My Electric Toothbrush

Posted by Chuck Vose Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:50:00 GMT

Firstly I’d like to thank Panasonic for making such and excellent toothbrush as the Sonicare. Not only has it lasted almost an entire month without needing a charge, it’s also really good at what it does. Secondly, I’d like to thank Mitch Hedberg for giving me the humor to realize that like many electricity driven mechanical devices (escalators, toothbrushes,... okay that’s really it), when they break they still work for their original purpose.

This brings me to an excellent point: in America if an escalator was broken it would be roped off so that nobody could mistake it and stand there for an hour getting mad about their lack of movement. In China, except at Wal-mart (big surprise really), not only do people still use dead escalators, any efforts to rope them off would be ignored. The only thing that seems to stop people from using dead escalators is a huge blockade of shopping carts which can’t be navigated around. I’m still unclear whether this blockade was created by confused customers or employees.

(For background, the escalators at Wal-mart are inclined planes with some sort of attachment mechanism for carts so you don’t have to hold them all the way up or down the escalator. We’re unclear about how this works but I’m theorizing that it could have been confused customers trying to get up the escalator then getting their cart stuck on it, panicking, and ditching the cart for a nearby one and sneaking off into the shadows hoping any of the thousand people around them didn’t notice their snafu. Of course it could have been employees too but that’s much less amusing.)

Okay, so escalators and blockades: check. No wait, one more story about electric walls. It’s a little hard to explain the Chinese fascination with electric walls but I’ve come to believe that there is a deep-seated desire to surround yourself with glass or metal cages that beep at you when you’re too heavy, holding the doors open, or just because a beep is necessary. Usually the beeps are polite but sometimes the makers of the cages are more creative and build in a horrible wail or a screeching buzz just for added effect. In essence, I spend probably 2/3 of my travel time walking by/through, or riding in a very cramped metal cage that likes to beep, buzz, or wail at me at random moments. I think it will probably be one of the things I miss most when I go back to the states because there is nothing that keeps you on your toes quite the same way. Today I’m going to the fabric market with a friend. I’m excited to see how the whole thing works though I lack the money to actually purchase anything at the moment until my paychecks come in the mail (crosses fingers).

I’m also going to start carrying around a little book to write down my realizations when I’m around town. I have lots of things to blog about but usually by the time I’m home they’ve all been forgotten. So instead I write about my electric toothbrush which is the only interesting thing I’ve seen in the last 20 minutes.

So yeah, in case you were wondering, things are going well. I’m broke but that will hopefully be fixed soon and my sister is coming to visit me on March 27th so I’m very happy. But of course this means that if you want her to bring something back you should put in your orders now. :)

Wishing you all well!

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Sirens in Shanghai

Posted by Chuck Vose Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:07:00 GMT

Last night I heard protesters outside my building. Or at least I thought I did. It was typically windy and traffic was going crazy like normal when I heard megaphones blaring Chinese phrases repeatedly. Of course my Chinese roommate didn’t bat an eye. When I asked what the megaphones were saying he listened closely for a bit and said, “Ah, it’s just a reminder to be careful and turn off your gas and electricity when you go to sleep”.

I’m in a fucking weird place indeed.

I think there are pheromones in the water too. Everyone in the program has just come to the realization that they aren’t going to get laid for four months at least. Those that broke up with their SOs are hunting like mad and those that didn’t are reminiscing about their old favorite sport in part just to see the wide-eyed expressions of the Chinese roommates. They do not talk about sex at dinner but that seems to be all the the Americans talk about at any point in the day. I’ve tried to explain the situation but I think things are getting lost in translation.

So here I am, thinking about my lady, in my living room, in the dark, eating candy and posting my thoughts on a blog that I happen to know attracts very few views. But I’m not sure that I would trade it for the alternative of sitting at home in the dark blogging about absolutely nothing. :P

Week 1—Check

So week 1 has come and gone and I’m exhausted. Naturally, like the young whipper-snappers that they are, everyone has decided to go out to a bar that’s cave themed. One the one hand I want to go because I’m sure it will be a blast but on the other hand I’m feeling exhausted and depressed and basically just want to drown my sorrows in beer at the local “pub”.

Enough pity-fest, let me tell you all about what I learned this week. I’ve learned that Chinese people are easy to surprise and that direct translation of silly American phrases into Chinese just leaves everyone in the dust. They assume, “Penguins are sometimes eaten by Lions” must have been a mistake. All I wanted to do was make the class slightly more amusing but I think all I succeeded at was getting Chinese dictionaries banned from class.

