In China people will often tell you want you want to hear, no matter how improbable it is. A lot of the time, they just don’t want to disappoint. Inevitably this leads to irritation and occasionally confrontation.
When people think of China, two of the most compelling images that come to mind are food and Kung Fu (gongfu or 功夫 in Chinese). Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li are all household names throughout the world, and their movies have become legendary. Yet while there is a deep admiration for the difficulty of the practice, few westerners have much of an understanding of this tradition that extends back thousands of years and grew out of Buddhism. In order to gain an appreciation, I took a journey to China's most famous wushu, or martial arts, monastery the famed Shaolin Temple in Henan Province.
A pessimistic man once said “all good things must end.” In China that tends to happen even more quickly. Today will be my last day writing Daily Tea Leaves, or my first writing “China Expat Blog”. Sadly I am leaving China Expat, and we have also decided to re-name the blog in order to make its connection to the magazine and website clearer.
Congratulations to Black and White Cat, which has finally unblocked itself. The popular blog with the catchy name has long been hampered by one of the most basic problems a China blog can possibly have: it was unavailable on the Mainland. I’m not sure if it had to do with their blogging software, which had been Blogsome, apparently a free blog service, or if it was something on the site that rubbed a higher up the wrong way.
Last Friday I put up a post that seemed to be nothing special. Nonetheless it ended up crashing China Expat. It was questioning whether the hype around China’s booming economic, and potential to take over the international economy, was similar to that surrounding Japan in the late 1980s. The idea was not very original, as I pointed out, and yet something crazy happened.
For years economists have wondered whether the inevitable rising power of China was similar to Japan in the 1980s. If you remember (and that requires you to be over 22), people used to think that Japan was an unstoppable beast destined to take over the world. Movies and popular media frequently made reference to this, of in now-comical ways.
Air China, simple enough you'd think, Beijing to Rome. I know it's tough to be sympathetic with people who fly First class, but hey I paid for it, and I've worked hard for the extras. It's also really useful with extra weights in luggage (Speaking at a conference, so a ton of China Briefings in the luggage), and priority service with baggage handling, meaning you can get away quickly and so on. Plus all the extra frills, good food, wines, films, and general attention. It's handy when you're on a ten hour direct flight, helping with the trama of long haul travel, espcially with a three day conference the other end. China's growing development would mean an Air China flight would be an OK experience. Not up to par with what I'm used to, buy hey, lets give 'em a chance.
China’s firewall seems to be showing signs of getting smarter. Weird things are happening that makes me wonder if one day the country will effectively block out most of the information that they do not want in, not matter how inane it is. How did I come to this conclusion? It’s the story of a website called Great Firewall of China.
Today the Renminbi broke the 7.5 barrier against the dollar. Given that the Canadian dollar recently reached parity with its southern counterpart, I started to wonder what a one-to-one dollar-Yuan ratio would mean for prices here. The more that I thought about it, the more it because clear that there are a lot of things that would still be reasonably priced.
The obvious one, of course, is beer from the corner store. I pay 2 kuai, and 2 dollars for a big boy isn’t that unreasonable. Buses are typically 1 yuan, and that would be fair in almost any currency. Other things that would be reasonably priced, were they priced in dollars include bicycles (200), fried noodles (5), a very modest 2-bedroom Beijing apartment (2000), and knockoff DVDs (7).
To someone not in the know, my bicycle might not look like the manliest out there. It has a basket on the front, and a little bell to alert poor drivers. It is a one-speed, and the frame is a little too small for me. It has two locks, one of which requires that the key be in it in order to stay open, meaning I drive around with a key sticking out of the side of the back wheel. Some may say this is impractical, but I do not.
My bike is not that manly, to those who do not know. I had forgotten this, not having been around bikers in the States, with their 21 speeds and suspension systems. To me it looks great. It is a Phoenix, which means strong and powerful to me, not weak and ill-equipped to tackle any sort of hill. It looks silver and majestic from where I stand, not gray and dull, like it would to anyone who had just arrived in China.
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writing “China Expat Blog”. Sadly I am leaving China Expat, and we have also decided to re-name the blog in order to make its connection to the magazine and website clearer.
