tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104928812024-03-13T00:49:44.158-07:00The Paper TigerSemi-random musings, links & conversation about writing, politics and China...Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.comBlogger678125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-6690814422736744922015-04-26T12:28:00.002-07:002015-04-26T12:28:21.129-07:00Under the dome...A couple of months ago, a documentary about China's pollution went viral, receiving over 150 million hits in the first few days of its online release. Made by Chai Jing, a former investigative reporter with CCTV, "Under the Dome" is reminiscent of Al Gore's <a href="http://www.takepart.com/an-inconvenient-truth/film" target="_blank">"An Inconvenient Truth."</a> It explains the problem in ways that people can easily understand. And it is a call to arms. Some have called it China's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring" target="_blank">"Silent Spring." </a><br />
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Here's Part 1, with full English subtitles.<br />
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I've <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/01/crazy-bad.html" target="_blank">blogged</a> (and written<a href="http://www.lisabrackmann.com/books/hour-of-the-rat/" target="_blank"> a book</a> about) China's environmental problems, which are so severe that they've had a huge negative impact on peoples' health and could undermine China's economic miracle altogether. The Chinese central government—or at least certain factions of it—are well aware of extent of this crisis, and on paper, Chinese environmental regulations are fairly strict. But China's environmental protection agency, SEPA, lacks the funding and the regulatory teeth to actually enforce those regulations, and competing interests that benefit from unrestrained growth and dirty industry want to keep it that way, in spite of the very real costs of China's filthy air, contaminated water and polluted soil.<br />
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These dynamics partially explain why "Under the Dome" was a huge viral hit, with some 200 million Chinese viewing it. Until the video was abruptly pulled from Chinese websites by government censors.<br />
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China's central government in recent years has been fairly tolerant of discussion and even protests, as long as those protests remain localized. And there are many in the government who would like to see stronger enforcement of environmental regulations. But the "red line" in China is any kind of discussion or activity which could form the basis of a mass movement that might potentially oppose the CCP, and environmental concerns in China have the potential to unite large numbers of people. In fact, they already have. From poor farmers protesting polluting factories that destroy their crops to wealthy urban dwellers who would like to be able to breathe safely on the streets of their own cities, these issues cut across class, income and location.<br />
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Sadly, the margins for acceptable public discourse under new President Xi Jinping have narrowed considerably. Environmental activists, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/13/chinese-police-free-three-of-five-feminist-activists" target="_blank">feminists,</a> and <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2015/04/17/gao-yu-sentenced-7-years-prison.php" target="_blank">journalists</a> have been detained and in some cases sentenced to long prison terms for activities that might have been tolerated a few years ago. In the case of "Under the Dome," <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/opinion/why-under-the-dome-found-a-ready-audience-in-china.html?_r=0" target="_blank">a <i>New York Times</i> article</a> speculates that the documentary may have been actively supported by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and then suppressed by agencies such as the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance. From my amateur Sinologist's perspective, I find this a pretty credible theory. As the NYT piece points out, power in China is far from monolithic, and factional competition and fragmented authority drive events far more than many people realize.<br />
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But what is also true is that these competing interests are all "under the dome." Everyone whether they are rich or poor breathes the same air.<br />
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-36972884751454694382015-04-07T23:43:00.002-07:002015-04-09T17:17:35.206-07:00Ladies and gentlemen…comrades and friends...A little over 10 years after I left China for the first time, the Los Angeles Opera staged <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_(composer)" target="_blank">John Adams</a>' opera, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_in_China" target="_blank">"Nixon in China."</a><br />
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You might be thinking, "An opera starring Richard Nixon? That's…an interesting choice." Many critics shook their heads as well, not at all sure what to make of an opera whose characters were not only based on real people but the majority of whom were still alive at the time of these first productions (the opera originated in Houston in 1987 and was performed in LA in 1990).<br />
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My then-boss asked me if I'd like her ticket -- modern opera wasn't really her thing. I wasn't sure that it was my thing either, but I was fascinated by the idea of an opera based on Richard Nixon's historic 1972 trip to China.<br />
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I'd gone to China in 1979 at the age of 20, not because I'd had any particular interest in China. The opportunity had come up, so I took it. I really hadn't had any idea how this decision would impact my life, that it would be in essence an abrupt left turn that took me away from any clearly marked path and into unknown territory. Ten years later, I was still wrestling with the experience. China had been so different from any previous point of reference, and now I was orienting my life around something I really didn't understand.<br />
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<i>(if you look carefully, you'll find me)</i></div>
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So I'd tried to make up for that lack of context by reading Chinese history. In particular, I was fascinated by the enigmatic<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai" target="_blank"> Zhou Enlai</a>, the first Premier of the People's Republic, who held the position until his death in January 1976.</div>
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Zhou, unlike Mao, was still greatly admired by most of the Chinese people I met back then -- intellectuals for the most part. They and many Chinese saw Zhou as the "People's Premier," the rational leader who moderated the worst of Mao's excesses, who truly cared about China and the Chinese people. </div>
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The reality, of course, is far more ambiguous, complicated by the fact that Zhou, unlike Mao and many other Chinese leaders, did not leave extensive written records of his thoughts and philosophy. You have to search for the evidence with Zhou, mine other accounts, dig out salient quotes. You have to read between the lines.</div>
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Anyway, off I went to the Los Angeles premiere of "Nixon in China." This was a slightly revamped staging of the original Houston Grand Opera production, with the original cast. </div>
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From the moment the curtains opened on a choir standing in a stylized Beijing winter landscape, I was hooked. </div>
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Adams as a composer has his roots in minimalism, but "Nixon in China" goes far beyond the sort of repetition you might associate with that style. It is melodically lush and rhythmically complicated (how the conductor and the musicians count some of these passages is beyond me!). It has actual songs you can sing (well, I do anyway, but I'm told I'm a little strange). But what really impressed me beyond the music, which I love, <a href="http://nixoninchinaopera.blogspot.com/2010/01/reading-nixon-in-china.html" target="_blank">is the insightful libretto by Alice Goodman</a>. The words and music come together to convey an amazing amount of historical and character insight. If you want to see what I mean, take a look and a listen at the scene below. </div>
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Contrast the smooth elegance of Zhou Enlai's vocal lines with the herky-jerky repetition of Nixon and his fixation on "news."</div>
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If you want to keep watching, Nixon's aria continues and descends into a truly paranoid passage about "rats chewing the sheets." So Nixon! And then it's on to Mao's entrance, accompanied by his three secretaries, "translating" his disjointed thoughts into a demented chorus.</div>
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But I think what impressed me the most was the opera's insightful portrayal of Zhou Enlai. Nixon is the star, Mao the force of nature, Madame Mao gets the show-stopping aria that closes Act 2, and Pat Nixon is the most sympathetic character. Zhou is much harder to characterize. He has two arias that bookend the opera, one at the end of Act 1, the other that closes the opera. What they do is show a character who has the most insight and awareness of of the cast, who grasps both the potential and the reality of the situation, of that moment in history and how they had arrived at it. He has the hope and the vision that they can truly create a better world, one where the different paths of nations are mutually respected. </div>
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<i>(I love this piece and this performance by baritone Sanford Sylvan. My biggest disappointment with other productions has been that I haven't seen another "Zhou" come close to what he does here)</i></div>
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But for all that, Zhou is ultimately a tragic character, because this awareness is combined with an inability--or an unwillingness--to prevent the worst of Mao's excesses. During the Cultural Revolution scene that closes Act 2, he is but a passive spectator--disapproving, perhaps, but helpless to prevent the chaos. At the end of the opera, he is left to wonder: "How much of what we did was good?"</div>
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Speaking of Madame Mao, her aria is a total blast, the dramatic highpoint of the opera: </div>
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The video above is from the Metropolitan Opera's production in 2011. Yep, "Nixon in China" made it to the Met -- and in fact, after that uncertain premiere back in the late 80s and early 90s, it is now probably the most widely performed contemporary opera of our time. My hometown San Diego Opera <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-san-diego-nixon-review-20150316-column.html" target="_blank">just finished four performances</a> to stellar reviews, and yes, I went. Twice.<br />
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p.s. I would be remiss if I didn't add one of Pat Nixon's arias. They are truly beautiful. Sorry about the ad preceding it!<br />
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<i>Lisa…every other Wednesday...</i></div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-37180551442638230242014-12-17T21:34:00.002-08:002014-12-17T21:34:24.421-08:00On the border...<br />
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<i>(as always, click to embiggen)</i></div>
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I was born and raised in San Diego, California, about a half hour from the Mexican border. When I was growing up, it was entirely possible to ignore the border, if you were a typical White kid like I was. Tijuana, the sprawling, messy city on the other side, was a place that a lot of the time, White San Diego seemed to pretend wasn't there, engaging in an act of civic denial.<br />
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Or, Tijuana was there, but it was "The Other," the place where you went to engage in transgressive behavior, to get drunk, gamble, go to donkey shows, do things you wouldn't do at home.<br />
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Or, Tijuana was a problem. The poverty. The sewage spills. The migrants who crossed illegally. And later, the drug wars. Something you guarded against, built walls to keep out.<br />
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Of course, there was always another side. Latino families with roots on both sides of the borders, who crossed back and forth all the time. People who lived in one city and worked in the other. It was easy to cross, before 9/11. You'd go for a couple of hours. Eat some street tacos. Buy tequila. Do a little shopping. Go to the bullfights if you were into that kind of thing. Maybe drive down to Puerto Nuevo for lobster, and beans, rice and tortillas.<br />
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I remember one time when I was in college, and I was driving a friend home around 11 at night, and somehow missed his exit.<br />
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"Let's go to Mexico," he mumbled, half-asleep.<br />
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"Okay," I said, and we did (I had the presence of mind to stop and buy Mexican car insurance before we crossed).<br />
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9/11 changed that. Even more, the drug wars put an end to that casual crossing. The violence devastated the tourist economy in Baja California. People were afraid to visit. And many residents were afraid to go out at night.<br />
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But in recent years, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/opinion/sunday/the-rebirth-of-tijuana.html" target="_blank">Tijuana has made a comeback.</a> The cartel violence has died down. The city is a hotbed of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/the-tijuana-connection-a-template-for-growth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">electronics assembly and manufacturing. </a> TJ has become known for its culinary and cultural scene. There's increasing talk of the "San Diego/Baja Mega-region."<br />
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And since I'd recently moved back to my old home town San Diego, I decided it was past time for me to revisit Tijuana. Some friends and I signed up for a market tour with an atypical tour company, <a href="http://www.turistalibre.com/p/about.html" target="_blank">Turista Libre</a>*, founded and run by an American journalist who lives in TJ. We would visit several markets via an old school bus. It seemed like a great way to get reacquainted with Tijuana, which to be honest, I'd never known all that well to begin with.<br />
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We took the trolley to the border, something I'd done in the past, but so long ago that I barely remembered the process.<br />
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Nowadays, at least, though there are physical barriers aplenty between the US and Mexico, the "border" is not always clearcut.<br />
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Crossing on foot is easy. You might even say, "pedestrian." You head up a path that feels almost like an afterthought. Sadly, there's nothing on the US side that suggests anything neighborly. What it feels like is that you're entering a prison.<br />
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<i>Don't worry, your ad here can be seen by over 8 million people a year! </i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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But it's easy enough to get in. </div>
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And here we are!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJn0huNmj5FOKZ-DbdGRctca6IZQPyl-YGCiTiSnVe8KR8HdaLAV5uSACVWHVaJ1FprYIRbUkWHLRQrx0MUIqz4tlSURGjLt48EDB7QuIje0N3nlAc9JJv6SQqbhOFPnrVvAMgLg/s1600/PC070961.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJn0huNmj5FOKZ-DbdGRctca6IZQPyl-YGCiTiSnVe8KR8HdaLAV5uSACVWHVaJ1FprYIRbUkWHLRQrx0MUIqz4tlSURGjLt48EDB7QuIje0N3nlAc9JJv6SQqbhOFPnrVvAMgLg/s1600/PC070961.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Looking back toward the US</i></div>
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We walked a bit, to a parking lot where our battered school bus waited, loaded up on <i>pan dulce</i> and Nescafe and headed up into the hills, to our first destination: La Villa Swap meet. Heading up there, you see a lot of housing that borders on shanties, little homes and businesses in crumbling disrepair, graffiti, everywhere. What you might have pictured Tijuana to be. </div>
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The swap meet itself? </div>
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I don't have any photos that capture the scale of this thing, and the truth is, when you see it, you can't really tell just how big it is, how far it goes, how many little side streets it spills into. It just never ends. You'll find:<br />
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Clothes. Oh so many clothes. Clothes, shoes and bags. DVDs. Stereos. Drum kits. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioIiMyp8W_ZZdjPj2y7sYYgUQNIICtCdbu6Tg1mupJ8s2A6RUUW_CnSzGO51BugQEweFJLyQN8aDqC1_QDpRGLRSJa-AT-g_pyOVIMgjYsXPE9AjpF85GB_yN3p1WA4LK_THj7yA/s1600/PC070973.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioIiMyp8W_ZZdjPj2y7sYYgUQNIICtCdbu6Tg1mupJ8s2A6RUUW_CnSzGO51BugQEweFJLyQN8aDqC1_QDpRGLRSJa-AT-g_pyOVIMgjYsXPE9AjpF85GB_yN3p1WA4LK_THj7yA/s1600/PC070973.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Food of all sorts. And snacks. Tacos. Gorditas. Churros. Huaraches. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3vSjJAykiVNkNbgsz9IHQXaFFnkLIBPYjpRHfvT-ENRmrOoiZe9NyBVeEOfyQ8q6TiZ4AWzanxcRwSCqWIp8eLySSB8JYNDAqW-WjFYX9jZS0zYBBasvfmK79Scxs9KCLIvJ4hg/s1600/PC070964.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3vSjJAykiVNkNbgsz9IHQXaFFnkLIBPYjpRHfvT-ENRmrOoiZe9NyBVeEOfyQ8q6TiZ4AWzanxcRwSCqWIp8eLySSB8JYNDAqW-WjFYX9jZS0zYBBasvfmK79Scxs9KCLIvJ4hg/s1600/PC070964.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(this stuff)</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrmHhxixLfOE1QEOsHYnOADoK56-35TbBdlvgcIRr915RhNn4XIJAfg79NlX0tSCD9dH2xpDyL416bZP_s-F0Znhzpu2sRCWu4eUxEpMODEEbqHqPANK7vgItC5mkJfM9OLxvmQ/s1600/PC070974.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrmHhxixLfOE1QEOsHYnOADoK56-35TbBdlvgcIRr915RhNn4XIJAfg79NlX0tSCD9dH2xpDyL416bZP_s-F0Znhzpu2sRCWu4eUxEpMODEEbqHqPANK7vgItC5mkJfM9OLxvmQ/s1600/PC070974.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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And all kinds of furniture.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir2JqPaDOQJAhM3ggZ6aI5m2jovKGTMdj9rRpTbUpC-ehIq-sgfvSnSzFQ_7Mkl4cvFTzTG3rTTFKAglmW2ct7ZBo_hswkeYKXkT_V5tR2AioM2Y-LFaQYs5fcRu1qx5zw6qK6Ug/s1600/PC070978.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir2JqPaDOQJAhM3ggZ6aI5m2jovKGTMdj9rRpTbUpC-ehIq-sgfvSnSzFQ_7Mkl4cvFTzTG3rTTFKAglmW2ct7ZBo_hswkeYKXkT_V5tR2AioM2Y-LFaQYs5fcRu1qx5zw6qK6Ug/s1600/PC070978.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>(I have no explanation for the bowling balls)</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS4BylImBJ798cn_tosLyP_tu1fXxsHoIb5jvzKNGvCcAYuUu49toWyM7c5vmbljVkllJGR0FaNfen8gmZihijjW06YlbvgswCpxeTc33kcZ393SMA0WsVVJzsqWlQdi5__iZGWg/s1600/PC070009.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS4BylImBJ798cn_tosLyP_tu1fXxsHoIb5jvzKNGvCcAYuUu49toWyM7c5vmbljVkllJGR0FaNfen8gmZihijjW06YlbvgswCpxeTc33kcZ393SMA0WsVVJzsqWlQdi5__iZGWg/s1600/PC070009.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Used tools, engine parts, whatever all this is...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVodOmCjDmfXEE1IjoBe0CIzIXFSruMfBK4VtIYqZ78ijuicZ1FurKe4z3kxrkMUw1wRgB-Yw9qJGLJeuwSISnTD6CvL6d6AyPsh7l4Mfz9CIFbdqk94HTBHfShScXogB3GmyePA/s1600/PC070001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVodOmCjDmfXEE1IjoBe0CIzIXFSruMfBK4VtIYqZ78ijuicZ1FurKe4z3kxrkMUw1wRgB-Yw9qJGLJeuwSISnTD6CvL6d6AyPsh7l4Mfz9CIFbdqk94HTBHfShScXogB3GmyePA/s1600/PC070001.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Tires. Car parts.</div>
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<i>(this place lets you use their bathroom for a quarter)</i></div>
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And musicians. And friendly people in general.</div>
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Our next stop was to the oldest market in Tijuana. Given that Tijuana is a new city, it's not very old: the Hidalgo Market opened at this location in 1984. This is a place where you'll find all kinds of food products, piñatas, kitchenware and pottery. Also, a rather upscale coffee stand, where the barista told me all about the beans and encouraged me to smell them.<br />
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Our last stop was on Avenida Revolución. Back in the day, Revolución was the epicenter of Tourist Tijuana, where you'd have your photo taken with the donkey painted like a zebra, get plastered at bars that served underaged college students and buy all manner of tacky souvenirs: gigantic sombreros and cheap maracas and cartoon mescal worms.<br />
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Many if not most of those places are out of business now, leaving Revolución quiet, almost deserted, at least on a Sunday afternoon.<br />
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But in the place of those tacky tourist shops, new and interesting things are appearing: Small, local businesses selling edgy T-shirts, hand-made accessories, and art. I happened upon a little food court tucked on the other side of a tunnel-like passage of shuttered stalls, where they had hummus, portabello burgers, and craft beer, among other things, with distressed wood tables and the kind of vibe you'd expect to find in in any middle-class hipster neighborhood.<br />
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Yes, I tried the beer. And it was good.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJqEkWwYMa_IcY4Nc6p5-praYOvqQKqniujzbWIS0o2L3zTEBbK59WBFjRCh0eXw8gzAPlqH3k3gmyLl0YU1etBjjIjwfMgTemd4QK_sgEXluwDjJwCFb5Yl0evqupS6Syt-g1zQ/s1600/PC070036.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJqEkWwYMa_IcY4Nc6p5-praYOvqQKqniujzbWIS0o2L3zTEBbK59WBFjRCh0eXw8gzAPlqH3k3gmyLl0YU1etBjjIjwfMgTemd4QK_sgEXluwDjJwCFb5Yl0evqupS6Syt-g1zQ/s1600/PC070036.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><a href="http://tjinchina.dinstudio.com/" target="_blank">(there's an interesting story behind this place) </a></i></div>
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After all that, it was time to return to the border…where there were still approximately 900 pedestrians in line waiting to cross -- a wait that could take as long as three hours. </div>
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We circumvented the worst of this by paying $6 a person to get onto an old airport shuttle bus, that for some reason was allowed to go to the head of the pedestrian line, where after about 55 minutes or so, we were able to debark and finally, head into US Customs.<br />
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Which is nothing like US Customs at any airport I've experienced. It's small and dimly lit and grimy, sort of like the worst small-town Greyhound station you've ever seen, and although I'm sure most of the CBP staffing it are fine folks, we encountered one guy who screamed at people in the wrong line and another who was just kind of an asshole. The rest were perfunctory and and not particularly friendly. The best I can say is that once we were actually in the Customs area, it didn't take very long to get through. But the fact that it routinely takes pedestrians <i>hours</i> to cross is a national embarrassment. Frequent border-crossers apply for the Sentri Global Entry or Ready-Pass programs, and I plan to do that ASAP.<br />
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Because I plan to return to Tijuana and Baja soon, and I hope to visit often. I like living on the border.<br />
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<i>Lisa…</i><br />
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<i>*If you're interested in visiting Tijuana, I recommend Turista Libre to get acquainted with the city. I'm signing up for the craft beer tour, for sure! </i></div>
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<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-47998029271576803622014-11-11T15:22:00.002-08:002014-11-11T15:22:36.855-08:00Things seen in China...Sometimes I think I should have learned photography. I like taking pictures, having that frame to put around the world. It's a lot easier, at times, to share experiences of other places through photos than it is to write about them.<br />
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I have a semi-respectable camera but I really enjoy taking pictures with my smartphone. I like being able to edit and post on the fly, also that the phone is less obtrusive than a DSLR. The main reason I want to upgrade my phone at this point is for a better camera (I mean, does anyone actually use their smartphone to <i>talk</i>?)<br />
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Anyway, here are a few images taken on my trip to China last month. The purpose of the trip was visiting craft breweries there, but I did manage to do a few other things, apart from trying Chinese IPAs. In all instances, click to embiggen...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_YT0HcJCLM5mN7rxe96bdWDWz-EsBjN2Kyr1Rx2Tj5EZ1Oy_mvyG5D7gaEhDwE5Yqq0Sqx8eyQw1wEzW6xHR0Oi2sH0I2tjzd3ylc-lygg-MjeZpU56NWQBPPQNfdz1aNyIsig/s1600/IMG_3122.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_YT0HcJCLM5mN7rxe96bdWDWz-EsBjN2Kyr1Rx2Tj5EZ1Oy_mvyG5D7gaEhDwE5Yqq0Sqx8eyQw1wEzW6xHR0Oi2sH0I2tjzd3ylc-lygg-MjeZpU56NWQBPPQNfdz1aNyIsig/s1600/IMG_3122.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
This is a blurry night shot done with that outdated smartphone, but I was so taken by the scene. Rather than having tables or blankets, a lot of vendors in this hip Kunming district were selling their wares out of the backs of cars and vans. All the better to outrun the <i>chengguan</i> if need be, the much hated "urban management" police force in charge of cracking down on illegal street vendors and other petty crimes. They have a reputation for brutality and excess, and even if you aren't crazy about illegal street vendors (who can be a real nuisance), hardly anyone roots for the <i>chengguan.</i><br />
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Yeah, I know, I know. I have a thing about weird signs.</div>
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I was primarily seeking out "craft" beer from microbreweries. While this hardly fit the "craft" category, it was a pretty decent German lager. And, yellow.<br />
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The "vampire" trend in Beijing started a few years ago, and to my surprise is still hanging on. This is a bar on a very trendy <i>hutong</i> (alley) that's been around for a while.</div>
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A couple of Kunming fashion statements (and yes, the sign below really does translate to "smelly socks" -- someone has a sense of humor!)<br />
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Sure, they look innocent enough during the day...</div>
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Run away! RUN AWAY!!!!!<br />
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You can find peaceful places in China if you look…<br />
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So. Much. Good. Food. The snaps below are all from Dali, in Yunnan.<br />
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I would so ride this.<br />
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Shanghai may be one of the most modern cities in the world, but in the older sections, this is how they do the scaffolding. In a lot of the newer ones, too…<br />
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<br />
Things seen in Beijing...<br />
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I always find these tranquil snapshots in the middle of Beijing.<br />
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But these old neighborhoods are almost gone now…<br />
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<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-16289959948877739982014-10-08T08:26:00.000-07:002014-10-09T08:05:29.784-07:00Long Time No See! <div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cara Lopez Lee and I met through an
online author network and bonded over our love of China, Mexico, and writing.
