Friday, Feb.10th, 2006
After 13 consecutive days off from work for Chinese New Year, it took me more than half a day to recover from holiday lag when resumed work on Tuesday, February 7th. Jet lag was more being impatiently induced by the hall-full of late night arrivals of passengers and the ever slow passport inspection at the airport custom check point, prior to this the inadequate service of a few verbally economical and unsmiling flight attendants, and topped with bad apologies for ten minutes flight delay as informed in the uncompromising in-flight announcement before landing, also in turbulent hiccup ride nearly all the way.
Critically speaking, China will never be on par with the rest of the world in service sector as long as ten minutes apology is anytime announced; these ten minutes could possibly be translated into ten years late.
Overlooking the vast celestial nightscape, the full bright moon seemed to eternally, silently, and distantly hung in deep atmospheric space. The moon had shone brightly enough to illuminate the surrounding cotton clouds, however, without any complementary stars. Essentially an all day comfort zone, the day was not considered cold; the warming sunshine lasted most of the day while the night was also not dipping in temperature,
The cool festive ending of Year of Dog has officially signaled with a last blast, a big bang. View from my window, the night sky is sporadically splashed or streaked brightly followed by piercing, thunderous or heart-thumping blasts. With sound and effective advisory watch, the rules this year had been relaxed. Blasting was allowed at designated locations throughout the city. The folks were delegated to be responsible while every possible emergency aids were all out standing by. City Administration Unit as well as police forces was out to administer at a distance. However, most were still taking chances and set off unguarded joy to usher in the Minor Year or the Lantern Day, the 15th day of long traditional Chinese New Year. Sprinkled and shredded red papers with spotty charred areas were easily found when walking on the streets or along sidewalks. Some areas still lingered with the traceable smell of the spent blast offs. Once a year, all were out to be joyful but another round of unrelenting joy was already set to end sooner and eventually. None of the streets, however, that I had gone around was seen any conventional ornaments or decors. Without the conventional festive patterning, his included the entire stretch of the popular haunts of the highly commercial or capitalistic Nanjing Raod that on any occasion could be seen at a perspective distance those sidewalk shopping hustlers with their heads bobbing up and down.
Most streets lined with commercial stores were seen busy with folks buying and selling, scooping up the best bargain: buying all sort of attractive flowers, mixed with all types of quality and rotting fruits, tempting candies in colorful and shining wrappers, as well as fresh seafood propagating stanching smell or lamely stacked dried food; while the store keepers offered the best sale with their display spilled onto the sidewalks, not at all heeding to maintain the regulated tidiness of the sidewalk. Many shoppers were in both hands dangling with their bagful of scoop of the day. Also, street keepers in light blue uniforms with their ecological bamboo sweep tirelessly kept up with the irresponsible litter bugs, and risking their lives sweeping on the streets while streams of vehicles speedily swooped by them.
Floor displays over broadly spread canvas in orderly alignment lined the Pudong South Road near the Times Square area: less than quality Tibetan trinkets, inexpensive hairpins, counterfeit copies of the current bestsellers or novels in Chinese and English titles, plastic casings for CDs, Chinese ink brushes, chinoiserie print lipstick casings for ladies, counterfeit Gucci or LV handbags or wallets – tempted the passers-by.
People were seen busy walking on the streets, hurrying here and there, with or without aims. Elderlies in different buddy groups congregate by the streets, puffing and talking amongst themselves while some encircled their seating friends in the centuries old war game, the Elephant Games or Chinese Chess, essentially aged men's best pastime besides tapering sexual abilities or activities. Young couples in loving embracing position publicly display affection sitting over one another's lap on the street furniture along the Century Avenue. Little kids were released running wild with shrieking joy and parents with laughter after them. Only a few were out running their pet dogs. Occasionally, one or two darling little toddlers, cheeks so dramatically rosy red and in colorful Chinese costumes, were seen dashing free ahead of their parents while their parents ran hurriedly after them. Occasionally, a thuggish motorcyclist would honk loudly and illegally but rudely swerved into and avoiding the pedestrian crowd on the sidewalks. A young man in stylish suit cleared his throat and spitted in front of the crowd, with most taking for granted while I was in complete aghast, feeling miserable for sighting the moment. In duplicate school uniform walking in front of me, one of the two obese buddy teenagers casually tossed off her food wrapper onto the street, absolutely not heeding street cleanliness.
