Bad Chinese fashion statements

First of all, I really want to respond to some of the comments on this blog, but I can't because it is blocked by the Ch!nese Government and has been for sometime. But I did manage to recently set up the function that allows me to get all comments emailed to me. So I am reading them and although I'd like to respond in real-time, I can't.

Anyway, this post is to talk about some bad choices when it comes to Chinese fashion. I'd like to post some photos to go with this sometime, if I can.

1 Young Chinese men wearing crop-top T-shirts. Well, during summer many men walk around with their T-shirts rolled up to just below their armpits... eeeeww...

2 The good old jeans with high heels combo. One for the women, and usually combined with gaudy jewelery and flashy, glitzy 'extras'... But the jeans and high heels combo, looks awkward and way too Imelda Marcos.

3 Oversize button up shirts that men wear. At least 2-3 sizes too big. Now, I'm not advocating muscle shirts for China, and I don't wear them myself (although my hunky muscles are crying out for more exposure), but let's start wearing clothes that actually fit. A few times, staff at work have said that I like wearing 'tight' clothes... Actually, I wear clothes that fit...

4 Split pants... yes, the babies are not missing out here... split pants - pants with a gaping whole exposing your bottom and hooly-dooly (or girlie bits) so you can let rip with a dump anywhere you like... the park, the road, even allegedly inside shops... and why not!

Made in Hong Kong

Made in Hong Kong - Always wanted to say that... Good old Honkers, hey - these are some photos from the six days we spent in Hong Kong during early May. This first one's of a couple of chunky buildings.











This one shows a hazy skyline view from the Star Ferry.











This is in the harbour, a bunch of old house boats.












Hong Kong really is a great break from many of the cultural difficulties we have experienced in mainland China. There is a free-ish press to start with, so it was great to hear of many of the things happening in China that weren't being reported. The Hong Kong papers are quite critical of the Beijing government. Pollution is starting to effect Hong Kong too - evident in the haze that surrounded our visit there. I suspect a lot of this drifts over from neighbouring Shenzhen - a heavily industrialised Chinese city on the border. But Hong Kong was also great for the variety of food options, great shopping, and has more of a multicultural feel than you get back in Suzhou. People didn't stare at us and we were able to go on about our business. It's an exciting place.

This last one has been photoshoped by me. We were snapped in Shanghai, and the background is Hong Kong. I combined the two because there weren't any great photos of the two of us together in Honkers!!

Where are you?

This is an urgent (and serious) request for contact details for Kerryn Vose and Mikey Nicholls. All of the email addresses I have used to contact them have not worked, if you know either of their details could you email me please.

Thanks

Everything in it's right place

Firstly, if you've been reading any of the entries in this blog, I'm sure you'd agree that everything isn't in it's right place... at least in terms of my head... Where you at? I don't know... But I do know that I need a more positive attitude to dealing with this strange land. Humour laced activities, such as putting up signs in elevators are fine, but that's not going to go along way to persuading me that my time here is assisting in bringing about a better, fairer Ch!na.

The theorists' theories about the 6 month cultural shock period that then subsides into a period of acceptance and authentic enjoyment of a new culture, isn't mirrored by my experience. So yeah, here I go again, venting my frustrations on the net. Other than a recently stronger effort at fighting fire with fire - deliberately staring back at those who stare at me, whipping out the finger on occasions or some choice language, what are the options? (I hear my brain ask...)

I just don't feel I've fully adjusted to life in China yet - at least not in a positive way. I'm still quite negative towards the things that p\ss me off - staring, the Govt's control, access to information, limited food choices, pollution, other peculiarities....

So right now, I'm going to rant and rant into my little blog, and then maybe, one day it will all stop... ... ...

