fluid when shaken, stirred or otherwise disturbed

life preserver realized

dave's piece at the dumbo arts festival, installed in the pouring rain. we spent saturday down there documenting, drinking, and checking out the neighborhood.

posted by thixotropic @ 10:18 PM 0 comments

monkeys in shanghai, onwards to suzhou and chinese punk rock

being dragged around my first day on the visa errand was a wonderfully random and unplanned introduction to shanghai, involving lots of bus trips on a transportation system that is exponentially larger and infinitely more arcane than nyc's. you can ride on over 1,100 bus lines, costing about 2 yuan each ride - that's worth about 25 us cents. there is no such thing as a route map at the bus stop - you just have to know where the bus goes, or be able to speak fluent shanghainese or mandarin to ask. the alternative is to consult a route book of the bus system, which is about the size of a telephone directory. on some buses, there's a cranky lady that walks around, squeezing through the tiny gaps between the hundred or so people crammed onto the bus to collect the fare (the driver just drives). without the trips to the visa office, and the random wandering while waiting for our queuing ticket number to come up (there were over 200 people ahead of us) - i would never have passed by the shanghai version of monkeys by the road...

the next day we took the train to suzhou, one of the old-style canal towns about an hour's ride from shanghai. suzhou is famous for its role in silk production but also for its amazing gardens, several of which are over five hundred years old (!) my dad had told me that suzhou could be done in a day - it was apparent pretty immediately that what he should have said was each garden in suzhou could be done in a day. we visited both the humble administrator's garden and lion grove - both of which are unesco world heritage sites. the gardens are a bit crowded (suzhou is a huge tourism center, the second you step off the train you are offered 'special' deals on everything from a bike or a bus ride to hotel rooms and guided tours), but are totally worth it. classical chinese gardens are full of little groves and niches and gorgeous meandering paths, with amazing juxtapositions of landscape and architecture everywhere.

the humble administrator's garden was hardly humble - with dozens of little buildings, streams, bamboo islands and formal plantings spread out over five hectares. there was also a massive bonsai collection at the nursery there, which is definitely worth checking out. lion's grove is smaller but seemed much larger, as it houses an amazing labyrinth of rock tunnels and caves.

yes, all the roof tiles are really made of clay.

that evening, after taking the train back to shanghai, shane (another awesome canadian!) took us to an amazing show at the local bar on the corner, SUS2, which apparently, is also known as the Gua'er Music Bar. the first band was a bit discouraging - a bizarre art metal group that was mostly posturing - but the beijing bands really rocked out - amazing passion and energy, even if i couldn't totally understand what they were saying. between this show and the show from my first night in shanghai, i was thoroughly impressed by the chinese music scene. the listing lies - the show was not free but the ticket did come with a beer. unfortunately the following week shane told us that SUS2 had closed due to money issues. crazy.

the only thing possibly crazier, is that a quick google search for one of the beijing bands turned up a picture of the show that we were at! (same picture below). the google translation of the original web page is also very funny. jesse and i are standing by the bar behind all the people in the right side background - that's his white short sleeved shirt and my arm on the edge of the picture, just behind the headbanging kid who looks like he's asleep. i love "experimetal noise".

Ma Fei San and Si Xian Fang Ge
Friday, September 23, 2005 (7:00 PM)

Gua'er Music Bar
2150 Siping Rd (corner of Guoding Rd) (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps)
Shanghai, Shanghai
9月２３日挂二酒吧乐队演出－麻沸散乐队＆四线方格乐队

演出乐队：麻沸散乐队　四线方格乐队
嘉宾乐队：固化剂乐队　Slit乐队
演出地点：挂2酒吧，上海市四平路2150号(近国定路口)
演出时间：9月２３日１９：００
演出票价：免费
咨询电话：１３８１８０８３８０４
麻沸散.四线方格乐队"不翼而飞"行星巡演
对于一群自发成癖的好乐之徒来说，难道还有什么比一次浩浩荡荡的全国巡演更让人激越的事吗？沿着直觉划定的线路，我们整装待发，闭上眼睛就能嗅出空气中激情躁动的味道。
”ＥＭＯ－ＣＯＲＥ，ＨＡＲＤＣＯＲＥ，ＡＣＩＤ，ＰＯＳＴ－ＰＵＮＫ，ＰＯＳＴ－ＲＯＣＫ．ＥＸＰＥＲＩＭＥＴＡＬ　ＮＯＩＳＥ　ＡＮＤ　ＭＯＲＥ“

