Shanghai Vixen

The neck etc problems have continued to kick my ass, as has trying to work despite it this week. I went to Little Face’s Chinese medicine masseuse twice. Wow. Definitely the most singularly painful thing I have ever done. I barely managed not to scream. Afterwards, I am always barely able to move/think/sleep for a day, but after that it is much better.

The neck etc remain really fucked up, I still feel like my head is about to roll off and go bouncing down the street like something out of a Miyazaki film, but it is much better. And my knee injury, which they have also been targetting, is a world better. It also seems to be helping me loose weight, despite my neglecting the gym due to the pain (a bad move as exercise improves it a lot).

Tomorrow I kick into the acupuncture treatment, which I hear is far less painful. The masseuse/acupuncturist informs that Little Face refuses to do acupuncture because she’s afraid of the needles. Hee. That’s almost as rich as Sweet Fish’s fear of flying. I love when the totally lihai have very ludicrous little phobias like this - probably it makes me feel better for not being as bad-ass as they are.

Anyhow, the neck stuff makes me feel constantly out of it and exhausted, a perpetual hangover - although alcohol actually helps as it loosens the muscle tension. Makes socializing a bit what-the-fuck-ish.

Have been out lots with Guangguang. Wednesday, I was dragged to this bizarre advertising dinner by my cute but clingy hag fag D. Megalomaniac though I am, I get a bit “um. er. um.” by his eulogizations of how “Fa!Bu!Lous!” I am. I think at best I sometimes barely cut semi-fab, let along, well, that… Fashion people, such drama queens.

Afterwards, I met up with Guangguang and we traipsed out to Live Bar, where Sonic Youth was supposed to do a second, underground show. They didn’t show, but we had fun hanging out with D, the e-snorting rock old-timer who I that night discovered has a thing for foreign chicks - moping about the Italian girl who just dumped him, and flirting with every caucasian chick in the place; there was an oddly high concentration of them. Er, us. The place was baby laowai central. Fun shows, by a trance-inducing sound band and then by TFC singer LC doing a parady of Chinese variety show performances. LC is kinda nutters, but he’s hilarious. In a perfect world he would be the Chinese Jon Stewart; but in this world only total tools are allowed on Chinese TV.

An SMS from Unmilitary pulled us back accross town to Logo, where Sonic Youth finally did show. We got there just as they were leaving, but managed to meet and gawp at and awkwardly decline a joint from the band members. Inside, met up with Unmilitary and Foxy, and encountered the usual dilemma when trying to mix friends from opposite sides of the language barrier. So Guangguang bailed, I hung out for a bit, and was pleased to learn that Unmilitary and Foxy will also be heading to Beijing for Midi. Only they don’t know the organizers, so Vixen’s guanxi-meister mode shall again kick in. A bit worried about the Midi folk’s anti-Shanghainese bias, but I can shut them up with a few “we Shanghainese”. Solidarity, 有!

Sweet Fish, San Wei, Old Box and co left for the US Friday. On Thursday, I was recruited to breakfast by one of their two managers, this lovely doll of a German woman, Yi, who wanted my advice on problems with the other, main, Shanghainese manager. He is pressuring the band to accept a contract with their UK producer basically signing over to him all rights to and control of everything they do for the next five years. Basically, totally screwing them. The Shanghainese manager wants to take it because this “famous” (I am SO bored with the actual, let alone semi, famous) prducer is their “friend”. Friends don’t screw you over. I don’t understand record contracts, but according to Yi, the terms are far worse for the band than the industry baseline. And the Brit is obliged to them for nothing, while they owe him everything. So, if he wants to play with them, he can, but he doesn’t have to; he could also hold them for five years and do nothing. They would be his little Chinese toy.

Foreigners don’t let other foreigners take advantage of their naive Chinese friends.

Yi didn’t know what to do with this classic conundrum convergence of face and guanxi, as she didn’t want to go around the other manager and risk pissing off the band. Well, I don’t have this problem. The upside of being a perpetual “old outsider” is that I can get away with being pretty direct and indelicate, and it will be at worst laughed off as “oh aren’t laowai wacky?!” So, I went straight to Sweet Fish, told him Yi’s dilemma, reminded him what happened with his LAST shitty record contract, as well as with other friends of ours, and admonished him to be cautious. He took it well - I think, hard to tell over MSN, will see. We’ve been friends for almost nine years, and I just really want to see the band have the amazing success it deserves. And they should get all the credit for it - not some schmucky laowai. (Self, Yi included.)

