Shanghai Vixen

A Paki, a Mexican, a Sudanese and a Greek walk into a party, and...

...I fall asleep on the couch.

Yesterday, errands with Mama Buff followed with coffee with high school friend Vi. She was one of the two token Cantos of our old crowd, and significantly they are the only two of the ABCs who have resettled in La Jolla; all the beleaguered Taiwanese kids stayed on the East Coast after college to escape their parents. I barely knew Vi during school, but we've become friends since she moved. She's confidently misanthropic, with incisive, missile-precise wit. She is well: working hard, taking lots of posh vacations, and happy with a boyfriend who seems to suit her.

In the evening Camus and I went to the Turf Supper Club, a fabulously retro bar in Golden Hills. It has, alas, become a bit too successful for its own good, going from a well-kept hipster secret to where dumb frat types go to feel hip. Ugh. Still, fun, and Camus and I blathered merrily; her current boyfriend, a homely, beefy, neckless chap with unfortunate spikey hair, was a very good sport about our giddy zinging.

Camus is now 23, and is becoming ever cooler, and her sense of humor is blossoming richly. She has to deal with so much shit from both my mom and her dad, who constantly fight and try to drag her into it. While my mom wins for the family nuts, her dad is a right wing wacko, and is mad at Camus because "women shouldn't be doctors". My mom has been down on Camus always because she is the Spawn of John, and now also because she is jealous of her friendship with me. She is definitely my favorite living relative, and it is lovely having one person in my gene pool that I don't loath.

Over our martinis, I was bemoaning to Camus how much weight I'd acquired in a mere week. Ah, WASP food! (*Shudder.*) She consoled: "One looks at you and doesn't register your physical condition, because you have such a sense of style."

Aw. "Yeah, but now I'm too fat to even fit into most of my outfits," I grumped.

"Even when you're dressed in whatever, though, it doesn't matter, because you're you," she rejoined, "and your energy and intelligence and cheerful humor is what people notice, not what you look like." I wish but doubt it, but appreciated the sentiment.

Today, had an early breakfast with Benling, another high schoolie, now a mathematics professor somewhere in the South. He has been there a year, and is perplexed by the beer-and-TV culture there. Benling is an unapologetic nerd, complete with calculator watch, and is very cute. I do miss being told protein bonding jokes. We discussed American hyper-sensitivity and self-importance, traits I observe with shocked distaste, and particularly how they filter into romantic culture. "People prefer to be told 'I need you' to 'I love you', because love can go away, but dependence is dependable," he remarked. I would be creeped out if a lover 'needed' me, but some exes have criticized me for being insufficiently dependent. Hmm. We agreed that many people are silly, and observed that both of us are sometimes considered cold for being very rational, as if rationality and passion were incompatible. In fact, both of us are rationally passionate and passionately rational. Which is a good way to be.

Lunch with Kaoru Buff, then coffee with MD and her boyfriend, now fiance. I am very happy for them, they are well-matched and I've liked him since they first got together. MD was in China for five years, Dalian and Shanghai, but it was never home to her. Repatriation was a good move, in no small part because she met the boy on Match.com (see, it does work...sometimes) immediately, and she loves her job as a political activist. Warm fuzzies to see a friend in a good place.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with Bubbles, a batty old British-American writer friend of my grandmother's. She writes books on classical music, is fairly opinionated and negative, and occupies the narrow line between endearing and disturbing eccentricity. I am not quite sure why I am friends with her, but I find her very interesting, and enjoy the challenge of staying in the good graces of someone so easily offended.

My Mexicana friend Tia had a party tonight, and she came and picked me up ahead of time. She's fun but a little "...whimsical" as Vi puts it. She did an IR masters with one of my Shanghai friends, has struggled to find a good job with it. In IT for a while, is now student-teaching high school and thus is broke. She is 36 and divorced, and her latest romantic misadventure was sleeping with her roommate, which: bad idea. So, her life is in a bad place at the moment, and she was depressed and ranting. I am very good for the "there, there, here's a tissue" followed by the "so, let's figure out how to solve this", but pointless and repetitive ranting depresses and annoys me.