This month she’s celebrating the 2014 edition of </span><a href="http://conundrum-press.com/they-only-eat-their-husbands-love-travel-and-the-power-of-running-away/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They Only Eat Their
Husbands: Love, Travel, and the Power of Running Away</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, (Conundrum Press, <span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Oct 7 2014)</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">.</span></span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s about Cara’s nine years in Alaska, where she landed in a love triangle
with two alcoholics, and the year she ran away to trek around the world alone.
During that journey, she made her first visit to China and discovered that a
Chinese phrasebook is pretty much useless unless you speak Chinese. In honor of
her book’s re-release, I’ve invited her to The Paper Tiger to share her dogged attempts
to become multilingual. Enjoy! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Long
Time, No See!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After a year of Mandarin lessons and a year-and-a-half of
Cantonese lessons, I can say “Where’s the bathroom?” in both languages, but don’t
know what to do if the person answering does anything besides point. In
Cantonese, right is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“yao”</i> and left is
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“dzaw”</i>—don’t ask me the tones because
Cantonese officially has either six or nine tones, but I hear 16. Problem is, if
someone answers, “Down the hall to the left,” I’d hear, “Blah-blah-blah left.”
Actually I’d hear “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mut-mut-mut </i>left,”
because “mut” means “blah” in Cantonese. After a few left turns, I’d end up where
I started, where there’s only one thing I could say to the person who gave me directions:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Ho noi mo gin!”</i> (Long time, no see!)
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The above is called “losing face”: either <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mo min</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">diu gaa</i>. I prefer <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mo min</i>,
because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">diu</i> pronounced with the wrong
tone means, “fuck,” though I doubt <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">diu
gaa</i> translates “fuck-face.” I don’t mind losing face, but I’d rather not
get punched in it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I first visited China in 1999, during my solo trek around
the world. On that trip, I learned such Mandarin phrases as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Ni hou!</i>” (Hello!)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Duo shao qian?”</i> (How much is it?), and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Xie xie” </i>(Thank you). As a beginner traveler, I fell into the trap
of believing that, when in doubt, I could mime whatever I needed. Untrue, as I
discovered when looking for my bus from Lijiang to Dali. Unable to read signs,
I ran from bus to bus holding up my ticket and pleading “Dali?…Dali?...Dali?” The
drivers stared blankly. Panicked, I felt a weird temptation to try Spanish, the
only other language I knew. Good thing an old man read my ticket and led me by
the hand to my bus, or I might never have made it home to write my memoir. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Seven years later, I started
researching a novel inspired by my Chinese-Mexican ancestry. I wanted to find
the village of my great-grandfather, Ma Bing Sum, who was born in China. Until
the 1970s, Toisan county was where most Chinese-Americans traced their roots. To
prepare, I wanted to learn Cantonese. Toisanese is the local dialect, but I
live in Denver, where I thought finding a Cantonese instructor would be easier.
No such luck. Everyone insisted Mandarin would be more useful, so I surrendered
and found a Mandarin tutor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mandarin is hard. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A year later, I only knew a handful of
phrases, like, “I’m an American.” Shit, they could tell that by looking at me. So
I hired a translator to help me find my ancestral village. Fiona Zhu, or Zhu Zhu,
proved invaluable. My favorite great-uncle had told me my great-grandfather’s village
was Gong Hao, but Zhu Zhu discovered that Gong Hao was a district containing
eleven villages. So we embarked on a hunt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On my previous trip to China, I often thought
people were angry, because Mandarin tones sometimes sound harsh. Cantonese and
Toisanese sound more musical. A comedian once said Cantonese speakers sound
like they’re falling off a cliff: “mut-mut-mut-aaaaaaah!” Still, Cantonese can
sound angry too if you don’t understand. At one point in Gong Hao, shouting
people surrounded us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Are they angry?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Zhu Zhu chuckled. “No. So nice, everybody wants to help find your family!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Ultimately, someone directed us to a 99-year-old man in the village of Git Non,
who we nicknamed Old Mr. Ma. He spoke Toisanese. My translator did not. The
interview went something like this: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
“My great-grandfather was born in Gong Hao 120 years ago,” I said, “so I’d like
to learn what life was like here long ago.” My translator relayed this to his granddaughter
in Cantonese, who relayed this to her grandfather in Toisanese, whose answer made
the same trip in reverse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Five minutes later, Zhu Zhu said, “He
wants to know your grandpa’s name.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Ma Bing Sum, but he left before you
were born, so you wouldn’t have known him.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Chinese people are big on family
history, so Mr. Ma refused to give up so easily. I told him Ma Bing Sum was
born in Gong Hao around 1888 and moved to America in the early 1900s. Then I
showed him a letter my uncle once wrote my great-grandfather. Mr. Ma grew
excited, “Ho Ho Ho!” My great-grandfather was from this very village! Mr. Ma had
met him during a couple of his visits home. He verified that Ma Bing Sum had lived
in El Paso with a Mexican wife. He opened the village’s red book of ancestors to
a page naming Ma Bing Sum and his eldest three sons. Across the path from Old
Mr. Ma’s house stood the humble home where my great-grandfather was born. Down
the street stood the huge house he built with money he made in America. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Your grandpa was the richest man in
town,” Zhu Zhu said. This village was full of my distant cousins. “They say you
are family.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had tears in my eyes, but I did not lose
face. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Two days later we did a full interview. One thing Mr. Ma shared was that long
ago in Git Non, teens approaching marriageable age moved out of their parents’
homes and into two communal homes: one for boys, one for girls. Those homes now
appear in my novel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two years later I returned for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qing Ming</i>, a Chinese version of “Day of the
Dead” when people clean and decorate family graves and feed their ancestors. The
Ma family served a roast pig, which now makes an undignified appearance in my
novel. The next day we celebrated Mr. Ma’s 101st birthday. Everyone chuckled
with delight when I said Cantonese phrases Zhu Zhu taught me, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M’Goi </i>(thank you) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ho ho mei</i>, (delicious).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That does it</i>, I thought. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m learning Cantonese and I’m coming back</i>.
Mr. Ma won’t understand me, but his family will. I can also return to Guangzhou
and Hong Kong where my uncle grew up, and speak the language he spoke. What’s
more, I want my novel to feel realistic, and language is culture. I renewed my
search for a Cantonese tutor: “I don’t care if Mandarin is more sensible!” I found
Jing Jing, a twenty-something tutor from Guangzhou. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sometimes Jing Jing’s lessons reveal a
generation gap. She worked hard to teach me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Hang
gai, Tai hei, Sik fan,”</i> meaning, “Go shopping, see a show, eat”—the Chinese
version of “Go to the mall.” She assures me this is “very popular,” though I
doubt my great-grandfather said it in the 1910s. Then again, she also taught me
the common greeting,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Sik dzaw fan mei ah?</i>”
which never goes out of style. It means, “Have you eaten yet?” or literally, “Have
you eaten rice?” a reminder that rice is central to Chinese culture. Jing Jing
explained that, upon meeting someone, it’s polite to say, “Please give me your
advice.” I’m eager to make this request of my Chinese cousins. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There’s something about a foreigner
speaking our language that warms the soul. It says this relationship means so
much that I wish to build a bridge between us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The last time I saw Old Mr. Ma he was
waving from his doorway on his 101st birthday, saying, “Bye-bye!” a
popular farewell in modern China. I had given him sweets, a card, and a red balloon.
He was most tickled by that balloon, not because he’s feeble-minded—we had discussed
profound concepts, including how he values the family closeness of village
life, which is why he never sought his fortune in America—no, he loved the
balloon simply because he’s a joyful person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I hope I get to tell him, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Ho Noi Mo
Gin!”</i>—“Long Time No See.” If he’s no longer around, I’ll ask where his
grave is so I can leave an offering. Hopefully by then I’ll know how to ask for
directions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">About
the Author:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Cara Lopez Lee’s stories have appeared in </span><a href="http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-turkeyworm23nov23-story.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">The Los Angeles Times</span></i></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">, </span><a href="http://www.connotationpress.com/creative-nonfiction/2220-cara-lopez-lee-creative-nonfiction"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Connotation Press</span></i></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">, and </span><a href="http://rivetjournal.com/rivet-2/which-words-come-last-by-cara-lopez-lee"><i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Rivet Journal</span></i></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">. She’s a
book editor, and she’s a faculty member at </span><a href="https://lighthousewriters.org/person/facdetail/person/6912/name/cara_lopez_lee/"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Lighthouse Writers Workshop</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">. She has
traveled throughout Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. She
married her husband at an </span><a href="http://caralopezlee.com/blog/2009/12/bride-versus-the-volcano/"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">active volcano</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> in Costa
Rica. They live in Denver. You can buy Cara’s memoir, </span><a href="http://www.caralopezlee.com/they-only-eat-their-husbands.php"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">They Only Eat Their Husbands</span></i></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">, at Conundrum Press, IndieBound,
or Amazon. You can also follow her on </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/theyonlyeattheirhusbands"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Facebook</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">, </span><a href="https://www.twitter.com/caralopezlee"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Twitter</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">, and </span><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/caralopezlee/"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Pinterest</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-10818088845219961672014-10-08T01:02:00.001-07:002014-10-08T01:02:09.460-07:00Getting from here to there...I am sometimes not sure why I'm so addicted to traveling in China, because truthfully, it isn't always easy. Maybe because what it always is, is interesting.<br />
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A couple of days ago, I traveled with a friend by <i>Da Ba Che</i> -- Big Bus -- from Kunming to Dali. It takes about five hours or so, two hours less than the train. Note to self: What it saves in time, it makes up for in added discomfort and occasional terror.<br />
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You get on this thing and are immediately bombarded with a safety video instructing you to wear your seatbelt, not to smoke on the bus, and for reasons which are unclear to me, don't drop luggage on your baby. This repeats every 15 minutes or so. All well and good except half the seats don't have seat belts, or arm rests in some cases. The highways are very narrow, crowded with big trucks, close enough that you could reach out the window and touch one in the next lane.<br />
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At one point, we made a sharp turn, and my friend Richard went flying out of his seat, landing in the aisle. Both of us were so shocked by this that we didn't quite know how to react. This was topped a few minutes later when another bus nearly merged into us, our driver had to swerve and then he fell out of his seat. I guess he wasn't paying any attention to the safety video.<br />
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When the safety video wasn't playing, we watched strange Chinese comedies about a magical cellphone and another where a schoolteacher pretends to be a playboy's girlfriend for a visit to his parents, who run a martial arts school, for reasons that are unclear to me. Also, music videos. Like, "My Heart Will Go On," which is pretty much unavoidable in China, years after the film. As Celine Dion sang the chorus, a young couple behind us started singing along. Until it was interrupted by the safety video again. Wear your seatbelt. Don't smoke. And don't drop luggage on your baby.<br />
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We had one traffic jam, where lanes were closed due to construction. The barriers are bright colored plastic that look like the components of a child's fort, nothing that would actually stop a car. Meanwhile, we're barreling up a series of mountains, into greener and greener country dotted with Bai villages -- traditional whitewashed houses with gray roofs. Round mandala-like paintings under the eaves, like Amish barn signs. On the long walls, murals, some elaborate scenes of traditional subjects, dancers and musicians gathered around a bonfire, dotted with a series of small blazes, white geese taking flight around them. Others have paintings of dinosaurs. One village's murals are entirely different varieties of mushrooms. This part of Yunnan province is famous for its mushrooms, I'm told.<br />
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After this ride, I resolved to avoid the <i>Da Ba</i> in the future and take the train instead, even if it's two hours longer. But I expect I'll be going this way again, and soon, I hope. Because when you get there, it looks like this…<br />
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<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-55064473547965291372014-08-10T12:47:00.001-07:002014-08-10T12:47:28.745-07:00These are the voyages...<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(originally posted on <a href="http://www.murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2014/07/these-are-voyages.html">Murder Is Everywhere</a>)</i></div>
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I've traveled to places that many people would consider exotic. All over China, including Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. I just went to Russia for the first time this year. But I'm finding that my home town of San Diego is as exotic as anyplace I've ever visited.<br />
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Submitted as evidence: <a href="http://www.comic-con.org/about" target="_blank">Comic-Con International</a>.<br />
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Comic-Con started as a small gathering of comic book creators and fans, science fiction and fantasy writers and readers, and, well, Trekkies. Hey, I can say "Trekkie." I was an early adopter. </div>
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<i>"This is our Superbowl," Captain Kirk Shoe Shine explained earnestly to a customer</i></div>
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My sister and I attended one of the early Cons, back when it was held at the El Cortez Hotel, in a seedy part of downtown San Diego (actually, nearly all of downtown San Diego was seedy then, as I recall. How times have changed). I was somewhere in my early teens, my sister three years younger. "I'll pick you up in three hours," my dad told us, on his way to a three-martini lunch.</div>
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My sister and I ran around like wild things for those three hours. What I remember the most vividly are two things: We were in the company of strangers who liked the same weird stuff that we did. And it was the first time I saw the original "Star Trek" bloopers.</div>
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Now, as Geek culture has become mainstream culture, Comic-Con is an international phenomena, attended by 130,000 people a year, the place where Hollywood reveals teasers for the upcoming next big things. It's grown way too large for the San Diego Convention Center, so it's taken over parts of downtown San Diego as well, including Petco Park for a zombie run:</div>
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-- and entire sections of the Gaslamp and the Embarcadero:<br />
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The whole experience is pretty overwhelming. The crowds are huge, lines are long, events are impossible to get into. People argue that Comic-Con has grown too big, that it's no longer as relevant, that smaller, more intimate conventions are taking its place. And I think there's some truth to all of those assertions.<br />
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But still. 130K people with a love of comics and science fiction and fantasy and popular arts descend on my city, once a year. A lot of them cosplay--create really elaborate and beautiful costumes to express themselves. It's sort of like Geek Mardi Gras.<br />
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And there's just something pretty awesome about that.<br />
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Submitted as evidence, the following photos…<br />
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<i>There are more and more of these "Christian" protestors every year. But they are greatly outnumbered</i></div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-25524956983995324412014-07-16T08:36:00.002-07:002014-07-16T08:36:31.279-07:00Tony Gwynn, and a writer's work<br />
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If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you've probably noticed that I posted a lot of articles and photos about Tony Gwynn, one of the greatest hitters in baseball, after his untimely passing.<br />
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<i>Tony formed a great friendship with Ted Williams, who considered Gwynn the best hitter since, well, Ted Williams</i></div>
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Tony Gwynn was Mr. Padre, the face of a franchise that often -- well, mostly -- has underperformed. On a team with a history of mediocrity, he was excellence personified. He was also Mr. San Diego. For a city that hasn't always had a strong identity, other than, "We're not LA!" he was the perfect hero. Hard-working, loyal -- he stayed in San Diego for his entire career, though he could have made much more money elsewhere, and he could have been a lot more famous, too, if he'd taken the big bucks and gone to a big market like New York or Boston or Los Angeles.<br />
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He loved San Diego, and San Diego loved him back.<br />
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And get this. He was a genuinely good guy, too. Great family man. Wonderful to fans. Had a laugh, a gleeful cackle, and a smile that lit up the room. If anyone had a negative word to say about Tony Gwynn, I haven't read it yet. Instead, after his death, tributes poured in from all around the country. I'll just link to one, <a href="http://deadspin.com/i-was-tony-gwynns-bat-boy-1592123043" target="_blank">"I was Tony Gwynn's bat boy."</a> It will give you an idea of the rest.<br />
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<i>Tony's statue at Petco Park</i></div>
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It was a crazy thing, being in San Diego when Tony Gwynn died. He was too young, too nice, too good a person. I don't know how many sports figures there are these days whose passing would be felt by as many and as deeply, who was so linked to a particular city, a place that doesn't have many heroes. As a lifelong Padres fan (which is another term for "masochist"), I was, like many San Diegans, mourning a man I didn't know, and you know, I generally don't get all that involved in the lives of celebrities that I don't know. </div>
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Of course, I had to go to the memorial. Decked out in my Tony Gwynn retro jersey, wearing my new Tony Gwynn 394 Pale Ale T-shirt (yes, he collaborated on <a href="http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Jun/18/tony-gwynn-pale-ale/" target="_blank">a signature beer with Alesmith Brewing Company</a>. And it's delicious).<br />
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It was really a lovely event. There were a lot of emotional moments, but one of them came when former Padres shortstop Damian Jackson talked about how he didn't have a father growing up, how Tony would have been a great father to have. </div>
