Monday, December 10, 2007

Chairman Snow

It snowed here for the first time last night.  Not a huge blanket of snow, but more of a light dusting.  Still, it’s pretty cool, I haven’t seen snow in years.  Of course, being Beijing and all, this might not be snow, and could very well be a fine layer of some kind of deadly toxic pollutant.  I’ll find out when I go outside.

All these pictures were taken from either my living room or office.

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Sunday, December 09, 2007

Home Entertainment

So I did a little DVD shopping today.  I bought:

The Brave One
Transformers
Superbad
28 Weeks Later
The Futurama Movie
30 Days of Night
Sin City Director’s Cut
Hot Fuzz
Terminator
Terminator II
Terminator III
Boston Legal, Seasons 1-3

The grand price?  ¥440, or $60.

I also bought a bunch of groceries at Jenny Lou’s, the preferred grocery store of foreigners since it carries items from all over the US and Europe.  Now I’m off to IKEA to buy a frying pan, since I forgot to buy one last time, so I can make chicken quesadillas for dinner.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Panaphonics

Tonight after work the IT guy at our office took me down to one of Beijings huge electronics markets.  I want to build a 1 terabyte RAID, and need the components—two drives and a FireWire 800 case.  Seriously, you have never seen anything like this in your life.  Imagine a four-story shopping mall, and inside it’s like a huge swap meet or garage sale.  Everyone is screaming at everyone else, and all these little retailers are selling every conceivable computer and electronics item, from computers to cameras to phones.  Remember those pictures of people looting electronics stores after Katrina hit New Orleans?  Well, it was just like that, except everyone was Chinese and there was no water.

A brief aside:  I have a two bedroom apartment.  One bedroom I use as an office.  All my music is digital, meaning that if I’m in the living room or bedroom I can’t play music and hear it properly.  I’ve wanted to buy an Apple Airport Express and a second set of speakers so I could stream the music wirelessly via AirTunes.  Apple stuff, though, is not easy to find in China, and it’s usually pretty expensive.  So imagine my surprise tonight as I was walking down through the melee when I saw one in a display case.  I asked how much—¥480, or $65.  I managed to talk her down to ¥460, but she wouldn’t go any lower.  This is a genuine Apple product, not some knock off.  It probably came from Hong Kong.  Here’s the interesting thing:  these are $99 in the US.  So not only did I manage to find what I was looking for, I got it for 30% cheaper than I could back home.

Next I needed speakers.  Actually, I needed two sets of speakers.  Why?  When I first got here and began plugging in my computer stuff I stupidly assumed that all the power transformers would handle 220v electricity.  Boy was I wrong.  Everything worked fine except for my Bose speakers, the transformer to which fried about one second after I plugged it in.  I’ve been meaning to buy new speakers since then, so I decided to just buy two sets.  I managed to find a decent-sounding Chinese brand, subwoofer and everything, and talked the woman down to ¥200 ($27) a pair.  Thus I walked out of the computer mall with two sets of speakers and an AirPort Express for $118.

As for the RAID, I couldn’t find a case.  The hard drives, though, are cheap as shit.  They’re all made in China, so they’re much cheaper than US retail.  They’re all the same brands, too—Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, etc.—just a lot cheaper, about $100 for a 500 gig drive.  The only FW 800 RAID case I could find the guy wanted ¥1100, so I told him to shove it up his ass.  (Which sucked, because it was a really cool-looking case, too.  Oh well, maybe next time.)

The booth where I bought my speakers also sold headphones.  One of the brand names was brilliant.

That’s right, folks.  They’re a gen-u-ine “Yihao!” brand.  (They even got the font correct.) Which, of course, brings to mind the immortal Homer Simpson line:  “I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there’s Magnetbox, and Sorny!”

And, yes, the receding hairline you see reflected in the packaging is moi.