"DISAPPEAR WITHOUT A TRACE" TOUR, SHANGHAI STOP

Place: the Gua'er Music Bar, corner of Siping & Guoding Rds
Time: September 23rd, 7pm
Tix: Free!!!
Bands:
* Guhuaji (Shanghai)
* S.L.I.T. (metal, Shanghai)
* Mafeisan ("anesthetic powder in Chinese Traditional Medicine", Beijing)
* Si Xian Fang Ge (some sort of four-sided checker-pattern, Beijing)

culture:shanghai

posted by thixotropic @ 10:51 AM 0 comments

east river art installation

i know the weather report says rain, but i think that some things might be better viewed in dreary gray light. for example, come and check out dave melrose's awesome sculpture "Life Preserver" in the East River this weekend at the DUMBO arts festival, which will also happen to be full of other cool stuff that i'm not cool enough to know about. or just wait until the weather is nice on sunday, and come check it out then. and yes, it's really going to float in the river, and will be visible from the little inlet right between the state park and the city park (brooklyn bridge park?).


i also know that i've been amiss in writing up my trip to shanghai, but it seems like nobody minds at all. as i'm getting around to catching up with everyone, it seems like most people are happy with the "it's like nyc on speed" description. i'll still get around to writing about stuff and posting pictures, if only to preserve the fading memories, but if you really really can't wait, go and see some pictures here.

brooklyn:art

posted by thixotropic @ 11:14 PM 0 comments

shanghai - the landing

hong kong has the most ridiculously modern airport i've been in - high speed trains shuttle you between the shopping / services area to the gates - multiple escalators and levels carefully engineered to handle people traffic efficiently. very different from the old kai tak airport in kowloon, right on the harbour - with a runway approach that takes you within a few hundred feet of residential towers (on this satellite photo, the narrow strip of land in the north east extending into the sea is the runway of kai tak). apparently pilots had to be certified to fly into the old airport; now that it's retired, the skyline on kowloon side, long constrained in height by passing airplanes, is shooting up. but the new airport is safely tucked away on the far corner of lantau island, and it is from there i travel to shanghai's pudong airport wednesday evening.

there was a cramped bus ride with jesse from the airport, we dumped my bags at his flat, near which there were a whole lot of new commercial development and shabby-nice barber shops with pink lights and bored girls. one of the first things i noticed in shanghai is that almost all the roads are new - with orderly, fenced off bike lanes and traffic lights - winding through older, shorter buildings on the way to the new glass and steel. and then we're off in a cab trying to communicate where we're going, to a bar that jesse found out about somehow. there, we were treated to some of the best live music i've ever heard, by hasan and his friend from xinjiang. the bar was started by the owner of the bar, who wanted to have a place to play music in. tons of fun.

a busy run about town trying to get a visa fixed the next day was a quick immersion in hilarious chinglish and strange marketing irony.

is that what they really think?

and if you wonder what life in a communist country is about, consider that if you were in china, you most likely would not be able to access any blog. and todd writes passionately about how american companies are complicit in that censorship.

posted by thixotropic @ 10:02 PM 0 comments

good green stuff

to digress from travel writing a little bit, here are some consumption-related environment news.

october is nyc's electronics recycling month. remember throwing away electronics is bad bad bad - both in terms of potentially toxic components and also because they contain valuable components / parts / materials (i.e precious metals) that can be reused. this is exactly what someone we met on the train back from hangzhou makes a lot of money doing. the chinese are buying containers of thrown away computers and recycling all the materials - including the plastic - as much as possible AND turning a profit. it's a bit alarming that even given this fact, companies like hp ask me to pay them to recycle my electronics - they are making money at both ends.

on a slightly different sustainability note, my friend robyn is participating in a design/build competition for solar powered houses sponsored by none other than the department of energy. the house is being assembled on the mall as we speak by the project team. all participant projects are on display at the national mall in washington, d.c.. nice timing, given the oh so fun gas prices on top of what is forecasted to be a cold winter!

environment:culture

posted by thixotropic @ 10:40 PM 0 comments

hong kong part I

the trip to hong kong was not as awful as i had remembered, having been lucky to afford the direct flight from jfk to hong kong, via the north pole. the ride clocked in at 15 hours when it used to be 24 hours door-to-door (on top of the fun 12-hour time shift). and it's when i ride an amazing system like the airport express from the airport that i appreciate what mayor mike is thinking of when he wants a "one seat ride to jfk". it took me from the huge airport on lantau island to a station on the mainland were i was picked up by my dad in just under 20 minutes.



there were plenty of greedy monkeys on the side of the road near my dad's house. he's gone and moved from hong kong island proper to tai po, which is almost as far from downtown you can get and not be in china. hong kong is technically in the tropics so there aren't any squirrels in this version of suburbia, but we probably do have snakes in the yard.

it being the tropics, there was also the appropriately stifling mode of public transportation



the electric tram system is over 100 years old. but apparently that's not the reason they're made of out wood and have no air conditioning. torture on hot days for those trips the MTR just does not make, like happy valley to central.

the clipper lounge at the mandarin oriental is our family's traditional meeting spot - instituted by grandma who loved to look over the balcony and gossip about people in the lobby, which was a pretty major hong kong thoroughfare. the mandarin is closing down in december, for a renovation that will take away the balconies that celebrities commit suicide off of. it's definitely a bit sad to know that i've had tea for the last time in the clipper lounge i remember.

posted by thixotropic @ 7:31 PM 0 comments