Shenzhen Zen

Sign Language
About an hour and a half ago, I had 118 emails in my Yahoo inbox today; 70some percent of which were either spam or stuff I'd rather not respond to immediately, like the bothersome ransom demands for my kidnapped son and overdue utility bills. The ones I wanted or needed to quickly answer, well, that's why I'm writing this rather than sitting and pacing and sitting and pacing and smoking and sitting and pacing while the Web here sl-l-l-ow-ly goes through its paces and not always with any guaranteed results. Of course, there's no guarantee that this missive will make it online at all or, if it does, any faster that my botched attempts at email. Nonetheless here goes.
There was an earthquake in Taiwan on Dec 27, which has severed and/or drastically slowed down most Internet traffic between Hong Kong, much of mainland China and the rest of the world. Apparently HK's Internet traffic depends primarily on undersea cables routed through Taiwan that were damaged in the quake and, to put it mildly, a lot of us are living in the 1980s or earlier at the moment. Internet cafes are vacant, some shuttered. Cell phone text messaging has tripled, Google is a distant memory and local sales of porn magazines have tripled in the wake of the Inernet fix.
JT, a latetwentysomething American pal o' mine whose professional and personal life pretty much revolves around the Internet and who can't recall a time before the Web was bemoaning cast back into the past state we're enduring now.
"I feel helpless," he said, between hurling drunken slurs at the HK bureaucrats on TV who'd been assuring the public that the situation was being resolved "at a steady pace."
"Can't work. Can't play. Just drink. And that gets old fast," he whined between his fourth or fifth Jack Daniels.
"Ever try a 'fax?'" I playfully suggested. "Invented shortly after the wheel, or maybe the 8-track. Hard to recall. I think I was hunting Mastodons with my new Clovis point flint spear that season. Either that or in my cave watching something new called 'color Tee-Vee...."
TJ snorted a little and then paused. "I have been thinking about writing a letter. Haven't done that since a 4th grade assignment. How much are stamps?"

We once again interrupt our irregular Shenzhen/Hong Kong-based accounts of tedium, domestic bliss, occasional whimsy and travail for a preview of a piece I just finished for Asia Sentinel. And, by the way, I have finally received gainful local employment once again. As of mid-January I will be a behind the scenes running dog mouthpiece for Voice of America-Hong Kong.

Smells like Kim Spirit
Jumpin' Jong-il Flash, it'll be a gas, gas, gas come May in Pyongyang if a Korean French national who makes his home in London and swears allegiance to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has his way.

Jean-Baptiste Kim is the self-described "man with three fatherlands, very unusual, crazy life" behind a "Rock for Peace" festival scheduled for May 1-4. Sketchy enthusiastic slightly skewed English details are available on his Voice of Korea website (www.voiceofkorea.org) for what he is calling "the 2007 version of Woodstock rock festival in 1969 but in a different location and with a different goal. We welcome every musician as long as they are purely music based without political intentions."

Though the gig is open to any band "even if you are from USA" that has the visas, stamina and currency to fly itself and its gear to Pyongyang there are additional caveats not quite in the Woodstock, or even more modern goth, punk or death metal spirit.

"The lyrics should not contain admirations on war, sex, violence, murder, drug, rape, non-governmental society, imperialism, colonialism, racism, anti-DPRK and anti-socialism," he wrote.

Which pretty much rules out anyone save Barry Manilow, Celine Dion, Canto-pop performers or anyone from American Idol. This from a man who swears allegiance to Led Zeppelin as well as the DPRK, whose first album was Lynrd Skynrd's Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, and who says the Animals' version of House of the Rising Sun (about ruination in a New Orleans whore house) as his all-time favorite song. There's also a photo of Nirvana fronting the Voice of Korea site that reads "Unfortunately Kurt Cobain Can Not Participate Rock For Peace This Time. But We Still Do Remember All Good Songs of Nirvana From Aberdeen, USA."