Friday was the inaugural meeting of the Investing Club for Girls - more on that later - and then I crashed La Turqa’s afternoon meeting with Lu Kun as I wanted to see their studio and say hi. I’d expected an in-and-out kiss-kiss, had loads to do, but then quickly got sucked into company director R’s description of their latest plans and - ooh la la! - the tour of their closet. So many pretty, pretty dresses! (Which cost more than a mid-sized flat.) So many fun stories behind them! Oh, it was delicious. What a way to spend a sunny spring afternoon! Alas, I was writhing and unable to concentrate or react due to the neck - laughing five minutes too late for a joke, R. giving me a look like he was thinking, Vixen must be on drugs… And then spazzing over work needing doing. Still undone, fucking neck. 

Last night, I got Guangguang and her friend into the Tag Heuer/Han Feng party. It was bizarre: the fabulous fashion show was sandwitched between strange variety show crap. Wince-inducing attempts at humor from a TV tool type chick, big fucking phonies, and doing some stupid “Golf Culture Awards”. WTF. Afterwards, the tool tried to drag HF into a faux interview, and to her credit HF the cool vixen completely refused. Then there was a succession of lame-o photo ops and clapping for themselves, so very Commie, at which point I pointedly stood up and left.  Joined Gay Greek over champaigne in mocking the “golf fashion victims”. Golf is a stupid sport. Golf “fashion” - isn’t. It is funny how many conversations I have had in the past week explaining to Chinese friends the translation of Baofahu, nouveau riche. Woah, did I actually remember how to spell that for once?

Today was a mellow day, catching up on personal stuff like student loans, sitting in my neighborhood French park writing letters to my grandma and cousin while ease-dropping on the gossiping taitais and cooing over cute kids. There were two fraternal twin two year old girls, in the cutest matching dresses. Their mom was like, Shuo ‘hello’! and I responded, No, shuo ‘ni hao’. Please don’t poke at the monkeys. Then they got all into ‘Ni hao, ayi’-ing me, so cute! My mom is a fraternal twin, which I am told makes me likely to have them too. Not bad: two for one special, matching set. Although my mom and Doctor Uncle are not exactly feeling the womb-bonding love. I wonder whether some Chinese deliberately use fertility treatments to have twins, to get around the one child policy. Probably. I’d expound upon the OCP, but then I’d never get to bed.

Tonight, Guangguang came over for Sake and then too dig oo-ingly through my closet. We are such girly tomboys. Then to dinner and a brief show at a CF concert. Dudu got married! When did that happen? Dudu is the few other women in the rock scene, and she is way cooler than me. We are very “we should hang out more!” and then never do. Not sure what to think of her older, European husband - I liked the cute young American boyfriend better on brief interaction - but I rarely get other women’s tastes in men. Or they mine. Hell, *I* don’t get my taste in men.

Guangguang is such a dear. She is one who has psychiatric problems but is really fighting to deal with them, to get on and live, and I respect her so much for it. I admire how able and willing she is to request help when she needs it - “I am falling apart and need someone to hold me together. Will you?” she calls up. I oblige. It makes me curious, as I am someone who is proudly independent even to a fault. It also makes me able to in turn lean upon her more than I do most people - she will understand, not judge, and be a pillar, she is much stronger for others than she is for herself. She took such good care of me after my brother’s death, yet believing I was taking care of her. She claims I have saved her life by distracting/comforting her through several crises: I think she would have managed alright without me, but if not, well, it is good to know I am not quite as useless as I tend to consider myself.

Today the spring morning air was truly intoxicating. It makes my bad habit of getting up early in (unsuccessful) attempt at productivity all worth it. Something about the smell, the light, before the sun bakes away all the pollution laden dew. Mmm. My roses and the baby bamboo are going crazy.

Speaking of crazy. The nutcase trying to take over the journo club has become a huge, migraine-inducing time suck. Here is an example of her ilk; for some reason the delusions of grandeur types are attracted to journalism. I’m answering like twenty emails a day trying to deflect the latest wacky maneavers by her and her posse. I don’t want to run the club either - already did that for five years - but the people who are running it are too nice and polite. I am a very warmly affable sort, but pushed I stand firm. The funniest email was from this woman’s ex-husband, chiding me for hurting her feelings - hilarious from a guy who had an affair with his wife’s assistant. Expat men - such cliches.

Nibbling more happily at my time of late is helping with my friends’ impending LA trip. Visa letter, press release, media harassment, introductions, travel advice. Man, I wish I was going with them. The image of a gaggle of my Shanghainese rocker boys schlumphing around LA fills me with giddy glee and some worry - only one of them speaks English, and their questions are a bit worrying. “So, we can get around LA on foot, right?” Hahahaha! Oh dear. Shit, I am very worried about their dealing with SoCal public transit, it confuses the crap out of even the natives. And they were never heard from again… But can they rent a car with Sweet Fish’s Shanghai license, or on a Chinese or German credit card?

