sushipanda

They say that true writers cannot stop writing, that they breathe and eat words and sentences. There are no pseudo-writers; that is, people who were born to write but don’t. I believe this is true. I know people who throw words down on paper or on their computer so violently and forcefully that it is as if they are barreling down some invisible imagery highway that the rest of just don’t see.

I say the “rest of us” here with a touch of sadness. When I was growing up, there was nothing more I wanted to be than a writer. I drowned in stories of my own imagination, and loved scribbling them down on paper so I could read them to my classmates. I was a performer with these stories. I itched to make people laugh, to make them listen to what I had to say. The growing density of these dreams was not hindered by my teachers; they encouraged me and pushed me to write as much as I could, even if most of my stories were riddled with fart jokes and toilets that spoke English (hey, I never said I was little Chekhov).

It was automatic for me to assume that I could make a living as a raconteur. But something funny happens in these public school systems. As you graduate from each stage of school (i.e. elementary to middle, middle to high) you start realizing you aren’t that great anymore. There are other people who are funnier, it seems. People move faster down that imagery highway than you. The teachers don’t coddle anymore; at least, not you. And suddenly, you become just another decent student.

I think it’s nice to feel a little different, to stand out from the crowd just a little bit. I used to think that my writing would be my vehicle to uniqueness; instead, I wrote less and less and started thinking about doing other things with my life. I think true writers would call those other things, such as a business degree, a “distraction.” I didn’t.

I guess my point is that somewhere along the road, I stopped writing, and as a result I stopped becoming a writer. It was that simple.

They say that true writers cannot stop writing. I’m hoping there are still second chances for writers who have been distracted. I’m hoping a cutesy little online journal is a decent place dip the toe into the water.

Welcome to Las Vegas!

The famous sign beckoned me these past two weeks as I drove to and back from the Strip (on those days when I wasn’t painfully busy with watching television and enjoying air conditioning at home) on various little errands. But I stayed away from the casinos save for the Bellagio buffet I took Mom-Hu to on a random Wednesday night, and hence the money stayed in pocket. But I knew that before I left for Shanghai, I would not be able to resist the call from all the lights. They are meant to hypnotize people, after all.

Thus, I was looking forward to the arrival of Jim and Hyunjin, childhood buddies who kindly drove all the way from Claremont to Vegas to visit me and have one last gorge on American decadence before I head over to the Motherland. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Jim/Hyunjin combination, an apt description would be a two-headed, nipple-pinching, cost conscious and sexually ambiguous beast of a duo that I welcome at all times with very open arms. We hit Las Vegas in the only way that this classic triumverate of mischief could: $5.99 steak dinners, masquerading as high-rollers to get the free chocolate-covered strawberries at the Bellagio VIP lounge, and grinding-to-a-halt gambling sessions at $5 pai-gow poker tables at the Gold Coast (yes ladies and gents, the Gold Coast). Such exploits were a far cry from being spoiled by Spencer’s oft-comped blackjack/strip club addiction, of which I must sheepishly admit I have been a beneficiary. However, what I learned is that Las Vegas is candy-coated experience that comes in many shades of colors. Hey, at least I wasn’t staying at the San Remo.

Observations from the weekend:

1) One must master the art (yes, it IS an art) of the all-you-can-eat. First, there must be no drinking of anything carbonated. Minimal water consumption; sake is OK. Second, the stomach must be appropriately prepped before the big event. For example, if you are scheduled to buffet at night, it would be wise to eat as much salad as possible for brunch, just to widen the stomach without too much satiation. Third, there is the much neglected step of getting up and walking around a few times during the meal. I call this “doing the vulture.” Humans can only burn so many calories from shoving food into their mouths; it’s important to get up and remind your body of how it feels to NOT be eating, so when you sit back down it has the faith that it can eat some more. And finally, competition is critical. Whether you are trying to surpass your own personal benchmark, eating with your friends, or even sitting down at a stranger’s table and issuing a challenge, it is essential that we have a force that pushes us forward, that instills faith that we can overcome. Kids, write this stuff down, you’ll thank me for it later.

2) The water show at the Bellagio really makes me want to go pee. Badly.

3) Cocktails are only free if you win. If you don’t, each Jack and Coke costs about $50-$100 bucks.

4) Las Vegas is the best when you drive in at sunset and drive back at sunrise.

5) It took two weeks of living here before I began cursing out-of-state drivers and making fun of all the teeming tourists.

6) You’re either a baller or you’re not. Chances are, if you’re at the Barbary Coast waiting in line for the $5.99 steak and eggs dinner, you’re probably not a baller, no matter how nice you smell.

