Party Like It's 1949

China in the days leading up to National Day is getting a little crazy. It's the sixtieth anniversary, and the government is using this as another plank in their ongoing game to distract everyone from the man behind the curtain (See: Olympics). That is to say, it's going to be a huge event. I've heard that Beijing, where the main parade and political broo-ha-ha are all going to go down is absolutely insane. They've blocked off Chang'an Avenue for parade practice, and I kid you not, they told the people in the office blocks not to look out their windows for fear that people would spy on their preparations. They allegedly beat the crap out of some folks working for a Japanese news agency for just such a crime. They also told people who live around the area not to invite anyone over, not to leave their houses and to buy all the supplies they will need for a few days because the stores won't be open. Oh, and a friend of mine can't get chocolate gelato or Xinjiang raisins anymore.

In Shanghai, things seem quite a bit more laid back. I mean, sure there are flags everywhere, and it's clear there will be a big to-do here, but I think this is another way that Shanghai and LA are similar. Unless something directly affects Shangahinese folk they're not going to get worked up, and frankly, a lot of what I see seems more like going through the motions. That being said, the Mao Statue seems to be getting a cleanup, or something:


On a side note, it's worth noting that like most of these types of events, the government seems to be using it as an opportunity to test out systems of control and such. The best example of that is the new internet clusterfuck. Most of the domestic sites are still running smoothly (under massive censorship, self-imposed and otherwise, of course), but international sites are even more problematic than usual. I use a VPN to convince the internet that I'm in the US or the UK, which generally works just great, but now even that method is crapping out. The usual suspects, facebook, twitter, flickr, and the service I use to write this blog (basically think anything that people used to call web 2.0 - all the socially networked stuff), are naturally inaccessible without a VPN, but now, even a VPN isn't necessarily enough. Sometimes they're up, sometimes not. Sometimes Facebook is up, but Twitter isn't. And don't even get me started about the gymnastics you have to go through to post on twitter from a cell-phone.

Well, this was more of a whine than an update, but I'm trying to write more, so there you go :)

Nail House

Just a quick note to show off a couple of pictures of the little house that looks like it's getting torn down outside my window. They're doing construction everywhere here, and I'm sure there's a lot more to the story, but it seems that this house was completely surrounded and whoever was inside couldn't get through the construction to get in or out.

A couple of weeks ago, two flags popped up - one national, one CCP (I'm guessing - looks like a USSR flag, but without the empty star). The little banner on top (which reads "Give me back my road, I want to eat" - A possible nod to Yue Fei's 还我河山?) appeared sometime thereafter. Two days ago, the big painted characters (reading "Save me [Communist] Party") came up.



This morning, things look a bit different:



Flags and banner gone, slogan partially whitewashed away. It's interesting that whoever took care of this took particular care in getting rid of the character for Party.

The Lovely Minhang Campus

Well, I finally made it to the Minhang campus for today's classes.
It's nice if you go in for a North Korean aesthetic. That is to say
that it sits on a huge empty road, allows no cars inside to drive on
the huge empty roads inside and there seem to be very very few
students around to fill the yawning open spaces.

So, why am I tapping away on the blackberry instead of
happily/frantically sitting is class trying to understand Jameson in
Chinese? Good question. Another fun characteristic of the Minhang
campus, aside from being an hour and half outside the city and
completely soulless is that although they have the occasional map, the
maps don't seem to be, well, good. And although they have buildings,
the buildings aren't labeled or anything, so you can't tell which is
which unless you have a good map, so well... Alas.

Well, a missed class a missed first class too, a major harumph, but
not catastrophic in the grand scheme of things, I suppose. I did find
the library easily enough, so I should be able to plop myself down in
there and do some reading and editing while I wait for the afternoon
class, yes? Well, no. Turns out that you need your student I'd to
even get in. Need a visa to get an ID and I'm still waiting on my
visa, so I don't even have my passport on me.

So, sit out of one of the massive empty waste-land lawns and read maybe?

