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Anne and I bought a new TV.  It’s odd- the tv was the first TV either one of us have ever purchased during 25 years of living.  Anyway, it’s a 32″ HDTV lcd. It’s got HDMI so my laptop looks beautiful and stunning on it as I surf the internet from the couch across the room.  The TV’s too bright to show up very well in the picture but this should give you some idea.

I should also note (especially since I know a lot of you Americans are being hit really hard by the economic crisis) that we got a FANTASTIC deal on the TV and it was paid for entirely by money that we weren’t expecting to get, so it didn’t touch our budget or savings plan at all.  Plus come on– how can you not watch the Sopranos in high def??

I have spent my adult life with a president who is not fit to manage a McDonalds, much less a country.  This man is directly responsible for killing my friend, and thousands of others.  This man tanked our economy and has made me afraid to move back to the US because I think I won’t be able to get a job or find a place to live.  Because of this man’s policies and responses to national disasters, I’ve had friends who were displaced– almost forced to come to China because they didn’t really have any other place to go.

I’ve spent my adult life shamefacedly admitting that I am from America.  Or having to make excuses– “but I didn’t vote for Bush!” — or, even worse, lying about where I’m from.

Today that changed.  I had people coming up to me all day CONGRATULATING me– just for being American!  People thanking me!  Brits, Australians, Italians, even a man from Pakistan.  Congratulating ME because Barack Obama was elected.  Most importantly today I am congratulating me and my country.  Today– for the first time since I’ve been mature enough to understand politics and government– today, I AM PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN.

And yes, I know that it’s a bit naive to think that everything will magically be better now– but not TOO naive, actually given the trouncing the house and senate republicans got– but you know, it sure as hell won’t be worse.

Later, I’ll fill you in on my busy day of poll watching, betting (I won the electoral vote bet, by the way, by shooting the moon with all of the swing states), and explaining our weird electoral college to students who struggle with basic vocabulary.  But for now, I just want to say congratulations.  I know a lot of you don’t see this in America, but over here in China where I’m surrounded by people from every country in the world– I can safely say that not only am I proud of America today, so is the international community.

Because of this man:

YES WE CAN!

I did something horrible to my neck this weekend and subsequently I can’t move my head at all.  The pain was so intense yesterday that I gave up my vow never to use Chinese medicine again.  Here’s what I got; I thought the packaging was very lovely.

The red stuff is “Red Flower Oil”.  It smells like a cross between listerine and vapo-rub.  It also stains anything it touches, but it feels hot and good when you rub it in. Seeing as it’s from China and it’s medicine, my guess is that “red flower” probably refers to the gall bladder of some endangered animal and/OR locust shells.  But credit where credit is due, it does feel really good on my neck.

The yellow package with the strange non-Chinese writing (I think this is Tamil) is this pad that you put a funky bright yellow substance on and then apply to your neck. This stuff stinks to high heaven, and immediately set Anne into an allergic sneezing fit, but again, it did feel pretty soothing.

The white bottle is a mysterious substance from an unknown origin– the Nepalese highlands, if I had to wager a guess.  Whatever the ingredients (some root or flower called A- Seat- O - Men -a -Fen), this seems to work the best.  The mystery drug is administered in the form of a small, red, circular object that you swallow whole– How strange!  But like I said, this drug– pronounced Tai - Li - Nol– seems to work the best out of all three of these odd treatments.

Looks like my pooh-poohing of Traditional Eastern Medicine was premature!

You can see the whole set here.

Full set here.

My father would kill me.   We walked out of a production of Hamlet after only seven minutes.

Anne and I were really pumped to go see this production of Hamlet– Hamlet 1990.  We were excited to be doing something “cultural” with our Friday night other than going to the usual lineup of bars and clubs, or sitting around making fun of crappy 80s horror movies.  We put on our finest clothes and were giddy with excitement about seeing an avante garde remake of Shakespeare’s classic that supposedly made profound statements about the state of Chinese society post Tiananmen Square and under the rule of an authoritarian government.

