Frivolity

Do people have direction in life? I think a lot of people are looking for something, money, happiness, love. I have all that. I'm left with vague ideals about "making the world a better place" but also a strange quest for entertainment and travel. Self-Actualization as some people call it. I don't have a post-modern vacuum. I do wish the world made it easier to contribute positively, but to act is to have power, and power is hard fought for. All I'm left with is frivolity.  

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Favorite Expo Person

I met my favorite person at the Expo yet. He was just a normal guy, I had trouble understanding his thick Shanghai accent. He was dressed in blue overalls and must have been around 50 years old. We started with the usual:
Me "Do you like it here?"
He "yes it is nice, where did you study Chinese, it is really good"
Me " I studied in Shanghai for 3 semesters, I really like China"
Him "Your foreign countries are much better, you only like China's exterior"
Me "No, I actually don't like the buildings and all that, I really like the people and the food and the culture"
Him " foreigners can't understand China, the government is much better to them"
Me "No, I know what you mean, the foreign newspapers are always talking about human rights and the politics of China"
Him "It is the normal people that are suffering in China"
Me "Yes, that is too bad, I wish I could do something to help"
Him "There is nothing to do, it will never change"
Me "that is the wrong mentality, if everyone thinks that nothing can change, than nothing will change, for the politics to change, the mentality must change first"
Him "the expo is interesting, they invite all these democratic countries, the Expo is all about technology and the economy, but the biggest part is missing"
Me "You can have economic development, but without political developments it is empty, the rich will only keep their wealth and the poor will stay poor"
Him "yes, I agree"

So refreshing to have someone who thinks the same way as me, yet is so different. He seemed surprisingly happy that I could not only speak his language, but also share his ideas. If only more of the people coming to our pavilions were more enthusiastic about speaking their minds, I told my frienf at one point that "I have developed a habit of not talking about politics with Chinese people because it seems to make them uncomfortable", but I think it is also because a few conservative and controlling voices block put the voices of those who would rather see change than the ongoing political repression and control imposed by the Communist Party.

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Late nights

I have been staying up really late for the last 2 days. Maybe I stayed home too much when Syt was here, but maybe it is just a coincidence of life. A few of us went to a coworkers house after work on Sunday and we had Cola chicken with beer, yellow wine and red wine. We listened to Chinese music and western disco. One of my co-workers got really drunk while another proved that he does not drink. Both were fun and the vibe was perfect with no discontent.

We came back home at around three and my roommate was drinking in the courtyard with Angolans and Namibians. My other friend started freaking out and went to the Internet to try and contact a girl. He did not sleep that night. I started talking to a guy from Angola and we had a wide ranging discussion about development, African-Chinese relations, colonialism and the use of natural resources for growth. At the end he said that we were treading on politics and changed the subject to astronomy saying: "You know what is amazing? The stars and the moon, and how we are tiny beings on a small earth flying fast through space". He was correct of course.

After sleeping many hours and going to work I went out again yesterday with the idea of having a quiet night. We had chicken at a small restaurant with garlic cucumber and a meatball soup. We then went to a local dive bar. The night slowly deteriorated into a modern art play. My friend picked up a girl and eventually left together with her. Around 4 women were hanging around this one guy, at some point using him as a pole for pole dancing. A drunk kept coming over to us, spewing  drunken speeches and gesticulations at us as if we were interested. We watched as the bartender slowly got drunker and drunker stumbling from one room to the next in great debauchery. By the time we left she was puking in the stairs in what seemed to be a very uncomfortable position. We went for BBQ meat and vegetables outside the bar and saw her slowly emerge from the stairs to lay down on the ground in front of the bar. Her two "friends" were telling her to go home and stop puking. A large British girl was trying to help, herself quite drunk, with her boyfriend, drunker and an English teacher, acting as a bodyguard against unknown threats. We bought water for the bartender and tried to help her get home, yet she would not budge and eventually fell asleep in the security office in front of the bar, with her own assigned guardian. The drunken British English teacher got into a confrontation with the drunken American English teacher to our great joy. We were called retards for perceived slights to the English language and the American English teacher attempted to insult and attack some Chinese men who just made fun of him. We eventually left for the French quarter in a cab with  a Parisian and possibly a Chinese girl. After walking the empty streets for a few minutes looking for a missing bar we all went home happy and exhasusted.  