She'd turned on CNN while waiting for other people to arrive, and the Hussein execution was on. Such a macabre, gloating freak show, and then her gaggle of international grad student friends arrived, and they joined me in the "America is fucked up" wincing. Good times to be sitting between a Pakistani mathemetician and a Sudanese physicist. Then, a brassy ex-navy woman from Alabama arrived with a ditzy blonde friend. Tia introduced me as her friend from Shanghai; "You don't look Chinese!" blondie giggled. Oh, fuck off. Navy started going on about how hard it was to get her ipod reconfigured. That was when I decided to fall asleep.

When I got back with Jifu after our first breakup, I came up with the analogy that he was to me like a pair of old shoes, comfortable and familiar, well broken in, so comfortable to slip back into. That easy intimacy where I forget the boundary between thee and me.

I am now back in LA, albeit about to go south, and have been seeing old friends who also have the appeal of old shoes. I have several Shanghai friends dating back the full eight years, but American friends are the oldest of shoes; with them I am a much fuller collection of the Russian nesting dolls of selves past and present. I'm staying at Peaceful Dragon's place, my animator friend from my Beijing student days, with her for the first day before she headed off to visit her parents. We had a good catch-up babble; she's about the same as when we last saw each other here in May, but a lot of things have come full-circle in both her work and personal lives. Particularly, a guy she long longed for became finally available and interested, and she decided against him for several very mature reasons.

Does the switch to our thirties make us somehow less silly, more practical and rational in matters of heart and hooch? For some, it seems so. Perhaps that's why I'm so nonchalant about bedding Biteable my last night in Shanghai. It may end there, putting out so readily may sabotage, or it may blossom into warm fuzzy happies. Whatever. I got laid, after a dry spell of over two years, with a stunningly gorgeous man. Seriously, he has the nicest body I have ever set eyes (or hands) on. I get older, fatter and uglier, but my men just get hotter and hotter. Sweet.

OC native Dodo is back from University of Chicago biz school for a whirl, in between job interviews in Hong Kong and surf camp in Costa Rica. Dodo's travel schedule makes even my head hurt. We trawled Santa Monica's main strip looking for a place to have martinis, but this town is all about pubs and trendy "Asian fusion" annoyances. We're both total magpies, drawn easily to the *sparkly!*, and were entertained by the crap in the window of a novelty shop. Amongst the offerings was a cliched faux-Asian bag, complete with the requisite fake characters. "It's so chinky!" Dodo exclaimed. The bag also declared "Miso Pretty", which Dodo loved. I'm never gonna hear the end of this one. He observed that I always get a particular lilt to my voice right before I crack a particularly bad joke, which is true and no one has ever noticed before, myself including.

We had to settle on a nautical-themed steakhouse for watery martinis. At least there were blowfish dangling from the bar, which amused us somehow. As global gaddabouts and dedicated martini enthusiasts, we decided to launch the Worldwide Martini Safari. Alas, during his recent semester in Beijing Dodo did not make it down for the best martini in Shanghai, if not in Mainland or greater China. One more reason he needs to get a job in Hongkers.

Then last night I finally met the intrigueing and mysterious Joshua Xanadu. He didn't drive me crazy, but he did drive me all over scenic Alhambra (or wherever it was). Suburban holiday lawn decor is so adoreable, and I really do mean that non-snarkily. Mostly he was trying to find another visiting friend who was just off the bus from Vegas. Instead of Martini Quest, it was lost Taiwanese tourist quest.

Apart from a few gradient variations, Joshua was pretty much as I expected, although much is added with the third dimension, from abstraction to actuality. The main divergence is that I anticipated he'd be a lot like the guys I grew up with, the NCB next door. He's completely not, and it's great.

Rather, he reminds me a bit of myself. I know, every person I like and care about I claim "is a lot like me". In Joshua's case, I think the comment is quite fair, though. We have a succession of amusing if slightly creepy parallels. Not so much fun house mirrors as overlapping film transparancies of shots taken a couple seconds apart. Line them up, they're mostly similar, but the lines weave and blur, with a few dramatic disparities between shots.

He is pretty dorky, not in a bad way. He habitually rambles about how attractive he considers himself to be. I don't know him well enough yet to be certain whether he's joking or actually is narcissic and deluded. Habitual self-aggrandizing is a bit strange to this habitual self-effacer. Nonetheless, Joshua seems quitte a kindred spirit, and already feels old shoe-ish.

