December, 2009

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Readability

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

I’m not one to keep up with all the new techno marvels that stream from all corners of the world day in and day out.  I almost never check out the large pile of posts that get put up on this blog, even if it is one of my Google Reader subscriptions.  Most of this gadgets, programs, apps, websites, social networking sites and what-have-you seem to just suck up our limited time and give little in return.  That said, every now and then I get something that makes my life better.  Other than he new Pleco Chinese dictionary for the iPhone/iPod Touch I have recently been playing with a new web service called Readability.

Like much of my generation I do most of my reading on computers.  Now with a full-time office job, which affords ample time for reading the news and what not, I am doing more reading than ever before.  The problem is the internet and a computer screen are not nice places to rest your eyes hours at a time.  The flashing ads, teeny tiny text, distracting links that take you away from what you wanted to read in the first place, and so on make reading annoying in a way curling up with a paperback isn’t.  Besides having Google Reader to organize and display the countless blogs I try to keep up with, I’ve begun to use this nifty new service called Readability.

Readability is basically a link on your browser that you click when you want to view a online text without all the clutter.  For example, today I was reading Evan Osnos’ interview with the U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman.  On the New Yorker website the article looks like this:

Picture 4

It’s not horribly displayed, nor is it egregiously distracting, but nonetheless I would rather read it in a font size and layout to my particular liking.  So while viewing the page I just clicked on the Readability icon on my bookmarks bar and I see the article rendered like this:

Picture 6

Goodbye crap, hello clean clear text.  The readability site lets you pick what style, text size, and margin you want when you make the bookmark on their website (it’s very easy).  The three buttons in the top left corner let you return to the original version, print the unadulterated text, or email the text to a friend.  This isn’t really the best example because Evan Osnos’ New Yorker blog on China, Letter From China, can be easily viewed on any blog aggregator, such as Google Reader.

The real beauty of this service for me has been with viewing Chinese articles.  Not only are Chinese websites well known for their bad design, distracting ads, and generally off-putting vibe (though the situation does seem to be getting better as of late), but Chinese text is very difficult to read if it is small, which makes Readability great for reading Chinese texts online.  Importantly, viewing a text with Readability doesn’t hamper one’s ability to cut and paste or use tools like Perakun to look up characters.  Here’s an example from a People’s Daily article published today on the Chinese government’s anti-corruption work:

Picture 5

Picture 7

Nice, right?

My father is a true believer in having the best reading sitaution possible when you sit down to read something.  Having proper lighting, folding the newspaper the right way, and, when reading something from the internet, always printing out a text before reading it.  Now if we all printed out everything we read online there would be no more trees on this planet, so for me (and maybe my dad) Readability is a useful and almost perfect tool.

Posted in Internet, Reading | 2 Responses »
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Let the rivers be rivers, Let the mountains be mountains

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

This is kind of old news, but better late than never, eh?  This is an environmentally aware animation that until recently was playing at the People’s Square subway station.  I used to see it on my daily commute in the massive corridor between Line 1 and Line 2, where it would be simultaneously be playing on a dozen screens for the tens of thousands of people that switch lines there.  Something about the austere black and white animation and its similarity to the Chinese shanshui (mountains and rivers) landscape painting style would always bring my eyes to it.  People’s Square is a capitalistic maze of color and flashing lights, a sad black and white depection of the environmental degredation happening in the world was always a welcome change for me.  It was also nice knowing that someone here in Shanghai was trying to get the message across that we are destroying the natural world.  Today I saw a write up on it over at the Neocha Edge blog, which, by the way, is a fabulous place to see and read about all types of contemporary art coming out of China.

Posted in Art, Internet, Shanghai, Video | 4 Responses »
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Christmas in China

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Huaihua Before Christmas

I was recently asked to contribute a blog post for enoVate, a Chinese “insights and design firm” based here in Shanghai.  The company’s focus is on the youth of China, the world’s most dynamic demographic, specifically what young Chinese enjoy doing and buying.  It’s a fascinating topic that is in such flux and so misunderstood (even by the Chinese) that you never really know what to say about it.  I am of the opinion that China’s youth are one of the biggest reasons modern day China is so damn exciting (take, for instance, the fact that China has the largest number of internet users in the world yet almost all are under the age of 30).  Right now the enoVate blog is doing a series on how Chinese youth celebrate Christmas.  My entry is about my Christmas last year in Huaihua, Hunan, where I used to teach English.

If you are interested my post written a year ago about Christmas in Huaihua can be found here.

Posted in Huaihua, Internet | No Responses »
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Garden Books

Monday, December 21st, 2009

This post is part of my series of reviews of Shanghai bookstores, which I introduced here.  I am looking for the best English language bookstore in Shanghai and whatever other interesting bookstores I find along the way.  A Google map of all the bookstores can be found here.

