I should start by saying that I am married to a Chinese girl, I love her to bits and I have lots to thank China for this last year. When I think about what I like about living in China I think about food, friends, my job and the fact that this has been one of the craziest moves I ever made in my life!
I had dreamed of doing something extraordinary for quite a while before deciding to come here, I thought of skydiving, climbing a mountain, travelling around the world and trying to get a job in the secret service. (Shh don't tell anyone). So I guess quitting my decent job and moving to Shanghai was the extraordinary thing I finally got around to doing! If you still don't know the reason I came then you can read my first blog.
But what I want to write about here is the things I don't like about China, actually, lets say Shanghai..I wouldn't want to judge a whole country on what I have seen in my time in just one of its major cities. The Chinese are a very proud nation and I have nothing against that, but my experience has led be to see that although they have respect for their country and their traditions, they have little to no respect for each other, and since I have lived here for almost one year, this has had direct effect on me.
THE COMMUTE
I will start with my daily commute to work. I teach English in a great school called Web International, they have many centres throughout China and loads in Shanghai. My centre is in a large shopping centre named the "Friendship Mall" in the Minhang district of Shanghai. It takes me about 45 minutes to get there from my flat and includes a short walk to the subway station, a subway ride with one change and then a short walk to Web. My first gripe about Shanghai occurs in phase one of my journey, yes, the SHORT walk from home to the subway, a three minute walk. What could possibly go wrong? Well, its the act of crossing West Nanjing Road but I am going to be bold and roll this out to any road you need to cross where there are no lights to tell the drivers to stop and the walkers to cross. In England I am used to people stopping their car at a zebra crossing when there are people waiting to cross, especially at the ones where there are no lights, so it came as a great surprise to me when I came to Shanghai and found that no one, and I mean no one, stops for pedestrians. As I am walking to the zebra crossing I can see in the the distance 5, maybe 6 people on either side of the road waiting to cross, and they just wait, and wait and not one car stops, slows down or even looks at the pedestrians as they drive on oblivious of their surroundings. So I arrive, and I'm not a patient person when it comes to waiting for things so I edge out. I can feel the others looking at me as if to say, "Look at this crazy lao wai (foreigner)" but I just wont wait when I know they wont stop, and West Nanjing Road is a busy monster at 12pm on a weekday so there is no chance of a gap in the traffic. So I'm edging out and the cars slow down and we all make it safely to the other side of the street, except that's not what happens. As I'm edging out little by little, the cars are edging further in to the middle of the road to go around me, there are cars coming the other way and they are risking a collision just so they don't have to slow down. I've even had people sounding their horns to tell me they are coming through when I'm already half way across, those people get my middle finger and I slow down and make sure they stop. If there is any kind of minor accident on the road in China it is usually settled by the person at fault paying off the unfortunate soul and possibly the policeman for good measure, but that's another story for another day when your brain can begin to handle the level of corruption in this country. One day, if someone hits me, or my wife or any of my friends on a crossing, I fear I will unleash a torrent of anger that has built up over the months. Let's hope for that drivers sake that he learns a lesson before he drives near me.
So I'm 3 minutes into my journey and I'm already pissed off before I have even crossed the road. But the sun is shining, somewhere behind the car fumes, and I continue down the escalators into the subway station. My first subway journey is a single stop East on line 2 where I change at People's Square. Cue gripe number 2.
West Nanjing Road station is next to Peoples Square station in Shanghai and they are probably two of the busiest stations of the subway system here. So when I arrive at the latter there are many people wanting to get off and just as many people wanting to get on. Its the people who want to get on that start to get me angry at this point. Rather than politely waiting for the people to get off the subway before they get on, they are blocking our exit and crammed up against the door before it even opens. I am usually one of the first out because I have only travelled one stop and stood at the door. So the door starts to open and before it is fully open there are people in my face trying to get on whilst maybe up to 10 people are trying to get off. You don't need to have a high IQ to see that this causes a bit of a problem. As you have probably worked out, I am not smiling this one out. I have many times purposely blocked people from getting on until people have gotten off and shouted for them to wait! Its just completely rude in my opinion but the Chinese sit back and accept this as...well acceptable, and it really isn't. In the opposite situation where I am waiting to get on, I wait for people getting off and I have people behind me pushing through! I block them too and get a barrage of tuts which soon stop when I turn round and say "WAIT!!" When they see I am a tattooed foreigner they seem to comply! Tattoos here are much less common than you think, because they are seen as a criminals only art form. I get totally bewildered when a whole country has the exact same views about things like this. Since being here I have been witness to the same "stock" answers and conversations over and over again. I don't know if this is a side effect of communism where you are told what to think and do in any given situation but it certainly is a bore. Invariably when I ask my students if they like tattoos I get the same result, they say they like it but "In China" people think you are a bad guy if you have a tattoo. Its like no one has a view of their own and they are certainly too scared to go out and get one even if they do like them, because they know that it isn't accepted. Anyway, my point is that in a country of 3 billion people I would like to see a bit more variety amongst the people. If they want to be a world leader they have an incredible power to be an innovative nation if only they can shake out of this singular mindedness about everything.
