User Comments - Grambers

Posted on: How to Eat a Hairy Crab

Fear not, fellow Old Outsiders. I've already lodged a complaint with the European Commission on Human Rights on this. I also wrote a letter to Hu Jintao which made quite plain that Dilu had hurt the feelings of the foreign people. I think I can speak for 84 per cent of the world's population on this, right?

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

Can I also say that I feel outraged to be compared to this "Tal" bloke. I am my own person, goddamitt. An individual.

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

Woah, a huge amount to get through. I'm gonna have to go with the bullet points method. Sorry.

1) Thank you (sincerely) for your welcome. I appreciate it. I can't quite resist (though I know a more mature man would) the urge to confess that, though my passion for commenting is a recent phenomenon, I was actually living in Shanghai in 2005 when Chinesepod was established and was listening from (almost) day one when production values were not quite what they are today (thank God they did away with the jingle early on). It's been a grand ride. I only wish my own career had followed such a consistent trajectory.

2) Thank you (specifically) to RJ for appreciating the essence of my initial statement (for for delivering on my language query!). To be quite honest, the statement was 75% joke, but, yes, there was a serious (and slightly political) undercurrent.

3) I hope that anyone who ever replies to my comments knows that I make my points with a smile on my face and a strong conviction that I know that nothing I say is really that important. For what it's worth, I spend a good chunk of my time DEFENDING the CCP against the vitriol of one of my nearest and dearest. Please take my comments in the spirit of robust but playful debate, not antagonism. That said, there will be times when I probably sound antagonistic. Comment forums are where the internet reveals its weakness. There is no substitute for facial expressions and body language.

4) I'm not sure what is showing up on my bio. Whenever I go to my own page, there is no text there at all. Let me here and now declare my China credentials. I have lived in China for approximately one sixth of my life (a little over five years) though only a small amount of this time was spent in Shanghai (yes, a city which is so different to anywhere else in the country that it begs the question as to whether it really is 'China' at all). The majority of my time was spent in Guangdong ("A-ha," I can [almost] hear you cry, "another inauthentic Chinese locale full of expats and rich people"). I actually lived in a small city by the name of Zhaoqing, in the western reaches of the province, and was one of half a dozen non-Chinese passport holders in town. From this base, I have explored nearly every corner of the country (work and pleasure) and have worked both within State-run institutions and without. Moreover, I now spend the majority of my life reading about China from various perspectives though (largely, but not exclusively) in the English language. In other words, though I do not make claims to be an Old China Hand, I do feel I have a perspective on the country which is relatively informed but always and eternally condemned to be incomplete.

5) Politics in China is everything, and everything is politics. It's almost impossible to disentangle politics from virtually any debate. I understand that you might not want to get dragged into a detailed argument about the CCP, an institution which hardly anyone writing in the English language knows anything about (and I am including myself in this statement) largely on account of its total opaqueness. However, its dangerous (and very much playing into the hands of the powerful) to put it to one side as, in China more than most countries, it affects EVERYTHING (and that includes "If You Are The One" and Taobao).

6) Finally, back to the dominant theme of the debate: I resolutely stand by my assertion that beyond culture, we share a common bond that is deeper and more profound that the fact we speak different languages and wear different clothes and have different ways of organising family relationships etc.etc. Neurological science, geneology....hell, any number of academic fields...tease out the subtle differences between our brains and our backgrounds. They appear to believe this is important work. It probably is. However, being a man more of literature than science (contrary to what previous postings may have implied), I think you will find the things that unite us are fare more eternal and truthful than the little, ever-changing and always fascinating facets of culture that distinguish us. I don't mean to denigrate culture, or dismiss its importance. It's what makes travel so fun. However, the world's collected poetry, literature and religious treatise provide overwhelming evidence that beyond that veneer of difference, we are, basically, the same.

Phew.

