Hangzhou Lovin’

Well seeing as how I won 2 awards on the sinosplice network awards because this site rocks so much, I must thank my gracious host John at sinosplice. he will be missed when he moves away.

My first award is for Most Typographically Nonconformist which rules cause it totally represtns attitude i take toward spelling. Cause speliing is just a social construction, know what I mean? Who is to say that a thing with lots of pages and words in it should be spellid Book, dude it could totally be spelled bouck. You gotta twist social conventions, you know freak people out.

But what’s up with Most Unaware of the Theme of His Own Blog. Casuse dude i am totally awayre of the theme of my blog and i will spell it out for y’all right here.

“The unstated, (until now), theme of this blog is a collection of amusing anecdotes about my adventures in China written in a “stream of conciousness style” (pioneered by william fauklner), all done in a style which is a “pastiche” reminicent of a modern day youth with his affectations of blackness, of southerness, of asianness all in an attempt to cover up the blank hole in the middle of sole, (a style that is one of the hallmarks of early postmodern works), a style that is punctuated by ral world events that bring this uraban youth back to life, but still is it not ironic that these real life events have taken on the form of “entertainment,” whose quest fills ihs lonely hours. This is all done with a punk rock attitude, and when I say punk rock I don’t mean straight edge no talent whiney bitches, but hard core no talent smack heads whose names I don’t need to know because that would make me some kind of pussy “punk rock affcionado” instead of someone who is out there living the life (besides punk music sucks); All this combined with a true and honest love for Kittens.”

That my friends is the simple theme of little website we like to call 杭州做爱. i don’t really know where john got so confused.

Cool

I’ll help it out a bit

The miserable failure

I can’t support Dennis Kucinich because I am of the “any body but bush” persuasion, and DK is a damn long shot. But you gotta love a guy that come up with powerful ads like this.

Kucinich ‘04!

This is a rather disgusting article about Bush’s contempt for the iraqi people and his love for the Saudi theocracy

“We are talking about something called “sovereign debt.” And unless George Bush has finally ‘fessed up and named himself Pasha of Iraq, he is not their sovereign. Mr. Bush has no authority to seize control of that nation’s assets nor its debts.

But our President is not going to let something as trivial as international law stand in the way of a quick buck for Mr. Baker. To get around the wee issue that Bush has no legal authority to mess with Iraq’s debt, the White House has crafted a neat little subterfuge. The official press release says the President has not appointed Mr. Baker. Rather Mr. Bush is “responding to a request from the Iraqi Governing Council.” That is, Bush is acting on the authority of the puppet government he imposed on Iraqis at gunpoint.“

I went out and bought me a tree. She’s a looker that’s for sure and if i understood the chinese guy who sold it to me she will have flowers by april.

But understanding the tree seller was a major problem. I finally got off my lazy ass and went down to the plant market with my compradres. More exactly we went to the 金花鸟市场　the golden flower and bird market. This plass lived up to it’s rather grand name. There were rows upon rows of plants, i didn’t really know what any of it was, cept the orange trees, cause they had oranges on them. but Luckily carl’s friend was in from the states and he was a fount of plant knowledge, I was very glad to have him along, it made me smarter.

The plants were also cheap as whore in a the 金小姐自行车市场 (that’s the golden whore and bicycle market, they got markets for everything here in China!) A three foot orange tree could be had for 40 kuai, about 5 bucks, a 6 foot bamboo grove or a delicate orcid for the same price. Supposedly the natives can get ‘em even cheaper, but hey you got to pay your laowai tax.

They also had a bunch of cool ass bonsai. Now these weren’t the best specimes as they had kinda tacky sapes and most of them had the wires left on to long, but the were big old and cheap. Just look at the gnarls in the trunk of my baby. She’s about 3 feet high and probably was planted by mao himself!

