opheliaswims

Steve meets Mao:

“When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue.” Mao Tse-Tung

“Nobody has tried to swallow us since I’ve been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.” – Steve Jobs
( i have entirely too much time on my hands)

For more about my travels through Southeast Asia go to: KCET.org

Lastest musings from the Other Side.

I was in a check-out line in Quingdao, China; when these two gentlemen started fighting and throwing bad punches. A bag of fruit was used as well. The police came and took them away. And we all went back to our shopping. Such excitement!

I amuse myself when I wait in lines. I look around, I look at the person in front of me, I look at the people behind me. I do the 360Ëš swivel of my neck. “What is she wearing? He’s cute. That’s a big kid.” If I am in a grocery line, I look at what people are buying. “Tsk, that’s just going to make you gassy.” “That’s a lot of bleach, and rubber gloves? Hmmm…crime scene clean-up?”

What really kills time is when a couple argues. You get pieces of what is ticking them off; impatience, missing documents, general malaise. I fight the urge to jump in and say “Hey, it has nothing to do with you…!” But I like my face the way it is. Going in between an arguing couple is like trying to separate fighting dogs. You just know you are going to get your hand bit.

Another one is check-in lines at the airport. First off you are already stressed out by the length of the line. There is an equation; the longer the line, the sooner your departure time is. I always get the guy in front of me who needs to reroute his whole trip to Timbuktu by way of Buffalo, NY. And he has extra carry on and luggage wrapped in duct tape. And families! There should be a rule about families traveling together, there should be a separate check-in for parents and teenagers. The parents will love the fact that the kids are not pulling long faces and the kids will love not being seen with their parents.

I am the happy person in the line with you. I will talk to you. I smile back. You want to know why? Because being in a line means I am doing/getting/going.

Image: ©Ophelia Chong / Carrefour Shop, Quingdao, China 2007

Beijing/ The Oriental TaiPan

I am one of the most sensitive people you will ever meet. I cry whenever I watch the part in Blade Runner when Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) lets go and falls to his death, I take in rescue dogs, I find homeless hamsters, I do almost as much Pro Bono as Bono (except I don’t travel by private jet).

This is my story about how I almost ran screaming from a spa in Beijing.

I love spas. Here in Los Angeles, the going rate for a facial averages $100 -$200. In Beijing, the capital of China, it’s $25- $75. For a foot rub with a choice of beverage and snack, it is 55RMB (US$8). That’s one hour of a masseuse rubbing your feet and a neck massage. The masseuse is paid an average of US$10 a day. In China, like Japan, there is no tipping.

So here I am sitting in this puffy giant Lazy Boy Chair, my feet in a bamboo bucket of heated herbal water. In walks this really cute young dude. He’s going to rub my feet. First I am thrilled; then a weirdness sinks in. “Hey, somehow this isn’t right, he rubs feet all day, he rubs the feet of people who aren’t very nice or people who don’t see him as nothing more than a human foot roller”. My second thought went to how most strippers hate their clients. (I know this because I have known a few…strippers).

As he rubs every toe, I fight the urge to sigh and say “more”. My brain flips back to Human Rights Mode in a blinding flash, my toes stiffen up.

“He’s doing this to make money to go to college, but he really hates every minute of it…he rubs feet for money…”
Cue in the lyrics from Hall & Oates:
She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she never danced before
She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she never danced before

Dang my ultra-sensitive bleeding heart brain!!!

I couldn’t just enjoy the moment. Nooooooo…I had to read all this stuff into it.

After the really great foot massage, I secretly tipped him and had him pose with Mister Pooh.

My mother started her business in China in 1976. When she finally retired, she had built the first foreign hotel in Beijing, a science center and the first commercial office building. It was a long hard road for her, and for me as a child. I would see her a week or so every month; this lasted 15 years. In my small world it only affected me, I didn’t see my father’s anger or my younger sister’s struggles. Now years later, I have come to appreciate what she has done and the determination she had to meet her goals.