But like I said, we only made it seven minutes in. As Anne pointed out on our way home, the production hit the trifecta of things that we could not sit for 2 and a half hours through.  IF it had only been two of the three problems we probably would have toughed it out– but all three made it just impossible.

Problem 1: No Subtitles:
All the advertisements for the production listed in bold letters: ENGLISH SUBTITLES.  In fact that’s what inspired us to buy the medium level tickets literally minutes after seeing the posters. However when the play began, the subtitles were not projected at all.  There were spaces on the sides of the stage that looked like where they would project the subtitles, but it just never happened.

Problem 2: Couldn’t hear/see:
We would have been ok without the subtitles since we’re familiar with the story and we had expected to be able to kind of tell what was going on.  However our seats were so far away from the stage that we couldn’t really see what was happening up there or hear the actors at all (our Chinese sucks, but we thought we could catch as catch can during this.)  The behavior of the audience made seeing what was going on or hearing it impossible (see Problem 3).

Problem 3: The audience’s behavior: Before the show, Anne and I discussed the possibility that the behavior of the audience might be pretty annoying. To avoid making generalizations about a whole nationality of people, I’ll just say that we were a bit worried about the audience’s ability to sit quietly for 3-ish hours of a play.  It turned out our fears were incredibly justified.  For the first 5 minutes of the play, people in the audience were, I’m not exaggerating here, getting up and wandering around the theatre.  Because people were wandering around, some people in the middle of the audience stood up so they could see.  This caused a wave of standing up so for the first 5 minutes, the whole audience was standing and kind of shoving each other around to get a better view.  After about five minutes people got settled and finally seats were taken.  However sitting down just kind of intensified the ongoing discussion amongst the audience.  I’ve noticed before that my students have a tendency to talk through movies.  Often just saying aloud what they see happening on the screen. “That man is fat.”  “He is driving a car very fast.” “They are going to fight.” The bits I understand from my students are always just simple declarative sentences.  Perhaps at times they make more astute observations, but the pieces I catch are always very simple “this is what I see right now” type sentences.  I’m not sure if that’s what the audience was doing, but the talking was pretty overwhelming– so much so that we really could not hear the actors.  Now perhaps there’s something to be said about really interacting with theatre and truly being a part of it by discussing it as it happens, but seeing as we couldn’t even hear the actors, I think this was pretty annoying.  So after five minutes, we decided that we just couldn’t do it.  There would be no way we could stay through two and a half hours of this mayhem, but we felt really embarassed to leave.  Whispering (we were the only ones whispering), we decided that we would leave on the 20th time someone’s cell phone rang.  It took two minutes for 20 cell phones to ring, and we were out by the seventh minute of the play– right during Hamlet’s first monologue (I think– I couldn’t hear him, but he was the only person on stage, and I think I saw his mouth moving).

So yeah, I feel deeply embarassed that I walked out of a theatre in mid-production.  And even more embarassed that I walked out on Shakespeare.  But there was just NO WAY we could sit through that. It’s very important that I mention that we didn’t walk out because of the play itself.  From what I could see of the set it looked really great– a simple, kind of frightening barber’s chair for a throne in front of a cheese cloth background that they used great lighting effects on.  Also some kind of garish ceiling fans on top (that one review said would later be used as swords?).  I mean the play itself really sounds spectacular, and I would love to see a production of it sometime under better circumstances.  I just felt really disappointed, not just because I had to walk out of a play, but because the play seemed to have so much potential.  Maybe they’ll do an international tour sometime and I can check it out somewhere else.

Tonight Anne and I will be going to see Hamlet 1990.  Here’s what a Chinese newspaper wrote about it:

BEIJING, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) — A popular avant-garde version of Shakespeare’s classic “Hamlet” will be on stage again next week after its premiere 18 years ago.

In 1990, the play, directed by Lin Zhaohua, a leading artist of Chinese avant-garde theater, gained huge popularity and roused great controversy in China for its unique perspective and performance.

