Re:Shanghai

[reshanghai-blog]

In ChinaÆs growing art market, now the second largest in the world, outsize auction prices often overshadow faked sales data and forged art.

I think this issue speaks to a much larger philosophical education concept in Chinese culture. Forgery and abuses of intellectual property run rampant throughout the country and why, other than for the obvious goal of making money?

I believe that there is a fundamental difference in how Chinese view "copying." Is it fraud or the manifestation of the age old pursuit of mimicking perfection? To follow some forms of Chinese logic, what is the purpose of creating something new when it was already done? Chinese teach educational rigor through imitation and copying; it is no surprise that it is a major issue in terms of art, music, or technology. 

[reshanghai-blog]

Yes, that's me and Hu Jintao. We're kind of like Dennis Rodman and Kim Jongun except not weird, awkward, and a potential danger to foreign policy as we know it.

[reshanghai-blog]

上海，我回来了 （Shanghai, I'm Coming Back)

In line at the Chinese visa office in the central business district (downtown area) of Singapore. Seems clean. Seems organized. 

Until it was time to wait in a line. 

Regardless of requests and repeated instructions by the man and woman manning their stations at the front desk, armed only with short sentences and pre-coffee attitudes, my fellow visa-wanters queued in the way of the Dao. 

And by the way of the Dao, I mean with absolutely no regard for those in front of them. 

I have always believed, in my 15 years of studying and learning Chinese and off-and-on time spent living there, that if Chinese line philosophy could be explained, then world peace could be realized. 

This, my friends, has yet to happen. 

My first trip in China was to the southern coastal city of Beihai and it was after having my foot stepped on in a line for a bottle of water that I realized how serious these people were. Gone were the days of the polite courtesy of “excuse me.” No—- this shit was do or die.

In order to get anything in China that involves a line, one must be aggressive. One must throw out all sensibilities of human decency and polite adult behavior and become students of the Ludacrisian School of “Move bitch, get out the way.” Ism. 

So, 11 years after my first experience of nearly having a toenail severed by the ill-badazzled shoe of a middle aged Chinese woman, I did what the Chinese do: I strong-armed an octogenarian, smacked my tongue, and stood my ground. 

"Nah, little old lady. Fall back," I said to myself, proud of the confidence it had taken years of waiting so much longer for a yangrouchuar (lamb stick… street meat) than I ever needed to. 

So, it is with this attitude that I return to China and that I begin this blog, Re:Shanghai, a more organized exploration into the facets of Chinese culture that have both fascinated and confused me for so long: fashion, music, education, and most importantly, my first hand accounts of what it’s like to be the literal needle in a haystack: a black girl in China. 

In 48 hours I’ll be living in Shanghai again but this time, no one puts baby in the corner. 

M