"Rock and roll symbolizes freedom for me. Even though USA was the incubator of rock music, I still love rock music because I believe frontiers must not exist among us when we enjoy music. Music is the greatest took to unify all different people from all different places," Kim said in e-mail interviews from Voice of Korea headquarters in New Malden, a south London suburb that one western blog, North Korea Zone, described as a place "which for some obscure reason has become home to thousands of (South) Koreans living in Britain."

Kim, a 40-year-old father of three and former correspondent for North Korea's largest newspaper, Rodong, said 62 bands from 20 countries have signed on so far, but aside from one Norwegian death metal band he's reluctant to provide any details as yet.

"Too many bands from all over the world. I will release full list of participants soon on the web site," he wrote.

Kim's confident that Pyongyang -- which has also hosted grand spectacles such the annual Arirang Mass Games, international taikwondo tournaments, and the International Pyongyang Film Festival --will have no problem with a rock fest and the attendant messy details most have come to expect from them such as plentiful, clean Port O Potties, lodging, decent sound and lights, drug casualties and fulfilling vain performers' niggling contract rider requirements for Bacardi Anejo rum and backstage celery "to be trimmed, but not peeled."

"DPRK is well experienced for large international events," Kim wrote. "We do have comfortable hotels and reasonable transports everywhere in Pyongyang, though they are not so luxury compared to Las Vegas 5 star hotels. Sound engineering, lighting and filming will be take cared by Voice of Korea's (unnamed) official partner, a Canadian company based in Toronto."

But he provided this disclaimer for any bands expecting limos, groupies and limitless blow.

"Every band is responsible for their own trips to and from and staying in DPRK...DPRK will provide free transport for their music instruments only."

Kim's background is a bit vague and perhaps as seemingly improbable as his plans to rock the DPRK. But as he tells it, it accounts for his devotion to North Korea.

A full-Korean French national born in South Korea, he claimed that his father was a member of a movement in the 1960s and '70s devoted to the overthrow of then-president Park Chung Hee who was assassinated in 1979. "My father was imprisoned many times and myself and my older sister were born when he was in prison," Kim wrote. "My family suffered miserable poverty because my father was a political criminal. Our lives in South Korea were totally ruined by the government."

He said he "fled" to France at age 19 following the death of his father. "When your father is a criminal you cannot expect a life of your own in South Korea. I survived all alone in France and did many hard, dirty jobs including military training as a soldier of fortune."

Kim said a chance meeting with a North Korean diplomat at age 30 led to a change in his fortunes and a succession of jobs for Pyongyang including his gig with Rodong and“lots of behind stories and military trades before it was not under UN sanctions ... I am abandoned by South Korean government because I work for DPRK. My life is a lot more complicated than what most people imagine and there are many things I can not speak out until my death." And while he misses South Korea and considers France his home and ultimate burial site, "DPRK is my fatherland in blood."

While he does shill like a veteran party member for Pyongyang, Kim isn't completely clueless regarding the cultural differences his project entails should he ultimately kick out the jams. He knows it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll, DPRK-style.

"Rock for Peace is a great cultural experiment for DPRK," he wrote. "Rock music and DPRK may be two very different things but I am very confident I can create a DPRK kind of rock atmosphere rather than just follow Western kind of rock moods. It is not a contradiction but a harmonization of two different atmospheres.

Hail, hail Great Leader rock 'n' roll.

At the Library
A little more than three years ago when I first crash landed in Shenzhen, fresh western reading material was extremely hard to come by. At the time I relied on subscriptions to Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker supplied by my doting father that, thanks to China Post, the mainland postal system, usually arrived 3 -to- 6 weeks late, if at all. And there were several gratefully received CARE packages (eternal gracias to Dad, Mattydred and Janeen) that I fell upon and devoured like a baboon eating its young.

Shenzhen had one major book store. Like all the other large ones in China it was named Book City and owned by Xinhua, the PRC's major news/propaganda outlet. The English language section, such as it was/is was comprised largely of vocabulary and English learning books, some glorified outdated computer/software instruction manuals ("Open BEAGLE, version 0.16.1 (ALPHA) -- It's the Future for Six Months!"), dusty self-help and business tomes (still one of the largest selections in any English section at any book store here) pirated, mangled versions of bios such as The Bills: Clinton and Gates, and a smattering of "the classics," some abbreviated (Frankenstein or Moby Dick in 78 pages) and the others -- save Twain and a carefully combed selection of Hemmingway, Austen and DH Lawrence -- mostly a reading list of The Best of Wheezing, Tubercular Western Lit.

