The East is Red, and Red is in the East

Don’t call me naïve. I’m not naïve. I’m not, for example, the Other Art Teacher, who came to China without knowing it was a communist country. I shit you not. After arriving here, she kept suggesting really inappropriate religious things, such as naming the four classes in sixth grade after the saints of the gospel, and when people kept mentioning communism and China in the same sentences asked, and I quote, “I keep hearing about communism. What is that, some kind of philosophy?”

No, I’m a good American, and I know what communism is. It’s Bad. It’s so Bad that there are only 5 countries in the entire world still clinging to these ideologies (see if you can figure them out…I’ll list them at the end) But then, on the other hand, I’m not a really good American, because I really don’t give a flying fig about politics. Or history, at least not 20th century history. And it’s only been living abroad that has awakened me to these sorts of things, because your standard high school history course doesn’t exist to teach such things. It teaches civic pride and nationalism very well. Details about conflicts such as the Korean War and Vietnam….eah, not so much (actually being IN the DMZ, or the Cuchi Tunnels, though – now that will educate you real quick. And make you want to know more). The point of this digression is, there are a lot of things I didn’t know about communism.

As I mentioned last Saturday, I’m reading Lost on Planet China right now for the second time. This book has been therapeutic for me – it took me a good week to read it the first time, not because it wasn’t a riveting book but because I was savoring it. I never savor books. I’m more the “gorge yourself on books until you have to go to the vomitorium and then start all over again” kind of reader. But I savored this one, and when I got to the end, it broke my heart a little bit. It also educated me. As I said, I’m not into history or politics…or, err, even current events. Sorry if that offends, but the news is depressing and I have my hands full dealing with the depression Nature gave me without piling the news onto it. I prefer my news filtered through people who know what will be interesting to me, what I can do something about. So even though I live in China (possibly BECAUSE I live in China) there are things I had no idea about. Such as the Falun Gong. I’ll let you look that one up on your own, because looking it up was what led me to last Saturday’s field trip. See, apparently the PRC still makes propaganda posters. The Falun Gong haven’t been around that long, and yet, the Wikipedia page has propaganda posters about them. It’s a funny thing to think about, that in this digital day and age governments would bother with propaganda. But then, without unfiltered media, I guess they could be effective. So I went to the Propaganda Poster Art Center to learn more.

I like the fact that “art” is in the name of the museum. Lots of the posters really are beautiful works of art. And the PPAC is a great place, because let’s face it, posters don’t get a lot of respect and the owner/curator, Yang Pei Ming, has done us a favor by collecting them, because so many of these posters were destroyed after their day was over. But it’s interesting, as an outsider, to look at them. I teach my fifth graders a unit on propaganda posters, and as we look at propaganda from WWII I draw attention to the fact that we know how ridiculous these statements are now, but that the people living then found it easier to believe. As I laughed out loud at this one, I wondered if my students would find it ridiculous, as well…

I won’t say anything else – I’ve probably gotten myself into enough trouble with my ramblings this month. Suffice it to say that it was the most interesting museum I’ve been to since DC’s Spy Museum. The PPAC is at the corner of Huashan Lu and Changle Lu, and pretty much equidistant from the metro stations at Jiangsu Lu (on lines 2 and 11), Changshu Lu (on lines 1 and 7) and Shanghai Library (line 10), so find yourself a map, pick your metro line, and go there, because it’s well worth the 20 kuai admission price. And the Bund is nowhere NEAR this exciting these days…

*(The five??? China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. Those are the easy ones. You should have gotten those. Especially since Korea and Vietnam were mentioned in the post, and Castro’s on one of the cards. Extra credit if you knew the fifth one was Laos.)

French Kissed

So I left the house this morning on a quest to visit one of the places stuck to my laptop on a tiger-shaped post-it note. I made it there (I'll write about it soon, but I need to do some scanning first), and afterwards found myself wondering what else I might do on this beautiful Saturday afternoon. An Aussie traveler who'd just come out of the museum sat down next to me, pondering the same thing, and asked for suggestions. I sent him off to Tianzifang, but opted to go on a walk-about myself. It occurred to me that I've never written about the French Concession...um, excuse me, former French Concession (apparently there is some touchiness about that title - harkens back to the humiliating days of colonialism - and a pizza restaurant recently had to issue a public apology for listing their address as the French Concession) and today seemed like a good opportunity to rectify that situation.