The night ended at my friends' art event, with good wine and fun people. Amusingly, a friend of a friend of Joshua's we encountered there turned out to be a friend of a friend of mine. The world is hilariously small.

Um? You know? Like? Sort of? Huh. Ohmygod! Huh? [Pause.] Totally! Like! Yeah! Um?

I remember a coffee fourteen years ago with my high school friend Itching, a tiny woman with a big brain and bigger heart, and who thankfully has now become too busy proving evolution in a petri dish to bludgeon me with physics books.  Over hammerheads at a place that now sells trashy beachware on Prospect, she argued I should abandon the silly "social sciences" for the real science I was once so good at if indifferent to. As I tried to get her to go more than 30 seconds without saying "like" as an adjective.

I won then, but hardly since: after twelve years in Boston her "like"s have receeded, but she's cured multiple diseases and world hunger and how to manage the tab after dates while avoiding sexual politics. Her mother considers her a slacker. Okay, I exaggerate, excepting the last point.  I see Itching at most once a year now, sadly, but of all my old friends she has changed the least.

I can write Cali, but I am bad at talking it, for all my cultural adaptability. Took me a decade to drop "pop".

Peaceful Peasant is Yay! here, and I have to negotiate work, her, other friends and Biteable tomorrow. (He's SOOO cute and nice, dammit!) Then, back to the "like, um, you know" even from the elitest of the elitists. (And then I wonder why you email instead of posting comments. Like, huh.)

Eh? Eh! Eh. (Why Shanghainese are so at home in Canada.)

"You seem familiar, yet off somehow. Are you...Canadian?" 

I am off to the US in a few days. Yes, the country known as America by its ignorant citizens, who don't realize that that's the name of not one but two continents, and the rest of the people on these resent us for claiming to be the only actual Americans. It's like if China renamed itself Asia. Or Taiwan called itself China. Oh, wait...

Visiting America - 回国了 - is always scary. Uprooting my life for weeks or months, coping with the psycho mom (no, I haven't told her I'm coming yet) and the travails of travel are the main woes, and the anxiety nightmares continue to attack. But once I arrive, it's culture shock time. Fun, fun, fun!

I have never faired well in mainstream/white American culture. There's a line in the one episode of the new US show "Heroes" that I've watched so far in which the villian recalls growing up hoping someone coming to the door to tell him his family wasn't his. That's rather how I felt, except I was too young to formulate it, I just felt out of place, miserable, and constantly terrified. I had my cat, and I read several books per week starting at age two. My family was fundamentalist christian, domestic missionaries if you will (they were probably too frightened of the heathens to try to convert them), and I juggled between parochial and public schools. In both I was an outcast, sent to classes several grades above my peers for reading and math classes, and generally lost in my fantasy worlds. My only friends were teachers, impressed with my smarts and "inner strength" if worried about my nonexistant social skills, and FotB immigrant kids popularly considered as strange as me. (My brother was Mr. Popular, how now unfunnily ironic.)

Hence, in tenth grade when my Uncle Doctor ordered my mom to send me to move me from christian school, where I kept getting in trouble for confronting the Bible teacher about sexist theology, it was a huge trauma. The following year I moved again to the public school where I made real friends and belonged for the first time in my life. No matter that our Geek Brigade was mostly Jewish and Asian future doctors, they ushered me into a world of the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Hitchcock, Richard Feynman, Miyazaki, Juzo Itami, Tom Lehrer and Monty Python. At least I resisted the AD&D and Star Trek pressures. Then I trundled off to the Ivy League.

Anyhow, I have never been the most savvy connoisseur of American culture, popular or not. I still have a strange accent in English, from learning the language mostly from reading. The most common references will draw a blank look from me, although at this point I can fake it, at least for brief periods.

So gals, what are los Estados Unidenses up to these days? I need forwarning. Yay Dems! But, boo to potential trade barriers and demonization of China, Mexico, India, the rest. I'm glad to see the Bush ship is finally sinking, but that it's taken so long worries me about the future of the "American Experiment". (What business have we trying to export a model that is working so badly at home? Just ensuring someone steals the patent and reimports it.) I'm nervous about 2008, Ms. Clinton seems the favorite but she's about as charismatic as the bastard child of Jiang Zemin and John Kerry. We Dems need to learn: run governers, not senators! Senators are wonks, Governers are campaigners. Wonks are great, but they lose. If we must run a Senator, let's make it Obama.  Since he grew up in Indonesia, he'd break an additional barrier: the first expat brat candidate. Cool.

