The Two fly rule.

You may have heard of the one child policy in China well there is now a two fly rule in Beijing. In an effort to make the public bathrooms cleaner, regulators now say there can be no more than two flies in a bathroom at one time. I am not sure what the punishment will be for having more than two flies but if it makes them less smelly, I am all for it. How would you like to be the guy who had to monitor this rule? It may seem like a crazy rule that is completely unenforceable but I for one and all for making the public bathrooms cleaner. I give the two fly rule and enthusiastic two thumbs up!

From the state media:

Public restrooms in will soon be cleaner after a new rule says Beijing conveniences should have no more than two flies, reports Beijing Evening News.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment (BMCCAE) issued the new standard for public toilet management on Monday, making a series of criteria to offer a better environment for public toilets in parks, tourist areas, subway and train stations, hospitals, shopping centers and supermarkets, the paper said.

According to the rule, the number of flies should be no more than two, and discarded objects should also be less than two pieces and left uncollected for no longer than half an hour.

The new requirements are not compulsory and only aim to improve the environment of public toilets, Xie Guomin, head of the sanitation management division of BMCCAE told the paper.

The new rules also requests facilities to be well equipped especially for the old and disabled.

The bride had cold feet? or Ewe and I together forever

It’s Valentine's Day in China and since we are almost a day ahead of the U.S. I have had a day to observe the happenings here. The Chinese celebrate two Valentine's days. The American one, which they celebrate the same way as us with lots of roses and flowers being purchased, plans for dinner and romantic evenings. They also celebrate one later in the year that is more traditional and centers on an ancient fairy tale. Young lovers in China, I was told by a co-worker,  are more into the American version. They like getting flowers and gifts. Tonight walking home I saw men scrambling quickly with flowers in hand trying to get home to their sweethearts. Some looked truly happy to be heading home and others looked like they were in trouble for waiting too long to think of buying flowers. For the record I got my flower order in early. There were kissing contests in various cities in China to see who could lock lips the longest. At a tourist area in Beijing a large teddy bear was placed on a pink bench so loving couples could pose with it. It seems that the Chinese have truly embraced this made-by-Hallmark holiday. 

The biggest Valentine's day news has been an on-going story in the paper about a love affair that has captured the imaginations of netizens all over China. At a wild animal park in Yunnan province a deer named Chunzi and a ram named Changmao have been kept in the same enclosure and the chemistry developed into a full blown national love affair. Pictures of the couple started showing up on Weibo a social media site and the netizens went nuts. There were cute pictures of the two “kissing” and later some rated R photos of them practicing some inter-species hubba hubba. Zoo keepers tried to separate them but that caused problems. Jealous bucks tried to get between the lovers by challenging the ram one got his leg broken by the lovesick ram. Changmao would accept no substitute for his true love. He even refused the hottest ewe. Finally the zoo keepers decided that they wouldn’t stand in the way of a love that strong and soon came the announcement of the Valentine's day wedding.

This morning we got a call from our Yunnan based freelance photographer that the wedding was delayed! Apparently the bride got cold hooves and took off right before the nuptials. OMG what will the waiting public do?? After a few hours of silence we got the news that the bride was back and the happy groom had forgiven her for her runaway bride act. Soon photos came into the newspaper that showed the two walking under an arch that said in Chinese characters “ I do” and then a great photo of the happy groom smiling a huge teeth-bearing grin. He got his love back and all was good again. Only in China. 

Photos by Wang Yuheng

Chunzi (L) and Changmao (R) at the wedding.              -Photos by Wang Yuheng

The happy Groom Changmao                                                 -Photos by Wang Yuheng

Working without a net (maybe the dumbest thing I have done in Beijing)

I think China would be OSHA’s worst nightmare. There aren’t a lot of safety measures in place at least to the eye of a average person. As I travel around Beijing and other places in China, I notice things that would send an OSHA inspector to the mad house. Workers scrambling up bamboo scaffolding with no protection are a common sight. Hard hats do exist but not always. You see open manhole covers with no cones around them to warn people not to fall in. You see all sorts of unusual things that you just don’t see in the U.S. For example if you go to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, you can ride a toboggan down back to the parking lot. It is fun but if that same ride were in the U.S. you would have to sign consent forms, there would be railing all the way down to prevent a speeding toboggan from leaving the track. There would be people yelling at you if you did anything remotely dangerous.

