Shane Travels

I suspect that rambling posts are less engaging to the reader than focused topic oriented ones… oh well.

I’ll start by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! If you don’t celebrate Christmas or the New Year and live in the places where it is, I sympathize with your plight and rescind my previous greetings to you and offer a standard hello instead.

This is my first year being apart from my family and apart from friends during Christmas and it’s been strange and uncomfortable at the personal, private group and public group level. (I was debating what word would work best when describing my social interactions with others [friends, society at large] and opted for group… which do you prefer?)

At a personal level I miss my immediate and extended family and the times spent together over the holidays. Being half way around the world at this time, makes me long for the most awkward moments of holidays gone by. Like being forced to sit on Santa’s knee during [insert family name here] family Christmas… I missed being able to watch my parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles being called up in the yearly ritual. A wonderful opportunity to have a laugh at each others expense and be reminded that no one is too good for Santa’s knee. You have to sit there to get your gift

I shared my Christmas day with my girlfriend (gf) and her/our extended family of ex-patriots. This group mostly consists of Americans, but we had representation from China, Bulgaria, Russia (?), Netherlands and Canada (me), as well and in no particular order. My gf, at the last minute, managed to have 2 turkeys with stuffing and cranberry sauce, catered and delivered right to our door. In addition my gf and our friend Tabitha (sp?) cooked up additional tasty food options including mulled wine, vegetarian paella and mashed sweet potatoes. The mulled wine was a big hit and is probably the only way to make cheap great wall wine (local Chinese red wine) enjoyable. The dinner party was a nice opportunity for friends to get together for a home cooked/catered meal rather than gathering for teppanyaki. I could do an entire posting on Teppanyaki… but let me sum up instead… 160 RMB all you can eat, all you can drink (beer and sake). Dinner out for teppanyaki… can be messy.

Christmas in China is an exclusively commercial holiday. For those in North America who complain that Christmas has become too commercial… you should visit Shanghai during the Christmas season. It seems that all hair salon employees (i could do an entire post on these as well) must wear santa hats. All apartment buildings and especially the shopping malls around where we live must be decked out in incredible amounts of lights and other Christmas decorations. Christmas music is piped over the speakers of all stores. The superficial aspects of Christmas are in place and are perhaps even more over the top than in “the west”. With that said there are no long standing family traditions that would lend feeling to the time of year and to the well wishes. It’s probably not overly controversial for me to say that the religious aspect of Christmas hasn’t been all that important to me in my life for some time, but the tradition, the gatherings of friends and family, being surrounded by many people who share the same traditions and holiday sentiment is something that is unsurprisingly absent here in China and I missed it.

Other topics:

I wanted to say a couple of quick things on product placement in shows. I’ve been watching a lot of TV series on DVD courtesy of my local street dvd store. These DVD stores provide copies of movies and television series at an extremely reasonable price. A movie goes for less than 2 dollars CAD. An entire season of television rages from 7-10 dollars CAD. The great thing about watching TV on DVD… is the lack of commercials.

I recently introduced my gf to 30 Rock. We both love it and managed to watch all of Season 1 & 2 in a few days. 30 Rock takes an interesting approach to product placement. They are intentionally obvious about it. Whether it be Snapple or Verizon wireless (have i just advertised for them) they integrate product placement into the plot and make fun of it. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) looks into the camera in one the episodes and says something along the lines of “do we get our money now?”.

Since i’m watching the show on street dvd and I may know of a number of people who come by their digital entertainment via alternate means… i suspect that product placement may end up being the primary way that entertainment is paid for in the future. You can’t cut out product placement… it’s integrated into to the plot and survives downloading, PVRs, etc…. Is this the truly negative aspect of digital piracy?? I can’t image that all content will be able to make product placement as enjoyable as 30 Rock does.

My next post will bring you up to date on my reading, Chinese studies and perhaps comment on how what we might (in the west) consider the seedier sides of life are integrated into life here in Shanghai.

hope this finds you all happy and healthy

shane

p.s. Our cat Zoe escaped the apartment last night. I personally hope that she walks through the apartment door (which we’ve left open for her); however if she is not able to get back to us and we’re not able to find her I hope that she is met with kindness wherever she goes.