Garden Books Shanghai

English Name: Garden Books
Chinese Name: 韬奋西文书局
Address: 长乐路325号, 近陕西南路
Website: http://www.bookzines.com/
New or Used: New
Languages: Mostly English.  Good selection of French, German, Italian, and Spanish books and magazines as well.
Selection includes: Recent bestsellers, classics, Chinese history, Chinese philosophy, Chinese language learning, art (contemporary art, design, architecture, fine arts), cookbooks, gardening, coffee table books, test prep, self help, religion, children’s books.

It has been over two months since my last Shanghai bookstore review and while I’ve been busy blogging about all manner of things I haven’t forgotten my commitment to check out this city’s best bookstores.  Today’s review is of a foreign language bookstore here in Shanghai that is well known by the foreigner community.  Garden Books has been consistently sighted as one of the city’s premier English-language bookstores and the crowds that peruse its selections on the weekends are nothing to snigger at.  The store’s location is perfect for attracting foreigners and well-to-do Chinese who have an interest in foreign language books.  It sits on a picturesque street in the old French Concession surrounded by small boutiques, galleries, and a smattering of (mostly) expensive restaurants.  On nice weekend days the area’s sidewalks are filled with families and shoppers and it is in fact one of the nicer areas to walk around in Shanghai.

A short note about the Chinese name.  I had no idea the store even had a Chinese name, you don’t see it anywhere when you visit.  However, this website had a Chinese name posted so I am obliged to include it.  Interestingly the Chinese name comes from a famous Chinese journalist named 邹韬奋 (zōu tāo fèn ).  Zou Taofen was born in Fujian Province in 1895 and studied in Shanghai before becoming an outspoken journalist.  During the Japanese invasion and occupation of China he was an advocate of a strong Chinese response and wrote against the Nationalist’s policy of non-resistance.  He was editor of Life Magazine (生活) starting in 1928 and even opened a bookstore and publishing house with friends.  He died in Shanghai in 1944.  For more on this man check out the Baidu encyclopedia entry on him (Wikipedia has nothing on him), the article is in Chinese.

The store is a two story stucco building with large windows looking out onto the tree-lined street.  Walking into the store the first impression you are likely to have is that the place is a very good bookstore, and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.  The first floor has most of the store’s collection.  Right up front they have a great collection of books about Shanghai, including a bunch of walking tour guidebooks, restuarant guides, a history books.  The most recent bestsellers and general fiction are also found here, along with basic general knowledge Chinese language learning books (the more hardcore test prep books and textbooks are found upstairs).  Along the wall is a collection of non-fiction and fiction books about China, including the more popular titles about Chinese philosophy.  All the china-focused fiction can be found along the wall as well.  The cashier’s counter has the store’s magazine selection and various other knickknacks can be found up front as well, including greeting cards and postcards.  The front half of the first floor is always the most crowded part of the store and you can spend a fair amount of time here looking at books.  I found Julia Child’s memoirs here, the first book I bought at the store.

If you head to the back half of the bookstore you find the art books, design books, cookbooks, various large coffee table books, English language classics, self help and English test prep books (i.e., for the SAT, GRE, etc.), and a smattering of dictionaries.  The cookbook selection was especially intriguing to me (I love to cook) and I must pronounce it as the city’s best selection of food and cooking books.  They are recent bestsellers, cookbooks for a wide selection of the world’s cuisines, and professional level books on restaurant management and professional cooking.  Some particularly drool-worthy books included the famous culinary encyclopedia Larousse Gastronomique (in English), The River Cafe Cookbook and its various offspring, the Phaidon published cookbook Vefa’s Kitchen (which, if anyone is wondering, I would love to own), and even a copy of Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shoposin.  While I am a fan of cooking, if architecture, photography, interior design, fashion, or contemporary Chinese art are more you line of creative expression then the back half of Garden Book’s first floor is right up your alley.

Garden Books Shanghai

Walking up the stair case brings you to the second floor, which has been practically empty every time I’ve visited.  Taking up the center of the second floor is a large children’s books section with a kind of play area.  I didn’t check out the children’s books selection but I did see that they have Tintin in French, which bodes well in my mind.  French is not the only non-English language you will find on the second floor.  There are very decent sections devoted to Spanish, German and Italian books (though the French and German selections seem to be the best).  Near the front of the store on the second floor there is also a fine arts section with many books on European painting and the like.

