January 4, 2004

• 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!

  • 8:46 am
  • 11 Comments