In the play, the role of Hamlet was divided among different actors, switching from time to time. So did other characters. For instance, Pu Cunxi, the hero, was Hamlet sometimes and the King Claudius for a while.

“I want to demonstrate the concept of ‘everybody is Hamlet’,” said the 72-year-old director during a rehearsal here Saturday, “All characters shared elements of good and evil, honesty and falsehood. I mean to blur morality difference in apparently opposed characters.”

The stage design was quite contemporary. The King and Queen were seated on a barber’s chair. A grave maker made a phone call to his colleagues. Ceiling fans are “swords” used by Hamlet.

Actors were not wearing costumes but their own clothes.

“I want to draw Hamlet closer to us as our brother and one of us, instead of making him an alien noble,” Lin said. “For me, he is not a prince revenging for justice, nor a humanism hero, but part of us. Facing your truly ego is the most positive, bravest and heroic posture that modern people can have.”

The play was not apparently different from the edition 18 years ago except for the actors, Lin said.

Hamlet is played mostly by Pu Cunxin, a renowned actor who played leading roles in several famous Chinese dramas such as “Thunderstorm,” “Teahouse” and “The Three Sisters, Waiting for Godot”. He was the only one left of all actors in the play’s premiere.

King Claudius and Queen Gertrude are played respectively by Zhou Mingshan and Chen Jin, both veterans, while Ophelia go to Gao Yuanyuan, a young starlet who played in several films.

Lin was one of the pioneers of Experimental Theatre Movement that brought Chinese theater into its modernistic stage by introducing non-illusionistic style and techniques in the 1980s and 1990s.

The play will be staged in Beijing from Oct. 21 to 25, in Shanghai from Oct. 27 to 28 and in Shenzhen from Nov. 6 to 8.

I haven’t been able to find much other information about it yet, but Anne says it’s supposed to reflect the time after the “Tiananmen Incident”.  I’ll write a better review of it afterwards.

After Hamlet, Anne and I will rush home where I where shave my week’s growth of beard into a handlebar mustache, don my burgundy cowboy hat, attach a toy gun to my belt with huge Jesus buckle (thanks, Nathan!), and go to a halloween party as a cowboy.  Pictures forthcoming.

I can see why this is pretty much the central platform issue for the republicans.

A couple of nights ago, Anne and I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie The Happening.  Within the first 5 minutes, we were shivering with the chills making explanations of “Oh my god!”  and “WHAT THE FUCK?!”.  We were absolutely horrified.

What I liked the best was how it could make something as simple as trees in the wind take on this horrific quality not usually associated with them.  Also the calm and single-minded driven-ness with which the people would set about their deeds (to try to avoid spoilers) was beyond chilling.

When we finished watching it, we whole heartedly agreed that there was no way either one of us was getting to bed that night, nervously eyeing the bamboo in the corner of the living room, so we decided to look up reviews of the movie online to make sure everyone else was as freaked out by this movie (which we both agreed was the scariest thing we’ve ever seen).

This is when I got angry.  The reviews were HORRIBLE.  I think it was sitting at about 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 5.5 on IMDB.  People called the acting horrible (I think the acting wasn’t horrible, but rather kind of intentionally forced).  They were comparing it to his other “stinker” The Lady in the Water (which, by the way, I absolutely loved– what a great fairy tale with such a wide range of characters).  They called the direction bad and the cinemetography bad, which I just have no response for– I think it was perfect for the movie:  The scene where Marky Mark is in the old lady’s house is terrifying, with no need for a line to be spoken by the actors– classicly good cinematography.

One review even said something along the lines of  “How can you have a horror movie when you never even see the monster?” which I think hits the nail on the head.  If you don’t understand how NOT seeing the “monster” is a league scarier than shitty CGI, then you have no business reviewing, or in my opinion, watching movies of any caliber greater than Transformers.

So am I out of line here?  That was a scary movie, right?  Or have I just been watching so many b-movies that this seemed better than it was?

… and I’m not talking about the sexy kind.