My first night out in Shanghers, long ago, was in the French Concession (in for a penny, in for a pound - if I'm going to get in trouble with the glorious People's Republic of China, it will probably not be for dropping the Former, and I'm feeling rebellious...I'm blaming this on my second reading in a month of J. Maarten Troost's Lost on Planet China) with Roisin. We went to this place called the Boxing Cat Brewery, which was probably wasted on a Mormon girl, but it was fun anyways, and they have pretty good virgin drinks there, not to mention the food. I'd met Roisin briefly twice - we were two weiguk ships passing in the Korean night, back in the day, but we both seemed to be of the opinion that anyone who's cool by Bronte is cool by me, and that has proven to be a pretty good rule of thumb. And what is cool by Roisin has proven to be cool by me, as well. Also, she told me that whatever I had to do to have heated floors come winter would be worth it, and boy, was she right. Of course, the French Concession is pretty much cool with EVERY foreigner who steps foot in Shanghai. Everybody wants to live there (okay, everybody but me - give me heated floors and toilets that flush properly over quaint apartments anyday). This is probably because it tricks you into thinking you're NOT IN CHINA ANYMORE.

After all, a scene like this you would expect in Paris more than Shanghai. Of course, Shanghai was once known as the Paris of the East, and this is where the Frenchies made their homes, so I suppose that makes sense. But you just don't expect to see this

and this

just blocks away from each other. It's an area of old apartments with lots of character, in interesting shapes with more than one level. It has Irish pubs, Greek restaurants, clothing boutiques, and shops selling knickknacks. And if you want to feel like you are somewhere besides China, you are more likely to get that here than anywhere else in the city. But as for me, I'll keep K-Town, thank you very much. As I pulled up to the A.P.T. on the bike the other day, I heard, "Mi-guk," and the ensuing conversation I had with a couple of Korean school children warmed the cockleburrs of my little heart. Ahssahbyo!

Springtime for Mao

There is one, just one, beautiful season in Shanghai. Blink, and you will miss the budding forsythia, the blooming cherry trees, the blossoming redbuds, and the weather...well, that's still unpredictable. Monday I wore my LIGHT leather jacket on a nice long walk before school, and it was too hot. Yesterday I wore my linen pants, but forgot that the storm that blew in the night before (some nice, albeit brief lightning and a hard shower) could drop the temperature 18 degrees fahrenheit, and realized, when I started to head off on my bike, that I was going to be too cold. However, the reward for putting up with this weather is scenes like this...

Or this...

Or even this (this is on my street, walking from the apartment to the subway at Longbai Xincun)...

Well, I promised you one blog a week, and I figure I should make myself useful and write about more than just the flowers, so I decided to visit the flower market. Okay, maybe that's still just writing about the flowers. And yet, the flower market is more than just a flower market. You can buy all sorts of things here - antiques, fish (the kind you keep for pets), handicrafts, and you can get paintings framed here for really cheap. During December it's the best remedy if you find yourself missing Christmas carols and the smell of pine. To get to this wonderland, go to Longbai Xincun on line 10, and go out exit 5. Walk straight (north) along Hongjing Lu up to the light, then cross over so that you end up catty corner, and keep going. A half a block later, you'll come to a large gate that looks like this:

Now, it's called the flower market for a reason. Want flowers?

We've got them. Oh, you wanted LIVE flowers, growing in a pot?

Got those, too. Want to try your hand at keeping a bonsai tree alive (for the fourth time)?

We can make that happen, and at a significantly lower price than you'd pay in the states. Let's say you love orchids, but don't want to throw the money away on them, knowing they are persnickety and bound to die in your care?

Doesn't matter - they're so cheap here that you can buy a new one every couple of weeks without breaking the bank. And if you've gotten fed up with being eaten alive by mosquitos, we've got the solution for that, too.

The next building in has animals and ceramics and crafts and antiques, but rather than put even more pictures of THINGS on here, I'll leave you with a little Chinese slice of life, because you can't be angry here on a beautiful tomb sweeping holiday! Hope you're having a good week, too.

Not sure what they're doing, here in the sun-dappled space between the two buildings, but they seem to be having a good time.

Wet and Wild

You'd never guess it, but you can get some really beautiful, fresh fruit in China. A friend of mine lives near a wet market, one block north of Hongqiao Lu on Jianhe Lu, that she's been telling me about since we moved here. I finally got around to checking it out over Chinese New Year, and you know what? It actually made me wish I cooked more often.

Here's the entrance from Jianhe Lu. There's an aisle on the left, which actually goes down the middle, and has mostly vegetables, and the one on the right there has fruits, at least here at the front. To the far left is....

...less palatable things. I'm not entirely sure how the Chinese can eat stuff that looks like this, because these meats look totally inedible to me. These look inedible to me, as well, but other people might like fresh shrimp.

Or fish. I've been to a fish market or two in my time, and I have to say, there was less of a fish smell here than any I've ever visited before.

You can get real meat here, too, with the butcher on hand to cut it down to size for you, and I've gotta say, it looks pretty tasty.

