Living in this little prison complex that is the Expo village is a bit frustrating. There are police everywhere and they don't do anything. They are supposed to protect us, but since they have no threat they just annoy us by denying us access whenever we don't have an access pass, or they don't let us sit on random objects. Once there were fireworks and they stopped me from climbing a fence. I always make a point to talk to them when I have to pass a security check. I guess most of the security in charge of "protecting me" at the village is like 18, works 12 hours a day, comes form a village and has absolutely no power of initiative. I tried to convince them to unionize, but my frail efforts failed, I guess they are in the army and you can't unionize the army. Mostly, I complaint about the bothersome security checks and the total ineffectiveness of it all because there are so many loopholes into the security checks that anyone really wanting to do something bad ass could do it.
What I am coming to realize, and I guess I have always known this, is that my complaining to them has absolutely no effect on the services we receive. I've begun complaining about their "leaders" and it is having interesting effects. When I do that everyone agrees. Thing is that leaders at the Expo seem to be detached from reality. They are hidden somewhere in an office, I guess, and decide on random rules. Now the obvious problem is that there is no feedback. When decisions are taken at the top and nobody listens to the workers implementing those decisions those decisions are useless and ineffective. I think my whole point here, and I am not expressing it very well I understand, is that people are not given enough freedom and power of initiative to function at their maximum effectiveness. And it starts in schools, where people are not allowed to think for themselves. So that it is deeply ingrained in the culture that people don't fix problems for themselves, people don't make changes to their environment, and they have no responsibility to others for their actions (for like the environment for example) because the party takes care of everything. It just seems very inefficient and unsustainable, the whole thing is bound to crash.
I detest all the police in the street around here and the army in Shanghai. I understand the protesters in Toronto burning cars. Put so many influential people who are unaccountable behind so many police authoritarian figures, and you are bound to have outburst of frustrations in a western society. China might be different because people have different values and political arrangements, but people will eventually have to take responsibility, and that involves some kind of power.
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mardi 29 juin 2010
samedi 26 juin 2010
Nationalism
I got sicked out by people signing the national anthem today. It was a bit bizarre. I don't usually like those things, but this time I just wanted to hide somewhere. It was a very strong averse reaction. We were in a bar for a Canadian day event and people were signing the anthem over a mic. I just thought it was so "in your face". Nationalism can be just as bad as biggoted religion, racism, or wathever other type of intolerance. People just love to find good reasons to hate others. I would be quite happy with no country. Yet I work in some national branding exposition.
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mardi 8 juin 2010
Expo parties
Me, my girlfriend and her parents were eating with a friend of my girlfriends in a suburb of Shanghai. He just graduated as a doctorate student from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. We ate spicy dishes, but he spent the entire meal talking about his career prospects, and he could not drink very much - probably good for an engineering guy. Basically, apparently people discriminate according to where you studied, it is the best if you studied abroad, second if you studied under someone who studied abroad, and worst if you just stayed in China. I felt horrible because it should just matter what is the quality of your work, especially for doctorate graduate, but my opinion is worthless out in the bayous of Pudong here.
I understand people in China who cut the lines and try to cheat to get ahead. There are just not so much opportunities, and a lot of the people who are ahead in life have cheated to get where they are. But people just get punched in the head for nothing. I saw so many people spend so much time and energy today to skip a thirty minute line to go into a stupid side show entertainment thing that is the Canadian pavilion. If you just spent half the time on productive behaviour in Canada, you would get such a larger result. Yet, people in China are often stuck working crap job as waiters, security, maids etc... Who gets to do a influential and important job? 1% of the population?
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Yall be drinking from em back holes
Now em smart ass be readin this all be thinkin be better than this. But I know em assholes be small and tight, like them from the pussycat dolls. Some em people ain't meant to think like em leader down the road down them place there, that where the people at, where! I fuck em place em people from the down low. I had enough of this mayhem, that why I quit down there Ho!
Please, leave em thought behind when a readin this@)
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jeudi 3 juin 2010
Beijing train ride
Blog will be devoid of pictures until I buy batteries.