On Friday night at 9 pm, a plumber showed up to fix our sink’s faucet that had broken, and a sink in the bathroom that was leaking water slightly.  Not emergency work by a long shot.

He happily fixed everything, asked us about Scout (Chinese people rarely keep cats as pets), gave her a rub, and left at about 10 pm.

What an interesting place.

I should start by saying that I purposefully haven’t read what Anne said about the trip, so it’s likely that we’ll probably both be saying the same things and using the same pictures (since we basically share one camera), so I apologize if this is redundant for family and friends who read both of our blogs.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Shanghai since I first went there a couple of years ago and got trapped for over a week, though honestly, it was mostly hate.  Ever since then, I’ve been to Shanghai numerous times to go to the airport or pick people up at the large Pudong International Airport, but I’d spend as little time as I possibly could in the city for each of those trips.  Thus after being stuck in Shanghai, and only going to the train station/subway/maglev/airport/maglev/subway/train station I’d just built up this image of Shanghai as being a hassle and a pain in the ass and very much over rated.  Why go there, if I can get everything in Nanjing that Shanghai purports to have?

I’m happy to report that my image of Shanghai has really changed for the better a lot from our trip.  In the end, Anne and I both ranked the trip at 85% on the awesome scale, and that’s a pretty good score I guess.  Most of the trip was really fun and exciting and exceptionally easy.  But then there was 15% that was more in line with my previous ideas of Shanghai as being a big ball of annoying hassles.

We stayed at the A-Live Design Hotel on Nanjing Xi Lu, and I couldn’t recommend a better place to stay in Shanghai.  It’s downtown, near the subway and kind of smack between the French Concession and Nanjing Dong Lu’s walking street.  Best of all, the little neighborhood it’s in is absolutely perfect.  It’s everything an urban environment should be.  Many cities would do well to take a lesson from this neighborhood.  Rows of modern and slightly upscale clothing and gadget shops as well as bakeries and little restaurants all situated along a pedestrian only street with statues, lots of plants, benches, and trash cans (we only recently started getting trashcans around Nanjing).  The hotel itself was pretty cheap (250 yuan/night– book through sinohotel.com), exceptionally clean, and surprisingly quiet for a Chinese hotel.  Most importantly, the location can not be topped.

Our first day there, we decided to walk down Nanjing DongLu to the bund.  My main goal in this was thinking that there was a new Apple Store on Nanjing Dong (I was wrong, there were only a couple of pretty nice authorized resellers).  This little promenade ended up being a mistake.  I’d gone to Nanjing Dong Lu a few times before and it was always busy and stressful.  For those not familiar with Shanghai, Nanjing dong Lu is kind of the quintessential shopping street in China.  It’s pedestrian only and lined with (expensive) name brand stores like Gucci and Prada.  As I said, Nanjing Dong Lu is always busy and stressful, however the combination of it being a holiday and the weather being absolutely gorgeous Nanjing Dong Lu was unmanageable to move in.  Imagine a street about the width of a 4 lane interstate that runs for about a mile.  Now imagine that area entirely packed with people, shoulder to shoulder, heel to toe, all shuffling along, pushing and shoving, and trying to get somewhere (who even knows where).  That’s what it was like.  Anne and I were kind of freaked out by the whole thing, but the Chinese tourists seemed to LOVE it!  They seemed so excited to be a part of such a huge crowd, like it was some amazing event– like they were fortunate to have chosen such fortuitous day to go to the shopping street– a day when everyone else decided to go to Nanjing Dong Lu as well.  By the time we reached the Bund I couldn’t even think properly.  Everything was just a haze of people and movement and noise and lights.  It really was weird how much that wears you out and just how kind of crazy it can make you.

By the time we got back to the hotel, our voice was sore from having to shout BU YAO!  at all the hawkers selling fake rolexes and prada bags– we timed it at every 7 steps we’d have to wave someone away selling exactly the same thing (this is not an exaggeration).  We crashed for a little bit and then decided to go check out the French Concession, which has the same sort of shops (upscale, nice department stores and restaurants) as Nanjing Dong Lu, but was quite a bit more manageable because of the comparative lack of people.