Sometimes I see it as refreshing. I see it as a world lawyers haven’t hermetically sealed for safety not just for the safety of the population but more to  protect  companies from getting sued. I like that there is still something called personal responsibility. It makes you pay attention! It makes you watch where you are going so you don’t fall into an open man-hole or walk under a falling building or walk in front of a speeding Beijing taxi etc. With so many ways to buy the farm here, you would think Chinese people would be nervous wrecks! They should be neurotic but they seem so calm much of the time.  Even when they are in a hurry they don’t seem to be thinking, don’t fall into that manhole! Watch out for that Taxi! I think to the Chinese mind, they just have to go around thinking positive thoughts. They must assume that nothing bad will happen to them. In fact much of the time I notice that people are singing, whistling and walking, hands behind their backs rolling walnuts in their palms. ( I think this helps the Qi or life energy). I think after a while one becomes intoxicated by this calm approach. You just assume nothing bad will happen and you feel like you did when you were a child, before you discovered all the ways the world can kill you.

This brings me to something that I probably wouldn’t have done in the US but did without much hesitation here. I found myself locked out of my apartment with a faulty door lock. I approached the lady who works in the office and told her in mandarin that my key won’t open the door. So she came up and tried. Then she said something about telephone and I figured it meant she was calling an expert. After a while a pair of maintenance men came up and tried the key for a while then they tried to pry the metal door open with a screwdriver, then pounded on the door for a while putting a bunch of small dents in it. My confidence in getting back into my apartment was not high. So as they are pounding and prying and bending and denting, I think to myself, hey I bet if I was inside I could just open it and whatever was stuck would un-stick!

I noticed a hallway window and after unlocking and sliding it open I noticed it was very close to my balcony windows. I reached out and found that my windows were unlocked so I climbed into the hallway window and reached around to my window. As I stepped onto my balcony railing, I think I heard a small voice in the back of my head say “ Mike you understand this is seven stories up right?” But I live in Beijing now and have adopted the “nothing bad will happen to me idea”! I stood on my railing and jumped down onto my balcony. Walked to the door and tried from the inside to open it. I could hear the guys outside step up their efforts when I moved the door handle. They must have thought Oh man! There is someone locked inside!!!

After realizing that I couldn’t open the door from the inside either I climbed back up on the balcony and over to the hallway window. Again no real thought of what was below me. The office lady saw me climbing down from the hallway window and that calm nothing bad can happen attitude seemed to fade from her. She was talking quickly and shaking her head and moving her hand side to side like saying NOOOOOOOOOO you don’t get it. Nothing bad can happen to us because we are Chinese!!! Lots of bad things can happen to you because you are a foreigner!!!!!!!!!!!  I realized she was trying to tell me that popping in and out of seventh story windows in not a good idea for a non-native.

It was only then that I remembered that I have a fear of being on the edge of high places. I am totally comfortable in an airplane, or any other heights but if you put me anywhere near the edge of high places, my knees get weak, my palms get sweaty and I get this queasy feeling inside my lower intestines. So as I waited for the new expert to come to open my door, I looked up from ground level at my open window and the open hall window and realized I am not Chinese!!!! I could have killed myself in a really stupid way. If that wasn’t enough realization, my girlfriend gave me my first skype scolding! Apparently she was not impressed with my solution-oriented approach to my door lock problem. I didn’t argue much.

A few things to remember when dealing with the superior female mind;

1)   Try not to justify too much.

2)   Try to recoup quickly with an apology and a promise that you won’t do it again. (at least not unless it is an emergency!)

3)   Try to remember that she just cares about you so that is why she is a little angry. 

Note the people in this graphic are not real. The information was not scientifically gathered. -Michael Paul Franklin

Dragon meets Kitty

Xin Nian Kuaile!! Happy lunar New Year! I have been excited about this because we are transitioning from year of the rabbit to year of the dragon! No offense to people born under the sign of the rabbit especially my girlfriend but I was getting a bit tired of the fluffy bunny imagery that was everywhere during Spring Festival last year. Giant cartoonish rabbits were the main attraction at temple fairs. Now when I think about China, I think powerful! I think proud! I think exotic.  Remember most of my knowledge about China before I arrived was from kung fu movies. Somehow fluffy bunnies didn’t really hit me as a symbol that fit my ideas of China. Now a dragon! That’s more like it!! When I arrived I got a bankcard, which had a little bunny on it. If I had arrived this year I would have one with a dragon! Missed it by one year!