So I finally fight through the crowd to get to the escalators and I make my way to line 1 and the second leg of my subway journey. This is where I usually take a back seat from the pushing and shoving and get out my book or tablet and relax for the remaining 30 odd minutes. I do however look up now and then to see the same thing happening at every stop. People rush on, fight for a seat and look proud of their victory, I have to laugh sometimes when an argument breaks out over who got there first. When I get off the subway and head for the escalators I see people rushing to get on there too. But the strangest thing then happens, you think that think that these people must be in a real hurry but the moment they get on the first step, they stop dead and allow themselves to be carried up at 1mph. Then they get to the top and walk extremely slowly onwards. This leads me on to realise that there is a great contradiction to the way Chinese people behave. One the one hand they have no time to slow down their cars when they are driving, and on the other hand when they are walking they are the polar opposite. Reading this you must think I am generalising or stereotyping Chinese people but I can honestly say that this same routine happens every single day on every subway journey, and in a city of over 23 million people I dare say I don't ever encounter the same people.
I arrive at work just before 1pm and for the next 8 hours I have a great time. Teaching English to Chinese students is mostly amazing, easy, fun and relaxing. Getting them to laugh is really rewarding and I have made several student friends, some I even spend time with on my days off. I highly recommend it to people thinking of a change of country, job or lifestyle.
SHOPPING
Shopping for clothes is a horrible experience for me here. In China the shops are overstaffed and annoying. The second I walk in there is someone under my nose asking me what I want, handing me clothes to try and generally annoying me. I understand that they are trying to be nice and helpful but they really put me off going again. There is such thing as trying too hard and fashion shops in Shanghai epitomise that notion for me. Elsewhere, in supermarkets, there is only one problem I see and that is a matter of efficiency. When you buy things that are priced on weight you have to get them priced and tagged by a desk in the area where you pick them. So instead of picking your apples and pears, dropping them in your trolley and taking them to the checkout, you have to pick your apples and pears, drop them in your trolley, take them to a queue to be weighed, hand them to the miserable bastard who weighs and tags them, throws them back at you bruising your apples and pears, then drop them in your trolley and take them to the checkout. In a crowded supermarket the size of Luxembourg that can really add some time on to the already dull task of food shopping. Before I came to China I expected great technology and efficiency but I have been disappointed by both in many areas.
THE CONCLUSION
England has its problems, I won't pretend its the perfect place full of happiness and joy 24/7 but having lived in China for almost a year it has made me appreciate more that it is a country of great diversity and originality and I am proud to call myself (half) English (I am also extremely proud of my Italian half)
China is an amazing place, I would not change coming here for anything because I have met my perfect wife and I have enjoyed my time here very much, apart from the little grievances detailed above. I could write more, particularly about corruption, but I will save that for another time.
I would love to see Chinese people respect each other more and stop lying to themselves that corruption is OK and acceptable, but tattoos are for dangerous people. Nothing holds people back more than when they start accepting bullshit behaviour.
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Wednesday 24 October 2012
Thursday 4 October 2012
[MOVIE REVIEW] Looper
---SPOILER ALERT---
I'm a lover of sci-fi, I'm an admirer of good acting, time travel ticks my boxes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favourite current actors and I am looking forward to seing Bruce Willis in another good movie! I'm sure I have said all of the above in seperate conversations over the last few years so I when I heard about Looper I lit up inside!
The premise is simple. Time travel hasn't been invented yet (2044). But in 30 years from now (then) "it will have been" and it will be immediately owtlawed due to its obvious temporal implications. But in a corrupt world something that powerful could never be kept behind a locked door, unused. Someone is bound to use it for gain, and in Looper we learn that the future mobs use it as a way to dispose of bodies since it has become increasingly difficult to do so undeteted. They bound up and bag up their faces, send them back in time 30 years to a "Looper" who then executes them and disposes of their body. The real bummer is that when a future mob boss wants to terminate a looper's contract he simply sends his future self back to himself for termination and "closes the loop" as a kind of housekeeping task designed to stop too many people knowing too much. Failure to carry out an assassination means you will be hunted down and killed by the rest of the team, led here by Abe, (Jeff Daniels) a mob leader sent back in time to employ the loopers.
