Every day I wait for the inspiration to arise to write something profound about modern China. Every day I end the day thinking, "Man, this place is fucked up!" Not profound, but true.
China is a rapidly changing society and the inevitable consequence of rapid change: fucked up. The engine behind the change is money. Every single person in China has more money that he once had. The infusion of cold, hard cash has led to some strange behavior, especially to the eyes of an American like me, whose family has lived in the middle class for more than a generation now.
China is brimming with the "nouveau riche" all out to get their share of the good life. Unfortunately they have left behind their own definition of good life and appear to be striving to assimilate the Western world's good life, with very mixed results.
Consider, for example, the luxurious high rise housing that my family moved into on Christmas Eve. On the surface, everything is built to Western standards. But the truth is that Chinese workmen have no concrete understanding of Western standards, so the surface is the only thing they get right. Our lovely flooring has ginormous gaps in it, the master bathroom toilet is not sealed and leaks sewer gas, every appliance is equipped with 50 buttons, 45 of which simply don't work.
Remember the Beverly Hillbillies? They used the billiard table for dining, and the queue sticks were "pot passers." I think I might be able to get those here.
In the meantime, here's some random photos.
Eleanor watching SpongeBob in Chinese.
Fancy kitchen.
Real winter.
Old building (c. 1984) being torn down.
Da hei shan (big black mountain).
Construction next door .
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Comments
Keep posting, please. While I have no desire to even travel to Asia, I find this very interesting. Of course, your writing could make a box of cereal interesting.