Indeed, I counted myself lucky to find Madame Bovary which I purchased and read halfway through until I went blind and it literally fell apart. Cheap bindings and pages printed in miniscule font on paper that makes tissue paper seem like cardboard are a constant. In between, I relied on yellowing, tattered copies of mostly Brit-published thriller paperbacks passed from expat-to-expat-to-expat like illicit zamizdat before the Soviet Union held its closeout sale.

And so it came to pass that several months ago, a longtime SZ pal o' mine, James "The Temple Guy/Laughing Buddha" Baquet, told me about a new Shenzhen library and Book City. He swore up and down that the selection, while not up to that of Barnes and Noble or Denver's Tattered Cover, at both was miles ahead of what we'd encountered on splashdown. "There's even an English language magazine reading room at the library!" he babbled like a junkie who'd found a reliable, trustworthy source for his Ibogaine habit. "Rolling Stone! Harpers, Atlantic I think I even saw a current Esquire!"

I initially and cynically dismissed his report as delusional. A native Angeleno and theme park freak, born on the same day as Disneyland opened, James is naturally given to illusion and false optimism. Then, prodded by C who was yearning to check out the "new" Book City, I made the plunge today.

What I found mostly astounded me. To whit, at the new Book City English store (a separate store!) while browsing through coffee table bios of Beatles and Elvis, 100 Best Erotic Internet Sites ("All blocked in China," I quipped to C, who replied, "Only 99 of them...") I picked up fresh paperback editions of Carl Hiaasen, TC Boyle and Martin Amis. Sure, sure, I could've also snagged Last of the Mohicans, and Ethan Frome but, hey, a man has his limits. Too much, too soon, too fast, moderation in all things etc. There were a few "typically Chinese" quirks to the place, though, enough to jolt me out of my reverie.

"Staff Selections" read the pre-printed cards pasted to the sides of the book racks, just like in London, New York or even Des Moines. There you get enthusiastic minimum-wage lit major store employees such as "Jason," "Dylan," "Leigh" or "Heather" enthusing about graphic novels like Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets series or a lesbo-vampire post-modern western and occasionally something relatively mainstream like Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. At the new Shenzhen Book City it's kinda, sorta of the same thing, except none of the touted books were available, none of the employees were named Sean, Ian or Bridget and no editions cost "287 pounds."

Next stop: the new Shenzhen Library. Visually it's quite impressive. Kind of Star Ship Enterprise, all blossoming glass and aluminum or steel frame, sloping entrance ways which you approach over newly laid, dipping and already caving-in concrete sidewalks (some with gaping un-barricaded three foot drops into the nether-world of the Shenzhen sewer system). But content-wise, I've been in worse American libraries. The Fort Leonard Wood army library in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri during my basic training comes to mind as does the Boulder County Jail...that just for research purposes, mind you.

It was jammed, testimony both to the thirst of literate Shenzhenites for reading material and free Internet access, though on the 2nd floor (English literature) and 5th (English periodicals) there was room to move and browse. The English lit section was spotty to say the least. As if 4 years worth of expats had suddenly fled, leaving behind their odd selections, ranging from mucho tatttered John Grisham, Dean Koontz and Judith Krantz to Duke: The Life and Times of John Wayne and Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole. Leading off the stacks, though, were "Marxism, Leninism, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, The Theories of Deng Xiaopeng."

"Remember, you are in China," C, reminded me before we headed to the periodicals. There, I found a slew of trade manuals and mags, electrical, software, chemical, engineering and otherwise, but was gratified to see one patron leafing through a current Sunday edition of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (increasingly a commie boot-licking rag, but still not one deemed safe enough for mainstream mainland circulation) and, though no Rolling Stone or Esquire, fresh editions of Harpers and Atlantic. I settled in to read the Harpers Index as C browsed some more.