Had one of the best train rides ever the other day. I left for Beijing at around 10 Pm on Sunday night. The train was full of people going back to work after going to see the Expo for the weekend. I couldn't get a sleeper so I had to get a hard seat. Hard seats come in all varieties from what I have seen. Most seem to be wooden seats, with around 6 people sitting around a table. Better trains have cushioned seats with the table, while the newer fast trains from Beijing to Shanghai have individual seating with 3 to 2 seats per side of the train. I was sitting on a medium quality hard seat with 6 people sharing a wooden table in the middle. The train was overcrowded and a lot of people had bought standing seats which happens when no more seats are available. these people were standing around or sitting on little stools, until night came and people fell asleep on the ground all around, sleeping under benches and in the corridors.
I was sitting with 6 interesting people. The first one I met was a Chinese American English teacher from California. For some reason he did not seem so interested in speaking Chinese and mostly wanted to speak to me in English (as opposed to the others in Chinese) - definitely a banana, white culture yellow skin. He was very friendly though. When I met him he was trying to talk to the old man across from him. This man was obviously a migrant worker, his first words to the English teacher had been "I am from Hebei". He then said he was a labourer, but for some reason I was the only one to understand, I think I am developing a skill in understanding very bad Mandarin, not to mention speaking very bad Mandarin. This old man then proceeded to sleep for the rest of the journey, not saying very much and basically being there.
There was a northern girl next to me who also spoke very good English, she was a translator at CCTV where she watched English news and television and translated it... She used to be an English teacher and so the English teacher guy talked to her when I was ignoring him. She didn't seem to like CCTV and wouldn't say where she worked until people forced her to. When she reluctantly agreed to say it, people made fun of CCTV. I agreed. The main proponent of Anti-CCTV comments was a Shanghai man of about 35 years. I guess he was a small business owner going for a business trip to Beijing. He was short in stature, and I guess he had probably not been to university, but he was very intelligent, and we shared a lot of political ideas. He spent the whole train ride speaking about politics with whoever would listen to him, and I was one for listening. I think it all started when I showed the English teacher the book I was reading about Mao Zedong "Red China" written in the 1930s by journalist Edgar Snow following a trip to northern China were he met Mao Zedong and much of the Chinese Communist leadership. Our Shanghai friend opinionated that the book was crap because it spoke positively of the Communist Party. I was obviously surprised because this is not the type of things you usually hear from Chinese people. He then went on to say that Mao was a tyrant and that Deng Xiaoping was a hero, Mao had caused the Cultural Revolution, killed millions and held back the Chinese for more than 50 years, showing as proof the developments of the last 30 years. I politely disagreed citing the education system and health system created by the Communist Party during those years, which in my opinion are at least partly responsible for the developments of the post-Mao era. He had none of it and simply said that I did not understand because I had not experienced and nor had my family experienced the evils of the Mao era. Following this conversation were other discussions on politics, culture and all that, his opinion was often that China and its people lacked education and morals and that this was directly linked to the Cultural Revolution.
A Shanghai/Beijing student sitting next to him seemed to be in agreement with what he said for most of the time. He was of this post 80s generation, people my age, who have not seen the days of Mao and hardcore communism. People like him are much more open to western ideas and ways of doing, especially in big cities. According to the Shanghai friend, Shanghai is the city that is the most open to western ideas and so foreigners come to the city where they feel "like fish in water". Spending a few days in Beijing afterwards, I can definitely agree that architecturally speaking, Beijing is much more Chinese, but Shanghai is not western, it has more of that Asian metropolis feel that also exists in Hong Kong.
A last character that made the train ride interesting was a thirty year old Northerner from the city of Harbin. He spoke with a nice northern accent which has heavier Rs and is usually louder. He spoke of wine and women, as well as money. He read everyone's hand using techniques of Chinese medicine. He told me I have low blood pressure and a bad stomach. This was definitely true at the time since I had a stomach ache caused by sitting on the train for too long. He was a lovable and funny man and I enjoyed that reading hands felt very much like a hand massage. Who could not enjoy someone who massages everyone else hands. He was also a positivist. While the Shanghai coin trader (that was his profession, at least on his business card) was railing away at the government and the backwardness of the Chinese people, my northern friend was saying that Chinese people are not that bad and making jokes. A very nice counterweight to a negative but needed viewpoint.
I arrived in Beijing and rode a cab to see family..
