Robert’s
Every city in China that has foreigners has an foreigners bar. Many have more than one- Beijing and Shanghai, of course, have hundreds. In Kunming there are several. Even in Fuzhou there were always a few.
In Lianyungang there was just one, and it was called Robert's. Now, Robert's was only a bar in the strict sense that it accepted money in exchange for alcohol. There wasn't really any atmosphere to speak of. The food was putrid. The service could be best described as laissez-faire. Yet it was the bar- the only bar- that I went to during my first five months in Lianyungang. It was a second home and a refuge.
I arrived in Lianyungang in the fall of 2004, six months out of college. I was 23 and couldn't speak a word of Chinese. The other residents of my building were either a generation older or not, for whatever reason, very social. I was desperate to connect with people my age.
I received a tip from a colleague that there was indeed a group of youngsters in town, and that they congregated at a watering hole called Robert's. He suggested I go and find it. But the first few times I attempted to find the bar, during my second week in the city, I failed miserably. I would take walks to the center of town each afternoon, scouring the landscape for the bar, and find nothing. Of course, I couldn't ask anyone for directions due to the language barrier. Was it possible that Robert's didn't actually exist? Was it just a state of mind?
Then, one day, I found it. I took a left turn at a junction where I had previously gone right, and came across a non-descript building with adorned with a large mural of Bob Marley. In Lianyungang, a fairly typical Chinese city with bathroom tile apartment blocks and excessive neon, Bob definitely stood out.
I walked in and took a seat at an empty booth. The only other customers were three young Chinese guys and a pretty brunette. As I sat, she jumped up from her booth and wandered over to me. "Is there something you'd like?," she asked in heavily accented English. I scanned the menu and checked my watch. It was 4:30, and even in my addled 23-year old brain, I subscribed to the notion that respectable people didn't drink before 5. I ordered a coffee.
The girl, whom I would later find out was a 20-year old Russian named Olga, gave an uneasy look at one of the Chinese guys. She spoke to him in Mandarin, and he looked confused. This was not a good sign. But, he marched into the kitchen anyway. "OK," she said, "he make it for you". And so he did.
Ten minutes later, he presented to me the worst coffee I have ever had in my life.
But it didn't matter. I had found Robert's, the Mecca, the locus of all my hopes and dreams. I was delighted.
A few days later I returned to Robert's in the evening and found a crowd of foreigners gathered. This was it! My people! I walked in, expecting to be hazed like a fraternity pledge, but instead found that the assembled patrons took more interest in me than I did in them.
Think of it this way: imagine that you're at a bar with six of your friends. Sounds great, right? Now imagine that your six friends are the only people that you'll ever hang out with at bars. Still OK, but after awhile you're bound to get sick of them. After all, most people have more than six friends for a reason.
Now imagine that you have six people you hang out with at bars, but they're not your best friends. They're not even necessarily your peers. In effect, they're six completely random people, a cross-section of ages and nationalities and personalities and quirks. If you're a reasonably outgoing and social person, you're probably going to like at least three of the people. The others you might dislike or merely tolerate. But it doesn't matter. Those are the six you have. You'll do anything to be on friendly terms with them, because the only other alternative is isolation and silence. So when a new person comes along- the seventh!- it's easy to see why the other six get excited.
Though there were slightly more than six foreigners in Lianyungang, this was the basic dynamic of the city's "bar scene". Throughout the year, a person would stop into Robert's and announce with genuine excitement that they had spotted a new foreigner on the street, or had a new colleague at their school. (We were all English teachers, the only gig in town). And so Robert's would resemble a big game of sardines, a game of waiting for the new guy or girl to come and chlorinate our little pool.
Bad coffee was just one of the way Robert's fell short of an ideal bar. The beer were often only cold when they days were cold, owing to poor and irregular refrigerating. The food was best left safely in the kitchen. The bartenders couldn't really tend bar, meaning that we often had to go and mix our own drinks. One night in November the electricity suddenly cut out. It didn't come back on for days. Undeterred, like hurricane survivors, we huddled in the darkness and continued our ritualistic imbibing.
