HAPPINESS

Oh yeah, dancing is good!
Fuck tariffs, fuck Greenland, fuck Zelensky, fuck Putin and fuck XiMaoXiaoPing or whatever he's called too.
I'm an old man, why would I give a shit?
Just give me dance music.
And lots of booze.
And give me some Viagra too.

Ibis trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of smoke, Flood of fire) - Amitav Gosh

I first read a book by Amitav Gosh more than twenty years ago, during my first trip to Myanmar, when two Italian ladies on a boat ride along the Irrawaddy river gave me a copy of a short story collection by this Indian master. A few years later I got to admire his talent after reading "The glass palace" and since then I've read anything by him I've happened to come across.

Mao: the unknown story - Jung Chang

We have already met Jung Chang when we talked about her “Wild Swans: three daughters of China”. She had already introduced us to the hardships the Chinese population had to endure under Mao Zedong’s rule.
This book, as the title suggests, features the dictator himself as the main character. Jung Chang tells us how this son of a farmer, born in a remote rural province, managed to take over the Chinese communist party first and the whole country after that. It also tells us how dozens of millions Chinese had to suffer and die because of the ambitions of a single man.

The rape of Nanking - Iris Chang

Nowadays what happened in Nanking (current name: Nanjing) on the eve of WWII, when the Japanese army invaded the city, looted it, killed and raped hundreds of thousands - children and elderly alike - is a very well established, known and discussed fact. But up until the mid ’90s it had been swept under the carpet of history, quite unbelievably, given the prominence of the sides involved and the magnitude/typology of the tragedy.
Iris Chang’s book is one of the main sources of the limelight that was suddenly and belatedly shed on the event.

Snow flower and the secret fan - Lisa See

This is yet another novel about women in China. It’s based in the nineteenth century, in a very rural area. Ancient traditions still apply: feet binding, arranged marriages, transfer to the groom family after the wedding ceremony, seclusion in dedicated rooms, tiring house chores, endless childbearing. Women are expected to deliver sons and they are looked down upon and abused in case they only give birth to daughters or they don’t have children at all. More often than not their husbands take up concubines when their wives get older and less attractive.

Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah, Mao's last dancer - Li Cunxin

Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society is one of five books that I picked up from the Chinese literature section of a second hand bookstore in Bangkok. While reading the introduction I found out that it is categorized as children fiction. I was about to drop it, then I decided to give it a try. Well, if this is a novel for children, then nowadays children are very lucky! I read it all. Though I am a bit of a history buff and I have spent quite some time in China and Shanghai, where most of the characters live, reading this book I’ve learned a few things I didn’t know or I had forgotten.

Wild swans: three daughters of China - Jung Chang

This novel reminds me of great family sagas such as War and Peace, One hundred years of solitude or The house of the spirits, where the authors tell the history of their respective countries over many decades through the vicissitudes of a few generations of one or more families.

Jung Chang recounts the history of twentieth century China while writing the biographies of three women: her grandmother, her mum and herself.

The bridegroom - Ha Jin

This is a collection of short stories. I’ve always liked the genre and I’ve read quite a few such books in the past, mostly American but also European and Asian - Korean and Japanese to be precise. This is the first time that I read short stories written by a Chinese author (who writes in English though).

The stories are all based in post cultural revolution China. The country is developing fast but still recovering from the social and material disasters of the previous decade.

Wrong signs, with photos - Suzhou, China

Signs in China are often translated in English. I am not entirely sure about it but I suspect that there might be some law or government guideline behind this. Normally road signs and information boards in public places are correctly translated. When it comes to the private sector though any sign can suddenly become some sort of comic strip, cheering you up when you are in a bad mood or simply a bit bored. Sometimes the mistakes are so funny that one might think they came out of a lousy Google translation or that out of a long list of dictionary entries somebody carelessly picked the first one, regardless of whether it made sense or not.
In order to give you an idea of the quantity of mistakes over the total number of signs I'm only publishing the ones I've spotted in the Suzhou residential compound where I've been staying for a few weeks.

