June 4, 2009, shortly before 7:00 p.m. Location: People’s Square, Shanghai. A police van with a bewildering array of cameras, lights, whizzing bits and oddly bulbous domes is parked near a large crowd. The van’s side door is slightly ajar. Signs behind the crowd reveal that the people are here to watch “High School Musical” at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. A peek inside the police van reveals an officer staring at a computer screen, playing Solitaire.
This Friday will mark one month after the 97th birthday of Kim Il-sung, which is a good enough excuse for me to post something that’s been sitting on my computer for some time.
It is an ode to Kim Il-sung written in the style of Robert Burns, with apologies in advance for any true speakers of Scots. I’ll admit I can’t remember the precise reason that I decided to compose such an ode, but here it is.
For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the hagiography of the DPRK, here is some background information:
The poem refers to the log cabin on Mt. Paektu, the place of the mythical origin of the Korean people, in which Kim Jong-il had his equally mythical birth. That birth, on February 16, 1942, is said to have been accompanied by a double rainbow and the appearance of a new star in the sky. The cabin stands today and is something of destination for pilgrims in the DPRK — it’s also filled with numerological significance, including being 216 meters (as in 02/16) from the base of a nearby cliff.
Juche is the principle of self-reliance that is the foundation of North Korean ideology. Arirang is the name of a famous Korean song, sometimes sung as an ode to reunification, and has also been used as the name of the Mass Games held in Pyongyang.
And now, the poem:
On seeing his cabin on Mt. Paektu
Abune a cauld and mirky brae,
o’ Paektu’s snaw, aneath the skies,
whar Kim Jong-il th’ bairn is frae,
a cozie, hamely haddin’ lies.
It hears at dawe the birdie’s sang,
tha’ echoes ben the gracefu’ morn.
Sae hinny as he flees amang,
Th’ pine, th’ larch, th’ spruce
- th’ thorn.
O haddin’! Bigg’t by daddie Kim!
Frae timmer made: Ye stand sae straught!
Me heart’s astir wi’ thoughts o’ him,
Wha me to grit Pyongyang hae brought.
But now, waesacks! His banes gae stiff!
An’ cauld as airn; He’s here nae more!
I’m wearie, fill’t with dool an’ grief!
Me fiere, me daddie’s, left the shore!
O! Kim Il-sung, I’m fidgin-fain
For ye! An’ though ye’ve now passed on,
I’ll see your haddin’ when ye’re gaen,
And ken tha’ Juche isna faun.
And sae, thegither, teuhgly stan’
a-fiel’! We, wi’ blithe spirits all!
For bonnie is the Arirang,
O! Kim Il-sung! We hear your call!
An ill-starred taxi ride recently left me without a commuter bike. Lesson learned: When taking a taxi, always get a receipt. Without one, the Bashi Taxi Company proved unable to recover my belovedDahonBoardwalk, folded and placed in the trunk. It had recently been converted into what I dare say was China’s only fixed-gear folding bike.
Wu Xiaohai, the manager of Devil Bikes on Jiangning Lu, had been the man behind that fixed conversion, and his condolences on the loss were sincere. Then he showed me this (click to enlarge):
The bike is made by TNT, a Taiwanese company with no apparent web presence. They specialize in what are known as “minivelos”: rigid road and mountain bike frames built for 20″ wheels (BMX size). TNT’s frames are all-aluminum, and include such nifty features as generous clearance for fat tires and fenders, and disc brake mounts. The frameset, including fork, sells at Devil Bikes for RMB780 (US$114).
The Brooks saddle, lifted from my ernai Jamis (now suffering from pangs of jealousy), was my own addition. The rest was built up as Wu saw fit.
I had not been aware of minivelos, which I understand are enjoying some popularity in Japan. They combine the quick steering and all-around fun of a small-wheeled bike with the solidity of a rigid frame. Plus, they’re small enough to fit in the back of a taxi with an easily removed wheel. Just don’t forget your receipt.
Any visitors to this blog (there, I’ve said it) have no doubt noticed a distinct lack of activity in recent months. That’s mostly due to my resources being focused on this magazine and blog. Much to my surprise, however, I’ve found this site continuing to draw a steady stream of visitors.