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Friday, December 07, 2007

Oldie Hawn

Like most people, I listen to my iPod at work constantly.  Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of late 80s-era industrial and goth:  early NIN, Revolting Cocks, Ministry (before they started to suck), that sort of thing.  Right now I’m listening to “Assimilate” by Skinny Puppy, a song I’ve loved since I was in high school.  (The lyrics are awesome.)

Then it dawned on me.  Most of the Chinese I have working for me, all of them college graduates, were probably born around the time this song came out.

Fuck, I’m getting old.

No See Food

I just realized something.  My refrigerator doesn’t have a light in it.  I tried to open it in the dark and couldn’t see anything.  It’s made by Siemens, a global appliance manufacturer, so presumably they intentionally decided to omit the fridge light for the Chinese market.

What, the Chinese don’t open the fridge in the dark?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

What’s Up, Doc?

The trip to the doctor turned out to be quite an experience.  The appointment was at 5 pm, and I was seen by Dr. Shia.

Dr. Shia was born in Hong Kong and had been living in England for thirty years. He studied medicine at Cambridge University and then undertook specialist training in Family Medicine. He had been working as a General Practitioner in Britain for fifteen years before coming to China.  Dr Shia’s other qualification included a BSc in medical science from London University and a MSc in cancer research from Oxford University. He was also trained in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at leading hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai.

As well as a practising doctor, Dr. Shia was also a Clinical Fellow in a teaching hospital in London, and an invited lecturer at the Oxford University medical school. He also taught acupuncture to other doctors and physiotherapists in Britain.

Cambridge and Oxford. This guy ain’t no slouch.  The facility itself was quite impressive.  The decor was sort of a hybrid of my favorite Chinese restaurant and a regular doctor’s office.  You can see pictures of it on their website. 

The staff all spoke fluent English, and were professional to the highest degree.  It was, in most respects, exactly like going to a doctor in America—you fill out the patient info form, a nurse takes you into a little room to check your vitals, then you meet with the doctor.  The difference here was that I didn’t have to sit in the little room for 3 1/2 hours, I was taken right in to the doctor’s office.  (Just like this one.) He took a standard patient history, and I showed him the medication I’m currently using on my hands.  I told him that it worked, but that it wasn’t working well enough, and asked if he had anything stronger.  Since he’s a UK/Chinese doctor and wasn’t familiar with this particular medication—the same medications are often marketed under different names in different countries—he Googled it right there in the office so he could see chemically what was in it.  Once he figured out what it was, he then knew what he needed to give me that would be more effective.  While I was there I also asked him about a scalp itch problem I’ve had.  He said it was something similar to the eczema on my hands, and that he had just the thing to treat it.  He wrote the prescriptions, then said he’d go get them from the pharmacy.  Five minutes later he came back in, explained the dosage and use, and I was done.  He walked me to the cashier, where I essentially paid a co-pay for my medications of ¥243, about $32.  Just like in the US.

I also asked him about the medication for managing my OCD.  He said that the drugs I take are available in China, but that—just like in the US—it was a preexisting condition, and that my insurance wouldn’t pay for it.  I still have my insurance in the US, so it looks like the best course of action will be for me to get my medications back home three months at a time and have them sent over here by my mom.

All in all, though, between the three facilities I’ve visited—Bayley and Jackson, United Family, and International SOS—I feel absolutely confident that I can receive top-notch medical care here one way or another.

Powdered Goat Testicle

One issue about living in Beijing is the dry air.  Everyone has humidifiers.  Since I got here the eczema on my hands has become almost unbearable—every time I open and close my hands I get little cracks in my skin, like paper cuts.  I brought some prescription skin cream with me from the US and I’m almost out of it, so today I have my first experience with expatriate medicine in China.  I’ll be going to the Bayley and Jackson medical center.  It was recommended to me by coworkers, and they direct bill my insurance company, just like in the US, so I’ll have no out-of-pocket experiences.  I’ll post a report later on this evening about the experience.