So the obvious question going forward is one of what you would do when you are face to face with your own future self and your orders are to shoot on site. Which is exactly what happens to our main protagonist Joe played by a strangely unfamiliar looking Joseph Gordon-levitt. I say strange because his makeup is designed to restructure the top haf of his face in an attempt, I presume, to make him look like a younger Bruce Willis, who plays a Joe 30 years on.
Older Joe escapes termination and has an agenda of his own, to terminate a younger version of the new mob leader (in the future) who is closing the loops of all "loopers" and has also murdered his girl in the process. The idea is that the new mob leader, known as "The Rainmaker," will not grow up to hunt Joe down, kill his lover and end his happy life. But younger Joe has ideas of his own and plans to kill his future self in order to stay alive in the now. Bruce plays a very Terminator-esque role, going from door to door of three possible "Rainmaker" kids but then again, who doesnt like The Terminator.
I have to mention that one of the best performances comes from the child who plays the young Rainmaker (Pierce Gagnon). He goes from cute little boy to evil monster in seconds, rivalled in my memory only by the scene in Gangs of New York where Daniel Day-Lewis' character turns from sobbing wreck into serious gangster mode in at most 2 seconds. The kids pure evil eyes are something I will remember for a long time and also remind me of Tony Montana's "I'm angry and I'm gonna kill you for touching my sister" face.
What I enjoyed about this film is that there is no newbie character built in to help explain the deeper meanings of the science behind the movie. In the first Matrix it was Neo himself and in Inception it was Ellen Page's character but those movies were focussing on the science and here, Looper ignores all that and focusses on the "What If" and human aspects, choosing not to get bogged down in the mind-blowing side. In fact even the characters cant be arsed with it sometimes, most memorably my favourite lines are when old Joe tells young Joe "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws" and when Abe explains "This time travel crap, just fries your brain like an egg"
There are more surprises I won't mention here but they do help add to the exciting futuristic science and human evolution aspect you might be hoping for, but they are really just eye candy devices to keep the less mature audiences involved.
Overall this movie can't surpass Dark Knight Rises for my favourite movie of the year, but it feels refreshing and rewarding as long as you go in not expecting too much science and exciting future stuff. Its comes down human instincts and the idea of nature vs nurture. Yes, there are some logic flaws and yes there are questions left unanswered about the science but by the end of the movie you just dont care because you enjoyed the ride and we get the important resolutions (for now??). There is certainly room for a sequel but I hope that Rian Johnson moves on to bigger things and uses this movie as a well earned kickstarter towards "Nolan Heights". I for one will be keeping a keen eye on his progress (and brief back catalogue).
Overall score 8/10
I'm a lover of sci-fi, I'm an admirer of good acting, time travel ticks my boxes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favourite current actors and I am looking forward to seing Bruce Willis in another good movie! I'm sure I have said all of the above in seperate conversations over the last few years so I when I heard about Looper I lit up inside!
The premise is simple. Time travel hasn't been invented yet (2044). But in 30 years from now (then) "it will have been" and it will be immediately owtlawed due to its obvious temporal implications. But in a corrupt world something that powerful could never be kept behind a locked door, unused. Someone is bound to use it for gain, and in Looper we learn that the future mobs use it as a way to dispose of bodies since it has become increasingly difficult to do so undeteted. They bound up and bag up their faces, send them back in time 30 years to a "Looper" who then executes them and disposes of their body. The real bummer is that when a future mob boss wants to terminate a looper's contract he simply sends his future self back to himself for termination and "closes the loop" as a kind of housekeeping task designed to stop too many people knowing too much. Failure to carry out an assassination means you will be hunted down and killed by the rest of the team, led here by Abe, (Jeff Daniels) a mob leader sent back in time to employ the loopers.
So the obvious question going forward is one of what you would do when you are face to face with your own future self and your orders are to shoot on site. Which is exactly what happens to our main protagonist Joe played by a strangely unfamiliar looking Joseph Gordon-levitt. I say strange because his makeup is designed to restructure the top haf of his face in an attempt, I presume, to make him look like a younger Bruce Willis, who plays a Joe 30 years on.
