Cop encounters--the safe and legal way

I spend a lot of my time here avoiding police. Not because I'm actually doing anything illegal (most of the time), but because the Chinese po kind of scare me.

So I wasn't all that keen on the idea when my friend, panicking after her digital camera was stolen, insisted on calling the police.

But what was I going to say? "No, you shouldn't try to find your 3,000-yuan camera because I have an irrational distrust of people in uniform"? So I waited with her at a wet and chilly Chengdu bus stop as we waited for the promised officers to show.

And waited, and waited.

After about half an hour, I asked if realistically the police were going to come. As someone who has phoned 9-1-1 in a panic to report a just-nabbed bicycle, only to be instructed to phone the non-emergency line and fill out some forms, I know how justifiably unwilling Canadian police are to dash, sirens blazing, to the scene of every petty streetside theft. But she was seriously distressed, and convinced the police would come and be on the thief's trail in no time.

Sure enough, they arrived--the two most laid-back cops I have ever encountered. Shoulder badges flashing, they listened to my friend's story, asked her a few questions, and told her there was nothing they could do and she should come to the station to fill out some forms.

She was not impressed.

I, on the other hand, was callously delighted to get a free ride in a Chinese police cruiser, a free tour of the surprisingly small police station and the chance to gaze in almost total incomprehension at detailed incident reports--so liberally stamped with red-ink thumbprints they were almost illegible.

Naturally, our officer duo found me thoroughly amusing, especially when I tried to answer questions in butchered Mandarin. Oh, joy.

Huoche of Fail (or, how not to take a train in China)

A word of advice: Do not, under any means, buy a "no seat" ticket on a train more than 12 hours in duration. Better yet, make that 10 hours. Sure, it sounds like a good idea at the time: Trains are booked solid for the next 10 days, you've decided you absolutely MUST go to Chengdu this week and honestly, what could be so bad about a mere 31* hours without a seat?

At this point, anyone with an interest in preserving his or her sanity, dignity, back and neck muscles would turn away from the ticket counter and walk away with the 257 yuan firmly in his or her pocket--a little disappointed, but secure in the notion of having spared oneself a couple of days of severe discomfort.

Why didn't I do that?

True, I have little sanity or dignity left to concern myself about preserving. But I do have neck muscles; or, at least, I did before this misguided excursion. It would seem, however, the instinct of self-preservation that would have mentally linked two days standing on a train with physical discomfort required more foresight than I was capable of mastering at the time.

Smooth move.

In my defence, the train should not have been that full: It was a full month before the New Year, when Chinese make the legendary trip home to the interior and the countryside in mind-boggling numbers. Who on earth was heading in such droves to Sichuan from Shanghai now?

I got my answer in Wuxi, a couple of stops outside of Shanghai.

Migrants.

Lots and lots of migrants.

Jobless migrants, whose work in factories, on construction sites and as casual labourers has dried up in the vice-like grip of the notorious jinrong weijin--the economic crisis--that has China and the rest of the world by the balls.

With no work in the industrial or urban areas where they make their living, millions of migrants are heading home to join their families for New Years early. Millions of migrants with no social security who, if there continues to be no work for them come February, will be stuck, in limbo between the rural homes that can't support them and the slumping industrial heartlands that now has no work for them. Millions of migrants who will be desperate, upset and who will have almost nothing whatsoever to lose.

*Cough*"mass incidents"*cough*

They swarmed onto the train in droves, schlepping misshapen tarp, burlap and plastic-y rucksacks they shoved into overstuffed overhead compartments, jostling noisily--and sometimes violently--for space in the crammed hard-seat car. They filled all the seats and then whose were full they filled the aisles and the spaces between the bathroom, the smoking area, the doors and the hot water tanks. They stared at the seat-less waiguoren with a bemused look normally reserved for freaks of nature or aliens from outer space.

Or, in this case, a combination of both.

Waiguoren, for her part, set about engaging in a stilted and awkward conversation. After insulting everyone who could be insulted (hint: "Minggan" means "Sensitive," as in, "That's too sensitive for me to talk about, so back off, jackass"), she discovered the following: The charming folk in her immediate proximity all hailed from Mianyang, Sichuan--one of the cities hit by the killer quake last May (their families were all okay, though--phew). They did "da gong"--part time work, or casual labour--in Wuxi, but now that has dried up, they're headed home for the holidays early. They plan to return to Wuxi after New Years.

