i hear siberia is nice this time of year
i’ll keep this short … because i still need to pack. i leave tomorrow — really later today — for a national day (oct. 1) holiday trip to xinjiang, the huge territory that occupies the northwest corner of china. and then i’m heading to the very, very top of it, a lake called kanas that sits close to khazakstan, russia and mongolia.
we’re doing a week-long hiking/camping trip through the altay mountains (a chinese guidebook to the area features the english words “asian switzerland,” so i’m expecting lots of blondes, banks, chocolate and clocks) and eventually ending up at the remote kanas lake. (actually, it’s not that remote. it’s also accessible by a very long bus ride, which no doubt is what almost all of the chinese tourists will opt for. so, i’m expecting this lake in the middle of nowhere to be crowded, noisy and smoky, like everywhere else in china during a holiday.)
09.29.2003, 3:34 AM · Xinjiang · Comments (3)
christmas is only 87 days away!
now available at the online store … 2004 calendars featuring some of your favorite photos from this site! click here to get yours now. other new products coming soon!
09.29.2003, 2:25 AM · Site News
Up in Smoke: Shanghai is all tied up in the tobacco
NOTE: Versions of this story appeared in the South China Morning Post (subscription only) and that’s Shanghai magazine.
by DAN WASHBURN
SHANGHAI — Song Hai Pei’s front teeth are stained brown from smoking cigarettes. A pack of Red Double Happiness rests at the ready in his breast pocket. He often offers smokes to the patrons of the small restaurant he owns in northern Shanghai. Song, 47, has been a smoker for 25 years. Not once has he thought about quitting. No reason to, he claims, as long as he feels healthy and can afford the financial burden of his habit. When asked whether he believes cigarettes are addictive, he responds: “No. I can go without smoking for one whole day without feeling a thing.”
09.29.2003, 12:26 AM · Politics, Stories · Comments (2)
today is a sad day
my inspiration died today. well, not all of it … but a big part of it. george plimpton passed away from an apparent heart attack. he was 76. plimpton, the godfather of “participatory journalism,” was, unwittingly to be sure, a major influence in the odd course my “career” has taken over the past half decade. reading the best of plimpton, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, literally changed my life. never got a chance to thank him.
to read his new york times obituary, click here.
to take a look at all of the stupid things i tried in the name of plimptonian participatory journalism — including bull riding, nude water volleyball, sky diving and handgrabbing for giant catfish in mississippi — click here.
09.27.2003, 8:32 AM · Words · Comments (1)
2003: a dental odyssey
the dentist office was too perfect, at times. it was all rather kubrickian.
going to the dentist in china is like going to a foreign policy pow-wow at the white house: you just have a feeling that something is going to go wrong. think the streets of shanghai are dirty and overcrowded? just take a look at some of its smiles. sure, china has experienced its share of economic growth recently. but it ain’t nothin’ compared to its oral decay.
09.24.2003, 12:32 AM · Observations · Comments (6)
another reason not to eat fast food
bombs over hubei (news.yahoo.com)
the explosions were “planned.” good detective work.
09.23.2003, 6:42 AM · News
cricket fighting: shut the hell up, russell!
cricket fighting — yes, cricket fighting — has been a popular activity in china for thousands of years. they are the roy jones juniors of the insect world: they sing … and they kick ass!
09.22.2003, 11:35 PM · Observations, Sports · Comments (10)
drew barrymore fights crime in henan … and other news
Squad of Chinese “Charlie’s Angels” act as bait to nab rapists (news.yahoo.com)
Policewomen in central China’s Henan province are tossing aside their uniforms and donning high heels, mini skirts and low-cut blouses in hopes of luring and nabbing rapists. The women are part of a special squad of young, attractive female officers recently formed by the city of Zhengzhou’s police department to serve as bait for sex assailants. … “In the past, we had male police officers dress up as women. They thought women were too weak to perform such work. But the men were not very convincing,” Liu said.
09.15.2003, 9:35 PM · News · Comments (3)
so who is this smoky guy?
saw this printed on the front of a girl’s t-shirt over the weekend: from fuckin’ smoky
no idea.
09.15.2003, 9:26 PM · Humor
a man of letters
things i learned during my mid-autumn festival (the fifteenth day of the eighth month by the chinese lunar calendar … usually on or close to a full moon) dinner with professor xu — a dean in my department at shanghai university — and his family at xian heng restaurant on thursday night:
09.14.2003, 2:16 PM · Observations · Comments (2)
u.s. tour complete!
the final installment of pennsylvania photos takes you in and around philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. and fittingly, it starts off with photos of my college friends — brothers, of sorts — getting really, really drunk. and then you’ll see all that historic crap … and chinatown, of course. click here
then we head to montana — big sky country — where the big sky was full of smoke and my longtime friend justin married laura, who, by the way, hails from mongolia. (they met at montana state university, where they both are getting doctorate degrees in subjects far too complicated for normal folk like me.) expect to see lots of drunk people — do you see a trend? — and horses and mountains and bison and elk. took a side trip to yellowstone and the grand tetons. click here
for all of my not china photos, click here.