I’m flying into Shanghai on Tuesday morning (9/23), and should be getting there on Wednesday night. I’ll be going with a pocketful of dreams…and a suitcase full of toiletries. All you Chinese people, watch out!

-Eric-

Greetings from Shanghai, the Paris of the East! After much talk and hype, I finally went through with my word and left the comfort of the country that raised and nurtured me for the last quarter-century to live in the country that raised and nurtured generations upon generations of little Hu’s for the past five thousand years. Needless to say, China needs another one to add to the mix.

Some travel details: I spent a good 15 hours surrounded by a horde of Japanese tourists with huge bags from the duty-free stores in the Las Vegas and Los Angeles airports. I learned a lot about the wonderful Japanese people from spending so much time with them in such a confined space, namely that if you inadvertently slap their faces around with your duffel bag while bumbling about in the aisle of the airplane, they tend to punch you in the ass. This happened on several occasions, but towards the end I kinda started enjoying the Japanese ass punch.

I finally arrived in Shanghai late Wednesday night, which would have been really early Wednesday morning for those of you back in the States. My mom and I were greeted by the wonderful site of our luggage locks broken open. Upon further inspection, I was steamed to find that one of my pairs of socks was missing. “Baggage robbing cretins!” I shouted and pumped my fist in the air. My mom tried to convince me that having her black pearl necklace fleeced was more painful than losing one of my socks, but I had to lecture her on what is valuable in this world and what isn’t. “Mom, if you were forced at gunpoint to emulate Tom Cruise in “Risky Business,” what would you rather have, your necklace or my socks!” She punched my ass.

I have to say that watching the movie “What a Girl Wants” starring the underrated Colin Firth and newcomer Amanda Bynes repeatedly on an airplane is a great way to prevent jet lag. I hardly slept on the plane, and when I finally got home, it was around 11 pm and the perfect time to sleep. I, of course, delayed my bedtime with a few intense games of Freecell, but that’s besides the point. The house that I’m staying in is located on the far west side of the city. It’s pretty modern with lots of hardwood floors for me to slide around in nothing but my socks. Everything is a little bit smaller than back in the states, but I suppose that makes sense since the people are a little smaller, too. We live in a bit of an enclosed community, and Mike later told me that this area is filled to the brim with expats like myself and triad members.

So yesterday was my first full day in Shanghai, and I made the best of it by watching a bootlegged copy of “The Transporter” at the house. Even sucky movies are fun to watch when they’re bootlegged! In the afternoon, I finally went out on my first Chinese mission ever: to open my own bank account. Good thing my mom was there to help me out, because get this: EVERYTHING IS IN CHINESE!! Isn’t that outrageous? You’d think that a country as big as China would finally get the picture and start to use English and sell Krispy Kremes!

After some lunch, Mom-Hu and I headed out to the local Carrefour, which is basically this huge department store that sells everything. In the home appliances section I promptly knocked down one of those hanging aisle signs that indicates what that aisle has in stock. Dude, the whole thing came crashing down and bounced off my head before knocking down a couple of wall fixtures. I had never done that before in the States, so I was pretty excited and started looking around for someone to high-five. Alas, all I saw were some pretty angry salespeople, so I hightailed it outta there and headed to, where else, the booze section.

At first, I was stoked because it all looked so cheap. They sold my favorite beer, Boddington’s Irish Pub Ale, in packs of four for less than $3…or so I was led to believe! Apparently, everything there is sold as an individual item, probably because there are so few people in China and there is no need for them to buy in bulk. So it was $3 a can, not for all four, and all of a sudden the liquor section wasn’t looking so rosy anymore.

I hung out around the spirits section, and was approached by a Caucasian salesperson. She started asking me what I was looking for in accented English, and I was a little taken back, since even though I’m an American, I look pretty goddamn Chinese! I wondered what about me made it so glaringly clear to her that I spoke English. So I took off my cowboy hat and the American-flag bandana that I usually wear, and asked back, “Where do y’all keep the port?”

At night, my new friend Judy (to whom I had been introduced by Cindy Ng a few months ago and who was also teaching in Shanghai) invited me out to go this club in downtown Shanghai called Pegasus. Naturally, this was going to be my first night out in my new home, and I was feeling some stage-fright. Would I be able to fit in? Did I have the dance-floor moves to cut it here in the big city? How do I say “The other guy grabbed your ass, not me” in Chinese? So many questions I had to ponder while heading towards the club, but I ended up falling asleep instead.