Posted on: Market Research 2: Management Report

I was wondering more what the good folk in Phoenix though of NYC, rather than what NYC thinks of Phoenix (er...not a lot, I'm surmising:)?). In my experience, people in big cities always think the poor unfortunates who live beyond city limits are somehow missing out on 'real' life. My chief reference point for this is not NYC or LA but London town, a city I live within on hour of, and a city I visit on a weekly basis. The majority of friends I have there really are quite infatuated with their metro-cool existence. Frankly, I couldn't conceive of anywhere I'd like to live less. Nice to get in, look at the architecture, catch an art-house movie and have a stroll on the South Bank. Even nicer to get the hell out when darkness falls:!)

Take your point on Los Angeles. But is it really reasonable to judge a city based on the joys you can have when you are not actually in it?

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

One World, One Dream, I'm sure you don't need me to remind, was Beijing's official English-language slogan for the 2008 Games. Very few people at the time seemed to notice the heavy, heavy irony of a government which has used exceptionalism as a political strategy for a generation employing such a slogan.

The 20th century's love affair with 'uniqueness' and 'individual' was instigated by the king of the day, Mr Marketing Man. In order to sell copious amounts of unnecessary stuff to people, you need to make them believe that by buying said unnecessary stuff, they are expressing their 'inner selves' and demonstrating not only taste and sophistication but also their true identity. I suspect that pre-commercial revolution, the majority of people had no such pretensions. I don't image people really believed, as they do now, that the world consisted of X-number-of-billion 'unique' souls (hang on, I'm describing Christianity now, so perhaps they did after all). Anyway, my thesis is this: we are a 'species', no more, no less. We are born, we live, we die, and our lives are totally and utterly inconsequential. There is no human power or glory which exists today (and there are many who could claim such a mantle) which will not be lost to the sands of time. A cursory glance through any history text book with a time span of more than a few hundred years, or any compendium of literature (from any culture) should be enough to persuade you that, no matter how special, and fated we believe ourselves to be, as special 'individuals' with our panoply of 'human rights', we are destined to live out the same tragic cycle as every other who has walked this earth. The drama will feature a modicum of excitement, of hope, of optimism, of confidence, and will go on to include disappointment, despair, tragedy, and melancholy and hopefully, sooner rather than later, there'll be a resolution where stoic acceptance is the overriding emotion. Every documentary which claims to further demonstrate the startling diversity of life serves to affirm the fact that the human experience. across races and cultures, is totally and utterly uniform.

I hope that adds so specificity to my 'we are all the same' claim?

Hang on? Does Chinesepod have a policy of avoiding 'politicizing' comment threads. If so, guilty as charged. I'll leave quietly.

Posted on: Market Research 2: Management Report

我终于有个和语言有关的问题！就是：深入和彻底有什么区别？

Posted on: Market Research 2: Management Report

I realise I've sounded like a right old grumpy 王八蛋 recently, with a litany of comments which could be perceived as anti-China. Can I just here and now state that I regard China to be the most beguiling country in the world: frustrating, sometimes; disgusting, occasionally; inspiring, often. 

That, of course, was just a precursor to me making another negative comment:): 

Isn't this sentence, from the expansion, a total contradiction in terms?

做得简约大气一些。

Posted on: Market Research 2: Management Report

Maybe I am, by nature, just a 'third tier' kinda guy. Who wants to be top dog anyway?

Posted on: Market Research 2: Management Report

I guess all people of all nations have a sense of which its cities are better or worse in certain respects, which are important, less important globally etc. But China's categorisation of Chinese cities into four tiers has always seemed fairly techncratic and lacking in nuance. Now, I happen to wholeheatedly agree that Shanghai rates extremely high across a whole host of indicators: history ('palpable' - as opposed to 'utterly undetectable' [I'm looking at YOU Guangzhou, Luoyang, Nanjing, Hangzhou and...oh what the hell, Beijing]), geography, demography, architecture and economics and that Shenzhen doesn't cut it in any sense other than hard economics (it's basically a Hong Kong suburb, with oversized malls and nice grass verges, right?). But making SH, GZ, BJ no.1 and Wuhan, Chengdu, Kunming no.2 seems a bit harsh. How about the US? Do people in Phoenix accept 2nd-class city-zenship to the likes of Chicago, New York and, whisper it, that sprawling blight on the western seaboard, Los Angeles?

Posted on: Market Research 2: Management Report

Don't take it hard. Supercilious Shanghainese criticism comes all our way sometime or other.