Older Joe escapes termination and has an agenda of his own, to terminate a younger version of the new mob leader (in the future) who is closing the loops of all "loopers" and has also murdered his girl in the process. The idea is that the new mob leader, known as "The Rainmaker," will not grow up to hunt Joe down, kill his lover and end his happy life. But younger Joe has ideas of his own and plans to kill his future self in order to stay alive in the now. Bruce plays a very Terminator-esque role, going from door to door of three possible "Rainmaker" kids but then again, who doesnt like The Terminator.
I have to mention that one of the best performances comes from the child who plays the young Rainmaker (Pierce Gagnon). He goes from cute little boy to evil monster in seconds, rivalled in my memory only by the scene in Gangs of New York where Daniel Day-Lewis' character turns from sobbing wreck into serious gangster mode in at most 2 seconds. The kids pure evil eyes are something I will remember for a long time and also remind me of Tony Montana's "I'm angry and I'm gonna kill you for touching my sister" face.
What I enjoyed about this film is that there is no newbie character built in to help explain the deeper meanings of the science behind the movie. In the first Matrix it was Neo himself and in Inception it was Ellen Page's character but those movies were focussing on the science and here, Looper ignores all that and focusses on the "What If" and human aspects, choosing not to get bogged down in the mind-blowing side. In fact even the characters cant be arsed with it sometimes, most memorably my favourite lines are when old Joe tells young Joe "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws" and when Abe explains "This time travel crap, just fries your brain like an egg"
There are more surprises I won't mention here but they do help add to the exciting futuristic science and human evolution aspect you might be hoping for, but they are really just eye candy devices to keep the less mature audiences involved.
Overall this movie can't surpass Dark Knight Rises for my favourite movie of the year, but it feels refreshing and rewarding as long as you go in not expecting too much science and exciting future stuff. Its comes down human instincts and the idea of nature vs nurture. Yes, there are some logic flaws and yes there are questions left unanswered about the science but by the end of the movie you just dont care because you enjoyed the ride and we get the important resolutions (for now??). There is certainly room for a sequel but I hope that Rian Johnson moves on to bigger things and uses this movie as a well earned kickstarter towards "Nolan Heights". I for one will be keeping a keen eye on his progress (and brief back catalogue).
Overall score 8/10
Wednesday 26 September 2012
First Time For Everything
It's 3:43 am in shanghai, I stayed up to watch my beloved Manchester United play against Newcastle in the newly named Capital One Cup! The game is on the laptop whilst I write my first ever blog "from my iPhone"
I'm not expecting anyone to read it but I fancy my hand at writing more in my 28th year! I have a lot to look forward to in the coming months, if, as they say, all goes to plan! So I would like to keep a record of my last few months here and going forward in the UK!
The big plan on the agenda is the impending move back to blighty, which in my case is the wonderful town of Chesterfield, England! My wife and I are leaving China after the Chinese New Year in around Feb or March! The VISA process seems to be manageable by ourselves but I hope to McJesus that it goes smoothly! As much as I have enjoyed Shanghai over the last 10 months, I miss my family a great deal, not to mention my friends, and can't wait to get back to them!
Here's the backstory! I came on holiday to shanghai (from now on, SH) in July 2011 quite randomly! One of my best friends and his now ex-girlfriend were visiting her brother who has lived here for 3 years. They asked if I wanted to join them and at the time of asking I had no real exciting plans in the pipeline and was just getting over a breakup from a 4 year relationship! I replied with an immediate, "fuck it, why not!!??"
So the time rolled on and I was eventually in SH on the 17th July 2011! I have always had something of a "thing" for Chinese girls in my late teens but never had the chance to meet any until I went to university in Manchester! There was a Chinese girl in my hall but bless her soul, she was very shy and kept herself to herself! Come to think of it I can't remember seeing her too much at all!
Anyway on my first night in SH, I had my first real encounter with a Chinese girl, 2 in fact, friends of my mates, (now ex) girlfriend's brother! (My hand is killing me typing on my iPhone)
Their names were Lynn and Helen, they spoke English quite well and I introduced myself with a traditional Italian style, both cheek kiss! (Being half Italian myself this felt quite normal, but somehow doing it in China felt strange and I didn't know if it was the right thing to do) All seemed ok though and we had a great first night in a bar called Windows Too near the famous West Nanjing road in SH!
Within 20 minutes I was learning the basics of mandarin. They were teaching me 1-10 (yi, er, san. si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi FYI) and we got drunk and had a dance! But my real attention was on the other girl, Lynn! She was gorgeous and I plucked up courage to say hello and introduce myself further. Immediately I saw her English was not as sharp as Helen's and found out she had not been learning as long, but we slowly had a conversation about, I forget now, but I remember her smile and welcoming behaviour to this day. That's mainly because I still see it every day at home, we got married on the 17th July 2012, exactly one year after we met!