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Yeah, that kind of guy.</div>
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<i>The memorial at Petco Park</i></div>
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One of the things most remarked upon was Tony Gwynn's incredible work ethic. He was a pioneer in using video tapes to study hitting, a practice that is now universally used in baseball. He showed up earlier, practiced longer, than just about anyone. He analyzed hitting constantly, down to the smallest minutia. He rarely struck out. He was all about putting the bat on the ball, hitting that 5.5 hole.<br />
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He wasn't a great fielder at first, so he worked his ass off to become one and won five Golden Gloves. </div>
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He worked very, very hard, and this is something that was greatly celebrated here. It fits in with that hazy San Diego civic culture: Work hard, don't be flashy, get the job done. </div>
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Somewhere around the 100th iteration of Tony Gwynn's work ethic, I realized that there was an element of wishful thinking involved. Basically, if you work hard, you too will achieve and be rewarded. While that's not UN-true, it's not the entire picture, either. He had incredible natural gifts. He had a loving and supportive family. </div>
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Plenty of people could work just as hard as Tony Gwynn and not achieve what he achieved. </div>
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Why am I going on about a beloved baseball player on a blog dedicated to fictional mayhem set in foreign countries?</div>
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One of the things I kept thinking about was how Tony Gwynn's career resonated with me as a novelist. </div>
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Baseball can be a real grind. It's a long season, and baseball players play a lot of games. It requires stamina, discipline and the sheer, dogged stubbornness to show up and play whether you feel like it or not. </div>
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Writing novels feels a bit like that at times. </div>
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Novels are…long. Writing one takes sustained effort over a long period of time. You research. You struggle through the first draft, and then you rewrite. And revise. And rewrite and revise some more. You deal with editor's notes. You revise and rewrite. You do your line edit. Your copy edit. Your page proofs. You try to craft the thing as best as you can, down to each single sentence. </div>
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And like most things, you get better with practice. You work hard, and it's reflected in the work. </div>
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But so is your individual talent. Your voice. That spark and gift that you can't explain and you can't always will into being. </div>
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Respect your own gifts by working hard and treating people well. And by being loyal to the thing that drives you to create in the first place. </div>
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You don't cheapen your Muse by selling out and becoming a damn Yankee, or a stinkin' Dodger.</div>
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<i>Lisa…every other Wednesday…</i></div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-65959309680047732182014-07-02T00:19:00.002-07:002014-07-02T00:19:09.961-07:00A visit to "Chinawood" <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Whenever I come to China, I try to go somewhere I’ve never been. On this trip, I decided to visit Hengdian World Studios. I worked on a film studio lot in Los Angeles for many years; how could I resist a visit to the largest filming facility in China, which, as I understood it, is also a tourist attraction a la Universal Studios.<br />
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This trip happened kind of quickly and I didn’t have much time to research it or even really think much about where I was going and what I would do. I’d read an article about Hengdian that purported to explain how to get there and what to do, and for whatever reason, I just took it on faith that the information was correct.</div>
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So, I took a high-speed train from Shanghai to a place called Yiwu that I knew nothing about. From Yiwu I was supposed to look for Bus K850 and for 1.5 yuan take that to someplace called Jiangdong, where supposedly there were shuttles to Hengdian for 10 kuai. I didn’t know what time the buses ran or stopped running. I was mildly anxious about this, but not enough to do anything about it. I just got off the train in Yiwu and wandered over to the right, where the bus station was.</div>
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<i>(this was on the way back, but you get the idea)</i></div>
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The bus: a typical Chinese public bus. I asked the attendant if it went to Jiangdong and if from Jiangdong I could get to Hengdian. She nodded and said “yes,” rather curtly, so I got on the bus. I was naturally the only <i>laowai </i>on the thing.</div>
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Which was standing room only. The bus jerked and moved and stopped and went, all of us who were unfortunate enough to be standing hanging on to the plastic strap handles and swaying with every turn and halt. I do not necessarily recommend traveling this way.</div>
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Yiwu, as it turns out, is a pretty big city. We passed a row of luxury car dealerships as we headed into town. Lexus and Infiniti. I’d never even heard of Yiwu, but at least a few people there must be making enough money to buy them.</div>
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The drive took a long time. We seemed to go out of the city, and then into another one, but when I asked the woman next to me where we were, it was still Yiwu.</div>
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Finally we came to Jiangdong, which was the end of the line with a lot of other city buses, still in Yiwu. A smaller white bus was parked there. I figured it was probably the shuttle to Hengdian, and as I stood there, considering, a guy asked me if I was going to Hengdian and said that this was indeed the right bus.</div>
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I sat by an open window, thinking, it would be nice to sit for this leg of the journey.</div>
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Unfortunately, just as I got comfortable, someone came on the bus and made an announcement in dialect that I couldn’t understand, but the upshot of which was, everybody had to get off this bus and get onto another one.</div>
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<i>That</i> bus, naturally, was already full. I grabbed the absolute last seat on it, climbing over someone’s suitcase to claim it, next to a young woman who was sitting sideways in the seat because her luggage was piled around her. More people boarded, filling the aisle. It was a 12 yuan ride, as it turned out. I asked the ticket collector how long it was to Hengdian. “<i>Yige xiaoshi,”</i> she told me. An hour. And <i>“Nide Hanyu ting bucuo.”</i> Your Chinese is not bad. This is a compliment. “Not really,” I told her. “I have a long way to go.” I would demonstrate how far later in the evening.</div>
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“Are you going to Hengdian?” my seatmate asked me. I said that I was. “I heard it’s fun,” she said.</div>
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What is <i>not</i> fun: sitting with your seatmates’ kneecap pushed into your thigh, a water bottle in the front seat pocket poking into your knee, your backpack and bag perched on your lap, being jammed into your kidneys by the collapsing seat of the person in front of you.</div>
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According to the article I read, “Hengdian is so small that you can easily find hotels of all kinds and many restaurants.” Also, supposedly, there are Hengdian Studios electric cars and rickshaws to take you where you need to go. Well, not so much. It’s more like a medium-sized town, and when the bus stopped in its center and we all got out, I realized that I had no idea where my hotel was and no idea how to get there. I didn’t see any of these magical electric cars and/or rickshaws.</div>
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What I did see was a “modi,” one of those motorized trike vehicles with a tin covering, where you can ride on a wood bench inside. They are of course extremely underpowered and pretty dangerous. Oh well. The driver looked at the address of my hotel and told me it was “very far” and would therefore cost me 30K to get there. I wasn’t sure that I believed her. “Very far” in small Hengdian? But after a halfhearted attempt to find other options, I gave up. Odds were I probably wasn’t going to die in a crash taking one of these things just this once.</div>
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Not only are you riding inside of a giant tin can, you are riding on one that is being hammered on, where every bump in the road is a major jolt, and who knew, she was telling the truth when she told me it was “very far,” or “very far” in terms of Hengdian. We bounced along, down rough roads that appeared to be taking us out of town. This can’t be right, I thought. This is supposed to be a four-start hotel with “excellent” ratings on CTrip, and we are heading out into the countryside. Then, down a road lined with…furniture factories. Yeah. Long, warehouse-like buildings advertising mahogany and rosewood furniture.</div>
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Then, suddenly: my hotel. An apparition in marble and gilt in the middle of a row of furniture factories.</div>
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The name of it was the Hengdian Honton Boutique Hotel. “Honton” is not a word in my Chinese dictionary, but looking at the actual characters, the name has something to do with “rosewood.” As close as I can figure out this hotel caters to businessmen coming to make deals on furniture. It does not cater much to foreign tourists, and I quickly reached the limits of my Chinese understanding when trying to communicate with the desk clerk, who spoke very quickly and with a heavy local accent. But eventually I made my way to my very nice room, and then, to dinner.</div>
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The restaurant was a series of private banquet rooms, and I sat alone in one at the end of the dinner service and drank a Cheerday Beer. I really needed a Cheerday Beer by that point.</div>
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After the adventure of getting to Hengdian, the actual studio visit was almost an anticlimax. Not that it wasn’t interesting. I visited the Qing/Ming Dynasty filming base, the one with the giant full-sized replica of the Forbidden City that Zhang Yimou used in his films HERO and CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. </div>
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After that I wandered around the streets of old Hong Kong.</div>
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Filming was mostly done without sound, so tourists clustered around the production sets in close proximity to the filming. </div>
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Other tourist activities included dressing up in costumes for photos and performances in your own movie skits, a blue screen demonstration, horse and archery shows, comedy performances.</div>
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When it was time for me to head back to Yiwu, the Hengdian tourist taxis again eluded me, and I ended up in yet another <i>modi</i> back to the part of town where the shuttle buses waited. Hopped on that. </div>
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“Oh, you’re back!” It was the same ticket taker as yesterday. “Did you have fun?”</div>
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“Yes. A lot of fun.” And I really did. Because sometimes half the fun really is just managing to get there.</div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-38519768507773266802014-06-01T14:44:00.001-07:002014-06-01T14:44:18.401-07:00Dog Years...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm pretty sure some novels are written in dog years.<br />
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I'm wiped out. I feel kind of like that guy up there, except not as perky. But I am similarly exultant.<br />
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A couple days ago I sent off the draft of my latest book to my editor. The draft was…a bit…tardy. Okay, I was late. This has never happened to me before. But every once in a while, you run up against the reality that, although writing books for publication is a job, embedded in a for-profit (we hope) business, creating a novel is still an artistic process, and sometimes you just can't create on demand.<br />
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This was a funny realization for me to come to, because I've prided myself on delivering on time, turning in a clean draft, being a pro. But one of the interesting things about being a novelist is that every book is different. You learn how to write the book you're writing by writing it. Some of that knowledge transfers from book to book. Other knowledge is unique to the book you're writing. Nothing you've learned before applies to some particular aspect of the problem set you're trying to solve, so you just fight your way through it until you figure it out. You hope.<br />
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That's the scary part about being a writer. It's a constant dance on the cliff's edge of failure. While this is not as consequential as failure in jobs where peoples' lives are at stake, or where a wrong policy decision screws up lives a few generations into the future, it feels really important when you're the person whose creative ass is on the line. When you fail at writing, it feels personal. You're mining so many aspects of your personality and experiences to provide material for your work. And there are times when that process is is the last thing you want to be doing.<br />
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But then, there is craft. Craft is the great salvation of writers. Craft allows you to take all the messy, painful, complicated stuff, the material you're working with, and shape it into something separate from yourself. Something apart, and with enough distance that you can look at it more clearly, as an artwork, or as a product, however you prefer to frame it. By either label, it's a creative projection of your will, and the only thing getting in the way of shaping it like you want, having the kind of control to create meaning and order that you don't necessarily have in your own life, is you, the author.<br />
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You're the creator of your own success or the cause of your own failure. External circumstances can make the process easier or harder—or sometimes, impossible. But there's no one who can get that book out of you but you.<br />
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<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-34596935366010533182014-05-14T21:50:00.002-07:002014-05-14T21:50:19.106-07:00The seeds of an idea...<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<o:p> Writers will tell you that one of the questions we get asked the most often is some variation of: "Where do you get your ideas?" My inspirations tend to be character, place and an issue or two that I find particularly compelling. Here's a little of what went into the second of my Ellie McEnroe novels, set in today's China. </o:p></div>
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<o:p><i>Scenic Yangshuo. How could I not be inspired?</i></o:p></div>
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<i>Yangshuo hostel. Like I said, scenic</i></div>
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I was sitting in my hotel room in a converted farmhouse in beautiful Yangshuo, China, web-surfing, when I came across the story that would inspire my third novel, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hour-Rat-Lisa-Brackmann/dp/1616953713/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1398832644&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Hour Of The Rat</a></b>. An American suspected of “eco-terrorism” had been arrested in Dali, in southwest China, for having some thirty pounds of marijuana buried in the back yard of the house he was renting. I found this strange and compelling on many levels. You’re a fugitive wanted by the FBI, you flee to China, of all places, and you get involved with massive quantities of pot?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Dali, a favored hangout of Chinese and foreign hipsters</i></div>
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<i>Dali</i></div>
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<i>Dali is also very scenic! </i></div>
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At the same time, I wanted to deal with environmental issues in China. It’s no exaggeration to say that China’s natural environment is in crisis, devastated by decades of exploitation and neglect, the recent siege of off-the-chart air pollution in Beijing being just one small example. These problems are so severe that they threaten to undermine both the health of Chinese citizens and China’s “economic miracle”—the astounding 30 years of growth that have propelled China from poverty to the second largest economy in the world. Moreover, they are a source of social unrest. From poor farmers demonstrating against polluting factories that have contaminated their cropland to middle and upper class urban professionals who would like to have breathable air in their cities, Chinese people have protested about environmental problems, on the streets and on social media. The government has taken a somewhat more relaxed view of such protests than it has of others that are more overtly political, but that tolerance only goes so far because environmental issues provoke an increasingly large percentage of China’s “mass incidents,” and they have the potential to bring disparate groups of China’s citizens together.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Protesting a chemical factory</i></div>
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It’s easy to dismiss China’s problems as things that don’t have much affect on us in the US, or at least to keep them at a distance because they aren’t connected to us. But there are consequences and connections if you look.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In plotting this book, I needed that American connection, and I thought that a fugitive “eco-terrorist” might do the trick. But what was he protesting?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I decided to use GMOs – genetically modified organisms. These products, pioneered by American companies like Monsanto and DuPont, are created by a process where unrelated genetic material is inserted into a plant or even an animal to create something with desirable properties that you’d never find in nature. Most commonly they’re designed to resist herbicides, such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, or engineered to produce their own pesticide, such as Bt corn. More than 90% of the soybeans grown in the US are GM, as is 88% of corn and 90% of sugarbeets. As a result, GMOs are in nearly all the processed food we eat—if it doesn’t say “organic,” odds are it’s GM.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Many of the claims made for GMOs– that they produce higher yields, and that they reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides, for example – have been called into question and even refuted. A recent United Nations study pointed to sustainable agriculture as a better way to feed the hungry, promote economic growth and protect the environment. In the case of pesticides and herbicides, their use has created pesticide-resistant pests and herbicide-resistant “Superweeds” – leading to more pesticides and herbicides and plants designed to resist ever more lethal doses of them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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More to the point for writers of conspiracy-minded thrillers, the largest producer of GMOs, Monsanto, has a public reputation only slightly better than Al Qaeda. The company is routinely accused of bullying farmers, suing them unjustly in the States and driving them to suicide in India, and if you Google “Monsanto” and “revolving door,” you’ll find pages dedicated to proving that Monsanto exercises undue influence over the federal regulatory process due to former employees moving over to government positions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s a fact that past Monsanto employees working for the FDA have made positive decisions involving Monsanto products, <a href="http://occupy-monsanto.com/washington-post-probe-of-3-fda-officials-sought/">which in one case prompted calls by members of Congress for a federal investigation</a>. It’s a fact as well that because these products are considered “substantially equivalent” to their natural counterparts by the FDA, they are allowed on the market with a minimum of review, and there has never been a study of their affect on humans.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Even the State Department pushes GM food, lobbying to promote the products, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/usa-gmo-report-idUSL2N0DV2XF20130514">writing trade laws in their favor and preventing labeling laws in other countries</a>. GMOs are not labeled in the US—and corporate agriculture spent millions of dollars <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2012/08/22/monsanto-dupont-spending-millions-to-oppose-californias-gmo-labeling-law/">to defeat a proposed labeling law</a> in California in November 2012.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Chinese industry is rushing headlong into developing GMO products, both in collaboration with Western companies and on its own, and the Chinese adoption of these products is seen by some biotech champions as a “tipping point” —as China goes, so does the rest of the world. As it stands, China is the world’s largest grower of GMO cotton, and because it imports such a large percentage of its soybeans from the US, where some 90% of soybeans are GMO, these products have already penetrated the Chinese market. Yet the Chinese government has not yet approved of the mass cultivation of GMO food crops, and there is considerable suspicion on the part of Chinese consumers about GMOs – especially when it comes to that Chinese staple, rice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rice is so central to Chinese culture that when you ask someone if they’ve eaten yet, <i>“Chi fanle meiyou?”</i> you’re literally asking if they’ve eaten some form of rice. This is also a common way to say, “how are you?” because food is a really big deal in China.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Leftist nationalists in China are suspicious of GMOs in part because of their perceived “foreignness,” and in the case of rice, you are messing with China’s cultural patrimony. But the development of domestic varieties hasn’t calmed consumers’ fears.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When it comes to environmental and food safety, China may have regulations on the books, but the regulatory system itself is underfunded, and regulations are under-enforced and all too frequently ignored. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8476080/Top-10-Chinese-Food-Scandals.html">The scandals in China’s food supply are legion</a>. Hardly a day passes without a story about the use of illegal pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, <a href="http://grist.org/article/food-2010-10-25-a-close-encounter-with-chinese-sewer-oil/">“sewer oil,”</a> adulterated baby milk powder, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/world/la-fg-china-food-20110627">glow-in-the-dark pigs</a>, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/03/news/la-dd-rat-meat-china-20130503">rat meat masquerading as mutton</a>, <a href="http://www.scmp.com/article/967287/chickens-fed-mineral-salts-boost-weight">chickens fed minerals to increase their weight</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/world/asia/08food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">fake</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVnhRDuXGPs">eggs</a> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-walnuts-filled-with-cement-2013-2">walnuts</a>, tofu mixed with detergent, not to mention the recent <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60768-0/fulltext">sixteen thousand dead pigs</a> floating down the Huangpu River and into Shanghai’s drinking water supply. With those kinds of systemic problems, mistrust of new, unfamiliar and potentially under-tested genetically modified staples is more than understandable – it’s sensible.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<i><span style="line-height: 32px;">None of which stopped me from eating fish </span><span style="line-height: 32px;">on a</span><span style="line-height: 32px;"> stick in Dali</span></i><span style="line-height: 32px;"><i>…</i></span></div>