Worryingly, many — particularly over the Olympics — seem to have come to view my inaccurate and generally useless “analysis” of air pollution indices in Hong Kong and Beijing. I tracked down the origin of many of those visitors to Wikipedia’s Air Pollution Index page. Apparently, someone thought that a random entry on a blog, prefaced by an explicit warning not to rely on the subsequent information, was a good source of information on the topic.
I like Wikipedia (I particularly enjoyed reading that the Shanghai World Financial Center was built “on the dreams of a few ‘Nam vets” — a phrase that has since been removed), and the fact that the entry on APIs was changed (not by me) is a good sign that the Wikipedia model generally works. But I still don’t quite understand how someone would add my API discussion in the first place. And thanks to its brief spot on Wikipedia, that page is now the top search result on Google for air pollution index beijing. Yikes!
Dubai Airport at 2:00 a.m. is possibly the strangest place I’ve ever found myself. It’s not so much the airport itself, but rather the multicoloured masses of deranged, jet-lagged travellers lunging through the never-ending duty free shops that lend it a manic intensity.
It isn’t helped by my state of mind, which has been off ever since my spotless Dubai taxi paused, mid-journey, to pick up a Thai prostitute this afternoon. She explained she’d been waiting for ages for a cab along the ruler-straight, eight-lane artery where my driver pulled over, and was running late. Rather than forcing her to wait for him to return after dropping me off, the cabbie chivalrously offered her a seat right there.
It turned out to be for the best: she recommended a decent restaurant, where I sat opposite a mosque, watching sheikhs drag race their Cayenne Turbos between pedestrian crossings.
But the airport really is an odd place. Its enforced 24-hour openness makes estimating the time a futile task, and 12-hour analog Rolex clocks hardly help. The main strip of duty free shops is forever jammed with people, their resistance to consumer bingeing weakened by a lack of sleep and tantalising lottery displays that promise new BMWs at 1000 to 1 odds.
The only signs of attention to some kind of time zone come if you attempt to engage the information desk, where staff will greet you with a “good morning” at 1:45 a.m., and at the restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a fairly reasonable 24-hour cycle. As of 1:30, dinner was still being served, much to the amazement of an Indian man who filmed the entire buffet on his handheld camera before grabbing a plate of dal and eating while wandering around, his eyes half-focused on the Filipino waiter trying to charm the two brunette German backpackers.
I’m a big fan of China’s many regional cuisines, which provide a nearly endless array of mouth-watering dishes: solid, proletarian Beijing dumplings, grilled lamb skewers from Muslim western China, delicately steamed fish from Hong Kong, sweet Shanghainese “red-cooked” pork, fantastic green vegetables from just about everywhere, and, my favourite, the exquisite “numb-spicy” dishes of Sichuan.
But sometimes, I just really need a peanut butter sandwich.
China’s cuisine is many things, but every so often it will come up short, and a craving for a peanut butter sandwich is one that Chinese food is particularly ill-equipped to satisfy. Firstly, there’s the problem of the bread. “Western-style” bread in China, as in perhaps every Asian country other than Vietnam, is at best a weak approximation of the concept. It is as if bakers have tried to reverse-engineer recipes from photographs of foreign loaves, without ever having tasted them. The result is bread that looks fantastic, but has the consistency and flavour of an old bath sponge. My current preferred brand is a step above most, but still makes my teeth squeak when I eat it.
Peanut butter, thankfully, is an area in which China excels. In addition to a wide range of local brands, international p-b giant Skippy is well-established here, and its products — both smooth and crunchy — can be found in many local supermarkets. This, however, is where the story gets interesting.
At first glance, China’s busy supermarkets are visions of plenty. Behind their shiny exteriors, however, is a re-stocking system that could generously be called “spotty”. I still remember the day that my neighbourhood supermarket in Beijing simply stopped selling bacon. There was no explanation: it was as if it had never existed. I was disappointed, but took it in stride. Then, suddenly, the peanut butter disappeared.
Assuming it had been relocated in one of the supermarket’s pointless bi-monthly reorganizations, I asked the store manager where I could find it.
“We don’t have it any more,” he said.
Worried, I continued: would they be getting more?
“We might get more, but we might not. I don’t know.”
And just like that, the peanut butter was gone, its place taken by a random selection of salted plums and something called meat floss. The next few days went by in a blur as the cold reality of life without peanut butter sank in.