There's also just about every kind of egg you could want, freshly laid (either that, or the chickens in the storefront behind me were for those looking for VERY fresh meat).

They've got tofu (which is - are you ready for this - "doufu" if you need to ask for it in Mandarin)...

And freshly made noodles, too.

Here are some of the vegetables:

Do you know the mushroom man?

And this is my fruit seller. Note the beautiful avocados. I probably overpaid her, at 8 kuai each, but $4 for three avocados wasn't half bad, especially since another one of the stalls sold me some cilantro - it was a fresh guacamole weekend for me!

On the fruit side there are also shops selling spices and beans and nuts. I haven't seen a selection like this since leaving the middle east.

There's even more to this market - along the outside edge, you can get everything from a health check to a haircut, kitchen utensils or wellies. But the best of all is outside. If, after all that shopping, you are too exhausted to cook, you can stop for dinner at Nino's, an authentic hole-in-the-wall pizzeria run by an Italian expat. The food is cheap, good, and best of all, Nino's Chinese wife speaks English with an Italian accent, bringing on one of those fabulously surreal moments when you're no longer sure WHAT country you're in.

Disappearing Act

Since moving into the Fortress of Solitude, I passed a certain house every day on my way to school. The front of this house had an electronic marquee in the window that flashed, "Defend the dignity of law! No illegal home removing!" Note all those past tenses in the first two sentences, because they're important. See, like all their neighbors gone before, the "Dignity of Law" house is no more. And it kind of pisses me off. See, it's not exactly an uncommon thing - an area up the street has been sealed off and knocked down. These areas might be kind of dingy, they might be a little seedy (the one up the street had hookers), but they were REAL China. Not the slick shiny knockoff of other large cities around the world, but a thriving mess that was truly, authentically Shanghainese. And they're disappearing under the forward march of progress. So let this week's blog stand as a tribute to those alleyways, as I take you down one of the few that are left in Hongqiao.

You can enter this alley from either Huaguang Lu or Chengjiaqiao Lu at Hongzhong Lu. I started on Huaguang Lu then looped back along Chengjiaqiao. Like I said, they're grimy, but alive, and have probably been standing as long as China's been communist. Maybe longer.

Madonna and Child, with piss stream.

Kenny Rogers ain't got nothing on these bad boys. I was a few seconds too quick; as I turned away to peddle off, the one on the right turned and hawked a big loogie. That's China for you.

The meat cart - no back alley is complete without it. This one doesn't have any paws on it, in case you're faint of heart.

Now, from my comments above, you may think I'm making fun. Don't get me wrong, the public urination and spitting everywhere gets old. I met a friend for dinner on Thursday and when she took off her ear muffs they had caught a gob of phlegm that some individual spat somewhere along the way (we were both disgusted until we realized it COULD have ended up on her face or in her hair). But places like this are honest - the people are what they are, unreservedly and without shame. They don't have a lot of money, but my gosh, what they lack they make up in character, and I kind of think that's beautiful. And I think it's a shame that their communities get torn down for new apartment blocks. I'd rather see smiling faces like these...or hell, even be reminded of my otherness by open-mouthed stares as I pedal down their streets.

Me and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Well. Not a whole lot has been going on around here. Got caught up in the winter doldrums, and have been axing deserving individuals from my life (Socrates has not been mentioned on here in a very long time, but it wasn't until January that I finally cut him out of my life, thanks to the fact that he came back to Shanghers this fall and I - like an idiot - felt sorry for him). I've also been busily job hunting - this recruiting season, I sent out 29 applications, but it wasn't until three weeks ago that I set up my first interview. I was excited for that one, since it would have sent me to Marrakesh and a K-12 art position, if I had succeeded. After the interview, I felt like it was okay, but decided that rather than sit around and hope they called, I started filling out other applications. One of them was for the American School of Ulaanbaatar, for a secondary art job, just in time for their deadline. Later that night, I got a reply, asking for an interview, and after talking to their personnel consultant, and their principal, I was offered the job. It's not Marrakesh (who I never heard back from), but I have a feeling God was guiding me in this, since there are several congregations of my church in Ulaanbaatar itself, whereas there's just the one in all of Morocco, and that in faraway Rabat. And I think I'm going to like working for the principal a lot, and I work a lot harder for people I like (sad but true), and there is a decent-sized Korean population in UB, and while the salary is a little less, the taxes are as well, and I won't have to pay for rent or utilities (other than phone), and all in all, I think it's going to be a good place for me.

