Once more unto The Barstool!

I have just chosen the winners and the 'honourable mentions' from the first month of my 'invent a band name' competition over on the Barstool.

Please go and take a look. There is much amusement to be had there. Tell all your friends.

And please, keep your band name suggestions coming - I shall try to keep this feature running throughout the year.

Self-destructive tendencies

Some people felt that my remark last week that "the Chinese seem to have very little innate sense of self-preservation" was just another of my trademark overstated japeries - but NO, it's really, horrifyingly true.

Although laid up for most of the week with a horrible dose of bad bowel, I have ventured out for an extended walk around my neighbourhood hutongs at dusk on the last two days, to enjoy the celebrations of the Lunar New Year - celebrations which, of course, mostly involve setting off large amounts of fireworks..... on the sidewalk.

I like to share in the joy the local people obviously feel at this time of year; but this empathetic spiritual uplift is rather undercut by the almost constant anxiety that you are about to witness a very nasty accident indeed.

Amongst the outrageously dangerous, unbelievably stupid things I have witnessed in the last 48 hours:

1) Lighting fireworks with a cigarette. A ubiquitous practice - often while the cigarette is still in the mouth. I saw one guy actually squatting down over a box of rockets, trying to light the fuse this way.

2) Sifting through piles of still smouldering spent firecrackers with bare hands, attempting to retrieve any non-ignited ones (on Wednesday night I saw a kid of about 3 or 4 years old doing this, in full view of his unconcerned parents).

3) Attempting to light a volcano firework..... barely a foot away from one that's already in full flow.... and downwind from it (you think maybe you lit the wrong one first, fella?).

4) Holding a cigarette lighter right next to a large Roman Candle - and right up close to your face - in an attempt to illuminate the 'DON'T DO THIS!' instruction written on the side.

5) Two teenage boys teasing each other by tossing lighted bangers at each other's feet (not very big ones, but not trivial either); and, on at least one occasion, one of them picked it up and threw it back.

6) Allowing children to light their own fireworks, and often with little or no supervision (again, fairly ubiquitous; I've seen a little girl of only about 7 or 8 years old lighting some pretty big rockets).

7) Lighting a box of rockets (inadvertently??) lying on its side, so that the rockets scud across the ground and smash into the building opposite.

8) Lighting fireworks in the middle of sidewalks (or, occasionally, in the middle of the road), without any concern for passing vehicles or pedestrians, or nearby parked cars. Yesterday, I did spot a group of Chinese youngsters who - with uncharacteristic good sense - had positioned themselves on the opposite side of a car, so that they could watch their big box of rockets go off in comparative safety. The car (presumably not theirs) didn't do quite so well: they had put their rockets right next to it, and it picked up some scratches and scorch marks on the rear door.

9) Holding firecrackers while they're going off. Yet another ubiquitous vice. And some of these are pretty big firecrackers: they make a deafening racket, and spit big sparks and fragments of casing a distance of some yards. And some of them come in very long strings. But it seems to be a custom with Chinese guys that you have to show how tough you are by holding on to the top of the string until the last possible moment......

10) And - my favourite! - returning to a lit firework. I'm sure this was one of the cardinal safety rules dinned into our heads as children in the UK: "Never return to a lit firework." That might be a somewhat unrealistic rule - I mean, what are you supposed to do? Leave them abandoned out on the street until they bio-degrade?? However, in China the rule seems to be: Always return to a lit firework. As soon as possible. Ideally while the fuse is still visibly smouldering. Pick it up. Hold it as close to your face as possible. Shake it lightly. And, if it is a mortar-type firework, HOLD THE TUBE DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOUR EYE and look inside it to see if you can work out what went wrong.

I am afraid I am not in the least kidding about any of this. It is pretty damned dangerous just to be a bystander out on the streets in the midst of all this lunacy. Constant vigilance is called for. Mortar arrangements typically sag, collapse, flop over to a horizontal position - so projectiles could be shooting sideways past your ankles. There are many duds that fail to go off first time, but may take you by surprise quite some while later. There is such a litter of spent firework casings everywhere that it's very difficult to see if there's a 'live' one in your path - you have to watch out for the gaggles of cowering, giggling, expectant Chinese warning you of the possibility of an imminent explosion in the vicinity.

It's fun, yes; but it's also rather terrifying.

A Chinese New Year haiku

Drifts of red paper
Rustle underfoot; sky full
Of smoke and rockets.