Turns out that Pegasus is just like any of the other clubs that I sporadically visited back in San Francisco. It appeared that about 70% of the crowd there were expats; you could have mixed any one of them with the Berkeley graduate crowd and no one would be able to tell the difference. And it wasn’t all Asian either, there was a much better mix of ethnicity than I had expected. Apparently, this was a pretty hot spot for expats, and on a Thursday night it was nearly impossible to do any respectable dancing with such limited space. After a few drinks, however, I found myself on stage shaking my tail feather in front of everyone. I’m surprised no one threw anything. The view from the below looked something like this, if you were to read the stage from right to left “Hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl….WHAT THE…!”

Sadly, I think the jet lag hit me, and something inside me crashed. I didn’t really want to move or do anything anymore, so I just kinda stood in the back absorbing the vibe. I was pretty surprised at how standard everything was; I swear I could have been at NV or the Velvet Lounge or any other decent club back in S.F.. It’s that similar of a scene. As of now, I’m sure how to feel about it, since I long ago realized that my affair with clubbing was over once I turned 24. If this is what the scene is like, then I might have more time updating this journal, cuz I’ll just be home all the time lamenting that there isn’t any other scene. It’s hard to get to know people or meet anyone at a place like that, and I’m hoping that Tina or Mike will be able to show me around the lounge/bar scene later on, which I prefer much better.

Anyway, I selfishly dragged Judy away from one of her many suitors and cabbed back home with her, since we live pretty close to each other. Then I crashed and dreamt about dinosaurs like I always do. My first day in Shanghai was over, and I felt that I had gotten a small taste of what my life will be like here, and where I was hoping to find some relief, I continue to feel trepidation and anxiety. Still, I think to myself, isn’t this what I came here for? For some IN-stability? Some kind of a test to see how I do in the face of strange and uncomfortable situations?

I realize I have only been here for a little more than a day, and there is a lot more to explore. I’m going out to dinner tonight with Tina; it’ll definitely be nice to see an old friend again in a city teeming with new strangers. In the meantime, I’ll do my best not to knock down any more signs, and I’m convinced I’ll need more to drink if I’m going to try to stand out from this expat crowd.

Shanghai is the place that makes you heave all your superannuated preconceptions about China out the window: it is HAPPENIN’ here. It’s not just the nearly 15 million residents that hurry through the streets every day; the architecture and construction renaissance continues to grow and breathe fire, pushing the boundaries of the city further in each direction. The energy that I feel walking down some of the busier streets must be akin to those visitors of New York in the early part of the 20th century, that of a city that neither stirs nor rests, but one that quakes and roars. Every human being here is on his or her way somewhere; stragglers are discarded and figuratively run over by all that is moving here on Shanghai’s roads. Everyone seems to fit chaotically into some complex yet beautiful machinery that spews out energy and returns it back unto itself so that it can be re-used and harnessed for later.

The last time I was in Shanghai I was suffering from a sickness potent enough to confine me to a hospital bed overnight. Hence, I remember very little about this crazy city, except that it didn’t make me feel very good. I must have been unfairly assigning blame; the magnificence of this city is tangible and ever present in its huge litter of super-skyscrapers, its spacious shopping malls, its elegant parks, and the billboards (Oh the billboards!). I hear that a lot has changed in the past 5, 10, 20 years. I haven’t been here to bear witness to that change, but the intensity that I feel seeping through every corner here must have resulted in some sort of progress.

There is so much yet for me to see and do, but the impression this city has made on me has, needless to say, been quite powerful. I think it’s difficult for people who have never lived in a truly massive metropolis to really appreciate how large a city like Shanghai can be. And the energy isn’t concentrated here, either. I walked out of a subway station in Pudong, the far eastern side of the city, and I saw a crop of buildings that looked like the downtown area in San Francisco. Later I learned that these buildings were all new residential complexes, and not even considered part of any downtown. This city is growing so quickly and so tremendously that an area the size of San Francisco can be considered a fringe residential neighborhood.

Following my first adventure out on the town on Thursday night, I went out to indulge in some nightlife again on Friday night with Tina and her crowd of personable and energetic friends. After an all-you-can-eat-drink sushi binge, we headed off to Fuxing Park, which is located in what is known by the tourist guides as the French Concession. Back in the mid 19th century, when the Europeans and Americans basically blackmailed the Chinese government into giving them pieces of the city, the French typically wanted no part in the other colonists’ attempts to unite all the Western areas of the city, and remained segregated from the rest of the town. The French colonists had their own system for transportation, electricity, and water. This area, now the French Concession, is now an amalgam of 20th century communist industrialism and classical French architecture, which is actually quite beautiful at night. I was telling Judy as we were standing outside the restaurant that a lot of this area in Shanghai reminded us of parts of New York, namely the East Village, where the avenues are lined with trees and tidy brownstones, with beautifully designed restaurants and boutiques almost hidden by the comfortable architectural homogeneity of the surrounding buildings. Fuxing Park at night was a welcome respite from all the towers and hotels in that the greenery overwhelmed the buildings, and not vice versa.