Hundreds of copies put up all over the compound, all of them with the same typo

This is my favorite, it beats them all 

Possibly the best war museum I've seen - Nanjing, China

300000 victims in just one city 

We get off the train at Nanjing central station, take a quick look at Google Maps and get on the subway to Yunjinlu station. After misinterpreting the station area map we end up at the Silk and brocade museum. We understand straight away that we've made a mistake, nonetheless we take a jolly little walk among silkworms, looms and robes. At the end of it we get out again under the Central-Eastern China scorching sun and enter the right museum, the Nanking massacre one. The structure spreads over a number of air-conditioned halls and an outdoor area (more suffering, it would've been much better to come here in spring). The visitors can walk among commemorative sculptures and installations, reconstructions, bunkers, authentic (and rather grim) mass graves unearthed many years after the events took place and an amazing photo exhibition that I recommend you leave as the last part of your visit. 
Obviously, in order to focus on the real value of the exhibition, one has to scratch the inevitable bombast glaze that coats the whole thing and overlook for a few hours the Chinese government exploitation of the historical events (and the subsequent hatred against the Japanese) for slimy regional supremacy purposes. Beautiful sentences of the "forgivable, but not forgettable" type can sound rather shallow in this context. 
This is no doubt one of the best war museums I've seen though. Those in Hanoi and Saigon can also sport first class exhibits but the buildings that house them and the general care for details are definitely of a much lower level. At the Nanjing museum quality encompasses a number of different aspects: architectural, artistic, historical and documentary. And if that were not enough the admission is totally free, for everyone. If you happen to be anywhere in Eastern China (especially in Shanghai or the surrounding region) I strongly recommend you pay a visit to it

A few more photos:

The legendary Suzhou's wind - China

Motherly instinct: her kid can as well burn in hell as long as her princess skin is screened from the sun light

It's hot in Suzhou, a demotivating kind of hot. As a result I've decided to suspend my daily jogging sessions. Who would have thought that I would suffer it like this after all those years spent training at the tropics? Fortunately on our side we have the proverbial Suzhou's wind, as my friend L likes to call it. Besides cooling your skin the gusts can also knock down your parked bicycle, throw a handful of dust in your eyes and uncover a curvy girl's thigh or boob, in case you are lucky and she's not. The best part of it, though, is spotting one of those affected city ladies nervously grasping the handle of her closed parasol, forced to let the sun scorching her skin like a simple mainland farmer girl. Asian girls actually tend to look quite good when they are tan: I find them more sensual, feline and spicy. Far Eastern people in general though, especially the wealthier ones, consider a dark complexion a loss of status, a stain that must be washed away with expensive beauty treatments or crappy whitening creams, which turn out to be mere sunscreen products in disguise. 

Cakes and birch trees - Suzhou, China

The stack of papers...

In order to sooth L's recurring sugar abstinence crises instead of buying him an ice cream today I've opted for a slice of mille-feuille. I go to a fancy little bakery nested in the basement of a posh shopping mall and I order the cake. Instead of serving me right away a guy wearing a chef hat scribbles something on a receipt sheet. Actually this is not a very accurate term as the sheet works as a receipt only at the end of a long procedure that might make sense if you were purchasing a hundred kg of cement, a case of car sparks or, as we are already at it, a 20kg vanilla bag for your own bakery. Not for a single mignon cake though. The procedure prescribes in fact to take this three-multi-colored-copy form, go to a centralized cash register station serving all the shops of this section of the mall, pay for your order, receive two of the sheets correctly filled by a printer connected to the till and yet another receipt, go back to the bakery where an employee will keep one of the two sheets and give you the remaining one, the extra receipt and your cake. That, in order to make sure that he beats every relevant world record, he has wrapped in a plastic sheet and stored in a paper bag. I reckon that about fifteen birch trees have had to be felled in order to supply the procedure with the necessary raw material. Paper that everyone will obviously throw in the first trash bin at hand right after leaving the shop. The aggravating aspect of the situation is that this is not just a fancy of the managers of this particular mall. It works like that pretty much everywhere: shopping centers, department stores, food courts. You want to buy a lipstick? You'd like to eat a quick noodle soup? You need a bottle of honey? Well, then you have to take the stack of papers through all the steps of the route, until you finally throw it on a heap of garbage.
Hopefully they will recycle it. Well, actually, considering that…alright...hopefully they will…

More photos below:

Do you really eat rice??? - Suzhou, China

Some stacks of small Chinese rice bags

I'm at a convenience store to buy a couple of ice creams. If L doesn't take his daily sweet poison dose he's gonna be in a bad mood until the following night. And I'm the one who has to give him that shot.
When I'm walking by the rice corner I suddenly remember that we run out of it last time we cooked some leek and sausage risotto(*). I can't see the prices though. I ask the cashier how much the small(**) packs are, I get one of those and I drag it to the counter. It takes the girl a while to come to, she looks at me with a stunned expression and when she finally decides to scan the bar code she says: 
"Do you REALLY...eat rice?"
"Of course I do, why?"
"I thought..." she places her hand down on an imaginary table and then brings it up to her mouth to mime the action she's referring to "...that YOU only ate bread!"
That's funny: if you talk to a Chinese in Chinese like a Chinese he doesn't turn a hair, taking it for granted, but if he finds out that you eat rice he looks at you as if you were Yuri Gagarin who just disembarked from the Sputnik. 
I mean, of all foreigners, to me! I was born in the Po Plain, a land of rice fields, rice weeders and risotto. Chinese people are really great at surprising you by getting surprised at you. 