A New Year 'treat'

Here in China, the national TV station - rather disconcertingly called CCTV - marks New Year's evening and New Year's Day with a colossal TV variety show of jaw-dropping tackiness and (mostly) mind-numbing tedium. It goes on for many hours; hours that can start to seem like days. At some point, Da Shan will almost certainly be on (the insufferably smug Canadian who has cornered the market here in foreigner-as-performing-monkey appearances); at this point, any foreigners who happen to be watching (unlikely) will throw things violently at the TV screen.

We shouldn't knock it, really - it is the BIGGEST TV event in the world, with an audience in the hundreds of millions, and the advertising slots fiercely competed for in a blind auction. And it is, I suppose, a useful background distraction from all the overeating, family bickering, and setting off of fireworks which are the main business of the next few days. Indeed, for those poor saps who have not been able to go home to their families (the staff in the handful of bars and restaurants that remain open tonight, the security guards in the sentry box at the front of my building....) it is their only source of consolation at this time of year.

And so, in this spirit of cheesiness-in-entertainment, I offer you this......

I was rooting around on YouTube at the weekend trying to find some clips of Joe Jackson, my favourite British singer-songwriter...... when I happened upon this. How do such things ever come to be? I have no idea!

William "Captain Kirk" Shatner performing Pulp's Common People on the Jay Leno show - with able support on vocals from Joe, and a great backing band featuring exuberant keyboard work from Ben Folds (without the other four on this occasion). I settled down to watch this with a mixture of amazement and embarrassment, but..... actually, you know, it's not half bad. Go on, take a look.

For any Jarvis Cocker fans who find this too much of a sacrilege, here is the original Pulp video of the song.

Happy New Year (again)!!

Yes, one of the great joys of living in China is that we get to celebrate the New Year twice - about a month apart.

Tomorrow sees the beginning of The Year Of The Rat.

Special greetings (and a special rat, below) to my favourite 'rat' - Moonrat, of course. I can't believe it's actually her birth year in the Chinese zodiac, but since she has a special affinity with the animal I think she can properly claim all the privilege and good fortune (but skip any bad stuff) which the astrologers may ascribe to 'Rat' people for the year ahead.

Froog on.... Negotiation

I have been in talks with a few of the major clients of my last employer, sounding them out as to whether I might be able to help them out, on a consultancy basis, with some of their study-overseas or study-in-China-for-a-chance-to-go-overseas programmes.

I had thought things were looking quite promising with one of the biggest of these outfits. I knew that they were going to be ridiculously penny-pinching on their budgets (of course, this is China); so, when they first asked me to indicate my 'salary expectations', I cut the bullshit. It was, I like to think, a tough-but-tender approach, but nonetheless tough; I hoped they would appreciate such a frank, no-nonsense attitude.

"Look," I said to them. "You probably can't afford me. Not full-time. Why don't you tell me how much you're able to budget for this kind of help, then I'll tell you how few hours I'm willing to give you for that - OK? Deal? Deal!"

Well, I didn't put it quite as bluntly as that, of course; but I thought I'd got my point across well; and it seemed to have been taken on board.

Ah, but this is 'negotiation in China'. After an hour-long meeting last week, during which appreciative nods had greeted each of my suggestions for structuring a possible remuneration package, and notes were apparently made of the most important points, and after taking 4 or 5 working days to mull the matter over...... they have just come back to me with the following reply:

"We have decided to completely ignore all the points you made about structuring your remuneration. We have decided to make you an offer based on your being available to us on demand, whenever we choose, for any number of hours per month. And [the KILLER!]...... our salary offer is....... 100 rmb per hour."

It's a good job I wasn't eating or drinking anything at the time, or I might have choked to death! 100 rmb per hour??!! What planet are they from? English teachers get paid 150 rmb per hour. Fresh-off-the-plane English teachers, unqualified and with little or no experience, painfully naive English teachers who accept the first job they're offered..... they get paid 150 rmb per hour. I don't get out of bed for less than 250 rmb these days. And most of the stuff I do pays at least 300, 400, 500 rmb per hour.

As an opening offer, that is just stupid - an insult. However, this is China: it's probably not intended to be a serious offer. I can see this developing into one of those protracted haggling death-matches one gets embroiled in at the Silk Market or Yashow, where you pass the electronic calculator displaying the offer and counter-offer to and fro between yourself and the hectoring stall-holder for what seems like hours.

I hope it is, anyway - because I usually come out of those market-trader encounters getting (more or less) what I want. I just wish it didn't take so bloody long!

Tears of laughter

If I don't get a grip in a minute, my neighbours may summon the men in white coats to take me away to the Funny Farm. I haven't laughed so hard in, oh, ages......

