than they did before looking at the magazine. I guess you're going to naturally compare yourself to others, and when the images presented are idealized images of supposed perfection, you're always going to come up short.

This body-image stuff is supposed to be trivial, but I've seen countless examples of it affecting women--and men--who are intelligent, analytical individuals. Any Western woman in China who's tried to shop for clothes--unless she's considered small in the West--has probably experienced the overwhelming emotions of being confronted with the fact that she's too big to fit into anything in the entire store. 

Recently we decided to run a 'shopping guide for the Western woman in Chengdu' story for the magazine. The idea was to run the addresses of all the secret spots for clothes foreign women have discovered over the years. I put our intern on the beat, as she had just arrived in the city and said she enjoyed shopping. Perhaps it was a cruel assignment on my part, given that she probably had no idea what she was in store for, and I did, having had a traumatic shopping experience within weeks of my first arriving in China years ago that turned me off any attempt to buy clothes for the next several years. 

On that day, my roommate--a Beijinger who had studied abroad in England for two years--invited me to come shopping with her after work. I gladly accepted, eager to have a local help me navigate the stores since my one attempt at finding shoes earlier was botched, I thought, by my inability to speak Chinese (I later found out it had nothing to do with language barrier and everything to do with my size 9 feet). We went to various stores, with her trying on lots of things and looking fabulous in them, and me, just looking for a pair of jeans, not being able to pull anything all the way over my thighs or zip them up fully. Finally one of the shopkeepers handed me a larger pair, and I celebrated that I was able to get them all the way on--until I stepped out of the dressing room to look in the mirror and realized they were men's jeans. After that I realized, at a U.S. size 8 or 10, I was just too big for Chinese clothes, and I guess the epiphany was written all over my face because my roommate--who several years after we parted ways, I realized was extremely aware and perceptive--said something to the effect of, "You're upset, aren't you?"

I should have been forewarned when, the summer before I left for China, I happened to see the tag (which read XXL) on the jacket of a friend from Beijing who was studying in the States. She wasn't thin, but she definitely wasn't fat, and I couldn't imagine her wearing anything bigger than an American medium.

I remember going shopping with friends here who've had similar experiences and shown similar upset; and most foreign women I talk to seem to be of the opinion trying to shop here is a waste of time. And while this applies generally to Western women of non-Asian descent, I've heard even ABC friends say they can't fit into the clothes here. On the other hand, my white friends also seem to shrug it off as a disparity between Western and Asian sizes and body types. But those of us who are of (even partial) Asian descent can't so easily hide behind that curtain. At least I started feeling some sort of frustration along those lines.

Years later I'm perhaps a couple sizes smaller, the natural result of a more active lifestyle, daily bike riding, climbing stairs, and making a conscious decision to do some sort of more rigorous exercise regularly, and it's one of the few times in my life I feel quite OK with my body. And I can find clothes in most any shop here that fit, although usually only if they're XL or XXL--and I'm OK with that. 

My size 9 feet, on the other hand, are a different matter altogether, and no amount of exercising are going to shrink them!