First impressions are usually mistaken, but they are also interesting because the eye is alert to any novelty, and the culture clash is rich with ideas. Warning: this post contains sweeping generalizations. Take it for what it is, and if you are serious about understanding Japan you might want to look somewhere else.

I came to Japan quite randomly, I wanted to spend the holidays in a quiet and relaxing place,  and in the week of the Chinese National Day, Japan seemed the only place near enough with the right conditions. I am preparing for the high level HSK later this month, and the plan was to take a few hours a day to practise my characters.

I chose the South of Japan on purpose, with the vague idea that they would probably be a bit more relaxed than in the North, and therefore more suited to my Southern European nature. I soon found out my assumption was wrong.  For one reason, there seems to be no such a thing as “South Japan”. Although this place is clearly in the South, they call it West Japan.  And the character of the people here is diametrically opposed to any notion of latin indulgence I might have harboured.

The cultural shock came right from the first contact. It was the passport controller at the airport of Fukuoka. I had been given the immigration card in the airplane and, like usual, I had quickly filled my “address on destination” box with a lazy “Hotel Nagasaki”. I couldn’t remember the real name of the hotel, and anyway these things are never checked in any reasonable country. In Japan they are.  And that is how I met my second Japanese.

“What did you write in this box?,” said the inspector when I was led to his office, pointing at the place in my card.

“Hotel Nagasaki?” I said.

“There is no hotel by this name”.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it literally,” I explained, “It is short for ‘a hotel in Nagasaki’.”

“Reservation receipt please?”

“Er.. it is in my mailbox, I haven’t printed it out.”

And they took me to a series of offices until they found a place where I could connect to the internet and produce my hostel reservation from hostelworld.  This took about an hour, enough to convince them that I was a dangerous outlier, so the inspector led me to the searching department.

My third Japanese was an older man who did the most meticulous search I have seen in my life, even feeling with his bare fingers all along the sole of my well seasoned travel socks. He searched into every possible hiding place in my bags and my body, except for that precise one that you were just imagining.

All the while, the three of them -my first three Japanese -  treated me with scrupulous respect, constantly smiling, and polite to the point of scary.

One of the things that was shocking in my first dealings in the shops is the “hi!” sound that they emit all the time, to say hello or to hand you something. It comes constantly and accurately, timed like a semiquaver, dressing any human exchange with a singular martial tone.  But the most awe inspiring feature is their absolute, compulsive, anal obsession with cleanliness. This country must be the cleanest place I have seen in the World by a large margin.

I came to this conclusion during lunch in one Western cafe in Nagasaki, were I witnessed some peculiar behaviour. It was raining outside, and every time a new client finished paying his order, the cashier walked around the bar with a clean tissue and bent down to wipe the drops of water left by the client’s shoes. A completely unreasonable action, even for safety purposes, because the other side of the cafe next to the entrance door was permanently wet and left unwiped.

The only explanation, I figured after a while, was that the entrance area was out of the field of vision of the cashier, hidden by the tables. It wasn’t a safety procedure, it was just that she just could not bear the sight of some drops of water on the spotless floor in front of the bar, even if it was almost pure H2O from the immaculate street outside.

I am impressed by this aspect of the Japanese culture, and I wonder how  the thousands of Japanese living in Shanghai cope with the hygiene situation there. I guess this explains why, being by far the largest foreign community in Shanghai, we see so little of them. They must all stick to their Gubei compounds and restaurants and avoid leaving the area unless it is strictly necessary.

The service in the restaurants here is excellent, and the food is prepared with so much care that you actually feel sorry to eat it. The Japanese like things well done, and they manage because, like most Chinese, they are very hard workers. But there is an essential difference in the motivations: Chinese exert themselves for a dream, to buy a car or a better house, or just to avoid being left behind by their fast ecoomy. Japanese already have all those things. Like Westerners, they have little left to dream that can be bought with money.  So it seems that they  work for the sake of work well done, out of a strong sense of duty and perfection.

When I came to Japan, I was prepared to find meticulous people who revere order. I thought it would be somehow similar to Germany, and although that kind of country is not exactly my idea of fun, it definitely fitted the bill for my week of retirement and study. But Japan is not even comparable to Germany. As far as I have seen it goes further in the field of obsession, to an extreme that for a newcomer -a Southern European one, at any rate- feels like borderline pathologic.

I don’t want to judge the character of the different peoples.  Each culture has its own ways, and all is well as long as we get along. I just wonder if the little world of efficiency and perfection that the Japanese have built around them is not but an exhausting illusion, and if, somewhere in the middle of all their productive activity, they find the time to think of what is important and just enjoy. The people I am meeting here–starting from the fourth one– are positive and friendly, and I have no reason to suspect they are not contented.

I have just been speaking with a PhD in electro microscopy who is in Nagasaki for a World congress in the field. He tells me that more than half of the participants are German and Japanese, because these two countries rule in electro microscopy applications. Somehow I am not surprised.

“It is a good thing we have Japanese and Germans,” I told him, “Otherwise we would be in trouble to wipe the dust between the atoms”

A middle aged man in a dark suit left this car. He didn’t look in the least embarrassed. Was he a pedophile? A cadre under the influence, bringing it home to sweetie? Or just the resigned father of a normal Shanghai girl?

