Stop Being So Damn Negative

I believe that after reading some of my ravings essays here one might think that I have a kind of negative attitude about China. Appearances may be a bit deceiving.  China is where I live, and what I write about in this blog, so you sometimes see some unkind words regarding my adopted home.  However, I think that if I was to write about other places where human beings are, you would find that my tone might be equally, if not more caustic.
So in an effort to be more positive, I have some good things to say about China, and my town:

1. It is a great place to shop for groceries.  I am able to get very fresh and exotic produce, sea food, eggs, tofu, fresh noodles, dim sum, spices, nuts, dried fruits, and wealth of other things at open markets and from small local purveyors.  It's commerce at its most basic, and full of wonderful human interactions as well.
2. Chinese food is incredible.
   
3. Dumplings!
4. Unlike the US, the government has admitted that corruption is rampant, and they are actively prosecuting officials.
5. Cell phone service is far superior to the US.  You are not tied to a parasitical contract.  There is no minimal fee you pay each month.  You buy a phone, and pay ahead for the time you use. Phones can be anything from cheap Chinese phones to iPhones. There are bootlegs, 10 year old new Nokias, and good Chinese brands.  You can buy the latest models of anything.  Walk three blocks and you can find a large shopping area that is nothing but small shops with glass cases chock full of devices ranging from $10 to $600.                                                                   You can pay for your service at a mobile service company, at ATM type devices, or any number of small holes in the wall where you hand the person your money and the phone number, they call a number on their beat up phone, type in your number and their secret code and voila, you have 100 RMB credit to your account.  I do a lot of text messaging, and I spend roughly about $10 a month for my service.                                             Cellular coverage is also excellent here.  There are no dead spots, and you don't get bent over and gang raped any time you try to call from outside your coverage area.   
6. If you are smoker, it is an awesome place to live.  Cigarettes are dirt cheap and you can get away with smoking almost anywhere.    
7. You are a lot less likely to be injured, or die as a result of violence here than you are in Pakistan, Syria or the US.  In fact it's pretty darn safe.  Guns are illegal, and people are far less prone to settling disputes by trying to kill each other. I can go anywhere in this city (in the daytime) and be completely safe from harm.  (Except from traffic.)  That is not the case in Los Angeles, or even Portland, and you stand a much greater chance in the US of getting shot than you do here.
8. They have fewer people in jail and prison than the US even though they are a totalitarian state.
9. The government wants everyone working, and is constantly acting to create and encourage job growth.    
10. Beer is cheap.
11. They have a very cool high speed train system.
12. They have e-bikes.
13. They value education.
14. Life here is far better now than it ever has been for the average person.
15. The money is pretty.  The largest denomination is pink and worth $16.  If you have the equivalent of $500 in your pocket, it's a big wad o' cash.
    
16. It's not the best place in the world to be a woman, but it's better than most places in Asia.
17. There are no Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, TV evangelists, creationists, Republicans or Democrats.
    
     
    
18. But they do have some very entertaining superstitions.
    
19. You can spit any time you want.
20. If you want to be frugal, you can keep your cost of living very low.  On the other hand, if you want to live high on the hog and spend lavishly on nice things, you can do that too.
21. Public transportation is cheap, and goes most places.  You can get a cheap bus to virtually any place in the country.
22. It's the bootleg capital of the world.
    
23. Nobody here knows who Kim Kardashian is.
    

                      

No Black Skin!!

Click image for larger picture

Women here shun the sun.  Fair, pale, and white is the desired skin tone.  Of course in the US, Europe, Australia, Brazil, and countless other places, people love the sun.  They spend lots of time laying about on beaches, around pools, on rooftops, on docks, in boats, browning themselves like a Thanksgiving turkey.

                                   

Caucasians generally do not darken easily, but Orientals do, and unless a woman wants to look like a peasant who works on a boat or in the field, she avoids sunlight like a vampire.  The term they use for this affliction is "black skin".  You don't want black skin!!!
Here in the southern part of the country, the sun can be pretty intense, so you see some pretty interesting efforts to stay pale.  The #1 tool is the umbrella.  A lady always has it open when it's sunny, whether on foot, pedaling a bicycle, or riding on the back of a motorbike.  While riding a motorbike, she will be completely covered in gloves, long sleeves, and helmet with face shield.
Most avoid outdoor activities such as tennis or swimming outdoors, and few ever spend extended time on a beach unless she is covered like an Afghan woman in a Taliban village.
I came across this new device in "China Daily" the other day and it appears to be gaining in popularity.  It's called the "face bikini", although it seems to have a pretty generous cut for a bikini.

Not very stylish.  I think they could be a bit more creative. Something like this:

Or this:

The new Chinese beach volleyball team uniforms!