Via the always entertaining (and suddenly very prolific again) Webside Gleanings, I discover this list of classically dumb things that have been said recently by contestants on UK quiz shows.

Of course, when you have such obviously dim people (and dim people who are utterly petrified about being on TV - or even on the radio), it is a bit of a cruel and unusual punishment to bombard them with 'helpful hints' of the "rhymes with...." variety.

I think my favourite from this collection is:

"What name is given to the medical condition where the sufferer can fall asleep at any time?"

"Nostalgia."

(Actually, that's a really tough question. And you know, I quite like 'nostalgia' here - it's not an utterly stupid guess; charmingly appropriate, in a way.....)

Mind you, the question about Dallas and the one about court jesters are both also CLASSICS. The whole list is pretty good - go check it out for a couple of minutes of soul-purging mirth.

Is there YouTube in Heaven?

There had better be.

If there is any doubt, I'm afraid I am just going to have to live forever.

So many songs, so little time.

A traffic vignette

Yesterday, as I was walking to a lunch rendezvous, I witnessed an alarming moment of drama on the street - a near-collision between a taxi and a bicycle.

The taxi decided to pull a U-turn in the middle of the street - without slowing down very much first or (of course - this is China!) checking mirrors. The cyclist was putting himself in harm's way by trying to overtake the cab down the middle of the road (cyclists usually have the sense to keep to the sides of the road: it may be the wrong side, but at least it's the side). Fortunately, he heard the whirring wings of the Angel of Death and dodged his fate by inches with a nifty last-minute swerve.

The amazing thing about this, really, was that it did not develop into a major incident. The cyclist paused to yell a few choice obscenities, but then remounted and wobbled on his way. The taxi driver, evidently feeling his ancestors had not been insulted to a sufficient number of generations to justify his parking his car in the middle of the street and getting out to launch into a counter-harangue, completed his dodgy manouevre and sped off in the other direction (perhaps to score some cardboard baozi for his lunch). Ordinarily, an episode of this kind would result in a 20 or 30-minute slanging match - blocking the road, with traffic backed up a couple of hundred yards in all directions.

Is the Olympic propagandizing about 'politeness' finally starting to have some effect on the city's millions of road-ragers? Or were these guys just in a godalmighty hurry to grab their noonday meal? Or maybe it just didn't seem to them like such a scary, scary, scary what-the-fuck-are-you-people-doing don't-you-want-to-live moment as I had thought it was.

Start the week with a Tom Waits bon mot

"You can't live all your life in the present."

Tom Waits

I thought this was particularly appropriate for today's bon mot, since I am projecting into the future with this post. Anticipating that I will be incapable of posting, or of any form of coherent communication, for much of tomorrow (after starting the day with a 5-hour alcohol breakfast while watching the Super Bowl) I thought I would take care of my Monday morning 'bon mot' ritual a little early and change the time-stamp to make it appear that everything is as it always is. I hope you, my readers, are reassured by this consistency of routine.

Line of the Day

"I'm worried my hamster may be gay."

Oh, the strange anxieties of the modern pet owner! One can't somehow imagine Richard Gere expressing such misgivings.

It has been a long and strange and drunken and very good day...... but this comment over lunch has lodged most prominently in my quirk-hungry brain.

Another Classical poem

It is an occasional Sunday 'tradition' of mine to share a favourite poem of mine with you.... and I am particularly pleased today to have discovered this previously unknown-to-me piece by my great favourite, Robert Graves. I mentioned a few weeks back that, as a Classicist, I have always been a cherisher and collector of poems and stories with a Classical theme - I can't think how I can have overlooked this one for so long!

Ulysses

To the much-tossed Ulysses, never done
With woman whether gowned as wife or whore,
Penelope and Circe seemed as one:
She like a whore made his lewd fancies run,
And wifely she a hero to him bore.

Their counter-changings terrified his way:
They were the clashing rocks, Symplegades,
Scylla and Charybdis too were they;
Now they were storms frosting the sea with spray
And now the lotus island's drunken ease.

They multiplied into the Sirens' throng,
Forewarned by fear of whom he stood bound fast
Hand and foot helpless to the vessel's mast,
Yet would not stop his ears: daring their song
He groaned and sweated till that shore was past.

One, two and many: flesh had made him blind,
Flesh had one pleasure only in the act,
Flesh set one purpose only in the mind -
Triumph of flesh and afterwards to find
Still those same terrors wherewith flesh was racked.