Sanwei, my old flatmate and a big sweet cuddly teddy-bear but who looks large and menacing, wants to side-trip to San Diego, sans the translator. Introductions to my LA friends is fine, even the non-guoyu speakers are pretty sophisticated and can improvise. They can always talk music. My San Diegans? I can only imagine him hanging out with the crowd there - sitting down for dinner with the proper, polite Buffs, coffee with the prissy Cantonese girls…um, no.

It reminds me how large the cultural and linguistic gaps are between the worlds I live in and the people I love. Awkward enough when I’m with a bunch of Chinese friends and some linguistically impaired expats bound up - I may try to translate, but the conversation of one group is often quite boringly irrelevant to the other group. That is hard to translate.

Last night at Sonic Youth was rife with the Chinese rocker buddies. Great seeing so many in one place, all having so much fun. I know I’m “one of the boys” when they all greet me by punching me in the arm - which is less cute when I have an arm injury. Ow.

Yeah, I know I’ve hit my 30s when the body starts to go. It’s been a month that I’ve been having this soreness in my neck, left shoulder and upper back, sometimes excruciating. I don’t know whether it’s carpel tunnel, from sleeping funny, from carrying an uncomfortable purse, or stress - or all of these. Just sometimes my neck hurts so much I feel like my head is going to fall off.

At Xiaolian’s insistance, I went to a TCM masseuse Monday night. Very good, and pinpointed my problem as deriving from the back right of my cranium - it hurts to even be touched there. The massage had me screaming - and I have a high pain threshold - but I think regular installments of this will do me a lot of good. Not just for this problem but for all my injuries and aches. But in the short term it makes it worse. Ow.

In other news, I have two new “Hmms” and an actual crush. Beyond the Chindian, who is so yummy but a bad-boy man-whore, and I probably shouldn’t go there. The two Hmms are fairly unattractive but cutely fun Shanghai guys, both in the arts, who seem to be into me - laughing too enthusiastically at my bad jokes, giving me little looks then blushing when I catch them. Neither my type, but good guys who probably would be pleasant to date, and good friends of good friends. The crush is an old Shanghainese friend of mine and Jifu’s - but not a close friend so it’s okay. He was in the US for grad school, and I only recently re-met him. He was always this cool, cute, quiet, quirky kid; now he’s shy, scraggy scientist by day, rock god by night. (I know, I keep saying no more musicians, but they are the only hetero men I seem to know…My thing for scientists predates my thing for musicians.) I think the signs are promising, we are both earnest but awkward when chatting - such as last night, when his friend Tuzi, who is good friends with Jifu and never liked me for some reason, was totally giving us the stink eye. I shall explore this and see, and will be nice reviving the old friendship regardless, although hazardous waters with the old crowd.

This has been a week of wrapping up loose ends, dispatching various albatrosses - that is the expression, right? sometimes my English is quirky - that have been nipping at my mind, perhaps contributing to my neck/headaches.  I’m pretty laidback, not the stress-mess I was a teen, but still I like to keep all fussa-fussa swatted away.

AND another two hours of band trip emails and calls later. It is so much fun being helpful. I am good to my friends, I have to say. Actually, to anyone: I’ve gotten a couple of random college kids summer jobs already, and my inbox overflows with more fussa-fussa to swat at. Spring goes by so quickly - perhaps that is a good thing.

I am currently reading the NYT profile of the V-Tech killer. I find it particularly disconcerting because his awkward, angry loner profile so resembles my own late brother. Thankfully, my Gege did not take anyone else out with him when he killed himself - but I suspect he could have.

Media and blogosphere commentary chastises the Virginia shooter’s family and roommates and teachers for not seeing his problems and getting him help. The problem with the mentally ill is this: what can others do about it? My mother tried to get my Gege committed, and that only served to make him worse - I sympathize with the instinct to do precisely the opposite of what our crazy bitch of a mom wanted. I did nothing: I had spent a lifetime trying unsuccessfully to befriend him, and a childhood getting beaten up by him; when his downward spiral began I just avoided him. I had no interest in being taken down with him, and I find large unstable men to be rather physically alarming. I do struggle with guilt and remorse and what-iffies over this, but I will never apologize for putting my own survival first.

Very often the mentally ill do not want help, they want enabling. They often make conscious choices to wallow in their unreality rather than dealing with the unpleasantness of reality.