And, uh, what happens if there's still no work in February?

Stony silence.

"There will be work."

Hu Jintao had better fucking hope so.

Size matters ... to China

Tell your friends: China's building the world's biggest radio telescope.

Why is China doing this?

I don't really know. I'm still not quite sure what the practical purpose of China's space mission is, to be honest.

But you can rest assured China's radio telescope is the biggest. The People's Daily says so: It's as large as 40 football fields, 10 times bigger than the current largest one in the United States and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Maybe not that last thing.

In case you haven't noticed, China has size issues.

This seems kind of weird in a country that is not only the largest in the world in terms of square kilometres, but has the largest population. Especially because no one in China is going to let you forget that for a moment.

Almost every single Chinese person I've met begins at least one conversation on the government's less palatable policies with, "Well, China has so many people ...

... it makes democracy unfeasible."

... you can't have individual freedoms."

... the government can't provide for everyone in a timely manner."

Etcetera.

Does this make sense? To a certain degree, yeah: There are 1.4 billion people here, fer chrissake. To cruelly continue to mock a former Canadian federal party leader who really doesn't deserve to be mocked any longer: You think it's easy to run a billion-person country?

Of course it isn't. It's kind of a logistical nightmare, and in one sense that explains the government's addiction to order (it also explains why almost no Chinese person can ever answer a question beginning with, "How many people ... ?").

But by that same token you could also argue that trying to rule a bazillion people with an iron, one-party authoritarian fist really isn't a realistic goal. I think it's also fair to argue that claiming the country's unfit for things like a competitive political system or the protection of individual rights is really selling this population short. If your argument is that democracy or human rights are overrated and China's just smarter than everyone else, okay. I'll buy that as an argument, although I can't say I agree. But as most ostensibly democratic countries have aptly proven on numerous occasions, democracy can be more farcical than effective.

But the people who can master both killer street food and a cutting-edge space program aren't capable of casting a ballot and send some hapless bozos into government?

Umm...really?

Awkwardfest 2008

I can't figure it out. No matter how annoying, irritating and Hanyu-illiterate a waiguoren I am, people still seem to want me to hang out with them--even to attend family gatherings, where I'm guaranteed to be nothing but a social leech, smiling and nodding and murmuring basic pleasantries before falling mute once again to gaze curiously at the action going on around me.




So far I've had two opportunities to hang out with the Wang family--an incredibly warm and vibrant clan that knows how to throw a good party (even if they do have unfortunately indiscriminate taste in guests).



Aside from my awe at how graciously my gawking presence was tolerated, the great thing about these events was being able to see a tight-knit, deliciously rambunctious family in action. Even though I could rarely comperehend a word that was said by anyone (most of the family speaks either Shanghaihua or Subeihua, the local dialect in northern Jiangsu province, which means I'm even more linguistically challenged than normal), the familial themes were eerily familiar:

Aggravating questions about marriage/jobs/education: Check.



Teasing about age: Check.



Eating off each other's plates: Well, in China this is actually official practice, whereas in my family we're just rude. Check.



Akward family photos: Check.

Even-more-awkward family hugs: Check.





Cousinly banter: Check--right down to the lewd jokes the adults aren't supposed to hear.



Telling embarrassing stories about the 60-year-old birthday boy in front of an audience of hundreds: Check. Except this time, they had a proper mic.




The trip to Gaoyou to be awkward at Joyce's uncle's 60th birthday, however, was a wholly unique experience. No sooner had we arrived in the small northern Jiangsu town than we were whisked from one food-centred birthday event to another--from a dinner in a hotel's enormous banquet hall to do-it-yourself fireworks in an open lot beside someone's apartment. There were so many people in town visiting we spent the night in massage beds at another uncle's spa. That isn't the weirdest place I've ever slept, but it's definitely up there.




I spent the vast majority of my 20-ish hours in the city lurking in corners, watching goings-on with wide eyes and without the foggiest idea what was going on.

High five.

Shanghai nocturne

You can tell a lot about a city by what happens to it at night.

Does it shrivel up, snail-style, pulling googly antenna eyes with it?

Does it come alive with crowds of partiers who dance until dawn and piss on their neighbours lawns?

Shanghai can't seem to decide.