That is of course all an exaggeration. Dictionaries haven’t been banned and I couldn’t even begin to say that sentence, but I would like to. For now I have to satisfy myself with, “I am a lion” and make the appropriate clawing pantomime for clarity. Chen lao shi thinks this is just about the funniest thing in the world and sometimes I’m worried that she has fainted on her podium until she finally wipes the tears from her eyes and breathes again.

Ah! I’m developing a test also. It’s called “n ways to determine whether you’re in a polluted city or not”. Maybe not the best title but it seems fitting. I think if you answer yes to more than about n/2 you’re probably in Shanghai or its equivalent. If you answer more than about 2n/3 you’re probably in Beijing or the equivalent. Or maybe it’s just fucking foggy where you are. With that I present:

N ways to determine whether you’re in a polluted city or not!

  1. Do you have to brush the roof of your mouth in order to remove soot?
  2. When you wipe your face with a refreshing wet towel does it come away slightly blackened even though you do this at every meal?
  3. Do people wear face masks when they traverse traffic?
  4. Can you see the tops of buildings?
  5. Can you see stars?
  6. Can you see your own hand in front of you?
  7. Is the tap water drinkable or do you have to fear growing breasts or becoming infertile if you drink it?
  8. Can you find exhaust pipes laying beside the street on occasion or have the junk sellers already picked them up? Okay, that was just an exercise really. Some of those are actually true of Shanghai though which is a little weird and worrisome. I hate to think what the inside of me looks like right now; can’t get at that with a refreshing towel. I’ve tried though. Oh how I’ve tried.

Okay, I hungry. I’m going to go try to order some food now. Wish me luck.

PS. I don’t proofread this before I post and I’m usually exhausted. Please forgive my spelling errors.

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First Days in Shanghai

Posted by Chuck Vose Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:03:00 GMT

Program Description

The most common question I received when I decided to come to China was about the structure of the program. A close second was what was Fudan University like. Naturally, being the lazy ass that I am I couldn’t answer these questions but I am now prepared to state that I got lucky as hell.

Fudan is a fantastic college. Fantastically huge campus at least. We saw an aerial model of the thing and at 1:1000 scale it takes up about 100 sqft; that’s more than a good apartment in Shanghai. I believe that you would need a bike or taxi to get from one end to another. But it is also fantastically beautiful though probably not quite as beautiful as my first college. We have our own floor in the 25-story Guang Hua building with safe drinking fountains (!) and a little zen garden for smoking. I think that you have to work pretty hard to convince people to smoke outside here, so we get a zen garden.

The program is structured like you would expect any good uni to be, we have 12 credit hours of Chinese per week with 1.5 credit hours of Culture and 1.5 hours of Politics or Economics. We are taught by graduate students who are very, very young. I have been assured that by the end of the year 2/3 of them will have hooked up with their students at least once. Lacking this option to get ahead however I will rely on petty bribery and hard work to get good grades.

Outside of the language class there are some other learning periods that I haven’t experienced yet as we are just entering our second day. Something about a language lunch and some 1-on-1 time but I’m never quite clear which things are for just the intensive program and which apply to me. The Alliance has been miserable about organizing this aspect, nobody has any idea which classes they’re in and up until yesterday probably half of us hadn’t signed up for a class.

There are also 2 divisions of classes, intensive and cultural. The cultural program is more about learning some Chinese as well as experiencing as much as possible. The intensive program is a little crazy; they spend something like 20 hours doing Chinese and are required to take a language pledge that they will not speak any other languages during the semester under penalty of being suspended. I am extremely glad that I didn’t decide to do this because I would be very lonely for a long time. Naturally, this aspect of the program was documented nowhere on the website that I saw.

Big Man in Little Korea

My biggest fear about traveling to China was that I had a 10-ish hour layover in Incheon Korea so that I would arrive in China at a reasonable hour in the morning instead of getting to the airport at 3am. But what the hell do you do in an airport for 10-ish hours? The Internet yielded no interesting ideas to me and the thought of taking a cab into the city was appealing but very expensive; the nearest hostel was 1.5 hours away by taxi so would have been quite expensive.

So I did what anyone would do, I decided to just meditate on the problem until it fixed itself for me; this took about 10 minutes until I realized that I was sitting in the same row as Becca and Dan Lanaghan from UPS. They live in Seoul. Why didn’t I think of this?! Fortunately we hadn’t spoken in about 3 years so we had enough to keep us talking for the entire 14 hour flight. It did make me realize that I really don’t stay caught up with facebook nearly well enough.