As always, in hindsight…Our family has a long history in China. My sister lives in Beijing, an expat. She has been there for 19 years now. She is what you call a trailing spouse, her husband is the China head of a large US corporation that has interests in China and India.

( in the background you can see the traditional “Mao” suits. Back then that was all there was. The little kids now run China)

Let a hundred flowers bloom.- Mao Zhedong

The stack of bills amount to 110,000 RMB (roughly $12,000US). It was presented to a village for a land lease of thirty years on a commune house near the Great Wall. My sister and her family plan on building a “villa” as a retreat from the city of Beijing. I was there to record the transfer of funds. The ramshackle house that stands there now is inhabited by a family headed by a mentally handicapped father and his wife who suffered facial burns from an accident. As I walked up to look at the house, I saw stuffed animals drying on the laundry lines along with assorted underwear. The commune has arranged housing for the family in the local town; in my mind I pictured a nice clean apartment filled with stuffed animals. The house next door was purchased by a Danish man and his minor ex-pop star wife, down the road a villa was just photographed for Architectural Digest, the owner is a French lawyer. The people behind the project are preserving the area and bringing work to the locals, they are inspirational; if only more local Chinese thought the way they do. The local Chinese are now learning how to profit from foreigners wanting to get away from them by living like them.

After the money was pushed across the table, the commune cadre wrapped it up in newspaper and took away. Simplicity. No waiting for the cheque to clear in the bank; just cash.

Everything is done in cash. If you can’t afford it, you don’t buy it. ATM cards use is on the rise, it’s easier than standing in line at the bank for an hour to get your cash. If you have a VIP bank card (minimum 50,000RMB), you can go straight to the head of the line. Class system in a communist country based on wealth. I am dizzy from the dual messaging. I love China, I hate China.

I have been traveling to China since I was a kid. I love China. I remember standing on the balcony on my first morning in China in 1976, and looking out over Tiananmen Square, hearing the national anthem blasting out from speakers; as the sun rose over the yellow sulfur air from the burning coal. We were aliens back then, dressed in jeans and wool sweaters. They had never seen Overseas Chinese before. The gates had just opened and now the world was slowly seeping in. After being fed a regimen of Maoist thought for over 30 years, they now had to realize that the middle kingdom did not exist alone. Their Great Leap Forward caught them in mid-air and had held them there.

Copying someone’s work is not a form of flattery – it’s pure theft.
- Sandra Stoodley

Fast forward 30 years to a country with Audis, MBZ, BMWs and Bentleys; Prada, Gucci, Versace at every “high class” mall. They are opening up branches in each major city, even if it runs in the red for the next few years, they all must have a presence. However, the Chinese have done them one better and reproduced their goods so that all can afford that Gucci bag. That’s communism.
I watched the film The Simpsons the other night, I paid a dollar for it. However, I had to turn it off because I don’t speak German and the english subtitles were written by Yoda. Pirating of films will stop once someone dies from it. A few upset stomachs have occurred from watching Steven Seagal films, but no deaths yet have been reported.

Black cat or white cat: If it can catch mice, it’s a good cat
-Deng Xiaoping

So goes the Chinese mind, it it does the job, what’s the difference?

Till later,
Ophelia (“Will that DVD play at home?”) Chong

Image: ©ophelia chong

Welcome to Beijing… This is a typical day in Beijing. It’s noon and it’s not morning fog. A chunky mix of cement haze, dust, carbon dioxide, and humidity. Why live in a skyscraper when you can only see a few feet out from your window? “Because we can!” say the Chinese. Deng Xiaoping’s blueprint for China’s modernization is gradually being turned into wonderful reality…a reality of massive industrial growth that has created polluted rivers, air and earth.

I am torn between being a tourist with a fat wallet ready to buy cheap goods and a human being aching for fresh air. As I look around I am constantly reminded of the trade offs. The shirt I hold in my hand was made by a woman in a factory who works from dawn to late night with a 30 minute lunch break. She probably traveled from her small village to work in a medium sized city (avg. 5 million population) to make a dollar a day. And here I am bartering with the stall owner over a few kuai (pennies). I am ashamed of myself. “Oh the deals you will find there!!” blasts out of every tourist book, but don’t look behind that silk curtain.