To me the dragon has always been a symbol for China. It must have been the earliest image I saw probably in a Bruce Lee movie poster. In fact, Bruce was the little dragon and Jackie Chan’s Mandarin name Cheng long means become a dragon. For some reason I could relate more to the Chinese version of a dragon than to the ones you see in English mythology. Chinese dragons don’t breathe fire and they don’t have wings. They usually sport beards and are a symbol of strength and wisdom. In fact a recent controversy arose over the year of the dragon stamp. The stamp depicts the dragon and it is really a strong image. The dragon has it’s mouth open as in a roar. To me it is a very cool symbolic icon. To some Chinese though, it sends the wrong message. Many Chinese people think the image is too aggressive. They want a cute cartoonish dragon. There was a story in China Daily about the controversy. "When I saw the design of the dragon stamp in a newspaper, I was almost scared to death," said one blogger. "The dragon on the stamp looks too ferocious," "It is roaring and intimidating," said another netizen . These were quotes from posts on Weibo.com a Chinese social media site.

New stamp 

Houtong bunny

I was surprised this was an issue but then I started to realize that there are fluffy bunnies and cartoon characters everywhere. What is China’s compulsion to have cute characters running around on the street. I have seen it at the Olympic Stadium, The mascots for the Olympics were beibei , jingjing, huanhuan, Yingying and Nini. They were the Fuwa or good luck dolls. They were going to be called the friendlies but the name was changed because of fear that the “Friendlies” name would be misinterpreted. The dragon was in consideration for the Fuwa as was a drum. Both powerful symbols but they lost out in the end. The Fuwa for the olympics consisted of a fish, panda, olympic flame, Tibetan antelope and a swift. They were all of course cute depictions of the animals.

The Fuwa. 

Where does this obsession with cute things come from I wonder? Why does China love cute?? I think a lot has to do with the panda. The panda is loved here. It is a lot like China itself. Powerful but friendly looking. They seem to be very concerned with the idea of being friendly. I have run into many Chinese people who when they find out I am from the U. S. comment on the fact that our two countries are friends. I see it especially with older people. I think many Chinese citizens are also very aware about possible fears other countries may have about China’s power. They are a huge country with a lot of money and resources. The stamp controversy sort speaks to that. Many would rather send out a “look, I am a dragon but a friendly one” kind of message than one of “look at how strong I am” kind of message.

                                                Mini in a houtong                  © Michael Paul Franklin

                                                    Mick at the bird's nest       © Michael Paul Franklin  

  

So we have cute animals and cartoon characters running around all over Beijing. I have run into people wearing bunny heads in houtongs, I have seen all sorts of imagery showing cute characters for almost everything. They even opened a Hello Kitty restaurant in Beijing. Talk about an overdose of cute!!! Ok so before you revoke my man card. Please realize that my career as a photojournalist made me curious. I that curiosity had a lot to do with my decision to join some friends at the Hello Kitty restaurant. I figured what the heck, it will be weird at least and funny at best. So I girded my loins and said bring on the kitty. If China does love cute, this is the place to find it in heaps.

The HK Dream Restaurant is more of a nightmare if you ask me!! I don’t think I am in the demographic they were aiming at but I am not sure what that demographic is supposed to be. The food is trying to be high-end. The décor is definitely little kid, stuffed animals, pink and full of bows and balloons. The poor waiters have to wear these ridiculous outfits and as I sat trying to look as manly as possible, I just thought, at least I don’t have to dress like that. I looked at the chefs working in the kitchen, which was also covered with images of the famous kitty and they just had this depressed look. They were probably thinking about how they will ever get another job after having this on their resume. The food was not great, in fact it was just bad. They were trying hard, too hard maybe. It seems like they are trying to create a western menu with fancy looking food but reviews have been universally bad. It had only been open a short time with lines out the door and already the crowds have thinned. Seems like Chinese people love cute but not cute with bad food.

Above photos  © Michael Paul Franklin

So welcome year of the dragon. I look forward to awesome images of dragons looking majestic, mysterious and strong. 

Oh man!!!???

HO HO HO, COUGH COUGH COUGH

Note:

I haven’t blogged much lately. Why you ask. Maybe you don’t ask but it is because of a woman. An amazing woman I started hanging out with and eventually fell in love with her. So who writes blogs when they are happy and exploring an amazing place with someone they care about. I had no time for blogging when I was busy living! Now she has moved back to the US to start a new job with the hope that job will lead her back to Beijing so for now I have time on my hands. I could spend that time going to bars and trying to forget that I miss her but instead I will try to be somewhat productive and engaged with my life in Beijing.

The stockings were all hung from the chimney with care, 

In hopes in the future we can still breathe the air. 

With apologies to Henry Livingston. 