His wiles were witty and his fame far known,
Every king's daughter sought him for her own,
Yet he was nothing to be won or lost.
All lands for him were Ithaca: love-tossed
He loathed the fraud, yet would not bed alone.


Robert Graves (1895-1985)

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Molly the Cheerleader

Well, no, I doubt if I would really go for a girl like this. I mean, the taut body and the bubbly personality are certainly very appealing (and these girls aren't complete airheads either - they all seem to have degrees these days); but this just isn't my type somehow.

However, I did meet the lovely Molly when she was over here with a few of her colleagues from the New England Patriots' cheerleading team last month, and was more than a little smitten.

And it is Super Bowl weekend.

And, since the Packers - the team I usually support (and would fear ever to root against under threat of being ostracised in perpetuity by my America-based amigo The British Cowboy) - were apparently edged out by the Giants in the the Conference Final the other week (I have only just discovered this - god, it's difficult to actually find the results on any of those NFL webpages!!), I am at liberty to side with my Beijing buddy The Man In Black in pulling for the Pats. And watching out for Molly on the sidelines......

The MIB and I have yet to agree on a venue for watching the game, but there are several options. I just need to make sure I can drag myself out of bed in time for what will be here in Beijing a pre-dawn kick-off.

Ah, Molly, Molly...... what is so fascinating about you? Is it the name? Is it the boots? Is it the obvious unattainability?

Cyber conversations

It's been a busy week in Blogland for me this week. It is rather sobering to reflect that my prodigious output on my two blogs (well, three if you count BookBook as well) is only a small part of my writing effort. I am also a frequent commenter on several friends' blogs, and a prolific e-mailer and text-messager.

Here are just a few brief highlights from the many exchanges in these various media that I have been involved in this week:

Text message, from my friend DD to me:

"No, it was fine. I was mesmerised, until I got bored."

(Re: My apology to her for having dragged her along to an especially weird and not particularly involving Xiao He gig at the new Yugong Yishan music club last Sunday.)

E-mail, from me to Moonrat:

"I'll settle for 'tsunamis' if it's all getting too complicated."

(Re: Her plan to print some T-shirts with selected examples of her boss Robert's hilarious 'Gems of the Day'.)

E-mail, from me to Man In Black:

".... nowhere too far east of Gongti. My 'dark horse' suggestion would be Kro's....."

(Re: Discussion of where to get wrecked while watching the Superbowl next Monday morning.)

Blog comment, my reply to old Oxford buddy Mothman's recent reminiscences over on the Barstool:

"..... immediately after the Benylin incident....."

(Re: One of the famous low points in The Bookseller's career of insanely heavy partying.)

Blog comment, a rare moment of intellectual semi-seriousness over at The Granite Studio:

"Later versions of the Iphigeneia story [Agamemnon's daughter, who was sacrificed to the gods to procure a favourable wind for the expeditionary fleet to sail against Troy] transform it into a "just testing you!" prank of the Abraham & Isaac variety, and have the young girl miraculously rescued by the gods at the moment of death."

(Re: The prevalence or otherwise of human sacrifice in early European and Chinese societies.)

Blog comment [forgot about this one at first!] to the Imagethief (who was chiefly responsible for first luring me into all this blogging malarkey 3 years or so ago):

"No, China mobile doesn't really know who I am or where I am. But they may occasionally know where my handset is when I don't."

(Re: The latest scaremongering story in the Western press about supposed 'Big Brother' surveillance in China via the mobile telephone network.)

And there was more. So much more. These are just a few of my favourite snippets.

I do in particular commend you to the excellent Granite Studio (lots of great stuff on there in the last couple of weeks: owner Jeremiah, after considerable teasing of me in recent months for the verbal incontinence of my blogging, has suddenly begun to outstrip me in his output), which is this week celebrating its escape from the on-again-off-again-on-again censorship tribulations of Blogspot. Teething problems with the server have meant that thus far the supposed greater accessibility/reliability of the new arrangement have yet to prove themselves...... but, touch wood, things seem to be operating smoothly now. I have got involved in a couple of bracing exchanges there this week: here and here.

Traffic Report - blog stats for January '08

56 posts on Froogville last month, and nearly 16,500 words.

Barstool Blues was again hard on its heels, largely thanks to the major series of posts on 'Dating in Beijing' last week: only 40 posts but getting on for 16,000 words.

