I'm proud of my city because of the street vendors selling...

When I want to read books in English, what do I do in Shanghai?

I could go to the Internet and go to Amazon, have fun browsing through and then order a few books, the only fallback is the transportation fee of the books often out run the cost of the books so you often end up paying double for the books.

I could also go to the official Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore. Nowadays it’s pretty good at storing quite a collection of current popular titles. If you’re looking for a book you heard in the media, there’s a good chance you could find it there. The price of the book will be roughly the list price in U.S. dollar translated into the local currency, so not bad either.

Or, I could stop at a street vendor, peer into the bookcase he lays on the sidewalk to see if there’s something catches my attention. My neighborhood is by no means a high-end neighborhood and I don’t see too many foreigners hanging around, but there’s one street vendor carrying English books, often stationed himself just outside the supermarket. He must have more than one station spot, coz he does not come everyday, if I assume he works everyday. But what amazes me is the array of books that he carries. He has only two case of book, so in total perhaps only two dozen or so titles. One of the cases contains mainly pop culture/business non-fictions ranging from the classic “Men from Mars, Women from Venice”, to “How to speak to everyone”, or “How to Get Yes”, to Jack Welch's autobiography. Another case devotes to fictions, sporting from the classic “Gone with the Wind”, “God Father” to the current “Twilight” series.

The price of these books are benchmarked to the normal price of a book in Chinese, about 20 to 30 in RMB, or a fraction of the list price of its original in the official foreign language book store or Amazon. And the printing quality is so good I almost couldn’t decide if it is a “real” copy or not. The only slight weakness that betrays its counterfeit root is the paper, it’s often rawer than the real ones. But to me what really matters is the quality of the print, and when I finish a whole book, spotting none or only one minor typo, I would give it a pass and decide to trust this vendor in the future.

Now what I bought in the past year from him include: “Charlotte’s Web” (a children’s story), “The Little Prince”, “Outlier” (a new book from the author of “The Tipping Point”), “Lipstick Jungle” and “One Fifth Avenue” (by the author of “Sex and City”), and finally, a booklet by Jung that I didn’t finish and already lost. The last time I stopped by him I was surprised to find several copies of George Orwell’s “1984”. Of course I have heard of this author and this book, but if I didn’t see it with my neighborhood vendor (and so cheap), I don’t think I’ll ever read it in my lifetime.

And there’re books I SHOULD have bought from my neighborhood vendor but I have unfortunately bought months earlier from Page One on my trip to Hong Kong: “Twilight” series, “Brideshead Revisited”, “Sex and City”, “Devil Wears Prada” and “The Kite Runner”.

The other day I was at the Foreign Language Bookstore and I almost bought a copy of “Chasing Harry Winston”, on the cover of the book there’s a trademark high-heel, as on the cover of “Devil Wears Prada”, but this time, the high-heel is sharp green, not bloody red like “Prada”, then I remembered I might have seen it with my neighborhood vendor, so I put the copy back.

A few days later I met the street vendor again and I searched in his cases but was disappointed when I didn’t find “Chasing Harry Winston” and I meant to ask the guy. I suddenly got stuck because I’m sure he couldn’t read English and wouldn’t know if I ask him about “Chasing Harry Winston”. Catching a glimpse of inspiration, I asked him, “Do you have the book with the green high-heel on the cover?” “I did before, now I only have the red one”, “Could you get me a green one me next time?”, “Sure”. See, very easy communication.

So I’m almost proud of my city because of the street vendors selling English books, until I saw another vendor. The other day I was shopping on South Shanxi Road, the most bustling shopping street at the very heart of downtown Shanghai. And amidst a troop of street vendors taking the sidewalks selling everything from stockings to counterfeit VCDs, I spotted a vendor with one case on the bike, selling English books, one quick glance gave me a big surprise: he has a whole case of nothing but…Harvard Business Review.

Now I’m officially proud of my city because of street vendors selling English books. How many cities in this world have street vendors selling Harvard Business Review on their bikes!

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Old China Therapy

Most of us living in the Urban China nowadays do not go for Traditional Chinese Medicine anymore. When one get sick, one go to the hospital to get things fixed as quickly as possible. We only think about the old China therapy when we need a massage or acupuncture for our chronicle neck and back problem or when winter set in, we will be awakened for our needs to take various kind of tonic supplement.