Evil Chinese Date Rape Toys

The greatest magazine in the world, Reason, has a story up about the recent spate of Chinese product recalls.

If you’re inclined to confuse peaceful exchange with forceful invasion, China’s domination of the toy industry will indeed seem alarming. Between 70 and 80 percent of toys sold in America pass through China. An analysis by Canadian economists Hari Bapuji and Paul Beamish found that as of September .05 percent of these Chinese-made toys had been recalled. That’s a lot of toys, and it is an increase even when considered in the context of the increase in Chinese toy imports overall. But it’s also a smaller percentage of toys than was recalled from non-China countries as of September, according to the same analysis. Bapuji and Beamish find that 0.7 percent of non-Chinese toy imports were recalled, many from countries far less likely to be demonized, such as India and South Korea.

Can only Westerners be trusted? Hardly; nearly three-quarters of the toy recalls are attributable to American and European designs. The Barbie and Tanner toy mentioned above, for example, features a plastic dog that defecates after a child stuffs putty-like biscuits into its front orifice. Barbie’s pooper scooper harbors a small magnet between pieces of blue plastic. The magnets, which can cause severe intestinal damage if swallowed in multiples, are a component of the directions Mattel gave the factories with which it contracted. Blaming China for these flaws is something like blaming an ugly building on a bricklayer.

The concerns about lead paint, by contrast, are directly attributable to factories in Guangdong. But even here, blaming “China” evokes a Fisher-Price vision of a world delineated into brightly colored, non-overlapping geometric shapes. As Hasbro CEO Alan Hassenfeld puts it, “Companies manufacture, import and sell products; countries do not.” To take just Mattel’s August 2 recall of Fisher-Price toys contained dangerous amounts of lead, the factory that Mattel dealt with directly—Lee Der Industrial—appears to be honest. The paint suppliers Lee Der contracted with also appear to be honest. The culprit was three links down the chain, involving a crooked supplier of pigment to one of the paint companies supplying Lee Der. Brands lost touch with their complex supply chains. The trail of guilt runs along those chains, and does not extend far beyond them.

This gets to the heart of something near and dear to my heart, overregulation of business.  While China is indeed a police state, and their bureaucracy is truly something to be marveled for its sheer size and scope, there’s what I’ve described as the the “oddly libertarian” aspect to life here.  Take my apartment complex, for example.  From where the taxi drops me off to the front door of my building I have to walk down one set of stairs, across a courtyard, then up another set of stairs.  It’s about a three minute trek.  Before you get to the first set of stairs there is sort of a shallow trench cut into the sidewalk.  They have run some kind of pipes into the ground, obviously on a temporary basis, and apparently aren’t going to re-pave the area until the work is complete.  I tripped over it a couple of times when I first moved in.  You’d never see this in America because of the liability it would open for the company.  Some numbnuts would be walking along, not watching where he was going, trip over the trench, and then the complex would have a lawsuit on its hands.

The first set of stairs, near the health club, has no lighting.  At night it’s damn near pitch black.  There are no handrails, nor those little reflector things to show you where the edges of the stairs are.  You just have to pay attention to what you’re doing or you’re going to end up going ass over teakettle.  Then, as you walk across the courtyard, there are a couple of concrete things sticking up out of the ground about six inches.  I don’t know what they’re for, presumably the base for some future object, but they’re very easy to trip over.  Again, you have to pay attention to where you’re walking.  The final set of steps, as well as the rest of the trip to my door, is well-lighted.

The thing is, I find this danger curiously refreshing.  It’s nice being treated like a sentient being, with the ability to take care of myself, rather than as some drooling idiot who can’t pay attention to where he walks.  Remember, America is the country where screwdrivers come with warnings like “Do not stick in eye” solely to protect the company against legal liability when some dumbass inevitably does so.