When I saw peanut butter back on the shelves a week later, I was euphoric. That feeling came crashing down a moment later as I discovered that the variety on offer was a pirated version of Skippy. Now, I can understand a pirated handbag or coat, but I draw the line at knowingly eating knock-off food products — especially when each jar of supposedly identical peanut butter had its own distinct hue.
The Skippy did eventually return, but I had learned my lesson: I began stockpiling peanut butter in anticipation of the next shortage.
When I moved to Shanghai, I was dazzled. For the first few months after my arrival, I couldn’t stop talking about my supermarket. Forget peanut butter — hell, it had balsamic vinegar!
How quickly the lessons of the past are forgotten.
By this time, my tastes in sandwiches had expanded, and I was venturing into recreational mayonnaise use. I thought I could stop any time. Little did I know I would be forced to quit cold turkey when it vanished from even the fancy foreign supermarkets.
What had happened? Who was to blame? How could an entire city of 19 million people suddenly run out of mayonnaise?
I pondered these questions for weeks, unable to find an answer.
And, just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the mayonnaise was back.
And what mayonnaise! The old standbys like Kraft were there, to be sure, but there was so much more. German brands I had no hope of pronouncing filled the shelves, their contents held suggestively within flexible tubes rather than the familiar, rigid jars. Light mayonnaise, “real” mayonnaise, spiced mayonnaise — it was all there.
I grabbed a selection and headed for the cashier. Standing in line was a friend of mine, his shopping basket filled with two dozen cans of tomato sauce, his eyes filled with a triumphant gleam. We nodded at each other knowingly — for today, at least, we were both victorious.
From a friend (and hosted on Danwei), a new show on urban life in Shanghai: “The Shanghai Beat”. The first episode features a tour of Shanghai’s gay scene. More to come…
This explanation (with diagrams!) of cars at a Beijing intersection making a left turn is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while. Substitute a Volkswagen Santana for the Hyundai if you’re in Shanghai, and add a couple of mopeds.
I was visiting the Web site of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) a few weeks ago, and was disappointed to find that the weather conditions in Beijing — temperature and wind speed — were given only in degrees Fahrenheit and miles per hour, respectively. I sent a suggestion through BOCOG’s online form, but several weeks later, there has been no change. Today, I sent the following message by e-mail:
To: international@beijing2008.cn, xuanchuan@beijing2008.cn, webmaster@beijing2008.cn Subject: Weather Reporting for Olympics
Dear madam and / or sir:
A few weeks ago, I sent a message through the “suggestions” tool on BOCOG’s Web site, pointing out that Beijing’s temperature and wind speed, as given on (http ://en.beijing2008.cn/), are shown ONLY in degrees Fahrenheit and miles per hour. I asked that the information also be presented using degrees Celsius and kilometres per hour, in the interests of the many English speakers unfamiliar with Fahrenheit and miles. To date, I have seen no response to my message, and there have been no changes to the site. I am sending this message in the hopes that it might be more successful than a Web-based form.
As the United States is the only country left in the world that persists in using Fahrenheit as a temperature scale, the exclusive use of Fahrenheit and miles per hour is both confusing and annoying to those of us who have adopted the metric system. Consider:
English is the primary language in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Belize, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Guyana, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jamaica, Jersey, Montserrat, Nauru, New Zealand, the Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the United Kingdom.
None of these countries and territories uses the units you have chosen in any official capacity. Only the United States does so. To use only Fahrenheit and miles per hour on your site, therefore, is to implicitly suggest that all English speakers are Americans. While I take no issue with America as a country, and indeed count many Americans among my close friends, this is an affront to the national sensibilities of all non-American, English-speaking countries.
I hope that in the spirit of international co-operation and friendship, you will fix this issue on your site. We may have “One World, One Dream,” but not all English speakers use “One System of Measurement.”
Thank you for your time, and I wish you all the best in helping to make the Beijing Olympics a great success!
Warm regards,
Andrew Galbraith
I am eager to hear back from them, and hope I can get the metric system up there before the Games start. 358 days left!
Edit: I’m aware that my statement that “none of these countries uses Fahrenheit and mph” is overstating the case somewhat… that’s only really true regarding Fahrenheit. I believe the point still stands.
Update: international@beijing2008.cn has bounced my message back. Apparently, it doesn’t actually exist, despite being listed on BOCOG’s site.
Another video, also from the Children’s Palace in Pyongyang. This one is of a band playing the song “Thunder on Jong-Il Peak”, possibly my favourite of the DPRK’s musical contributions:
