However, it’s officially the weekend, and I’m in the mood for some Olympic-sized funnies:

The Beijing Olympics: Are They A Trap?

Every time she says that “Oh, they’re going to wait until it gets dark, and they’re going to bring out their dragons” I pee a little.

Even more hilarious is that some couChinesegh folks on the YouTube page seem to think that ONN = CNN and missed that this is satire.

I’ve been itchy all week (seriously – I think I have hives or something), and fortunately I caught this video explaining it’s just Olympic Fever.

Chinese Officials: Deadly Virus Sweeping China Is Just Olympic Fever

And finally, check out “Green-Clad Olympic Archer Steals Gold Medals From Rich, Gives Them To Poor”

He’s probably a Canuck – just looking to bring something home to Canada.

Also stumbled across this funny video of the Daily Show in China (h/t Shanghaiist):

I’ve been intentionally quiet lately because, to be honest, my stay in China has been resting on a bed of nails.

My visa was up on the 22nd, and until its replacement arrived in the mail the other day, I wasn’t entirely confident I’d be enjoying this sweltering Suzhou humidity much longer.

When Maggie called up the local PSB a couple weeks back and asked about the special travel/L visa issued to folks like me married to a Chinese national, or indeed issued to any foreigner visiting a close family member here, they informed her that it could only be issued for a 30 day period.

This was quite in conflict with what the Entry and Exit Bureau (I swear, I’m not making that title up – it’s printed in big letters on a likewisedly big building) had told us 6 months ago when we asked about the visa. Then they had explained that it would be no problem for us to get a 1 year multiple entry visa.

Understandably, Maggie asked the officer why the change, to which he replied, “Special Circumstances”. My wife, the smart jiaozi that she is, questioned the officer on whether or not the “special circumstances” had anything to do with the rather global sporting event about to take place in Beijing. He, rather stoically, and with no elaboration, simply stated, “No, just special circumstances – but it should be better after September.”

It’s enough to make a guy contemplate the amount of force required to drive a chopstick through his skull.

Later in the week Maggie paid a visit in person to the Entry & Exit Bureau and asked for more details. She was told by a very kindly girl there that it shouldn’t be a problem to at least get a six month visa, despite the “special circumstances”.

However, as we’ve recently moved to a new district, the downtown Entry & Exit Bureau is no longer where we need to go to renew the visa. Now out in the rather ritzy SIP, we need to go to the local office, which evidently exists in its own visa regulation dementia dimension.

The 笑里藏刀 of a woman at the desk grinned politely for the foreigner and treated Maggie like she just stepped off the slow train from Ningxia.

She basically told Maggie she had no right to request this type of visa for her husband because she had no right to live in Suzhou (Maggie, for those that don’t remember/know, is from the north-eastern part of China). Despite Maggie displaying that she had the proper identity card showing her registration in Suzhou, and despite the downtown bureau explaining that’s exactly what we would require, this woman wasn’t having any of it.

Finally, just a hair before Maggie ripped off the woman’s face and fed it to her, the woman caved and told us to fill out the application, maybe we could get a 30 day visa – and that we were lucky she was feeling so benevolent.

After filling out the application we had to wait for our number to come up, which was made confusing as there were two separate number systems going depending on what you were looking to accomplish – normally no problem, but in this case the numbers were running in the same sequence.

I passed the time watching another foreigner hopelessly try to figure out why the woman under the #194 LED was refusing to help him – despite is #194 ticket. Two booths over #194 came and went.

Eventually we got back up to the counter to submit our application to a young girl sitting right beside our Mao’er than thou application hander outer benefactor. The young girl seemed a bit confused by Maggie being from outside of Suzhou, but not at all as hostile as her neighbour. When she wasn’t sure what to do they looked it up in a book and made a couple of calls. Apparently it was entirely possible to get the visa we wanted, but only for a 3 month period – special circumstances and all.

In the end we left the visa office feeling good about things, but dreading what might change between the application being processed and the visa being stickied into my passport. Fortunately the visa arrived by courier the other day and I’ve 90 days before I need to worry about things again – just enough time to catch the opening ceremonies of the Special Circumstances, and then to watch as the whole event withers and fades, leaving everyone with a “what the fuck was the big effin’ deal?” look on their face.

Mrs. Granite Studio (YJ), Danwei, Beijing Boyce and a number of others have jumped to the call and found no evidence that supports the SCMP article.

Am I the only one sitting back and scratching my head feeling, whether true or not, this isn’t half the big news that it is being made out to be?

Maybe I’m a fool, but there’s just no way that an order like this would ever come from high up. If it ever were to happen, it would be an ignorant and knee-jerk decision of some low level pleb officer – not some covert CPC conspiracy to limit the dark-skinned denizens of the world from hanging out at Beijing bars. We might not agree with the powers that be in this country, but I’m certain we can agree that they are generally more educated than an action like this demonstrates.

One of three things will happen:

1. SCMP, a generally quite reputable paper, put out a bunk story and will print a retraction and reprimand their reporter accordingly – living with the fact that they’ve sullied their rep a bit and brought the “Western media is out to get us” mentality one step closer to home.