2 weeks and counting

Updating the earlier post about the "don't wizz in the elevator" sign, here's the proof. This has been up for 2 weeks now, in both of our elevators. There doesn't appear to be much evidence of anyone removing it, but Nancy stuck it up with quite strong adhesive, so I think it will be there for sometime. Apparently the translation was slightly incorrect, so no doubt most Chinese people will deduce that someone with bad Chinese created it, ie a Westerner. Anyway, we are happy with our work, it brightens up our days when things aren't going so well.

more stuff blocked

Blogger is still down, Flickr is down now too - since last week all Chinese users have been unable to view any pictures on flickr. Rumour has it that it's because of a whole lot of Tiananmen Square incident pictures uploaded recently... I'm sure the blocking of YouTube is only just around the corner, because there's plenty of news coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre and other things up there...

Two nights ago while watching CNN, a story started, "A man in jail" or "Prisoners in..." and then was 'mysteriously' blacked out for the rest of the story.

This is all just so frustrating, makes me want to go out of my way to be subversive...

Check this and this out...

grow up

Anonymous message to the Ch!nese tossers who block blogger and other useful sites on an almost weekly basis... Grow Up! It seriously p-sses me off that you bunch of brain-washed dweebs are living in the 21st Century and still trying to control what people think. You must be all so scared about people having an opinion in Ch!na - imagine that! "Ooooh, what if people could actually express their own opinions on a site like blogger.... hmmm, what if people could actually listen to other people's opinions on these sites....ooooh - sounds dangerous! Better stop that quick and smart"....

Get your hand off it...

Right now, I'm so totally fed up with many of the things that happen here. I've been reading a probably slightly biased book about M A O - "The Unknown Story". It's about 700 pages long and I'm half way through it. I'm up to 1949 when M A O actually takes control of the country. But already under his guidance the amount of death, suicide, torture and abuses is staggering. Millions of people sacrificed for his causes and I still haven't made it to the notorious famines and socalled "Cultural Revolution". It's not only disgusting to hear of the millions of people that were killed or tortured - but it's hearing about sexual mutilations, disembowlments and being buried alive etc - the way things were carried out that is really scary. This sort of treatment of humans seems to be a well established theme in this country, and if it wasn't M A O who was to do this, I'm sure one of his other cronies would have acted in the same way. So much of their history is completely untold - not just here but largely in the West.

Of course, in balance, the 20th Century was full of bloodshed, torture and genocide in many places in the world. But Ch!na's place in this history is extremely downplayed or unknown due to the culture of rewriting history and fabricating of events - turning atrocities into victories for example. What sort of a country actually uses their own tanks and guns to kill their own citizens for protesting? (talking about the great unknown and rewritten history of the T-Square incident of 1989 where somewhere between 200 and 400 people were killed).

Please provide your comments to help me deal with my frustrations. I know that getting angry is futile and not constructive. Oh - but right now, of course, I can't read the comments section because its blocked...

Suzhou traffic

Here's another short movie I put together. As Radiohead once said, "Everything... in it's right place"...

We got a boy on the way

Baby update. This weekend we found out that the baby to be is a boy. We saw the ultrasound which was good, it really helped make this whole thing a lot more real. We saw pretty much everything - the body, the heart, the spine, the face... and other things that I'm sure you can work out. Although it all looked like some alien type creature I'm sure it won't come out that way. This is also good because now I have to get a bit more serious about names. Ms Wurly's been hassling me to start taking the name-thing serious. Apparently my suggestions of "Fartler" and "Hildario" weren't so good.

Names can be viewed as being important in that they help define the character of the person, and they're words that you're going to say a lot in your life. Alternatively you could consider a name to be an arbitrary, but necessary 'thing' that society requires. My opinion fluctuates between the two thoughts.

Anyway, I know that some of the more left-field names Chinese students have chosen as 'English names' won't be needed. Here's my account of some people I've met (or fellow English teachers have met). Yes, this list is deadly serious:

Shelf
Promotion
King
Winner
Flyer
Superman
Oasis
Ci Ci
Headerson
West
Groger (one of my kids – but think he means George)
Harry Potter (all a first name)
Strawberry
Justice
Kcon (pronounced ‘con’)
Hitler

That last one is not one of my students, but a fellow teacher's friend's former student. But most of the others I can vouch for myself.