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Which makes what I found with a bit of Googling not all that surprising, but still pretty alarming.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since about 2005 and again in 2010, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/news/stories/food-agriculture/2010/illegal-GE-rice-seeds/">unapproved varieties of GM rice have made their way into the food chain, in China</a>. Greenpeace China found GM rice in Hunan, <span style="color: #262626;">Hubei, Fujian and Guangdong Provinces, on farmlands and in stores. Farmers were offered the seeds at a discount, and in some cases, for free.</span></div>
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<i>Guizhou Province countryside. Guizhou also is a setting in HotR</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8kD5s82V88RNM623pHqztL68NERbWw7o4FEPXfiofgfigTAF6fASyyjVQYDTURnUSo9i5mlMEIlmnFrALa2-KZMk7iXUXgZfhS5TPhyphenhyphenMReTvl6VcJcqRv8xWV8vR8qpQBeNgfGQ/s1600/P4210856.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8kD5s82V88RNM623pHqztL68NERbWw7o4FEPXfiofgfigTAF6fASyyjVQYDTURnUSo9i5mlMEIlmnFrALa2-KZMk7iXUXgZfhS5TPhyphenhyphenMReTvl6VcJcqRv8xWV8vR8qpQBeNgfGQ/s1600/P4210856.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><i>A lot of the farming in Guizhou is still done like this</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;">What’s not clear is where, precisely, this rice came from. <a href="http://www.eeo.com.cn/ens/Industry/2010/06/25/173757.shtml">According to an investigation by the Chinese journal, <b>Economic Observer</b></a>, the </span>university that had official approval to produce GM rice denied the rice was theirs, yet it held a thirty percent share in one of the three companies found to be selling the seeds – and of those three companies, one of them didn’t even officially exist—it was not registered with the necessary provincial authorities. The rush to move these seeds illegally into the food chain, the journal speculated, had to do with the university’s “safety” permit from the government to produce them—it expires in 2014. It’s the old, “better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission” approach.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Guizhou village</i></div>
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Further complicating the picture is that genetic material associated with foreign products was found in some of this rice. It seems to be a case of patent infringement, which is not uncommon in China—yet it’s also in foreign companies’ best interest that these products are defacto accepted in the market—all the easier for them to make the argument for their own. And there are also cases where foreign entities are involved with Chinese counterparts, and one side or the other evades regulation and accountability.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For example, in 2012, Tufts University, the USDA and a Chinese university were implicated in <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/china-sacks-officials-over-golden-rice-controversy-1.11998">an unapproved study</a> involving Chinese children fed “golden rice”— genetically modified rice that is enriched with beta carotene. While the idea behind this rice – preventing Vitamin A deficiency – may be a good one, conducting an experiment on Hunan village kids without their parents’ full informed consent, was not. The lines of responsibility are difficult to determine in this case. So far, three Chinese officials have been sacked, and Tufts is conducting an internal review.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, in China you have GMO research taking place in an environment with a poor food safety record and an opaque decision-making structure that makes review and accountability difficult. In the US, you have a GMO industry dominated by several large players who have poured millions of dollars into the political system to have the regulatory system written in their favor.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Industry spokespeople tell us that any worries about the safety of these products are unwarranted, even “anti-science.” It is true that there is not a lot of data, precisely because they were released onto the marketplace without any rigorous studies of their effects on humans. But let’s put aside the evidence we <i>do</i> have, that GMOs may not be as nutritious as their natural counterparts, that they may cause allergic reactions in some people, that they may promote tumors and kidney and liver damage in rats. Let’s also put aside any concerns we have about a GM salmon that grows more rapidly and is extremely aggressive getting loose into the wild population, or questions about how <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/06/genetically_modified_wheat_ore.html">an unapproved, experimental GM wheat showed up in farmers’ fields in Oregon</a>. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that GMOs may be as safe and nutritious as their natural counterparts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’ve all heard about the dangers of monoculture in food supplies, the Irish potato famine being just one example of a catastrophic crop failure due in part to a lack of genetic diversity. What does it say about our food system that three large companies, two of which are American, control half of the world’s proprietary seed market, and that one of those alone, Monsanto, over one quarter of it? That five huge biotech companies have bought up <a href="http://www.fewresources.org/market-concentration.html">more than two hundred other seed companies</a>, greatly reducing the number of seeds offered, making commercial access to a greater diversity of crops more difficult for farmers? That the average price of planting an acre of soybeans has risen <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/13/supreme-court-monsanto-indiana-soybean-seeds?CMP=ema_565">325% in less than ten years</a>? Do we really want that kind of “monoculture” controlling what we eat?<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the way, my original inspiration, that American eco-terrorist busted in Dali. What I knew about him <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28china.html">from the article I’d read in Yangshuo</a> was that he’d been accused of acts of arson in the Pacific Northwest, including one that destroyed a horticultural center at the University of Washington. There were no details about the motives behind the attacks. It wasn’t until I’d nearly finished writing the first draft of HOUR OF THE RAT that I looked deeper into the case and found out what those were.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He and his group were protesting GMOs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 32px;">Lisa</span><span style="line-height: 32px;">…every other Wednesday...</span></i></div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-9693226570956521012014-03-18T18:33:00.000-07:002014-03-18T18:34:14.818-07:00The Great Wall<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(originally published March 5 at Murder is Everywhere) </i></div>
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I had planned to write about the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Then the Ukraine crisis and invasion of the Crimea happened. I still wanted to write about the Olympics but struggled with how to put that all in context.<br />
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Then something happened that I really don't want to write about, but feel that I must: The Kunming train station killings.<br />
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If you have somehow missed <a href="http://www.tealeafnation.com/2014/03/enemies-of-humanity-china-debates-whos-to-blame-for-the-kunming-attack/" target="_blank">this dreadful story</a>, between 8 and 10 armed attackers (accounts vary) dressed in black and wielding long knives <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26402367" target="_blank">descended on the Kunming train station</a> and began to indiscriminately attack people waiting to buy tickets, killing 29 and wounding more than 130. Four attackers, three men and one woman, were shot dead by police and one was captured (a woman). The attackers were immediately identified as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people" target="_blank">Uighurs</a>, a Turkic people who primarily live in China's northwestern Xinjiang Province.<br />
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It is a shocking, horrible thing (<a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2014/03/03/watch-victims-recall-knife-attack-kunming-train-station.php" target="_blank">This is a good roundup</a> of eye-witness accounts and a range of Chinese viewpoints on the attacks). I've been to Kunming a few times. I've been to that train station. Kunming's nickname among Chinese is (or used to be, the first time I visited in 1980) "The city where it's always spring"— a place known for its good weather, a pleasant city that's becoming a regional powerhouse, in one of China's poorer but most beautiful provinces, diverse in terms of its landscape and its people. Imagining that kind of violence there is hard. Particularly violence committed by Uighurs, whose homeland is very far away.<br />
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But there has been a history of conflict between China's Uighurs and the Chinese state. It has mostly been confined to Xinjiang Province. The most significant incident in recent years were t<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots" target="_blank">he riots and subsequent crackdown </a>that began in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in July 2009. The inciting incident was a demonstration to protest the deaths of two Uighur migrant workers in far away Shaoguan, a demonstration that turned violent (whether the demonstrators or the police provoked the violence is up for debate). The resulting casualties were mostly Han Chinese, attacked by Uighur mobs, but this too is a matter of some debate: Uighur advocacy groups claim that the Uighur arrest and death toll was greatly undercounted, and it is true that the Chinese government's reporting on these matters is, shall we say, far from transparent.<br />
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Why the violence?<br />
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One of the things I found upsetting in the aftermath of the Kunming train attacks were the knee-jerk comments by Americans and other westerners that this was another manifestation of global Islamic jihad, with plenty of cracks about "the religion of peace" thrown in. Yes, a majority of Uighurs are Muslims. Most are moderate Sunnis. Yes, there are Islamist organizations in Xinjiang, and yes, odds are the attackers were Islamic extremists (though we don't know this for certain). And I want to say very clearly: there is no excuse or rationalization for this horrific act of terrorism. It is criminal, it is inhuman, and the only causes it advances are hatred and fear. But reducing the conflict between Uighurs and the Chinese state to "Islamo-nazis!" is dangerous and just wrong.<br />
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Questions of who "owns" Xinjiang, the legitimacy of Uighurs' claims, and so on are complicated, at times murky, and far from my area of expertise. What I can say is that this an ethnic conflict that is multi-faceted, where religion is just one factor, where the larger issues are self-determination, cultural suppression and economic justice.<br />
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On a very basic level, Uighurs look very different than the Han, who make up some 92% of China's population. They are visibly "Other."<br />
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All of this has been greatly exacerbated by recent Han migration into Xinjiang. For the last couple of decades, the Chinese government has been encouraging this migration, to the extent that the Uighurs are now a minority in areas where they used to be the majority. This has caused a considerable amount of resentment, especially among the majority of Uighurs who are not fluent Han speakers and who are not doing as well overall economically as the recent Han migrants and who do not hold the majority of government positions and political power (that, again, would be the Han).<br />
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There is a lot to be said about Chinese government policy toward Uighurs and "ethnic minorities" (the Chinese government's terminology) but rather than me trying to badly paraphrase it, I'll offer some links to articles written by experts.<br />
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Check out this piece by Evan Osnos written for the New Yorker: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/03/after-31-the-dangers-of-chinas-ethnic-divide.html" target="_blank">"After the Kunming Massacre: The Dangers of China's Ethnic Divide." </a> For background, see James Palmer's <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/strangers" target="_blank">"The Strangers."</a> For a more personal response, read long-time Xinjiang resident Josh's <a href="http://www.farwestchina.com/2014/03/5-questions-xinjiang-kunming-terror-attacks.html" target="_blank">"5 Questions about Xinjiang and the Kunming Terror Attack." </a><br />
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And for an example of how the Chinese state's policies persecute exactly the sort of people who might serve to help bridge this divide, see <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26333583" target="_blank">this BBC article</a> about China Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti, who has been arrested on separatism charges.<br />
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I also recommend this short film about Uighur life in China's cities, which is often marked by alienation and prejudice. <a href="http://beijingcream.com/2014/01/dfxj-battle-and-uyghur-life-in-chinese-cities/" target="_blank">See this post, </a>"Dispatches From Xinjiang: Battle' And Uyghur Life In Chinese Cities' for background.<br />
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ETA: <a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/opposing-narratives-in-piecing-together-kunming-attackers-motives/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1" target="_blank">Here is a NYT piece</a>, "Opposing Narratives in Piecing Together Kunming Attackers' Motives" with some new information and good background.</div>
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A few words about my own brief experiences in Xinjiang. I visited there in February 2009, just a few months before the riots. I was astounded by the place. The landscape was beautiful (I made it up to Yili, not far from the Kazak border). The mix of cultures, fascinating. The people I met, from many ethnic backgrounds, some of the warmest and most welcoming folks I've ever encountered. There was an epic drinking and dancing night that…well…some other time.<br />
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It's a place that I long to return to.<br />
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But there were hints of trouble if you looked for them. Here's an experience I had that might explain what some of the conflict is about, from a post I wrote in March after my return to the US. For background, I was visiting a friend who taught at the university in Yining. I called the post "Ethnic Dances":<br />
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The students - and the teachers - here don't encounter a lot of Western foreigners, so my coming was seen as an opportunity to meet a real, live American and get some English practice with a native speaker. I'd done this kind of thing thirty years ago, but this was one of the only places I'd been to in China recently where I was really a rarity, a novelty.<br />
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I loved the students. They were enthusiastic, sweet, a little shy but not so shy that it stopped them from asking questions, excited to have a foreign guest and to share their culture with me.<br />
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I went to their "English Corner." They'd arranged a presentation with me, all about Xinjiang, about the local foods and customs, and the particular cultures of Xinjiang's "ethnic minorities."<br />
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This was a mixed group of students. Most were Han, but there were Kazaks and Uighurs as well. Now, everyone seemed happy and excited to participate. But...the MCs, the kids doing the explanations and introductions, were Han. "And now this Kazak girl will show us the Kazak dancing!" The Kazak girl did, with a big smile. A Uighur couple did a traditional dance, acting out the roles, having fun with it. All the performers were really good - I learned later that they were either enrolled in the arts school at the University or were at members of the dance club or the music club. Then, a young Kazak man played a song on the dombra, the Central Asian lute. He was dressed head to toe in black, his hair spiked like an early 80s punk, his collar turned up. He played with fierce concentration. No pro-forma smiles here. When he finished, he made a little, abrupt bow, stone-faced, and left shortly after. Elvis has left the building, I thought.<br />
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It was just a little strange, hearing these Han kids talk excitedly about the quaint local customs, introducing the "ethnic minorities" to perform in front of me.<br />
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There was one particular Uighur girl there, outgoing, a live wire, wearing a sweater with some slogan spelled out in sequins, I forget what it was. Regardless, she sparkled. After an explanation from the MCs about several aspects of Uighur culture, she stood up and explained things from the perspective of an actual Uighur. "This is why we make the chuanr on iron and not wood." "This is why we eat this dish with our hands." She laughed a lot, seemed to be close to many of the other, Han students. But she was not shy or apologetic about explaining her own culture in front of them.<br />
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When it came time for questions, she stood right up. Her first question I couldn't exactly understand. It had something to do with how young Europeans were portrayed in films and television that she'd seen. The gist of her question was, were they really as sexually active as they appeared? Did they kiss and do such things on busses, in public?<br />
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Perhaps, I said, it's true that Europeans are more sexually active at a younger age than most Chinese, but I am not an expert. Perhaps they are more demonstrative in public as well. But different European countries have different cultural norms in this area. And of course, films and television tend to exaggerate.<br />
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Her second question: "Is it always true that the more powerful people in a country will always cover up the less powerful? Will the less powerful always lose their culture? How do you solve this problem?"<br />
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I paraphrase, but this was the gist.<br />
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The other kids in the class reacted, but I wouldn't say they overreacted. No one passed out in astonishment; I didn't get the sense that anyone was running out to inform the local Party representative (though who knows, really?). Still, I was impressed by her fearlessness. There's no more loaded an issue in China than anything smacking of "splittism."<br />
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As a member of the majority culture in my own country, what could I say? Well, that, to start. I'm in the Han position, you know?<br />