There are a couple of foreigners I know in Shanghai who are definitely unstable and not getting help they need. I know one women who has the very same issues of bipolarity, delusional and obsessive-compusive disorders as my mom, except more functional - but so was my mom, at her age. But how do you tell an acquaintance, “You really need psychiatric treatment, and should not be living in a country where you cannot get it”? Close friends are another story, and I hope if I ever start to succomb to genetics all of you will “Yo!” at me - as you do even when I feel just a little bit wallowy and depressed. However, many crazy people don’t have close friends.

My brother had good friends in college, but did not stay in touch with them afterwards. He was completely isolated at the end of his life.

The line between sanity and insanity is a fine one; all of us have danced on it at some point. The human mind is so evolved yet so feeble, the soul so little defense against the horrid absurdity and absurd physicality of existance. Everyone is alienated and bitter sometimes. It is not surprising that some people go nuts sometimes, but rather that most of us don’t.

Yikes. I’ve gotten hundreds of hits today after being outed. It is very disconcerting. And I am not sure how to deal with the “friend” requests from people I don’t actually know.

My film director friend Little Face just came over for tea and chat. No Shanghainese lessons today, though. I love talking to her - we have very similar Chinese+American perspectives - although I am always a bit intimidated by her. She is so lihai and observant, she doesn’t let me get away with anything. Zero tolerance for bullshit. I was amused at her noticing my nursing my bad shoulder - carpel tunnel syndrome plus sleeping funny while drunk. “I have a good massuese. Let’s go. Right now!” The woman wastes no time.

Little Face is one of the most interesting people I know. From a Shanghainese literati family, she studied and lived in New York for seven years, and has also spent a lot of time in Japan. She is an endless source of amazing stories, about her parents - also famous filmmakers, trailblazers in the 1930s industry, about her sent-down youthhood during the Cultural Revolution, about her US experiences, about all the other famous filmmakers she hobnobs with, about the travails of being an independent filmmaker in China. I have written articles about her, but man she deserves a book. I would like to someday write a book profiling the cool Chinese women I know - so many, so cool! She’s invited me to travel with her to the village she was sent down to. I am psyched, but I suspect I will be hard-pressed to keep up with this woman twice my age.

We spent a while bitching about the Chinese and the American press, particularly the coverage of the Virgina shootings compared to the collapse of a Dongbei factory the same day, in which 32 Chinese died. Why is one any more of a tragedy than the other? Why is unsafe work conditions - which claim more lives even than handguns in the US - a less important social issue? Why does even the Chinese press give more value to American lives than Chinese? Of course, China is not much for discussing its social issues, huh.

Also in media news, my favorite shows have resumed. Ugly Betty and Heroes are back - I have such a fangirl crush on Masi Oka, of course. Veronica Mars is looking pretty shark-jumpy, and Lost jumped with that awful Bailing episode. Smallville I have long since given up on.

Otherwise, I spent this rainy Sunday nursing a hangover from the Joyce opening, where I downed way too much Moet with a Shanghainese-speaking American architect friend I see far too little of. Rather like everyone this time of year. And then writing up a press release about Sweet Fish, San Wei and co’s big US debut concert next week. Their visas were approved, woo! Am hoping to get them - and Shanghai rock by extension - shitloads of US coverage. I am possibly more excited about the trip than they are, Sweet Fish has been making fun of me for it. Yes, I’m a big dork.

This blog is a place I post very personal, private things for the reading pleasure of my friends. I do not mind that random people have stumbled upon it, but this was never intended as a “public” thing.

This afternoon, someone emailed the entire membership list of a journalist association I am involved with telling them about this blog and identifying me as its author. I am fine with strangers reading this site, but not colleagues and acquaintances. This stuff is too personal for me to be comfortable with that.

So, friends and regular readers, please register so I can approve you as a “friend”. And apologies for the bureaucracy. It’s this or take the thing down entirely, which would be regrettable.

My mangy balcony roses have started blooming. A new offshoot of one of them has grown five feet in two weeks. My two pots of purple bamboo have ten thick new shoots, growing several inches per day. While my flat is Hui Long Hui - a play upon my name and its location - my study I call Zhu Ying Dun, tiny place of rustling bamboo. When I first got the bamboo, Jifu joked that Mr. Wonderful would eat it because he looked like a panda - fat, black and white; he didn’t, but Silver Lining loves to chew bamboo leaves, and he looks nothing like a panda. He is more of a Totoro. The morning glory seeds I planted have sprouted, making me happy because the farm I lived on as a suicidal eleven year old had a wall of morning glories that made me feel glorious. And I have been mucking through my urban compost in preparation to seed basil, dill and mint - I always kill the fucking mint somehow. I once had a rich crop of basil plants, but then I went to the US for two weeks and Jifu killed them off. Sigh. Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme…Lv hua makes me happy!