The comment community is diversifying a little, as I have attracted a number of Moonrat's Minions over here in the last month or so (although they usually seem to be frightened off by the craziness after a single visit!) and have also goaded old, old Oxford drinking buddies The Bookseller, Mothman, and Little Anthony out of their long hibernations. My 'competition' challenge to find the funniest name for your fantasy rock group also seems to have enticed in a few passing strangers. Perhaps this will be the year I finally make it 'big' in Blogland.

"I've always been big! It's the Internet that's small!"

An 'It's that time of year again' haiku

First sign of the storm,
Distant rumble of thunder:
New Year's fireworks.

It begins. For the past few days - since the weekend, I suppose - we've been intermittently disturbed by distant bangs and pops and rattles, the fabric of the day torn by unseen staccato explosions. You imagine this is was it must have been like during the bad times in Beirut or Sarajevo - isolated bursts of gunfire becoming so commonplace that you barely register them any more, barely stir in your sleep.

The Chinese New Year's Eve is still 6 days away, but the warm-up for the annual firework frenzy has begun.

When I first arrived in this city, a firework 'ban' was in place. It was not very vigorously enforced, and the firecracker mayhem during the 15 days of the 'Spring Festival' holiday was pretty extreme. I had naively supposed that it couldn't get much worse when the ban was lifted two years ago. Oh boy, was I wrong! I then tried to kid myself that everyone was indulging in a cathartic firework splurge to celebrate the end of the ban that first year, and that it wouldn't be quite as bad in subsequent years. But last year, it was every bit as bad. And this year? Well, I imagine it will be the same. Spent firecracker casings cover every sidewalk, fill every gutter; they accumulate into snowdrifts, are sometimes swept up into towering street-corner pyramids; intermittently they are spirited away by street cleaners, but always this detritus of singed cardboard is replaced within hours. Gunpowder smoke clogs the air continuously; it's often so bad that it closes down the airport. New Year's Eve will be the worst - a deafening, unremitting cacophony from late afternoon through to the early hours of the following morning. That first 'big' New Year a couple of years back I spent with a few friends in a near-deserted Bookworm - and the din from outside was so intense, we struggled to carry on a conversation. Yes, that is the peak of pyrotechnic overkill - but it will continue, more or less round-the-clock, for the whole of the following fortnight. It is quite an ordeal to live through (refer to my posts from this time last year - especially this one - for more examples of the hazards we face at this time).

Ah, but maybe things will be a little better this year. The government, I am told, is 'cracking down' again - but this time the focus is on firework sellers. The reports I've heard are garbled, though: I'm not sure if there's supposed to be a ban on selling fireworks within the city altogether (in which case people will just go out to the outlying villages to stock up), or simply on kerbside vendors and other 'unlicensed' outlets (which is likely to be pretty ineffectual, and sounds as if it is just a way for the government to try to cash in on the consumer frenzy by collecting 'licensing' fees). I forget what the figures bandied around for Beijing's expenditure on fireworks was the last couple of years, but it was colossal - well over a billion yuan, I think. Of course, the thing you can never find any accurate or comprehensive figures for is the number of firework-related deaths and maimings - which, given the volume of explosions being set off in the city this month (and given the fact that there is limited public education on safety, and that the Chinese seem to have very little innate sense of self-preservation), is likely to be HUGE. The 'illegal' firework manufacturers and vendors are, I fear, no more than a convenient scapegoat for the government's failure to take any real measures to promote public safety - the few accidents that are admitted to in the next fortnight will almost certainly be blamed on faulty merchandise rather than reckless behaviour and a lack of public education about basic safety precautions.

We must all keep our heads down and our fingers in our ears for the next three weeks. It's going to be a rough ride.....

Who is this Froog person anyway?

Some have asked. Heaven knows why!

If you're really interested to learn more about the eternal enigma that is Froog, here is the thumbnail biography I knocked up as 'back jacket copy' for a would-be novel as my entry in Moonrat's competition last week.

Froog attended Oxford University, where he was rendered virtually unemployable by a degree in Classics. He has flirted with careers as an academic, a schoolteacher, a lawyer, a TV producer and a beachcomber, but was spurned by all of them. He is a recovering teetotaller who moved to China in 2002. He now lives in Beijing, working mainly as a technical editor for a variety of academic journals, educational publishers, and business information services.

For the really curious (Beware of the Cat!!), this is a more richly detailed version that I created for one of the training companies I was involved with last year.