I spent a lot of time with her on my holiday and by the end I knew I had found something special, we kind of clicked, in a cliched kind of way. I remember texting home to my parents that I had "fallen in love with a Chinese girl."
I told Lynn on my final day in SH that I would like to come back for her! She cried and said she hoped I would, but she really thought I would just go home and forget her! I promised I would try to come back if she really wanted me to and we kept in touch everyday when I got home!
I kept my promise, after convincing my parents that it was what I wanted and planned my move! It was a prospective case of regretting the things I did or regretting the things I didn't do, and upon thinking of this I didn't once doubt choosing the former! I simply couldn't bear the thought of not seeing Lynn again and so, to cut a long story short, I got an English teaching certificate, quit my job and came back!
Lynn is fast asleep lying by my side as I write this and I can't help but feeling like the luckiest guy alive right now!
It's now 4:40 am, Manchester United have won 2-1, and I'm about to post my first blog!
Lynn...she said her name was Lynn! x
I'm not expecting anyone to read it but I fancy my hand at writing more in my 28th year! I have a lot to look forward to in the coming months, if, as they say, all goes to plan! So I would like to keep a record of my last few months here and going forward in the UK!
The big plan on the agenda is the impending move back to blighty, which in my case is the wonderful town of Chesterfield, England! My wife and I are leaving China after the Chinese New Year in around Feb or March! The VISA process seems to be manageable by ourselves but I hope to McJesus that it goes smoothly! As much as I have enjoyed Shanghai over the last 10 months, I miss my family a great deal, not to mention my friends, and can't wait to get back to them!
Here's the backstory! I came on holiday to shanghai (from now on, SH) in July 2011 quite randomly! One of my best friends and his now ex-girlfriend were visiting her brother who has lived here for 3 years. They asked if I wanted to join them and at the time of asking I had no real exciting plans in the pipeline and was just getting over a breakup from a 4 year relationship! I replied with an immediate, "fuck it, why not!!??"
So the time rolled on and I was eventually in SH on the 17th July 2011! I have always had something of a "thing" for Chinese girls in my late teens but never had the chance to meet any until I went to university in Manchester! There was a Chinese girl in my hall but bless her soul, she was very shy and kept herself to herself! Come to think of it I can't remember seeing her too much at all!
Anyway on my first night in SH, I had my first real encounter with a Chinese girl, 2 in fact, friends of my mates, (now ex) girlfriend's brother! (My hand is killing me typing on my iPhone)
Their names were Lynn and Helen, they spoke English quite well and I introduced myself with a traditional Italian style, both cheek kiss! (Being half Italian myself this felt quite normal, but somehow doing it in China felt strange and I didn't know if it was the right thing to do) All seemed ok though and we had a great first night in a bar called Windows Too near the famous West Nanjing road in SH!
Within 20 minutes I was learning the basics of mandarin. They were teaching me 1-10 (yi, er, san. si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi FYI) and we got drunk and had a dance! But my real attention was on the other girl, Lynn! She was gorgeous and I plucked up courage to say hello and introduce myself further. Immediately I saw her English was not as sharp as Helen's and found out she had not been learning as long, but we slowly had a conversation about, I forget now, but I remember her smile and welcoming behaviour to this day. That's mainly because I still see it every day at home, we got married on the 17th July 2012, exactly one year after we met!
I spent a lot of time with her on my holiday and by the end I knew I had found something special, we kind of clicked, in a cliched kind of way. I remember texting home to my parents that I had "fallen in love with a Chinese girl."
I told Lynn on my final day in SH that I would like to come back for her! She cried and said she hoped I would, but she really thought I would just go home and forget her! I promised I would try to come back if she really wanted me to and we kept in touch everyday when I got home!
I kept my promise, after convincing my parents that it was what I wanted and planned my move! It was a prospective case of regretting the things I did or regretting the things I didn't do, and upon thinking of this I didn't once doubt choosing the former! I simply couldn't bear the thought of not seeing Lynn again and so, to cut a long story short, I got an English teaching certificate, quit my job and came back!
Lynn is fast asleep lying by my side as I write this and I can't help but feeling like the luckiest guy alive right now!
It's now 4:40 am, Manchester United have won 2-1, and I'm about to post my first blog!
Lynn...she said her name was Lynn! x
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