I won’t get into too many details about my experience at the bars, except to mention that splitting a bottle of Johnny Walker Black will make you not able to acknowledge anything, even the fact that you’re drunk off your rocker. It was in this stupor that I realized I had lost the $500 cell-phone that my mom had let me use. I’m surprised that none of the major news stations both here in China and overseas had any reports about the full-fledged hurricane known as Hurricane-Eric’s-Mom that hit the central eastern coast of China.

When the fit hits the shan, somebody’s going to have to stay after school. Now who do you suppose that might be?

Well, there’s other stuff to report too, but I have plenty of time to do that, and you have plenty of time to read it.

Peace

On Monday night we sat down at an outside patio table at “Red,” a popular and upscale fusion restaurant in the Luwan district of Shanghai that happens to belong to one of Tina’s friends I had met a few days prior. Judy and I were just coming from dinner at an Indian restaurant in the same district. At this dinner I was introduced to a Turkish graphic designer who had grown up in Australia and had her future correctly told to her years before by someone reading her leftover Turkish coffee grains. Then there was the New York-based auditor who had just arrived in Shanghai for four months. Apparently, his job is to travel from one country to another for a period of four months each time.

“Just enough to really dig in and get to know a place,” I said to him.

“Exactly,” he responded.

Then there was the petite ABC (American Born Chinese), a fireball of a Northern Californian who had a penchant for hunting white males in Shanghai nightclubs and bars and had lost eleven cell-phones in a little under 2 years here in Shanghai. Our conversations meandered through the spiritually creepy (ouija boards, talking to the dead), the physically impossible (light as a feather), and the genuinely haunting (the Lachaise cemetery in Paris). All of this over Punjabi food (Murgh RaRa) and Japanese and German Beer.

So here we were at “Red,” sitting down to another group of people, 1 Brit and 2 Aussies. The Brit was a recent transplant from Hong Kong, where she had spent 10 years working as an architect. She had a fabulous British accent and an even more fabulous gap in her front teeth to go with it. She had recently won a sausage-eating contest. One of the Aussies had been at his seat since 2 pm that afternoon (it was now 10pm), and he was painfully nursing his 12th pint of inevitably Western European brew. Next to him was a 44 year old Australian bar manager who used the term “Sarcky” instead of “sarcastic” and always seemed to be a little sarcky himself.

The 44 year old Aussie raised his mug in a toast. We accordingly raised our wine glasses, which were filled with Italian chianti.

“To convergence,” he toasted.

To convergence.

Today I’d like to talk about the little nuances about the Chinese language, specifically the fact that it’s impenetrable and bewildering in every single way. Not only are these hieroglyphics plastered across all that is meaningful here, but speaking it poses a greater threat to the novice tongue. You see, almost every word here has multiple meanings that need to be placed within the context of the entire phrase and spoken with the right intonation in order to be understood. There are four main intonations, and here are how they sound…ok, I just spoke them out loud to the computer, and I realize you probably didn’t get that, so you kids will have to buckle down and use those imaginations of yours.

Basically, one word uttered from your lips can mean up to a dozen or two different meanings, even if you use the correct intonation. While the Chinese government has tried to be helpful and to move into the world of computers and hence, typing, through establishing a system of words based on the Latin alphabet (pinying), it still doesn’t have the correct intonations listed on maps, menus, et al. Let me give you an analogous example using English.

Say you walk into a Krispy Kreme. “Hi, can I please have a glazed donut?”

The donut engineer hands you a chocolate covered donut.

You respond, “No, I’m sorry, not that glazed donut, but THAT glazed donut.”

“Oh, you mean a glazed donut.”

“Yes, thanks.”

She hands you a maple cake donut.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t want that glazed donut, I want that glazed donut.”

She hands you an apple fritter.

“No no, that’s not what I wanted. I wanted a GLAZED donut.”

She hands you a Bud Lite.

“Yes, thank you very much,” you say.

“What? What did you say about my mom?” She gets indignant.

“No, I meant “THANK YOU VERY MUCH.”

“Yes, I can’t believe Arnold won, either.”

You see what I mean? That is how the interchange is here if you aren’t sure which intonation to use and with which words to use the words you intend to use. Got it?

