Raining cats and dogs

Tuesday and Wednesday were apparently the biggest typhoon to hit Shanghai in ten years - nobody tells me about these things. Anyway, it mostly rained a lot...it was kind of a pain to get around, because nobody designs things with water drainage in mind. The local stream/garbage dump came very close to spilling its banks.

Normally this bridge is several feet above the water.

This one got totally submerged...

The Women's World Cup was apparently being held around here, and some of the games had to be postponed. One of the games in Hangzhou was pushed back to Thursday, only 24 hours before I found myself in Hangzhou. With much better planning, I could have watched it myself (I found out today that some people had some extra tickets.)

On another note, I learned something else new today. I had heard stories about these Muslim noodle shops that make their noodles out of dough. They start with a loaf, and then elongate it and fold it over itself several times, until their loaf is a long noodle. Then they give you this one noodle in the form of a noodle soup. Today I finally got a chance to try one. It's called lamian, or literally, "pull noodle," though (I learned) better known in its Japanese form, ramen. FTR, it's much better in person.

China and authoritarianism

The other day I wore my "Taxation Without Representation" shirt to class, and one of the Chinese English teachers asked me what it meant - and I was totally at a loss. Megan is actually my best teacher, and she speaks pretty good English. She understood the "taxation" part - but how the hell do you explain "representation" to a Chinese person? There's just nothing in Chinese history to tie it into. It's easy enough to explain that DC has the same special status as, say, Hong Kong, but just I couldn't get her to understand why people think that's bad.

On a related subject, I got to the end of my giant Chinese History book, (Fairbank and Goldman China: A New History) and the conclusions section had an interesting note on the lack of democracy in Chinese history. The author argues that the gratuitous violence of the Cultural Revolution reflects a paranoia that has been present for a long time in Chinese history:

Conspiracy was a continual part of Imperial Confucianism because the ruler's legitimacy was assured only when his proper conduct produced harmony between ruler and ruled. Dissent was disharmonious, and so a dissenter feigned loyalty to protect himself. Sensing this deceit, a ruler easily became suspicious if not actually paranoid. The system had little space for the open expression of opposition because policy was part of the ruler's moral conduct and so of his legitimacy. Opposition must therefore be secret. It might animate a secret society. It implicitly aimed at power. There could be no loyal opposition. In this light, for example, the pro-democacy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square on XXXX X, XXXX, since they wanted changes, seemed to the CCP elders to be their enemies. Those who expect conspiracy can always find it. (bolding mine)

I'm not sure it's quite so easy to write Maoism off as just another incarnation of Confucism though. Ever since Mao, with his internationalist way of thinking, China (with some help from India) has been the loyal opposition. In this model, their censorship and political repression actually has more of an overseas than a domestic audience in mind.

Also, thinking in terms of the global system helps answer my earlier question, about how you explain the concept of 'representation' to a Chinese person. The Chinese government 'represents' the Chinese people on the international stage, where many different forces are competing for attention, in order to get the most 'goodies' (like the Olympics.) There is even some loyalty involved here, as shown by China's recent move to dump Zimbabwe. Ever since the Sino-Soviet split really, they've made it clear that they can still antagonize the US even while maintaining some semblance of standards of their own. It is this role which has allowed them to ascend to global power status.

...I haven't yet tried explaining this concept to any actual Chinese people.

Signing on from Yuyao

...and with a new look to boot. (Now that I have pictures working, I will also get an actual picture of myself for my profile too. Then I will also need to work on getting this blog visible inside China, which will involve not quite hacking, but some technical capability, and that will be a whole new project.) Anyway, here is the entrance to the school where I work, all schools from primary on up are basically set up like college campuses.Here is my house

Believe it or not, here is the view out my back windowliterally steps from where I live, with a just broken-glass fence in between (poking in the bottom right of the photo). Apparently just a few years back this whole area looked like this (my school is just seven years old but) now the city is putting a whole lot of investment money into the area. Just a ten minute walk from school is UBC Coffee,

where they always greet you with a friendly "good morning," no matter what time of day. I wondered if I should correct them, but I finally decided they would probably take it the wrong way. Chances are whoever came up with this policy wouldn't even be the person I'd be talking to. I asked the waiter with the best English if she knew what that meant, and she said yes. Chances are that's actually a chainwide policy, since I first tried UBC in Hangzhou, and according to the back of their napkins they're in several other provinces as well.

My other haunts - an internet cafe the next block over, where I'm at now, which is a dirty place. Half the keys in most of the keyboards stick when you push them, and I think I've gotten myself addicted to nicotene from all the second hand smoke. A couple of restaurants know me well...one shop owner always says hi, even though I've never bought more than a bottle of water there. The first time I saw him he got really excited and asked where I was from, and he even managed to spit out the names of a few American cities. He doesn't speak more than a word ("hello") of English though, which limits our conversational options. Oh and these girls at a knick-knack shop downtown were amused when my brain shut down and I started saying the wrong things in Chinese...

Anyway, all things considered, I think I did fairly well on my assignment. I like the area, and the school doesn't even make me teach all of the hours that are in my contract. Some people I heard either complain a lot or didn't get quite so lucky.

Pictures are here

Okay, we'll start from the beginning...the streets of Shanghai ...where you could get some, shall we say, designer goods.





Here's Charlie...





Zenia posing with some random Asian tourist

The temple in Haining

Students from my first school

The view from the hotel at my second assignment (BTW, all these pictures can expand when you click on them)

Julie, our fearless assistant

And, finally, the Great Wall. Our tour bus is the one with the yellow and blue swirl.

Here's me

We were going to go up this other side, but from the ground you can't see that the side we went up is about 2-3 times taller.

Beijing in the distance

Scott, Matt, and Kent. You see them? Try zooming in a little closer. I think Scott's even waving at the camera.

A picture

This is a picture they took of us on our last day in Hangzhou before going to Beijing, they decided to drag us out to a college and give as a promotional thing about attending classes there. As you can probably tell, it was pretty hot that day and nobody was all that excited to be there. Also, I had just met half the people the night before, since they had had totally different teaching assignments.



Now, what I wished I had my camera for was the "fuck Japan" graffiti written (in English) on a wall outside of the school.