I didn’t stop to ask. But I appreciated the customized kitty steering wheel, rear-view mirror and head-rest. And the heap of slain and skinned pink cats stuffed inside the back window for further upholstery use.

It has been a while since I last wrote, and now I feel the typical blogger’s guilt, the same that drives some weaker souls to start all their blog posts with unasked apologies. But worry not, we are not that kind of blog. We don’t ask for forgiveness here, and that is because we already punish ourselves even before facing the public. What better penance than playing the role of a lab rat for a sociological experiment? Using our own body to test in the open some potentially lethal phenomena?

What follows contains shocking images made public here for the first time. Sensitive readers are advised to close this website now before reading on.

The laowai phenomenon

Everyone familiar with China has heard of this phenomenon. When a person with non-Asian features wanders in the country he gets hundreds of local fingers pointed at him, as he is promptly and thoroughly informed that he is a foreigner (“laowai !”). Even in the 21st century, after 30 years of reform and opening, this behavior is prevalent in most areas out of the foreign-populated centres of Shanghai and Beijing.

Although some foreigners still take offense, it is by now widely acknowledged that the “laowai call” is just  a neutral form of expressing curiosity in a country that is almost entirely uni-racial. It has also been explained as part of a socializing device that consists of stating the obvious to each other, like “Hey, you are back from work!” or “hey, you are a laowai”.

Fig1: Standard testing equipment: “laowai has come!” – “laowai has left!”

But enough theory now. This Summer we took a completely different approach and decided to test the Chinese people’s humour by entering some of the most dangerous bumpkin infested areas of the country wearing the garment in Fig 1. The sampling areas selected were: the tourist village of Zhujiajiao and a fake market in Shanghai.

The challenge was phenomenal, and the reaction of the public was correspondingly massive and spectacular, with whole streets turning their heads or popping out of windows to share in the excitement. It was a great performance of what I believe is called “Kazakh humour”, its main characteristic being that nobody is sure who is laughing at who.

Among the passers-by we discerned and duly registered in the log book the 3 following attitudes:

1. Conspirational –  Those who were laughing with us.
2. Malicious –  Those who were laughing at us.
3. Annoyed – Those who felt they were being laughed at.

Fortunately, the Chinese passed the humour test remarkably well, falling mostly into category #1, with some children and local lowbrows accounting for the #2s. We didn’t encounter any crazy patriot accusing us of hurting people’s feelings, which confirms my previous notion that those people can only be so silly when under the anonymity of the internet. In any case, this T-shirt is a must if you want to be famous in a mid-size Chinese town in the first 5 minutes of your arrival.

Some more pictures of the experiment:

In the fake market

Relaxing facial muscles after hours of being pointed at

The next challenge

If you liked this performance stay tuned for the next experiment. We have obtained the necessary gear to boratize this time an altogether different social group. Equipped with the 7” mangy moustache and the genuine garment in Fig 2, this specimen will make its appearance at the next fashion show in the exclusive M1NT bar. How will the high society in expat Shanghai (more than 50% clad in fake Paul Smith) fare in our test?

Fig 2. Whiskered specimen used for laboratory testing

You haven’t really seen a city until you have been to its zoo. I have known this fact since I was 5 years old, and after many years I suddenly remembered it again last Sunday, and I decided it was about time I went to the Shanghai zoo.

When you grow up you realize zoos have a good side and a bad side. I still enjoy watching a tiger as much as before, but now I have more of an environmental conscience, and I can’t help a sense of guilt at the thought that my joy costs its freedom. Fortunately, the clever sign at the entrance reassured me that the animals environment was taken care of.

NOT!

I was shocked by the behaviour of a big part of the Chinese visitors to the zoo. In spite of all the forbidden signs they kept throwing all sorts of food at the animals. Parents encouraged their little kids, and they all made fun when a monkey could not open a sealed packet of chips or a can of soda. Dozens of people watched and laughed, and nobody thought it was wrong, no guards to be seen either.

They were putting the animals in danger of cuts, poisoning, etc, and in the same time they made the cages so dirty that some animals were literally living in a garbage dump. Some kids were also putting themselves in danger by jumping the security barriers or hand-feeding monkeys.

But what made me saddest of all was to see the king of the junkyard, the Lion, who was taking a lazy nap after lunch. The public had come to the zoo to hear it roar, and they would hear it roar. In 5 minutes I saw 3 bottles of water full of water fly towards the lioness head. She was so used to it that she didn’t even move when she got hit in the paw.

What’s up with Shanghai? I am really surprised because I always considered our city a civilized place. How can people have such little respect for those beautiful animals? And how can the council allow this to happen? I hope somebody puts an end to this situation immediately, it hurts the animals, and it gives a sad image of the city for the Expo.

For comparison I add a picture I took in the zoo of Pyongyang, were as far as I know I was the only visitor of the day. I complained that the animals received political indoctrination, but otherwise the place was much cleaner than Shanghai zoo.