Sometimes, you come across a few words that serve as all-purpose good-time words.

Bao.

Say it out loud and let it dangle in the roof of your mouth. That means “bun,” and makes me think about biting into a plump Chinese bun on a cold morning, letting the juices from the meet run down your throat, and all the steam that comes out of your mouth because the “bao” is just a little too hot.

Bao.

Say it like your belching. That means “full,” as in after a huge meal, and it makes me think about leaning back in a chair at a table full of laughing and satisfied friends, the wine and pasta still fresh in my mouth. There’s nothing like feeling “bao” in the presence of good food and friends, places like North Beach in San Francisco, the North End in Boston, and any street in Paris.

Bao.

Say it like you’re spitting something out. That means “hug,” as in the biggest bear hug you could probably get from someone you haven’t seen in too long of a time, whether it be 30 minutes or a year. For me, I miss the “bao” that I left behind when I came here to Shanghai, the kind that is only reserved for soothing aches.

What a perfect note to segue into Dido. On Monday I finally met up with Mike, who had returned from his vacation from Hong Kong the night before. It was good to see another familiar face, and I think he was relieved to have another good friend from back home here with whom to play video games. The next night, at my prodding, he took me and Judy out to one of the shadiest operations I have ever seen. I had been desperate to buy the new Dido CD “Life for Rent,” which was released in the U.S. on the 1st of October. Sadly enough, my Dido missions were failures and always ended with me sobbing into my hands on the corner and Judy trying valiantly to console me.

This time was different. We turned into a small and dark alley and to an even smaller and darker establishment with a small flickering sign that read “Coffee Club” above the doorway. Inside, two young girls sat at two small tables counting money. Mike stormed past them and into the back of the “restaurant,” where he opened a door into a room and subsequently opened the door to my great Shanghai happiness (thus far). The room contained stacks and stacks of DVDs and CDs, neatly arranged in boxes and on the disc shelves wallpapered over each wall. The room was not large, but my eyes were as I gasped at the sheer magnificence of such an efficiently-run bootlegging operation. And what did I see leaning on the third shelf from the bottom on the CD wall but Dido, irrepressibly smiling on the front of her album cover.

Could this be it? At that moment I realized what Coronado must have felt staring at those massive chambers of gold. As I picked up the CD, I was afraid that it would evaporate in my hands, that the whole thing was some sort of apparition and I would turn around and see Ashton Kuchter saunter in and smugly claim that I had once again been “Punk’d!” Alas, I dreamt a dream, and that dream came true. In my hand I held a $1.20 copy of “Life For Rent.” The heavens opened up, the angels sang, and God himself came down and kicked me around a bit for buying illegal contraband, but it didn’t matter to me. No Angel could stop me from “Life for Rent.”
The album is splendid. I think that only Sarah McLachlan can sing about longing and heartache the way Dido can. “White Flag” is the crème de la crème of the album, when she sings about the fiancé that she left behind to pursue her career.

“And when we meet, and I’m sure we will”

It’s emotionally rejuvenating to hear someone sing about the faith that you want to feel in your body as well. The song “Life For Rent” is about all of us who have felt afraid of being owned, of committing to something, of always being on the run. Maybe those of aren’t so alone after all.

OK, I know there are a lot of people who aren’t into Dido and won’t find any of this interesting, so I’ll stop being a cheese-puff and tell you guys that if you have yahoo messenger, all it takes is a webcam or even just a microphone and we can see and talk to each other online for free. Roger was just telling me in real-time about how he voted for Gary Coleman in the California Recall because everyone was telling him to vote for Arnold, and he thought they meant Arnold from “Different Strokes.” That’s the kind of shit you want to HEAR from your friends and not get over e-mail.

Hope to see you online soon.

-Eric-

I realize that I have not used this journal much to really talk about things that I’m feeling. This is primarily because I wanted to treat this as a method of storytelling rather than as an actual diary. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that I should be putting some of the more robust emotions that I am experiencing down on paper, at the very least so that I can read it and try to make some sense out of it for myself. So here goes…

There was a time in my life where I felt everything on an exaggerated scale, where each emotion was amplified and rendered me incapable of reacting to things in an appropriate manner. Then I “grew up” and became more and more tempered, more mellow in the way that I dealt with my feelings. There were times recently when I’ve been criticized for being emotionless, which is a far cry from the over-sensitive reactionary that I had been when I was younger.

Sometimes, however, I will be floored by a wave of feeling and emotion, and at these moments there are no antidotes, and there is no part of me that is mellow. So the brain shoots out in 50 million directions and I am consumed by the very fact that I am consumed.