I hate bargaining, and buying this tree was a prime example of why. First we walked around the whole market to get an idea of the selection and the prices. This one guy seemed very happy to talk to us and said he would give us a special deal ’cause we were americans. But usually that means about fifty times what everybody else pays.

I like his trees the best so i go in to talk to him and pick one out. he starts talking fast about the plants, i catch that th ones with smaller leafs are more expensive, you have to keep some plants outside and that some of the plants are decidous. But i’m a little wary because in China you are always told to assume someone is trying to screw you over and talking fast to confuse the foriegner.

When you bargain in China it’s generally along these lines

Laowai: How much for this fake north face hat?

Bootleg hat vender: 500 kuai

laowai: hahaha

Bootleg hat vender: feel it it’s real cashmere!

Laowai: I’ll give you 10 kuai

Bootleg hat vender: hahaha, you insult me, I need to make money here, look look it’s real cashmere

laowai: (starts waling away)

Bootleg hat vender: Ok ok, I’ll give it to you for 20

laowai: 15

Bootleg hat vender: ok 15 (sells hat)

Chinese person: How much for the hat?

Bootleg hat vender: 10

Chinese person: I’ll give you 5

Bootleg hat vender: ok

After having to many of these experiances i am rather jaded and i didn’t trust the guy selling me the tree, plus it was getting drak and i didn’t want to have to go through the ordeal of bargaining. So he offers me a price, i thought he said 280. i only had about 240 on me and i needed a cab ride home, so I tried to bargain him down to 150. After this he got very frustrated with me, I couldn’t figure out what he was saying so i asked if 200 would be ok?

then carl walks up and he looks at carl, points at me and says “听不懂 (dosn’t understand) He then clarifies to carl that the asking price for the tree was 180, not 280. In all my apprhension about having to bargain, i had totally misheard what the guy had said. The main seemed a little embarrsed about all this and in the end gave me the tree for 150 even though I tried to pay him 180.

The moral of the story is that bargaining is stupid because : One, it is a waiste of time, just tell me the damn price so I don’t have to argue with you for five minutes. Two, it makes me hate people, Three, I often inadvertantly insult people by asking ridiculously low prices.

Why everybody, except rich greedy bastards should hate bush

“All this is in keeping with the recent pattern of Republican governance. Last year, the Associated Press conducted a remarkable study showing how federal spending patterns had changed since the GOP took over Congress in 1995. Republicans did not shrink federal spending, it found, they merely transferred it, from poorer Democratic districts to wealthier Republican ones. This, the A.P. reported, “translates into more business loans and farm subsidies, and fewer public housing grants and food stamps.” In 1995, Democratic districts received an average of $35 million more in federal largesse than Republican districts, which seems roughly fair given that Democratic districts have more people in need of government aid. By 2001, the gap had not only reversed, it had increased nearly twentyfold, with GOP districts receiving an average of $612 million more than Democratic ones. Justifying this shift, then- Majority Leader Dick Armey said, “To the victor goes the spoils.” It would be a worthy slogan for Bush’s reelection campaign. “

Carl’s site is really great! for me to poop on!

Fareed Zakaria has a good peice contradting Hu Jintao and GW.

“What is most dismaying about this state of affairs is that for the past 50 years the United States has skillfully merged its own agenda with the agendas of others, creating a sense of shared interests and values. When Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy waged the Cold War, they also presented the world with a constructive agenda dealing with trade, poverty and health. They fought communism with one hand and offered hope with the other. We have fallen far from that model if the head of the Chinese Communist Party is seen as presenting the world with a more progressive agenda than the president of the world’s leading democracy.”

I would go further and say that on many issues the Chinese are much more progressive than the short sighted american politicians. For example, the Chinese just added a fuel economy measure to theire cars that is much stricter than the american one; it actually applies to minivans and SUVs. The Chinese actually seem conserned about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, while americans celebrate.