The least artistic way to promote art - Shanghai, China (with photos)

The former power plant converted to a museum

Thanks to the astonishing high-speed railway system that China has implemented in a matter of few years Shanghai can be reached from Suzhou in less than thirty minutes by train. The first time I covered that distance in the opposite direction, back in 2005, the cattle convoy trip I traveled with took almost twice as long, and the atmosphere was way more picturesque. Today our journey's goal is the "Power Station of Art" museum, where the "15 minutes eternal" exhibition, entirely dedicated to Andy Warhol, will be held until July 28.
The Power Station of Art, as the name suggests, is a real power plant, no longer in use, converted to a museum in a very interested way. A fascinating structure and a well realized project indeed. One of those works that nowadays are built (in a reasonable time) only in China, the only country that can afford a large number of almost non repayable investments just for status or strategic reasons. You can take a look at some of the details in the photos I'm publishing below. You won't find any of Warhol's works though, as I was one of the few visitors who respected the "no-photo" rule. Besides the event venue I obviously liked the exhibition itself. The thing that surprised me the most though was the entrance fee: 20 RMB, equivalent to two and a half euros! And I'm talking about full priced tickets here, not the discounted ones for students or retired people. Although the exhibition has already been opened for one and a half months and this is not likely to be the place where the American artist's fame reaches its peak there were a lot of visitors and most of them seemed to be extremely interested. Asia is a place where it is very easy to be charged up to five times as much for attractions that are way less worthwhile, if worthwhile at all.

Panic exponential function - Shanghai, China

My guitar, my bag and Luce, the ear-licking chihuahua

I'm at the last X-ray luggage scanner. I'm traveling from Guangzhou to Suzhou along the following route: subway to Bayun airport, flight to Shanghai-Hongqiao, subway to Hongqiao Station and train to Suzhou-Yuanqu, the so called SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park), a mixed residential, industrial and university area where both L - a friend who works near there - and D - another friend who teaches maths - live. 
This should be the last scanning, since the platform where the train to Suzhou leaves from is right beyond the machine. I can't remember how many of these checkpoints I've gone through so far. In any other place they shouldn't be more than a couple, as I only took one flight. Considering the Chinese authorities paranoia though, and their fondness for this type of technology, it's safe to multiply the aforementioned number by a coefficient ranging between 1.5 and 2.5. Let's say 2: four scanning points is a reliable estimate then, which for just one flight and two subway trips is not bad at all. 
Four of these procedures in just a few hours and a considerable number of bags are really testing my absentmindedness to the limit. Normally I manage to keep it under control by means of a set of automatisms that I have acquired over many years of nomadic life, during which I have come to consider my bags as my only belongings. I have a backpack where I store my clothes and other giblets (after many years of drudgeries I finally realized that wheels are actually useful but as I hate traditional trolleys, as well as hard baggage, I bought a hybrid one, soft with back-straps), a shoulder bag where I keep my computer, electronic devices and other not extremely important personal things, an acoustic guitar in a soft case that I still don't know how to play, and a money-bag where I keep my passport, bank cards and other documents that I don't carry in my pockets for convenience and security reasons. 
I greet the security staff with a nihao and a smile, both unreciprocated, I put the backpack down, I take the guitar case off my back, then the the money-belt and finally my shoulder ba...WHERE THE HELL IS MY SHOULDER BAG? 

Those mainland Chinese - Hong Kong

View of Hong Kong skyline from Tsim Sha Tsui

M is about to complete a Master in Educational studies at a famous Hong Kong University. She is from the People's Republic of China, we've know each other for years. She a nice, sweet, extremely well-mannered girl. Nothing to do with the stereotypical Chinese who expectorate everywhere, clean their ears, nose or something else in public, chew seeds and radishes while they're sitting next to you, sucking noisily and spitting out broken shells and crushed fibers. However, since she came to Hong Kong, that stereotype has never stopped frustrating, embarrassing and humiliate her for a moment. 
Sometimes at a shop after she asks the second question about the product she intends to purchase the salesperson will tell her that "this is not mainland China, this is Hong Kong!" She tells me that the Chinese immigrants are accused of "stealing" job positions that should actually be given to the local citizens or - and this is something that directly involves her - master or doctorate posts at the best universities. She is paying for her studies, much more than what a local would by the way, and she finds this type of generalized accusations rather irritating. 
We are taking a walk in Kowloon and when we get to a junction as there are no approaching vehicles I go ahead and cross the road, as I always do, regardless of what the traffic light color is.

