Saturday, August 19, 2006

Ms. Wong's Wild Ride



When I was young I looked forward to our annual trip to the original Disneyland in Anaheim California, when we would have a free run of the park without tickets on General Dynamics Night. Back then the Matterhorn was considered the true “E” ticket ride, but I held out for a smaller venue located behind Cinderella’s Castle. This was “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” an attraction adapted from the now almost forgotten Children’s classic “The Wind in the Willows.” After a 45 minute wait you were strapped into a Model T horseless carriage and then zoomed through a maze of teetering obstacles; teapots, bookshelves, English potting sheds, before you careened out onto a road for more sideswiping action before the finale down a train tunnel and a screaming meeting with the light of an oncoming express train. The whole ride was over in 2 minutes but the adrenaline rush stayed well into Frontierland and Fantasyland.

I got a chance to relive this sensation when on Monday here in Shanghai at 10 am my wife Lingling announced to me and her parents that she was going to rent a car. Today. She had only recently received her driver’s license after passing the obligatory driving school course. But we were planning on some automobile
outing in the near future, like a family trip to one of Shanghai’s canalled ‘water towns.’ No, she wanted the car to run some office errands and to basically show off that she could drive. So before I could even organize my affairs and check that my insurance and last will were in order she arrived with her father from Shanghai Avis with a black VW Santana sedan.

We piled in and set off. We drove about 3 minutes to the
Gate of our compound, which Lingling approached at an oblique angle. Passing through we heard a loud bump and a grinding sound – “What the *%#$@?! was that!!” A little too loudly for Lingling’s liking because she immediately invited me to stay home. She had actually hit a metal post and scratched the wheel well, much to the amusement of the gate guard. We then turned into traffic.

A land full of Chinese drivers, all zooming down the YangGuo ring road, oblivious to each other, in out of lanes, no signals, here a giant dump truck carrying sludge, there a luxury Mercedes carrying a high official off to work. There is that great feeling, for a passenger, of the car being slightly adrift in the ocean. You get this
when the driver isn’t really in full control. But her dad was in the front seat giving loud directions while I was in the back with Grandma and Dario. I hoped the other drivers could see the “New Driver” sticker we placed on the window. We heard honks immediately, as Lingling had failed to turn off her left signal. I smiled at them and pointed to the sticker.

We were on a four lane highway, which required lane changes, but Lingling would slow down when it was time to change, when logic demanded one should speed up instead. Every time she tried to change the next speeding car would honk and she would retreat. No urging from me helped. “It’s O.K. if I drive slowly!” Sure, if you are driving in an empty parking lot. I just closed my eyes and grit my teeth. I remember that slogan I saw once on a Mexican long distance bus. “Dios permir mi regresan.”God permits my return.

Lingling had gotten a car with a stick shift, to prove she could drive with one. I made a mental note to keep track of how many times she stalled. I lost track after about seven. Stalling is wonderful. You try to start up at a green light and the engine conks out and the car shivers and there you are, dead in the water as traffic backs up behind how. Skilled drivers can start and accelerate simultaneously but Lingling was not one of these fine F-1 pilots. It would take about four minutes before we were underway again, all the time me praying that that no one please rear end us.

After a scenic drive over the Nanpu River bridge, complete with another slow motion lane change on the circular bridge approach, we actually reached a destination. All we had to do was park. Ahh, the lost art of parallel parking. Lingling made one approach into the slot, tried to straighten out once, and left it at a 37 degree angle with the rear of the car hanging out into the next spot. I didn’t care. I dashed off to a convenience store to get a drink and restore some chemical balance. I was alive!

We had made arrangements to meet more members of the extended family at a restaurant in a dense quarter of Lu Wan district. Dad tried to direct us down a lane filled with hand carts and street stalls and even Lingling refused. She slowly tried to edge back into traffic, watching only the cars. I watched in silent horror as a woman on our right walked into the traffic to pass a stationary trash dumpster, and Lingling actually began to, well, push her along with the car. “LINGLING YOU ARE HITTING THAT WOMAN!” The lady in question turned around, Lingling stopped, rolled down the window and apologized profusely. Here it comes, she wants some money in compensation, but amazingly she asked for none. She had, after all walked into traffic without looking but…oh at least no one was hurt.