They have new kitties. Oh man it was sweet. It’s hard to be mad about getting woken up in the middle of the night when it’s because a kitten is weaseling their way under the covers with you. God damn I’m such a cat lady.

After a long sleep Dan and Becca taxied me to the bus stop where I promptly realized that I couldn’t read the signs and had no idea when to expect the bus. I ended up waiting for about 50 minutes panicking silently that I didn’t know how many buses I was missing that would take me to the right place. Turns out that I hadn’t missed a single one but had arrived about 3 minutes after the bus I was supposed to catch. Luckily a fellow showed up with luggage like my own and I decided to follow him to the airport. As it turned out he also spoke very good English so we chatted the whole time about the Internet, Korea, and business. And like all the Asians that have shaken my hand so far he wanted to hold my hand for a surprisingly long time.

Oh, when I say bus I actually mean multi-passenger limousines. They’re really damn sweet. No jacuzzi but it does have reclining cushy seats and plenty of room for luggage. They cost about 13k won which I believe is about $13 though it may be less now that the Korean economy is dying a painful death at the hands of their American masters.

First Post!

I believe that I was the first to arrive because nobody at my apartment had any idea who I was or what I was doing there. It seemed a fitting way to start the day considering how easy it was to get a taxi to take me to my apartment (150RMB btw, about $20). It could also be that I kept talking to the guy who looked to be in charge but spoke absolutely no English whatsoever.

Eventually the front desk found our program coordinator, Ella Ding, who turns out to be a totally fantastic lady. She helped me get checked in a day early at the modest cost of 70RMB (which puts the apartment at about $300/mo). I thought it was hilarious that she was totally amazed that I had made it all the way from the States by myself without speaking any Chinese or Korean at all. I guess things could have gone way worse but I’m refusing to ask her what she thought might happen.

When I got up to my building I was a little worried from the outside. It’s a 14-story, bland, pink building that like all Shanhai buildings looks like it’s starting to fall apart. When I got up to the room however I was taken aback by how completely gorgeous the place is. My first impression was that it was furnished with a big TV, chairs and couches, nice coordinated furniture, a kitchen with an actual stovetop, washing machine, and not only running water, but hot water at that (the maintenance ladies were especially proud of this bit which scares the hell out of me to think of their house).

And to this day I still think the place is nice, certainly worth ever USD, but it’s also all fake and low quality like everything I’ve seen in Shanghai so far. The wood flooring is fake, the coordinated furniture is extremely fake, the washing machine’s pipes were fake (.5mm thick piping which rusted through and fell off the machine), the Internet cables were fake, and the heaters were so clogged that I spent the first night at about 8 degrees C (in Fahrenheit this is “butt-ass-cold”). Most of these things have been fixed but every single person that moved in has a similar story of their apartment having something completely broken be it the heater, the running water, the washing machine, the shower heads, etc.

My theory is that Shanghai is either planning obsolescence in a way that puts America to shame (“50 years until things fall apart!? Make it 10! We’ll show those Americans!”) or it’s really impossible to buy quality products. It could be a little of both but I can say with some certainty that there is no place like home depot here where you can buy a new pipe, you just buy it from the guy who’s biking around with the stack of oddly shaped pipes on the back of his tricycle. He in turn bought them from a bigger dirty-broken-pipe vendor or stole them off of a construction scaffolding which means it’s already half rusted through from the corrosive salt and lack of water-proof coating.

Pipes are a great one but paint is the same way, all the paint is peeling in Shanghai making the whole city look mottled. Except for the suburbs of course, where everything is pristine and looks exactly like an American gated community (or so I hear, I refuse to go there on principles).

So yeah, where was I?

Ah yes, first night was spent freezing my ass off. They fixed the heater the next day but I bought a blanket anyways. It cost about 3 dollars and is worth exactly that. I’m unclear on whether the blanket is the cause of my minor sickness or if it’s the dust in the heater, normal bug from being around people, or the pollution in the city. Certainly the blanket is extremely uncomfortable to sleep under so I thank my lucky stars every day because Erica was nice enough to make me a sheet pocket before I left. I use it every night and love the hell out of it. Serves me right for buying a blanket at Wal-Mart. I was assured that Wal-Mart was different in China, and it is in a LOT of ways, but it’s still shitty, child-labor manufactured bullshit items for the most part. Where you find good blankets is still a mystery to me right now.

I’ll have to write more about my first day tomorrow. Jesus this was a long post. Time to go to class and get ready for the day!

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