TV: I'm still addicted to Veronica Mars, me and like five people. Good show. The absence of West Wing and Angel (yes, I'm slow) sadden me. I've gotten into Lost, with mixed feelings: fabulous supporting cast, included hot Korean and Indian men, paired against increasingly irritatingly silly plot and really annoying lead cast. Really, the doctor and the scruffy blonde guy are considered hot in the US? Ewwwww. Then, Daniel Dae Kim is written as an asshole, perpetrating the "huh?!" inducing stereotype of Asian male machismo. Really, what the fuck? Then, the hot Indian plays an Arab, because actual Arabs are way too white-looking to play Arabs on US tv. Sigh. Everytime a Sikh gets called a terrorist...(or worse.)

For further hunky Koreans on islands, I've gotten sucked into downloading the latest Survivor, despite my aversion to reality tv. Yul Kwon reminds me so much of my dear college friend King Yellow, in better shape if less smart and accomplished, down to mannerisms and accent. It freaked me out a bit to learn the went to the same highschool, it's bad enough that I can place many mainlanders by their accents. Sheesh. Anyhow, great watching someone relatable on US tv. I'm sure, like King Yellow, Kwon has a lot of inner snark brewing that he's too polite to publicize. There should be a sitcom of publically polite/privately snarky East Bay Asian-American guys, it would be so hilarious.

The other thing I'm downloading these days is Ugly Betty, about a sweet and sincere young Latina from Queens working at a Vogue imitation. Vastly better than Devil's Prada, for its keeping the heroine as she started. As someone indifferent to fashion who works for a fashion magazine, I find it very engaging. Of course, it's totally over the top, as befits a soap opera. Most off-putting, again, is the "let's cast an Indian as a generic brown person" in the nephew role. Because, like Arabs, Latinos can be too white-looking, what with the sometimes blonde hair and blue eyes. Just start casting women in men's roles, I'll consider it all fair.

Anyhow, end/rant, what else should I be forewarned about the US these days?

Lychee beer is odd. That's all I'm gonna say.

I'm just back from the latest ShanghArt opening and dinner. These are always fun, a great chance to hang out with artist buddies I don't see nearly enough, expounding proposterously on: politics, history, society, race, religion, ghosts, tradition, defining traditional Chinese culture, and today whether or not Borat is really a Kazakh. And, on occassion, art.

I largely hung out with my Shanghai best friend's exish-husband. Why hanging out with couples is dangerous: if they split, the awkward ensues. Even before, when they fight, they both dump on me, and my best diplomatic skills are required to extricate myself. In this case, my sympathies lie entirely with my friend Smackling, although I think her exish does have some good points. I'm always very honest about my opinion of their situation, which she appreciates, and he gets in high dudgeon about. He's Shanghainese, but his dad is orignally from Hunan, and they're a family that yells recreationally. (I have spent holidays with them. Oi.) Hot temper, face obsessed, and an alcoholic, although still a very interesting and cool guy, but whenever I innocuously joke about something in his personal history, he shits kittens. At which I just laugh at him, which is why we're still friends.

I tried to bring Biteable along for the events, which would have been a good baptism into the Vixen's social life of wry, chain-smoking, much older artistic Shanghainese men. My geges. But he couldn't make it, dozens of smses later, but dinner is tentative for tomorrow or Monday.

He wasn't at class on Friday, which was a relief as I tested for my green-blue belt. I was nervous enough, and exhausted as I'd been up late blathering and boozing with my Irish and Dongbeier friends after the That's Shanghai party. Intensive lunging the day before at the gym also proved unadvisable, as my glutes were already screaming for mercy. It was not my proudest moment, and I only passed because my school has pathetically low standards. I barely made the one-legged squats required, as my knees just don't go that far down. I surmise that Chinese squat so much from a young age they tone those particular tendons, but perhaps it's a random genetic distinction. Anyhow, hoppy happies to be at a new belt level. Tough chicks rock. I figure it will take about another two to three years to get to my black belt (green-blue -> blue -> blue-red -> red -> red-black -> black).