That said, Mongolia is really, REALLY bloody far north. Right now it's 19F up there, although tomorrow the high's supposed to be 28 (almost above freezing - How about that!) So I celebrated being offered my contract with a trip to the fabric market. Ostensibly, this was to buy layers, but far be it from me to leave China (thank goodness!) without doing my part for it's (endless) economic growth spurt. So in addition to the two pairs of long underwear I had copied in silk jersey (silk wicks sweat away from your skin) and the two plain shirts I had copied to put under other shirts, I ordered a dress, and a copy of a wrap skirt I own (except out of wool knit instead of the light breezy cotton it was originally made of)...and while I was looking for colors of the wool knit that DIDN'T look like the 60's threw up all over it, I found the most awesome shiny gold and blue leopard print, and decided I needed a dress made out of that, too. I told myself no more leopard print after the pencil skirt I bought back home last summer...but one more can't hurt, right?? Especially one like this - I figure I can go out dancing in this over the summer when I visit the Evil One in Lima...

Anyways, after the Shanghai Literary Festival - where Shermeen and I listened to Steffi Schmidt tell us the preface of her book...err, talk about her book, Shanghai Promenade (mostly stories about German spies who used to live here - we weren't unduly impressed, although Meen went ahead and bought the book and has promised to share any gems that tumble forth from the very dense book) - and lunch at Charme on East Nanjing Rd, I headed down to the fabric market to pick up my new clothes. The shirts and underwear were fine, the leopard-print was stunning in a nice, loud way, once they lowered the neckline a little, and the skirt - well, they need to reverse it so the purple layer is on top and the black on bottom, but it fit fine and I think it will be nice and warm, I may even have to have another made. And the other dress? It was beyond amazing. It was the best thing I've bought at the fabric market. It fit perfectly and was really flattering. This is it...

I decided to start calling the girl in the shop the Little Chinese Seamstress. I met her last spring when JoAnn was next door ordering shirts...it took a long time and as I was wandering around the third floor, I ended up in her shop because I saw a dress that I thought was really cute. The Little Chinese Seamstress was very convincing - she had good English and she wheedled me into ordering the dress I stopped to admire, even though I was kind of over buying things that day. It's a good thing she did, because everything she's made has turned out well. This is the fourth dress she's made me, and by far the best. It goes a little past my knees, has a flat panel down the middle of the front with ruching down both sides. My only wish is that she had more patterns to choose from - it's a really small shop - and that fewer people had discovered her, because she's usually pretty busy. I promised her today that I'd be back every month til I left, and I fully intend to. Leaving behind the fabric market is going to be one of the hardest things about leaving Shanghai. Here's the original dress she made me...

Speaking of leaving Shanghai, I've decided to live it up tourist style until I go. I've told myself that I will write a blog every week til then. While I bitch about the fact that there's not much soul to this city, there are lots of things I haven't done yet. So stay tuned.

Out of Oz

I had ten, glorious days in Korea. I slept most nights in a jjimjjilbang...when I left, I figured I was about as clean as I could get...and wandered Seoul like a very large, very cold amusement park during the day. I spent three days in Daegu with Wilmarie, Nam-Hee and their boys (would have liked to put a couple of pictures up, but I seem to have misplaced my camera), and an evening in Bundang with my Dark Lord and Master (and his wife and spawn). It was not a remarkably eventful trip, and a little disappointing (the Asia Eros Museum, which I was going to visit, has vanished - apparently it closed down), but I got to see my peeps, got to have two lessons with Belynda, in which we worked out most of Kashmir, and ate some great food. I also had a lot of conversations about leaving Shanghai. I have been planning to escape since, oh, October, November? I've made no secret of this. It's a daily struggle, dealing with my neighbors and the idiotic things they do. Not that people don't have a tendency to be idiots no matter where you are in the world - they're just more tightly packed together here. And things at school are...less than satisfactory. I mean - my fellow art teacher is a GREAT teacher, but otherwise a complete moron, and I have to share a classroom with her. But as I was walking around Namdaemun Market on Thursday, my last morning in Seoul, I began to question my decision to leave. There are SO many places I want to see in China, and I've hardly scratched the surface. I could possibly get experience teaching middle school, if I could get the school to move me up (and if I could stomach the colleagues I would, then, be working with). I have a great apartment, I'm not far from the subway, and there are things I like about Shanghai....the fabric market, for example. I'd have to figure out how to live with the Shanghainese without going crazy, which would be challenging, but I've been with people who HATE their host country neighbors, and I don't want to be like that. But more than anything else? I'm arms reach from Korea. I don't know if I want to go back to live...it's never the same, is it?...but it's nice to know I can hop a plane if I want and be there within two hours. Is that worth another year here? Maybe not. But with all the other reasons to stay, I think another year in Shanghai might be warranted. Unless the school in Istanbul calls. Then I'd be out of here faster than you could say, "Yallah, habibi!"