triple whammy

Since things will be closed for the next few days, and I don’t always have the time to write.. here is some more.

I finished the book China Inc. mentioned in my first HK post, which by the end turned in to an anti-communist verging on racist to inflict fear of the threat of the Chinese in the American people last ending thought. There is going to be increased prejudice and tension towards the Chinese in America if these types of attitudes continue as China rises to power. The end of the book spoke fearfully at the tightening bonds of Europe and Asia over Europe and America. America fears the decline in power and blames the Chinese, but the decline for the US is already well underway by their own means.

I am here at an interesting and exciting age for China, right before the boom. It is claimed that China has already had thousands of years of glory (and strife), but this is a new media-saturated, hi-tech age of civilization. It seems the society is really young and only starting to develop its image and place in the modern world. The young people in China are going to be the ones defining the world in the next decades of the future. I think the entire world is slowly starting to realize it. More people are taking attention to it and becoming interested in the country for business and culture.

Even in noise:
ihatemusic_msgboard post

Dog Years 2006

This Sunday is the Chinese Lunar Year of the Dog. Rather than following the cycles of the sun, the Chinese follow the moon. Most of Asia will be held immobile during the days of the festival. Many businesses will shutdown from a minimum of three days to as long as two weeks. Prior to the New Year, sales in ever store are off the wall. Chinese New Year is a much bigger deal than Christmas. It is a time to eat plenty, buy plenty, give and celebrate. On my bedside I discover a lucky red envelope with coins and two Clementines (or some Chinese related fruit) for good luck.

Every year there is the Flower Festival where a Flower Market is set up and it is much like a carnival (food stands, toys, balloons, windmills etc...) with tons of flowers for sale. Mostly orchids, cherry blossoms, lucky Clementine bushes, Chrysanthemums…. The immense crowds of people (plus the pollution) were more than I could bare.





The first two days of the New Year festivities are for gathering with friends and families. Those who are married are to give lucky red envelopes with money to the children. On the third day, everyone is supposed to stay home – for if you go out to see people it is said that you will argue, so you stay home. The 7th day of the festival is called People’s Day or everybody’s birthday. On the 7th day you are to eat the two clementines at your bedside. The New Year celebration (which does not involve a countdown) involves dragon dances, eating of New Year cake (sweet, gooey, fried), fireworks, firecrackers and celebration.

And no it does not include the opening of fortune cookies, though when I was a grade-schooler, my mother always gave me fortune cookies to share with my class to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Happy Chinese New Year 2006 Year of the Dog!

Filipino nanny culture

In HK it is not uncommon to have a nanny and clean for you. For about 500$/month CND you could have someone do your laundry, wash your car, do groceries, make you dinner and take care of your children (if applicable). Most often these nannies are women from the Philippines with families back home. They come to the big city to work and send money home to their children. Sundays is every nanny’s given day off. With no real family or friends in the city, these women gather in the downtown core to make friends. Every Sunday (and sometimes, but more sparsely on Saturdays) they virtually line every public space and walkway (especially surrounding city hall). Sitting on cardboard boxes, and blankets often enclosed by umbrellas, they eat, play cards, chat/gossip, shop, and share stories. Rather than troubled, drug addicted homeless men or street kids in North America, poverty in HK are those either from the mainland (farmers coming to earn money for their families back home), or those from more impoverished countries/areas.



Class difference is not so much seen as social problem (drug addiction, abuse, crime), but as those who come from a more traditional way of life or non-industrialized society. They are seen as uneducated and somewhat more primitive (referring more to the idea of‘mainlanders’) rather than troubled and mentally unstable (“crazy”).

the secrets revealed

Shit well, there is just too much to talk about. I have a wad of notes and no desire to write it out.

Been using up thoughts on email.

Record stores:

Music: the music here seems generally lacking. The local music community consists of imitation rap, Coldplay ripoff, alterna-rock bands and jam bands (e.g. The 5th Element mega showcase featuring something like 20 bands in 5 hours). The music community isn’t exactly inspired...



I did however discover an amazing record store near Causeway Bay called White Noise Records www.whitenoiserecords.org – it’s tiny and hidden up a concrete stairwell amongst small grocery stores. The store is about the size of a bedroom, but the selection is great. From obscure Finnish, German music, indie, avant-garde, noise, experimental, to electronic... surprisingly a lot of Montreal content including Fly Pan Am.