I suck at Taekwondo. Which is why I like it. I'm a big fan of challenge, of pushing myself, of enjoying the rewards of real struggle. Sure beats what comes easily. But, I make up for my lack of coordination with being really strong, compared to most of the gals who move like dancers but couldn't bruise a hemopheliac. The best thing, though, is that apart from me it's all normal youngish white-collar Shanghainese, sweet sincere kids, quite different from my usual blathery bohemians. Tonight I was making fun of one of them: "You're as representative of the Chinese as I am of Americans." He conceded.

Otherwise, am an the chaos of pre-trip shopping. I will be visiting about sixty different people (I'm anal, I made a list), which means a lot of gifts to get. A bit fatiguing/bank-rupting. I got a very simple, classy jade pendant for my fifteen-year-old cousin, and am contemplating returning to get two more, for 24-yo Camus and for myself. It's a simple small barrel shape tubed around a delicate chain. Contemplating even springing for my our grandma, our respective mothers, possibly the second coses too. So much separates our biological clan from each other, necessarily under the circumstances, that it would be nice to have something, no matter how insignificant, uniting us.

The farthest distance in the world is the few inches between a potential lover's face and one's own. There are no parachutes for the jump down that cliff, and whatever awaits at the soon or eventual end, be it immediate or gradual rejection, heartbreak, an overbite or happily (enough) ever after, you've just gotta brace yourself for it, or better yet not even think about it, and leap.

Or, if you're me lately, not.

A great first date with a great guy. Biteable (the actual pun is kissable, but I won't make things harder on myself) is, along with being far too hot for a chubby, ordinary gal like me, is sweet, smart, interesting, funny, considerate and cool. And seems to like me. Considereing that this is the first date I've been on since the male model disaster a year ago: not bad.

But I'm leaving town in a week. Why does this always seem to happen when I meet someone nice? Perhaps because it takes that pressure for me to act on my crushes?

I texted him today suggesting we do that dinner tonight after class, and he responded affirmatively. We avoided each other during class, and afterwards he took me to a little congee shop. It was usual first date stuff: job issues, hobbies, travel experiences, ambitions, but fun. The downside is that he's someone who gets tongue tied when nervous, while I get all babbly. He seemed amused, but whenever I checked myself and stopped, there would be a pause where we stared at each other evaluatorily. Awkward. Stare. Awkward. Smile. Awkward. Blush. Awkward...and I would start slurping in more congee or else slurping out another silly anecdote.

Biteable is 33 or 34, a fellow Cancer, and like several of my friends a graduate of ShangDa's art academy. His ad design firm employs six, all family and friends of his, and all stockholders to ensure they don't jump ship. He says his work is what attracts clients, but that he's got everyone well trained enough that he only has to work a couple of hours a day. His ambition is to save enough, and evolve the company enough, that he can take a couple of years to live and travel abroad. We spend a lot of time comparing various Southeast Asian and European destinations. He's been a lot to the former, never to the latter, but probably knows more about Europe than I do.

He lives near where we ate, so I offered to drop him off on my way, despite his claims he should drop me off. Not sexist, just courteous. We stood on the curb for a while, discussing/jokingly arguing about this: standing close, shiny staring eye contact, so ripe for the leapage. Yet: I just couldn't.

A reader here named Yul recently commented about Biteable:

Wow...you found a good one. He also knows how to subtly flirt without being stupid. In fact, I would guess that either he's lived abroad before or he's dated a Western woman in Shanghai, or both. No worries about him not setting a date yet. He knows where to find you, and is letting it grow slowly. Trust me, i'm a guy.

I don't know this guy, but he's goood. I was explaining my recent article on women's issues in China, and talking about the gendered pressures in the market economy: men to make lots of money, women to find a man who makes lots of money. "Yeah, that's why I don't date Chinese women. They're so calculating." I was startled, since while it's common to meet Chinese men who are annoyed with Chinese women (and Chinese women who are annoyed with Chinese women), the only Chinese man I've heard enunciate it into a dating policy is Korean Ice, my artist friend now on his second foreign girl, my friend Good Bug who he's planning to marry.

