The Dharma Force

China Stuff Part 2

It is hard to talk about my trip in China, besides the meals.

I did not go anywhere. The weather was too hot, the kids were too noisy and did I mention the meals were great in Shanghai?

My wife took my daughter on a zoo trip. She got her pictures taken with some lion cubs. She was holding them in her hands.

For all of you thought that was adorable, please try to remember the stench of the zoo in the summer. I went to the book store instead. It smelt much better there. Unfortunately, for a big store of 8 stories, I could not find more than 2 books I barely liked.

It was not that all the authors were bad, it was just that the whole industry had been changed to be like cheap magazines. Flash covers with weird plots, and no endings. All of them were like that, no depth, no soul reaching depth.

It was all about money, and copying. It just made me sick.

Coming out the bookstore, I started to think that I have stayed in Shanghai too long. Beneath the surface, I started to see the real Shanghai.

Everyone wore long pants.

That was the summary of my observation. OK. I am near-sighted, but I wear glasses, so please bare with me here.

The weather was hot, and I wore shorts. But wherever I looked, I was the only one. It took me some time to realize that. The only ones who wore shorts here were the tourists.

The reason was simple. It was not the question of fashion, but everyone here was too serious. They were all busy to earn a living here, and only long pants were the business attire around here. Only the dumb tourists like me were relaxed enough to wear shorts.

The whole Shanghai was like one big corporation, and everyone here was struggling to make a living. The tension was unbearable, and unhealthy.

One day, my wife and I took our daughter to one of the good restaurant in town. Our son was too small to make the trip with us.

The food was OK, but the service really sucked. Finally, one of the waitress accidentally dumped a whole pitcher of red juice on my wife's pants. We were so mad, but the waitress seemed indifferent. She did not even apologize or anything. So I told her that I wanted to see their manager.

At that point, she started to cry, and said that she would surely be fired, if the manager knew about this. That kind of changed my perspective. The service sucked because all the waitresses here were new. Girls just came to Shanghai from other provinces, immigrants in a sense, trying to make a living in a harsh world.

So I leaned over to my wife, who was still mad about her favorite pants. I said to her, "You know, our meal here is about one month of her salary." Well, actually I exaggerated, it was just about half of her monthly salary. But that hit my wife's heart.

She told the hostess who came to see what was going on that she was not going to complain to the manager, and she wish they would not give the girl a hard time.

The hostess thanked my wife, and offered to take off some charges from our meal. My wife told her that only if it was not going to take out of that girl's salary.

That was actually the norm there. If anything went wrong, the damages would come out of the waiter/waitress's salary.

So the meal ended with my wife had a pair of soggy orange/gray pants, latest fashion. We did not know what happened to the poor girl, she did not come out of the kitchen after the hostess showed up. We wish her the best of luck to make it in the city.

After that, wherever I went, I saw that girl's image. The whole Shanghai city was prospering. The streets were cleaner (relatively better than before.), more and better restaurants and malls popped up everywhere.

But I think few of the people here were actually happy. It was like they were all on a moving train. The train was moving faster, and more people were getting on, and they were all trying their best not to be threw out of the train.