Chinese standing in line to take a photo with the white guy...one leads to another - Hong Kong

The giant inflatable duck floating on Victoria Harbor, just before it is found deflated

I've walked a lot today as well: I lean on a fence and look at the people walking by. Avenue of stars, that's how they called it. And they even placed the handprints of the stars of the flourishing local cinema industry on the pavement. Actually I don't know any of them, except for Jacky Chan, that little clown, and the excellent Wong Kar Way. At least I don't know their names. It's just my fault, I admit: I really liked the main actors of In the mood for love, I should remember them at least. Of course I know who Bruce Lee is. Due to chronological reasons they didn't manage to take his handprints though, therefore they erected a bronze statue of him and named him the star of the century.
Let's get back to our story. The promenade is rather busy, mainly with tourists. I relax my back and legs, stretch my neck and watch. People watching, close or from afar, in front of me of from above, has always been one of my favorite hobbies.
Suddenly a Chinese tourist (I mean from mainland China, not from here) draws near me, holding a point and shoot camera.

Unexpected hostility against the pedestrians - Hong Kong

A fisherman at Hong Kong harbor and the hazy skyline in the background

It's Sunday night and Lan Kwai Fong is not very lively. To be honest I'm not very fond of the place. In the weekends it gets crowded with assholes all dressed up, driving their fathers' expensive cars and, stamped on their bulldog faces, an arrogant expression that seems to say: "I have all this because I deserve it. Because I am what I am and you are a heap of shit!" And the bouncers - poor bastards who get paid nothing and treated badly, maybe with their work permit hanging from that lousy job - who back them up, always watching whether your shoes are shining, your shirt is freshly ironed and starched, if you smell like misery or have a misfit look, a wanker one or, even worse, both of them. On workdays they can't afford to be too picky though; they invite you to go in, and if you're wearing flip flops and undershirt they will still try to humiliate you, but in a more pathetic way: "Hey, that's not good..." they'll say as they spitefully pinch your shirt with two fingertips "...next time you dress better, OK?" Yeah, sure, next time I'll spray a couple of drops of Eau de Manure on the redneck shirt I'll be wearing. Get out of my way...you asshole, minion and pitiful loser.

A passport photo is NECESSARY! Unless... - Hong Kong

An old 20 HKD banknote and a passport picture

Usual stop in Hong Kong to get a Chinese visa. Usual stay at the Nathan road mansions, where the foreign hasslers who come here to start a new life are getting more and more annoying and the smell more and more pungent. The beehive cell-like rooms haven't gotten bigger by a bit though. Only the prices might actually have been increased. 
The Forever Bright agency at the New Mandarin plaza by Tsim Sha Tsui East MTR station is way more crowded than the last time I was there. They have even hired a guy who wears a suit and a tie and stands by the door and mounted a movable structure for the customers to form an ordered line. 
The situation at the counter is chaotic: it's a mess to receive the forms, to get information about the fees and to hand in the application papers.  I was planning to get a six-month, multiple-entry, business visa but in just a few years the fee went from 600 to 2000 HKD. I opt for the three-month, single entry, tourist one which only costs 500 HKD. 
"You need to give me a passport picture."
"Here you go!"
"No, this one has a white background, we need one with a blue background."
Shit, the blue background...

Durian: the real forbidden fruit, i.e. the measure of freedom - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

A durian, split open with a machete, one of the flesh-beans still intact and a pulp-less seed

What does durian, a tropical fruit, have to do with freedom? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot.
Durian. I tried it for the first time many years ago, when I had just arrived to S.E. Asia. It might have been in Singapore: at Bugis Junction in fact, where I was staying, as soon as the picking season was under way the area filled up with street-stalls selling it. Even though I didn't find it disgusting, like the majority of the other westerners, I was not particularly impressed, but I wouldn't be able to tell why. I was not even stricken by its supposed, terrible stench. And to think that in Singapore, due to their bad smell, durians are forbidden at hotels, subway stations and other public places, even with illustrated prohibition signs. Then again, in Singapore it is even forbidden to import chewing gums, imagine eating stinking fruits indoor. In Asia I have eaten much worse smelling food than durians. Some varieties of chou doufu (stinking tofu) in China and Taiwan forced me to hold my nose when I was still fifty meters away from the source-restaurant. An intensity similar to the one that 20 years ago, in a small Appennino Lucano's town, was rising from a cliff where the carcass of a cow was rotting, and entered through the broken window, saturating the room, keeping my brother and me awake all night, looking for dead rats under the bed and checking our retches, while we couldn't stop laughing incredulously. Durians vaguely smell of kitchen gas, but it's not an unbearable odor.