It is at these moments of complete honesty that the music I listen to inserts itself into my supernova of emotion and passion and becomes forever imprinted and identified with all the chaos. I know this does not happen just to me.

Here are lyrics to Dido’s beautiful “White Flag”, to be referenced later:

I know you think that I shouldn’t still love you,
I’ll tell you that.
But if I didn’t say it, well I’d still have felt it
where’s the sense in that?

I promise I’m not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can’t talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of “it’s over”
then I’m sure that that makes sense

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

And when we meet
Which I’m sure we will
All that was then
Will be there still
I’ll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I’ve moved on….

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

—————————–

Much of my life has been a series of delayed reactions. Most people think about the consequences and ramifications of their major decisions prior to making those choices; I plow ahead and am forced to look back at what I’ve left behind, somehow always with a tinge of copper-tasting regret. I left my home in San Francisco, both figuratively and literally, nearly 2 months ago, and while the time leading up to my departure was fraught with anxiety, excitement, and most of all, pain, I was always moving forward, always preparing myself for what was going to happen next. Why did I want so much more when I had so much already?

One long delayed reaction. I look back now and can’t help but wonder if, like Dido, I will one day meet the past…and let it pass. “And all that was then, will be there still.” I am paying a huge price for coming out here, because I know I may have left too much mess and destruction to go back again.

“And I caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can’t talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of “it’s over”
then I’m sure that that makes sense”

*I love using my own words, but sometimes, someone can do it so much better*

I’ve been too greedy. I want it all and so much more. And here I stand, looking at the price I have to pay for wanting so much, and more and more it looks like I have to lose so much instead. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to say goodbye, to let go, because it means that I really have lost it, and there’s no going back. Whether I fight or put up the White Flag and surrender; I’m going down with this ship anyway.

I hope I can be forgiven for everything, and I hope that my happiness and I can be together once again.

So Buddha came down last night in my sleep and whacked me in the head.
Crowned in a Boston Red Sox cap he looked down at me and said:
“I’ve been reading your online journal and it is a bore,
Thus I command thee: thou shalt blog about Dido no more.”

Ok, so I’ve been a little melodramatically arbitrary in my last 1 or 2 journal entries; I still reserve the right to use it since all of you are back home and sleeping when I need some loving armchair psychiatry. But now, after my last reality check, it’s back to writing about my Shanghai mis-adventures.

About a week and a half ago, my extended family and I crammed into a big red van and drove about 1.5 hours either north, south, or west of Shanghai to a famous city named Suzhou. Suzhou is particularly famous for its enclosed gardens. These gardens usually have man-made ponds and streams inside, with little white walking bridges and teahouses completing the picture.

My great-grandfather is buried out in an old cemetery on the farmland surrounding downtown Suzhou. The kind of poverty you see the farther you are from Shanghai is truly thunderous. Most of the farmers and village-folk have lived their type of lifestyle for hundreds of years. Street vendors were selling things like roasted chestnuts, home-made buns, and cans of Pepsi. After paying respects to my great-grandfather Hu, we were surrounded by three little ladies who must have been in their late 60’s or early seventies, trying to peddle little home-made trinkets and snacks. My dad ended up handing them the equivalent of $6.25 for them to split evenly between themselves. I can’t adequately paint the picture of how happy they looked, but let me just say that it made me smile.

Driving back through the countryside, the driver was able to pick up the major Shanghainese radio stations. I guess that once a week, one of the stations does a little countdown of popular English music in the U.S. and the U.K.. Listening to the DJ’s staccato through Chinese that I couldn’t understand, and then pause to say things like “P. Diddy” in thick Chinese accents, is priceless.

Justin Timberlake came on the radio as we were driving through the crowded streets of Suzhou, and as I started bobbing my head to the music, the following two questions popped into my head:

1) Isn’t it a trip that I’m driving through this really poor part of the country and we’re all listening to Justin Tiberlake on the radio?
2) Does the fact that I’m bobbing my head to this music mean that I should be attracted to men?

Indeed, the first question is reflective of how this ancient country is changing so fast, is becoming so modernized and westernized everywhere you look, even outside the city.

I’m still working on the second one.

I’ve decided that I need to write a will, partly because I’ve accumulated enough material things of value that I have something to offer my friends and loved ones, but mainly because every time I get into a cab here, I’m almost certain I’m going to die. Road signs, lane dividers, and pedestrians are usually dismissed by the drivers as roadkill-worthy impediments to their ultimate goal: getting YOUR ass to your destination as soon as possible so that they can get another fare. It’s all about inventory turnover, after all. In any case, I have about 30 stuffed panda bears and a kick-ass Edward Hopper print that are up for grabs. I want to be buried with my Calvin and Hobbes collection, though. And my old Intel badge. Yeah right.