I talked a bit with the clerk about the HK noise scene and shows. He says there’s not much support for that kind of stuff. He says people will only come out to shows if they are free, but otherwise no. Bands don’t often come to HK either and people don’t like buying cds once they find out they're CDRs. I picked up this record off this apparently small Belgian noise label Audiobot, branched from www.freaksendfuture.com. All the cover art from the label is really nice - intricate drawings and designs, stitching and brightly coloured. The one I bought is by Verde and Clay Figure – beautiful noisy compositions with synths, field recordings and occasional subtle guitar melodies, a bit psychedelic.. actually pretty psychedelic.

Artwork for this was done by www.dennistyfus.tk there are a lot of really great art/music links on the website.

This is just a taste. There more on art. I don’t have time to write.

people with nice shoes:
(for vinh closest to shots of cute girls that i got)



foggy architecture - i have a lot to say about the architecture and multi-level costruction of the city. with the mountain - narrow streets winding around buildings, giant escalators through the mid-levels of the city, and above ground walkways all around the downtown... it's like a epic/hi-tech multi-layer antfarm civilization for humans. kind of fun to maneuver the city rather than to be stuck flat on the ground. driving up the mountains is also quite the experience seeing immense apartment buildings jutting up into the sky from the foliage.



street... so street.

HK

The plane:



17-hour direct flight. Over the north. Hi-tech experiences with flight attendants feeding you endlessly every hour or so, coming around with drinks, snacks, rice/veggies/pork, ice cream, more drinks, sandwiches, instant noodles, even more drinks and snacks, mini-dim sum and again more drinks. If I was consuming alcohol every time they offered us a drink, I’d be passed out for the entire 17hours.

Touch-screens on the back of every head rest provided enough entertainment for the trip. With international movies, television shows, games and an interactive satellite view of the entire flight with stats, I wouldn’t mind being trapped in a cramped vessel for a day more often. Watching episodes off the BBC, to animated shorts from Australia, to avant-garde films from South America, it was like buffet of global culture and a breathe of fresh air from mono-perspective of North America.

My favorite part of the international airplane cultural experience was the film “Drink, Drank, Drunk” a Chinese romantic comedy about a girl who cannot get drunk no matter how much she drinks. The film touches upon issues of inner beauty vs superficiality, pressure to marry as one ages, pressure to be beautiful/youthful and settling down. The film provides a Chinese view of Western culture. In the movie there is a French-Chinese pretty-boy aspiring to own his own restaurant. All the girls fawned over him wondering if he has abs like Brad Pitt or is promiscuous and into casual sex like Western-washed boys are. It was also amusing to see Chinese actors grimace at the sight of gourmet French food like blue cheese and commenting on the strange textures of the food, similar to when some Westerners encounter foreign foods. It was nice for once to get the reverse perspective. I was starting to suffocate continually getting a uni-directional dialogue in North America (which is partially why I hated “Lost In Translations” – simply Westerners alienated by a culture they don’t understand – deeming the East foreign and unknown, strange and weird). This time it was the East talking back. The Western and French inclusion in the film rang to me of Montreal. It spoke to me on a number of levels. Hilarious and fun - it is the best romantic comedy I’ve seen in a long time.



Asia is modernizing at hyper-speed. It is no longer a foreign and traditional third-world country. So late to modernize, China is newer than the new, despite the civilization is amongst the oldest in the world. Though Communist rule has slowed and stifled industrial development it is now accelerating beyond control. The culture is now more open to Western influence and the newer generation is increasingly developing a style and contemporary view of their own separate from heavy Chinese tradition.



Stepping off the plane, the humidity hits you in the face. The island is beautiful with lush green foliage and sub-tropical weather similar to that of Florida. The air is different and much heavier. Even from the plane the Hong Kong skyline is filled with hundred and hundreds of 40 story high apartment buildings, identical and scattered throughout the mountain along the water. Huge, highly stylized skyscrapers decorate the downtown core. The architecture is immense, extremely modern and hi-tech like in Metropolis minus the flying cars. The city feels like a newer/cleaner Asian New York with giant Prada ads and brand new ultra-modern malls like the IFC mall. The city is booming – it makes New York look like a rusty rig. The subways are brand new and immaculate. Large glass doors slide open and shut as the subways arrive. The windows block people from the tracks entirely, only sliding open when the train arrives. The subways ring Cantonese, Mandarin and English (British with an strong accent) translations on the PA. Getting by with English in Hong Kong is like English in Montreal. The British influence makes HK feel even more like a hybrid city. I feel rather comfortable and strangely at home. Perhaps I am accustomed to being in an environment where I don’t entirely understand everything that is being spoken.



