Festivities

Yes, I'm not going to feel too bad about being ripped off for $16 in the streets of Shanghai when my credit card company comes along (just to put things in perspective) and rips me off for at least $80.

So yesterday, we had a sort of induction ceremony into the town of Haining. We went into the best part of town, this little upscale development which is kind of hard to describe - it's almost a city onto itself, with houses, shops, playgrounds, etc. except that it's probably less than a half square mile. First, we sat on stage, while local politicians and stuff made speeches, then we were paired with Chinese families to go eat dinner. That was kind of cool, although you'd be hard-pressed to say that they really represented Chinese families - their house was almost as big as you'd get in the states. Afterwards, there were a bunch of mini-performances from students, these old retired ladies I guess doing opera and dance, and the security guards. The police guys actually had the coolest show, they did a martial arts demonstration, doing things like flipping their adversaries over their shoulders. At one point, one of the guys actually twisted the other guy in a way that AFAICT involved almost pulling the guy's leg out of his socket. Whatever your take on Chinese politics, they do make having a police state look good.

Tensions have calmed somewhat between us and the administration - one of the main guys from our American organization (UCE) has come over for the time being, and he's been really helpful. Now if we could only figure out to do with our crazy old guy - it seems that every once in a while you get some crazy old guy (reading the blogosphere it sounds like this isn't too isolated a phenomenon) who comes to live in Asia because they can't get along with anybody in the states - only problem, we still have to put up with him until he goes out on his own. Last night he insisted on doing interpretive dance while we recited the pledge of allegiance...I think several of us inidividually are about to blow up on him, at least one person already has...