I was in the US during the holidays, the first time back since moving to Beijing almost a year ago. Of course seeing family and a few friends was wonderful and the usual feelings of homesickness were present. I missed the warm weather (California had a warms spell during the holidays with temps in the 70s during the day). I missed the ocean and of course my family. Coming back home during the holidays also put a spotlight on one thing I had not thought about for some time. Consumption!

Wow everybody buying last minute Christmas presents. I thought that mall crowds would be much easier to take after living in a big city like Beijing where there are crowds for everything. I was wrong! After living away for a time, seeing the mad dash for buying everything you can get your hands on was strange to me. I had never looked at it with fresh eyes before. I started to want to rebel against it. I saw it everywhere.

I visited my brother’s house for Christmas. He has a large beutiful house but since he has four boys it seems reasonable. His wife has a penchant for decorating. Christmas seems to bring that out in heaps. There were stockings everywhere, a huge grouping of Santas wearing gold robes that covered a huge area, a huge Christmas tree with every inch covered with ribbons, ornaments etc. There were so many decorations in this one house that if you took them all and put them in a department store you would think…Wow they really did it up for Christmas! It was a winter wonderland. As I looked around it hit me! Is this is the reason I am breathing all that smog!!! Most of this stuff is probably made in China’s factories! Making the world look Christmasy is killing my lungs and those of millions of Chinese people! Then I turned inward. I brought a huge suitcase full of presents for each member of my huge family. All this consumption is causing the pollution I see the smog from my balcony every morning yet it also makes it possible for me to be able to afford giving presents to my family. I had found myself facing a huge quandary.  I have a job because of China’s financial success. That success thrives on the production of good ranging from technology to cheap crap that people want. That success is causing a dangerously unhealthy environment. Talk about being caught in the middle! I AM the middleman! I am part of the problem!

As American as Apple products. 

Here I am in the US. Buying things that were made in China and shipped over to the US to take back to use in China. Electronics are more expensive in China. For example the top level Ipad2 is about 118.00 more in Beijing than in California. They are made in China but consumers there have to pay an import tax because it is an American company I guess. Note: I am not an economist or even close. I can barely balance my checkbook so this is guesswork on the why part. Much of what is made in China is made purely for export so even if it is made here you can’t always buy it here.

You can’t forget the Chinese population here either. Now that they are starting to earn more money, they want to buy useless stuff just like we do! They want the newest and best gadgets in fact I am amazed at how many of my co-workers have the latest iphones, ipads, macbook air laptops etc. I could swear I heard a nation wide sob when Steve Jobs passed away! As the Chinese wage grows they will be wanting more and more. China is the largest exporter in the world but they are also the second largest importer of goods. This is confusing to me because it seems like everything is made here. What is left to import? I will have to look into that later. According to a website for Global Source, a business media company, China exports everything from Apple product to Whole foods 365 Organic products. When ABC news spotlighted that fact the store had a simple explanation, food doesn’t have to be grown in the US to be labeled “organic”. I remember a big uproar a few years ago when it was made known that millions of dollars worth of American flags were imported from China, Taiwan and South Korea. Even the new M.L. King monument in DC was made in China.

Sensory overload!

A visit to the Japanese store Ito Yokado in Beijing is a good entre into the desire for consumables. This is a four-story department story with a supermarket on the basement level. You walk in and are overcome with deafening music, people yelling at you to buy this and that. If you walk up to look at anything, you are instantly set upon by a sales representative talking to you in Mandarin at a very fast pace. I assume they are trying to tell me how good the product I am looking at is. Usually I say thanks and walk away but sometimes I wish I could just look at something in peace. I wonder how this strategy works for them. Maybe having someone come up to you and start yelling at you about how good a product is works for people in China but for me it’s a big turn off. It is worse in the supermarket section. In some isles there are two women standing like sentinels at the opening and as you approach they strike holding out some soap or liquid something and yelling at you to buy buy buy!! I think the real reason Gung fu started in China was to survive a day at the supermarket! There are times when I just turn around and walk out. I remind myself that one has to prepare for a trip to this store. Meditation, stretching, listening to whale sounds are a good start then some shadow boxing to practice defensive moves to fend off the soap sellers. Warm up preparation has to be built into the shopping experience!

So should I be trying to promote less consumption which would be essentially be risking my future employment? Should I be selfish and hope for more consumption so I can make more money for a long life in a world that has air you can’t breathe? What to do? I want clean air, I want money, I want a future for my children and grandchildren. Is there a way to have it all? I guess I could watch my consumption, hope that the Chinese government will take the steps they have said they would to help the pollution problem and hope that people around the world will also see that moderation may be a good idea. What is that saying, everything in moderation? 

Christmas time in Shanghai