Spring makes me happy. Life makes me happy. I am happy. The past two days, I dispatched two large albatrosses about my neck: on Wednesday I resumed Taekwondo, my first time back this year. I will stick with it, be athletic (and have an athletic body) again, get my blue, than blue-red, then red, then red-black, then black belt. I will be an ass-kicking little beyatch - heck, I already am. I love TKD, and I love the gym, but I have this unfortunate insecurity about all things physical. (And, yes, this impacts my sex life too.) Yesterday, I finally finished this annoying textile forum article that has been hanging over me since I went to Beijing three weeks ago to cover it. 2,500 words on technology, branding, social responsibility in the global/Asian/European textile industries. Sexy.

Maybe it was sniffing the compost. Maybe it was the post-workout adrenaline. Maybe the sunshine has gone to my head - wheee! Maybe it was a particularly perky song slapping me in the ass. Whatever it was, I felt simply and suddenly happy and optimistic as I haven’t for years. It just…all fell together in my mind, organically and comfortably. Things will work out not just alright, but pretty fucking awesomely. I cannot wait for tonight, tomorrow, next week, next year. Bet the 2050s will be neat too. Yes, Vixen has gotten her groove back.

I will stay afloat financially, and more.

I will write a book, then another, and then another.

I will be, along with a successful writer, an artist, designer and photographer.

I will lose the flab and get my body back. And I will cease loathing myself until then.

I will reconcile and balance my Chinese and American lives.

I will have some nice, fun, healthy if disposable relationships with some nice cute guys (or gals) to make up for my wasted 20s.

I will eventually find a partner who suits, supports, compliments me, to skip and stumble off into the sunset with.

I will someday have and enjoy a real family, birthing and raising children who will surprise and amaze me.

I will love and be loved.

I will die, but with a joyful laugh knowing that I lived every moment.

I will not have the life I deserve - we humans are petty brutes who deserve nothing, fuck American entitlement. I have and will have the life I make for myself, and continue to be the person I make myself into. China is wonderful for keeping a person real, aware of one’s own mortality, of the physicality and desperate absurdity but also the transcendance of human life.

Shanghai suddenly feels much lonelier: Iski Cat has scampered away back to her native Nanjing, then puffing off again to god knows where like dandelion fluff in a tornado. It is not that I will not see her again, soon, or continue to bore her with daily online ramblings. Still, I have lost one of my best friends here or anywhere to the general, see you sometime, diaspora. I miss-ki Iski. 

It is the nature of Shanghai, the people here be they laowai or zhongguoren, drift, continentally. I feel strange for staying still.

Iski is one totally cool cat. She is amazingly smart, observant, erudite, innocent, wise. She soaks up languages like I soak up free Champaign, and speaks better English than 99% of native speakers (possibly myself included). She has a wry sense of humor – as all cool women do – and is more often bemused than amused. She is a shy and soft-spoken cat around strangers, and even among friends is more often the listener and observer, but she can out-converse the best of us if she wants to. If.

Iski and I met in 2000, when she was a wee lass of 18 or 19, at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center. I went to interview Little Goose about an English-language play she was producing; Iski was an off-stage voice performer for it. We didn’t actually MEET meet – but Iski remembered me and brought it up after we’d been acquainted for years. Iski remembered my funky shoes – burgundy brocade Chinese slippers. Oddly, after she told me that, I remembered my entire wardrobe that day, down to the underwear: it was when I was really, really fat, so in my size 12 silver velvet jeans from the Gap, and a navy silk Chinesey top inherited from Mama White.

I MET met Iski through her ex-boyfriend Mushroom, who was good friends with Jifu. The four of us spent years and years double-dating, but I never got to know her that well. Jifu and I were loud, Mushroom talked a little, Iski talked less. Yes, she really does know me way better than I know her…which is a little worrying now that I think about it.

Iski and Mushroom seemed like a great couple. They were really cute together, finished each others’ sentences, seemed very comfortable. Mushroom is very cute, a total Zhou Jielun twin, as well as an immensely talented designer. They were very brain and talent trust. But while Mushroom was busy being a money machine computer nerd, Iski was busy trotting the globe getting advanced degrees in topics esoterical. She was studying in the UK in August 2005.

August 2005. I went to South America to be in Mama White’s wedding, then was in San Diego for my Gege’s funeral when Mr. Wonderful died. I was a mess, suffice to say, and Cloudy was a good enough friend to collect me at the airport when I returned home. It was on the airport bus that she informed me that Mushroom had cheated on and then broken up with Iski. Amongst our small circle – us, Birdy, Cloudy – it was a double bomb, the loss of two great reliables.