For me though the draw of the second floor is its extensive collection of Chinese history books in the back.  While on the first floor you can find the bestsellers of Chinese history the second floor not only has those books but also a bunch of books on China’s history, religion, geography, ethnic makeup.  It was really quite extensive and I am sure that a historian or anthropologist would enjoy themselves immensely looking through the rows of books that can be found here.

Thus far I have been talking about the good aspects of Garden Books, namely its diverse and abundant selection.  The problem comes with the prices.  I am sure that if money was no object to me I would love this place deeply.  And while I do like this place and I find myself coming back here time and again, actually buying a book here can be painful.  English language bookstores in China always markup book prices due to the many problems in getting English books over here, that’s also why most English language bookshops are paperback only, not that that really.  The thing is Garden Books prices its books in a way that bothers me, I get perturbed just thinking about it.  At Garden Books all book prices are the the U.S. dollar price multiplied by 10.

Bear in mind that the current exchange rate for U.S. dollars (as of 12/2009) is 6.8 RMB/ $1.  This means that an American paperback priced at $14.99 will cost 150 RMB, which is actually $22.  This pricing system is not only lazy it is downright infuriating.  I am sure that Garden Books has a high rent and all but when you compare these prices to other bookstores in Shanghai Garden Books has one of the worst deals in town.  Then again, this is a problem at all English bookstores in China.

If, like me, you enjoy snooping around a bookstore just to see what you can find, even if the books may be too expensive for you to purchase, then Garden Books is a nice spot to spend an hour.  After flipping through all those beautiful art books you can sit at the store’s cafe and order some delicious Italian gelato.  While seeing a book you want and not being able to purchase it is a heart-wrenching activity, the hazelnut gelato and a quiet moment sitting and reading a book (bring your own) in the store’s cafe is a pleasure and makes your visit feel worthwhile after all.

Garden Books Shanghai

Posted in Shanghai, Shanghai Bookstores | 3 Responses »
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Shanghai in the early morning

Monday, December 21st, 2009

On a Friday night, some time ago, I went out to meet some friends.  It all started around 11:00 at the Boxing Cat Brewery.  I began my night at the Boxing Cat Brewery simply because that was where everyone was and because my friend was trying to finish 12 pints of strong ale in 2 hours to get his picture on the wall (he failed).  As the night progressed the third floor of the bar, with its slopped red walls, seemed to turn into an impromptu gathering of the Americans of Shanghai.  In between downing pints of the brewery’s IPA, Helles, and Porter offerings (all tasty) I met some amazing people, all, like me, lost in this modern day China we live in.  Many people thought that I was still a college student, which made me both happy to have fooled them and to then be able to announce that I am in fact a workingman (heading nowhere).  At around 2:30 or so my friends and I realized that most of the people had left, so down the stairs we went to watch Charlize Theron pick countries’ names out of a hat to make the line up for the World Cup next summer.  The other patrons watching were a sofa full of young men; one was from France, another Mexico, and one from Columbia.  All agreed that Brazil would tromp the other teams in their bracket, though I have no memory of who those teams were.

Somehow more time passed and then I was in a cab stopping and starting towards another late night bar in an underground graffiti sprayed maze of rooms and music, all drenched in thick smoke.  I chatted with a man from Lagos (the “History of Nigeria” class I took two years ago in college has paid off more than one would expect here in China cities, where Nigerians seem to flock) and he was surprised I know so much about ethnic divisions in his home country, but I was too far gone to have much of a conversation and we soon went our separate ways.  I ran into the Belgian man in the hallway whom I always run into at that bar (I have no idea what the bar’s address is, I only ever go after 3 AM), his girlfriend is a bartender there and he waits patiently every night to take her home after the bar closes at 4:30 AM.  He seemed a little annoyed with the world that night and I didn’t say more than a cheerful hello and left him to watch his girlfriend serve drinks.  There was, of course, a full selection of late-night Chinese street food (aka: meat/vegetables on a stick, 烧烤) right outside of the bar, which a friend and I enjoyed for a bit while standing in the cold.  Thing is, that ungodly-hour street food didn’t feel like enough, so we moved on.

As is often sometimes the case, my night ended at a McDonalds.  A Chinese McDonalds at 4 AM is like a solitary light at the end of a dock, the myriad creatures of the night sea converge in its unworldly glow.  Outside the restaurant the six-lane street was as dark as a downtown Shanghai street ever gets and every store was closed – except for the McDonalds.  Upon entering the semicircle fluorescent glow that covers the recessed entrance, a visitor is quickly pounced on by the beggars who have set up their nightly traps.