Of course there are the omnipresent construction sites that never seem to shut down for the night. Most workers camp out on-site and take breaks or naps periodically, but these mazes of cranes and skeleton buildings are lit and crawling with activity when the rest of the city lies dormant. This partly explains both how the city can erect ginormous structures in the space of a few months and why the gaping maw of Shanghai's growth needs all the migrant workers it can get (or at least why it did until the financial crisis came along to cramp its style).

Most useful places (*cough*the public transit system*cough*) close at ridiculously early hours. I learned this the hard way one night, when I was stranded while transferring stations and was forced out of the subway into then-unfamiliar territory in search of a cab driver with a high tolerance for disoriented foreigners. I'm still very bitter about the often puritanical closing hours of necessities like subways, stores and the gates to apartment complexes (no, seriously--whose idea was that?). The message here is very old-school in nature: Why are you up late? You should be sleeping so you can work hard making steel in the morning, dammit.

Because of this deterrent attitude, and because it's so expensive, most locals don't really go out partying very late. Sure, there are plenty of clubs, etcetera, but they cater primarily to expats and a very select group of well-heeled Shanghairen.

But night time is when Shanghai's shikumen and lilongs come alive. These narrow alleyway housing complexes-cum-mini neighbourhoods become outdoor living rooms at night: People wash dishes, bathe, eat and play cards or mah jong in pools of street lights and hanging bulbs, obscured by clouds of steam emanating from vats of noodles or baskets of dumplings. Past 3 a.m., labourers load miscellaneous crates and cardboard boxes on and off of trucks several times too large for the narrow lanes they lumber through.



This is the part of Shanghai I love, which is saying quite a bit because this is a far-from-loveable city (no one I've met so far, save for especially h-core Shanghairen, actually likes this place at all as an urban entity: They're just here for the cash). It makes one feel as though this surreal, space-age money-making cyborg actually has a beating human heart. Even if that human heart smells a little like fermenting garbage and duck carcasses, and although it serves more than anything else as a reminder of the city's income gap is growing as quickly as its economy, it's pretty fun to wander through after hours.

Firewall THIS

I get this message a lot. Not as often as I would if I did my web-surfing in Hanzi, but frequently enough to have me punching the wall in extremely disharmonious frustration.

That message pops up--along with a maddening, triangular, exclamation-pointed hazard sign--every time I try to load a website that's been ix-nayed by China's "Net Nanny." I imagine this imposing entity personified by a group of censors huddled over fancy, interweb-intercepting computers, analyzing site addresses and page contents and determining whether they're kosher enough to merit a CCP stamp of approval, or if some seemingly arbitrary rubrick has judged them too incendiary for Chinese browsers.

I say "seemingly arbitrary" because I have trouble figuring out what kind of criteria, exactly, are used to figure out what's allowed through and what isn't:

All Wordpress-hosted sites, including the Maclean's website, are blocked. But Blogspot, evidently, is not.

Thankfully for my sanity, globeandmail.com is kosher. So is nytimes.com, apart from a few days ago when it latter was blocked and then mysteriously restored, eliciting some interesting theories as to why it was firewalled in the first place. But articles about the Dalai Lama take a suspiciously long time to load. BBC is fine in English, but not the 中文 version.

I get search results but can't open anything when I Google Tibetan or Uighur independence. Most Tian'anmen "incident" articles open, just fine, but the image results I get are drastically different when I use Google.cn. Having once done an image search on Hu Jintao (don't ask why that was necessary at the time), I found to my consternation none of the photos that showed up would open.

I know, I don't get it, either--his photo's everywhere.

The creepiest thing, though, is that when I Google something problematic, I find other, normally kosher sites--usually those belonging to major news sources--take an awfully long time to load, and my browser's propensity to freeze rises suspiciously.

Weird.

But the Net Nanny's incessant naggings don't render China's active "netizen" community any less powerful. Quite the contrary: The blogging, QQ-ing community is extremely vocal and active--in expressing opinions, co-ordinating charity events and, most notably, in enacting "human-flesh search engines."

Apart from being a really fabulous name for a band, human flesh (renrou) search engines are part of a vigilante, netizen-driven movement that conducts mass witch hunts aimed at exposing and tormenting no-goodniks--anyone from corrupt officials to frauds, kitten-killers and philandering husbands. The alleged perps find their personal information posted online, making them the targets of a shaming campaign that picks up where what it sees as a grossly inadequate (or nonexistent) official justice system leaves off.