BTW: Kim never travelled further than Russia.

After a terrible weekend in front of the computer I have managed to re-open my site on a new URL. I am fed up of the internet right now and I am going out to enjoy the Shanghai Sun for a few hours.

I will try not to write more about this for a while, one never knows who is watching, and I don’t want to sound like I am rubbing it in. For those of you whose sites have the same kind of problems send me private message, I might have some useful tips.

Actually, the general idea is very simple. There is not such a thing as internet censorship, it is just a well-known bug on the internet that apparently trips on some keywords and then makes some URLs and some IP addresses inaccesible…

All very annoying, these internet bugs! ehzrg7f6xk

UPDATE: This afternoon/evening I still had an intermittent block, but I have finally figured it out. Some of the elements in my blog were still pointing to the old /eng/ directory, and for some reason my Regex search was unable to find them. Thanks to my friend and IT genius Giom I have found a firefox add-on to see the traffic from my site, and corrected all the references. Blog should be completely “debugged” now.

This is the imposing main entrance of my favourite university campus in Shanghai: HuaShiDa.  I like this entrance because it is very green and very complete, and it has everything from a roundabout sign to a saluting giant Mao, to a construction crane in the background. But what I like most is the inscription:

SEEK TRUTH, FOSTER ORIGINALITY, LIVE UP TO THE NAME OF TEACHER Click to continue »

So guess what now:  I am blocked.

I am banned, prohibited, harmonized, river-crabbed. Censored, in short, by the Great FireWall of China. If you are reading my blog now and have not noticed anything strange, it is because either:

1- You are reading the blog from outside China and therefore you are not going through the GFW (Chinayouren is hosted outside China, you are on the same side of the Wall). Or else,  2- You are reading this from mainland China and you are using some means to connect anonymously and pass through the wall. Most probably a web proxy or  VPN, which is what I am using now. Click to continue »

In the afternoon of the World Environment Day, the sky in Shanghai has gone almost completely black (brown?) at 3pm, and these little babies have fallen from the sky.

In the same time,  many “Environment Day” squadrons were busy in the parks and beaches for the 1 hour long volunteer cleaning up activity. I hope they are all OK.  I’ve never seen the sky so dark.

Are the heavens complaining against a meaningless WED? Is it a sign, on 6/5, that the regime has lost its virtue ?  I let you figure that out, but please do not leave home without an umbrella.

Photo: Origin unknown (circulating on emails)

The mysterious ways of computer science.

Today for example, I completely panicked when I stumbled into one of the bugs of wordpress. For some reason, when you add a “click to read more” tag next to a section in bold, it goes and turns the whole blog to bold, including sidebar, titles and header. So yes, I think I have gone bold for a few hours,  but it was not intended. I hope I didn’t hurt any feelings.

The Goose Huggers

But this bolding effect is nothing compared to the vicious attack that this blog is suffering from an international band of Goose Huggers. 

I have been wondering for a while what is going on with my Goose post. It is attracting more clicking action than anything else around here, and by now it has become already the most popular of my posts. 

Click to continue »

It was exactly one year ago, almost to the minute. It was Monday, and we had started our meeting at 2pm in the 22nd floor of the client’s headquarters. About an hour later, in the middle of heated negotiations, there was an awkward silence.  It took a long moment before we understood what was making us dizzy. One of the slick managers of the client went first:  he sprang up, kicked his chair back and screamed: “Get the hell out of here!”

Panic spreads fast in the crowds. In the emergency stairs people screamed and treaded on each other as they desperately prodded at their cell phones. The crammed staircase felt like it would fall on us any moment. It is a sense of utter helplessness of man against the forces of nature. It feels terrifying and it feels unfair. 

Ten minutes later the building was empty, and thousands of employees were safely reassembled on the People’s Square. It was a sunny day in Shanghai.  We smoked cigarettes and, to get over our nervousness, we turned to joking about the reaction of our client. Only later the messages started coming in, and we understood we had just had a slight taste of the tragedy that took place 1,000 miles to the West.

Chinayouren’s thoughts today are with the brave people of Sichuan.

On the internet, the best and most tasteful homage to the victims I have seen today is the one on the taobao site. You have to be used to the exuberant front pages of  the Chinese internet to fully appreciate the impression. Only a little candle on the right side of the logo is in yellow colour, but you will have to follow the link to see it, as animations didn’t come out in the picture.

Last Saturday we went down to Anar to watch the Lions of Puxi. This is a reggae band recently formed in Shanghai, with some familiar faces of the expat music scene, including some of the guys we usually see at JZ. 

I am not much of a music critic, but I can say this band sounds good and it makes you dance. They are all great musicians, with a powerful frontman called Gauthier that rocks the place. We met them outside the bar during the break and they are a friendly bunch. 

We especially enjoyed and sang along the Laowai song, which is in the process of becoming the anthem of an expat generation in Shanghai. Now there is also a videoclip, based on the original Sting. Judge by yourselves. (H/t Xiao Lu for sending me the link.)

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Some pictures of my recent travels in Shanxi & Shanxi. As with past editions, 5 words per picture.

The Shanxis have solid history Click to continue »