From afar, this is going to sound bad, those beggars reminded me of the zombies from a Hollywood film.  In a zombie flick the characters always end up going to some supermarket to pick up the canned food that has survived the apocalypse, often the supermarket has a horde of the mindless dead waiting for prey outside it’s front door.  The characters ready themselves with weapons whose names always begin with “semi-automatic” and charge in, adrenaline pumping.  Walking towards the McDonalds at 4 in the morning I was filled with a certain dread (though no adrenaline) as I knew that getting to the door would mean telling the beggars that I would not be giving them any money.  That night there were three beggars: one old man with a worn winter jacket and a walking stick polished from heavy use and two pairs of mothers with their dirty infant children.

Upon walking into the bright McDonalds even my numbed senses were shocked awake.  The usual crowd was there.  A group of Europeans had just finished ordering and were snacking on French fries as they headed to a table, an African man and his Chinese girlfriend were at a table for two sat against the wall and seemed oblivious to everything around them, filling in the empty spaces was a collection of about half a dozen college-age Chinese students sleeping with their heads lying on their folded arms.  My friend ordered a huge meal for himself, which I would later eat from.

We ate at the long communal table along the front of the restaurant facing the sidewalk.  I was not that hungry so after finishing half of my friends Big Mac I stare at the street.  Soon one of the mothers with her infant child comes up to the window and begins to tap on the glass in front of me, her child watching me watching her.  After awhile she backs away, looks at me and walks off in another direction clutching her child’’s hand.  I then bring my attention back to the restaurant and realize that I’m thristy, but for all the food my friend bought he only managed to get one small soda, which he was drinking with gusto.  Then, while watching the two students next to us sleeping with their heads on the table (there must be better places to sleep, no?), a foreign man who looked to be from Europe stood at a seat next to one of the sleeping students and, taking his time, carefully dropped his tray of food on the table making a loud noise that woke up and startled the student.  The foreign man didn’t laugh or anything and took his seat while the student sauntered off to another table in the bright restaurant.  After that I decided to wait outside for my friend to finish eating so I could get some fresh air and escape the fucked up restaurant.

Immediately upon exciting McDonalds the old man with the walking stick came up to me begging for money.  I apologized and refused to give him any cash and after he had stood next to me for awhile, lightly tapping me with his empty paper cup while I starred off into the distance, he walked away.  A bit later one of the mothers came up to me with her son explaining that they needed money for food.  I looked around me and found no one nearby so I slipped her a 5 kuai note ($0.73).  She thanked me before catching, in the far right of her vision, a group of Europeans approaching the McDonalds.

The Europeans walked quickly towards the door to the restaurant in a riot of Italian leaving the old man in their wake, penniless.  Seeing me near the woman and her child they cautioned: “Don’t give ‘em any money.”  I nodded knowingly.  One of the Europeans, a young woman, stayed outside and squatted in front of the beggar woman’s young child.  Ignoring the woman at first she said “hello” to the child and smiled.  The beggar woman started to give her pitch in a sad desperate drawl, explaining in Chinese and sign language that she and her child were hungry.  The European woman told them that she would not give them money but then offered to buy them food inside the McDonalds, opening the door and motioning them to come inside.  The beggar woman held a look on her face that seemed to say: “This is not what I asked for.”  With a kind of trepidation she and her child walked inside.  The beggar woman had noticeable fear as she entered the bright room, whose light seemed to show her poverty even more strikingly.

I stayed outside.  Like the beggar woman the light and motley makeup of the crowd in McDonalds was not what I wanted at 4 in the morning.  I waited for my friend to finish eating and when he was done we said our goodbyes and he got a taxi and I started for home.  During the dazed walk to my apartment I thought about how I had treated the beggars that night and then began to reminisce about the beggars I have come across in China.  The ones I remember are often the most shocking: the boy on the outskirts of Tianjin with a tumor the size of a volleyball attached to his hip and put prominently on display; the gang of young children who surrounded me and some friends in Changsha latching themselves onto our legs as we walked, like scuba weights, pleading for money; the man on the corner in Kunming his body so burned it was nauseating to look at him – his face basically gone, no nose, eye sockets replaced by cruel scars, no hands; the young boys roaming the late night bars of old South Sanlitun selling bruised flowers and drinking your half empty beers; the police officer in Kunming taking a kid, who couldn’t have been more than 12 years old and wearing an oversize patched suit jacket, and beating him on the sidewalk; most memorable was the woman in my Kunming neighborhood – her body so filthy that her skin was permanently the color of a mechanic’s grease smudged hands, she would always try and touch us as we went pass all the while muttering to herself.

I’ve never had a system for dealing with China’s numerous beggars, sometimes I give them some money sometimes I don’t.  Either way some of their faces and desperate situations wind up haunting me long after I walk past them.