We drove around the next day and Lingling only once nearly took the car into a retaining wall on one of her go-slow lane change attempts. But we all had to agree with her that she’d done well for her first solo driving attempt. And she had, at least by local standards. Avis didn’t notice the scratch and beside she had paid extra for collision insurance. It is the avowed goal of every nouveau richein Shanghai to have their own car, but Lingling says she doesn’t want one just yet. Hopefully by the time she does onboard computers and large rubber bumpers will take all of the excitement out of Chinese driving and you can just punch in your destination, close your eyes, and relax.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

More Sex Please, We're Chinese


Ten years ago, I was on my first date with an open-minded young lady
Beijing, who asked me over drinks with a straight face "What do you think
of Chinese sex?" Unsure at the time if it was a come-on I diplomatically
answered, "Well, there is an awful lot of you Chinese, so you must know
what you are doing." The torrid affair that followed underlined for me
personally that after 50 years of Maoist Puritanism mainland China has
been undergoing its own sexual revolution. Today young singles in Chinese
cities use their cell phones to hook up for one-night stands while pink salon
bordellos and gay bars are permitted to operate freely. MTV dance numbers with
costumes that would make Janet Jackson smile compete with racier talk shows
where interviewees kiss and tell from behind feathered carnival masks. Today Mao might be forced to accept this version of ‘People’s Liberation’ – after all, he kept whole
harems of bright-eyed peasant girls for his own enjoyment.

It was only natural that this unstoppable force would quickly get
under the covers with China's commercial and business boom. With Chinese
factories now producing 95% of the world's sex toys and gadgets the market, both for
export and internal sales is enormous. Residents here in China all remember the
shock, surprise and smirks that greeted the appearance of vibrators, dildos, and anal
plugs in their local pharmacy about five years ago, complete with a white smocked, middle-aged sex health therapist, ready to explain their merits with a straight face.

It is only proper that Shanghai, the city most open to new trends, should be
the venue for the 3rd International Adult Toys and reproductive Health Exhibition-ADCEXPO (held August 11-13 at the International Exhibition Center in Hongqiao). I made my way there last Saturday with the lovely wife and we were greeted at the door by a pair of Chinese cheerleaders, complete with short white skirts and tops and blue pom poms. Nearly 100 exhibitors had set up shop in traditional trade show booths. On display was the whole spectrum of Chinese and foreign sexual paraphernalia available
legally in the country. And taking up up one corner was an exhibit of 250 items from Professor Liu Dalin's China Sex Culture Museum. There was plenty to see for one's 30 RMB admissions.

Companies with names like Girl's Whisper Sexy Underwear Co, Ltd and Shenzen Oddity Adult Toy Limited displayed their wares, with the emphasis on your standard battery powered vibrator with all the bells and whistles. One even moaned from little voice chip. One stiff plastic member "Angry Penis - Imitating Human Bionic Structure" might scare off buyers. Another latex female ass and vagina had all Chinese markings so my wife translated the model name as "BIG FAT SISTER." Not necessarily incestuous, a ‘big brother or sister’ often refers to your senior or older work or school mate in Asia. The female company reps, glamorously but conservatively dressed, handed out catalogs and praised their products, again with that same straight face. How do they do it?

Determined not to come home empty handed I bought a bargain box of 36 “Secret Agent 007” condoms for a mere 10 RMB while the wife flitted off and returned with two sets of skimpy lingerie for 120 Kuai. The Chinese executives were too busy making real deals (“O.K., that’s two container loads of “Angry Penis” for Changsha, payment on delivery next week.”) but I managed to casually chat up some of the foreign representatives. The scholarly gentlemen from the Alexander Institute, a producer of erotic sex therapy DVDs ( www.lovingsex.com ) designed to spice up sex-slumping married couples, complained he had not yet received official clearance to sell his products. The DVDs from his Chinese competitor a few booths down, he said “contain no sex at all, just crashing waves on beaches and trains going in tunnels.” I had to agree. The most explicit depiction of actual activity at this fair was on some of the condom boxes (Is this a 3-some here on one?). The authorities want to hold a firm line against pornography but everything else seems to be permitted these days. In this respect China is no different from some Catholic countries in Europe and South America. However, porn is here, just under the table. My wife’s friend, who runs a DVD shop, sells pirates of American porn with one best seller the 1972 classic “The Devil in Miss Jones.”