Sitting dangerously close in the taxi, we were talking about Shanghai dialect, and I mentioned that I'd dated a guy from the Fengxian suburb. "Chinese?" Okay, there IS a clan of abandoned black one-time missionary orphans, now old with part Chinese kids and grandkids, in Fengxian, but it's not wide knowlege. "Yeah. Shanghainese."

"You like Chinese guys?"

Sigh. "Some of them. I'm used to them at least."

"I like European women." Why? "They are more likely to date based on emotion, rather than money. I also believe feelings should come first." Aw.

"European. But not American?" This is as blatant as I got. He clarified that both were good, and he meant ethnic European, adding that he'd dated a French girl last year but they proved incompatible personality wise. This is great. The worst part about dating Asian or Asian-American men is their tendancy to make a big deal about dating white girls, whether it's the grating "You're so funny looking but I love you still" (my usual situation) or "Ooh, exotic white meat!" (at which I flee). Nice to be in someone's prefered but not exotified demographic for a change.

We pulled up at his flat, sitting close and cozy, I expected him to kiss me. He didn't. With the Shanghai guys I've dated, I've always had to take the initial leap. (Unlike the tongue-happy Beijingers, perhaps it's linguistic.) I wanted to kiss him, but I'm terrified I've forgotten how. Perhaps just as well, as I'm leaving so soon. Sigh.

It was less dramatic, no doubt, than when Peaceful Dragon fell in her car off an LA freeway; the car was totalled, but she was so thankfully unscathed. She was nonplussed, but I do a version of what she calls the "Asian parent hyperventilation" whenever I think how close I came to losing my best friend.

I went to bed a week ago to find that the ceiling above it had fallen down in one huge, thick chuck, pleasantly landing where my head goes. If I had been sleeping there, it may well have killed me, or at least severely injured. But, like Peaceful Dragon's car wreck, I was just like, "Oh! Lucky me. *Shrug* Fuck, now I have to get this fixed..."

Which: was a bitch. I spend several days sleeping in rubble, procrastinating the inevitable descent of the gongren before calling my landlady and informing that we have a problem. She called early the next morning to arrange timing, and we established late afternoon. They showed up at 10 am. I was rushing to appointments, when I got back at 1, they were still there at my door.

Since it was the Wanping Xiaoqu Zhuweihui repair team, they were Shanghainese instead of the usual nongmin. That made them: less likely to be afraid of the scary caucasian, more likely to blather my head off and gawk bemusedly. "Where are you from? You're American? Oh, we'll take special care of our 美国小姑娘, little American girl. 你一个人不容易, it must be hard for you here all alone." I'd appreciate their sentiment, if it weren't so friggin' condescending. And if they didn't proceed to play with my stuff and trash my apartment. All while being condescendingly flirty. Like, I have an antique qipao hanging from my bed, and when taking it down one of them proceeded to pretend to dance with it, then attempt with me. Really, please, don't.

Then, yesterday, I was awoken by a loud clanging. The Jiangbeining soldiers downstairs, after their place has been empty for a year, are now re-renovating it yet again. They want to rent it out, it's worth about 3500-5000 RMB a month, but they want: 10,000. Ha! In this crappy, hazardous ceiling (but still better than most new buildings) place? Ridiculous, as I have a long list of friends who want to rent downstairs as soon as/if they get over their delusions of yi wan-ness. Sheesh.

Last night, I headed to the gym through a gauntlet of sexual harassment, from the workers now living downstairs. Repeating now every time I come or go. This morning, I was gasping at 7am by such a stench of second hand smoke it sent me out onto the freezing balcony. The smoke drifts upwards, so even from the first floor my place reeks. If they rent out to a chain smoker, this will get violent. As their kitchen technically is part of my apartment, I'm allowed to scatter trash and cat feces however I like, legally.

This morning, though, Silver Lining came to my rescue, and obligingly curled up next to my face. Flank o' Persian smells lovely. But: cats are way too smart for comfort. As I reached for my water glass, which he loves to drink from as long as it remains three inches or less from the top (and I mock his Persian non-snout), I offered him a swig from its four inch down resevoir. Each time, he sniffed than passed, but started to purr loudly upon the offer. It makes me think cats "get" more than we realize. Also, though, this thought makes me a bit more uncomfortable with Silver Lining's insistance on sitting on my chest when I masturbate. Bad pussy.

But my initial catsitter just bailed; I'm screwed!