Our 2004 guidebook to Shanghai said that near the French Concession on Maoming Lu there were a lot of quality bars, so after dinner we decided to walk there and check them out.  We found, though, that the 4 years since 2004 really did bring lots of changes to the city, and most of the bars had shut down.  All that remained was 2 bars, a pizza restaurant, a tapas restaurant, a Morrocan restaurant, and an Italian restaurant (which, in retrospect, is quite an offering– but all these businesses only took up about 10 meters of street level shops).  We chose to go to a bar called Blue Frog because of it’s impeccable atmosphere.  Big tables in front of an open front.  The weather was great, the music good, and we had a really nice time there.  I drank a Bloody Mary Kit, which meant that they brought all the ingredients out and let you mix it up yourself.  It was great because it was the first time in China that I’ve had a passable bloody mary, and indeed it was delicious (the five shots in the “mix,” by the way, were salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, tabasco, and horse radish– I used them all, except for half salt and pepper) .  I’d recommend the bar on the quality of its bloody marys alone, but the atmosphere and the chilled atmosphere make it an undeniably cool bar.

On our way home, we decided to stop in a bar called Windows Bar that was located in the basement of our hotel.  It was a really really strange experience, and reminded me of the type of bar vampires would go to.  Anne and I have been watching a lot of bad vampire movies lately– Lost Boys, the Blade trilogy, True Blood, etc– and this bar really seemed like a bar straight out of one of those movies. It was all black with weird lasers and industrial music playing loudly.  Needless to say, we loved it.  They also had cheap beer (10 yuan coors light in a bottle) and free pool.  It was pretty empty that night? Though it seems like the type of place to get busy on other nights.  The fact it was kind of empty really endeared it to me, though.

The next day, we decided to go to the aquarium.  I’d been there before and absolutely loved it, and Anne and I really love zoos and aquariums, so it was a natural choice to go there and check it out.  Before I go on, it’s important for me to note that the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium is probably one of the best aquariums in the world.  It is extremely modern, well kept, and just absolutely gorgeous.  I’d highly recommend it at the top of the list for anyone visiting Shanghai.  It’s on the short list of my Favorite Places on Earth.

However, THIS trip was awful.  It was PACKED with people.  People were running around, shoving each other out of the way to get a view of the fish, banging on the glass to make the fish react, and taking horrible flash photography of the poor animals.  And I’m talking ADULTS.  You can imagine the behavior of the children who it seemed were encouraged to behave like the grown ups around them.  I remember being so infuriated at the horrible behavior of these tourists (and was on the verge of snapping a few times after being pushed out of the way from looking at one fish or another or having some redneck asshole start banging on the glass next to me trying to get a fish to move around more).  Nevertheless, we got some good pictures in there and eventually made it out alive.  My tips for going to this aquarium: go late at night.  They don’t close until 9, so I’d recommend maybe 7:30 or so.  Most importantly, DON’T GO DURING A HOLIDAY.

That afternoon we walked around the awesome little neighborhood near our hotel, and ended up spending WAY too much money at this clothing store called The Thing.  They had really great design, and I thought the shirts were really hip.  So much so that I ended up buying four of them.  You can check out their website to get an idea of what it was like.

Also during this trip to Shanghai, I’d been looking at the new ipod nanos and pricing them and comparing them.  I’ve been wanting one for awhile because I’m always stuck borrowing Anne’s ipod.  Finally we walked past a reseller sold all sorts of cool gadgets as well as the new Ipods.  I saw them in the window, and finally I just decided to go ahead and get one (with Anne’s encouragement).  I walked in, pointed at an iPod and said, I’d like to buy that.  I guess it kind of freaked the seller out that I seemingly walked in, saw an ipod and decided to buy it so suddenly.  His shocked response was “Wh… REALLY?!?!”, which I think is a classic response from a salesman about to make an easy sell.