Mushroom has his own design company, and makes pretty good money. One of his employees, typical girly-bitch Shanghainese, set her sites on him, and pursued him for a year. Cute Chinese teenagers, Iski and Mushroom had never consummated, despite dating for four years, cohabiting for several. (Tell me if this is TMI, I’ll take it down.) The Girly-Bitch finally succeeded in seducing the very asexual Mushroom, and after just one bang she got pregnant. And made him dump Iski and marry her.  Yes, he betrayed Iski horribly, but also horribly funny that this shy, afraid of sex boy knocks the girl up the very first time he got laid. Well, the guys who get played by the girly-bitches of the world probably deserve them, and want to have their lives run for them. Pity the kid, though. The most fucked up men I know are offspring of girly-bitches and the men they pussy whip.

Iski handled it magnificently and maturely. Okay, she did hack his email and contemplate murder, but that was fairly understandable. The break-up served to forge our friendship, shed of respective boys and sympathizing over respective infidelities. Fortunately, she had her, um, er, white knight in the wings, her friend and then boyfriend Otter, and they are eloping this summer. Otter is a smart if smart-alecky Brit who talks too much and too fast when nervous – amongst the reasons the Jews are my favorite Caucasians. Apologies again for the soggy pasta, by the way. Iski, geek that she is, is learning Hebrew.

After Iski returned, I hooked her up with a job at an art museum. I thought it would be cool as my fabu LA-Taiwanese taitai friend was there, but she ended up working under the girly-bitch mistress of the boss (again, TMI?), and it was a rough year. Everyone at the museum is already whining how they cannot function without Iski, they miss her more than she misses them. (Likewise!) I hope some good experiences were had, though. Friendships forged, lessons learned.

Over lunch last month, we discussed where we want to geographically “end up”. Iski is dismayed by the crass materialism and face-obsession in China, especially Shanghai. I agree, but my lot is cast here, and I am invested in the struggle against those facets. Iski informs that England is quite blatantly racist, teenagers would harass her on the bus for being non-pink. She says Otter wants emigrate to the US, but as Iski knows, having lived there, it is a difficult place as well. Really: there is no promised land, no gold mountain, for our tribe of multicultural, multilingual, miscegenating intelligentsia. We make our communities as we go, then lose them as they go. We are not “global nomads”, we are global homebodies. We who belong nowhere, belong everywhere.

Iski, damn I’ll miss you, already do. I am proud to call you my friend and my meimei. Have you gotten far in Amrita? Banana Yoshimoto therein writes about the “time lost between sisters.” I know time lost towards my brother gone, but what is more is the time found between sisters chosen. Love you babe. Meow. Purr.

Another thing that predicated yesterday’s rant is the below email, which Brilly forwarded to me recently:

OMG, this is so lame.

—–Original Message—–
From: Bad Cat Productions
Sent: 2007年4月6日 0:08
Subject: April 11th: Project Pajama Jam

Greetings Dear Bad Cats!

It’s been a while since we threw our last oddball stunt. Spring is in the
air, and we’re itching to have some fun in Shanghai. Yes folks, another Bad
Cat happenstance is in the making, and this time we’re having fun in our
pajamas!

On April 11th, we bring you: Project Pajama Jam!

The Mission:

   1. Wear pajamas in public and get away with it.
   2. Freak others out (fun).
   3. Freak yourself out (exponentially more fun).

If you live in Shanghai, there is no doubt that you’ve been
appalled/amused/bemused by the sight of locals donning pajamas in public.
Can someone say culture shock?

On April 11th, we plan to jam that culture. We hope to take one step closer
to worldliness (or un-worldliness, whichever you prefer), and you’re
invited. The project is to descend on Huaihai Park, where locals sporting
their best sleeping gear gather to dance, promenade, and liao tiao all
night. Jammers are encouraged to bring picnic dinners and bbq grills.
Additional gear may include radios and instruments. Accessorize with wigs,
sunglasses, lawn chairs, cigars, pillows. This is a free community event,
all ages welcome.

The Details:

Rendez-vous Point: The Coffee Bean Cafe, Xintiandi, Shanghai
Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Time: 7 p.m. sharp
Or find us at Huaihai Park east of Xintiandi

We’ll be handing out Bad Cat goodies for first arrivals, so come early!
Also, stay tuned for the upcoming events this summer, we’ve got quite a
packed schedule prepared for you! We’re continually upgrading our website,
check out our brand spankin’ new blog, and see pics from our previous
parties too!

Stay bad and see you soon,
The Bad Cat Crew
(((Bringin’ Folks Together)))
====================
http://www.badcatpros.com
http://www.badcatpros.com/blog

It pissed me off so much at the time that I forwarded it to several of you, and I’ve been meaning to post it up here. Mocking a country and culture is as much “performance art” as it is “humor”. Adding to the obnoxiousness is that the country and culture they are mocking are those they have voluntarily opted to live in, and which treat them quite well.