And this winter, I found myself picking up the old China therapy. Things started fairly simple. I have been trying to grow my hair long, but it grew really slow and I thought I should take some Gou Ji. I remember at one time my father was losing hair fast due to his age and he took Gou Ji in Chinese rise wine and he actually grew back a lot of black hair! I don't drink Chinese rise wine so I adopted a common practice in the office: throw in a couple of the orange colored small dried fruits in the hot water and drink it for the day. I have finished a whole bottle of Gou Ji but my hair is not growing any faster. Anyway, Gou Ji should be good for my kidney at least.

When the weather got colder and one's appetite for afternoon snack picked up, I decide to take some sesame and walnut: in the food store around the corner, they sell bottles of crunched sesame and walnut mix and it's a popular winter snack for your health. Sesame is widely known for the blackness of your hair and walnut is good for your brain (some say because of its shape!) I bought a bottle without sugar coz I don't want to gain weight but then it isn't very taste without sugar. So the winter is almost gone and I still have half a bottle sitting on my office desk.

The third remedy I tried on was dates. One of the colleagues started to take dates regularly and she gave us some too. Dates in the Chinese medicine term, is good for the production of blood, so especially good for women. And this is no ordinary dates, it's been emerged in the glue from donkey's skin, another classic remedy for woman. The dates actually tasted good. But I have too many remedies going on so I often forget about it and now I still have two more packs somewhere in my office drawer…

Around the time of Dong Zhi (literally "the arrival of winter", the official winter starts at this Chinese solar term), advertisement banners starts flapping above all the traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy as well as TCM hospitals, announcing the arrival of the ultimate tonic supplement weapon: traditional Chinese herb paste! This is the only time during a year that TCM doctors will be busy prescribing for herb paste and the TCM pharmacy busying making them, because winter is best time of the year to take in supplement and it's best to start at Dong Zhi. And if you take it right, you'll be much healthier the next year.

Long Hua hospital is one of the most famous TCM hospitals in town and some of my colleagues decided to go to a renowned doctor there. Our sales manager sent a junior rep to get "appointment number" for us and on the big day, three colleagues plus the whole family of our sales manager gathered to wait for the call of the number at Long Hua hospital. The wife of our sales manager went in first and she came back to tell us: I have been seeing this doctor for five years now, I don't understand why I'm growing older every year and the doctor is not! Well, the doctor must be really good, at least, at maintaining youth for himself… The process is the same for everyone, you go in there, the doctor checks your pulse with his index and middle fingers on your wrist, he watches your complexion and asks you to show him your tongue. Then he asks a few questions and then he started writing the prescription. I enjoyed his writing a lot. Although he's using a pen, but he wrote from above to the bottom, from right to the left, the way of traditional Chinese calligraphy, and his writing is beautiful, it's almost a grass-root, everyday life artwork of traditional Chinese calligraphy. After a brief statement of the problem which employs the phrases such as "insufficient liver and kidney", "Chong and Ren imbalance", he would write the names of two dozen or so herbs and the weight of the herb prescribed at the foot of each name. I liked the square characters in the calligraphy writing, Bai Shu, Fu Lin, He Huan, Tian Ma… you could almost smell the subtle scent of the herb from the white paper. In all formal ritual, the doctor would press his personal chop in red ink at the end of the writing.

Now you take the prescription to the pharmacy in the hospital, or other famous TCM pharmacy in town, they calculate how much your prescription cost (and it's not cheap, mine this year cost RMB1200/Euro120 plus RMB500 for the pharmacy to make it into a paste, and btw the doctor's prescription fee is RMB250, the most expensive I've ever paid in any hospital in Shanghai, Western or Chinese). In a week or so, you went back to the pharmacy and got your magic herb paste in a big bowl. It looks almost black, but smells of a nice, almost sophisticated scent. You take one spoon each morning, dissolve it in hot water and drink it for two or three months and … you'll be several degrees healthier in the new year!

 

 

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Avatar: A dream of re-born

I waited long enough for the crowds to subside before I venture into a movie theater for Avatar - you know we have already too many crowds on any normal day at any normal place that to dart into a crowd by the Chinese standard - like go to a blockbuster movie in its first two weeks is not recommended for those with weak nerves. But still we didn't go to IMAX, we heard you still have too wait long queue and the "second-hand" ticket - an option available at higher cost to those value convenience has roared to RMB600 (or USD88) for a ticket worth RMB160 (or USD24). So we just watched it at a "normal" 3-D theater at RMB120 (or USD18).