"Find anything?" I asked a few minutes later. "There's no American Vogue!" she snapped mock-churlishly.

"Remember, you are in China," I replied.

At the Library
A little more than three years ago when I first crash landed in Shenzhen, fresh western reading material was extremely hard to come by. At the time I relied on subscriptions to Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker supplied by my doting father that, thanks to China Post, the mainland postal system, usually arrived 3 -to- 6 weeks late, if at all. And there were several gratefully received CARE packages (eternal gracias to Dad, Mattydred, Janeen!) that I fell upon and devoured like a baboon eating its young.

Shenzhen had one major book store. Like all the other large ones in China it was named Book City and owned by Xinhua, the PRC's major news/propaganda outlet. The English language section, such as it was/is was comprised largely of vocabulary and English learning books, some glorified outdated computer/software instruction manuals ("Open BEAGLE, version 0.16.1 (ALPHA) -- It's the Future for Six Months!"), dusty self-help and business tomes (still one of the largest selections in any English section at any book store here) pirated, mangled versions of bios such as The Bills: Clinton and Gates, and a smattering of "the classics," some abbreviated (Frankenstein or Moby Dick in 78 pages) and the others -- save Twain and a carefully combed selection of Hemmingway, Austen and DH Lawrence -- mostly a reading list of The Best of Wheezing, Tubercular Western Lit.

Indeed, I counted myself lucky to find Madame Bovary which I purchased and read halfway through until I went blind and it literally fell apart. Cheap bindings and pages printed in miniscule font on paper that makes tissue paper seem like cardboard are a constant. In between I relied on yellowing, tattered copies of mostly Brit-published thriller paperbacks passed from expat-to-expat-to-expat like illicit zamizdat before the Soviet Union held its closeout sale.

And so it came to pass that several months ago, a longtime SZ pal o' mine, James "The Temple Guy/Laughing Buddha" Baquet, told me about a new Shenzhen library and Book City. He swore up and down that the selection, while not up to that of Barnes and Noble or Denver's Tattered Cover, at both was miles ahead of what we'd encountered on splashdown. "There's even an English language magazine reading room at the library!" he babbled like a junkie who'd found a reliable, trustworthy source for his Ibogaine habit. "Rolling Stone! Harpers Atlantic I think I even saw a current Esquire!"

I initially and cynically dismissed his report as delusional. A native Angeleno and theme park freak, born on the same day as Disneyland opened, James is naturally given to illusion and false optimism. Then, prodded by C who was yearning to check out the "new" Book City, I made the plunge today.

What I found mostly astounded me. To whit, at the new Book City English store (a separate store!) while browsing through coffee table bios of Beatles and Elvis, 100 Best Erotic Internet Sites ("All blocked in China," I quipped to C, who replied, "Only 99 of them...") I picked up fresh paperback editions of Carl Hiaasen, TC Boyle and Martin Amis. Sure, sure, I could've also snagged Last of the Mohicans, and Ethan Frome but, hey, a man has his limits. Too much, too soon, too fast, moderation in all things etc. There were a few "typically Chinese" quirks to the place, though, enough to jolt me out of my reverie.

"Staff Picks" read the pre-printed cards pasted to the sides of the book racks, just like in London, New York or even Des Moines. There you get enthusiastic minimum-wage lit major store employees such as "Jason" or "Leigh" or "Ian" enthusing about graphic novels like Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets series or a lesbo-vampire post-modern western and occasionally something relatively mainstream like Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. At the new Shenzhen Book City it's kinda, sorta of the same thing, except none of the touted books were available, none of the employees were named Sean, Ian or Bridget and no editions cost "287 pounds."

Next stop: the new Shenzhen Library. Visually it's quite impressive. Kind of Star Ship Enterprise, all blossoming glass and aluminum or steel frame, sloping entrance ways which you approach over newly laid, dipping and already caving-in concrete sidewalks (some with gaping un-barricaded three foot drops into the nether-world of the Shenzhen sewer system). But content-wise, I've been in worse American libraries. The Fort Leonard Wood army library in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri during my basic training comes to mind as does the Boulder County Jail...that just for research purposes, mind you.

