A Tourist or Why I Don't Like Writing About Shanghai

" The worst blogs about China are written by adoptive parents on a baby run, boozed up immature party animals congregated in Shanghai, and washed up failures teaching English in the PRC because they can't get jobs back in their own countries. These bloggers are usually short-timers in China without a clue and don't have any real insights worth reading. For the most part, their blogs are started upon first arriving in China. Undistinguished, unimaginative, and lacking any originality, the blogs soon die from apathy. "

- The China Tattler

The group was at one of the typical Shanghai patios, drinking ourselves into a stupor before sauntering off to a night of debauchery at some club, leaving nothing but the bitter taste of trite sarcasms and idiocy in our wake. We called for more drinks, prattling our ill-formed Chinese sentences, still too self-conscious about the rise and fall of our voices, sounding like Tourette's cases attacking our wide-eyed hostesses. Someone proudly gave this peroration:

Someone
The Chinese have a lack of creativity. The people have no spirit. It's all but been destroyed by the Communist Party and the Cultural Revolution.

Ferret
Please define what creativity is.

Someone Else
Here comes Ferret playing the devil's advocate again.

Ferret
No, I'd genuinely like to know because as far as I can tell the only thing our "creativity" has given us is more bars and clubs.

And Yet Someone Else
Are you serious? What about democracy and human rights? Individualism?

Ferret
It's unclear if they've been all that productive. I don't want to be entirely skeptical. I'm all for democracy, transparency of government, and individualism, but we, sitting right here, sure as hell don't seem to be taking advantage of it. Being more affluent or having more rights doesn't make you any more interesting or free of a person. In fact, I've met a lot of Chinese people who I think are a lot more authentic than me and a lot of foreigners I know here. Most foreigners I meet in Shanghai are just tourists, whether they are doing business or not. China is not their home, and they have no intention of making it one, lost souls without a purpose, looking to exploit the market, the laborers, the women and yes, all the jiu-ba's.

Somebody
Look, man. We're trying to have a good time. I've been teaching class all day. Let's not get all philosophical here. There's no need.

Somebody Else
Come on, Ferret. Stop trying to be all clever. I can see you posting something like this on your blog, and posting me saying you'd post it.

And Yet Somebody Else
Oh, that's deep shit, going all meta.

Somebody Else
Oh, I know!

Ferret
Of course when I post you saying that you'd say that I'd post it, then where the hell are we?

Somebody Else
So then you're posting that you're saying that you'd post saying that I'd say you'd post this in your blog?

Ferret
I'd say we're at the point of no return.

Somebody
Will you guys please talk about something interesting? You sound like babbling idiots talking about nothing.

Ferret
Drinks?

And Yet Somebody Else
[yelling far too loudly]
服务员!
Waitress!

A Broken Heart

A broken heart is heavier than lead
In eighteen wheelers Jupiter attacked
By gravity. A broken heart will head
From sunny strolls to pits of snakes, when backed
By thoughts of love like lobsters boiled in pots,
A-squirm for life that suddenly went numb.
A broken heart will run on breathless plots
Of ponzi schemes, a soured chance to thumb
A nose at chance, to fill a void with void.
A broken heart will fight with shadows cast
By puppets, characterizing those joyed
Affections lingering to hold the past.

[WARNING: I wrote the following concluding couplet to try and add a happier resolution to the matter, but having just now taken my own advice, I find that it's basically bullshit. (This is probably attributable to my singular inability to have any kind of lasting, meaningful, affection for anyone. I attribute this to my genes or environmental factors, but I'm sure the victims of my so-called 'affections' would probably term this to be the case of my being a 'cowardly ass-hole,' unwilling to commit to anything of worth. (I should note that I'm not altogether unconvinced by their sentiments, but that I would attribute my own 'ass-hole cowardice' to geneological and environmental factors... A reductio ad absurdum: you provide the reductio; I'll more than happily provide the absurdum.) Like Washington, I now have similar reservations about love: "it is not reason, it is not eloquence; it is force." (Even though I know it's not.)]

But even broken hearts can mend with time,
A beer, a friend, or just a clever rhyme.