By the way, my new iPod is SWEET (mine’s the diminutive grey one on the end– it matches my computer).

That night we decided to just go back to MaoMing road for dinner, and to go to Blue Frog again since it was just so pleasant the night before.  We finally decided to eat at the Italian place over the Moroccan place.  BIG MISTAKE.  The restaurant’s atmosphere, that at first seemed very classy and fancy, we realized was just kind of condescending and boring (I know it’s bad writing to describe it as both condescending and boring without good examples, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one). Worst of all the service was HORRIBLE.  Not that they were inattentive, but that they were absolutely RUDE.

At first Anne thought it was because we were wearing t-shirts in their “fancy restaurant” since we were going out to a bar later, but we later realized they were treating everybody this way– other people wearing t-shirts and other people wearing nicer clothes.  They were just absolute dicks.  For example, I asked for cheese and the lady looked annoyed that I’d want such a thing on my pasta.  She went to the counter, and complained loudly in Chinese that she hated her job, took a cup of cheese, slumped over to our table and then knocked half a spoonful on my dish.  I remember that I thought she was going to serve me in the classic Italian way where they knock out parmesan until you say stop… I started saying “stop!” when she was about four steps away.

Anyway, the food was mediocre and given its exorbitant prices, I’d even say horrible.  And the rudeness of the wait staff is inexcuseable.  Anne postulated that perhaps they were trying to seem like fancy “servants” in a 5 star restaurant (you know, being detatched and reserved to your needs)  and had just gone wrong somewhere– but no, I think they were just a bunch of dicks.  So, yeah, avoid the Italian restaurant on MaoMing Lu (I don’t even know its name, or perhaps I forced myself to forget it) — but don’t worry, it seems like there was an Italian restaurant on every street corner in Shanghai if you’re looking for it.

After expensive-dinner-with-the-wait-staff-from-hell we walked next door to Blue Frog for drinks and we almost started crying when our server walked up with a big smile, said “hello”, and asked us very politely what we’d like to drink.  Again, the atmosphere and the big windows of that bar really made a big impression on me and we had a great time.

On our last day there we decided to go to the Shanghai Natural History Museum.  Our guide book said to avoid it because it was just a dusty old building filled with  rotting animals in jars and badly badly badly stuffed animals.  However, that sort of description was EXACTLY why we wanted to go there– and it delivered.  It was a horrible natural history museum, but if you think of it as an incredible avante gard art piece it’s in-cred-i-ble.

The specimens were hilariously bad.  The things in jars were decomposed to the point where they had no color and you often couldn’t tell what animal it was originally.  The animals that were stuffed were so badly done that they were like cartoon caricatures of the animals that they were originally.  Anne spent a lot of time taking pictures here, and I was kind of jealous that she was getting such amazing shots.  She really deserves a lot of credit on her photography in there and you should DEFINITELY check out these photo sets she put up on flickr.  THEY ARE AWESOME.

That trip to the natural history museum was by far my favorite thing in Shanghai.

After leaving the museum we couldn’t find a single taxi, so we ended up having to walk back to People’s Square, and thus, back to the massive throngs of people. Like our first time there, it was incredibly stressful; Anne almost got pickpocketed (she was vigilant and thwarted the bastard, though).  By the time we made it through the crowds and got to the train station, we were really relieved that we’d bought soft seat tickets and so we could crash in the soft seat waiting lounge (MUCH nicer than the normal-people waiting lounge) that had nice couches and a little coffee shop.

All in all, it was a good trip.  I’d stick by the 85% awesome that Anne and I originally determined.  When it was good it was GREAT, but when it was bad (usually because of all the people) it was stressful and obnoxious.  But luckily the good was a lot more common than the annoying, so I guess I’ve kind of changed my impression of Shanghai for the better.  It really is a cool, modern city.  And if you know what places to avoid and when to avoid those places then it could be really relaxing and a fun place to vacation.

However, make SURE to go see Anne’s pictures and her thoughts about the whole trip.  We had a blast and a half!