Now, let’s look at this in the context of restaurants.  When I lived in Los Angeles there was a huge scandal involving corruption and incompetence at the LA County Board of Health, the agency responsible for inspecting restaurants for food safety.  One of the local news stations did an undercover investigation and found that some of LA’s finest restaurants had rats and cockroaches in the kitchens.  The board of health was grossly underfunded, its agents taking bribes to allow restaurants to open, and so on.  The public was outraged, and immediate reforms were in place.  Whether these have had any tangible effect I have no idea, but they give the appearance of having an effect, and in politics the essence is more important than the existence, to paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre.

Compare this with China.  Yes, they ostensibly have food safety inspectors here, but the general rule of thumb is “Never sit in a restaurant at any table where you can see into the kitchen.” God only knows what they’d have in there—live chickens and rabbits in cages, that sort of thing.  I imagine that their food standards are quite a bit lower than ours.

Here’s the thing.  Since coming to Beijing I’ve had some of the best food in my life.  I haven’t had a single case of food poisoning.  I feel terrific.  So this leads to the inevitable question: if Beijing is able to provide clean, healthy food with minimal regulations (or minimal enforcement of a larger set of regulations) then it proves that the regulations weren’t really necessary in the first place. The solution is simple—if I go to a restaurant and get a bad meal, I tell all my friends to avoid it.  Eventually it gets a reputation, the expats stop going, and it closes down.  Adam Smith strikes again.

There are a billion and a half Chinese.  Obviously they’re not all dropping like flies because of an inferior food supply, especially here in the cities.  Yes there are dodgy, disgusting restaurants, and the solution is to just avoid eating there.  It’s Milton Friedman in action—you’re free to choose whether you eat there, and they’re free to choose what to serve.  Some people (like me) would rather pay a higher cost for better food.  Others, including a number of expats, will choose to eat at the dodgy restaurants, partly for financial reasons and partly because it adds to their “Chinese street cred.”

The point I’m making here is that, in the US, we have so many regulations for so many things, and compliance with these regulations costs an incredible amount of money.  These costs are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.  Are the benefits of these regulations worth the price we pay for them?  My time in Los Angeles shows that, even in one of the biggest cities in the wealthiest nation in the world, with countless regulations concerning food safety, crappy food will inevitably end up being sold. Safety is, therefore, a relative illusion.  Conversely, my experience in Beijing shows that we could probably do away with a lot of regulations if we as a society started placing a greater emphasis on the responsibilities of the individual as well as his rights.  Here in China you’re responsible for making sure you don’t bust your ass when you walk down the street.  If you trip over something, it’s because you didn’t watch where you were walking.  And if you eat at a dodgy restaurant, just don’t eat there again.

Earlier this year I was the foreman on a jury trial in Los Angeles.  The case involved an alleged hit and run injury.  Basically the defendant was coming down Queens Blvd. in Hollywood and came to the intersection with Sunset and wanted to turn right.  (See the Google Map of the intersection.) As anyone who has driven in a city knows, when you’re turning right like this you have to look left to monitor the traffic as you pull in.  As the defendant began to pull forward, the plaintiff walked right in front of him and was knocked over.  He wasn’t sent flying, he just fell backwards.  He was suing for past medical bills, future medical bills, and the infamous “pain and suffering.”

As a matter of law we found that since the plaintiff was on a crosswalk the defendant was technically at fault.  As such we awarded the plaintiff his past medical expenses, and we gave him (if I remember correctly) about $10,000 for future expenses.  But we all agreed that, in principle, the guy was a moron for walking out in front of a car which was turning right, so when it came to pain and suffering we gave him a big fat zero.  Nada.  Zilch.

