Fireworks, Dumplings, & Golden Pigs...

Red underwear be gone!!! The year of the pig is upon as, my year is now dog-gone. Chinese New Years celebration started up this past Saturday and brought with it four of the more insane days I have ever taken part in on this fair planet.

For those of you who have never been to China during their New Years, the only thing I can compare it to is Beirut circa 1982. If you missed out on that as well, you can check out the video below. I shot this beauty a few moments after midnight on Saturday. The street is a couple blocks from my apt and is home to Mr. Ma's dumpling joint, where we made our own Jiao Zi (dumplings) and then cooked them up at midnight while we lit off an absurd amount of fireworks alongside seemingly the rest of China. We did this, naturally, to chase away the bad demons that will keep us form having good luck and prosperity in the New Year.

The Spring festival goes on for a total of 15 days, concluding with the Lantern Festival. Until this day, demons must be chased away. Fireworks have been going non-stop, day and night, in all locations imaginable: streets, parks, courtyards, building tops, out windows, off remote control helicopters, your hand, anywhere...

Hopefully I'll get through it all, if not, well...at least I went out with a bang.

This might sound weird...

but I realized that my pits smell like the tap water I grew up with for my first 19 years in the burg.

Real Politik...

Utopia, as I define it, is no place. Most people should. I love idealism. I realize the beauty of it. I want it, and in those moments in time when I feel good, too good actually, I agree and say those ideas. The idea that no person should kill another and that pacifism rules the day is a thought that makes me do business in my pants. Its an idea that we can make the world a better place. Its an idea that we can control our instincts in a way that propagates the good of man. Its an idea that allows us to dance, dance, and dance our problems away so we can ramble on without the problems that make us dance in the first place.

As great as we are our, our chances are nil. Our minds are capable of analysis, and analysis of ourselves. Thats deep shit. We bury nonsense in this shit, nonsense being each other and the reasons for us being of course. The problem, however, is that while we think rationally we are not rational and we never will be.

Gun, Germs and Steel is a novel by Jared Diamond, and it does not touch on rationality, but it touches on rational thought. Read it and then think. Think about the points he makes, and then think about why u are here. Then think about why ur nation and u have passports. Whatever that nation is, and why it is here, and why that nation and the people and the future people that are in power will continue to be in power is not rational, which is why idealism rules not the day. Self-interest drives the self and thus drives the day. Real politik........

Holidays, Earthquakes, & Ubuntu

Merry Christmas belated to you all, we are currently enjoying ourselves in Beijing for these lovely Christian holidays. I wonder if the origins of that word come from holy days. If anyone has an answer to that, much appreciated. We've been doing a lot of eating, we bought some things for our expansive apartment, Meng Zi lost his cell phone and China telecom is proving the idiocy of its customer care employees as he tries to replace his sim card. Turns out 45 RMB was used on his phone after he misplaced it, possibly in a cab, possibly in a pedicab. Who knows? We were thinking about how a rural guy just found the phone and was calling back to his hometown: "Hey, yea doing well in Beijing mom, got me a cell phone. That's right. No no, talk all you want, doing well I can handle it."

An earthquake in Taiwan supposedly busted the G-damn DSL and to quote Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse, "now it takes ten minutes to get to tits." Though really my problem is FTP access to the servers I rent (thanks for the help Harr, you da man) since I have to show the companies I make web sites for what the hell it is I've been doing with their money. If you know a little bit about the way the internet works you can figure out that this doesn't make any sense, not being able to get to websites and servers in North America just because of a severed connection in one location doesn't make any sense. The partial origins of the internet in Arpanet and the way that system worked explains it all. Check it out:

Pretend that puzzle pieces A through E are computers, both client and server computers. If puzzle node computer A wants to communicate with puzzle node computer C, then it can go right on through the connection it shares with E. But what if Node E got washed out by a , oh I don't know, an earthquake? No problem, A can go through connection B or D. B is down? D is down? Well what the ef? Then I can't get to node C. Except of course, the real internet is made up of more than five nodes. Its made up of let me see, one, add five hundred thousand, multiply by...carry the one million...You get the idea.

On another note, Meng Zi may be working on a Linux distribution project, version code name "Ubuntu" and there is some serious hype about it, in fact people thate created blogspot, the google empire, hosted a summit about it recently. If you don't know what Linux is, it is an operating system like Windows is or OSX is, but it was made with the sole purpose of being free. You still pay for linux packages, but the price is significantly lower and what you pay for is not the product but for support issues or the convenience of a bundled package, like open office (free program compatible with microsoft office suite), graphics editing programs, little games where you can be a penguin racing down an ice chute, etc. This fella Mark Shuttleworth had something to say about it, but seeing as the earthquake has disrupted some server access (my ass) I can't check it out. You people feel free to do so then tell me how it goes. Christmas was great, looking forward to the new year, happy holidays to you all and all of our friends participating in the holiday diaspora from India to Georgia, USA. PAX.