It was jammed, testimony both to the thirst of literate Shenzhenites for reading material and free Internet access, though on the 2nd floor (English literature) and 5th (English periodicals) there was room to move and browse. The English lit section was spotty to say the least. As if 4 years worth of expats had suddenly fled, leaving behind their odd selections, ranging from mucho tatttered John Grisham, Dean Koontz and Judith Krantz to Duke: The Life and Times of John Wayne and Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole. Leading off the stacks, though, were "Marxism, Leninism, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, The Theories of Deng Xiaopeng."

"Remember, you are in China," C, reminded me before we headed to the periodicals. There, I found a slew of trade manuals and mags, electrical, software, chemical, engineering and otherwise, but was gratified to see one patron browsing through a current copy of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (a rag, but not one deemed safe enough for mainstream mainland circulation) and, though no Rolling Stone or Esquire, fresh editions of Harpers and Atlantic. I settled to read the Harpers Index as C browsed some more.

"Find anything?" I asked a few minutes later. "There's no American Vogue!" she snapped churlishly.

"Remember, you are in China," I replied.

Merry Christmas, Baby
"I am so sick of that song," C muttered recently as we were grocery shopping in Shenzhen a couple days ago. I briefly abandoned my hunt for a box of eggs with a freshness date more recent than Oct 33(sic), 2003 and tuned into the overhead PA from which a wretched English language version of All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth was squawking.

"Me, too," I said. "Sick of it about 45 years ago. It's probably my least favorite Christmas song. Except for ..." Then the tune I was going to name segued into the rasping mix. Little Drummer Boy. "That one. I relocate halfway around the world to an officially aetheist country and still can't escape them."

Still she's expressed hope that we might buy a Christmas tree this year. An exotic wish from her point of view and a complete waste of money and space as far as I'm concerned. Especially given odd slant that Christmas takes in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Hong Kong is easily more organized, commercial, "western" -- and religous, in that there are easily hundreds - if not more - of various Christian churches and organizations, from store front to full bore mega congregations whereas Shenzhen has one state approved mondo non-denominational church, one large state-sanctioned Catholic congregation, and lots of underground cells. And the mainland in general doesn't recognize Christmas as anything more than a growing curiousity and commercial opportunity, much less an official holiday as in Hong Kong.

Still, at my friendly shopping mall neighborhood/residence in Hong Kong the prominent Christmas displays are, to put it politely, obscene even to my agnostic, Grinch-like sensibilities. Hong Kong Disneyland, which is still suffering from less-than-predicted attendance after a year in business, has rented space throughout the Telford Gardens mall during November and December to promote "The Academy of Princesses." It's Snow White, Cinderella, what's-her-fin from the Little Mermaid and about four others I don't recognize (oddly, no Mulan, the only strong Chinese female character, hell, Chinese character, strong, female or otherwise, period that Disney has ever spun) all in various "Christmas" theme displays.

It's all part of an overall effort by Disney to "educate" the Hong Kong populace about the Disney "story-telling tradition." Mickey, they know. Donald, kinda mostly. The rest...heh. Though Snow White and Cinderella, more so. So build on that; given Hong Kong's obsession with an unrealistic female beauty standard: anorexically thin, vampire white skin, cosmetically enlarged eyes, eternally age 20, mentally about 14, and an equally unrealistic, unhealthy obsession with certified rigid educational standards, and the concept of a pre-fab "Princess Academy" is perfect.

I grumble both grimly amused and aghast as throngs of HK shoppers flock to photograph themselvse and their children posed proudly (flashing the "V" sign, which means not "Peace" or even "Victory" here, only "Hey, I'm having my photo shot and don't know what to do with my hands!") in front of a life size display of a plastic Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs hovering around what appears to be mangercum cottage. No holy dwarf child in swaddling clothes, hell, not even a Santa to be found. He's not a Licensed Disney Character...yet. But the inference is clear. Snow White = Virgin Mary. Just gotta figure out what to do with those troublesome, old dwarf pervs she hangs out with. Seven wise guys?