Chinese expat bars tend to foster uninhibited behavior, and Robert's was no exception. A group of French engineers would come and on occasion dress up like women and form conga lines. Sexual acts in the bathrooms were not uncommon. Neither were random flashes of nudity. Robert's kept no hours, no regulations, and no restrictions. We were in complete control of the music, the atmosphere, and the drinks. One night, the lone bartender on duty simply fell asleep at his post while we continued on partying. Everyone placed their money in a neat pile next to his head. It might seem strange that he would trust us to that extent, but he knew we had nowhere else to go.
Sometime in January Robert's shut down. Nobody knew anything, but there were rumors that the bar would be knocked down. Sure enough, a week or so later, Robert's and all the other buildings on its block had been reduced to giant piles of rubble. Even the Bob Marley mural was gone. Later, when I learned more about China, I discovered that such occurrences were extremely common throughout the country. But for the moment, Robert's demise struck me as a great tragedy.
But- like the Chinese people themselves- the redoubtable foreigners of Lianyungang quickly colonized a new, better bar some three blocks away. Within a week, sipping on lukewarm beer and shouting over the din of bad karaoke warbling, we had forgotten that Robert's had even existed.
Well, almost.
An Open Letter to US Airways
Dear US Airways,
I realize that these are not the salad days for the airline industry. Rising fuel prices and lessened consumer demand mean that profit margins are smaller than ever, and in a competitive market each airline must do what it can to cut costs and attract customers.
I realize that the days when you could expect a solid (if unspectacular) meal, a blanket, a pillow, and other perks for free are long gone. I realize that the only thing that matters is that price on the website when I, the consumer, search for flights. I realize that brand loyalty is as quaint a concept these days as bipartisanship in Congress.
Yet even with these caveats, I found your performance on my red-eye flight to be most disappointing. First, there's the matter of the emergency row seats. Now, as a tall person facing an overnight flight I was quite happy to purchase one of them for a bit of extra leg room. $36 is a little steep, but facing the prospect of being wedged between two slobs in a middle seat I did not hesitate in the slightest to take it. When the transaction was finished, I figured that we had reached a win-win solution. I, the tall passenger, got the leg room. You, the airline, got extra money.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that my seat wasn't in the emergency row but rather behind it. My 30 years on this planet have taught me that a row, in the singular, consists of items placed next to each other. If there are seats placed behind others, the row ceases to be a row but rather rows, in the plural. Or, put another way, columns. Now, there's a reason that airplanes don't have emergency rows, or emergency columns. It wouldn't be efficient in the event of, you know, an emergency.
When I tried to point this out to the steward, a small man who resembled a jowlier version of George Stephanopolous, he cheerfully pointed out that I still had "access to" the emergency exit. While I appreciated his enthusiasm, I think he rather missed the point. Being close to the emergency exit in and of itself isn't much of a privilege. In fact, it's a responsibility, as the steward so earnestly warned us. Why anyone would pay extra to assume an extra responsibility is beyond me.
Had the steward admitted that the "emergency row" bait and switch was really just another example of your petty, de-humanizing business model, I would have respected his honesty. Instead, his brainwashed explanation for why I should feel grateful for my marked-up seat made me hate you even more. I can only conclude that there is something rotten in the state of US Airways, an infection that has spread from the top of the corporation to the lowliest foot soldiers on the front lines. My fury only simmered further after your gate "attendants" twice gave me the wrong departure gate on the connecting flight, nearly causing me to miss my connection to New York.
US Airways, you know as well as I that the Earth is littered with the carcasses of dead airlines. TWA. Pan-Am. Valujet. If I request anything for Christmas- other than one of those portable electronic devices you tell me I'm not allowed to use - it is that you too meet the heavy hand of bankruptcy. Failing that, I suppose I'll be secure in my knowledge that I'll never have to fly with you again.
Yours,
Matt
A Week Without My Computer
Late last week, a classmate accidentally knocked over my laptop while I was preparing to leave class. It hit the ground with a thud, and when I picked it up I realized that it was broken.
I'd like to say that I reacted with cheerful good humor, patting my classmate on the back and telling her not to worry about it. But I didn't. "Um, I guess write your information on this paper," I stammered, as if I had just survived a car accident. Mortified, she apologized profusely. "It's ok," I finally said.
But of course, it wasn't 'OK'. The plane had crashed into the mountain. The wheels had come off of the car. The train was on fire.
You see, I am very attached to my laptop. It isn't because the laptop is particularly special, though I do like it very much. I am simply the sort of person who uses a computer all the time. I don't own a television or a stereo, so virtually all forms of entertainment I derive from my little HP. Living without it seemed unthinkable.