The pajama culture is fucking awesome, a great idea. Wearing pajamas in public is no weirder than wearing shoes in the house: a normative habit, and the variances are what make a travelled existence so rewarding.

Sure, the Chinese find it funny, a foreigner buying shoes is hilarious, but once they catch on that these laowai are “insulting Chinese culture”, a deserved lynch mob will descend. Remember that strange news item about two foreigners dropping coins on the street and then trying to photograph Chinese picking them up? This reminds me of that, sans the justified uproar.

This is different from the US issues, but they both illustrate this disturbing trait of white American culture: this sense of superiority, of entitlement, of cultural neocolonialism, of condescention. That “We are normal and right, and everyone else is strange and wrong.” A lack of appreciation for the amazingly wonderful relativity of the human experience. Americans are such fucking absolutists (goddamn Christians). It leads them to make grandious assholes of themselves abroad, whether on a petty scale like this, or the profound scale of much of US foreign policy.

I’ve been watching the furor over the Don Imus comments and firing with interest. Ah, America. How little have you changed - in fact, I suspect it has gotten worse, given the white male fratty intolerance of the Bush administration and era.

Should it be any surprise that a shlock radio DJ said something racist? I don’t myself listen to such drivel, but my grandparents were religious about listening to Rush Limbaugh and others, and what passes for ‘humor’ on these things entirely consists of white, heterosexual men saying unpleasantries about non-whites, women and homosexuals.

A lot of white Americans are somewhat if not totally racist. Most, though, are well-meaning but oblivious. A large problem is that white Americans consider themselves deracialized, that white is not a race or ethnicity but “normal”. I recently heard a talk where a white American guy mentioned that “Hispanics are now the biggest ethnic group in America”, and my immediate reaction was, wow! There are now more Hispanics than Caucasians?! I puzzled over this for several hours before I realized he was not counting whites as an ethnic group. The next day, my Beijinger friend Little South was asking me how to say 民族 in English, “minority, right?” I corrected her, that although ethnicity and minority are used interchangeably, in Mandarin as well as English, they do not mean the same things. I pointed out that Han is also an ethnicity, and she was all like “Huh.”

Anyhow, my point is that the majority of older Caucasian-Americans, and younger too in many places are comfortably ignorant in their isolated world. They may know an “ethnic” or two, at work or around the neighborhood, might even be friends with a few, but still consider themselves “normal” while the non-whites are kinda different and strange looking and acting. In fact, all humans are strange looking and acting. We are physically a clumsy and inelegant and really quite odd-looking species, we just all look funny in our different ways.

Whites like to make fun of non-whites for how they look, but take it so badly when it’s turned around. It’s hilarious how pissy hetero white men get when made fun of, whether in the comments here or elsewhere. Hey, whites are impractically pink - or hideously orange if you leave us in the sun too long, we’re hairy monkeys, and have big noses and bigger asses. Mainstream white American cuisine is both boring and unhealthy, which is why most of us are fat, ugly and lazy.

What, not laughing? Why can’t you straight Caucasian men take a joke?! What’s wrong with you people?

After all, it IS funny that most of these jerks like Imus and Limbaugh are ugly, sleazy losers who wouldn’t be worth fuck if they hadn’t gotten rich and famous by being assholes on the radio for the benefit of other sleazy, defensive losers.

For people who think words don’t have power, note that there are no slurs specific for the hetero WASP male.

Words are complex, as is reappropriation. As a woman, I’ll use words like bitch, cunt, ho about myself or jokingly to or about other women. Bitch has been mainstreamed enough that men can use it if lightly, “Yeah, she’s kinda a bitch sometimes.” In other contexts, though, “You bitch”, “She’s a stupid bitch”, it is meant and taken as demeaning, dehumanizing, condescending and threatening. As the biological daughter of a violent misogynist, I have strong views on this. Likewise, racial groups can use their own historical slurs, but from anyone else it’s assumed offensive.

I am currently reading Iris Chang’s history “The Chinese in America”, so that has me mulling these topics a little more than usual. It’s interesting to compare the Imus flap to Rosie O’Donnell last year, and then those to the endless flow of sexist and homophobic comments that elicit zero response. O’Donnell’s idiotic and unfunny ching-chong (please flush?) was less slur-ish than just ignorant, and was directed at the Chinese rather than Chinese-Americans, but most white Americans do not make that latter distinction anyways. That incident did not seem to make the mainstream media at all, let alone get O’Donnell fired. The lesson taken: be really nice to the blacks and the Jews, they be organized, but say whatever the fuck you want about Asians (East, West and Central), women, and gays. We aren’t organized enough to get your flabby pink asses fired. Yet.