Posted in Shanghai | 3 Responses »
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The Haydn Society

Friday, December 11th, 2009

My father is a lifelong lover of classical music.  When he got to Dartmouth for his Freshman year in 1941 he had a piano hoisted into his dorm room so he could practice pieces by Beethoven and Mozart.  After he graduated college (which happened only after he had enlisted as an officer in the United States Army, served in occupied Germany and the Allies won the war) he and some friends started a small independent recording company in Boston called the Haydn Society.  During the company’s relatively short life my father was able to travel around Europe and America making some fantastic classical music recordings.  While the original aim of the company was to record the complete works of Hadyn they in fact recorded works by many of the great classical composers of Europe.

Usually discussions of The Haydn Society only happen at my family’s dinner table and among my father’s friends, but as is bound to happen in this day and age information about the Haydn Society can now be found online.  One of my cousins recently discovered a graphic design blog that has been posting Haydn Society album covers.  The blog is written by the Graphic designer Javier Garcia and looks beautiful.  Mr. Garcia’s online portfolio can be found here and all the Haydn Society album covers he has photographed and discussed on his blog can be found here.  At my family’s home we still have every single Haydn Society album ever produced, many hanging on our dining room wall.  They are beautiful pieces of artwork and show the fascinating graphic design that existed in America almost 60 years ago, and I’m just glad somebody cares enough to put them online.

Many of the album covers were designed by my father’s good friend, and a man I got to know very well growing up, the artist Joseph Low.  Sadly Mr. Low passed away in 2007 at the age of 96.  I will always remember him as a true artist with a jubilant imagination.  In his lifetime Mr. Low also produced several New Yorker covers and illustrated more than a few children’s books.  The unofficial art director for the Haydn Society was my father’s college roomate Alvin Eisenman, who would later teach graphic design at Yale, and he was the one that found all the artists who produced the beautiful album covers.

As if by fate while I was writing this post I learned that Shanghai is hosting a Haydn Chamber Music Festival starting today and running until the 16th at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.  Chamber music groups from around the world are participating and the prize money (134,000 RMB) is the largest sum ever given to chamber music group in China.  I am itching to go but I don’t really know anyone in Shanghai who would like to check it out with me.  Anyone reading this planning on going?

About a year and a half ago I tried my hand at converting some of the Haydn Society’s albums into MP3s.  Being that I am no music technician and can barely get this blog to look decent I achieved only mediocre results.  I’m going to try and put one of the song’s I managed to digitize online just as soon as I get home today.

Here are some of the Haydn Society’s album covers that Javier Garcia has photographed (again, his blog can be found here):

Designed by Alvin Lustig

Designed by Joseph Low

Designed by Joseph Low

Posted in Music, Personal | 2 Responses »
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Gay conversion therapy in China

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Being a homosexual was a criminal act in China until 1997 and Homosexuality was listed as a mental illness in China until 2001, facts we should not forget when talking about the long march for gay rights happening in this country.   Another hiccup in the generally positive development of gay rights in China is the use of gay conversion therapy here.  Gay conversion therapy is when people (stupidly) try to convert a gay person into a straight person.  This useless act is often tried through the use of religious guilt, peer pressure and sometimes more bizarre actions: “Picture this: you are watching gay porn, you are feeling good.  But they put ammonia into your nose to make you feel bad.”  I didn’t know that gay conversion was going on in China (other than the feeble attempts of Chinese mothers to help their gay sons find a wife), but I guess it is happening in both the Christian community and with professional psychiatrists.

The Global Times (they seem to be talking a lot about gay issues these days) just published an article about a public forum at Beijing’s Renmin University by Yi Huso, a “research fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University in New York and a visiting assistant professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing,” which discussed the use of gay conversion therapy in China.

The article is rather odd.  It clearly states how gay conversion is bad for gay men, “those who failed at therapy might have been harmed in terms of chronic depression, low self-esteem, have difficulty sustaining relationships and experience sexual dysfunction.”  At the same time the article ends by quoting a Chinese “expert” who believes that, “If he/she is willing to change, I believe the therapy would not cause any harm.”  The whole thing is not very well written and besides making it clear that there are well over 10 million gay men in China the article doesn’t mention how the straight Chinese population needs to change to allow for a more *cough* harmonious future.  So, in the end the only real value I got from the article came from the intriguing story of one gay man who had gone through gay conversion therapy in China:

Will, 20, a self-described sexually confused boy who embraces several religions, nodded from time to time.

As a Christian, he experienced the “spiritual interventions” designed to rid the individual of his or her sexual orientation through prayer, group support and pressure.

“But I failed because I could not stand when they kept telling me how sinful I am and stopped me from meeting my gay friends,” he said.

At last, traumatic anti-gay encounters changed his mind.