Shanghai, I spent five days there. It’s about my 10th trip to that beautiful and historic city. Beginning in 1976. I have seen it go from a city of 11 to 13 million. By walking the city you will find French, German, English, and traditional Chinese; you will find a century of architecture that you will not see anywhere else in the world, it’s a city created by greed, lust and commerce. One building under construction was pointed out to me by a friend, he said “it’s going to be the tallest in the world, they haven’t announced officially the final height”. I asked if they are going to put a tool shed from Home Depot on the top and does that count as a “floor”, if someone else beats them in Dubai.

Taxi drivers in Shanghai…I had a map and instructions in Chinese. Still no go. You would think that anyone who lived in a city their whole life would know it. However in China, the streets are crisscrossed and the one ways byzantine. What makes sense doesn’t and u-turns in the middle of the freeway frequent. Just leave your logic at home, it’s safer there.

Food. City Chinese love to eat. My theory is that they are making up for every famine that struck in the last 1000 years. Under Mao over 20 million died from starvation during the Great Leap Forward. As we ate our Red Bean Icee Mountain, my thoughts went to the lost generation. The men in their fifties are in that group. They were too unskilled during the late 70’s to catch up with the new boom, and now too old to catch up on the second (high tech). A very bitter group. The generation now (mid twenties) are lucky only to know the Cultural Revolution through school books and kitchy propaganda posters. They chat and SMS on their newest Nokia cell phones with strands of cute icons and jewels while they get foot rubs at the mall.

Want a Ninetendo DS? Real or fake? I can’t tell. Just keep that fire extinguisher near. And don’t even think of returning it if it breaks down. That Mao Watch stops ticking the moment you leave the stall. The real Mao keeps better time in his mausoleum. I cannot tell what is real or fake anymore. Even the people hide behind layers, you never really know if what they are saying is what they mean. I would blog all of this, but blogspot is on the embargo list in china, as well as Flickr. Free speech and images are scary things… and not to mention the smells here.

till later, ophelia
(hacking up a lump of coal at the moment) chong

This is the first day in two weeks that I have been able to access my blog. China had an embargo on it. Ahhh, that Great China Fire Wall.

Image: ©ophelia chong

Today I went to the Mall of the Supreme Knock Offs. Not your ordinary purses sold on NY corners by barking salesman, but the Uber Bag. So well done, it would fool a hardened Chanel addict. You could find of course the tell tale bit where it’s not Chanel, but hey, it even has the hardware with the Chanel logo. No plain metal here. I will post a picture later when I can get my camera unloaded. I am staying at the Shangri-La Hotel in Quingdao. Lovely room, when I walked in there was a bowl of fruit waiting. I don’t think I will ever leave. Mister Pooh has asked me politely to stay. He’s in love with the girls at the Front Desk.

As I was in the car on the way to the hotel, I thought “I am in a foreign country”. But then it occured to me that I was home. I have never felt out of place here. My heart belongs here.

I took this photo at Jusco’s in Quingdao. I was standing in line with a bag of lychees. All of a sudden I heard screaming and jumped back. The two gentlemen in front of me were fighting. Flinging fruit and air punches, they screamed at each other for some small transgression that was brewing in the short time they were in line. Ten cops ran down and arrested both of them. The Chinese take this in stride, we all watch the ruckus, and then go back to shopping. Getting dinner is the priority here.

This is one of a few sporadic updates from China. I landed in Beijing last Thursday, all ready to do my “thing”. I have been visiting China since 1976 since I was a kid, yes that long. The changes are beyond leaps and bounds, lets say more like a jet fueled rocket propelled crashing into the next two centuries. I love it and I hate it.

I miss the crumbling old China, the shut off China. However, I love the advances she has made. Like China, I am have one foot in the past and one in the future.