Then I asked my friends: "what do you think after watching Avatar?" Friend A said "I hope to go to Avatar too, this world is too complicated, I don't like it, I feel I'm an alien here". Friend B said "I think the future belongs to the high-tech companies, I should really watch for it when I'm working on my stock-investment".

To me, Avatar is a dream of re-born.

But Jack's re-born is a little too convenient. (BTW, why do every muscle-guy from Hollywood who has the potential to save the world calls "Jack"? From 24 Hour to Lost, even the little guy in Titanic?) For an ex-soldier with two broken legs whose brother just died of the vice of this world, he seems to have very little reason to love this unworthy planet. While the option of Pandora offers a brand-new, "healthier" life, a whole, stronger body and a great "natural" love/lover, anyone in Jack's shoes wouldn't give it another thought before he takes the leap, I wouldn't give it another thought.

Really, to think about that. Everyone would like a chance of re-born.

A director wants to be re-born with a new blockbuster movie; a poor Mexican wants to be re-born by crossing the northern border with America; a poor kid living in the country-side of some in-land province of China wants to be re-born by going to a university in some big city; the 40-year old middle-class Parisian Paul Gauguin wanted to be re-born into a free artist life and he did it by taking off to Tahiti (meanwhile deserting his wife and five kids, a little not so convenient, but he had art as his excuse or cause of sacrifice).

If I had a chance of re-born, what would I like? I would like a place of fresh air, pure water, plenty of green, fewer traffic, little noise, no pollution - now it sounds like Pandora, or Switzerland? I would also like less work, more time, more travelling around the world - now it sounds like wining a lottery. And I would also like to be re-born into a stronger, healthier body that looks like Natalia Vodianova or Olivia Wilde - now it sounds like, I know, a dream.

Shanghai World Expo 2010: history's most ... logo/mascot

I was on the plane the other day and watched a clip of promotion video of Shanghai World Expo 2010 from the in-flight TV and was once again "thunder-bolted" by the bluesome mascot, dubbed lovingly as "Haibao", meaning "treasure of the ocean", coz "ocean" in Chinese pronounces as "Hai" which is the second part of the name Shanghai.
Shanghai government is said to have spent over 100 billion RMB, or 10 billion Euro / 15 billion USD on this event which is to Shanghai what Olympic 2008 is to Beijing. Yet I have hated the logo and the mascot since the first time I saw them.
Let's start with the logo. The three greenish thick splashes with arms link together (the arms also extend out from both sides) looks somehow like the word "World" in Chinese writing, and I assume it means an union of people under this event. Yet the color and the way the word slumps reminds me of something particular. When I was a kid, once I put a frog into a small bottle filled with water and closed the cap. A few days later, I opened the bottle and poured out the contents: the frog was dead and flew out with the water - the effect was exactly - the World Expo 2010 logo.
So how about Haibao? It looks innocent enough. It looks pure and clean and reminds me really of a bar of jelly tooth-paste. The first time I saw it, and whenever I saw it afterwards, I think Colgate must be very happy with it. Actually, my biggest problem with Haibao is its painfully lack of imagination, if anything could bore anyone to death, Haitao bores me to death. I assume the creative rationale goes like this: let's take a drop of ocean water, which links to Shanghai by the "ocean" pronunciation as well as the geographic fact that Shanghai is a coastal city - and let's make the drop into a happy creature by adding two big eyes and a smiling mouth - and don't forget two little hands with one thumb up, perhaps with pointed-hair too!
Why can't we people make some creative mascot? Why can't we people make huge cartoon figures like the Japanese?
I tend to draw the conclusion that creative industry is the ultimate climax of economic development, and we're just not there yet. We're still at a time seeking and accumulating material wealth and we have a long way to go. But actually, it also hit me, when I'm stuck here, that beauty has not been a collective pursuit of our people, ever. There has not been any individual artist who attained the status like Da Vinci or Milelangelo in the West. Artistic pursuit, even affordable by the upper class, had been viewed as a self indulgence and even a kind of dissipation, almost negatively viewed with the moral mainstream. In fact, one of the emperor from the Song Dynasty, he himself a highly acclaimed painter of his time as well as centuries to come, was a big failure in his role as emperor and lost half of China to the Jin people from north. Bad example. If Confucius had been a preacher of beauty instead of a preacher of moral, we might have a better mascot now.