Another interesting exhibit displayed full-sized sex dolls from Japan. These aren’t the simple inflatable models, but custom-made, life-like, full bodied models, correct down to the last detail with a price to match, nearly $5000 each. I had heard of some American models, resembling mannequins, going for twice that amount. Over at the dazzling High Tech Novelties display I met Mr. Martin Tucker, an industry pioneer (You
can see pictures of his hard working assembly lines, which produce for the world market, at www.htnchina.com ) He told me about his search for inflatable dolls in Tokyo 30 years ago, when it was all whispers and late night meetings, like he was buying Uranium or something. The Japanese, I told him, call an inflatable doll, a “Dutch Wife” for some odd reason. We both agreed the Japanese were quite odd. They produce some of the most imaginative pornography in the world but they still censor the naughty-bits for the domestic audience with a circle of digitalization (the witness protection program, I call it), a modern application of a now obsolete law from the turn of the century.

The last event of the day was a fashion show of sado-masochistic costumes by the aptly named S&M house of Hong Kong. A hundred rabid Chinese men pushed up against the runway and had to be pushed back by some very loud and angry bouncers.
The show, with some masked dominatrix models showing off leather bustiers and whips, without any collared gimps or slaves, left me wondering how do you explain S & M to the Chinese? ‘Well, you see, some people feel guilty enough to want to be punished’…maybe they might lose me when I get to the concept of ‘power exchange.”
I could only stand a few minutes of the hot, sweaty jostling of the crowd as cameras snapped in the vain hope of catching some unexposed female flesh.

One former communist country does get it, however: there was a booth for next year’s EROS exhibition to be held next June 7-10 2007 in Moscow Russia www.eros-expo.ru . In addition to the usual trade show exhibits, this show will include “a Miss Erotica contest, Body Art Festival, a Naked World Art salon with sculpture, art, graphics and photography, and a Night Clubs show programs fair.” As for China, they just aren’t ready for all that yet, but perhaps next year’s ADCEXPO in Shanghai will have some new surprises. Tune in again next year.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Classical Shanghai


A day after the cello concert I was wandering in the malls
of Nanjing Road and found this woman in a gossamer dress
playing an enormous harp with eight pedals in a Bulgari
bag and jewelry boutique. She graciously let me snap this
shot, which may prove in the end to be the picture of the
summer.

La Dolce Vita a Shanghai


(My earlier post "Osaka Nudo Gekijo" will be reposted in it's entirety when I return to Japan in mid-September)

I once again took the good ship Xin Jian Zhen to Shanghai on July 25, skirting the north coast of Cheju island to avoid Typhoon #5, and arrived to a reunion with my wife Lingling and my son Dario, now 1 year and 8 months old.

Like everywhere else Shanghai is broiling in tarmac-melting temperatures, thanks to everything Al Gore said (so it's all his fault). I hope you are coping, but we are staying cool bye eating cheap watermelon (which Dario likes to smash on the floor when we are not looking) and by hanging out on Saturdays at the Purple Mountain Hotel rooftop pool party in Pudong district. The roof deck of our Zendai Gardens Aparmtnet gets some nice breezes in the evening and offers us a decent urban sunset.
But we hope to enjoy the real thing when we both get down to Thailand for a week on August 20.

On August 6 we met up with a friend of a friend in town, Will Runyon, at the glamourous Glamour Bar on the Bund for an afternoon of concert cello in sumptuous surroundings in honor of Lingling's Birthday. We then went off to a regal seafood dinner at a palacial restaurant full of tanks of delicious and probably endangered underwater species, including sturgeon, wrasses, shark/sharkfin and, yes, waterbugs.
You can view the whole album here:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/shinpath/album?.dir=d646scd

Shanghai continues to expand and amaze. Thanks to the efforts of a few preservationists, enough of the old architercture and row house districts are being saved, but only just. Country people continue to pour in, 3 million last year alone. I spent a broiling afternoon people watching around Shanghai
Railway Station, where these masses squat in the sun, their meager baggage and possessions wrapped in rice sacks and rope, either waiting to leave or for their local connection to arrive. 100 million on the move at anyone time, so they say. I wish them well.

I found a gripping book about another great migration here, the one at home along
the Mexican-American border. The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea reads like an account of the Titanic, but this time all of the passengers were Mexican migrants from Veracruz. The true account tells how a group of 30 were led
by an inexperienced 'coyote' into the desert of SW Arizona, the 'devil's highway,' got lost, and then one by one,how half of them slowly died from thirst and exposure to the sun. Urrea finds sympathy for the Border Patrol, who tried to rescue the survivors with all of their resources, and scorn for both the American and Mexican governments who let the traffic continue unabated. I learned about how the coyote gangs recruit,manipulate, and often abandon their human cargos, in much the same way that the snake heads in China do. It brought back memories of waiting in the desert in the town of Sonoita, only we were getting clearance to go south. I'm sending a copy to my father.