Neighbors

China has a lot of neighbors.  Fourteen countries border it, and across the water a ways there are the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan.  You also have Hong Kong and Macao, which are special "Administrative Regions" of China.  If you are Chinese, you need a passport and visa to go those two places, and, well... it's complicated.  In fact, having this many neighbors is very complicated.  Some of these neighbors, you would not want living next door, in fact most of them you would rate as undesirable, and the Homeowner's Association would never have even allowed them to come to the open house, let alone buy a place.
Four of their neighbors have nukes: India, Russia, Pakistan and North Korea.  
Pakistan recently made the news when a pregnant woman was beaten to death with bricks outside of the courthouse of its second largest city, Lahore.  By her family.  For marrying a different guy than the one they wanted her to.  This kind of thing happens a lot.
It also turns out that the husband had murdered his first wife, but that it was OK since his son legally pardoned him, which makes it alright in Pakistan!  You can't make this stuff up.  Stephen King would have considered this one of his finest story ideas and maybe have retired, knowing he had reached the ultimate pinnacle of horror twists.
They also have crazy Muslims that blow themselves up in crowded public places and kill and terrorize women who want to go to school.  And they have nukes.  Howdy, neighbor!
Afghanistan also shares a border with China.  It's a kind of stone age Pakistan, more savage, and without nukes, but which has the distinction of being the graveyard and black hole of empires.  There are several more "Stans", backward places all.
Drugs and firearms come in from Myanmar, Laos and the Stans. Crazy Islam filters in.  Human trafficking.  Cheap porn!  This neighborhood kind of sucks.
You might think that China would want to try to create some stability here.  They kind of do, sometimes.  They haven't had a border conflict with India in a while, and... Um..... Let me think....Oh, yeah!   Russia is mostly a good neighbor, having just closed a big gas deal with China! They have a long, Commie relationship.  Stalin and Mao had a complex loathe/hate affair, each trying to outdo the other as to who could be the biggest rat bastard of the 20th century along with Hitler and Tojo.  Today Russia provides China with a lot natural resources, and China provides a place for Russians to work, along with an unlimited source of bootleg electronics and luxury items.  And the governments never say a bad word about the other.
Another of China's neighbors is North Korea, without a doubt the shittiest place in Asia to live.  This is the result of 3 generations of draconian rule by the Kim family.  Baby Kim, the present ruler closely resembles an evil villain from a 1960's James Bond movie. He takes great delight in eliminating his enemies in ways so deviously creative, that schlock Hollywood writers have bookmarked "North Korea Executions" on their Google news pages in order to get ideas for their next Vin Diesel script.
This chubby, cherubic faced twenty something has all the charm and predictability of a rabid, meth crazed badger.  Oh, and he has nukes.  Fortunately, his delivery system consists of rockets cobbled together from whatever parts are available on the black market and designed by ill educated, stressed out engineers, whose families are being held hostage by the sadistic minions of Baby Kim.  Nobody works well under the kind of stress caused by the knowledge that errors may result in Medieval family planning practices.  The rockets have had success in leaving the North Korean borders and landing in the ocean, much to everyone's relief.
The hapless citizens of this hellhole regularly starve, are imprisoned, disappear, and suffer a daily existence completely devoid of joy.  The lucky ones die at birth.  This Communist experiment in human misery could not exist without the support of China, which feels the need to keep a buffer zone between itself and the US military which keeps a substantial force along the border between North and South Korea.  The US, in turn can make a valid case for these troops being necessary to keep Baby Kim from sending his million brainwashed soldiers over the border in order to impose his version of Workers' Paradise on the entire Korean peninsula.
China really would not like this, since it does billions of dollars in business with South Korea, and the Chinese looooove Korean soap operas.  By the way, watching South Korean soap operas in the North will get you executed or worse!  Just goes to show how far China has progressed.  
It's a sorry state of affairs, and even though Beijing would prefer that the Kim family had produced a less odious offspring, they still seem OK with this arrangement.
One would think that having most of your borders adjacent to backward bastions of savagery would be cause for unease, but China seems mostly unfazed.  Instead, China has been enjoying some neighborly squabbles in the South China Sea with the Philippines and Viet Nam, claiming islands and territory for itself in spite of lack of proximity to China's shores.  Throw in their more legitimate claims to some rock piles that Japan says are theirs, and you have some potentially very troubled waters.
This neighborhood that China occupies is a lot more interesting than that of the United States.  The US borders two countries that it mostly gets along fine with, and apparently longs to be in a more interesting place, so it is Pivoting to Asia.  At least the part of Asia that is not Afghanistan.  Pivoting out of there.  Of course, to keep things interesting, they would pivot to support the Japanese in their shaky claim to those uninhabited rocks.  We have a treaty with Japan!  It seemed like a good idea at the time, since we had completely defeated them in WWII and they had a constitution that prohibits them from going to war, but they have right wing nationalist prime minister who seems to wax nostalgic for the good old days of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
Japan still enjoys near universal loathing among East Asian countries due to the fact that they conquered most of them, ruled with unrivaled cruelty, practiced savage mass murder and slavery, and the government has never publicly apologized for these acts. 
Fortunately, the only nukes Japan has are in the crappy power plants that dot this earthquake and tsunami prone country.
Rather than pivot toward Asia, the US might be better served by pivoting on home, and leaving this place to be messed up by its own people.  Bring the jobs back home and build a big wall along the West Coast.
This neighborhood that China occupies is dangerous and edgy.  Not many of the neighbors are the type you would invite over to barbecue or would feel comfortable loaning your lawn mower to.
Your back yard fence might include razor wire, guard towers, mine fields and a clear field of fire.
Won't you be my neighbor?