Yesterday was the big H&M launch in Shanghai, I was in the store half the day for interviews, then shlepped to Pudong for the opening. I had scored two spare invites, one for a Swedish friend who actually works for the company but couldn’t get an invite, another for my visiting friend Xiao Xu. But the latter got sick after our Putuoshan excursion, so her ticket went instead to a gay PR friend who had been pestering me to get him in. He’s very sweet, but a little bit clingy. And I have too many fay fashion friends to be anyone’s full-time beard.

Gay men are fun, though. They are much better than hetero men at showering women with the attention and consideration and little compliments that make us happy. The heteros could learn a lot from them. But just don’t learn to squeal like a girl whenever anyone mildly famous comes into view. Because that’s mildly annoying.

Anyhow, I’m bitter: Hong Kong H&M got Madonna, we got some random Australian poplet named Kylie something. Never heard of her before, and despite a tedious night of frenzied explaination from celebrity whores about who she is, I still don’t know why I should have. Another generic skinny blonde. Meh. White folk all look the same. I’m not much even for celebrities I have heard of, to be fair, although I enjoyed meeting Pierce Brosnan last month, and am psyched at the prospect of meeting Sonic Youth. The latter, though, is mostly because if I’m hoping to get a backstage pass for one of my Shanghainese rocker pals who’s obsessed with them.

I came down with a cold in Putuoshan, and did not make for a fun day of interviews yesterday. Shopping afterwards, though! I got two black-and-white funky patterned dresses (No, I cannot have too many of them. Shut up.) and a nice black pencil skirt that I will be able fit in about two kilos later (67.4 today, my lowest this year!). I am seriously contemplating returning for a cream leather trench coat with a price tag of about US$300. Not too fitting with my ambitions to save up to buy the lane house of my dreams in a few years, but such are the hazards of working in the fashion industry.

Afterwards, I was walking along Huashan Lu towards the place I get my legs waxed, and was grabbed by a bunch of guys who I assume from their wacky ‘dos were touts for a hair salon. Yes, the fun game of let’s harass/assault the laowai. I managed to extricate myself from their clutches and hurried down the street, saying angry and rude things over my shoulder. The same happened when I took the subway to Pudong for the party that night, at the Science and Technology Museum. Touts for the fake market got in my face, grabbed at me, followed me with lewd commentary. Yes, it’s bad enough when I’m not dressed up for a party, but a single white female in miniskirt and heels is harassment central. The Kejiguan market is much worse than Xiangyang ever was, there’s something creepy and dirty and literally underground about the place, and I feel quite unsafe there. Last time I was there, on my way to the Zendai Art Museum, I literally smacked a guy, accidentally: I’ve found that a “buyao” never works, I have to hold the palm of my hand to their faces, and this one was behind me, I wasn’t looking, and smacked him. The guy thought it was hilarious.

So, after this gauntlet, I then had to walk another half mile, in heels, through a harassing gauntlet of touts, around the Kejiguan to the back door where the party was. At the entrance there was a chorus of 300 Chinese girls singing bad pop songs in off-key Chinglish, it was like a bad dream. David Lynch, Tim Burton, they have nothing on the surrealism of ShangHigh Society. THEN I was told I had to check my camera, and to do so had to walk several hundred meters back the way I came, then back again, through the gauntlet. By the time I got in I was in a pretty grumpy mood, not to mention sick and menstrating, only to find that no one else had checked their cameras.

The space looked great, though, very very sparkly, and lots of my friends were there: Cloudy, Gay Greek, the Israeli photojournalist, and of course all of the Scandinavian crowd. The Israeli has gotten in the habit of subjecting me to impromptu photo shoots whenever I see him; last time it was coming out of a sketchy latrine at an art warehouse complex.  Of course, I am a very cooperative subject. I’m such a ham.

The Kylie concert annoyed the crap out of me. It interrupted a perfectly good party with annoying pop music and huge surging crowds trying to get a glimpse of her. Gay Greek squealingly dragged me to one precarious ledge after another so we could get a glimpse of her, a tiny blue-clad blonde speck: boring. I left soon after when the champaign dried up. The swag was a towel and a scarf, a B- in the swag rankage I say. I landed a fabulous taxi driver back: fast, efficient, and really nice - chatty but not annoyingly so. I sometimes call and complain when I get an asshole driver; I am going to call and sing this guy’s praises. I mean, not bilking a drunk laowai in Pudong should qualify him for siji sainthood.