Froog was born in the UK, in the small city of Hereford near the Welsh border. He attended Oxford University, where he took a degree in Classics (an exceptionally diverse 'major' covering the language, literature, philosophy, art and history of ancient Greece and Rome). He then attended the School of Education at Durham University for one year, successfully completing a PGCE (Post-Graduate Certificate in Education), qualifying him to teach both Classics and English at secondary and tertiary level in the UK. During this year he was lucky enough to undertake a 'teaching practice' with the inspirational teacher, Adrian Spooner, who was then developing his "language awareness" coursebook, 'Lingo', which used the language and culture of Rome and Greece as a medium for enhancing the English language skills of younger secondary school students. Froog drew on this experience in writing his course dissertation on the problems of native speaker language acquisition and on the ways in which comparisons with the teaching and learning of other languages can be helpful in the English classroom. After qualifying, Froog worked for 4 years in a small private school in south-west England, mostly teaching English (but also Latin, Greek, Classical Civilization, Ancient History, Drama, and Film Studies). He particularly enjoyed working with some of the low-ability groups in the school, in which many of the students suffered from serious learning difficulties such as dyslexia. It was also here that he first became interested in the challenges faced by speakers of English as a second language, since a large number of the students were Chinese (mainly from Hong Kong and Singapore).

Temporarily retiring from teaching after a serious illness, Froog soon returned to the profession, working as a private tutor around Oxford giving one-to-one coaching in preparation for the national school exams, and becoming an Examiner in English Literature in these exams at both the 16-year and 18-year-old level (GCSEs and A-Levels). He also trained as an EFL teacher with the well-known Oxford International School of English (OISE), and delivered more than 500 hours of classes for them over the following 18 months. Then – at the advanced age of 30! – he took a "year out" to go backpacking around the world. The main focus of the trip was a visit to an old college friend who was teaching at Jianghan University in Wuhan. He spent nearly three months there, using it as a base for travels around the central provinces of China, and fell in love with the country.

Back in the UK, Froog returned to academic study, taking a Diploma in Law at the University of Westminster in London, and then attending Bar School to qualify as a barrister (trial lawyer). He won a scholarship to intern for a year with a commercial law firm in Toronto, but on his return found that there were no openings in the profession in England for someone of his age. Instead, he went to work in business, joining a TV production company which specialised in making corporate promotional videos and designing websites. Although initially taken on as a salesman, he soon became a team leader, managing production projects from inception to completion. Later, he moved to a similar role with a leading corporate hospitality provider.

However, Froog could not shake off his fascination with China, and when the chance came up to move to Beijing in 2002, he jumped at it. At first he taught English in Universities: the Beijing Normal University, the North Jiaotong University, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Since 2005, he has worked entirely freelance as an English teacher and business trainer, developing and delivering courses for such companies as Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, Allen & Overy, Siemens, Alcatel-Shanghai-Bell, Beijing Power, China State Construction International, Sinopec, Lenovo, and the Bank of China.

He also provides specialist training seminars on business skills such as leadership, problem solving, time management, and giving presentations, and has taught on a number of pre-MBA and pre-MPA primer courses.

These days, teaching and training is only a sideline for him, as his focus has shifted more towards educational consultancy. He is also much in demand as a voice recording artist and as a writer and editor of English teaching materials, and has several further occasional jobs editing and polishing reports for academic journals, PR firms, marketing consultancies, business information services, etc.

He may write a novel or a travel book one day, if he can rein in his prolific blogging habit.

So, if you know anyone who might have a job for me......

It's a funny old world

My thanks to Ello (one of 'Moonrat's Minions', who keeps an amusing blog of her domestic struggles, with the fantastic title Random Acts Of Unkindness) for alerting me to the above piece of craziness. Yes, this is not just a joke, this actually exists. It is suggested in the promotional copy that these 'love seat' loos could actually bring couples closer together and cure relationship difficulties. Really? I should have thought it would be more likely to accelerate terminal ruptures, amid shrieks of, "What have you put in my bathroom, you pervert?!"

The Two-Da-Loo™ is apparently manufactured in China (although I would not like to speculate as to whether it was also conceived and designed here). I think, therefore, we can be confident of one thing - it won't work.

When I first visited this country 14 years ago, it soon became a running joke with my fellow travellers and the various foreign teachers I was visiting here that we all had to become skilled amateur plumbers in order to be able to survive the country. Really. In every place I stayed or visited, every Chinese friend's apartment, every cheap hotel, every university guesthouse, the lavatory cistern was completely dysfunctional. The Chinese seemed to just accept that this was the way of the world, and always kept a tin bucket of water beside the loo for flushing purposes. Yet my resourceful foreign friends and I often found that we could achieve at least a temporary rectification of ill-fitting outlet valves, blocked inlet tubes, and errant stop-cocks; bent coat-hangers proved particularly useful for such improvised repairs.

