scruta

Haphazardly, I wandered through the industrial outcrops of the city,

Strange avenues of weaved concrete binding hovels and factories,

Racing motor-machines, harbingers of this world in violent transition.

Then this long, pedestrian underpass, maybe just a place the planners forgot.

Women walk their infants here, far from the roar of scooters and clinky-clank bicycles muscling for a space between giant rigs and huff-and-puff taxis.

Is this the peace they hoped for? That they were promised so many times? This palisade in a jungle of concrete?

Under the belly of the overpass, rows of billiard tables lie dormant, tended by a lowly refuse wheeler, stacking his newest crop of waste sky high.

I stop to look, and so does he.

I’m too embarrassed to ask if my camera offends him.

He’s too confused to tell me that it does.

When you see an alien on the moon, you don’t question his motives.

Some club somewhere is being opened or shut.

A bunch of intrepid souls who framed their ideas of decadence in fuzzy, feathered sofas with oversized backings. Angel Bar. Heaven. Paradise. Club Fur. Dreamzone.

It’s all on hold now. Welcome to the Sidewalk Lounge.

A dirt road leading to another part of the city.

Monoliths radiating a sense of progress, renaissance, prosperity. The future.

I follow the road instinctively, as if someone had whispered the way in my dreams.

A slagheap comes into vision on the right. Junked car parts. Gritty slips of plastic sheeting. Eviscerated wrappers.

Reeds from a curdling estuary frame it. Taunt it with unhesitating passivity. As if desperately trying to overcome it with a whisper. Finding it unwilling to budge.

The wall nearby is riddled with numbers scrawled in desperate commerce. The vestiges of people on the road to progress, waylaid by the necessity of achieving their visions, leaving only refuse in their wake.

Another heap on the left. More masonry in the mix of insulation, carpet, and rubber tubing swirled in a conglomeration warped by myopic motives. Like a movie fashioned by advertising executives looking for exposure, but forgetting forethought, forgetting art. Self-serving garbage.

Above the walls of ivy leaves, cranes are busy hoisting new heights of concrete and reenforced steel to this land near the end of the road. A vision of order that rose from the junkyard. Or is going there.

Looking back from the cranes towards the road to the skyscrapers, there’s a sudden thought that maybe I’ve gotten time all wrong.

The future’s here with flotsam. Skyscrapers are dreams of the past.

I was sitting on the metro coming home from an extended tour of a bar in Pudong, when I began thinking about China, and people like Gao Chuancai, a true freedom fighter in the Chinese hinterland who risks his life daily for justice, threatening the livelihood of his entire family in the process. His fearlessness in the face of authority is astounding, and to most Chinese sheer insanity.

A time ago I remember being in Chinese class discussing how Western culture was different than Chinese culture. I remember commenting that Western culture values madness, but due to my limited skills I was unable articulate myself well at the time. Confusing, and possibly insulting my teacher. Even when I switched to English, I still found it hard to explain my intuition. What I think I meant was that I thought the West values the activist as an archetype. Whether you think they are loonies or no, activists are an accepted figure on the fringe of our society. In China, this isn’t so. Gao Chuancai is an example of how this is changing.

Just as I was thinking all of this, a fat, slovenly looking man walked into my car on the train and began barking at all the people in Chinese. Most of them looked generally annoyed, and gave him no notice. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, and to be honest, I didn’t try very hard. He struck me as a bum, asking for money. However, as he began to pass me in the car, he stopped speaking in Chinese and began speaking to me in polished English:

Hello sir! Let me introduce myself. I am the fat man on the metro who speaks out against corruption. [As he said this, and everytime he said he was “the fat man on the metro” he slapped his belly.] I go around on the metro lines telling people to stand with me, and declare they will fight with me to work for a more harmonious and free society. I know that if I stand alone, then they will come for me, and will probably kill me. However, if we stand together, then there is nothing that they can do. Let everyone know about the fat man on the metro and tell them to come and stand with me.

It was at this point that I asked him what his name was. He said simply, “I am the fat man on the metro.”

I stood and shook his hand.

At that point, the train stopped, and he quickly moved to another car and began all over again. I sat back down and realized:

I’m not the one he has to convince. Somehow I was already with him before he started talking. But all the Chinese people on the metro around me, were they?

Here’s another account of “the fat man on the metro.”

Here he is at other moments (in Chinese):

(Please hold on a second.)

There is a great, immediate, yet inaudible commotion on the phone before Ferret can even speak.

A minute passes. Ferret is frustrated, finding himself unable to express himself. Someone picks up the phone.