2. Black people, whether locals or visitors, will encounter overt racism when attempting to visit the bars – and international outrage will ensue – in which case it will immediately be proven that this is a fact and we’ll all be the wiser.

3. None of the above. This all just gives us bloggers something to buzz, rattle and rage about. It gives the polarized sides something to spit at each other over, and it gives the moderate middle something to navel gaze at.

The sale, of course, is backed by French members of the Eight-Nation Alliance, who were frozen more than 100 years ago with strict instructions to be thawed out to mastermind just this occasion.

Ah, but China is no fool this time around. Foreign insults will not be taken sitting down. Hell no, China is a Great Nation now. One of honour, pride, common sense, power, and a whole string of other Great adjectives.

No, the Bag’er Revolution is upon us! Where the Boxers failed, the Bag’ers shall not! We will hold up signs and hassle ALL patrons of Carrefour, using our bodies, our BODIES!, to block their way. We, alone, stand as the last bastion of Chinese self-respect. We have risen to the occasion, and now hold the line that must educate those ignorant Chinese that would trade their country for ‘Two Yuan Off’ sales.

We will show the world that we know, yes WE KNOW! what is REALLY going on in . We invite all our foreign friends to come to beautiful China and see for themselves what it is REALLY like in . No, not just what the evil and his mouthpiece CNN want you to believe. Don’t you know the people of have more freedoms than us Chinese erm… people-in-China-but-outside-? They can have AS MANY CHILDREN AS THEY WANT! Really! As many!

Wait… what do you mean there’s no sale? There are signs in the Carrefour window informing thrifty hopefuls that in fact there is no sale today?

But, but… if there’s no sale, does this mean possibly that there were other falsities in the call to arms SMS message I received from my very good and patriotic friends? Wait, does this mean that maybe the CEO of Carrefour doesn’t hang out with the and China bash? Oh boy, does this mean that France really doesn’t hate China and we’ve just spent the last two weeks on a self-serving nationalistic rampage that is as stupid as it is wide-spread?

Oh no…. [lowering head] does this mean that we Chinese have presented the rest of the world with the exact image we were trying to show them we are not?

[rising head with new found vigor] Hell no!

Down with Carrefour! Down with Carrefour! China’s Olympics! One (country) World, One Dream! Fuck you France, fuck you Rest of the World, we don’t need your kind! We don’t need your common sense! We are Chinese! We are proud! We are strong!

There’s nothing new about saying “China’s changing fast”. Every Sinophile for the last 25 years has been saying that, and they’re right.

But what gets me is that I’ve got this front-row seat to it all. And frankly, it’s a bit exciting.

Now, my generation – growing up in the technological revolution of the 80s-90s – undoubtedly experienced changes to the world faster than any generation before them, and this is likely to just compound for generations to come.

Even then though, you had a “generation” (y? z? which are we on now?) to deal with it. You had parents that didn’t understand all that Internet mumbo-jumbo. Wizkids. A divide of sorts.

To say things in China are “different” is somewhat akin to saying the Great Wall is “long”. But it’s not the difference of China that got me thinking the other day while I was walking my dog. It’s how fast the country is becoming the same, but not in that McDonald’s hegemony that cultural anthropologists are most concerned about.

Rather, the same in all the ways the country has been physically and emotionally unable to be until now.

• I was in the park and saw a bunch of kids pull up on their bikes and (after sticking about ten locks on each tire) run off into the trees together – to conspire, play fort, do math homework, or whatever kids that age do.
• Just shortly before the walk I was at a (typical Taiwanese-”American” style) coffee shop and grabbed a coke. It had a stay-on tab, which the Shanghaiist reported on last week.
• Last weekend I was at friends playing poker and PlayStation, eating Doritos and drinking a reasonable Chinese Cabernet.
• This morning I poured my coffee out of a freshly opened box of UHT milk, and the spout had been improved so as not to spill the first quarter of the box all over my microwave.
• I’ve been watching the news about all the Carrefour/CNN/Olympic malarkey, and reading comments on this blog and others where Chinese have chimed in on what used to be topics us Westerners would preach to the choir about. And I’m not talking ultra-nationalist (read: ultra-brainless) reactionary comments – but thoughtful, debate-expanding and prospective shifting conversations.

These may seem like some rather random and discombobulated things, but each in its own way has made me realize that much of the issue in the West and the recent conflicts between Chinese and Western media, is because many of us (as in Westerners) don’t realize the level of change happening here. We can say “China is changing fast”, hell it’s the catch phrase of every China business book written in the last decade, but we don’t have the facilities to understand what that actually means.

We judge the terms “fast” and “change” by our own societal perspectives, and as nations that have endured a relatively minor amount of change in the past century, it’s a challenge to really understand what rapid changes in a country that has yet had a chance to just “settle in” and enjoy the rewards of being a large modern nation.

Whereas CNN, Cafferty, and his ilk, are struggling to understand that this isn’t our grandparents’ China with Maoist slogans everywhere. It’s not even the post-Nixon, ‘to be rich’-Deng China of our parents – when I look around me, I realize this isn’t even the China I came to just three and a half years ago.