“I can have no sex. I can have no religion. But I cannot be non-gay just because others say I am wrong to be gay,” he said.

In the end it’s all just more mixed signals from the Chinese government and the Communist Party, which in fact runs the Global Times.  Just yesterday there was an article published by Xinhua, the official press agency of the Chinese government, with the headline: “Public tolerance needed for Chinese gays to tackle AIDS.”  On the same day Beijing News published a report on how the China Telecom is blocking websites set up to provide information to homosexuals:

The report quoted Guangdong branch company of China Telecom, one of the country’s main internet service providers, as saying that the “green filtering software” which was somehow put in place without prior application and confirmation of its clients has blocked a majority of government-sponsored websites that provide authoritative information on HIV/AIDS prevention and common knowledge about homosexuality.

What a mess….

Posted in Gay Rights in China, Homosexuality | 5 Responses »
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Hairy Crabs and Beard Papa’s

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Shanghai hairy crab

I don’t highlight my culinary adventures enough on this blog, a shame really.  Mostly I cook at home, which for me is like a glass of wine and a bout of meditation (i.e., relaxing).  And while I love to cook this isn’t a food blog, my meals are for me and me alone.  Though there are a couple things I need to get off my chest.  First, I love my roommate.  I am truly blessed by living with an amazing Japanese woman who loves to cook.  She has opened my eyes and mouth to many amazing Japanese dishes that I had never tried before and I am constantly learning new cooking techniques.  She is from the city of Sendai, which is north of Tokyo.  Her idea of comfort food has been a nice counterpoint to the American/Italian food I often make and the Chinese food all around us; sushi making parties and savory Japanese beef stews have become common at my home.  And get this, she loves flower arranging and makes sure that every room in the house has a fresh bouquet at all times.  She is, in my mind, one of the best roomates ever.  She is also a big fan of trying Chinese food recipes, like me, and sometimes will splurge on something really indulgents that she lets me devour.  Two weeks ago it was salted caramel popcorn covered in chocolate (amazing) and avocados (expensive), and last week she purchased two hairy crabs and steamed them up for us.

Hairy crab, aka the mitten crab, aka 大闸蟹 (big sluice crab), aka 上海毛蟹 (Shanghai hairy crab).  What is that, you ask?  Hairy crabs are the top culinary item from Shanghai.  Shanghai may be famous for it’s soup dumplings, wide array of seafood and subtly flavored cuisine, but as far as culinary items actually from this region, hairy crabs are number one.  Unlike the lobster found in New England these crabs spend most of their time in freshwater and in China are largely limited to one area of lakes and estuaries around Shanghai.  The most famous of these lakes is Yangcheng lake (阳澄湖), where the annual crab harvest (September-November) is celebrated with great enthusiasm here in Shanghai.

Being such a delicacy the crabs can fetch outrageous prices in restaurants, and nearly every one of the city’s restaurant seems to have some crab special during the fall.  I am not a rich man, so the thousands of crab advertisments around the city have been nothing but a slap in the face for me.  Being the holy grail of Shanghai cuisine and one of my all time favorite crustaceans (it’s hard to admit it, but sometimes I wonder if I in fact like crab more than New England lobster).  As usual my roommate made my day and bought two to steam ‘em up for a nice dinner.

Shanghai hairy crab

Shanghai hairy crab

They are called hairy crabs because of the lumps of hair growing on their claws.  These look like smudges of dark brown oil paint on a painter’s palette, or maybe the thick noxious algae that grows on the bottom of boats.  Even though the claws are covered in something that can’t really be called hair the legs are, in fact, pretty hairy, so I guess we’re okay.  Eating these expensive highly sought after delicacies is a pain in the ass.  While using scissors, knives, forks, my teeth, and hands to pry the tiny little bits of meat from the creature I couldn’t help but think how easy it is to eat a lobster.  My roommate was all about eating the crab’s grotesque inner organs, it’s an Asian thing.  Me, not so much.  One bite of the thick waxy orange goop and I was running to the kitchen for something to take the nasty flavor out of my mouth.  Luckily the meat was actually amazing in all respects.  Taking my roommate’s cue, I used a dipping sauce of about equal parts soy sauce and Chinese black vinegar (something I will definitely be using with lobster back in New England).  Once you pry the meat from the creature (make sure not to get any crab “hair” with it) eating it is a pleasure.  Sweet with a texture that is world’s away from overcooked lobster tail, it was divine.  However, I already loved crab before trying the famous hairy crab and I’m still not really sure what the big difference is.  It was delicious though.