Firefly

"I don't care, I'm still free, you can't take the skies from me."

So I have this idea: I take a day, I slice it up like an onion. Take that sliced up day, beer batter it, deep fry it, and then at the end of it all, just enjoy it.

And this moment in time...

has been brought to you by the band Bloc Party and a hoppin' little ditty called 'Banquet'.

It makes me want to wakeboard. What does it do for you? Frequent GreatBlog contributor Clomer was nice enough to find the a link to the song. Check it out here and let me know...

A Simplicity Lost

When it boils down to it I'm just a country guy. Sure, I indulge in the glitz and glamour cities have to offer, sometimes to excess, but I much prefer a take it easy mentality. A place where life occurs at a pace you don't even have to take a moment to process why it came about because it took so long to unravel. And while I love the 'Big Dumpling' (Beijing), I yearn for the days as one of the few foreigners in a small, provincial Chinese village. Specifically, I yearn for the ease in selection of a place to dine.

Beijing easily has the best food of any place I have lived in my life. It is not even a competition. That said, it is also home to some of the most deplorable food known to man. One wrong turn, one slip up in decision making and you will find yourself sitting on the porcelain throne wondering just how clean the restaurant you ate at was and looking through your "work" to formulate a guess at what the fare that put you in this state might have been.

And while rural China also has its fair share of sub-standard eateries, in many cases borderline cess-pools, it has a simple formula to choose fine dining that an international city like Beijing, with its stars ratings, glitz, and glamour, just doesn't offer. This formula is the Foreign Photo rating system.

When a six foot 5 inch white guy from America goes for a walk in rural China to choose a place to eat IT IS AN EVENT!!! You get 'helloed' every 20 seconds, constant stares, people yelling LaoWai (foreigner) the moment they see you, children grabbing your pants to see if you are real, and on and on...

It can be overwhelming at times, which is why when you get into a restaurant you feel as if you can claim sanctuary and begin to let down your guard. You can not. The first time I went to a restaurant by myself I was accosted by the staff as soon as I entered. The reason: I was the first foreigner EVER in their restaurant and they wanted to take a picture with me. I was only too happy to oblige and was rewarded with one of the finest dining experiences for the effort. Soooooo good, in fact, that it warranted a return trip. The next time I went back, a mere day later, I noticed that my picture from the previous day was now proudly hanging on the wall behind the counter. At first I saw this, and still do see it, as pure comedy and wrongly thought it to be a rare occasion, a singular East meets West moment. As the days in rural China piled up and I visited more eateries, I noticed that there were pictures of other foreigners on the wall in other places too. Some restaurants had several.

I continued to laugh the event off with a slight head nod until one day the brilliance of it all hit me. These pictures were a roadmap of where to eat. The foreigners previous to me, in their infinite knowledge, had left their mark on my small little town, lighting the way to the best places to dine in town with a click and smile. Much like the star system, one picture on the wall assures you a quality meal and the occasional amazing meal. Two pictures or more, and well...bring on the orgasm in your mouth.

I yearn for the day of easy mouth ecstasy.

Taming the Internet...

Blocked, unblocked, blocked, unblocked. This is one of the problems you deal with living in China, as websites are commonly firewalled/blocked by the govt. While I don't use www.wikipedia.com too often, since it does come up almost first/second/third on EVERY google search, it is probably one of the most famous examples of this and is a constant pain in many an ex-pats arse as changes in its block status happen almost daily.

Anyways, this post is for my students (you know who you are) that didn't pay attention in class, which i know is hard to believe...

Ok, first try to get on the website www.wikipedia.com.
Then after no success, go to www.anonymouse.org This website is a Proxy Server- 代理服务器 (is that right?). Type in wikipedia.com on this website and see the difference....magic!!!!

Dumplings

Ok, so I haven't been keeping up with my transporation back to Week 1 in China like I promised, but at least I've got this Dumpling animation courtesy of yesterday's lunch for you.

House Guests Welcome

I have been in China for over a year now and sometimes forget just how ridiculous/nonsensical life in the PRC can be, which is why I love houseguests. Right now, my roomies visitor, Nickers, fresh in from the good ‘ole US of A has transported the whole apartment back to Week 1 in China. The excitement, amazement, and awe the has been permanently etched on Nickers face since he arrived in the Big Dumpling (Beijing) while he has been following us around during our DAILY lives has renewed (once again) my lust for the beauty that is the PRC: pollution, hutongs, dirty street food cooked on stoves with flames comparable to afterburners on a 747, the public spitting/urinating/defecating, etc.

I pledge now, with Nickers as my inspiration and guiding force, to transport myself back to Week 1 and bring the nonsense to you!!!!