China Inc.: How the rise of the next superpower challenges America and the world by Ted C Fishman, was a gift from my father. A book on the rise of the Chinese economy and the threat it poses to the American economy (which tends to be the main concern of books like this). The note on the inside cover says:

To: Tiffany and Ashley,
Read this book and understand how China is influencing the world.
- Dad 2005

A book on business and economy (typical of my Dad) it is a thoughtful and relevant gift I can no doubt divulge something from.



The book essentially talks about how through-the-floor production costs, working wages and work standards is attracting US manufactures (taking away jobs from the States). Since corporations don’t have to spend much on wages, money can now go to improving quality of the materials. With the communist rule loosening up on the private market, millions of mainlanders are flooding into the cities to make money for their family on the farms. They are dead broke and willing to work for pennies. The west is realizing the potential and investing in the country. Workers now have money to start their own businesses, which are increasingly competitive as Chinese business owners are learning from foreign investors. They are able to make cheaper and increasingly better quality knockoffs - original marketers cannot compete. They are able to make things at low costs with better materials and they have a growing market (the population that’s migrating to the cities and making more money) to tap. There is also a growing number of high-educated young people ready and eager to work. With such leniency to economic rules, China's market (with so much power with the large population,) can indeed redefine the rules for the world. The country is building up at high speed. Nice cars, investing in new architecture, and the highest technologies. It is developing its own critical edge on the Western urban way of life. Next once the financial state and economy is fully bloomed, I believe culture and the arts will begin to develop and blossom further.

Strength in numbers.

First impressions : very new, hi-tech, modern, not foreign, booming, clean, little poverty (in the main city). Kowloon (on shore from HK island) has beautiful markets with tons of cheap knockoff goods. They have streets dedicated to types of goods – for example flower street for flowers, sports street for sporting goods. This is the market setting up shop for the day. Insanely cheap fake everything. More to come.



Article from Tiny Mix Tapes

More on art/music/less urbanized discoveries to come....

British Presence / Western presence
Filipino nanny culture / sundays
Happy Valley - the HK Beverley Hills
Chinese New Year
clothes,music,art,food,culture

embarkment

DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS | SSENSUOICSNOC ELBUOD

I was born with this strange ability to see beyond a single perspective - My cultural upbringing vs. my Western environment and education. As a result, this has probably lead to my ability to subsume myself in any subculture and possibly attributes to my somewhat schizophrenic existence.

Not having lived or really experienced anything outside of North America and having pursued western education to its ends, I feel embedded as a Westerner almost to the point of denying my roots. I have developed intolerance to prejudices, knowing far well that I can function in this society that I was raised in just as well as anyone else. I even feel I have an advantage as a minority having broader knowledge and awareness of the world and providing difference and diversity.

The question is how will I fair when confronted with this alternate world that is somehow more deeply my own than the one I have lived and gotten to know so well? Will my primal knowledge of my native language flood back to me as it did when I first learned to talk? Understanding of a language at such a level is an automatic understanding of the culture.

How well do I know my own culture? Has my parents’ non-insular liberal upbringing stunted my appreciation of my family background? Am I simply another Westerner fascinated by an exotic other (even when I am myself that other)?

Alternate universes are partially what keep me sane. To be trapped in a single world would suffocate me as the suburbs did through my adolescence. I hope to discover and re-discover a world that I should know, to broaden my insight and to bring meaning to my current primary existence in Montreal.

People of hyphenated identities always have issues with never feeling quite at home anywhere - Being too Western for the East and too Eastern for the West. Canada is, however, more generous to that than other places. Trinh Minh-Ha probably speaks about that better than I do and attempts to blur distinctions between the two. I personally have no identity issues – flicking on and off various switches as I please. It’s kind of fun. (We'll see how I fair - I will also be seeking my own 'Western' interests). Double Consiousness = critical edge on both parts.

My mantra:

To be critical of everything – to be versatile and nomadic – to see multiple perspectives – to not get tied down, or trapped in ideology – to somehow find stability within temporality.

kiss it!

i dare you.. kiss it.



undr constrctn

no hard feelings

xmas _ the return to the 'burbs. DEC 05

the youth spent in the discovery of meaning within the vast suburban empire of nothingness. a reunion after we have all officially departed from our mutual homestead.




+ trespassing on the slushy and cool waterfront in Port Credit - Mississauga
+ wandering and exploration and discovery ... unintentional mischief and quality time

behind the icy gates we trekked over slippery rocks to attempt our goal to reach the abandoned boat off shore.

two failed attempts : one - the wrong route was taken, two : the rocks got too icy


goose littered semi-frozen landscapes

suburbs and youth yield : endless time and boredom our reaction to the environment is somehow unchanged despite our age now.


us and our unattainable goal.. not so much about reaching it, but trying..



the something in the nothing.