In LA

• in LA, getting settled in #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

On my next-to-last day in Hengdian I bought a few little presents to send to some of my old friends in the states. I’d already packed my luggage and there was no remaining space for the gifts, so I wrote notes to each recipient and took a cab over to the local China Post office.

The man behind the counter dropped the items into boxes, gave me the forms to fill out, and it was all just about ready to go. Then I started dropping notes into the boxes and the guy freaked out.

He gave me a stern look and started jabbering in mandarin with a heavy local accent. Apparently it was not kosher for me to place a single piece of paper containing a few scribbles into each half-kilogram package –just not allowed. He even pulled out a volume from his China Post law library, opened it to Article 四.四-四 subsection 六十九, and stabbed his finger repeatedly at a citation I couldn’t read. When it was apparent that I couldn’t read the paragraph of bureacratic legal Chinese, he read it to me. With the accent and technical vocabulary it was completely unintelligible.

I argued. I pointed out the infinitessimally small weight of each piece of paper. He said it wasn’t about weight, but that I couldn’t send messages in the packages. I pointed out that the presents in question came from the factory with other printed material containing words, one could even say they were messages, and the Post Office regulations weren’t forcing me to remove those items. I pointed out that I could have dropped the notes into the prepackaged items’ boxes before he’d placed them into larger boxes and all would have shipped without Mr. Postal’s knowledge, and who would have cared? I asked what would happen if I wrote a note directly on the item’s box (the response was a “no” with a very angry look). By this point the security guard had come over to join the argument. They wouldn’t budge. Apparently I could include the notes if I sent using EMS, which cost 3x the price of China Post shipping, but that would have brought the cost of shipping to 3x the price of the more expensive items. On the plus side I was able to use some of my favorite new vocabulary words, all relating to “absurdity”.

So in the end, I sent the packages sans notes, and will send an email to each recipient just to let them know what’s coming. After I acquiesced Mr. Postal became much nicer, and we parted with smiles and salutations as if we were best friends, but I was actually feeling pretty stressed until I’d walked a half-block away from the post office in the rain.

The sad thing is that those notes were probably the first time I’ve tried to write English in cursive in a year or two. Cursive is really hard! It’s been 2 days now and my hand still hurts.

• am arranging a rental car to use for my LA sojourn #
• Sent a few packages to the US. Was read the riot act by the postal worker when I tried to put a note in each package. Bureacratic Kingdom. #
• talked with Matt (北京的) for a bit. Then Lisa randomly called. We had a short friendly distant conversation. I feel fine. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

That’s the one that got me.      (photo courtesy of Jason Pelham)

A few days ago I traveled to Yiwu with the VFX editor, Jason. We went to gawk at the city’s huge wholesale markets and also look at Chinese musical instruments. As we walked through one mall, a young Chinese woman, Stacy, ran up to us and started chatting. She worked for a import and export company, and I guess her and other agents just chat up any foreigners they encounter in the malls hoping to find clients for their businesses.

She quickly learned that we were just visiting and were not about to fill an ocean-going container with boxing gloves (a Canadian client’s order she’d been working on for a couple of days), but for whatever reason (boredom, intrigue?) she decided to hang out and help us find the musical instrument stores. This was a good thing, as it was very difficult to find a distributor of the zhong ruan (中阮), a traditional Chinese guitar-like instrument that Jason was seeking.

Eventually we found a distributor’s showcase on the very hot 4th floor of a large mall, and Jason played with different sizes of ruan while I tried to get an erhu (二胡) to emit anything other than the sound of a dying animal. When I return to Beijing I plan to learn how to play this two-string bowed instrument, and if I ever lose my vision I can then don country garb and busk with my erhu at the entrance to subway stations.

After we finished with the musical instruments, I asked Stacy if she knew where a good middle-eastern restaurant could be found. Yiwu is full of buyers from Arab countries, and I’d heard there was an area of town full of good middle-eastern restaurants and whatnot. She recommended a place and wrote its name and address on a piece of paper in Chinese for us. We then parted ways and Jason and I spent a few more hours looking at random products and taking photos of the crazed and unruly antics of the vendors’ children.

We headed out to the restaurant, and along the way I thought to invite Stacy. She and a friend showed up, he was an import export consultant from a different company. We all had some terrific food of the sort that I associate with Lebanese restaurants (I don’t know the exact country of origin of the food we ate). Then they took us to Yiwu’s underground clothes market, which is a huge underground mall. As it was getting late I called a driver to pick us up and return us to Hengdian. At Stacy’s friend’s request we went into a nearby KFC to sit and wait for the driver. I had a few spoonfulls of my Mango-seltzer and ice-cream float, Jason had the bizarre-tasting coffee float served in Chinese KFCs, and Stacy kept making eyes at a baby at a nearby table.

Eventually, she went over and picked up the baby, who looked to be about 6 months old. The baby was wearing split pants and no underwear or diaper, which is de-riguer in much of China. Split pants seem outlandish to many visitors from Western countries, but I hear they can work quite well. The idea being that the child’s caretakers quickly learn to anticipate when the kid needs to eliminate waste and they then hold the kid over a bush or trash can¹. I’ve also heard that the practice trains kids very early to hold it in until they’re held aloft, so split-pants-raised kids end up toilet trained a lot earlier than diaper-clad tots. Pampers and other disposable diaper manufacturers are of course doing their damnedest to get all Chinese people to think it’s best and healthiest to put untold millions of kids in disposable diapers. Despite the fact that it means kids crapping on bushes in public parks I think split pants are much more environmentally responsible except for those occasions when you take the kid to Spago or maybe KFC. But I digress…

Stacy brought the baby back to the table, and pretty quickly handed it to me. She was not the prettiest of babies, which of course means that she’ll grow up to be gorgeous. She slept in my arms for a minute, then opened her eyes a bit, then a minute later I felt something on my arm. I quickly stood up and held her outward but was too late, and she’d already sprayed my shirt, shorts, and my section of the table with some warm brown and yellow liquid of variegated consistency. People in the restaurant were laughing, I was laughing, the parents of the baby were apologizing and I kept telling them 没关系 (no problem), they took back their kid and I headed off to the bathroom to survey the damage. I washed up as best I could, but there were stains on my shirt and shorts the entire hour-long ride home.

Maybe Pampers should design disposable super-absorbent shirts and pants for use by parents and incidental acquaintances of split-pants-wearing babies.

1. Or in extreme and unfortunate cases the grandparents loft the kid over the ashtray in the lobby of a high-rent apartment building and the kid sprays the wall behind it, an incident I saw a couple of times at my first Beijing apartment. [↩]

• dropped by the town center to do some shopping with Hilde. Bought a copy of "Marco Polo" for my friend Christian to autograph (he was in … #
• Heading out to grab a bite with Christian Lee and the crew of ‘The White Crane’. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Thee are no more production lunches. I’m eating alone at the downstairs restaurant. The rest of editorial has likely already arrived in LA. #
• Waiting for my lunch, watching TV, realizing my quest to teach Chinese broadcasters about field-order issues may be a quixotic one. #
• Rode bike to VIP hotel, got staff to unlock the weight room (健身房). #
• Turned on the A/C, am waiting for it to kick in so that I can lift a bit longer then last time. It’s so hot and humid here. #
• 40kg BP 2x, 40 incline SU, 20 incline SU 2x, 10 BU, 5 70lb curls 4x, 2′15" 100m concept2 at 10 resistance (broken, other settings not poss) #
• Got caught in a thunderstorm while riding home. Had to buy flip flops at the hotel’s store because my shoes are drenched. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.