Roar of a Thousand Monkey's

Happy New Year!!!  I think this is the first full Chinese New Year that I've spent in Shanghai.  Since I've come out here, I've spent CNY in Hong Kong with my relatives.  It is probably the most festive season in China.  The buildings are all adorned with red lanterns and banners.  The streets are a bit emptier because many of the non-residents of Shanghai go back to their home towns to spend the holidays with their families.  And the night sky is filled with the sounds of sights of firecrackers.  It's kinda sad in a sense however, because many of the younger generation are starting to dismiss some of the cultural aspects of the holiday that my parents brought with them to Canada.  Many decide to go away for CNY, opting not to spend it with their family.  Others barely take a second glance at the beautiful lanterns and lights carefully strewn along buildings and walkways.  Others yet walk past the dragon dances put on for the audiences that I am always amazed at.  I often think that we overseas Chinese are sometimes more culturally Chinese than the Chinese themselves.  Some of the locals I know wonder whether I celebrate CNY back home.  They are surprised when I tell them, "Yes.  Every fucking year.  It's one of the best times ever."  It's supposed to be good luck to set firecrackers off.  My friends Tony, Jude, Vinny, Tito, Sam and Carol hung out and had CNY dinner and set some firecrackers off together to ring in the new year of the monkey.

I've been meaning to write earlier, to tell you my thoughts on awards shows in China.  A couple weeks back, I got an invite to the Channel V music awards.  It's kinda similar to the MTV music awards in the US.  Maybe the industry is not as advanced here, but I'm telling you, it was so crappy.  I wanted to leave after the first ten minutes.  Mind you, many record labels are hesitant to spend money in China because of rampant piracy (I love cheap CDs!).  I also think China is weary about the influence some of the pop icons have on the locals here.  The most popular singers are not from China, but are from Taiwan and HK.  "A Mei", an extremely popular Taiwanese singer was once banned from China because she sang the Taiwanese national anthem.  As China becomes even more embracing, I wonder how they are going to keep everything under control...

The set of the Chinese Music Awards

So aside from shitty production, there weren't too many stars there.  In the States, you got everyone at the MTV awards.  If someone were to drop a bomb at the awards show, the entire entertainment industry would be messed up.  My seats were kinda crappy, but if you look in the pic from above, the little round lit area was where all the VVIPs sat.  In that area was Faye Wong, A Mei, Ronan Keating (yes a white guy) and one of my all time favourites...

Here's a close up...

That's right.  Hsu Chi was in the same room that I was.  Okay, so the room could fit 50,000 people, and she was about the size of an ant.  But I heard her voice, and I could swear she looked at me a couple times as she presented her award.

Aside from that little highlight, the show was extremely disappointing.  It was 3.5 hours long.  The award categories were split so that mainland stars would be in one category and HK/Taiwan stars were in their own (so the mainlanders wouldn't have to compete with the megas).  Hardly anyone cheered when the locals were nominated, I suspect that nobody knew who they were!  I guess it's kinda like the Juno awards, or whatever that Canadian Music Award Show is.  There's about 5 famous Canadian Singers and all the other nominees just get no respect.  Jay Chou won a couple awards, but didn't show up.  Beyond was there, but really it was such a struggle of an event.  We decided not to go to the afterparty, but I suspect that I could have gotten Hsu Chi's number if I did.

Happy birthday's to Nancy, Ann, Jennifer, Bonnie, Cindy, Ryuma and Wai-ke.

The Fringes of Assimilating into Chinese Pop Culture

It is still a little difficult to completely immerse myself into society in Shanghai / China.  Things that I don't do, that I feel I should do include watching Chinese television (although the programming is quite shoddy), read Chinese publications (I am told Modern Weekly is a very good read), listen to Chinese radio stations, go to extremely local hangouts, and make local Chinese friends (other than the pretty - I mean party - girls).

Being an expat here is not too emotionally taxing.  The help of the Internet keeps me up to date with latest goings on around the world.  Google's news feature is great for up to date news around the world.  Hotmail, my MSN messenger and xanga keeps me in touch with my friends.  The site http://launch.yahoo.com keeps me in tune with all the latest music from the West.  Kazaa gets me the latest episodes of Alias and Enterprise (any other good shows out there by the way?) as well as the best music that money can buy - except I ain't spendin any money.  The local pirated DVD stores keeps me in tune with the newest movies that come out in the US and around the world (I just watched Lord of the Rings 3 and The Last Samaurai).  My expatriate group of friends bounce around with me from club to club, restaurant to restaurant.  I had Pizza Hut for lunch yesterday, Mc Donalds for breakfast, the list just goes on.  We speak in English to each other sharing gossip and anecdotes, while making fun of each other with ebonics and Chinglish.  We pass around good books written by authours from the West.  There really hasn't been too much integration.  People seem to think that extreme culture shock would set in, but from my experience, it really hasn't been that difficult.

The super commercial has caught my attention, however.  Feng Xiao Gang, one of China's most respected movie directors (up there with Zhang Yimou director of Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) recently came out with a movie called Cell Phone.  It's an interesting movie because it addresses adultery and extramarital affairs on the big screen, shedding light in a public way the shadiness that so often privately happens in this country.  Did you know that the divorce rate in China is now over 40%?  It rivals that of the US.

The other movie I recently watched was Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs 3, ending a 3 movie series starring a star studded HK cast of actors and actresses.  The basic idea of the first story was about a corrupt cop and an undercover cop and their interactions with their various contacts built around a pretty interesting story of action and deceit.  Internal Affairs 2 was a prelude to the first movie.  The third one, most recently released, takes place after the story, frequently jumping back to the past so the audience understands the depth of all the relationships in the movie.  In general I liked them all, except that I had to listen to it in Mandarin, so a lot of it I wasn't sure I really understood.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to dip my feet further into China so that I can understand it more than the surface level I'm currently at.  It's gonna be difficult because no one around me really does it.

Related Chinese News Article : Fingers do the Talking

Happy Birthdays to Charmaine, Paul, Nancy, Nan, Joe and Chris!