We grasp at the landscape and attempt to use that as a measurer of sorts. We see the massive amounts of construction and think, “Wow, that building wasn’t there yesterday, things sure change fast here.” And we use our inherent mistrust of change to condemn it. We step back and say, “China, you’re coming up too fast now. Slow down. Watch the environment. Watch your issues.”

I say, watch those kids playing together in the trees. Not everything about China need be a warning.

It seems I’ve had nothing to say lately but for commenting on the waves of stupidity surging higher and higher as the Olympics draw ever nearer. I wish I could say it was because I’m a cynical dick that likes to focus on such things (I am), but really… it would appear there’s NOTHING else going on in the world.

So, the latest is Grace Wang. Wang, a Chinese student at Duke University, has quickly become the poster child for the protests – lauded as the Great Yellow Hope by Western media and scorned as the “Most hideous Chinese student abroad” (according to CCTV, China’s national television station) here at home.

And what did Grace do to deserve such attention? Stood her ground against her compatriots. Last week when the torch travelled through San Francisco, protests were held around the US. Split between people protesting to free and the hordes of Chinese out waving the PRC flag to show their support for their homeland.

Grace, it would seem by happenstance, walked into the middle of the fray and attempted to negotiate cooler heads and real dialog. Something mobs are prone to do – that and listen to reason.

For her involvement she was immediately branded a race traitor, had her picture and personal info (address, phone #, parents’ address) smeared across the net. Her parents home in Shandong was pelted with rocks and she has been threatened and warned never to return to the Mainland.

Now, there’s and endless number of conflicting reports about Grace, and it’s impossible to decipher the real from the raunchy. But Grace’s story isn’t really about Grace. It’s about what happens when you break from the hive.

Grace isn’t standing up and shouting that should be free. She’s simply voicing her opinion that both sides need to cool the fuck down and talk about things. Sadly, that’s just not acceptable. Apparently, when you’re Chinese you either side with the crowd, or go to hell.

Now, I’ve written lately about the mishandling by Western media of news about China and the whole thing, and feel pretty damn strongly that China got the short end of the stick. When people are talking stupid shit, you’ve got ever right to be upset about how the country is being mis-labeled (with headlines) to the world.

China was given the moral high ground. It was handed to them. And what was done with it? They shat on it like it was Grace Wang’s parents’ doorstep.

Seriously. Yelling nationalistic slogans with your arms in the air and denouncing the first Chinese to stand up and speak her mind (as opposed to her nations), and speaking reason no less, is not the best way to illustrate to the world that China isn’t the brainwashed, stormtrooping, Red Guard of yester-year.

If China wants less criticism from the world and wants to dim villainous spotlight from the global stage, then it’s going to require a bit more than simply demanding it with a fist and flag in the air. To borrow from Ms. Wang, “take away your anger, and your heads will become clear, your minds will become sharper, and then your judgments correct (消除怒气，头脑才会清晰，思维才能敏捷，决断才会正确).”

N.B.: The one great thing about all of this lunacy is that despite all the Chinese uber-nationalists that fill their fragile egos with pseudo-patriotism, there seems to be a growing number of Chinese that are showing the maturity and confidence to not allow Western bias offend them personally, and illustrating the intelligence to discuss it all with thought and pause.

From his recent article entitled ‘Fanning the flame of controversy‘:

“In less draconian concerns, the pollution is said to be horrific, the food untrustworthy and just recently the Chinese began installing that cutting-edge technology known as the “sit toilet” at some venues after discovering that the rest of the world isn’t too keen on squatting over a hole in the ground to do their business.”

…

“Every world leader offers nothing but tacit support with their silence. And who knows, maybe at this point no major nation, let alone the United States, even has the moral authority to demand much of anything.”

…

“The Chinese even have given up on the bold promises about how there will be no disturbances. They’re trying to ban live broadcasts from Tiananmen Square, and they admit suicide squads might be nettlesome.

Their original plan appeared to include having every potential protester murdered, imprisoned or scared of being murdered or imprisoned.

At this point, the IOC only can hope that sickening idea works so they can ignore the violence, sip champagne and call the games a success. What do a hundred dead monks matter anyway when there are so many Big Macs to move?”

Dead monks? He did read the news right? The majority of those reported to have been killed were due to riotous violence brought on by Tibetans (and in some cases Tibetan monks). This isn’t to say that the forces of law and order don’t have blood on their hands – but when you have a violent mob running amok, concessions need to be made.

And how is it hard to wrap your head around the fact that by shutting down live feeds from Tiananmen, they are curbing the potential for various groups of protesters to utilize it as a launching ground to punt their non-Olympics related cause.

But despite all that stupidity – the bit that just makes me want to slap his apple-eatin’ ignorant face is the bit about “sit toilets” – what a culturally insensitive dickhead. A good half of the world’s population views setting your ass where others have set their ass (or urine) as somewhat unsanitary. That they choose to cater to Western ignorance and bad knees is a considerable kindness not a cultural catch-up – ya knob.