I spent yesterday emailing LA, San Diego, and ex-San Diego high school friends, and today got a delicious deluge of responses. The down: A-Chan and Dandan are stuck in NoCal, which I'm skipping this round, while Redbreast is staying in the interior. Nonetheless, it's GREAT hearing from them (ya) all, and makes me all tingly warm and fuzzy. And Dodo will be back in the OC, Peaceful Dragon will be around to facilitate my linguistic reaption, I get to finally meet J. Xanadu, I'll meet Ni-chan's new baby, Franzi will be down, and I get to see my adopted meimei Abba for the first time in four years. Yay!

Just need to find a cat sitter for the first week. And: how long can I go without telling psycho mom I'm coming? As soon as I tell her, she'll start sending long emails about how I'm an awful person, I need to have a breakdown like the rest of the family (hari kari for wasps), and she's praying real hard for me (that works out so well for her) to be more fucked up. The worst is that she leaves dozens of messages per day with the Buffs, which makes me feel awful, as it makes me a burden to perhaps the only group of people who really look out for me. I have amazing friends, but it's individual, community and family are rare. My school crowds have fragmented; my Shanghai groups started out that way. This, perhaps, is why I am so eager to introduce my friends to each other, creating a surrogate family.  But I am actually so fortunate that way, in what my didi King Yellow calls my real family. He is, they are, some of you are.

I cover all different facets of Shanghai cultural life, and sources/friends regularly moan that 交流不好! communication is bad in Shanghai's creative industries. It's true: in Beijing, you see rockers hanging out with film directors hanging out with artists hanging out with theater actors. Here, even within the same industry there's little communication. The exception is that there's some interface between contemporary art and rock music, in part because several rockers were trained as artists, like my friend Rain Sky is now an art professor by day, diminuative rock god by night, and a few of the artists here are big music fans.

In the past few months, several of my friends have organized big independent arts events, and all shared with me similar organizational woes. The point of this particular martini night was to introduce them to each other so as to compare notes and hopefully provide some support to their respective events.

The guests: Little Goose, a Hongkie who's lived in Shanghai since 2000, organizes the Fringe theater festival. Ginger One launched the official Shanghai Jazz Festival and has done several one-time events, most recently the Notch electronica festival. Ginger's one of the most incredible young Shanghainese women I know, she works full-time in a gallery, yet finds time for so many extracurricular projects, which also include recording an album of minority music for Bandu. Unmilitary and Soxy are also Shanghainese, respectively a musician and a journalist, who organized a rock festival in September. Then La Turqa and El Aleman joined as well, relevant since the former is on the staff of an arts festival in the US, and then Ginger One brought a visiting Norwegian musician who's looking for collaborators in China.

Apart from a language barrier between the two musicians, it went great. Much gin was swilled, new friendships forged. All were people whose company I enjoy immensely and ought to hang out with more. Ginger I see a lot, but usually at gallery openings so we're both working the crowd. She has introduced me to a lot of great people, so glad to be able to return the favor. Ginger One's pretty conservative but is trying very hard to be more out and open, and I so enjoy watching her evolve.

Little Goose had never been to Huilonghui (my house, now featured in yet another magazine) before, and we're sadly behind on each others' lives. Goose is cool but a little, I dunno, not uptight so much as proper. Maybe it's a ex-British colony thing - oh, wait, America, never mind. But I have noticed that about several of the Hongkies I know. I have another friend, a half-Hongkonger and half-Shanghainese from Canada, who looks like Goose's twin and also has very similar mannerisms. Anyhow, perhaps because of her comparitive propriety, Goose thinks I'm very amusing. I am very bluntly spoken, which makes me rather rude by American standards but somehow totally hilarious to many Chinese. Perhaps talking monkeys are inherently funny? Explaining my painting in progress in the sitting room (why is there no good english word for 客厅?), I told her about high school enthusiasm for painting. "Did you ever do any acting?" she asked. No. Although I did speech and debate and Model United Nations were what I did to overcome my inherent shyness. "You should act, you'd be great. Just put you on a couch on stage, just talking, it'd be hilarious," said the theater producer. Heh, move over, Da Shan! *Wince*

It was fun having Unmilitary over because, while I've known him as long as I've been in Shanghai, I don't know him that well. Amusingly, he was under the impression I've been here like fifteen years. (Yikes, do I look that old?) He's sort of friends with Jifu - I say sort of because Unmilitary considers Jifu a friend, while Jifu looks down on Unmilitary, along with almost everyone else in the music scene. Jifu trash talks everyone, including a lot of young musicians who earnestly admire him. This pisses me off, because I quite like most of them as people, and even if I don't like their music I admire and support their effort.  There's also a bit of a rivalry between the poppers and the punks, which I consider just silly, but for the six years I was dating Jifu I was very entrenched with the pop pie (sorry, Chinglish joke), while only in the past two years since the breakup have I been able to schmooze the punk pie.

