Shanghai Blur

Sitting in traffic on the road out to the airport.  Shanghai blur of three days here and now I’m heading home.  Three days later, I’ll be back.  A strong case could certainly have been made to simply stay here.  I’d have gotten much more done.  But I want to be home.  I want to see my family.  I want to be somewhere other than a hotel. 

This is generally the vexing part of the ride out.  It’s clogged and you start doing the math and worrying that there might not be any way to get out there to Hong Qiao on time.  Crawl, and crawl but unlike Beijing, things always seem to open up more swiftly here.  We’re moving now. 

I’m listening to Lee Scratch Perry fetishize China.  "Kung Fu Man" has suddenly come up in the earholes.  “I’m going to show you a little Fu Kang.”  How odd this must have been when Bruce Lee movies first arrived on the scene in Jamaica, presumably in the late sixties, early seventies.  Obviously there was always a small but important Chinese community of merchants there in urban Jamaica.  I am assuming that they were more readily associated with commercial muscle and perhaps fast food, rather than martial prowess, per se.  But suddenly this “rougher than rough” community of masculine bravado was celebrating, appropriating, a completely foreign version of pugilism. 

Bruce Lee as the ambassador of Chinese soft power.  He was his own man, and he could arguably only have arisen in out of the unique hot house that is Hong Kong, but clearly he can not but be a symbol of Chinese distinction and Chinese might.  A non-‘white’, “other” figure from the developing world, Bruce Lee kicked and punched harder than his fists and feet alone suggested.  He represented the underdog.  He was handsome, he was cool, and he was undefeated. 

Surely Leslie Kong, the seminal Jamaican producer was emblematic of the soft power of Chinese commercial prowess.  Thinking of the neighboring island of Trinidad and the neighboring tradition of Calypso the Growling Tiger back in the 30’s sang asking the “Chinee man to toss him akra and float” (give him some food for free.) We know West Indian’s were long familiar with Chinese food.  But Bruce, set perhaps against the backdrop of the then strident, revolutionary mainland, had the rudeboys all wanting, suddenly, to be Chinese, aka, to be tough and unbeatable, regardless of size.

Up next on the mix:  “Natty Kung Fu” as only Dillinger can could sing it. “Introducing for you the modern techniques of self offence called, Kung Fu fightin’ y’all.”   "Hu. Hah!"