09.14.2003, 11:35 AM · Photos, Summer Tour 2003 · Comments (1)
keeping whitie down
my former student was excited to show me his new apartment. well, apartment may not be the best word. a junior, he still lives in a building owned by the university. he still calls it a dorm. but it’s outside campus — barely outside, mind you, but outside nonetheless — and gives him some feeling of independence. “no curfew,” he said to me proudly. no hot water, either, but he’ll take what he can get.
09.11.2003, 12:39 AM · Observations, School · Comments (3)
the name game
this dialogue may or may not have taken place at shanghai university this week:
student: she’s bringing one of her friends to the dinner. cute.
teacher: oh, so you like this girl? the friend.
student: no, that’s her name: cute.
ah yes, another semester, another slew of students with peculiar, yet priceless, english names.
a sampling of this year’s crop (in no particular order): chriss, lichee, viya, luvee, vitamin, even, shiny, bristol, pizzaro, sting, fanny, heero, vanilla, kurapica, luthy, viper, sunshine (a guy), geniala, quasar, spirits, threa, vicient, jeff (a girl), canoe, interne, mercury, fish, amigo, hill west, ice, vassili, stockton, napanee, mealing, castal, shirka, sin, nickel, seifer, ekin, manson, beryl and an inordinate number of girls named mavis and stella.
09.10.2003, 10:47 PM · Humor, School · Comments (11)
new york stories
“excuse me. could you please tell me how to get to chinatown from here,” i asked the young waiter at the italian restaurant.
“just walk that way,” he replied, pointing down a soho street. “um …”
he paused, and looked slightly troubled by what he was about to say.
” … keep going until you start to see lots of, um, chinese people. you’ll know when you are there.”
09.10.2003, 10:08 PM · Photos, Summer Tour 2003, Video
tooth pic
“we’d like to thank yao ming for loaning us his teeth for today’s demonstration.”
submit your caption! click the comments link below.
09.07.2003, 9:28 PM · Humor, Photos · Comments (1)
buy me some peanuts and … soy sauce rice crackers?
something almost made me drop my tsingtao on friday (i said almost). at a bar, i glanced at a television expecting to see beckham or billiards or some bad chinese drama where the guys sport shaved heads and ponytails. instead, i saw my beloved new york yankees take on the toronto blue jays. i was stunned — my first time watching baseball in mainland china.
09.07.2003, 5:10 PM · Observations, Sports · Comments (2)
from the “it’s about time” department …
hong kong declares war on smoking (smoking, on an extended vacation in shanghai, could not be reached for comment)
bush’s job approval rating goes down (meanwhile, queer eye for the straight guy ratings continue to soar)
09.07.2003, 4:45 PM · News
worth reading: the dark underside of china’s economy
from the New York Times …
HANGZHOU, China — Migrant workers are China’s untouchables. They are assumed to be behind every unsolved crime. They are the yokels on the street corners of every city, barely able to speak Mandarin Chinese, wide-eyed with fascination or fear.They are also the dark underside of China’s economic success, which has been marked by annual growth of 8 percent for more than a decade and exports to the United States growing so fast that they have surpassed Japan’s. In general these people are vulnerable, pliable, cheap to employ and easy to suppress.
click here for the entire story.
09.07.2003, 2:00 AM · News
worth reading: will china’s boom go bust?
from the New York Times …
GUANGZHOU, China, Sept. 3 — Looming through the gray smog of every big Chinese city these days, high above the incessant rattle of jackhammers, are the construction cranes, slowly swinging back and forth over huge steel and concrete boxes wrapped with fine lattices of bamboo scaffolding.The question here and across the country, though, is how much longer the cranes will stay busy, and with them an economy that is powering a big chunk of the world’s growth and terrifying trading partners from Tokyo to Washington to Brussels.
While this week’s visit by Treasury Secretary John W. Snow has focused attention on the value of China’s currency, the yuan, the worry in China is that the economy is overheating.
click here to read the rest.
09.07.2003, 1:54 AM · News
back to china, back to school, back to sleep
i’m 80 hours into my second stint in shanghai … and finally coherent enough to sit in front of my iBook without my head bobbing up and down as if sleep was controlling it with a string. i thought i had the jet lag cured when i went to bed at 8:30 monday night and didn’t wake up until 6 o’clock tuesday morning (i have been told that i spoke on the telephone for approximately 25 minutes at some point during the night — the details of the conversation remain a mystery to me), but i was wrong. after only a few hours of shuteye, i woke up at 5 a.m. today, and couldn’t get back to sleep. it’s hard to snooze when your body thinks it’s time for the evening news … and i don’t even watch the evening news. strange.
09.03.2003, 1:07 PM · Observations, School
DVDos and DVDon’ts
perhaps i was bored. more likely, i was procrastinating doing something that really mattered. but for whatever reason, in the days leading up to my return to shanghai, i organized and cataloged all the DVDs i purchased in china last year. there are almost 200 titles on the list. which means the entire collection cost less than $200. all of these discs were purchased on the black market (which is actually rather out in the open here), but their quality, for the most part, is very good — and they all worked on my DVD player in the USA.
09.03.2003, 1:00 PM · Movies, Observations · Comments (1)