Poor Soxy, Unmilitary and I quickly launched into a dishy gossip session about various old friends, and she soon gave up on trying to sort out who all we were talking about. "Oh my god, what is going on with [Jifu]'s hair?! He used to have great hair..." Ha. Every time I encounter someone who knows Jifu (including his sister),  they remark on his deteriorating fashion sense. The permed mullet was hilarious, the current shag is better but hardly flattering on him. "I know! Last year, after [Mr. Wonderful] died, I contemplated getting back together with him. But then he showed up with the mullet, and I was like 'Um, no.'"

The Silver Lining faired admirably. As always, he tried to hide, but I dragged him out and he reluctantly cuddled up with Little Goose and El Aleman for a while, and everyone fussed over his fluffy cuteness.  He hissed a few times, but not as much as usual. The improvement in his acute feline paranoia is inconsistant, though: when Icy, my assistant, came over today, he hid underneath the tub (the one place I can't pry him out from), even though he loves her when he stays with her. Crazy little Persian.

I was going to throw a big Christmas/belated eight years anniversary/very belated 30th birthday party before leaving, but looking at the calendar and at my to-do list, I'm thinking: no. FaFa, one of my fashion PR buddies, has even offered me sponsorship by some of the liquor companies he represents. That would be kind of hilarious, actually: corporate sponsors for a shlumphy house party. I'll have to take a raincheck.

Oh, gawd. The silly things that China comes up with the promote its international "face". The latest? Abolish the dragon as a national symbol, because Western dragons are hostile, so it makes Westerners think of China "the rising dragon" also as hostile.

This, according to some "experts on English teaching", and we all know what those are like: washed up middle-aged laowais who could never get work or pussy in their home country, and even in China home of laowai scammage they can't do better than English teaching.

Almost as funny is the suggestion that they find an English translation besides "dragon" for the word dragon. Sheesh. How very Newspeak.

I love Chinese dragons, even before moving here I enjoyed their power, elegance, symbolism and mythology. How sad to trash Chinese culture because some people think it will make them more cuddly to the laowai. I also get pissed off with China's obsession with its image abroad, especially towards the very superficially negative like this. China should, one, have the confidence to say "piss off" if criticized for dumb things (but perhaps listen to the valid issues), and, two, worry more about the internal state of affairs than external impressions.

Dragon on its way to extinction

By Guo Qiang (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-12-04 17:40

China is changing fast and its totem dragon is no exception.

China's long- acknowledged totem dragon is likely to die out with experts on English teaching believing the icon invites misunderstanding and demonizes the country in which people are called 'descendents of the dragon', the Beijing Legal Times reported on December 4.

The dragon is based on a 7,000-year-old Chinese legend, and is a combination of a horse's head, a snake's body and chook's claws. It represented the emperor's power during the years of China's feudal system and it is also a symbol of auspiciousness and wealth among the people. In Western culture, the dragon developed a very different persona. Unlike eastern dragons, western dragons breathe fire, and swing their tails about.

Wu Youfu, an expert from the Shanghai International Studies University said people in Western countries believe the icon symbolizes power and abundant aggression.

"Dragon-related icons easily induce misunderstanding and distortion," said Wu.

Wu is heading a program that aims to create a new national icon to represent China to the outside world, the paper reported.

Wu said the new icon should include features of different times, races and cultures. "We should dig out positive elements from China's traditional culture," he said.

According to the paper, if a new national icon is created, the 7,000-year-old dragon image is likely to be replaced.

But the move is far from being accepted by Chinese people who have the image of the dragon deeply rooted in their hearts.

The animal should be translated into another English word instead of being replaced, comments on sina.com said.