喂。
(Hello.)

Ferret
喂，你好。我教一个相机。

Event #1 – 红包 (Hongbao, i.e. a red envelope full of money):

Ferret
So it was pretty cool how I got to go to a party for work today.

Roo
Oh yeah, what was it?

Ferret
This crazy juggling competition.

Roo
Wow. It was good?

Ferret
Real good. Best part was that they paid me to go. Check it out.

[Shows Roo.]

Roo
Wow. Who gave you money?

Ferret
The people at the event. They said they’d pay me to be there. Gave it to me in this red envelope and everything.

Roo
Ferret, that’s like bribe.

Ferret
No way. I didn’t promise them anything. They said they’d pay me to come, so I did.

Roo
No, that’s how it works, you know? They think you will write about them.

Ferret
No way.

Event #2: 红包回来 (Hongbao Returns)

Ferret
[on phone]
Yes, I spoke to Oldengib… No, there’s no way I can write about it. I’m sorry.

Oldengib
What’s going on? Who keeps calling you?

Ferret
Well, this girl from the juggling contest keeps calling me to ask me if I can put something in the magazine.

Oldengib
The one you went to last week.

Ferret
Yeah, it was cool. They paid me money to go. Gave it to me in this red envelope.

Oldengib
Oh, I see. You shouldn’t have done that. That’s the sneaky way they do it here.

Ferret
Do what?

Oldengib
Give you a bribe.

Ferret
Oh.

Oldengib
It’s all right. You didn’t know. In the future, just remember if someone offers to pay you to come, or slips money in your press packet, don’t take it. If we do, then we get calls like this, and get wrapped up in the custom of bribing journalists that they have here.

Ferret
Oh.

Event #3: 萄皮男孩子 (A Naughty Boy)

Ferret sits in a cab on his way to watch people pour vodka in new and improved ways. The cab is stuck in traffic, and he feels both tired and frustrated. He’s not sure it’s possible for anyone to pour vodka in a new or improved way, and even if they could, he thinks it would probably be entirely convoluted in its execution, Rube Goldberg style, or would produce a drink that was so revolting that even the fact it was free would do little to help its reputation. It’s been a long day, and the Shanghai craze is getting to him. They are almost at his destination down on the Bund, and the street is packed not only with cars, but scooters, bicycles, men with push carts stacked to at least 3m, and small children weaving in and out of the mess. Seemingly unable to withstand the hubbub, the window next to Ferret shatters.

The cabdriver immediately scrambles out of the cab and runs away. Ferret doesn’t know what to do. The driver has left his door open, but that has not prevented cars behind the car from doing their best to edge by. He looks to the sidewalk and sees that his taxi driver has apprehended the cause of the shattering. A little boy about 8 years old with a slingshot. His mother is there now, and she’s got a look on her face that says, “It’s time to pay.”

The driver scrambles back, and settles the bill with Ferret. He walks to the event thinking that today couldn’t get anymore surreal than the Chinese reincarnation of Dennis the Menace.

Event #4: Things Get More Surreal than a Chinese Dennis the Menace

Apparently, this is how you sell vodka.

“SECURITY has been tightened further on Metro lines ahead of the Olympic football matches to be held at Shanghai Stadium.

Four X-ray machines, eight detectors of toxic chemicals and four machines to screen for explosives will check passengers near the two Olympic venues, Dai Min, director of Shanghai Metro Police, said yesterday.

“Each large bag is being examined and smaller bags will be inspected at random,” Dai said…”

– “Metro tightens bag screening to secure safety at Olympics,” Shanghai Daily, 2008-07-29

Ferret
I think I might have snubbed the Shanghai police.

Roo
Really?

Ferret
Yeah, I walked into this metro station, and I saw this security guard standing next to a table. It was a little strange so I looked at it rather oddly. The security guard noticed I was looking, smiled really big, and proudly proclaimed “Security Check Here!” I had no idea if he wanted me to show him what was in my bag, or if he was just damn proud of his security checkpoint/table. Given his tone, it seemed to be the latter. However, I’ve never had anyone in my life say something to me like that. Not knowing what to do I just smiled, and slowly walked through the turnstile into the subway as if nothing had happened. I really hope I didn’t ruin his day, or piss him off.

Roo
Maybe the police will arrest you now.

Ferret
Man, I hope not.

I took the following picture today of this massive drill at work building a new subway station underneath Century Avenue in Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai. It’s unclear to me what the machine was doing, but it was only partially partitioned from public scrutiny, so were I do dare to go in for a closer inspection, there would be no problem.