So today marks my third full week of being Shanghai-nese. While there has been much excitement, I also have many concerns here. For instance, everyone here smokes. It’s not really the seondhand smoke, but in a city this large, the twenty-fifthhand smoke can get a little bothersome. Also, beer can be cheaper than bottled water here, which is initially a great thing, but after stumbling home night after night with nothing but beer in your belly, you tend to get a little tired of alcohol. And oddly enough, my belly has become more rotund and enlarged of late. I wonder if there is a term for one’s belly becoming bigger as a result of drinking an excessive amount of beer. I’ll have to Google that one…

There’s been a good reason I’ve neglected my blog, which is that my stupid web-hosting company (it’s called 1t3.com) is a total sham, and have left sushipanda.com hanging out to dry in no-server land. I’ve done a some subsequent research on the web and it turns out that no one likes these guys, so if you ever decide to actually get your own website, stay away from 1t3, they’ll take you up the river, strip your clothes off, make you dance around the smoldering pit of your own expectations, and then eat moldy tree bark. I’ve been there, it’s not fun.

Anyway, for that one person out there who reads these entries and is actually interested in my happenings here in Shanghai…one day I will find out who you are. I will also say that the past week and a half has been incredibly eventful. Let me give you the rundown:

1. I got a haircut
2. I ate some food.
3. I scratched my head a few times
4. I ate some more food.
5. I turned on some music and danced for a good 8 minutes one morning in my room when no one was looking. I was with no one. (“No One,” of course, is the name I lovingly gave my blow-up Whoopi Goldberg doll, but you guys knew that already)

Exciting stuff, huh? In actuality, one of my big fears before I came here was getting a haircut. As all of you know, my head is of unwieldy ballast, and I take great care in making sure that, with so much surface area to cover, the hair is evenly trimmed and takes on a semblance of symmetry. Being in a foreign land forced understandable trepidation upon me, and so it was with great anxiety that I entered a neighborhood hair salon one morning a few days ago to get inaugurated into the Chinese Wacked-out Hair Club for Men.

So let me tell you something about salons here in Shanghai: you don’t just come here to get your hair cut. Usually, patrons lie back and get a nice shampoo-down, followed by a neck massage and a full back massage, with the haircut as the grand finale. On a day prior to my trip to the salon, Mike Wong, wallowing in all the glory of his latent homophobia, strictly instructed me never to have someone of the male persuasion do all these things to me. I looked at his own goofy haircut (sorry Mike), and thought I’d take a chance and go another direction.

One valuable lesson I’ve learned since coming here to Shanghai, which I should have learned a long time ago in the States: If you have corrected vision and have contact lenses, make sure you wear them when you get your hair cut by a strange man with crazy orange skunky hair. I had to remove my glasses, and all I ended up seeing was a big blurry mess in the mirror. Of course, that’s how it usually looks when I have my glasses on, too, but at least I could make out my hair. I was floating and lost at sea, with nothing but the dude’s big-ass hands to guide me towards looking Shanghai-chic.

Did I say Shanghai-chic? I meant Shanghai-chic…ken, because that’s how I looked leaving the place. In fact, I decided to get into the spirit and clucked all the way home. Yup, I did the whole “arms under armpits” thing as well. No one really paid me any attention except that crazy old lady who came after me with a huge butcher knife and saying something about “kung pao,” but I waddled way too fast for her.

Apparently, the hair thing is a big rite of passage. I guess some people try to fit into new environments by changing things like the clothes that they wear or their patterns of speech. I ended up choosing, not by my own volition, to get a really stupid looking haircut so I could fit in with the rest of the people here. Some of my other attempts at assimilation have met with more disastrous results. No joke, the current fashion statement here in Shanghai is for people to walk out on the street in their fucking pajamas. I’ve heard a number of theories about why they do this, all of them surround the concept of “status.” People ostensibly feel that by showing others that they don’t care about how they look in public, somehow that fact alone will convince the public that they have just enough personal wealth to be that indifferent.

I looked at the person telling me this story, and said, “Wait, by ‘wealth’ you mean ‘crazy as shit,’ right?”

“No, that’s really the fashion here.”

Well, when in China, do as the crazy. I thought maybe I could fit in a little more than I have been by wearing my nightly attire out into public as well. It was a Tuesday, so I put on my zircona-studded green alligator thong, my Nikes, and my baby-blue baby-tee and hit the biggest shopping street in Shanghai to show off just how wealthy I was.