Ah. Just started to rain.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Dave Hull

Construction Outside My Window at Night

The Kitten Knows What You've Done.

Exercises I see in the Morning at the Park

• Strolling
• Jogging
  
• Walking backwards
• Walking forwards and clapping with each step
• shouting/laughing reeeeeeally loudly
• Taiji (surely it's just taiji and not any other more cultish practice :) )
• Rubbing against trees - generally back vs. tree, but I saw an old guy today that looked like... well, he looked like Baldy Li in Brothers
• Sword/Fan dancing

Might add more if I see any fun ones

The PSB and Me

So it turns out I'm not a liumang. See, a liumang is a wonderful catch-all term in Chinese that refers to anyone who is rootless and actively up to no good. It's usually translated as 'hooligan,' but it shouldn't be a surprise that that's not exactly it. Hooligan conjures up a European soccer nut who goes around and gets drunk and beats up supporters of other teams. That's included in the liumang, but there's also something a bit more sinister. Liumang is also what the government called people who need dealing with.

Anyway, that's not me. Here's how I know:

Now that I think about it, every time I've come to China in the past, I've been provided housing by the folks who invited me. The school where I taught, then a couple school where I attended class, they all handled the housing bit. I never really thought much about it, but it's not too surprising that the government here is very interested in knowing where all of it's foreigners are, and beforehand, this wasn't a problem because there were offices of folks tell them where I was.

Well, that's all changed. Now that I've moved into my new digs which aren't part of any institution, I needed to register myself at the local Public Security Bureau (PSB - basically, it's the police station). No worries, should be fun - but when I get there, they ask me where I'd been staying before. Well, the guest house at Fudan. Can you prove that? Well, no. Then there might be a problem.

I want to break in here and add a little color. The guy who I had been talking to was really nice and chatted me up in a very friendly way, so there wasn't any friction there, but there was trouble brewing in the waiting room. When I came in there was a young and very pretty girl sitting on a bench. not too long after a really ratty looking guy came in and they exchanged a few sharp words in Shanghainese. loooooong pause. more snappy back and forth. loooooooonger pause. He moves over to the bench and sits next to her. She immediately moves further away and he scoots next her again. She stands up and moves away. Then they really go at it for awhile. More uniforms show up and hover, but don't intervene. One office taps his pen on the desk trying to get the ratty man's attention.

I didn't get to see the rest of the episode, because my friend suggested that if I have time, I should go upstairs and talk with another officer about my problem. He seemed a bit uncomfortable and asked me if I understood Shanghainese. I said no and he smiled slightly. I went upstairs.

The interview seemed a bit odd. The gist of things was that they needed documentation saying where I lived before coming to their neck of the woods. Without that, I would be fined based on how long I was off-grid. In my case, over thirty days and thus 500 yuan (~$73). What proof would suffice? Well, they were supposed to give me a receipt when I left the guest house. Not a receipt for money but an official one saying that I as a foreigner stayed at a hotel that is allowed to house foreigners and all was well.

Oh, that receipt.

See, They asked me if I wanted one of those and I wasn't really sure why I would. I never needed one in the past, so I said no thanks.

Whoops.

So if I could go rush back to the guest house and get them to give me a copy of that receipt and get it back to them today by the close of business, all would be hunky dory. It made for a long trip, but the reception folks remembered me and took pity. they dug through files and files and a paper bag full of files and eventually one women when upstairs to look through god-knows-what, but they found the slip of paper, and handed it over with a smile.

A much relieved thank you, a cab and a light-rail trip later and I was back at the PSB. My friend who I dealt with yesterday was there and we laughed at the absurdity of it all. We chatted about elections in the US and isn't it funny that we've got an actor as a governor and a good time was had by all.

He typed in my info and now I'm a legitimate resident in my happy little corner of Shanghai.

I asked someone what the opposite of a liumang was in order to find out what I've become and the answer was a wenmingren - a civilized person. Well, I wouldn't go that far.