Incidentally, I didn’t go in for a closer inspection. Well, that’s not entirely true. I got close enough to see that everything was in order, or at the very least, the guy running the thing wasn’t worried.

Maybe I should have been…

Roo
You see those people sleeping in the street?

Ferret
Yeah, they’re so many of them.

Roo
You know about them? They are so poor.

Ferret
Yeah, we have lots of homeless people in America, but not like this.

Roo
Oh, they’re not homeless people. They have a house.

Ferret
What?

Roo
Yeah! You didn’t know that?

Ferret
No.

Roo
Yeah, they are just so poor they have no air conditioning. They’ll sleep outside for coolness. They don’t care.

Roo
Why did he take this highway? I don’t understand.

Ferret
It’s faster this late at night.

Roo
Not now, we are in traffic jam. It’s one in the morning.

Ferret
I know, but usually it’s faster, besides we’re at the next exit. We’ll get off soon, you’ll see. It’ll go fast.

Roo
This takes forever.

[They pause for a moment.]

Ferret
You know how my place is right next to this big tunnel where people are always getting into accidents?

Roo
Yes, I know.

Ferret
Why do they always get into these big crowds and just watch? I don’t understand.

Roo
Well, don’t you do that? I mean, come on, if you see something then you know…

Ferret
I mean sometimes I do, but it’s never a form of entertainment. If no one’s hurt, then what can I do? Why would I just want to stop and stare? Although in America they always talk about people rubbernecking, you know?

Roo
Rubberneck?

Ferret
Yeah, it’s a person who slows down when they’re driving to see the accident.

Roo
So it’s same, just like America. You both stop to look.

Ferret
I guess. Except no cars. It never felt like I was taking up so much time though. Maybe I’m just used to be in cars, and not on foot.

Roo
When is traffic jam going to end? 司机! (driver!)

” The worst blogs about China are written by adoptive parents on a baby run, boozed up immature party animals congregated in Shanghai, and washed up failures teaching English in the PRC because they can’t get jobs back in their own countries. These bloggers are usually short-timers in China without a clue and don’t have any real insights worth reading. For the most part, their blogs are started upon first arriving in China. Undistinguished, unimaginative, and lacking any originality, the blogs soon die from apathy. “

– The China Tattler

The group was at one of the typical Shanghai patios, drinking ourselves into a stupor before sauntering off to a night of debauchery at some club, leaving nothing but the bitter taste of trite sarcasms and idiocy in our wake. We called for more drinks, prattling our ill-formed Chinese sentences, still too self-conscious about the rise and fall of our voices, sounding like Tourette’s cases attacking our wide-eyed hostesses. Someone proudly gave this peroration:

Someone
The Chinese have a lack of creativity. The people have no spirit. It’s all but been destroyed by the Communist Party and the Cultural Revolution.

Ferret
Please define what creativity is.

Someone Else
Here comes Ferret playing the devil’s advocate again.

Ferret
No, I’d genuinely like to know because as far as I can tell the only thing our “creativity” has given us is more bars and clubs.

And Yet Someone Else
Are you serious? What about democracy and human rights? Individualism?

Ferret
It’s unclear if they’ve been all that productive. I don’t want to be entirely skeptical. I’m all for democracy, transparency of government, and individualism, but we, sitting right here, sure as hell don’t seem to be taking advantage of it. Being more affluent or having more rights doesn’t make you any more interesting or free of a person. In fact, I’ve met a lot of Chinese people who I think are a lot more authentic than me and a lot of foreigners I know here. Most foreigners I meet in Shanghai are just tourists, whether they are doing business or not. China is not their home, and they have no intention of making it one, lost souls without a purpose, looking to exploit the market, the laborers, the women and yes, all the jiu-ba’s.

Somebody
Look, man. We’re trying to have a good time. I’ve been teaching class all day. Let’s not get all philosophical here. There’s no need.

Somebody Else
Come on, Ferret. Stop trying to be all clever. I can see you posting something like this on your blog, and posting me saying you’d post it.

And Yet Somebody Else
Oh, that’s deep shit, going all meta.

Somebody Else
Oh, I know!

Ferret
Of course when I post you saying that you’d say that I’d post it, then where the hell are we?

Somebody Else
So then you’re posting that you’re saying that you’d post saying that I’d say you’d post this in your blog?

Ferret
I’d say we’re at the point of no return.

Somebody
Will you guys please talk about something interesting? You sound like babbling idiots talking about nothing.

Ferret
Drinks?

And Yet Somebody Else
[yelling far too loudly]
服务员!
Waitress!