‘PicOTD’ Category

PicOTD: Watching Beijing’s Only Male Belly Dancer

August 9th, 2009
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The opening of some sort of design store we got invited to by a woman that showed us a couple of apartments. What these guys are staring at with such interest is Beijing’s only male belly dancer. Actually, he may not be Beijing’s only male belly dancer but he’s definitely one of the few. A skinny Chinese guy with pointy hips and long beaded extensions which he would whip around dramatically while peeling his lycra-ed self off the ground from various bridges and executing various frightening pelvic maneuvers. If you managed to duck the helicopter rotor-like beads you would definitely get damaged by the jutting hip bones. It’s at least equally possible that they are staring at the belly dancer’s backup crew who are in fact female and, although Chinese, have much more going on in the hip section. Another classic bringing-the-art-to-the-people moment. Funk for the folks, male belly dancing for the lao baixing.

PicOTD: Unfortunate Photo Ops

August 1st, 2009

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At least a year back now in a class trip to Shaoxing. Outside the liquor ‘factory’ where I sat out the tastings with the two serious muslims on the trip. I spent a lot of time talking to one of them, a stout guy from Tajikistan who had the entire Qur’an in audio form on his cell phone and suddenly started playing a section for me outside a cave full of Buddha’s until the teacher told him to give it a rest for a while. He didn’t actually speak Arabic himself. In the parking lot groups of Chinese tourists took turns taking ultra-embarassed photos with some of us laowai. Herds of them would push one of their friends into the frame with us and then snap away until their friend managed to escape. It was like trying to force a bunch of 9 year olds to dance with each other at a school dance. Cooties galore. Giggles for days. Glorious cross-culture bridge building moment.

PicOTD: Shanghai Aquarium/Don’t Taze Me Chou

July 23rd, 2009
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In almost three years in China, I have never been as frustrated with the Chinese masses as I was at the Shanghai aquarium. Steph and I went there before a flight back to Beijing. A flight that turned into a multi-hour riot at the airport, culminating with us all being locked on the plane. And then forced to get off.
The kids pounded on the tanks containing rare species, emblazoned with bilingual warnings + pictograms beseeching visitors not to pound their fat, greasy litte palms all over the goddamn glass. Parents shooed kids under barriers so they could photo them near the shark tanks. Children stuck their hands into the tanks, which, unfortunately, were not full of pirahnas. The world’s longest underground sea tunnel, 155 meters underground and 50 or so meteres long, apparently required No Smoking signs.
I began to think extremely dark thoughts about people-eating fish and the obvious inability to follow instructions manifesting itself in calamitous ways later in life. Not thoughts to be proud of.
Ultimately, the airport and aquarium experiences taught me an important lesson: while most countries are right not to follow America in arming its citizenry, and indirectly, the citizenry’s children (a gun in your house is 32 more times more likely to kill a member of your family then an intruder), the use of Tasers should be much more common in China. I’m thinking of opening an import company. Don’t taze me Chou?

Once Upon a Time in China

May 14th, 2009
new project in the works