In America, as in most of the west, we have this idea that if we just pass a new law, why, we’ll all be safer!  Whether it’s laws regarding evil plastic Chinese date rape toys, or fingerprinting British citizens who are trying to come to Disneyland for a holiday, the principle is exactly the same—how much these laws will cost us (either in terms of finances or liberty) versus how much they will benefit us.  As my experience in China shows, and as any good capitalist can tell you, usually minimal regulations provide a comparable, and often superior, result.  What minimal regulations do not provide is the opportunity for politicians to show that they’re “doing something.” You can’t point to a law you didn’t pass as an accomplishment.  (Well, to me that would be the greatest thing a politician ever said.  “During my term in office I did damn near nothing!")

I’m not advocating abolishing safety standards for toys or health standards for restaurants or anything of that nature.  The point is that more laws do not inherently equal better quality, and often times leads not only to a result the opposite of the one desired, but creates situations where the “law of unintended consequences” comes into play.  There should only be as many laws as are necessary to achieve a desired result.  In other words, “limited government,” a concept that seems to have died in the United States along with Barry Goldwater.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Thanks for the Mammaries

This morning in Chinese class we were discussing the verbs used during transactions such as purchasing, ordering, that sort of thing.  One of the example sentences we learned involved asking for a glass of milk:  wo yao niu nai, which literally means “me want cow milk.”

Which of course begs the question, what other kind of milk would there be?  Considering the wide variety of animals the Chinese eat, I shudder to think.

Homer:  Crap on a crust!  They’re milking rats!  Milking rats!!
Quimby:  [to Fat Tony] Rats?  I’m outraged!  You promised me dog or higher.

Slag-U-Lera

Taxis in Beijing, like taxis in most every other city in the world, utilize free space for advertising.  This morning, on the ride in, this was the ad staring me in the face.

It’s an old ad, bleached by the sun.  The concert was in June of this year.  Nine Inch Nails played here in Beijing in September (I’m SO pissed off that I missed that show) and Linkin Park recently played in Shanghai.

The purpose of touring is ostensibly to promote an album, thus increasing sales and profit.  Since China is a country with no enforcement of intellectual property law and all the CDs are pirated, these bands are essentially promoting people to go out and buy pirated copies of their music.  I mean, obviously they’ll get paid for playing the concert, plus it’s cool to be able to say you played in a country like China.  I just get a kick out of it the whole idea. 

“Here’s a track off my new CD.  Be sure and pick up an illegal bootleg of it from that guy who sells them out of his house.”

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Are You Bye?

As I’ve mentioned here before, the way you say “thank you” in Chinese is “xie xie”, phonetically pronounced “shuh-shuh.” “Xie” is the word for “thank.” One way of saying “you’re welcome” is “bu yong xie,” which literally means “no need thank.” So to say “thank you” in Chinese you literally say “thank thank.”

I’ve always found this peculiar. How, from an etymological standpoint, did this habit evolve?  Why say the same word twice in a row?  Very odd.  However, a little while ago it dawned on me, we do exactly the same thing in English.

“Bye bye.”

Why the hell do we say “bye” twice?

What Does Information Taste Like?

This story is so damn funny, and so typical of the type of thing you see here, that I wish it had happened to me. 

The interesting thing is that Wikipedia is banned in China.  Perhaps at the time this happened it wasn’t.  I never really realized how often I used Wikipedia until I got to where I couldn’t access it any more.

This is what happens when you try to access WIkipedia, it just times out.  I wish they had something cooler, like an official government page warning you that Wikipedia is counterrevolutionary and that your activities as a subversive capitalist running dog are being monitored by the collective.

“Thank you for your interest in Wikipedia.  Your cot at the gulag is being prepared as we speak.  We recommend you spend the next 20 minutes saying goodbye to your family.”

