Absurdity, Allegory and China

In no particular order: Shake It Twice A reporter submitted green tea as his urine specimen to 10 Hangzhou (China) hospitals, then sat back and waited for his results. Six hospitals determined he had an infection, and five prescribed medicine totaling 1,300 RMB – in today’s money market, nearly $180 USD. Expensive tea. A spokesperson [...]

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I cannot begin to adequately describe just how deeply goofy things are getting here. As the Olympic clock ticks down – actually more burning fuse than ticking clock – things are coming unraveled. Yesterday on CCTV-5 (China Central Television), the official ChiCom sports channel, in the middle of a program renaming the channel The Olympic [...]

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Still Standing Trio of lucky cones on ‘Driving Practice Day’ in the parking lot of the Ping-Pong Palace, northeast of Tianjin Olympic Stadium. I realize I could be wrong on this one. It may not really be ‘Driving Practice Day’. It may actually be ‘Knock Down Cones Day’, in which case I should amend the [...]

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Love and Pipes, #1I could say that this one here is China when maybe it’s not China at all. Maybe it’s really Iowa or France. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference anymore. Love and Pipes, #2I feel like I’ve taken liberties with this one, using ‘Love’ in the title when really I have no [...]

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Hoons on Parade Here is a typical shot from ‘Lay a Patch with a Mercedes Day,’ an event that is becoming a quite popular weekend activity in my neighborhood. Mostly young men with locally reasonable wardrobes (no countryside migrant workers in this bunch) step into one of two Mercedes – “the new C-Series” stenciled on [...]

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Geometry and Fog This image can almost be twisted into life as the first wave of an invasion by the domineering forces of Dome. A Raindrop Assault Dome (RAD) in full attack mode muscles onto the frame from the left, as the thin-ply pillboxes, hopelessly dwarfed, try their best to protect the plant life hidden [...]

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The Chair I can’t begin to tell you how often over the past ten years traveling within China that I’ve wished I could … just … sit … down. Knee pain? Lower back stiff ‘n sore on another cold morning? Nerves a little bit edgy from the crowd? Be nice to have a place to [...]

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Photo 03353 If I could post the photo I write about here, I would. But I can’t. It’s China again, those little rascals. They’re still blocking. They just can’t help themselves. But blog posts are going through, at least for now. I could probably upload the photo, but since I have no way to view- [...]

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Posting-in-the-blind test. We received word this morning that blogspots.com has been opened in Beijing, the first time since October 23, 2007. These windows seem to only stay open for very brief periods as the Chinese get more and more security-minded (read “uncommonly paranoid, though well within the historic bounds of Chinese government.” If there had [...]

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