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And: "It's a very difficult problem. And it's really up to you and your children, how much you can preserve your culture, what's really important to you." I couldn't say, "too bad the Chinese government doesn't support an official bilingual policy, so if you have to learn Mandarin to advance in education and government and business, maybe the Han should have to learn Uighur or Kazak too." I don't know, maybe I could have said that, but I didn't think of it then. The whole issue of whether Xinjiang was "Chinese" or whether it should be something else, East Turkistan, maybe, well, I wasn't going to get into that.<br />
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What I did think of to say was this: "You know, it goes both ways. In America, African Americans are a minority, but African Americans' contributions to culture are so significant that African American culture really is a huge part of American culture - all Americans' culture." I talked about Chinese people in California - "that cultural influence is a part of our larger culture as well. Maybe here in Xinjiang, it's a little similar. Maybe Han people are also influenced by Uighur culture and by Kazak culture - maybe you are creating a new culture, that is a blend of all the people here."<br />
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It was the best I could do at the time: Sadly optimistic, uninformed and naive, especially now, when that cultural gulf seems wider than ever.<br />
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<i>Lisa…every other Wednesday...</i><br />
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-55546286268090425782013-12-03T22:44:00.003-08:002013-12-03T22:44:33.082-08:00Taxi Stories<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(originally published on Murder Is Everywhere)</i></div>
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When I go to China, I can always count on a couple of good taxi driver stories. Okay, I realize that taxi driver stories are kind of a cliche, but hey, Thomas Friedman has made a pundit fortune on them, so why not me?<br />
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Here's my first of the trip...<br />
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Story #1. BEIJING.<br />
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I needed to take a cab to get to the Beijing South Railway Station for a high-speed train to Shanghai. It's a long drive at best, in the far south of the city. Traffic across Beijing is generally pretty horrible (why I almost always opt for a subway), but I was leaving about noon for a 2:30 train, and I figured that time of day, it wouldn't be bad.<br />
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Wrong.<br />
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"Do you mind if I go a different way?" the cab driver asked me, meaning, not the typical direct route. "It's longer, but we'll get there faster."<br />
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Fine by me, I told him. You know better than I do.<br />
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I put him to be in his early forties, short, buzzed hair with only a little gray, tanned skin just starting to weather. We got to talking.<br />
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"You know what the problem with new Beijingers is?"<br />
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"You mean, <i>waidiren</i>?" People not born in Beijing. Migrants.<br />
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"Yes, <i>waidiren</i>. They aren't friendly. They don't really care about Beijing."<br />
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By this, I assumed that he had been born in Beijing, but I asked him anyway.<br />
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Yes, he was a Beijinger, he told me. Born and raised there. I've always enjoyed talking to Beijingers, because I was first in Beijing so long ago that I have some understanding of how drastically the city has changed. So we tend to have some things in common in spite of our differences, a memory of the city that the great majority of Chinese don't share.<br />
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We talked about a lot of things, some of them pretty typical: Are you married? Do you have children?<br />
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No, I told him.<br />
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"But why?" he asked me. "It's good to be married. My <i>laobanr—" —</i>basically, my old lady, my wife—"she is my best friend."<br />
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I gave him the usual answer. Life circumstances. You never know how things will work out. And so on. We talked more about family, about children, about age. About China versus America. The usual stuff.<br />
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"You know what the one of China's biggest problems is?" he said at one point. "Too many people."<br />
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This too is something that I've heard from a lot of taxi drivers. And no wonder. They're out there every day, trying to make a living driving through congested, smog-choked cities, where traffic laws tend to be more traffic suggestions, where there are just too many people in too many cars, and they aren't paid very much to do it.<br />
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You'll hear a lot of complaints from foreigners about Chinese taxi drivers, how they aren't friendly, how they'll rip you off, and I've had some of those experiences, but I've had more positive interactions than negative. This driver really knew his stuff. Suddenly we swooped onto a ramp that curved to the right, and there it was: the Beijing South Railway Station.<br />
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<i>"Bucuo!"</i> I told him, impressed. "Really fast."<br />
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He grinned back. A guy who liked doing a good job.<br />
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<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-82734531227704976932013-12-03T01:30:00.000-08:002013-12-04T01:32:13.457-08:00Greetings from Beijing….<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(originally published on Murder Is Everywhere)</i></div>
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I just got to Beijing last night after a long plane ride next to an adorable toddler…who unfortunately spent about half the flight wailing inconsolably. I'm on a train to Shanghai tomorrow, so my posting window is narrow and my energy is low—this will of necessity be short.<br />
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The Beijing air today was "very unhealthy" according to my handy iPhone app. Yeah, there's an app for that. "Protection is recommended." I did buy a mask before I left the US, but I haven't worn it yet. I'm saving it for "Hazardous" air, which is occurring with alarming frequency these days.<br />
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In spite of the bad air, I took a long walk around Gulou/Houhai, up Andingmen and then over to Yonghegong. These are the neighborhoods where I usually stay when I come here. They are some of the last old hutong neighborhoods in Beijing, and every time I come, I wonder what old landmark will be gone this time.<br />
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The city planners (I use that term loosely) here deemed most of these old neighborhoods unsightly, impractical, unprofitable—not modern enough for China's capital. Most have been replaced by anonymous high-rises and malls. In some, the old buildings were replaced with brand new "historic reproductions" -- not actual <i>siheyuan</i> (courtyard buildings) but an incredible simulation! Inevitably the new versions house trendy upscale stores, Starbucks and the like. It's true that a lot of the hutong areas were rundown slums and probably not practical to refurbish, but they were also living, breathing neighborhoods.<br />
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The Gulou area in particular has a lot of character. Gulou itself, the Drum Tower, is one of my favorite landmarks in all of Beijing, and the area around the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower is full of life: Small shops, bars, restaurants, markets, boutique hotels in old <i>siheyuan. </i>Locals come out after the tourist crowds have gone and walk their dogs in the plaza separating the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower. Old men gather around chessboards, sitting on small stools, and play games I can't identify. Hawkers ride their bike carts around, calling out their services.<br />
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<i>(yes, there are hipsters, too. This is near Yonghegong, the Lama Temple. Click to embiggen)</i></div>
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For the last few years, the "planners" have wanted to "improve" Gulou. For a while the idea was to knock most of the hutongs down, rebuild them and add a shopping center and a "Time Museum." That got shut down, but some new plan is in the works. I don't know what it is. I'm not sure who does know. Whole areas have been flattened, surrounded by steel construction fences, battered blue panels that travel from demolition site to demolition site. Some of it is for a new subway line. The rest of it? Time will tell I guess. Right now the plaza between the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower is fenced off. The locals sit on their stools next to the battered blue panels, playing their card and board games.<br />
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My favorite coffee shop is still there, at least. Last year, the <i>fuwuyuan</i> told me, her eyes tearing, that they would be gone in five months. A different worker was there today. She said they had at least five months, because construction there "is very complicated." Maybe they will get to stay. She doesn't know. It's not up to them.<br />
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Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out who this guy is…<br />
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-66537702919100409432013-10-29T23:05:00.000-07:002013-10-29T23:06:06.776-07:00Feeling So Vibrant I Gotta Wear Shades... <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm headed to China shortly and should have some fresh, China-related material to post soon, Great Firewall permitting.<br />
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In the meantime, I've been thinking about more mundane matters. Specifically, where the hell am I going to live?<br />
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I moved out of Venice Beach after 25 years last November. When I moved to Venice in 1987, one of its nicknames was "Slum By the Sea." It was a cheap place to live, a bohemian refuge, in part because it wasn't exactly safe. There was gang violence. A lot of people living on the streets, many of whom had mental health issues, substance abuse problems. I was very lucky during my years there, overall. I was nearly mugged once, another time followed by a creep in a truck who thought I might want to f*** him (and called me a "hippie c*** when I yelled that I had his license plate number and was calling the cops).<br />
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I lived in a building where weird shit happened, where cops where frequently called, where the SWAT team showed up once, where there were needles on the stairwells, where guys would steal a microwave from the 5th floor and knock on my door on the 1st floor at 8:00 AM and ask me if I wanted to buy it. I was at times the person who intervened, who waded into weird situations because, I don't know why. I just did. Weird domestic violence case with two incredibly drunk, naked people that I christened "Blue Velvet in Real Life"? Yeah, I was the person who walked through the door and told the little creep to stop hitting his girlfriend. I guess I was pretty dumb, except I figured, "they're both really loaded, and he's a skinny little dude, and he's naked, so it's not like he's gonna pull out a gun out of his butt."<br />
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Venice stories, I haz them.<br />
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During that time, I did a lot of stuff. I played in a band. I wrote screenplays and weird, unpublishable novels. And I held down a full-time job at a film studio. I started as a clerk and worked my way up to a position that I used to refer to as "mid-level studio bureaucrat." Eventually I bought a tiny house that I called "Shack by the Sea." I went through a lot in Venice, but ultimately, I was happy there, or my last few years were, anyway. It was a place that was rough at times but that encouraged creativity.<br />
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As I started doing better in my life, as I started making more money, established myself as a professional (albeit an eccentric, fringie one), Venice gentrified around me. By the time I left, Venice had become a very desirable, and very expensive, place to live.<br />
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Which, you know, has its plus sides. I liked being able to walk all over the place at night. Liked having groovy bistros and wine bars a few blocks away. Loved it when the Whole Foods moved in.<br />
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But ultimately, a novelist like me couldn't afford to live in a place like that.<br />
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So, I sold Shack By the Sea, and I've spent nearly a year ping-ponging around, exploring other places, trying to figure out where I wanted to be.<br />
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I thought, San Francisco. I love San Francisco. I mean, who doesn't? But talk about insanely expensive. It's gotten to the point where you literally cannot find an apartment for less than $2000.00 a month, and if you do (there's a huge rental housing shortage), it's a tiny studio. The gentrification there has become a civic crisis, as long-time residents are priced out of the city that many of them were born in. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/10/new-private-club-in-san-francisco.html" target="_blank">This New Yorker piece </a>may sound a little bitter and over-the-top, but from my experiences, it expresses how a lot of people are feeling; also, the clueless entitlement of the wealthy who look at the city as their personal playground.<br />
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I recently went to Albany to attend Bouchercon. Albany is an interesting city. It's a combination of grand civic buildings befitting the capital of the state, lovely, old row houses and homes built in the 19th and early 20th century, and de-industrialized blocks where industry fled and not much has come in to fill the vacuum.<br />
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I had a great time tromping all over the place in Albany, but it was sad to see these abandoned blocks with shells of beautiful buildings, with urban renewal projects that had failed.<br />
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After Albany, I went to New York for an event and for meetings with my publishing peeps. I decided to stay in Brooklyn, because I'd hardly spent any time there. I ended up in Williamsburg, which is just a bridge away from Manhattan. You can walk from Williamsburg to Manhattan in about 40 minutes, not that much longer than a subway ride. It's a beautiful walk across the bridge spanning the East River, into Manhattan. And Williamsburg, it's nice. Another community with industrial spaces that were colonized by artists and are now way too expensive for most artists to afford. Cute streets with bistros and bars and coffee houses. I liked it a lot. But I doubt that I could afford to live there.<br />
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Manhattan, of course, gentrified long ago, taken over by finance barons and Masters of the Universe. For a lot of folks, it's become a City Museum, not a living, breathing, creative place, but an Incredible Simulation! Walking on Manhattan's streets, it doesn't necessarily feel that way, at least not to me, but it's true that I could never afford to live there. And a life long Manhattan resident told me: "Parts of Manhattan, you used to walk on those streets and they were packed with people. They're empty now."<br />
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Because the people who own the co-ops, who rent the apartments, they're very wealthy, and they only live in Manhattan part-time.<br />
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So, where does that leave writers and artists? Queens? Vallejo? Detroit?<br />
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As a sidebar, I have to share an article I just read that inspired the title of this post. It's by the incredibly brilliant Thomas Frank, who wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-ebook/dp/B003J4VEM2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381902803&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+frank" target="_blank">"What's The Matter With Kansas?"</a> This piece is about the buzzword "Vibrant," and how encouraging artists and colorful creative types has basically become a substitute for addressing real, structural problems in the US economy. Instead, it's "let them eat art," where:<br />
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We build prosperity by mobilizing art-people as vibrancy shock troops and counting on them to . . . well . . . gentrify formerly bedraggled parts of town. Once that mission is accomplished, then other vibrancy multipliers kick in. The presence of hipsters is said to be inspirational to businesses; their doings make cities interesting and attractive to the class of professionals that everyone wants; their colorful japes help companies to hire quality employees, and so on. All a city really needs to prosper is group of art-school grads, some lofts for them to live in, and a couple of thrift stores to supply them with the ironic clothes they crave. Then we just step back and watch them work their magic....</blockquote>
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...Vibrancy is a sort of performance that artists or musicians are expected to put on, either directly or indirectly, for the corporate class. These are the ones we aim to reassure of our city’s vibrancy, so that they never choose to move their millions (of dollars) to some more vibrant burg. An artist who keeps to herself, who works in her room all day, who wears unremarkable clothes and goes without tattoos— by definition she brings almost nothing to this project, adds little to the economic prospects of a given area. She inspires no one. She offers no lessons in creativity. She is not vibrant, not remunerative, not investment-grade. </blockquote>
(I'm not doing this piece justice with these quotes. <a href="http://thebaffler.com/past/dead_end_on_shakin_street" target="_blank">Just go read the whole thing</a>)<br />
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I know that cities change and evolve and gentrify. Or decay. It's one of those life-cycle things. But what does it mean when a city like San Francisco, a city that has always been a refuge for the eccentric, for writers and artists, is no longer affordable for the people who were so essential to creating its character?<br />
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What happens when cities lose the qualities that made them what they are?<br />
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-42881835060698987642013-10-15T20:37:00.000-07:002013-10-15T20:37:53.716-07:00To the surprise of no one...<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(originally published on <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/10/to-surprise-of-no-one.html">Murder Is Everywhere, 10/2/13</a>, with a few additional thoughts added here)</i></div>
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Bo Xilai was found guilty.</div>
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<i>(Bo is over 6 ft. tall, so those are some very tall cops!)</i></div>
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For those unfamiliar, I wrote a little about Bo Xilai and his criminal case <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/08/vacation-style-medical-treatment.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/08/its-all-about-villa.html" target="_blank">here</a>. It truly is one of the most bizarre, Byzantine and fascinating political scandals of...maybe ever, but at least of the modern political era. I won't recap it again here (for one thing, I just got back from Bouchercon and a few post-Bouchercon events and...well, if you've been to Bouchercon, you'll understand! I need to sleep for about a week). But since my second post, a few more highlights of the trial were: Bo called his wife "crazy" (she's the one who supposedly murdered British businessman and fixer, Neil Heywood) and accused his once loyal righthand man, ex-police chief Wang Lijun, of having an affair with her. So, there's that.</div>
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What did surprise many observers was the severity of Bo's sentence -- life in prison, with the possibility of parole after a decade or so. Many had expected he'd get closer to 10 - 20 years, given his high "princeling" status. Also, the evidence presented in court was not terribly compelling--it was the sort of petty corruption that as one internet wag remarked, didn't even rise to the level of village headman. </div>
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But there were many factors at work here. </div>
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The first was the manner in which Bo proclaimed his ambitions before his downfall. While there might be some sympathy for his neo-Maoist politics (how deeply Bo believes in them is another question) Bo, with his American-style glad-handing, crowd-pleasing style, openly campaigned for high office. This. Isn't. Done. Decisions are made behind closed doors, and the battles are largely unseen. </div>
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Another was the current regime's desire to prove to the Chinese people that they are serious about tackling corruption, that they are willing to take down as high profile a leader as Bo Xilai, the son of an "Immortal." This is problematic, because the public suspects that most if not all Chinese leaders are in some measure corrupt, and if they aren't corrupt, they are so privileged that the distinction really doesn't matter. In fact, much of Bo's popularity stemmed from his anti-corruption campaign in Chongqing, and I can't really say if his downfall increases peoples' cynicism that "they're all the same," or if it reinforces a belief that anyone who really takes on the system will be brought low. Probably both, depending on who you talk to.<br />