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Mao Zedong is being replaced by Haibao

Everywhere I go there are giant  cute blue Haibaos, the Expo mascot. Haibao with Dolphin seems really popular. There is an Expo video of Shanghai with whales flying all over Shanghai. It is really disgusting. In the Expo park, there are a lot of really great sculptures, but people only take pictures with the Haibao. People in the stores are buying millions of Haibao everyday, and there are thousands of people selling fake black market Haibao in the streets. So many people are wasting their life for a moronic blue doll. This is supposed to be the next superpower, but the people are being fooled into stupidity.

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Old Friends

I met up with some old friends the other night. I met them through my girlfriend during my time in Shanghai. They are really my girlfriend's friends more than anything, but I really like them because they are good people. We met at karaoke and quickly went out for diner. We had spicy Hunan food and went through the usual drink respect ritual. It was really fun and pleasant and I think they enjoyed seeing me again too. I was a bit surprised about their lives. I met them while they were students and I always thought that they would end up in great work positions. However, they were all working fairly low end jobs except for one person that was still a management students. Basically, I was the one with the best job of the lot. It sort of gave me a reality check as to the inequality that exist between China and Canada still. Even though they have graduated from one of the best engineering schools in China and pretty much have what would be big money jobs in Canada (accounting, engineering, software, real estate) they were all working long hours and not getting paid very much money. I even heard them complaint about the quality of life in China, something I would have never heard during our university days. I was a bit disappointed in China which I thought would be able to give a better life to some of its best students.
No matter what the academic or work related experience and accomplishments, its still connections, money and power that open the doors to the really good jobs. In Canada I think we are lucky to be judged on what we can do and have accomplished, rather than on who we are or know.

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Rural Art

I went to a new Museum in downtown Shanghai. I guessed they opened yesterday. They had this exposition of Rural art. It's actually more like rural artistic inventions. With things like homemade planes, submarines, and a giant aircraft carrier that was actually a movie theatre inside. I also watched 20 minute of a Russian documentary about an astronaut going to the MIR station, in space. This television was placed in a room full of mirrors next to the room with a submarine half covered in water. There was a large expo of planes and stuff and they were accompanied by birds, real live one. There was bird droppings all over the place and the person working there told me they had not thought of that.

Museum girls are cute all over the world. Above, a picture of a robot!

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Beating Censorship and Drinking Beer

I have been feeling the heat of government authoritarianism and haven't been able to blog lately, But I have found some ways of getting around it and I will be posting regularly again. I had three days off and pretty much wasted them by not doing much. Tuesday went by fast as I shopped for shoes downtown, had coffee with friends and got drunk with a friend. We went to Cs bar which is my favourite bar in Shanghai. It is quite mega! It's a little hole in the ground that looks nothing like a bar at first. There is a Buddha shrine at the entry for some reason and then a staircase leading to the bar. The inside walls of the place are all covered in Graffiti and there is a distinct smell of piss to the air. Beer is 15 yuan, or about 2 dollars. The place is populated by foreign students and teachers, Chinese students and other odd types. You never really know who you will encounter. There are actually a surprising amount of Africans in the bar, one of the few places where I have encountered so many in Shanghai.

This particular night we met two Koreans. One spoke English the other Chinese, and I figure they both spoke Korean. I was speaking with the Chinese speaking one and she was being all "Kawaii", doing those Asian picture faces. It was getting awkward and I told her we had a girlfriend. By this time we were in some other weirdo bar with a toy like disposition that had black and white tiles and French people playing chess on the second floor. We then left for a place called Logo. This place always has Djs and couches, sometimes reggae nights. It smells a bit like puke. The Chinese Korean girl left without speaking to me and it was weird. My friend stayed on the couch and talked to his Korean. I just danced by myself, I think there were some Bulgarians on the dance floor. I hope I wasn't that guy who dances with himself and ruins the dance floor...

That picture says that "rural people make the city prettier". It is true. I saw a lot of rural people cleaning grass right next to where I took the picture of buildings. It makes no sense to have rural people move to the city from their farm just to make them cut grass and pick it up with a broom. But I saw like 10 people doing type of work in a 20 minute walk. It's one thing to urbanize, but do it right dammit.

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Penetration

I had a great carrot juice and vegetarian spaghetti right after taking this picture. Life is good!

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