Beard Papas

Another culinary thing I’ve been up to lately is eating too many Beard Papa’s.  The company really makes only one product (they do other stuff but no one cares): a pate choux pastry puff filled all the way with a luscious thick creme anglaise (other lesser flavors also available).  It was love at first sight, much like me and Krispy Kreme (which, coincidentally, just opened their first Shanghai store).  Beard Papas is a Japanese company that I first came in contact with in Beijing back in 2004 as a slacker high school exchange student, you can smell the butter goodness a mile away.  I hear they exist in America as well but I have only seen them in Shanghai and Beijing, which is a shame really.  Back in 2004 the name made us fans of the place even before we tried the product – it’s quite a memorable name with a Japanese-style cutesy logo of a bearded fisherman.  When you do finally get to the front of the line and nab a Beard Papa’s and bite into its crackly puffy exterior and enter the reservoir of sweet custard that fills its innards – it’s almost too much.  It’s like a creme brule to-go, except you are hard pressed to buy just one, or two or three….  I’ve found through exhausting experimentation that if you fill up on the first couple that you bought the extra one can go into the freezer for a late night snack.  Let it thaw for a few minutes and eat with knife and fork, delicious.

Beard Papas

Beard Papas

Beard Papas

Posted in Food, Shanghai | 2 Responses »
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More hope for gay rights in China? I don’t know…

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

The Global Times (环球时报) is an international affairs newspaper published by the People’s Daily (人民日报), the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, and it is usually about as entertaining as that sounds.  Unlike the People’s Daily the Global Times is hugely popular in China, my students in Huaihua used to read it all the time (they used its fiercely nationalistic articles to help them craft their essays for school).  Global Times is nationalistic and often goes after foreign governments, which can make it kind of grating to read as a foreigner.  This year they started printing an English version of the newspaper as part of the Chinese government’s multi-billion dollar investment to make the Chinese viewpoint heard round the world (they also want to start a 24/7 English news channel).  The English Global Times has enlisted a wide range of people to write articles and op-eds, including many English speaking expats living in China (even some bloggers), which means the paper has a far more diverse viewpoint than its Chinese mother.

I don’t usually read the paper, though recently the paper ran an op-ed with a headline that got my attention: “More Hope for Gay Rights in China Than in the US.”  How could I resist that?

The author is James Palmer. He is a non-fiction writer who recently published his book The Bloody White Baron, a history of the Russian Baron Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921).  He lives in Beijing.  Mr. Palmer makes some really great points in his editorial, but in the end his thesis is wrong.  I thought I’d hash out the details here.

He starts by saying that with the recent civil rights losses in Maine (the passing of a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage) and Rhode Island (the governor forbade gay partners from enjoying funeral rights) have left civil rights leaders “despairing”.  While I am certainly saddened by the developments in Maine and Rhode Island I am not despairing, and I don’t think other young LGBT Americans are either.  There was the recent super-sized march in Washington for LGBT rights and the signing into law of the Shepard Byrd Hate Crimes Bill that in my mind seem to offer a lot of hope and promise for the people fighting for LGBT rights in America.  Plus, the generational divide on the issue of gay marriage makes me very secure in the knowledge that there is no reason to despair, at least not too much.  Of course, Mr. Palmer is right in many ways on this point.  The recent murder, dismemberment and burning of 19 year old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado in Puerto Rico shows that our society has many problems and that the fight for gay rights in America is not merely about marriage.

He then writes:

If anything, the situation in China can seem worse. Gay marriage isn’t even on the administrative agenda yet, and most Chinese homosexuals still live hidden lives, pressured into marriage by their family.

Yet history and culture may offer more hope in China than in the US.

Not a ridiculous proposition, and one that I have also considered here on my blog.  The question is how far can you take this line of thinking?  Will China have nationwide gay marriage rights before the U.S.?  (Yes, that day will certainly come, both here and there.)  Will China’s gay rights movement follow along a path similar to America’s?  In the end I think the real question that makes such nation to nation comparisons fraught with difficulty is: What are the underlying differences between our culture’s views on homosexuality and how will these differences affect the fight for gay rights?

Mr. Palmer feels the same and he wrote a bit about homosexuality’s (especially male homosexuality) place in Chinese culture and history, something him and I both seem to have an interest in.  He brings up the eminent Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a man more fascinating and game-changing than Marco Polo ever was, who, in his quest to convert the Chinese masses, looked the other way when it came to ancestor worship but could never understand the Chinese people’s acceptance of homosexuality.  He wrote of homosexuality: “It is spoken of in public and practised everywhere without there being anyone to prevent it.”