I had fondly supposed that things might have improved in this area by the time I returned here in 2002. But no, not much. The loo in this apartment leaked continuously (with horrendous consequences for my water bill) for about 18 months before I was finally able to browbeat my landlord into replacing it. Unfortunately, I failed to get him to buy me a (not terribly expensive) Japanese brand that I know to be reliable; but I did at least get a 'top-of-the-range' Chinese model this time. It still ain't great (the flush button is apt to stick; and I'm quite sure the mechanism will break completely within a few years), but at least it does the job and doesn't waste water like a mini-Niagara Falls.

A few months back, I visited a South African friend in her breathtakingly upscale apartment. When I went to the bathroom and saw the almost-forgotten name of Armitage Shanks (Britain's premier manufacturer of lavatories), I swear I nearly wept with delight.

Of course, it's probably a knock-off Armitage Shanks - but a good knock-off (a "genuine fake" as the local terminology charmingly puts it) is usually pretty close to the real thing; and even a poor impersonation of an Armitage Shanks toilet is going to be 10 times better than any purely Chinese brand I've ever encountered.

Signs your country isn't really 'developed' yet: Inability to build properly working mechanisms of even the most elementary complexity (such as flush-toilets and can-openers)

Signs your country has ideas above its station: Taking on the manufacture of novelty dual-toilets when you can't even get the basic model right yet

I think perhaps I should have titled this post Running Before You Can Walk.

Another job I am unlikely to be re-hired for....

Part of the Xinhua English-testing gig I just mentioned involved giving the interviewees a three-line news item (from a Xinhua story of the preceding week or so) and asking them to "Make comment on it" (obviously the testing materials had not been prepared by a native English speaker - surprise, suprise).

One of the more interesting - surprisingly provocative - of these snippets concerned a recent German government pronouncement opposing any moves to obtain UN status for Taiwan or independence for Tibet. I contrived to make sure that most of my guinea-pigs (well, the more articulate ones anyway) got that topic. They were supposed to have a free choice from a dozen or so different ones, but it was easy enough to 'force' this slip of paper by placing it in the middle of the proffered 'fan'.

I was yet again struck by how thoroughgoing the brainwashing on the Taiwan issue is here, even amongst very bright and well-educated people, many of whom have spent long periods overseas.

Well, for a start, everybody spoke only about Taiwan. I suspect there's less active propaganda about Tibet, but that seems to result in a complete blind-spot about it - the idea that there might even be a controversy over this was apparently incomprehensible to most of the people I talked to yesterday.

After enduring 30 seconds or so of the knee-jerk, pretty much word-for-word identical gabble of the party line on the Taiwan question, I did a few times interject heavily: "But this article is not about Taiwan. It's about Germany." I wanted to follow up by saying, "Why do you think Germany is so keen to kiss China's arse at the moment?", but I refrained.

One girl gushed, "Taiwan must remain part of China, because Taiwan has always been a part of China."

"Oh, really? How long has it been part of China?"

"Always!"

"What about from 1895 to 1945? It was a province of Japan for 50 years, wasn't it?"

"Hm."

"And when did Taiwan actually come under the political control of the mainland Chinese government? That only happened in the Qing dynasty, didn't it? In fact, it didn't become a full province of China until the 1880s, I think."

"Oh, I am so shamed. You know my country's history better than I do."

I'm not sure if that last remark was true or not. I had been trying to tease out of this girl what exactly they were taught in high school about the history of Taiwan's relationship with China. Is the answer really nothing at all? Or nothing beyond this emotive nationalistic crap about it having been spiritually a part of the motherland since the Dawn of Time?

However, there was one positive note to emerge from a day of depressingly unoriginal thinking. One of the other news items was about a sharp dip on the Shanghai Stock Exchange last week, which was blamed on "fears of a new American depression". One of the news editors I spoke to jeered candidly: "Oh, that's just a pack of lies. We try to blame everything on the Americans. There's really very little linkage between our domestic stock prices and the world markets as yet. It's just that our market is very overheated, and everybody is getting nervous ahead of the next Party Congress in March."

Ah, insight, honesty, irreverence. You don't find it nearly often enough, but there is some of it around. Maybe there is hope for this country after all.....

Protection of information

I earned a welcome few bucks over the weekend conducting English assessments on staff of the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The Agency's office compound is rather an intimidating set-up - heavily guarded by sentries from the People's Liberation Army (rather than the police, or the shabby private security firms that most institutions make do with) - and much better-dressed and more intimidating ones than most of those who guard the foreign Embassies.