The director's name is Cheng Xiaogang. He had the movie A World Without Thieves out last year, a thorough sleeper that coaxed me into goofing off when barely half way through watching the movie. The locals all raved so much about it though. I have never completed seeing the movie. But I would say it rings the bell from those Hollywood flicks in the 60s or 70s, when large amount of train robbery genre movies were churned out then, except that his slick variety is occasionally laced with Chinese gongfu or kungfu film tricks as well as stunning and spectacular Xizhang or Tibetan landscape backdrops. Cheng is a very highly successful commercial film director, very well acclaimed and received by the local industry as well as strong supportive film industry from Hong Kong. His annual production is always selected to hit the market right on, if not right before the Chinese New Year, that easily making all this and previous movies to gross hundreds of millions RMB when the bored holiday theatre goers would throng the movie houses to count their prolonging festive time despite the steep ticket prices for first run with respect to their incomes in general.
I am not sure if Night Banquet is by him though. But I am quite right, yet to be ensured, that his other movie Handphone or Mobile Phone was a hit before I arrived in Shanghai. Locals talked about it but I was not interested in it at all. I could already sense that it's another one of those movies that feature mouth blaring moments with tirelessly endless dialogue in thickening Mandarin accent, rolling and twisting tongues. The movie is something about how the advent of handphone that has dramatically altered everyday lives。
Ask your students to help you to locate the movies; always remember that students are very good in browsing the markets, helping them in market accessibility and up to date. Or else, like me, play it with risk by picking up bad titles or bad copies every now and then, regret later and always give them all away. I suppose no harm buying and found out they are not what you wish later; just buying them as long as you haven't seen them. This is another way to go finding out the market and try the market.
If you want the movies, I could try to get it for you; however, I cannot guarantee if they will still be in the market. China's market is that if you don't get it by now, they will not be seen re-published in short term and will not be seen again or comprehensively displayed on the shelves unless you get lucky. This is another sign of bad marketing in China, very lag in the modern concept of marketing products, and also severely impacted by the never seem to go away piracy despite impromptu crackdowns by authorities.
It rained cats and dogs last night.
This morning, with no further raining, the sky seemed to be entirely smoldered with thick clouds or mists; the sky seemed to have been depressingly lowered in height than normal. One could also feel the warming trend; most had been claiming this warm winter. Many were seen to be arm holding their overcoats or thick winter wear, sign of over-dressing due to the dramatic temperature change. I took a few interesting shots at this all white environment, recording the moment with my ever ready digital camera, in minimal cost but some curious efforts to record.
Valentine's Day had come and gone; and not much 'love, loving, lovingly' or Valentine mood surrounding the city. The TV programs are full of youngsters vigorously chatting about thing related to Valentine's tradition while flower shops were featured in the program about how they uphold the currency of the Valentine's Day. A farmer introduced TV viewer about how to make it rich with growing flowers, another sign of ever increasing affluence in China in general. Also, few were sending SMS related to Valentine's celebration. By far, I only got two short messages sent to me and taking that as a sign of indifference towards the tradition or for the Day falling on the working day causing few to heighten their individual interest to celebrate so.
And it continued to rain hard last night but stopped this early morning.
Friday, February 17th, 2006
And it snowed flurries today. But, however, it was so briefly. Flakes were sprinkling from the sky, appearing like shredded white tinsels. By the time I completed my lunch at home and returned to workplace, the flurries were all gone.
In quick browsing into a website to find out the weather forecast of Shanghai in the next few days, the table showed the increasing trend of the day time temperature from single digit to double digit. It is a receding cold and warming trend, a sign of Spring around the corner. Winter seems to have skipped Shanghai this year.