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Had one of the best train rides ever the other day. I left for Beijing at around 10 Pm on Sunday night. The train was full of people going back to work after going to see the Expo for the weekend. I couldn't get a sleeper so I had to get a hard seat. Hard seats come in all varieties from what I have seen. Most seem to be wooden seats, with around 6 people sitting around a table. Better trains have cushioned seats with the table, while the newer fast trains from Beijing to Shanghai have individual seating with 3 to 2 seats per side of the train. I was sitting on a medium quality hard seat with 6 people sharing a wooden table in the middle. The train was overcrowded and a lot of people had bought standing seats which happens when no more seats are available. these people were standing around or sitting on little stools, until night came and people fell asleep on the ground all around, sleeping under benches and in the corridors.
I was sitting with 6 interesting people. The first one I met was a Chinese American English teacher from California. For some reason he did not seem so interested in speaking Chinese and mostly wanted to speak to me in English (as opposed to the others in Chinese) - definitely a banana, white culture yellow skin. He was very friendly though. When I met him he was trying to talk to the old man across from him. This man was obviously a migrant worker, his first words to the English teacher had been "I am from Hebei". He then said he was a labourer, but for some reason I was the only one to understand, I think I am developing a skill in understanding very bad Mandarin, not to mention speaking very bad Mandarin. This old man then proceeded to sleep for the rest of the journey, not saying very much and basically being there.
There was a northern girl next to me who also spoke very good English, she was a translator at CCTV where she watched English news and television and translated it... She used to be an English teacher and so the English teacher guy talked to her when I was ignoring him. She didn't seem to like CCTV and wouldn't say where she worked until people forced her to. When she reluctantly agreed to say it, people made fun of CCTV. I agreed. The main proponent of Anti-CCTV comments was a Shanghai man of about 35 years. I guess he was a small business owner going for a business trip to Beijing. He was short in stature, and I guess he had probably not been to university, but he was very intelligent, and we shared a lot of political ideas. He spent the whole train ride speaking about politics with whoever would listen to him, and I was one for listening. I think it all started when I showed the English teacher the book I was reading about Mao Zedong "Red China" written in the 1930s by journalist Edgar Snow following a trip to northern China were he met Mao Zedong and much of the Chinese Communist leadership. Our Shanghai friend opinionated that the book was crap because it spoke positively of the Communist Party. I was obviously surprised because this is not the type of things you usually hear from Chinese people. He then went on to say that Mao was a tyrant and that Deng Xiaoping was a hero, Mao had caused the Cultural Revolution, killed millions and held back the Chinese for more than 50 years, showing as proof the developments of the last 30 years. I politely disagreed citing the education system and health system created by the Communist Party during those years, which in my opinion are at least partly responsible for the developments of the post-Mao era. He had none of it and simply said that I did not understand because I had not experienced and nor had my family experienced the evils of the Mao era. Following this conversation were other discussions on politics, culture and all that, his opinion was often that China and its people lacked education and morals and that this was directly linked to the Cultural Revolution.
A Shanghai/Beijing student sitting next to him seemed to be in agreement with what he said for most of the time. He was of this post 80s generation, people my age, who have not seen the days of Mao and hardcore communism. People like him are much more open to western ideas and ways of doing, especially in big cities. According to the Shanghai friend, Shanghai is the city that is the most open to western ideas and so foreigners come to the city where they feel "like fish in water". Spending a few days in Beijing afterwards, I can definitely agree that architecturally speaking, Beijing is much more Chinese, but Shanghai is not western, it has more of that Asian metropolis feel that also exists in Hong Kong.
A last character that made the train ride interesting was a thirty year old Northerner from the city of Harbin. He spoke with a nice northern accent which has heavier Rs and is usually louder. He spoke of wine and women, as well as money. He read everyone's hand using techniques of Chinese medicine. He told me I have low blood pressure and a bad stomach. This was definitely true at the time since I had a stomach ache caused by sitting on the train for too long. He was a lovable and funny man and I enjoyed that reading hands felt very much like a hand massage. Who could not enjoy someone who massages everyone else hands. He was also a positivist. While the Shanghai coin trader (that was his profession, at least on his business card) was railing away at the government and the backwardness of the Chinese people, my northern friend was saying that Chinese people are not that bad and making jokes. A very nice counterweight to a negative but needed viewpoint.
I arrived in Beijing and rode a cab to see family..
Turn down-time into play-time with Messenger games Play Now!
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