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I think that Bo Xilai's unpardonable sin in the eyes of the current leadership was that he openly campaigned for high office. It threatened the hard-fought, behind the curtains consensus that has governed the succession process since Deng Xiaoping. His use of Maoist tropes suggested that he was willing to mobilize "the masses" to gain power, and that is a red-hot button for the leadership. They do not want to see a return to the violence and chaos of the Cultural Revolution period, but more to the point, they do not want to see a leadership selection process or the rise of a populist movement that's outside of their control.</div>
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Bo might have gotten a lighter sentence if he'd accepted his fate, admitted his guilt, thrown himself on the mercy of the court, but he did none of those things. He challenged the government's case every step of the way and loudly proclaimed his innocence. Now, he is appealing his verdict. How that will work out in a legal system largely designed to reinforce the Party's will is anyone's guess. </div>
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But most observers agree that the government didn't do a very good job of presenting the case against Bo, that when it came to the charge of abusing his power, they weren't willing to dig very deeply at all. From all accounts, Bo's anti-corruption campaign was also a tool used to punish his political enemies and to extort money from businessmen who were not his allies. The abuse of power was very real and very deep. But the real facts of Bo's case too clearly illustrate the arbitrary nature of authority in China. And apparently the new leadership isn't ready to tackle that.</div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-78715931211927044822013-09-02T22:16:00.001-07:002013-09-02T22:16:50.989-07:00Vacation-style medical treatment<div style="text-align: center;">
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<i>(originally published on <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/08/vacation-style-medical-treatment.html">Murder is Everywhere, 8/18/13</a>)</i></div>
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I've been wanting to write a post about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Xilai" target="_blank">Bo Xilai scandal</a>, which has to be one of the strangest, most over-the-top political scandals of all times. In fact, I wanted to rip it off for the plot of my next book, but I decided that no one would believe it. Even trying to write a post about it boggled my mind, because it's so bizarre. But here's a brief whack at it.</div>
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Bo is the former <strike>Mayor</strike> Party Secretary of Chongqing and was a very powerful fellow who had ambitions of becoming a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest decision-making body in China, and maybe even premier or president, and he might have done it. He was charismatic, popular, a guy who used old-style Maoist propaganda and "Red Songs" to appeal to the masses of Chinese who feel left behind in the current "to get rich is glorious" hyper-capitalism that runs the country these days. Bo had the reputation of a man who got things done, who cleaned up Chongqing, cracked down on organized crime and corruption. He combined this with the outspoken, glad-handing style of an American politician, something of which the gray men of the CCP did not approve, accustomed as they are to doing things behind the scenes and by consensus.</div>
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<i>Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai</i></div>
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Then it all fell apart. His anti-corruption campaign was as corrupt and as lawless as the forces it fought against. The nod to Maoist propaganda frightened many who'd been through Maoist excesses like the Cultural Revolution, even though Bo mostly seemed to be using this as a way to rally the masses, as opposed to resurrecting struggle sessions, violent battles between different factions of Red Guards and "Smashing the Olds."</div>
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And then his wife, Gu Kailai, a lawyer once known as the "Jackie Kennedy of China" murdered a British businessman.</div>
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At least, that's the story.</div>
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The victim, Neil Heywood, was a man with longstanding ties to the Bo's. He was a fixer of sorts who helped get their son, Guagua, into Harrow. He also is suspected to have helped the family move millions out of China and into offshore accounts. Oh, and there's a villa in Cannes involved. None of which is out of the ordinary for prominent Chinese politicians and the wealthy, for reasons beyond corruption (though there is a LOT of corruption) -- many do not believe that their money is safe in China, and their lack of confidence in the long-term stability of the country might give pause to those who are convinced that China will rule the world.</div>
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But I digress.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0eO0EFDMoYxzpvXeIvIMuhHF0CEf_je3OhaSuovH9sNtULRpCb0syoM9x7oCs6ciUXmxgQko-L-bReS5lXj218cjgsr6xkah7bjzYTV-VA1iieI40XF8w-2hff29Eh6ZUuuCU4A/s1600/Bo-guagua1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0eO0EFDMoYxzpvXeIvIMuhHF0CEf_je3OhaSuovH9sNtULRpCb0syoM9x7oCs6ciUXmxgQko-L-bReS5lXj218cjgsr6xkah7bjzYTV-VA1iieI40XF8w-2hff29Eh6ZUuuCU4A/s320/Bo-guagua1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Bo Guagua</i></div>
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The story goes that Heywood and Gu Kailai had a falling out, with Heywood demanding more money for his services and threatening to reveal the family's overseas business dealings. On top of that, Gu Kailai feared that he endangered her son. So, naturally, she lured Heywood to a Chongqing hotel, where she and an assistant poisoned him with cyanide. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH60nrZf9Pdj-5b0B1BWE7CCaRvw5ZZDH0D7vfX_9Th-_S5sYgLn-6HrgJOA1HXSpc60V94-Hi5ZorZ_nVRLmK8zM2gomnq4vcZJ2mO6YvgTbKLtVUx8Cni9y1JHjnhfEC4XP6uQ/s1600/Neil_Heywood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH60nrZf9Pdj-5b0B1BWE7CCaRvw5ZZDH0D7vfX_9Th-_S5sYgLn-6HrgJOA1HXSpc60V94-Hi5ZorZ_nVRLmK8zM2gomnq4vcZJ2mO6YvgTbKLtVUx8Cni9y1JHjnhfEC4XP6uQ/s1600/Neil_Heywood.jpg" /></a></div>
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<i>Neil Heywood</i></div>
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<i>If</i> this is what happened, she might have gotten away with it, if not for the head of the Chongqing Police Department (and vice-mayor of Chongqing), Wang Lijun. </div>
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If you're thinking this sounds like the kind of murder story where a heroic police chief defies and confronts the powerful in his pursuit of the truth, well, not exactly.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTmljfaPw-y1Qr_1rihv9BoYQtPVFSNvjzMQM-Xw1xv_aVVm2yTMs_BoPmQbml2BIxAF0K9WOVpKypa5ewAgQGc3ACC6S2vih6IX1pBw8s5IPOrB0NwPAP2ThDLDDAiHCnuJKUyA/s1600/120209021138-wang-lijun-file-story-top.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTmljfaPw-y1Qr_1rihv9BoYQtPVFSNvjzMQM-Xw1xv_aVVm2yTMs_BoPmQbml2BIxAF0K9WOVpKypa5ewAgQGc3ACC6S2vih6IX1pBw8s5IPOrB0NwPAP2ThDLDDAiHCnuJKUyA/s320/120209021138-wang-lijun-file-story-top.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Wang Lijun</i></div>
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Wang had been Bo's right hand during the crackdown on organized crime (and people Bo didn't like—the crackdown had also served as as a handy way to extort millions from businessmen on the wrong side of the political fence) but apparently they'd had their own falling-out, which might have been precipitated by corruption on Wang's part, or because he'd investigated Heywood's death and discovered the involvement of Mrs. Bo in same and confronted Bo with it. In any case, after being abruptly demoted by Bo, he fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, where he stayed for a day, possibly trying to defect, or maybe just looking for a safe refuge from Bo. He left on his own accord and was then escorted to Beijing by State Security. The Chongqing Municipal Government insisted that everything was fine and that Wang was undergoing "vacation-style medical treatment."</div>
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Gu Kailai was convicted of Heywood's murder last August. She received a suspended death sentence, and it's not clear how long she'll serve time. But even though the trial was a carefully choreographed affair, it had its own bizarre aspect. Namely, that the person standing trial was maybe not Gu Kailai. </div>
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Yeah.</div>
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It's not uncommon for rich people in China to hire a person in need of money to stand trial and receive punishment in place of the accused, and when photos from the trail were published, rumors flew around the Chinese web that a body-double stood in Gu Kailai's place.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipy1C1qizhfbNfhtugs2DVqRLvZqjLlj_Cvy7hS4NuwlOaT4boG9i91tmekKLftB95fjDpzUKI6sZ9QCnTtcGuXT91tZwGgA7gfqm8lY9I9T_k470KbJQHH_veKLNUXICEAPbURQ/s1600/Gu+Kailai_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipy1C1qizhfbNfhtugs2DVqRLvZqjLlj_Cvy7hS4NuwlOaT4boG9i91tmekKLftB95fjDpzUKI6sZ9QCnTtcGuXT91tZwGgA7gfqm8lY9I9T_k470KbJQHH_veKLNUXICEAPbURQ/s320/Gu+Kailai_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>You be the judge</i></div>
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Meanwhile, Bo Xilai was stripped of his positions and thrown out of the CCP. His trial is expected to begin next week. The charges against him are expected to be taking bribes, embezzling state funds and abusing his power -- altogether, not as serious as some expected. But it was always a difficult line to walk. Bo was not only very popular and a leading representative of the "New Left" in China, he is also a member of CCP royalty, the son of one of the "Eight Immortals," revolutionary heroes who were highly influential in running the People's Republic until their deaths (Deng Xiaoping was one of their number). Oh, and another one of the dynamics in all of this is that Bo's family warred with the family of the current president, Xi Jinping, and that Bo and Xi are long-time rivals. There's a nifty short book by John Garnault called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rise-House-Penguin-Specials-ebook/dp/B00A3Q9ER6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376813497&sr=8-1&keywords=the+fall+of+the+house+of+bo" target="_blank">"The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo"</a> that explores this angle. </div>
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The latest wrinkle? Well, three. Neil Heywood's mother has asked the Chinese government to compensate the family, particularly his two children, for his death. Bo Xilai's six brothers and sisters are quarreling about how the case should be handled and their relations with Gu Kailai's family (which is also a powerful "Princeling" family naturally).</div>
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And, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323455104579016803531203952.html" target="_blank">Gu Kailai is expected to testify against Bo Xilai. </a></div>
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Bo is said to be furious (not too surprising) — he didn't provide evidence against Kailai in her murder trial, even though they reportedly almost divorced a decade ago. But Kailai's motivation, supposedly, is to protect son Guagua from any prosecution by the Chinese government (Guagua has stayed in the U.S. through all of this). </div>
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<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323455104579016803531203952.html" target="_blank">According to the Wall Street Journal</a>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Mr. Bo, who didn't testify against his wife, is angered that she is now providing evidence against him and has threatened to disrupt proceedings and demand a divorce if she testifies in court, or via video, rather than in written form... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"She will provide evidence--that can't be avoided--but the question is in what way," said one person familiar with the Bo family. "If she appears in court, who knows what could happen."</blockquote>
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Given the facts of this case? I can't even begin to imagine.</div>
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Did I mention the French architect who also helped buy the Cannes villa and who once shared a residential address in England with Gu Kailai?</div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-59333227044250779342013-08-18T02:44:00.002-07:002013-08-18T02:44:56.587-07:00Shanzhai! <br />
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<span style="text-align: left;"><i>Originally published on <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/08/shanzhai.html">Murder Is Everywhere, Aug. 11 2013</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Greetings from scenic Buttonwillow, just east of the I-5. I'm driving to San Diego from San Francisco and I don't like trying to do it in a day, so here I am at a Motel Six, where the sheets are clean, the air conditioner is loud enough to drown out the trucks zooming up the freeway and there's a pupuseria next door. I find places like this pretty fascinating, actually. All these little farm towns and pit stops for travelers and truckers. A great location for some kind of suspense sequence, I'm thinking.</span></div>
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But I'm not here to write about Buttonwillow, or even Coalinga! No, I'm going to talk a little about the Chinese phenomena of "shanzhai." -- 山寨。"Shanzhai" literally means "mountain fastness, a fortified mountain village." Colloquially it means "outside of government supervision," and "pirated or knockoff."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Eo9syT7eAKpn6jkigvQgS_Hf_Rx7IYkDv9mRrmhj7W1g5QvhDdQKWK_IJlDDZGhC5wwWzV2Mh7eVqHtOyuU-gHC22ttooQOYwRNIsWRQYcyCO774O_SzDa1CHyGvR340GZ10qA/s1600/shanzai2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Eo9syT7eAKpn6jkigvQgS_Hf_Rx7IYkDv9mRrmhj7W1g5QvhDdQKWK_IJlDDZGhC5wwWzV2Mh7eVqHtOyuU-gHC22ttooQOYwRNIsWRQYcyCO774O_SzDa1CHyGvR340GZ10qA/s320/shanzai2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Shanzhai products in China are legion. Everything from fake iPhones to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14503724" target="_blank">entire fake Apple stores</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyIXFTJd38obZ0ci0PVW9IPLZwUyQv8sKHmINWpLY_n2QFOQwrxwDRwmxBgGmIK0mRaFTxLarh-gZ548wizOwfkCpCFltTaJAs79ihhNSly1FT0ardCUUB_YzAeD7-e_1-GOWrw/s1600/kfg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyIXFTJd38obZ0ci0PVW9IPLZwUyQv8sKHmINWpLY_n2QFOQwrxwDRwmxBgGmIK0mRaFTxLarh-gZ548wizOwfkCpCFltTaJAs79ihhNSly1FT0ardCUUB_YzAeD7-e_1-GOWrw/s320/kfg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyOnUYNHtiTrvHNxZqGTEoLHMpb3jJKIXFtGZISRgY3kKPhD_HPgkAQ7IzpAs6Am41kmHzpOIRafyk_DgCoL3Stavx58IAM1JuXx2reyDBB3FE4zhqU9mm2dVYs4_FWICrEo__mw/s1600/PC120556.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyOnUYNHtiTrvHNxZqGTEoLHMpb3jJKIXFtGZISRgY3kKPhD_HPgkAQ7IzpAs6Am41kmHzpOIRafyk_DgCoL3Stavx58IAM1JuXx2reyDBB3FE4zhqU9mm2dVYs4_FWICrEo__mw/s320/PC120556.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>(Starbucks knockoffs are a particular favorite)</i></div>
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But in China <i>shanzhai </i>goes way beyond fake brands or phony stores. In China, we have entirely pirated cities! </div>
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Here's a place I visited outside of Shanghai called "Thames Town." It is an almost deserted subdivision that seems to get the most use as a location for wedding photo shoots. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2z3OBVwXLVE57juibTUNHRTg3ldBQ2fiPteCqx6Bj9VRvrvF4ahpkobwS9hD2oITcW0CLKeRoi2380G-gsR00m617NKgqj3hQODCKGOkafOaPvAIQyXaOqfhWeIFGTzKtWO6dZg/s1600/PC160690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2z3OBVwXLVE57juibTUNHRTg3ldBQ2fiPteCqx6Bj9VRvrvF4ahpkobwS9hD2oITcW0CLKeRoi2380G-gsR00m617NKgqj3hQODCKGOkafOaPvAIQyXaOqfhWeIFGTzKtWO6dZg/s320/PC160690.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtsciXM8wQo9m3MesKlXGYuzA36lBBEnBLfzHuidiBckf5B92u8vLsQ6k-4ykgjP9ECwlC796W4qan-Zj1KI0kT3cvDmqa4f-ef_87IHg1nW9ckxJvj8Vl7QGAwVUcgJvtpjZfbA/s1600/PC160701.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtsciXM8wQo9m3MesKlXGYuzA36lBBEnBLfzHuidiBckf5B92u8vLsQ6k-4ykgjP9ECwlC796W4qan-Zj1KI0kT3cvDmqa4f-ef_87IHg1nW9ckxJvj8Vl7QGAwVUcgJvtpjZfbA/s320/PC160701.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>(A nice day for a red wedding)</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFOSiPY7vsZzreX70BUabP7IjLoxYoKkRWyAw5LZtLFP6t4WPB_YG3OpdAo2UjgDf4OXrL_MAdn3iuOYdf7a_cz3_E5La-OJvPstHjO1EMvqn88qnr4pLump_I0XIt38brKs84gw/s1600/PC160706.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFOSiPY7vsZzreX70BUabP7IjLoxYoKkRWyAw5LZtLFP6t4WPB_YG3OpdAo2UjgDf4OXrL_MAdn3iuOYdf7a_cz3_E5La-OJvPstHjO1EMvqn88qnr4pLump_I0XIt38brKs84gw/s320/PC160706.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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Not too far away from Thames Town is a fake Swedish town -- I can't remember the exact name but I think it translates to "Northern European Style Village." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgClMVIqM-K_ZNZ4MhskYoRzpnIXauM-BP196kqZA26zrpYROvV1_0yXVPS_7WwQ2hxsEga22t6tb0vZiIp2b7wDfHigGeVh1hADHjiUO6WkI9IdznLp0IH1RnqexW9ymMKbUL4zA/s1600/DSCF1276.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgClMVIqM-K_ZNZ4MhskYoRzpnIXauM-BP196kqZA26zrpYROvV1_0yXVPS_7WwQ2hxsEga22t6tb0vZiIp2b7wDfHigGeVh1hADHjiUO6WkI9IdznLp0IH1RnqexW9ymMKbUL4zA/s320/DSCF1276.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Also close to Shanghai is an entire "Little Paris," complete with Eiffel Tower. Do check out <a href="http://qz.com/111262/welcome-to-chinas-beautiful-but-empty-little-paris/" target="_blank">this amazing photo essay</a>--here's a sample: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy-1P5dO73XiLLvw8QNOEOd8DwOM8orXD_V2Xws4TF24uXtcY8kRHkmzp-v3x6ix7eDgVwU2lnxZTIOzvVNKzkZFCi3DAJ7cpRPAFHeN9k1RGZe_yM0ab6tpgHFEnOnMpoC0patA/s1600/man-wheelbarrow-eiffel-tower-china.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy-1P5dO73XiLLvw8QNOEOd8DwOM8orXD_V2Xws4TF24uXtcY8kRHkmzp-v3x6ix7eDgVwU2lnxZTIOzvVNKzkZFCi3DAJ7cpRPAFHeN9k1RGZe_yM0ab6tpgHFEnOnMpoC0patA/s320/man-wheelbarrow-eiffel-tower-china.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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There are so many <i>shanzhai </i>developments like this in China that it's hard to keep track of them all. But so far the winner has to be the Chinese real estate developers <a href="http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/06/how-austrian-mountain-village-ended-china/2227/" target="_blank">who duplicated the entire Austrian town of Halstatt. </a><br />
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<a href="http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/chinas-hangover/china-replica-manhattan-loses-its-luster" target="_blank">Then there's the plan to duplicate Manhattan</a> just outside of Tianjin. The city, Yujiapu, would serve as a new financial center for a new China. It's one of the largest construction sites in the world and includes replicas of Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers. But with the slowdown in China's economy, the success of this massive project is far from assured. And if it doesn't succeed? A Manhattan-sized ghost town of half-completed skyscrapers probably isn't going to get much use as a location for wedding photo shoots.<br />
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-71020679307738722902013-06-29T22:07:00.002-07:002013-06-29T22:11:48.177-07:00Who dunnit? <br />
I'm just going to say right off the bat that I'm not going to talk about Edward Snowden and his somewhat bizarre decision to seek asylum in Hong Kong, which is still a part of China, "two systems" or not, and how China has even more pervasive surveillance than the United States with no legal restraints on how it's used.<br />
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It would lead me to talking about how the institution of universal surveillance with questionable oversight and weakened legal protection is probably not a way that we should want the United States to emulate China. How according to someone who should know, <a href="http://aiweiwei.com/" target="_blank">Ai Weiwei</a>*, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/nsa-surveillance-us-behaving-like-china" target="_blank">the United States is doing precisely that</a>, except that our citizens live under a rule of law that shields us from the worst impulses of the state.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Chinese contemporary artist who helped design the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing and later ended up getting a hood over his head at the Beijing Capital Airport and dragged off to a semi-legal three month detention. The charges brought afterwards were tax evasion</span></i><br />
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Then, how the erosion of our Constitutional principles and the outsized influence of money in our political system is leading the US ever further down a road of increasingly seamless integration of state and corporate influences, where profit is the ruling principle, and power is only limited by the amount of it one has and one's willingness to use it. But if I say stuff like that without presenting some evidence, I worry about sounding like a candidate for a Reynolds Wrap chapeau.<br />
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And, I just read <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/174776/meta-question?page=0,1&rel=emailNation#axzz2WMPOdCCj" target="_blank">this very interesting and persuasive article</a> about how metadata is a means of social engineering that could be used as "a tool for a plutocracy." For example, your opinions, buying habits and tax bracket might make getting credit just slightly more difficult. Or slightly more expensive.</div>
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The author of this particular piece is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier" target="_blank">Jaron Lanier</a>, an American computer scientist and internet visionary who popularized the phrase, "Virtual reality," and has written critically of "Web 2.0." Among other things, he refers to the so-called "Wisdom of Crowds" as "Digital Maoism," which is the kind of thing that I would like to say but fear would get me labeled as an out-of-touch elitist. </div>