You know, maybe a real tree -- if I could find one, Shenzhen manufactures about 98 percent of the artificial Christmas trees sold in the USA -- and C and I singing Away in a Manger followed by I Found the Brains of Santa Claus by Jason and the StrapTones ("I found the brains of Santa Claus underneath my bed, They were in a pickle jar, I wonder if he's dead...") as we deck the boughs might put me in just the right holiday mood.

Naked Eye
Bopping -- although shuffling is probably a more apt description -- back and forth between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is almost always a study in contrasts and not just for the obvious differences such as:

1. Public toilets. Hong Kong (check), Shenzhen (Whaa? Oh, I mean, first bush on the right...)

2. Low prices. Hong Kong (No one here gets out alive) Shenzhen (A copy-cat BMW? No problem! Can I throw in an fake F-17 fighter jet and a phony Prada clutch bag for an extra 25 yuan?)

3. Crowds. No contest. Hong Kong (At about 7 million, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with an overall density of some 6,400 people per square kilometer.) Shenzhen (11 million, most of whom are "unregistered." Still, there's still room to move except in nightclubs after 10pm and hot middle class shopping malls on weekends with a paltry 5,500 sweaty souls per square click.)

No, it's the little things I learn when I'm back in Shenzhen that keep me on the proverbial learning curve. C is the source for much of this, of course, as in a recent casual exchange regarding shopping pals.

I've long since boxed myself in as her Most Trustworthy Shopping Partner and it's not due to my wallet. Part of the initial courtship ritual involved a sensitive guy approach -- "An afternoon spent mindlessly staggering like drug addled zombie lab rats through claustrophic, deafening, identical malls offering merchandise available everywhere else on the planet, save Darfur or the Vostok Ice Station in Antarctica?

"To do something as spiritually and intellectually fulfilling as that? Especially with you, dearheart? Instead of swilling low cost adult beverages and mindlessly bullshitting with my licentious, dissolute expat male pals? Aw, honey. You're kidding! Why did you even have to ask?" -- that I've been increasingly unable to convincingly maintain the role and, as such, have begun gently nudging her oh-so-gently towards the concept of galpal shopping. Giggling, flouncing, bouncing like spring fawns through a magical mystical wonderland o' retail blingbling, leaving the guys behind to scratch their butts, fart, talk football and cranking up the AC/DC.

Brief asideAny female readers out there who fancy a new international shopping partner? (End of public service plea...)

"I only have a few friends to do that with and I don't trust their judgement," she said recently. "Except one. And her work schedule is not regular."

This part caught my attention. I pressed further. "She's an accountant," C explained. "But she only does 'fake books.'"

In other words she specializes in cooking the books for Shenzhen businesses. I expressed mild surprise -- much as I would if C had said she'd rather watch ESPN replays of a 10-day old NFL game or have me lead her track-by-track through the new Who or Dylan releases rather than try on prohibitively expensive shoes for 6 hours. She was equally mildy amused at my naivete, to say the least.

"It's very common. Many accountants here do it. Almost every business has fake books. They only trust their family or relatives to do the real ones and hire people like my friend for the fake ones."

It all reminded me of the time she'd told me she needed to help an ex-People's Liberation Army pal lock into some low cost office supplies for the Hong Kong PLA garrison. On the surface China is the world's next super power. Economy growing to the point of overheating. Big inroads into future markets like Africa's energy resources. A couple of manned space shots. Respected international negotiating partner for problem spots a la North Korea. Huge World Trade Organization aspirations. Further proof of international validity? The first McDonald's in China -- long since a staple -- was established, complete with testimonial plaque -- in Shenzhen.

Yet most of the books are cooked down to the most basic level and the world's largest army can't figure out in-house logistics for office supplies in one of the world's most populated, supposedly cosmopolitan locales?

It all looks fine to the naked eye, but it don't really happen that way at all.