touring
Three day weekend? Not in China.
There’s a lot of holidays in China, some traditional, some national. The traditional ones tend to be the most important, I would rank Chinese New Years the most important, it typically lasts about a week. Other holidays are much shorter such as Autumn Festival (think Thanksgiving) which is usually 3 days. The shorter holidays will start on Thursday, but unlike the U.S., you don’t come into work on Monday, but rather, you have to come into work on Sunday to make up the day you missed due to the holiday. OUCH. That sucks. Be thankful for your 3 day holiday this thanksgiving.
edit: National Holiday is 7 days, the same as Chinese New Years.
On a different note, this Autumn Festival Claire and I took a tour around Qingdao and some small villages on the outskirts of the city, Qingdao is really a beautiful city no wonder I’ve been living here so long. It was nice to see the villages with favela like mountain views of the ocean, it was very green and tranquil in those parts but I couldn’t help but notice that in between there was a lot of construction and big buildings being built in between. What once lied in that area? Will the villages clinging to the cliffs be next? Who knows. I got a chance to record and take some nice video of the tour, I’ll start editing them tomorrow and hopefully have a vlog up later this week it’s been a year since I’ve made a video, even made a couple of sound tracks for it. Let’s see how it goes.
I haven’t written a blog in months, lets talk about taking a taxi as a black person.
I was going through my timeline and realized my front page looked like a soundcloud. I should probably stop doing that or at least mix it up a bit more. This is, after all, a blog about china.
Today’s topic will be about taking a taxi as a black person. Now I really don’t like getting into china and ‘racism’ because I don’t like to call what they do here racism. Its ignorance. They just don’t know and are afraid of the unknown. They go by stereotypes they see on tv and make vast assumptions, its not their fault, its a country with 1.4 billion people and they’re all yellow, even the internet is chinese *cough cough*.
Uber has been god sent, I no longer have to deal with this but about a week ago I was reminded of what I had to go through when I first moved here. If you’re waiting for a taxi, especially during rush hour or near a chinese person, the odds are you will be passed up. I don’t know why this is, it’s not like they don’t pick you up at night (shouldn’t they be more afraid at night?), it’s not like if you’re alone during the day and on an empty small street they don’t pick you up, they do, in fact its much easier to catch a cab when it would be the most dangerous time to pick up a threat lol, but a busy street next to a chinese person, especially a girl, forget about it you will be passed up 8 out of 10 times. I’ve learned to adapt however, typically I tell the chinese person I’m next too I have next dibs, so when they inevitably drive past me and to said person 3 yards away, that person knows I have next and they just allow me to get in, some will even open the door for you :). Problem solved. Anyways, I no longer have to do this, uber to save the day, Murica coming in and regulating without even knowing it. 🙂
Shots from my studio, and in a village called Shazikou
Chinese abroad in single are Dragons, Chinese as a whole at home are like bugs.
I was told this saying by a chinese person who was complaining about how Chinese companies abroad are taking over massive projects effectively, yet, within China companies are ran horrifically (not all, but many), having such traditions such as bribing your way to the top, hiding errors from your boss to save face which in turn affects production, floods of poor quality products. Yet, when you look at some of the chinese companies abroad they can pretty much compete with anyone. Pakistan have some new state of the art ports, they’re building hydro dams in africa, many solar panels and real estate projects in the U.S (they’ve got one of the biggest offices in the twin towers). One can only take such a saying to heart. It really does make sense. When the Chinese are individual, or outside of China, their work ethics magically change, but when there is nothing but chinese in China, something changes. I wonder what that is? Is the fact that within China they follow chinese culture/tradition? and abroad they have to be more modernized and use global standard? Imagine what would happen when china finally breaks free from its save face culture, and really starts to have an open mind and evolve from it’s older style way of thinking. Tradition is great, but we no longer think the way we did in the 1500s, and times have changed, it’s time to get with the program. And when the Chinese are on the program, they are dragons, it’s proven.
Los Angeles I – I’m home for a week
Random thought about underlining lack of pride
I was recently in a wechat group and an ad from a modeling agent came up looking for blonde haired blue eyed babies for a chinese baby food ad/label. Now, I found this to be a little odd because it would be like living in Norway and there being an ad with a chinese baby for a Norwegian baby food company (wouldn’t happen). Obviously when running an ad in a country you keep in consideration the phenotype of the population. Yet time and time again I notice a lot of ads have some kind of westerner or western theme, mainly blue eyed. I seriously see a flaw in this. How do you expect to be the superpower when you don’t even have the pride to put your own babies on your own labels? Your women are in the background or sharing the stage with people that do not even live in your country? What benefit do you get putting a nordic all over products other than to make your youth wish they were something they are not? This is psychological defeatism if I’ve ever seen it.
Another thing bothered me, same group chat, I saw a fourth of July flyer for a beach party, and not just some regular small size party a bunch of americans were throwing, I’m talking a massive festival. WTF. Last I checked China didn’t defeat the British on 4th of July. So strange, I mean I know its a reason to drink, but again, if you are to be a superpower how can you expect to be taken serious when you’re pretty much mimicking the opposing team? Do you think random americans (that are not of chinese descent) celebrate chinese new years? or a chinese festival? why not? why do you think? I just find it a bit baffling that I am celebrating 4th of July and Christmas in China. I thought I got away from all that but it has followed me in the most unexpected places. America truly has the most influence globally and no one is remotely close and will ever be in my life time. I am convinced of this.
-end of rant-
Jinan, Shandong
Photography of the day
People ask me if I’ve ever been denied access into a place for being black or a foreigner
Yes I have. Not often, maybe once or twice in 3 years, but I have. Now before you assume China is extremely racist, let me put things into perspective. China used to be a bit of a ‘hermit’ country, so they have a bit of xenophobia and are still learning to cope with globalization.
Me and my boy from London (white guy) got denied access into a chinese hostess bar. Typically I stay away from places like this, but we just wanted to see how weird it was – the door man however, had other plans: access denied lol. I guess it doesn’t bother us foreigners that much because this isn’t our home, it’s not like its happening in OUR country, that would be a bit different. Out here, you kind of just respect it, like you know you may not have access to everything its their country and maybe culturally you being an outsider might not be able to stomp around where ever you want like you own the place, basically as a foreigner, you know you may have limited rights. They also have a history of invasion so they’re a bit uptight. On the flip side, you don’t want to really go places where there’s not SOME foreigners and you’re out numbered anyways. Girls + Liquor + Jealousy + Tribalism = Violence. This is why some westerners are always getting their asses kicked. I’m too street smart and been doing this for way too long to get caught up in that drama, but these fresh out of college kids don’t pay attention to their surroundings and think shit is like in the west, where you can just walk up to any ol girl and start making out, you gotta be careful because SOME chinese and koreans (not all but some, you know, swagless non female getting guys) are protective of 2 things; their women and their country. In some respect, the doorman was probably saving our asses by not allowing us in and being outnumbered by 150 dudes.
Traveling Knox 