Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Thief Caught





The plane ride down’s an excuse to read the China Daily.  If I’m on a flight I always try to spend some time with it to savor the quality of official promotion.  It is a stern guide.  Ambiguity and nuance are only approached with the utmost caution.  Humor always falls flat.  And like many things in China it continues to improve gradually over time.

Twenty years ago the fun thing about China Daily was that there was, effectively, no bad news.  In the U.S. the front page of the paper might have headlines like “Robbers Make off with $4M.”  That would have been an unlikely headline in the PRC.  There is nothing to report publicly in China about such matters because there has yet to be a resolution.  The China Daily would report about such a story would read: “Thief Caught.”   These days we’ve a bit more subtlety and ambiguous stories like the Malaysian Airlines mystery can be covered.  But even here China’s rush to assert progress both rhetorically in the press and practically in the field, has not been particularly successful. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/world/asia/chinas-efforts-in-hunt-for-plane-are-seen-as-hurting-more-than-helping.html?hp&_r=0

Front page story on today’s China Daily: “Enemies Share Eternity Together” about grave site near the Battle of Zhujiagang in Jiangsu Province.  Chinese and Japanese veterans are each memorialized there.  The story and how it is presented, is fascinating. By merely referencing that dead soldiers were left behind shows that the Japanese Imperial effort in Asia was 自取灭亡[1]
                                                                  
What should have been a remarkably powerful story is necessarily ruined though by official needs to state the Party’s position, both in editorial voice and quotes profiled, that China was victimized, China’s reaction was magnanimous, Japan’s behavior is vile, Chinese people are still angry because Japan is not contrite.  The simple fact of the gravesite, where enemies lie buried is enough for sentient people to ponder the folly of Japan, the patience of China.  Shrill, China screams out impetuous with these sort admonishments that are humorous in their artifice.  One feels as if everything needs to be framed and explained to you by your friends in the propaganda ministry. 



Eddie Lockjaw Davis would appear to know.  He’s shaking his head, communicating clearly, scaring out the truth with his honking.  He’s not settling for a film flam easily.  He so much emphatic candor to channel it’s an earthy antidote to this day-job writing in China Daily.  I’ve got his 1962 release “Going to the Meetin” on.  It’s his fat, emphatic approach to “Just Friends” is effortlessly convincing.  I got to know this tune first through Chet Baker’s utterly approachable version, but this is more swinging.  I’ve had the guys’ music forever but only just placed a photo to the face with that unforgettable name.  This obituary in the Chicago Tribune from the year he died, 1986, had this to say about the origin of this New Yorkers name:

“Mr. Davis` nickname (often shortened to ``Jaws``) came from a mid-1940s recording on which the producer gave each tune the name of a disease. When a song titled ``Lockjaw`` became a hit, Mr. Davis had his moniker.”


Having bitched about the mendacity and pedantic hectoring of big brother, allow me to report a positive story of Chinese rules and officialdom.  Usually I have all my things in a bag I check in.  But this time I had everything in a backpack as a carry on.  I like the Kiehl's silk groom cream for my hair.  It’s not as critical just now but when my hair gets longer it’s necessary.  You used to be able to get the stuff reliably at the Hong Kong airport.  I’d pick up a bottle every time I passed through. http://www.kiehls.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-kiehls_us-Site/default/Home-Global?noRedirect=True

Suddenly, one day, a few years back, they said they didn’t carry it any more.  It isn’t in Beijing that I know of, but OK, no worries.  I’ll grab some next time I’m in Tokyo. Visiting, I searched out a spot in Shibuya and made my way over.  They too said they were out and that they wouldn’t have it any longer in any of the stores in Tokyo.  Please, take a free sample pack.  Oh dear.  Beijing airport?  Shanghai airports?  Nope.  Looks like they pulled the product from the region. So I went on line and had two bottles sent to me in the US and picked it up when I was home.  Clearly though, any commodity you like that becomes scarce and which must be obtained this way, with so few alternatives becomes precious.

At present I am half way through my remaining bottle.  And I unwittingly had it with me on my carry on.  A security guy pulls it out and says, it cannot go  on the plane.  Hmm.  “You sure?  Can we work something out here?  I don’ t care about the shaving cream.  You can toss that. Just don’t trash the Kiehls, would ya?  Anything we can do here . . ? 

The man slows me down.  “Are you going to return to Beijing in the next thirty days?”  “Uh.  Yes.  I live here.  I’ll be back in 3 days. “  “OK.  You can fill out a form and pick it up at the airport when you return.”   Overcoming my momentum of protest points, mid rebuttal, I acknowledge that it isn’t a bad compromise.  Sure.  It would be good to have the guy just say “OK.  I’ll ignore it.  Go.”   But short of that, the ‘pick it up when you come back’ bit isn’t so bad.  Do other airports do this?  Perhaps it is widespread.  I for one have never encountered it anywhere else.  I have certainly screwed up and brought liquids on in Japan or the US where there is no question that you have just lost for good whatever it was they just detected.  China’s tack that they would hold it for me, till I returned, in a timely fashion, seemed civilized in comparison. 

This current Hong Kong trip was barely a day long in duration.   The horrible heat has yet to descend. The city is pleasant.  But it isn’t the same as visiting from Beijing in the winter when the contrast is so dramatic as to seem like a portal to paradise. 



Took care of some officialdom mostly.  Paper work that had to get done.   Get in and head straight out to Cybperport in a cab.   Go meet someone up and over the hill from Pok Fu Lam down into Central.  Rendez vous with friends of friends in a joint over in Kennedy Town, and then these people want to lead things to Wanchai. Get down into the MTR now, and my Octopus card still has a charge.   The IFC, the Admiralty Center, Pacific Place, all these malls, reflecting different strata of development and times of construction.  Then finally the dash back to the Wanchai “Pier”, that used to have water lapping and is now a good kilometer from the harbor, to get the bus up to Shenzhen.  The line as I arrive is extended from the noisy stop loading area up the stairs and back on to a bridge.  But one bus came quickly and then another and then a third and in a reasonably short amount of time, we we’re on board and heading up to the boarder. 

Now there is a horrible faded television that repeats the same ads over and over that I cannot help but look up at.  At least I don’t have to hear it.  The bus is stuffed to the gills and most people have dozed off, like the guy next to me.  Looking through my pictures in the dark trying to see if I caught anything interesting, in the SAR, to share.





[1] zìqǔmièwáng:  to court disaster (idiom) / to dig one's own grave

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