The new puritans, less fun that the old

puritans....We just spent at night at the Marin Youth Hostel in the Headlands less than ten minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was cheap, $72.00 a night for a private room with no bath, and sounded rustic -- no restaurants, no TV, bring your own food, and enjoy the hiking! Well as it turned out, the place is magical. Located next to the Headlands Center for the Arts and two minutes from one of the most beautiful black sand beaches in California, the place could not have recommended itself more in terms of location. The atmosphere was disturbing: in the OC, we have a lot of anti-environmentalist behavior, fake smiles and plastic behavior, but the authenticity of the hostel guests was exaggerated in the other direction. Perhaps a vow of silence had been taken before we got there, but my eight year old's natural exuberance was thrown for a loop as he cringed every time he cracked a century old floorboard. Awe at the natural beauty of the place doesn't translate necessarily into sanctimony and disapproval...for me at any rate. Can vegans be more carefree? Does deep ecology make you deeply depressed? Just asking...I would recommend it despite my rather ill-tempered complaint. It is only twenty minutes from SF, and the whole area is gloriously beautiful. Perhaps I seek an impossible middle ground between the drunken revelers on Union Street, on a bender at 4 pm on a Sunday, and the sobriety of monastic hostellers composting their coffee grounds and beard clippings (I compost too- obsessively, but without the big plastic tub).

what I learned in Shanghai

Government controlled media in China gives detailed analysis of the global economy, global stock markets and currency and commodity trading. It is more in depth than NPR. Of course it's biased, but it's also informative. Our working class neighborhood masseuses understood that Americans are bankrupt because all Americans do is consume.

Street urchins may seem straight out of central casting, off the main boulevards Shanghai has so much character, I weep in the OC for it.

Shanghai Diaries

From July 14 -- a message I wrote, but was unable to post since China had blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and other social media sites because of the unrest in Urumqi, Xinjiang province

Friends,

It is 95 degrees Fahrenheit today. Our walk to lunch and a pedestrian area called "Special Characteristic Zone" ended up with Peter pale from the beginnings of heat stroke and a brief and confusing visit to a "museum" of antiquities which also advertised itself as a Research Center of the prestigious Fudan University. Inside the "museum," we discovered that the hundred year old wooden lattice windows, the ancestors altars and wood carved aphorisms that traditionally go over the courtyard of Chinese homes were all for sale. Three young women were on laptops, drinking tea. There was a small stage with a "guzhen" or butterfly harp covered with cloth. I asked if they held concerts and one young lady gave us a business card and urged me to call her, saying that special performances could be arranged for a price.

Yesterday we went to a fabric market and had Leo measured for a suit. His suit will cost $60.00 US. The market is in the Old City of Shanghai, which contains a warren of stores selling knock off crocs for three dollars. I doubt that the next time we are here that any of this will exist as the old markets are surrounded by gigantic holes in the ground alternating with high rises named Golden Harmony Horse, or Lucky Double Happiness Rabbit Foot. Peter and Michael claim to have seen something resembling a bear claw during market day in these streets. The testes of the bear are said by Chinese medicine to be a sort of ancient Viagra. Next time you think the Orient is so Zen, think again.

The seamstresses cooed over a pale and slightly feverish Leo, and one asked if I thought Chinese or American education gave children a deeper knowledge of academic subjects. Ashamed to tell her that most Americans don't know where Iraq is, or how to calculate variable rate mortgage, much less differentiate between Warring States Period and the Spring/Autumn dynasties, I said something anodyne like, children have less pressure in the US since there are more places at University available to them.

Leo has had a low grade fever for the past five days. I am a bit worried, since it seems to be a literary affliction. Perhaps his normal temperature is just slightly above normal when exposed to the neo-colonial circumstances of our summer vacation. (Did I mention we are staying in a Golf Villa?) Leo is otherwise cheerful, but his slight febrility makes me reluctant to engage in strenuous activities in the heat. Englishmen and mad dogs notwithstanding. Peter avoided heatstroke by a small margin this afternoon. I don't think I could have carried him back to apartment if he had collapsed after lunch, but he had this very funny look on his face.

We have seen some very funny examples of Chinglish -- direct translations of Chinese signage. One of them was in the North Pagoda in Suzhou, and it read "Watch out, Knock Head" about low rafters. At the exit of a hotpot restaurant, the door sign read helpfully, "Watchout Landslide." I believe it is about the slippery tiles and the monsoon rains, but it could also mean that there are invisible mountains nearby. Slippery Floor and Landslide are homonymic in Chinese.

I talked to my aunt this morning and told her that we wouldn't be coming to Shandong. She was very unhappy about that, but before the onset of this heat wave, I was floored by a kind of psychic inertia, and so I had delayed making any decisions about going out of town. Talking to her made me regret my choices. She told me to tell Peter that the entire Liu clan was eager to see the "foreign son-in-law."

A preserved warren of back alleys off Taikang Road boasts expat bars, boutiques and art galleries and small speciality shops, which haven't entirely displaced the locals. A few old guys had their beautiful mynah birds out in tiny cages. The alleys are lined with concrete sinks, where the original residents still get their only running water. A young and old man were mixing concrete for the pavers to be newly installed in the alley and they sat casually on the ground as if it were their living room. They took their time. Two Shanghainese beauties in tilted porkpie hats fanned themselves languidly and an impromptu photo shoot was taking place as a young woman in bug-eyed, Paris Hilton sunglasses posed for her Pygmalion in front of drying laundry.

Slick and stultifying malls are everywhere and they boast stores with strange names like "Kuhle" (German for cool) and other variations on Western brands. During interminable cab rides through forests of high rises, each one it seems, built by a former people's commune or factory that has made it big and is speculating on real estate in Shanghai, we think about starting our own brand consultancy here to come up with Teutono-American sounding names for things.

I've always been deeply disturbed by this place, too much so probably for my own good, but we will come back, only not in July/August.


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