People In My Neighbourhood: wanna buy a cricket?

If you were an old man in China, you might wander up to Wuyi Lu (three blocks away) to check out the cricket vendor's latest offerings.  For anywhere from 1 RMB (17 cents), you can own a tiny pet that you keep in a tiny box designed specifically for crickets.  You can feed your cricket leaves, bring it out for a cricket walk around the neighbourhood in the morning (still in its box, sadly, not on a tiny leash), and, on Saturdays, you can bring it to a local market for the weekly cricket fights, in which one cricket emerges victorious, having ripped the limbs from all other crickets.

Finding this cricket stand explained why one of my neighbours' blue toque always seems to be cheeping.  He keeps his cricket and its cage tucked into the brim.

I dream of purchasing my own cricket and training it to play Debussy, a la Chester in The Cricket in Times Square.  But what should I NAME it?  Prize for the best cricket moniker.

Shanglows

You know when it's tough to live in Shanghai?  When you wake up needing the kind of day where you quietly go about your tasks, listening to your iPod and, should you feel ambitious enough to cook, reflecting about what you might make for dinner later.

It's all fine if you can spend the day at home watching Seasons 1-5 of Project Runway.  (Oh, it's happened.)  But when you have stuff to do, there's just no way to do it without getting sucked in by the city's frantic pace.  I'm talking about an end-of-the-conveyer-belt-into-the-slaughterhouse kind of atmosphere.  There's noise.  There are people.  There are people's elbows.

Here are the two things that put me over the edge, and by "over," I mean, "in need of," and by "the edge," I mean "an ice cream cone to bring me down":

1.  Yup, I speak Chinese.  I went shopping for Christmas wrapping paper down on Fuzhou Lu.   

ME:  [in Mandarin] Hi, how much is this coloured crepe paper? 
VENDOR:  Three kuai [RMB].
ME:  Oh... hmm - [about to explain that I usually buy it for one kuai - which is true - but will offer him one-fifty]   
VENDOR:   [to other salesperson]: Stupid foreigners.  You can charge them anything.
ME:  I can understand everything you're saying.
VENDOR:  [ignoring me and holding up three fingers.  In English:]  TREE!  TREEEE! 
ME: [still in Mandarin]  Forget it.

2.  Um... thank you?  I took my usual Line 2 back home, crushed against a pole by the rush-hour crowd.  These women were so intimately close to my body that when they spoke, I could feel the condensation from their breath on my neck. 

WOMAN 1: This foreigner's scarf is a strange colour.  [It's mustardy yellow]
WOMAN 2: Yes.  It makes her skin look worse.
WOMAN 1: But she is nice and pale.


Let it be known that Baskin Robbins' Cookies 'n' Cream ice cream is as effective a sedative as any.  And now, back to Project Runway.

The many (smiley) faces of national pride

Now that the week-long holiday celebrating the PRC's 61st anniversary is over, I guess they'll take down all the national flags lining the major thoroughfares.  And maybe that other patriotic symbol, the blinking multi-colour LED smiley daisy.  Wait, what the -

(Also spotted near home - a purse store with JUST ONE CATCH!)

All things Beijing: Part 4

15. Yeee! Jingshan Park just before sunset
16. “I’m here to see the Wizard”: Claire scores some cough drops from the pharmacy, 10 p.m.
17. Private health care comes with white leather couches. Claire adjusts easily
18. Water Cube! Bird’s Nest! Aiieee!
19. Laura as integral structural component

All manner of technical difficulties

Hmm.. something went wrong; I meant this to be posted two days ago!

Instead of going to school on Thursday and Friday, I spent three hours each day at the police station with my landlord. I had to change my residence permit so I don't get tossed out of the country when they find out I don't live at the Donghua residence anymore. It was your typical Chinese administrative procedure: on Thursday, my landlord fought for attention amidst the crowd of other recent relocaters, waving my passport at the one police officer - a bored-looking woman with a number of shiny gold stars across the chest of her immaculate blue suit, presumably indicating a rank high enough to take her time doing her job but low enough to enjoy the suffering of others. Eventually, she took my passport, examined it carefully, and gave it to another officer, who looked at it with two others before taking it to the break room - clearly visible behind a glass door - where he smoked a cigarette and flipped through its pages. He returned it to us five minutes later, briefly glanced at my change-of-residence form, and told us to get a letter from Donghua University stating I was a student there and to come back tomorrow. (Even though I had already shown my highly-official student card and a form filled out and stamped by the university.)

Friday: we return with the letter, typed and stamped specially, and are told after about half an hour of waiting that we need to make photocopies of the letter, my other form, and my passport. My landlord goes away and comes back ten minutes later with copies in hand. The officer (same lady as Thursday) takes the papers, puts them on her desk, and helps the three people standing behind us in line. Then she makes three more copies of all my documents with the photocopier that is on her desk (!!!). She produces an impressive array of rubber stamps from a drawer, and an orgy of stamping follows: every page seems to get at least three, each a different shape and size. This is all intermittent - various people shove their way to the front of the "line" and are helped instead, sometimes for up to fifteen or twenty minutes, before returning to my file. This must be the reason there is plexiglass between the officer and the visitors - it keeps me from leaning over and yelling, "Focus! Focus!" and possibly hurling a steamed bun or two just to get some attention. The system here is so different from home, and I know Westerners are criticized by Chinese people - especially in business - for being too up-front, for rushing things and lacking subtlety. I know I'll have to get used to this way of conducting business if I'm ever to have a career here. I just hope the "getting used to" will happen sooner rather than later.

Happily, I did change my residence permit. I am registered as living, for free, as a friend in my landlord's spare room at his own apartment. Apparently this is standard for foreign renters, so don't worry.

No pictures - I had to delete the two I took in front of the police station's security guard. Yikes!