European societies, as Mr. Palmer points out, were cultures where homosexuality was, “condemned by religion, law and custom, and vicious punishments, even including death, were handed down to gay men.”  In contrast, China had long viewed homosexuality not in such black and white terms.  Many Chinese Emperors were bisexual (all but one in the Han dynasty), male concubines were allowed and often common among the wealthy, and male poets would write romantic lines about their same sex lovers.  While ancient China was never a homosexual paradise, it was also not the judgmental nightmare than Christian Europe used to be.

It was only with the Self-Strengthening Movement, the fall of the Qing dynasty, and the adoption of Western political and cultural ideas that allowed Western ideas towards homosexuality to become the norm in China.  Mr. Palmer points out that during Mao’s reign homosexuality was considered a “Western bourgeois vice,” a line of thinking that some still believe today.  Go figure, the ancient country with a long history of open homosexuality calls homosexuality a Western trend.  However, China’s history does not in and of itself easily translate into an easier fight for LGBT rights in today’s China.

Mr. Palmer mentions the interesting place of homosexuality in Chinese society today:

Today, gay rights in China are less advanced than in Europe or the US. Although a commonly accepted rule is “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion,”and legal persecution is rare, gays rarely live openly and have a difficult time, in particular, coming out to their parents. (Emphasis added)

Many gay men have male lovers in their 20s, get married and have a child – and then, very often, go back to having secretive same-sex relationships.

This is a pretty solid summary of the situation facing gay men in China today.  Gay men are neither hunted nor welcomed.  Gay bars are hard to find, exist as relatively secretive places and are not a place where you want to be seen by your straight boss.  At the same time the bathrooms of gay bars and clubs are covered in government ads urging the use of safe sex  and inside a Chinese gay bar everyone is very open and friendly.  Hell, the government in Dali, a city in Yunnan province, just opened a gay bar in the city today as a way to stop the spread of AIDS and provide a community center for the gay community. Turns out the gay bar has been put on hold due to the intense media attention, the gay volunteers voted not to open it yet.  If you ask me, this is sign of how the development of gay rights is going to be slow going in China.

Mr. Palmer is also right that most gay men in China still marry women and have children after their 20s.  I talked about these “homowives” and the reasons behind such marriages in a previous blog post.  Since coming to Shanghai I have also learned about  so called “sham marriages” (I forget the Chinese name.  If you know it please post it in the comments), which are when the women in a lesbian couple and the men in a gay couple split off into two straight marriages or when a lesbian and a gay man get married.  These sham marriages are purely for show, the fake heterosexual couples only spend the Chinese New Year together while visiting the in laws, for most of the year everyone can be with their true loves.

In finishing up his argument Mr. Palmer compares America’s Christian society and its “tradition of aggressive masculinity that sees gay men as ‘weak’ or ‘unmanly’” to China, a country that “doesn’t have any of this.”  I can understand this argument, and it does hold true much of the time.  For example, in my classroom last year effeminate boys were some of the most popular students and were not harassed as they might have been in America.  Male friendships are also of a different nature in China and can be worlds away from the American tradition.   Of course nothing is this black and white.  The comments posted by Chinese citizens on a recent BBS about Taiwan’s LGBT Pride parade were often deeply derogatory and violent.  So while being “unmanly” in the eyes of a male American may not be much of a problem in China, being openly gay and proud most certainly is.

The fight for gay rights in America is often, as Mr. Palmer writes, preaching against the “low-level homophobia of the playground” and showing that members of the LGBT community are productive and kind people just like everyone else.  At the same time though the fight for gay rights in China often means bringing up a topic that isn’t even discussed on the playground, let alone used derogatorily among students.  When homosexuality is as closeted as it is in most of China fighting for gay rights can be a huge undertaking.

Mr. Palmer seems to be saying that since China lacks a large Christian community (though, in all fairness, it is growing by leaps and bounds) and an American style love of macho manliness, that means that gay rights will flourish here unimpeded.  Maybe, but as of yet most of the flousihing of the Chinese LGBT community is happening outside of the public eye.  China’s gay community has to take the big step of coming out of the closet and promoting others to do the same before real dramatic changes can take place.  Mr. Palmer writes: “It might be that in 20 years time or longer, China recognizes gay marriage, while large parts of the US and Europe continue to be stuck in the past.”  But for this to happen in China there will have to be a strong open gay community, a governmnet not vague in its stance on gay rights, and probably an explosive moment that ushers in real changes.  Just as Stonewall started the modern gay rights movement in America 40 years ago, a strong stand against prejuidce and hiding could bring needed changes to the Chinese LGBT community.  If that happens I would not be surprised if it took less than 40 years for China to reach the kind of support and acceptance that I can find in my home state of Massachusetts.  I and the tens of millions of LGBT Chinese are waiting.

Posted in America, Gay Rights in China, Homosexuality | 2 Responses »
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