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But I'll say that there's a problem with creating "all the infrastructure a tyrant <span style="font-family: inherit;">would need" and "counting on having angels in office," <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/all-the-infrastructure-a-tyrant-would-need-courtesy-of-bush-and-obama/276635/" target="_blank">as this cogent piece</a> in <b>The Atlantic</b> puts it:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 23px;">...we're allowing ourselves to become a nation of men, not laws. Illegal spying? Torture? Violating the War Powers Resolution and the convention that mandates investigating past torture?</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 23px;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">No matter. Just intone that your priority is keeping America safe. Don't like the law? Just get someone in the Office of Legal Counsel to secretly interpret it in a way that twists its words and betrays its spirit.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">You'll never be held accountable.</span></blockquote>
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And, that what I'm thinking lately is, if you want to understand what has happened to the American economy and why we are where we are politically, approach it like a murder mystery. </div>
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In a murder mystery, somebody gets killed, and the central question is motivation. </div>
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Who benefits?</div>
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And, oh yeah, <a href="http://www.lisabrackmann.com/" target="_blank">I have a new book out.</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSz0wwAT-P8wcZ8Sc9D69P0u9WZZvaOZMn6CZ4-gyEI48EevhWUwjZXYKDL-5wK6kxoAmnm9Y77WVQzP7s8eETMo_-zOOKccxX-MTjlCHgUFGG7sZf1eHzncO8R94gR8fHPF9C5w/s648/Hour+of+the+Rat+5+and+6.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSz0wwAT-P8wcZ8Sc9D69P0u9WZZvaOZMn6CZ4-gyEI48EevhWUwjZXYKDL-5wK6kxoAmnm9Y77WVQzP7s8eETMo_-zOOKccxX-MTjlCHgUFGG7sZf1eHzncO8R94gR8fHPF9C5w/s320/Hour+of+the+Rat+5+and+6.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-10955217545189963882013-06-09T00:34:00.000-07:002013-06-09T00:34:10.345-07:00Mystic Yeast! <br />
It's a little over a week till my next book launches, and I'm kinda crazed. This will be my third published book, so the process is sort of familiar but still new enough to be pretty, well, <i>new! </i>And the whole thing is kind of overwhelming.<br />
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So right now I have the brain space of a caffeinated flea. Meaning that....</div>
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It's time for more Chinese signs!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvedKgc877Ll4Ax3ys3-AFtkMbV3_cfdswSHDb6hP8VvYzlB19R6zeE7vbBpuCKV5yhm6EepCKK-ZR0MMlXg41xnBc_iKc-3bPfFL5yv7rUI-C18Iz7eNjl8P37-Ej6ivgCgkUJg/s1600/P7090138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvedKgc877Ll4Ax3ys3-AFtkMbV3_cfdswSHDb6hP8VvYzlB19R6zeE7vbBpuCKV5yhm6EepCKK-ZR0MMlXg41xnBc_iKc-3bPfFL5yv7rUI-C18Iz7eNjl8P37-Ej6ivgCgkUJg/s320/P7090138.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i> </i><i> Seen at the Qingdao Beer factory...I want a T-shirt!</i><i> </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2n9Mqua43lHpBEiVWFsHiFCJjz6Gjoc9SohSIa1JhNBiq_hj0V_T5cH01battt1HF5C5MHuPO8sXEDCl9LgPHZHkUBpGwK6EUW3m3S030k9cM2eE6enGkYfKuqpqqIpl02Nr4w/s1600/PB300431.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2n9Mqua43lHpBEiVWFsHiFCJjz6Gjoc9SohSIa1JhNBiq_hj0V_T5cH01battt1HF5C5MHuPO8sXEDCl9LgPHZHkUBpGwK6EUW3m3S030k9cM2eE6enGkYfKuqpqqIpl02Nr4w/s320/PB300431.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Strange stones indeed! (click to embiggen)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBZMk_kYg39zArLIJie-PDw05YvNNhIU2NEYfhWck2PUq66f6bVFIRcuDryaVDsSQr8XKjAB1sw1pJ23IXjfpqd9Er39pw7lcuvNzzbWVQEW0FIWUU5ks8rRL21wyK0P91UKfFkw/s1600/P8140156.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBZMk_kYg39zArLIJie-PDw05YvNNhIU2NEYfhWck2PUq66f6bVFIRcuDryaVDsSQr8XKjAB1sw1pJ23IXjfpqd9Er39pw7lcuvNzzbWVQEW0FIWUU5ks8rRL21wyK0P91UKfFkw/s320/P8140156.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Because you don't want to be pulled over by a cartoon policeman</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiagQHLwhrkQRBGY9fISbGeCBqJmB9rSU5S6_fbbMf-j2taF_9Ijh8COhgYKvi-JODCxJVskIZ4Eb0DYyhVGGDSVf6cO0avrzBHJ59DfYcLF9-5KuSOoaW1tyhsH6Y79plegri1Fg/s1600/P8210246.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiagQHLwhrkQRBGY9fISbGeCBqJmB9rSU5S6_fbbMf-j2taF_9Ijh8COhgYKvi-JODCxJVskIZ4Eb0DYyhVGGDSVf6cO0avrzBHJ59DfYcLF9-5KuSOoaW1tyhsH6Y79plegri1Fg/s320/P8210246.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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"Eating the World-Wide Delicious!" (click to embiggen)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifuD7uobyYy7Q7H3fDoqhYyskesAytzbQJuJsghkxEUthO2pXIfE6f7iFNgcHeEoGTWzWa18E_-yalMp0MqIkHPgSb5hMwWbBSmRYsmEx75P_aPTDe7e2RinaHd1WdmNTbxu5qdQ/s1600/P2250101.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifuD7uobyYy7Q7H3fDoqhYyskesAytzbQJuJsghkxEUthO2pXIfE6f7iFNgcHeEoGTWzWa18E_-yalMp0MqIkHPgSb5hMwWbBSmRYsmEx75P_aPTDe7e2RinaHd1WdmNTbxu5qdQ/s320/P2250101.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I promise, I will sidewalk! </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8QF3qeK4BwT2GW5OfuyLo2W9kD4D3ge5m4QyG3fy52RJeK7EecsGRGL1YSkqmKubm_Hssiio1kMOzNhcA-mauJZ6q-eYdyR7BE8F6Bzbp-cikO_EXA9dENDIvzqrDqZZlRBHHw/s1600/P2280110.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8QF3qeK4BwT2GW5OfuyLo2W9kD4D3ge5m4QyG3fy52RJeK7EecsGRGL1YSkqmKubm_Hssiio1kMOzNhcA-mauJZ6q-eYdyR7BE8F6Bzbp-cikO_EXA9dENDIvzqrDqZZlRBHHw/s320/P2280110.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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And I won't occupy while stabling.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NP5fK2zJ1QC8i3E8Zj-lP0RiwvYm1B8Ni_ye_9_5VOt1XuT2Eq_4EdxKY7KBMM4dDjz_a6FZKYDbgolRyXb_eHzVFIvHmhFpBrxiaivQ5hcWI9f4V-JU9OqtTgbZ0e3FrRTmJg/s1600/PB280361.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NP5fK2zJ1QC8i3E8Zj-lP0RiwvYm1B8Ni_ye_9_5VOt1XuT2Eq_4EdxKY7KBMM4dDjz_a6FZKYDbgolRyXb_eHzVFIvHmhFpBrxiaivQ5hcWI9f4V-JU9OqtTgbZ0e3FrRTmJg/s320/PB280361.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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But would you want to live there?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOA4yokdrQo1dnzcMB7dRudtxFi4YR_tivKEe1umoQd9imw6kvjHkyyZtFZgVcvgXCWBGBPD2r2_RFWmVtEAIeXyYCs1LNHka_P1lciNEjkwfpU3kqAdInkz2ZuprXXI2nEwr_jw/s1600/P2180307.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOA4yokdrQo1dnzcMB7dRudtxFi4YR_tivKEe1umoQd9imw6kvjHkyyZtFZgVcvgXCWBGBPD2r2_RFWmVtEAIeXyYCs1LNHka_P1lciNEjkwfpU3kqAdInkz2ZuprXXI2nEwr_jw/s320/P2180307.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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This sign means, "Be Careful When Tossing Food to the Gulls," I think. </div>
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I am not sure what "mew" has to do with it.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKDgDUSZPCEGHL1ZVqJidPuTwmDcTHb4O3T4cvuSymp6kJeIOEaHeKPLo8LG9jqGoXWzyrnQ6ND5oPXkH9HKTiaNpSxEwTemk9KLBsbkR93adVFVBvrkRVydYhdrApYJKjOgILMQ/s1600/P2180308.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKDgDUSZPCEGHL1ZVqJidPuTwmDcTHb4O3T4cvuSymp6kJeIOEaHeKPLo8LG9jqGoXWzyrnQ6ND5oPXkH9HKTiaNpSxEwTemk9KLBsbkR93adVFVBvrkRVydYhdrApYJKjOgILMQ/s320/P2180308.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Yes, this is what you think.</div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-80056735746931164382013-05-15T01:37:00.000-07:002013-05-15T01:37:06.907-07:00The Train! The Train! <br />
I have an arm injury that makes driving uncomfortable (Also typing, thus my photo-heavy posts as of late). So, when I needed to go to <a href="http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/">the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books</a> recently, I took the new <a href="http://www.metro.net/projects/exposition/">Exposition Line</a> from my friend's house to get there.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4GouTN2HsYkGdP9sM0Dq64nwe92D_t3M_ff9siF0raCgWcoQnhpAFj0u2XfIOr8vnH0qgRufj1L_0xx4Jt6lSRDxwlUjh1rFGbW9TUF1SymqFuivczIdCD4g-ig4Caoz5sMHuHA/s1600/Image+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4GouTN2HsYkGdP9sM0Dq64nwe92D_t3M_ff9siF0raCgWcoQnhpAFj0u2XfIOr8vnH0qgRufj1L_0xx4Jt6lSRDxwlUjh1rFGbW9TUF1SymqFuivczIdCD4g-ig4Caoz5sMHuHA/s320/Image+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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What a revelation! Instead of fighting traffic and searching for expensive parking, I rode in a shiny new light rail that dropped me off at the USC campus for $1.50. It was a wonderful way to experience Los Angeles. I lived in LA for over 25 years, and I keep thinking about what a huge difference having an actual transit system like this would make for the city. Suddenly it feels more accessible. More tied-together.<br />
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To get back to San Francisco, I took <a href="http://www.amtrak.com/coast-starlight-train" target="_blank">Amtrak's Coast Starlight</a> train.<br />
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Amtrak gets a bad rap, which I feel is not entirely fair. Okay, not fair at all. The problem with Amtrak is that as a country, we do not fund it adequately. We subsidize driving in all kinds of ways, but the idea of a national rail system sends some people into screaming fits about socialism. I've ridden a lot of trains in other countries, and it's absurd to me that the US doesn't take more pride into supporting and expanding rail. There's no better way to get from city to city, and no better way to actually see a country than to ride its trains.<br />
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The Coast Starlight is a spectacular ride. Once you head north out of Los Angeles, the route hugs the coast, at times so close to the ocean that it feels like you can dangle your feet in the waves:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBcxqPE9GtKIyZKyocPy_WPR1J5w2UE8ZXOULRYY4u7W35xWfjhKyMOtwnlXS7DdgYn5jNkQvotoLijblCsDcu8daI6rCD9qlW_wK_BgsI_YIzUBCAgIGpZ_3ApucnXUXKyaIzw/s1600/Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBcxqPE9GtKIyZKyocPy_WPR1J5w2UE8ZXOULRYY4u7W35xWfjhKyMOtwnlXS7DdgYn5jNkQvotoLijblCsDcu8daI6rCD9qlW_wK_BgsI_YIzUBCAgIGpZ_3ApucnXUXKyaIzw/s320/Image.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx3hpu_-Usp8WtlYqP4VdBvCUzM9toTbsC7UkWJyHGgHMbsXsPbj49fWLmW21vhD_KLPqlWWKaxHL_y_UiawesVxJHgpyHqeQ8dvcsLO3RQFE3f9ReDQ_QZT9MJ63CrgYr5AUfUw/s1600/Image+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx3hpu_-Usp8WtlYqP4VdBvCUzM9toTbsC7UkWJyHGgHMbsXsPbj49fWLmW21vhD_KLPqlWWKaxHL_y_UiawesVxJHgpyHqeQ8dvcsLO3RQFE3f9ReDQ_QZT9MJ63CrgYr5AUfUw/s320/Image+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp0JxstlJTKgBz8NQ18Qyf3zIxRP6nFgl3cIZklugIYgXcnPNgBoGwARZBNbz0bCBtIjAp1VmWCA7E9pgFz343b7ZWAplD7vr1S8MGK9pbT2he6YEJ7B0Dmd7kdfLO4V7s-fNo_Q/s1600/Image+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp0JxstlJTKgBz8NQ18Qyf3zIxRP6nFgl3cIZklugIYgXcnPNgBoGwARZBNbz0bCBtIjAp1VmWCA7E9pgFz343b7ZWAplD7vr1S8MGK9pbT2he6YEJ7B0Dmd7kdfLO4V7s-fNo_Q/s320/Image+8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The route roughly parallels the 101, so after a time you head inland, through the Middle Kingdom around Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNemyjOlur6v_o30bNST6lEnKfxmefk4kiNjPJBk_LnJt9a59qfPm1ccT7X4-DXF-Hxkhu_7EbBrarWs3rHTpOQz5soXzj9jjm-oW0Rt16Rpy2PSu49Gj1BXUuGS8WyrBJu0Bf1A/s1600/Image+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNemyjOlur6v_o30bNST6lEnKfxmefk4kiNjPJBk_LnJt9a59qfPm1ccT7X4-DXF-Hxkhu_7EbBrarWs3rHTpOQz5soXzj9jjm-oW0Rt16Rpy2PSu49Gj1BXUuGS8WyrBJu0Bf1A/s320/Image+9.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Past San Luis Obispo, you experience some of California's agricultural and industrial heartland:<br />
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You get to experience all this sitting in comfortable coach seats (way more room than the cattle car ambiance of most air trips these days) or hanging out in the observation car, where strangers will ask you if you want to share their bottle of wine, or in the dining car, where you get to eat decent meals with real silverware. If you're lucky enough to travel first class, you have your own compartment (I'm doing this, I swear).<br />
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You ride the train, you can read a book. Take a nap. Stroll to the observation car. Visit the snack car, where the Amtrak worker announces over the PA that "there's pizza and beer, come on down!"<br />
If you choose to eat in the dining car, you share a table with other travelers. This can be a mixed experience. But it's never boring.<br />
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During lunch, one of my table mates said something that I found pretty profound:<br />
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"Other forms of travel take time. This gives you time."<br />
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She was so right.<br />
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-59006932973663924782013-04-27T23:49:00.002-07:002013-04-27T23:49:16.156-07:00Greetings from Puerto Vallarta...<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(Originally <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/04/greetings-from-puerto-vallarta.html">posted 4/7/13 at Murder Is Everywhere</a>...)</i></div>
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One of the donkeys who lives on the arroyo went missing again. This seems to happen nearly every time I visit Puerto Vallarta. The donkey escapes, runs through the neighborhood. Or disappears for a much longer period. This time poor Andale was gone for more many months, and when he reappeared (or was found, I’m not sure which), he was emaciated and dehydrated. The theory is, he was stolen and forced to work, and then abandoned when he became more trouble than they felt he was worth. He’s getting shots from a vet and extra food, courtesy of my friend who lives in PV in a house by the arroyo.</div>
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The donkeys are kind of a pain in the ass, in that one of them starts braying at unexpected intervals in the middle of the night – an incredibly loud “Hawww-HEEE-hawww-HEEE-hawww,” trailing off into a sort of exasperated donkey grumble. Maybe he’s complaining about his job. This is the other donkey, not the one who went missing this time, who works entertaining tourists at one of the bars on Olas Altas. I imagine that could get pretty irritating.</div>
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But I like the donkeys (I will not say the same of the roosters – note to those not familiar with roosters – they do not just crow at dawn – or the semi-feral Chihuahua pack that lives in the house behind this one). They are a part of what makes Vallarta, Vallarta. The city still manages to be itself in spite of the condos, the time shares, the all-inclusive resorts. It’s a tourist town, to be sure, and an expat Mecca, but it’s also a Mexican town. One of these places that exists in two worlds. A liminal zone.</div>
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I try to come here once a year. I’ve found that I like to do that with some places. See them regularly, get to know them, without the familiarity of a resident, to be sure, but with greater intimacy than a tourist. To mark what changes, and what stays the same. I go to China every year, and I almost always fly in and out of Beijing, and spend a few days there. I couldn’t write a series set in Beijing if I didn’t do this – the city changes so quickly.</div>
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So, coming here, people have asked, “Are you writing a sequel?” – I wrote a book set in Vallarta called <a href="http://www.lisabrackmann.com/books/getaway/" target="_blank">GETAWAY</a> that was published last year. I am, I tell them, but so far it doesn’t take place in Vallarta.</div>
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Some people wonder why I come, then. They especially wonder given the book that I wrote, which is a tale of a Vallarta vacation gone horribly wrong. “I’m a little too nervous to go to Mexico,” one told me. The drug war violence has scared a lot of people away.</div>
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There are a lot of ways to reply to this. First, the book I wrote is fiction. I usually start with that. I’m writing suspense novels, so things <i>have</i> to go horribly wrong, by definition. I do try to base what I write on some degree of truth, however. So, yes, there’s a drug war going on in Mexico, and it’s caused a tremendous amount of damage and an appalling number of deaths. But you don’t see this part in a place like Vallarta. Most of the violence is concentrated in border areas and in places where rival cartels contend for control.</div>
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Vallarta, traditionally, has been mostly peaceful. As long as you are not actively involved in dangerous activities, this is a safe place to vacation and to live. I’ve heard more than once, “this is a vacation town, for the cartels too.” And, more importantly, this is a “lavanderia” – a place to launder money. The confluence of entertainment venues and hot real estate make it ideal.</div>
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You look at some of those blaring discos on the Malecón, some of those massive condo projects that seem to spring out of nowhere, and you wonder: who’s paying for this? And why?<br />
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Here, everyone knows. </div>
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“A lot of resort towns have that history, if you look,” a friend remarked at dinner last night. “I mean, Las Vegas. Atlantic City. The Catskills – that place was funded by bootleggers.”</div>
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If you look underneath the surface of just about anywhere, you’ll find all kinds of things.</div>
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There are societies that are more and that are less corrupt, to be sure. In the United States, most of us go about our daily activities with the expectation that people will be honest with each other, that contracts will be fulfilled. For all the loathing of Congress as an institution right now, for example, most people will say positive things about their individual representatives. Our society largely works well on that level, on the institutions both public and private that we encounter in our daily lives.</div>
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But look a little further. A little deeper. And not even very deep. I think about the financial crisis, the speculative activities that fueled it. You can call it incompetence, to be sure, but when the bankers and hedge fund managers who committed the damage get off with their careers and their bonuses intact, while millions of us lose jobs and houses and savings, you have to start calling it something else. Class warfare, maybe. Oligarchy. Plutocracy.</div>
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Or, simply, corruption. Corruption takes many forms, not all of which are as direct as a local cop demanding a <i>mordita.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoujqtp2toB_NodFwgZwlVWO-YuCOBI4OTtNz6ABX87m3Rg_mdffhC-kOy2QW4P6EAvyDrn3XTLqOb8TSKIQhzdxkCCHNMHBU7cEycKnBritRJ_3CmeebpM8DnT67XOmjB27Rqg/s1600/IMG_0708.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoujqtp2toB_NodFwgZwlVWO-YuCOBI4OTtNz6ABX87m3Rg_mdffhC-kOy2QW4P6EAvyDrn3XTLqOb8TSKIQhzdxkCCHNMHBU7cEycKnBritRJ_3CmeebpM8DnT67XOmjB27Rqg/s320/IMG_0708.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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When you have the power, the money, to have laws written to your benefit, what do you call that?</div>
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So, greetings from beautiful Puerto Vallarta. I’m about ready to hit the beach, and have a margarita.</div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-88668362646766427542013-04-13T22:28:00.003-07:002013-04-13T22:28:19.892-07:00A bunch of crime fiction writers walk into a bar...<br />
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<i>(originally published on <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-bunch-of-crime-fiction-writers-walk.html">"Murder is Everywhere"</a>)</i></div>
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Writers spend a lot of time alone. Most of us are introverts to some degree — you almost have to be, to deal with the solitary nature of the gig, to spend that much time in your head. But many of us also need our social outlets —and there's nothing like the chance to spend a few days with other members of your tribe.<br />
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The crime fiction community is fortunate to have a number of annual conventions, gatherings of writers and readers. What these events seem to have in common is that they all center around the hotel bar. I'm not suggesting that <i>all</i> writers drink a lot, but I think it's safe to say that <i>most </i>writers drink <i>some. </i>And drinking or not, the hotel bar is where you go to socialize.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghTCrnXlZrP65-qMpDgFp2aWtDvtt-fEVap4z3T4ITpOGR6Dm7BRIvwXERnlFp4HahOis1axpiBYenUuuLrmUH3rEltgTzd0bkgtdAX-9RzkFsA-tsMXOMsAxiVBtZN1TmLRYwgw/s1600/IMG_1387.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghTCrnXlZrP65-qMpDgFp2aWtDvtt-fEVap4z3T4ITpOGR6Dm7BRIvwXERnlFp4HahOis1axpiBYenUuuLrmUH3rEltgTzd0bkgtdAX-9RzkFsA-tsMXOMsAxiVBtZN1TmLRYwgw/s320/IMG_1387.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>(bar food at Left Coast Crime Colorado)</i></div>
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I just got back from <a href="http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/" target="_blank">Left Coast Crime</a>, one of the two annual events I attend. The other is <a href="http://www.bouchercon.info/" target="_blank">Bouchercon</a>, the Big Kahuna of crime fiction conferences. Bouchercons typically bring in 1500+ attendees: authors, readers, publishers, agents, editors, reviewers, librarians and sales reps. Left Coast Crime is a more intimate affair, but equally professional in its organization and execution.<br />
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This year, <a href="http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2013/" target="_blank">Left Coast was in Colorado Springs</a>, at the lovely Cheyenne Mountain Resort. This was the view from my window the first day of the conference:</div>
