"How you'd like the city?"

A friend has asked me regarding "how you'd like the city?" Here you go...

It's hard to say that I like or I don't like. I am taking my time to know the city and to read the city. Along the way of discovering and reading, there is always good and bad critic and out of the stream of consciousness to describe accordingly. (Just whip for the bad and salute for the great! Truth is always truth, and be truthful is the key to truth. What am I talking about here!? Gee... Oh, never mind!) Meantime, Shanghai is still some very interesting city to look at. There are so much exciting and stimulating activities in town for anyone to go around. Most weekends, if I choose to be active, there is always something to do, say, go see some art exhibitions at some galleries.

I went to a book exhibition well over a moth ago. Alas, it was packed with sea of humanities browsing, reading, tearing, smearing all the displayed books. And flyers were just all over the floors. Listening to them yelling at each other, one young woman distributing flyers standing at the entrance doorway was harshly and loudly scolded by a man street keeper, for he was really mad at her flyers distributed to attendants were mostly dumped or trashed onto ground and the keepers could not keep up with the amount of littering. Milling through crowd, and they are everywhere inside the exhibition, I found myself exhausted just to struggle through my ways for better locations or positions, yet there is no hope for a leisure moment to browse for books. Corners, door ways, on the steps, under the staircase, on the balusters, all the chairs, even on top of any tables, were found peoples. (Yes, plural!) Imagine the crowd. With the crowd, nearby the KFC stalls the floors are – oh, help me PLZ, help my eyes, save my eye sights PLZ – all the trash all over the floor. I just wanted to close my eyes forever and hopefully forget about what I saw! And I promised myself not to go back to the same book exhibition again here unless I am bored with life or breathing. Haha!

All I can say is Confucius is long dead and now still dead. (This would be a good installation exhibition, say, named Confucius is still dead!) Where have all the so called personal manner and social etiquette gone to or from these Chinese culture themselves? Some Supreme Being out there help me to answer this BIG humanity question, PLZ! I am pretty sure there will not be any reward or prize to catch for even at the slightest notion of attempting to answer. But, well, anybody?

By the way, I read from Associated News from Shanghai Daily that the literacy rate has gone down the hill in China, yes, all over China. Then, here comes one smart aleck trying out on selling his stories by reading his novel via sms, short messaging system through hand phones (mobile phones or cell phones, depending on which country you are in!). And it takes nearly a month to finish receiving and reading his novels via sms. Quite some idea, eh!

Shanghai Daily is an English newspaper published locally with contributions from local Chinese and quite some reporting staffs are internationals as well, by reading from the names of the reporting staff to extrapolate they are internationals. Shanghai Daily is rather slim in weight, only a handful of pages, but rather extra in size, rather meatless in reporting, with an extra inch or two larger in paper format than the rest of other newspapers (Wonder why!?)

The service here is so bad. Worse than Malaysia for Malaysia is already bad enough. At Lianhua Supermarket, one gets the change thrown at the checkout points. This is a common behavior here, I mean rather common, and truly no manner. Those line workers hardly wear smiles on their faces, and most look sullen as though they hate life or themselves for standing in the line serving or helping those customers standing in line. Haha! Unlike USA, the manager even apologized to me because I was standing next in line to buy grocery. And in another occasion, the post office manager was so mad to see only a couple of us standing in line and he raised his voice making announcement to those behind the counters that it was a sin in a capitalist country to have lines and customers not well served. He also apologized to those standing in the line. See the differences in service. How to be competitive then, and with pride to compete? Tell me, Supreme Being out there, tell me now, I want the answer now, and if there is an answer out there.

Then, those cashiers are just some loud mouths. When they are on the job, they are still talking with loud pitch vocals, somewhat like the well animated Beijing Opera. And they could not care less about who is standing in the line but they keep you waiting, ignore and testing the customers rights (since when they have the rights of consumers!?) and patience. This would never happen in USA for as long as I lived in USA once. If they do so, go to the manager's office and let's talk about contract all over. Or, you are fired!

The ticket price for a movie here is way too expensive. I am also not going to pay for RMB25 (RM12.50) for a censored show. They should learn to circumcise themselves first before they shamelessly exercise censorship to snipe at someone's work of art. I don't' believe in non sense as such. (But I would love to attempt shaving their eye brows! Haha!) So far, I have never entered any cinema for once since I arrived. Usually, I stood outside the theatres to see what's on and see the crowds. As I over heard many also complained about the prices. It's really outrageous. I am not crazy about movies unless they are some great shows.

Recently, out of boredom, I picked up a pirated copy of movie Troy from the street side vendor. And Troy sucks! My gosh! What a lousy American production! Shame on the damned so called Hollywood production - for wasting their talents, wasting quality visual effects, wasting films, wasting my money and wasting my qi (energy) bargaining for one extra dollar less for the show. And look at Brad Pitt, really in the pit and looks pitiful. (No puns intended here!) I just wanna puke.

Well, all of the above are some bad sides and sights of what I personally saw and some went through. I will share more exhilarating stories to keep all our spirits up. Life should be brighter on our right sides.

Take care
Jeremy
September 16th 2004