I really didn’t get why they had to call in the military. Shit, now THAT was embarrassing!

I’m actually a little sick and downed a couple of NyQuil a few moments ago, so it’s getting harder and harder for me to lift up my fingers to type this. I wanted to write some more about this epic battle of the cab-drivers that I was involved in, and also about the half-bottle of scotch I took and gave right back in the most biologically violent of ways on Saturday night, but I think I’m going to crawl into my bed, curl up, and dream about Donald Rumsfeld in a Jacuzzi with a big tub of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I know you guys know the dream! *wink*

Ok, too much NyQuil. This kicks ass.

Halloween used to be about the candy. It used to be about the Sweet Tarts, the Snickers, the Gummy Bears, the M&Ms, the Reese’s Pieces. It used to be about eggs and toilet paper and little cute girls in princess outfits. It used to be about something pure and noble. Damn it, it used to be about SOMETHING!

*taking a deep breath*

Sorry I get so worked about this. It’s just that as you get older, the meaning of Halloween seems to get more and more lost. I mean, our Founding Fathers created Halloween so that Native Americans could ride reindeer and go to each house and look for colorful buried eggs. That innocent and patriotic spirit has been drowned in the painful cacophony of multinational corporate commercialism. Instead of it being about little kids living out their American dream, the holiday is now marketed toward adults who have money to spend on pre-packaged costumes, hideous orange undergarments, and lots and lots of beer. The very least that can be done, I say, is to put M&M’s IN the Heineken. That would help. A little.

Halloween in Shanghai was not much more than a blur of this aforementioned yupplie-driven drive to drink and dance and debauche. That’s OK when you’re in a city like San Francisco, what with all the wonderful freaks and fracas to keep the wicked energy buzzing. The people in Shanghai, for whom the concept of dressing up in hideous and gawdy apparel is reserved for the daily work-day, Halloween is nothing to crow about. For us Americans, who remain firmly entrenched in the quest to make fools of ourselves and show off our insane amount of free time, this narrows the Halloween options down considerably.

I ended up dressing up as Super Mario from Super Mario Brothers. My partner in crime was someone named Tim, who was willing to go as Luigi. Earlier last week we met up with Paulina, who was hosting her own little Halloween shindig at her apartment, to go to the Shanghai fabric market and design and purchase our own costumes. At first I was a little taken aback. I asked her, “Wait, you mean people actually MAKE clothes?”

Paulina laughed. “Where do you think you get your clothes from silly, a magic fairy?”

I was quiet on the outside, but inside I was re-examining the existence of Gwynelda, the Magic Clothes Fairy that I had thought lived in my closet back home and created clothes with her magic wand. Damn, I was sheltered!

Anyway, I was standing with Tim at the tailors that were going to make our Mario and Luigi costumes, and as the gentleman was about to measure our heads for our hats, I heard one of the funniest things anyone has ever uttered in my presence: Tim turned to me and the girls we were with and said, “I have a really big head, so I hope the hat fits.”

I spit out whatever I was eating and/or drinking at the time and looked incredulously at his puny head. It was all I could do to keep from laughing my head off…except my head doesn’t even come off with the jaws of life. Of course, this non-argument was put to rest when the tailor measured Tim’s head with one tape measure, and then had to fetch two tape measures to adequately measure mine.

“Are you sure you want a hat and not a boat-sail?” he asked.

I ended up taking the boat sail.

On the big night, we all started the evening at Paulina’s Halloween bash. It was the first time meeting lots of new people, and my initial shyness eventually melted away into uncontrollable fever with each glass of Johnny Walker that I downed. I ended up jumping up and down, pretending to break bricks and throwing imaginary fireballs like the real Mario. I think it was funny for most people up until the point that I began lighting people’s faux tails on fire with some matches. We ended up heading out to a few clubs that were hosting Halloween parties. I attraced a lot of attention on the dance floor at the second club we went to, and at first I was feeling pretty good about myself what with all these young girls trying to talk to me, until I found out that they all thought I was Italian.

And then Luigi came up to me, without his moustache. Apparently, he was so drunk that he let it drop into the toilet when he was using it and pee’ed all over it.

“Dude, I pee’ed on my moustache.”

I looked at him, my saddened little brother Luigi, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him so alone in this world without his moustache there to protect him. So I did the only thing an older, more rotund and mature brother would do.

I ripped off my own moustache, dropped it on the dance-floor, and pee’ed on it myself.

Now THAT, my friends, is Super Mario.

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!