Monday, December 03, 2007

Melly Clistmas

Here in China religion is, technically, illegal.  But, technically, so are prostitution and drugs, and neither of these is exactly hard to find.  And as we all know, Christmas (or, as it’s known here in China, “Tuesday, December 25") will soon be upon us, so it’s been with great interest that I have noticed a remarkable rise in the number of Christmas songs I’ve been hearing.  They play them in stores and supermarkets and restaurants and the like, bland background elevator music with a Christmas theme.  I was just in the 7-11 by my house, picking up a few snackable items and a bottle of Jack (one must have a restorative after a hard day’s labor) when I realized that I was listening to “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

Then it hit me.  I bet 7-11 in America wouldn’t play that song because of its religious overtones.  They’d play “Frosty the Snowman” or “Jingle Bells” or something like that.  In a country with both the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of Religion guaranteed in writing, here in godless Red China, a country where religion is illegal, you can play all the religious Christmas music you like, without fear of some whining maggot being offended.

See what I mean when I say China is “oddly libertarian”?

Dogs, They’re Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

One thing I’ve noticed quite a number of in Beijing is “pet hospitals,” i.e. veterinarians.  I asked some Chinese about it, and they said that the field is exploding.  Why?  Simple, basic free-market capitalism.

As people’s incomes grew they began to buy better things.  As they adopted more western cultural mores they began to see animals as more than food, they saw them as pets and companions in the same way we do in the west.  As their incomes continued to grow, thanks to glorious free-market capitalism, they wanted to make sure that their new feline or canine family members had the best care possible.  Where there is a demand the market will create a supply, and thus the birth of pet hospitals.

Remember, this is a country where just twenty years ago a guy with a PhD in math or computer science could expect to make $15 a month.  Now they have enough money to provide medical care to an organism that in the recent past would have been considered a fine meal.

It just goes to prove every libertarian contention about property rights.  People care more about things they own and have an investment in.  Want to save the rainforest?  Let people own it.  Property rights will do more to prevent the abuse of the rainforest then every piece of feel-good tree-hugging legislation ever written. 

Capitalism gave the people the means to better themselves by providing jobs.  This work was rewarded with higher salaries.  Higher salaries provided more disposable income.  Higher levels of disposable income provided the means by which the lives of pets improved.  It’s the circle of life.  When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 I’m sure he had absolutely no idea that 231 years later the arguments contained therein would explain the cultural shift in China towards how they view cats and dogs.

It’s like what Ross Perot said when he was running for president, and saving the spotted owl was the environmentalist’s cause du jour:  If you’re starving, you aren’t going to care about the spotted owl, except maybe to eat him.  This is clearly true.  Of course, as the previous post shows, people here still eat dogs, but it’s more of a traditional custom thing than anything else.  (South Korea still eats dogs, and this was a Korean restaurant.) It’s cultural, not economic.  When given the economic means to care about an animal, people began to do so in large numbers, to the point that pet hospitals are springing up with the frequency of Starbucks coffee shops.

Proving the point even further, the areas of China still riven with poverty—most of the country outside the four large cities—do not have the same explosive need for pet hospitals.  I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out why.

Sweet merciful Glaven, how I love capitalism.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Fido?  Food-o!

I’m sure many of you have eaten Japanese or Korean-style BBQ before.  Basically there’s a fire pit in the center of the table.  They bring out plates of raw meat and veggies, then you cook it right on the grill at eat it.  I first had this many years ago when I was in Seoul, South Korea, and it was spectacular.  In Los Angeles I used to eat at a Japanese BBQ place all the time. 

For those of you who have never been, the menu usually shows a picture of the plate of meat in question, then tells you what your options are as far as various marinades.  Last night we went to Korean restaurant here, and on one page they actually had dog meat.  Mmmmmm, delicious dog meat, right there, raw on a plate, ready for you to cook to your heart’s content.  It had the Chinese characters for “dog meat” and the same written in English.  It was, shall we say, a little disconcerting, not because people eat dogs—I’ve known that for years—but to actually see a picture of a plate of it, to know that this was a dog, and that someone would actually look through the menu and say, “Mmmm, let’s try some dog tonight.”

One of the guys I was with said that his girlfriend used to live near this restaurant, and could hear the barking of the food dogs in the pen they kept them in behind the restaurant.

Needless to say we stuck with the beef and chicken.