This is, after all, still a totalitarian country: news can be regarded as a 'state secret', to be guarded with tasers and pistols.

Xinhua, by the way, means 'Newspeak'. The irony is unintentional. They don't seem to have heard of Orwell here.  [Ah, I stand corrected on this last point.  Apparently, it's 华 rather than 话, the hua that means 'China' rather than the one that means 'language'. Pity!]
 

A bon mot double whammy

"Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need."

Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Unemployment spares us from three evils: drudgery, management, and fatigue."

Froog

Wooooo.....

The central loop line of the Beijing subway system has new trains today.

They are really quite snazzy..... although the folly of the decision to have uphostered seats was starting to become apparent after only 5 hours in service. Ah, this is China.

PS I'm not sure if this is somehow related to the introduction of the new rolling stock, but there have been a number of interruptions to the service this weekend. The short hop I've been having to make down to Xuanwumen should only take about 16 minutes, but has three times taken me more like half an hour. Today I decided to come back the wrong way around the loop, 1.5 times as far, thinking it might prove to be quicker - and it was. Things are always a little dodgy on the weekends, and some delays at the Xizhimen and Jishuitan stations (where trains are taken in and out of service and drivers changed over) are routine; but double the stated journey time - that's PFU!

Weekend entertainment - Portishead

I happened to be in a bar the other night (now there's a surprise!) where the TV screen was showing a film of Portishead in concert. Utterly mesmerising, even without the sound (though it was rather disconcerting, annoying to have other background music playing over the top of it - why??). I'd never seen this film before. Apparently it was recorded at New York's Roseland Ballroom in late 1997. I think I'm going to have to get this DVD.

Their fantastic debut album Dummy came out just before my first visit to China in 1994, and I was introduced to it by Toby, one of the friends I visited out here. I don't think he gave me a tape of it, as he did with one or two other albums of his that I liked, but the songs lingered in my head so powerfully that I always think of them as part of the 'soundtrack' of my travels that year.

I had intended to start posting some favourite songs from YouTube on here every week or so, or at least once or twice a month; but I haven't quite got into the habit yet. I will try and do better from now on. I did make a faltering start a while back, with clips of Liz Phair and Belly.

I learn from a quick noodle around the Internet that, after a 10-year walkabout, Portishead are finally about to bring out a third album in just a few months' time. I look foward to it.

And yes, I am hopelessly, hopelessly smitten with Beth Gibbons.

This is the song Roads from that Roseland performance.

Shame, resentment, hesitation

I mentioned in 'the other place' a week ago that I had entered one of my haiku in a competition to try to win a bottle of vodka. Yes, I'm that poor this month.

I have just learned that I did not win. Not even one of the runner-up prizes. And this despite the fact that two of the judges were acquaintances of mine (although it was all done anonymously, and I didn't do any illicit lobbying, of course). For a 'professional' haiku writer (well, you know, someone who writes them every week, sometimes nearly every day), this is rather humiliating. Annoying, actually. (I am piqued also that I only found out the results by checking on the organiser's blog; piqued that he didn't even bother to acknowledge receipt of the submission, let alone notify us of the results [it's not like he had that many entries!]; and piqued that he published my submissions without asking, and under my real name at that.) Although, in a way, I am relieved, because I will not now have to labour under any sense of "thank you for the vodka" obligation to this guy - who I find rather irritating and almost completely talentless.

However, this mild assault to the ego does add to my nervousness in confronting the Moonrat challenge. I have knocked off a couple of entries, but they are not quite what I would wish. And being told you suck by someone you like and respect is a little harder to bear. Dither, dither.

A labour of love

It's done! I have spent a hefty chunk of the past couple of days responding to Tulsa's (entirely forgotten, until she reminded me) request/challenge to come up with an analysis of the expat dating scene in Beijing.

Since Barstool Blues is where I mostly write about my love life (or the lack of it) these days, that is where I decided to put these posts. There's one on the unique circumstances of the Beijing scene, one on my advice to the ladies (!!), one self-analytical one about what I'm looking for in a woman here (and what my prospects might be of finding one), and the last - probably most practical - one is on how to meet people; and then there's a brief follow-up/summary with this morning's haiku.

If you don't live in Beijing (or you do live here but have decided to become an asexualist), this might be of limited interest to you; although I think there's quite a lot of 'wisdom' of more general applicability in these posts, as well as the odd invitation to controversy and quite a few good (mostly self-lacerating) jokes. A leisurely weekend read for some of you, perhaps....