Renrou search engines made the news most recently when a website and individual were ordered to pay compensation in China's first online harassment case. If nothing else, the searches' prevalence indicates the profound power the Web offers Chinese citizenry. In a way it justifies Beijing's censorship-inducing paranoia. But it also makes it patently obvious that censorship is fighting a losing battle to keep mainland China in a harmonious, ignorant bubble.

Silk and stone

In our latest travel excursion en masse (Attack of the Waiguoren III: Foreigners Strike Back!), we went to Suzhou for the day.

Although the eight-million-person city is dwarfed by nearby Shanghai, until about 150 years ago it was actually far more politically and economically important. It was home to a massively lucrative silk industry--the products of whose well-fed worms fuelled the legendary Silk Road-- and its myriad canals earned it international cred as the "Venice of the East."

The burgeoning silk industry still churns out pretty, pricey fabrics for lovers of swanky ties and scarves the world over, although via more expedient and less romantic route. The canals are still there, faithful to their Italian counterparts by being mostly filled with garbage and sewage.

But the city's gardens were the best part of our hurried tour: They boast grotto-like rockeries built to amuse wealthy officials and intellectuals, and enough trees and greenery to feel almost wilderness-y. It was a welcome change.

Suzhou's museum, designed by hometown hero I.M. Pei, is a beautiful complex housing a collection of incredibly well-preserved local artifacts. It was the best example I've seen so far of historical preservation that neither bulldozed nor Disneyfied (for lack of a better term) the so-called history it was preserving. It's probably just my Eurocentric curatorial bias coming into play, but I'm a sucker for artifacts in warmly lit, thematic/chronological rooms with little explanatory blurbs.

*Cough*loser.

The best part, though--aside from following a trio of 60-something Suzhouren who peered in unison at each glassed-off utensil, debating animatedly--was an exhibit of gorgeous, vivid lithographs by Chinese artist Zao Wou-Ki. Zao worked in France during the mid-20th century, collaborating with the likes of Francois Cheng and Ezra Pound. To see the exhibit in Pei's building was pretty sweet.

Across the lane from that testament to modern Chinese artistic genius was the preserved headquarters of the Taiping Rebellion--a nineteenth-century uprising spearheaded by someone who thought he was Jesus's brother, and since recruited by the CCP as a shining example of peasants' resistance to imperialism.

The contrast in that 15 metres was striking, to say the least.

Well, that clears that up, then

A China Central Television reporter was arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe from the relative of a man she wrote an article about (the businessman, according to her article, had been unfairly prosecuted by a local official). Her story took a turn for the absurd when her lawyer argued the man who gave her the 200,000-RMB (about $36,000 CDN) car is actually her boyfriend--his brother just happens to be the businessman in question.

"The corruption charge is nothing but revenge," the woman's lawyer was quoted as saying in a China Daily article. He added that, "As the brother is courting Li, it is normal for her to accept the present."

Um, ok. Well case closed, then. Move along; no guanxi-related conflict of interest, here.

I'm not sure what pisses me off more: The blow this deals to the already abysmal credibility journalists have in this country, or the fact that prosecuting officials " gained entry to [the journalist's] flat by claiming to check for a floor leak."

Dammit. Makes you miss the usual perfunctory corruption witch-hunts going on hereabouts.

(One issue a politics professor inscrutably interviewed touches on is whether China needs specific laws relating to journalists and the press. I have no idea what those would look like in a place where reporting anything that could "embarrass" China or the government is still a big no-no, but it would be fascinating to find out.)

Fengjing (or, how to turn a Shanghai suburb into a tourist destination, in five easy steps)

1) Prettify your scenery. Tourists are suckers for canals and quaint little houses.

2) Narrow your streets, and repave 'em with "traditional" paving stones.














3) Make sure all the garbage and crap is kept safely on the non-touristy side of the old city.










4) Banners outside souvenir shops add a festive and colourful touch...








...especially when they remind residents that economic development is always paramount.










5) When in doubt, a little subtle messaging is always a good idea.








(okay, friendly locals are a pretty awesome bonus)

Hilarity ensues

Yes, China's main news service really does care that Canada's opposition parties plan to topple the government. I hope everyone in Ottawa feels extra special right now.

But I get the feeling the Chinese students here think Canada's having a massive coup. It's probably just my abysmal Mandarin, but you would be surprised how challenging it is to translate, "See, the opposition parties want to take down the government and form their own coalition..."