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This is a little misleading, because if you turn to your left, you'd see a really huge golf course (winter brown at least) and a bunch of "ranchettes." But still a beautiful setting.</div>
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So, a crime fiction conference -- what do you do?</div>
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There are panels to attend, on topics ranging from forensics to writing other cultures, to discussions on genre, on using social media, on cold cases, panels on craft, panels on marketing. </div>
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<i>(Panel:"The Character, The 'Why' in Mystery," featuring Jeanne Matthews, Terry Shames, David...crap, I'm really sorry I'm spacing on his name, cause he was an interesting guy, </i><i>Shannon Baker, hello, I can't remember her name either, and she's also not in my conference program, and likewise had a lot of interesting things to say, plus moderator Robert Kresge, not pictured)</i></div>
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I was on two panels, "International Intrigue" and "What You Don't Know About Thriller Writers." Both were a blast. But as one of my fellow panelists said to me on the last night of the conference, "It's not about the panels. It's about...<i><u>this!</u></i>" An expansive wave around the bar. </div>
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Even at this late hour, on the last night of the conference, there were groups of attendees moving chairs to make larger circles around tables, clustered in twos and threes around the bar, some going from group to group to chat with old friends and to make new ones. </div>
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Yeah, I realize this all sounds pretty corny. But it's true. </div>
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The first day of the conference, some of my fellow Los Angeles Sisters and Misters in Crime took an excursion to the Garden of the Gods. Beautiful...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbBFBsJv50ApE83YWzkKRuBtPueu0ZPgStftNQDSK7Yx1yjP_rGtbdWlNYxo8K3si4yTG3oBjsBLD10W2AY0kHGiy6m2Xb0RLaV-Ch8Sb3PG4Y296z7fulTc31MY5p0FxFxbKmVA/s1600/IMG_1417.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbBFBsJv50ApE83YWzkKRuBtPueu0ZPgStftNQDSK7Yx1yjP_rGtbdWlNYxo8K3si4yTG3oBjsBLD10W2AY0kHGiy6m2Xb0RLaV-Ch8Sb3PG4Y296z7fulTc31MY5p0FxFxbKmVA/s320/IMG_1417.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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But of course, what made it especially fun was the company...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLjhcHqaJ67V5z3qvLPrn-8jp5LHiWgvNs8NQO1GesSB8_vVWbtA9CiTLnJeFMBV2a0ikxKn1AlX4yJ_Wzu0P8LZHKNHBELNFgk1AVi1sBP2GMJOZtX2o66N7pApioWwhr5qCk-Q/s1600/IMG_1408.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLjhcHqaJ67V5z3qvLPrn-8jp5LHiWgvNs8NQO1GesSB8_vVWbtA9CiTLnJeFMBV2a0ikxKn1AlX4yJ_Wzu0P8LZHKNHBELNFgk1AVi1sBP2GMJOZtX2o66N7pApioWwhr5qCk-Q/s320/IMG_1408.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>(We Might Be Rock Stars)</i></div>
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The conference ran from Thursday through Sunday. On Saturday, a good-sized storm came through Colorado. Again, the view from my window:</div>
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<i>(cold, white stuff falling from the sky)</i></div>
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By Sunday, the view looked like this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNoqNAcWYqCY7WDMDwvG9FHRDSPdY-fVl7CEgB46ijhhmL5849YYFUkpuFEJ7EIfgr7-kqEgTEXzhnVbr8Br9i11nVkfv9kuSN0OxJpDfWgLVSut2iqpf95KUJbHK0-IU-efXM9g/s1600/1662_514205888625216_1463199973_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNoqNAcWYqCY7WDMDwvG9FHRDSPdY-fVl7CEgB46ijhhmL5849YYFUkpuFEJ7EIfgr7-kqEgTEXzhnVbr8Br9i11nVkfv9kuSN0OxJpDfWgLVSut2iqpf95KUJbHK0-IU-efXM9g/s320/1662_514205888625216_1463199973_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Going to wonderful events like this and getting to hang out with people with whom I have so much in common, as a writer and as a reader, is really one of the best perks of this author gig. I'm very psyched that I still have <a href="http://bcon2013.com/" target="_blank">Bouchercon</a> to look forward to this year. And next year's <a href="http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2014/" target="_blank">Left Coast Crime is in gorgeous Monterey</a>, CA! And the US Guest of Honor is none other than....(drumroll)...our own Cara Black! </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi63NP_fiLW5V5Nh5BooPsut5h8ukc472ON9VNheBp0b24Ydvj36UsprerRNHjj64s2eoSyr7jx_FsfubWywBqfhhDWlyTEUTYIBP-zozPHnsUkm6SmZ6Eim95j4AtxyBN-Wz7NHQ/s1600/MAJ+CARA+BLACK+AUTHOR.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi63NP_fiLW5V5Nh5BooPsut5h8ukc472ON9VNheBp0b24Ydvj36UsprerRNHjj64s2eoSyr7jx_FsfubWywBqfhhDWlyTEUTYIBP-zozPHnsUkm6SmZ6Eim95j4AtxyBN-Wz7NHQ/s320/MAJ+CARA+BLACK+AUTHOR.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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The rest of the line-up is equally epic.</div>
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Yes, I've already registered.</div>
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Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-49753252699988175352013-03-30T23:29:00.000-07:002013-03-30T23:29:13.964-07:00Always going somewhere...<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(originally appeared on <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/03/always-going-somewhere.html">March 3</a>, on Murder is Everywhere)</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1tvcR44gcDMQm8U_wKH26_N_viDKDEEW_JSTaYwNmWhheQHZiuyAb0hYvBhQPWKn8jNxu3avYzH-kmq4X8gJzogrbSZ2-gQIXyog3ca9MkgS7IMK0oMzXxabAompTzVf8EmlGw/s1600/IMG_0653.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1tvcR44gcDMQm8U_wKH26_N_viDKDEEW_JSTaYwNmWhheQHZiuyAb0hYvBhQPWKn8jNxu3avYzH-kmq4X8gJzogrbSZ2-gQIXyog3ca9MkgS7IMK0oMzXxabAompTzVf8EmlGw/s320/IMG_0653.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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A couple of years ago, my life changed pretty dramatically. I left the job I'd had for over a decade. I sold a novel. I sold a couple more. Finally, I sold my house. That last one was pretty traumatic. I'd lived in Venice Beach for 25 years, in a grand total of two places.</div>
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And I had a lot of books.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj157KyEY7fwc7FsCs5ONYJ4-GuDFr7aEnVjQZlXBYAAtjGXTarI4ukUrMH_N10a5gTv-8JALoMEP3zvuqZktw-FGHOyE2jirBSmj2pX_xm4PzrbLxoMqDacalHYY9M9GGdAC2HHA/s1600/Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj157KyEY7fwc7FsCs5ONYJ4-GuDFr7aEnVjQZlXBYAAtjGXTarI4ukUrMH_N10a5gTv-8JALoMEP3zvuqZktw-FGHOyE2jirBSmj2pX_xm4PzrbLxoMqDacalHYY9M9GGdAC2HHA/s320/Image.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>(a portion of the Great Wall of Books)</i></div>
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As much as I love to travel, I hate to move. I'm not sure why. We moved a lot when I was a kid, that might be part of it. The rest of it, I'm not sure. I like wandering around my neighborhood. Walking to shops. Saying "hi" to people who work in them, people I've gotten to know. Having "my" places. My regular dates with friends. </div>
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Maybe a part of why I love to travel is the looking forward to returning home. </div>
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But "home" was a luxury that I knew I'd have to give up for a while. Selling the house was a long, sort of awful process. It took three offers before one stuck. And then it was time to pack. </div>
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And pack.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilVZrNBvZNcnikQoYtXqurszXLONSurtDw3nX3g-_EKUrLf9EhyphenhyphenI0XHWXcokWPZy5NKOmH6PcUGwWw_3Ux0zRmrONEiYK1J1zJgZ7t1D3tCKEHDIU6gaW-7ItmjXGPYLuzPpgNkA/s1600/IMG_1017.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilVZrNBvZNcnikQoYtXqurszXLONSurtDw3nX3g-_EKUrLf9EhyphenhyphenI0XHWXcokWPZy5NKOmH6PcUGwWw_3Ux0zRmrONEiYK1J1zJgZ7t1D3tCKEHDIU6gaW-7ItmjXGPYLuzPpgNkA/s320/IMG_1017.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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And pack.</div>
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<i>(did I mention that I have a lot of books?)</i></div>
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In spite of all the preparation I'd done, I had very little time to actually pack up and move. I never would have made it without the help of some very good friends. The whole experience instilled in me a horror of having Too Much Stuff, ever again. </div>
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The day before escrow closed, the movers came, loaded up all my belongings in preparation for a drive to Northern California, where a reasonable storage space just south of San Francisco awaited. I'd decided to delay getting a new place, to take a break from the responsibility of all that. Instead I'd take some time to get another book or two in the pipeline, save some money, look around, figure out where I really wanted to be, and what was practical with this writing life.</div>
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So, two days later, I loaded up the Mini Cooper</div>
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And drove north to San Francisco.</div>
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From San Francisco I went to China.</div>
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From China, back to San Francisco for a couple of days, passed through Los Angeles and then on to San Diego for a month.</div>
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<i>(Martin Luther King Day parade in San Diego)</i></div>
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And from San Diego, back up to San Francisco, via Los Angeles.</div>
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I'm in San Francisco now. In a couple of weeks, I'll head to Colorado for <a href="http://leftcoastcrime.org/2013/" target="_blank">Left Coast Crime</a>. After that, to Puerto Vallarta for a week, where the perfect writing studio awaits (and perhaps a few margaritas). </div>
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Then to Los Angeles and San Francisco for some period of days, including<a href="http://www.mystgalaxy.com/Event/Dana-Fredsti-Launch-Party-Plague-Nation-RB-040913" target="_blank"> the book launch for Dana Fredsti's PLAGUE NATION (!).</a></div>
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And then to San Diego for the greater part of two months.</div>
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After that? Not sure. I'll have some book events for the launch of my newest, <a href="http://www.lisabrackmann.com/books/hour-of-the-rat/" target="_blank">HOUR OF THE RAT</a> (details on those to come). Some research trips for the books I'm working on after those. I'll try to float till the end of the year, if I can stand it. If the people I'm staying with in some of these various places can stand <i>me</i>. </div>
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Or, if the part of me that loves this floating life wins out over the part that misses my cats (happy in their foster homes, but still) and my furniture. The art that hung on my walls. And of course, my books. I may never want to have too much stuff again, but I'm not going to pretend I don't have attachments.</div>
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This kind of lifestyle feels pretty weird to me at my age. The closest I can come to it would be back when I was in college, and immediately after. When I had very few responsibilities. When I could choose to go anywhere, and I ended up in Switzerland, China, and then Los Angeles. Where I stayed, for 25 years.</div>
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But I'm not a college kid. That was *cough* a lot of years ago. I swing back and forth between feeling a little panicked, a lot unsettled. </div>
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And sometimes, free.</div>
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Like, I could go anywhere. Anywhere at all. The possibilities stretch out in front of me. I just have to pick the next one. </div>
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Istanbul. Patagonia. Asmara. Belize.</div>
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I only know that there's an expiration date, too. But right now, I don't know when that is. </div>
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I guess none of us do, when it comes right down to it.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilk7xN8dIWVcCxjUO5Y2-MQ7UN5W5ZiPrgOT1pWvrTWVdpXrfji1DSspNYZPdugmAGhzmLHpPn_nTcmY041ugX5MlpUpCkLAGdBibByUJI4lUSPpJQ31xefueeNJrEk0_SzXz5AA/s1600/magic8ball.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilk7xN8dIWVcCxjUO5Y2-MQ7UN5W5ZiPrgOT1pWvrTWVdpXrfji1DSspNYZPdugmAGhzmLHpPn_nTcmY041ugX5MlpUpCkLAGdBibByUJI4lUSPpJQ31xefueeNJrEk0_SzXz5AA/s320/magic8ball.png" width="314" /></a></div>
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<i>Lisa -- Sunday...</i></div>
Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10492881.post-57386674382120777072013-03-24T18:37:00.001-07:002013-04-29T00:57:44.545-07:00Beating a Dead Pig...<br />
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<i>(originally posted on <a href="http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2013/03/beating-dead-pig.html">Murder is Everywhere</a>...)</i></div>
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Shanghai is a pretty amazing city. A lot of it looks like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15WTAmwyeK6R1D5pbHNpZ3OMIyVCtAmkxCx3EPt8APg6pXh-GfceMJ_ck5S7aHK6PWiJPI9O2yYSiBxErHJTPwlLOfpJem9vd7i4IFpyaE-eZqeUdNXKDX_v8KL9y5sXLurgw_A/s1600/P8110027.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15WTAmwyeK6R1D5pbHNpZ3OMIyVCtAmkxCx3EPt8APg6pXh-GfceMJ_ck5S7aHK6PWiJPI9O2yYSiBxErHJTPwlLOfpJem9vd7i4IFpyaE-eZqeUdNXKDX_v8KL9y5sXLurgw_A/s320/P8110027.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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And this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFvoK78H5l2SXN8qv1HkMywetpAF6x4nLEDB0k-RJegEIhiY86jm5aZ2c6KASd_3_D9-5A5zvYTiCo0OsJbySImfxXNEAcffVRIBaLzoXoC7lhvPEMCh4G9018mU5C7sz0-6rmjA/s1600/P8100010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFvoK78H5l2SXN8qv1HkMywetpAF6x4nLEDB0k-RJegEIhiY86jm5aZ2c6KASd_3_D9-5A5zvYTiCo0OsJbySImfxXNEAcffVRIBaLzoXoC7lhvPEMCh4G9018mU5C7sz0-6rmjA/s320/P8100010.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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(these are a couple years old, taken right before the '08 Olympics, so trust me, it's even shinier now)<br />
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The city boasts one of the largest subway systems in the world, built mostly over the last decade. Shanghai is China's business and economic center, a global city. It really is not the kind of place where you'd expect to find <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-16/shanghai-retrieves-more-dead-pigs-as-total-rises-to-9-000.html" target="_blank">9000 dead pigs</a> floating in a river that supplies the city's drinking water.<br />
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The pigs apparently came from a town upriver called Jiaxing, a center of pork production. Farmers there don't have the land to bury diseased pigs, so dumping is a common solution. The pigs supposedly died from <span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; text-align: left;">porcine circovirus, which does not threaten humans. The water supply is perfectly safe, say city officials. In fact, the pigs being dumped actually is a step forward for Chinese food safety, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/asia/a-tide-of-dead-pigs-in-china-but-dinner-is-safe.html?_r=0" target="_blank">according to the New York Times</a> -- in the past, pigs that had died from diseases frequently ended up sold for meat on the black market and on peoples' tables. </span><br />
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There have been so many food scandals in China in recent years (sewer oil, fake eggs, fake walnuts, adulterated baby powder, etc. etc. etc.), but this one seems to have struck a particular (gross) chord.<br />
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I'll spare you the disgusting photos and go right to the jokes.<br />
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A popular choice was parodying the recent Ang Lee film:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIbOHj0n3_7CYZivO4DsX6YGR-ZmqktI1U6g_Wprx2Yt8X-E1OlggLakOkkcAzzalhdNhjzztio_r8wdTTcOFDZGAg5nempIcm5ECH2Q7Ijn_VH6i_T0FSxAp_4I7O5r4Z3oxHrA/s1600/life-of-pig-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIbOHj0n3_7CYZivO4DsX6YGR-ZmqktI1U6g_Wprx2Yt8X-E1OlggLakOkkcAzzalhdNhjzztio_r8wdTTcOFDZGAg5nempIcm5ECH2Q7Ijn_VH6i_T0FSxAp_4I7O5r4Z3oxHrA/s320/life-of-pig-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2013/03/12/more_pig_carcasses_expected_to_be_found_in_shanghai_huangpu_river.php" target="_blank">(link)</a></i></div>
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<a href="http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/03/chinese-users-resort-to-dark-humor-to-mask-fears-about-pig-carcases-in-shanghai-river/" target="_blank">Tea Leaf Nation</a>, a site that provides translations of Chinese social media, had this one: </div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">@</span><a href="http://weibo.com/1843713042" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #488793; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="淮安老蒋">淮安老蒋</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> tweeted on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, “Shanghainese people are happy indeed. They pay for water but can drink pork soup!”</span></blockquote>
A variation on that joke reported on <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2013/03/13/official_hog_wash_figure_more_than_doubles_to_5916_pig_corpses_in_shanghai_water_supply.php" target="_blank">Shanghaiist</a>:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Beijinger: "We Beijingers are the most fortunate, we can open the window and have free cigarettes." Shanghainese: "That's nothing, we turn on our faucets and have pork chop soup!"</span></blockquote>
Managing to hit both this scandal and the horrendous air pollution that blanketed Beijing earlier this year.<br />
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In the past, the choice has been economic development at the expense of the environment, but now China's ecological crises are so severe that they not only threaten China's economic development, but the social stability of the nation itself. These are issues that unite Chinese across class, location and profession, poor farmers and wealthy urbanites alike. The new administration knows it has to take steps to improve food safety and the environment, yet somehow not throttle back development that keeps the masses employed. One good sign is <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1177450/populist-pan-yue-tipped-be-next-environment-chief" target="_blank">the front-runner for the position of environment minister, Pan Yue</a>, the former Deputy Director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration. Pan Yue used that office as a bully pulpit, taking on powerful state-owned companies and local governments that polluted with impunity before being shunted aside in 2008. Now he's back, and the question is, will SEPA be given the budget and enforcement power to actually do its job.<br />
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And it's a big job. You not only have to fight special interests with ties to the CCP leadership, you have to take on a society where far too many are willing to risk the health of others to make a profit. The lack of trust is frequently cited by Chinese as one of the biggest problems in Chinese society. I have to wonder, at what point are these social bonds frayed past breaking? <a href="http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/03/chinese-users-resort-to-dark-humor-to-mask-fears-about-pig-carcases-in-shanghai-river/" target="_blank">As one China netizen put it</a>: "The environment around us, and the society we live in, are rotting away just like these pig carcases.” The Central Government has maintained a broad popularity in China (unlike local governments, which are often despised for their more visible corruption), but faced with <a href="http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/03/chinese-lawmakers-political-delegates-sporting-high-fashion-draws-criticism-from-netizens/" target="_blank">CCP members dressing up in Pucci, Burberry, Hermes and Armani for the annual "Two Meetings,</a>" I wonder also how well that popularity will hold up.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivlnKlJbY-z1TPWbG1IDROjQuyOhBb9GZD0S3mnya55aMIC23qWERErylVeAn7j_ShNLpRGoSbO271OEvZPu_wV_93suUMMFSCCN09Z0HFKCqyKOmFCe7sJx_1bGwGc3L6GNC8UQ/s1600/twosessions10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivlnKlJbY-z1TPWbG1IDROjQuyOhBb9GZD0S3mnya55aMIC23qWERErylVeAn7j_ShNLpRGoSbO271OEvZPu_wV_93suUMMFSCCN09Z0HFKCqyKOmFCe7sJx_1bGwGc3L6GNC8UQ/s320/twosessions10.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><a href="http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/03/chinese-lawmakers-political-delegates-sporting-high-fashion-draws-criticism-from-netizens/" target="_blank">(link)</a></i></div>
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It will be interesting to see how incoming President Xi deals with all of this. </div>
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By the way, his wife, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Liyuan" target="_blank">Peng Liyuan</a>, is <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2013/03/peng-liyuan-chinas-first-lady-takes-centre-stage/" target="_blank">a famous PLA folk singer</a> and regular performer at the annual CCTV New Year's Gala. She apparently will take a more active role in Xi's administration than most Chinese First Lady's. One of her areas of advocacy in the past has been HIV awareness and education, and the hope is that she'll carry on that work. </div>
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I bet you want to see her sing, right?</div>
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Okay, this video has nothing to do with the rest of the post. But I just needed to share it. Because I found it deeply weird...</div>
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<i>Lisa...Sunday...</i><br />
<br />Other Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08079055348844157557noreply@blogger.com1