It really is a sorry time for american democracy.

trying to make a new chinese language blog, to practice my chinese, but all my attempts are failing. i’m not really sure whats going wrong, all the setting are the same as this blog and blogger says it is publishing succesfully. All that shows up is a lone profanity…

I want to start the blog cause i waste so much time n the internet that i figure if I keep the editor open to the blog and type stuf in when I feel guilty about not studying chinese. The ability to immdiatly acces it is good for someone with as little discipline as myself.

One thing I’m curious is what is the best way to type chinese. The ideal would be one wear you type in the pin yin and it predicts words for you a la the t-9 text input in my cell phone. I don’t know how to use all the input methds on my computer so maybe i already have something like this.

I’ve been feeling a lot of nostalgia lately fr my time back in the central province of henan, when I lived in the smal twn of Xin Xiang (pop 700,00). I have mixed feelings about the place, I am more comfortable and like my job better here in hang Zhou and I don’t really want to go back.

But I just can’t stp a naggin feeling that my time in Xin Xiang was more Chinese. I went out to more banquets then, where I was frced to eat way to much and drink baijiu, I nver really liked these things usually because there would only be one person who could speak engliah there, usually a middle aged teacher and we could never really get beyond small talk. but for some reason i still find myself looking back on them foundly and wondering why we never have any of that here. I even wnder why we don’t have more contact with or school administrators, even though I hated that back in henan.

The way I probably got most immerssed in Chinese culture back in Henan was working at an english school that was located on the top of a cafe where all the ex pats hung out. It was such an immersin into chinese culture for two reasons; First I had t negotiate my pay in what ended up being a very painful way that left all parties feelin bad. That negotation was the start of my intense dissatisfaction with the school I was wrking at, (they tried to take money off f my already low pay, and the realisation never t mix business and pleasure, or at least drinking and pleasure. She would always come up to me in the middle of drinking with friends and try to gulit trip me into teaching more classes for her damn school. I hear that to this day she still badmouthes me to her back.

the other way that I got in touch to chinese culture was that i tauht a class of adults there. These people always wanted to take me out to eat, I must have ended up eating hotpot at least two times a week. the thing is these people where annoying as all fuck. But I still et a little nostalgic thinking about going out and sitting grumpily around a hot pot table pretending not to understand chinese will orging myself, and then astonishing everybody when i show them that I understand what lao wai means.

Maybe the real reason I am nostalgic is that i don’t o n enough crazy adventures any more. I used to have crazy shit happen t me all the time. Like when I met a couple f guys at the bar and i tried to get home, but i forot where I lived, or when I met this other guy and after he fucked something up with his boss he tried to get me a hooker, or when I asked my new found chinese friend to take me to met here friends and they just ended up being a bunch of whores palying majohg. i think i got into so many strange situations because i didn’t know anybdy, so i usually went out alone, and it is pretty easy for a lone laowai to attract crazy shit in china (groups of laowai tends to scare people away). This stuff wasn’t always fun, but it was intersting. I could take it or leave it now days.

I think the thing i really miss is the feeling of ownership i had toward Xin Xiang. part of it was that there wasn’t many other friegners there, but more important i think was that i had a real feel for the city. i knew the streets because i biked along them every day. hell sometimes i even took a the 5 minute walk from my place t downtown. i loved biking home late at night, when the pollution actually made the city a little magical. just me and the mirant workers eating baozi ant late night stands. riding through hazy streets, the smell is what comes back. A winter smell mixed with burnign coal. I really liked it.

Check out my archinves I fixed em and there are a few good things in there that stand the test of time pretty well.

Myself strolling through the archives I find this quote that I’d quite forgotten about, by the esteemed K C Rehm.

“Note, asian girls don’t neccessarily know what cooties are or that when i say i don’t want your disease, I wasn’t serious. Cause in truth I want your disease, baby. I want your disease hard, in the face.”

words to live by no doubt.

*the bloody “o” and “g” keys are sticking, pain in the ass