The work pace has been fairly consistent, with non-stop commitment to the virtual world of computer. Many of what was systematically planned in procedures is not being respectively carried out about the general studies by first doing data collection of high rises or skyscraper, as the major project this year and begun right before the Chinese New Year. For the last two weeks since returning to work after the Chinese New Year, many critically selected one to tow page architectural theories or manifestoes were translated, all planned to be compiled for future references or getting them all published in the local magazines when time is right.
The weekend is up by tomorrow. I am so glad the weekend is around the corner. I plan to do little; I just want to take it easy, perhaps, watch as many movies as I could. And do some light cooking.
And it snow blasted this morning.
This could be the fist snow for this season. The snowing was so thick that cascading is an accurate term to describe the all white phenomenon. The sky was completely white, not blue. The snow powdered and pounded on the window, gone instantly due to the temperature inside, trickled down on windowpanes as irregular trails of water. The snowing was so heavy that my glasses was thrashed by snowflakes and gotten into my mouth. It was a phenomenon that I last saw when I was in Ohio so many years back.
Taking the chance, I changed and out on the streets shooting the snow blanketed scenery, collected on the greens and other structural areas but never on the ground. The ground temperature was not low enough to sustain the powder. It was less than two hours out to and from Lujiazui, the financial district of Shanghai, making rounds of shooting photos.
The snow was actually gone by noon, without a trace but the soaked streets. The rest of the day was wet, drizzling that needed no umbrella.
View from staircase window, where I live
An apartment block of the neighborhood unit, where I live, fronting the view of Shanghai Stock Exchange Building, where I work
China's tallest building and World's 3rd tallest Jinmao Tower shrouded in snow
An early morning pedestrian and a street management staff
Three views of the Shanghai Pearl TV Tower clouded within the snow blast
Friday, February 24th, 2006
Snow was long gone and the sun seems to stay from now on, claiming the beginning of Spring, of which I thoroughly welcome. The bedrooms and kitchen are not as freezing but very pleasant places to be. The sun penetrates warmly through the window everyday in the last several days, cooking up the wooden strip floor.
Just some thoughts of the day...regarding education in China, and out of working with these entry levels at work.
A graduate from the 4-year tertiary level institution doing entry level job did not know how to use Microsoft Office or Word program. To be specific: did not know how to set a simple table in different columns or rows and did not know where those specific symbols could be found from the pull down menu.
Another did not know how to propose or layout Contents for his project, a simple thesis work to graduate with a Bachelor of Architecture in a few months.
The other, with a Bachelor's and a Master's degree, about how to arrange or compose or allocate different single-family buildings, for the upper income level, on an undulating high terrain - all buildings were set not in different orientation but in one singular consistent direction despite the twist and turn of terrain.
I wonder!?
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
Today is the last day of February 2006. This morning, I just found out there are only 28 days for this February, not 27 and also not 29 days.
Throughout the last week of Spring like weather with lots of sunshine, the much anticipated Spring was again upset by the cold current that set in from the north. Much of the northern part of China all consistently recorded a dip of temperature, meantime, to stay put for the trailing winter first. And it rained hard and windy last Sunday.
Browsing the Shanghai website online, a small headline amongst the so many others caught my attention – the World population is recorded at so much. This morning, via radio news, the newscaster mentioned something I listened vaguely to that the World population has since doubled from 1960. It is nearly 50 that the world population has doubled – I have yet to check the accuracy as listened to the announcement.
Aah..Got it! From a website, quoted below:
Feb. 18 - A new United Nations report said the world's population has reached 6.5 billion in 2005, a billion more than in 1993.
The report, released by the UN Economic and Social Council, estimated that the world's population could reach 7 billion in 2012 and could stabilize at 9 billion in 2050.
The report said although most developing countries are well advanced in the transition from high to low fertility, some developing countries, mainly in Africa, still exhibit high fertility.
It said that in the last century, mortality experienced a rapid decline owing to better hygiene, improved nutrition and medical practices based on scientific evidence.
The report was released in advance of the next session in April of the 47-member UN Commission on Population and Development.
And what does this mean to me, yes, me, me, me, and you, yes, you, you, you, as one of these 6.5 billion Homo Sapien?
Monday, February 28th, 2006
So much for the month of February in the year 2006!
Jeremy
Greetings from Shanghai
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