Yet this is what I've had to do for the past week. My laptop is currently in a shop somewhere near Times Square, being attended to by the best and brightest in computer repair. I was told to expect it back within 5 to 7 business days.
In the meantime, I've had to adjust to a new reality. The change became apparent to me on Saturday, the first evening without the computer. After walking through the door, I was struck with the realization that I didn't know what to do. Normally, I'd march over and check my e-mail, turn on some music, and catch up on some blog reading that had piled up. But without my computer, none of this was possible. So I did nothing but sit on my bed and stare into space for awhile. I felt like a helpless animal.
Then, I noticed that a fair chunk of the Sunday New York Times was sitting on my kitchen table. For the uninitiated, the Sunday Times (most of which arrives on Saturday) is a beautiful thing, one of the great accomplishments of the American media. Most of the time, I barely get around to it. But this time, I tore through each section, reading even articles in the oft-neglected Sunday Styles and Real Estate sections. After a few hours I was caught up on international, national, and local events, what type of shoes Brooklyn hipsters currently favor, and learned how much one-bedroom apartments cost on the Upper West Side.
Slowly but surely, the benefits to not having a computer have accrued. I have had to write my midterm papers at the library, where there is far less to distract me, and as a result have become far more productive. My kitchen and bathroom are spotless. All of the laundry is done. I've even gone to the dry cleaners.
Alas, I am not totally removed from digital society. For e-mails, Facebook messages, and other forms of communications, I have my phone. For music, there's my iPod. The situation isn't that desperate. But I've come to realize just how much time I was wasting sitting in front of the computer every day. I've long taken pride for avoiding television, the leisurely scourge of many of my friends and family members. But was my Internet idling much different? In retrospect, almost certainly not.
I expect to get my computer back in the next couple of days. I can't wait. But despite the inconvenience, I'm glad in a way that our little separation has happened. Otherwise, I might not have realized that I had become a peculiarly 21st century version of a couch potato.
Occupy Wall Street
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to visit the Occupy Wall Street movement at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. My comments on the movement have been published by The Morningside Post.
Ode to the iPod
I bought my first iPod on September 26,2004. I remember this date because the next day- on the 27th- I flew to China for the first time. The two events are of course related. Since I could only bring a limited amount of belongings with me to the other side of the world, lugging around a stack of CDs seemed to be a waste of valuable space. Also, going away for a year without my music was out of the question. I had tried that once, after all. In the summer of 1998, I agreed to live with a host family in Sassari, Italy for two months, and for some reason didn't take any CDs with me. When I arrived to my host family's apartment, I discovered that my room had exactly two cassettes: Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins, and Legend by Bob Marley. To cure my homesickness, I listened to these two so much that by the end of the third week I knew every lyric by heart. To this day, whenever I hear songs from either of those albums I think of a stuffy little room in Sassari.
So I needed to bring music with me. The question was- which music? At that point my CD collection numbered about 500, all neatly organized in alphabetized binders. While I could have narrowed this down to the 30-odd I listened to most often, I was struck with an acute fear: what if I was sitting in my apartment in China and needed- needed- to listen to John Coltrane's Giant Steps at that very moment? I knew I'd tear my hair out if I didn't have it on hand.
The iPod was the obvious solution, so I bought one. I then spent the rest of that afternoon ripping my entire CD collection to iTunes, all the while selfishly ignoring my poor parents who wanted to spend the day with me. But I was adamant: putting my iPod together was as essential as any of my other preparations for the trip. That night, as I finally drifted off to sleep, I synced the new device to my computer for the first time, panicking that if the syncing didn't work I'd have to face the flight without it. Funny how that works.
Alas, when the morning came there it was: all of my music, so lovingly collected over the previous 12 years, there in one tiny gadget. It felt like Christmas in September.
Throughout the next two years in China the iPod was my constant companion. I used it on buses, when the noise from the karaoke video on board drove me to the point of insanity. I used it while walking through a crowd on my way to school. I turned to it when I was homesick, which happened often while living in a strange country among people who spoke a language I didn't understand. Anytime I needed a break from China, the iPod was there for me.
I'd like to say that I still own that particular iPod, but alas I don't; in 2006 it was stolen along with several other valuables in a bag I had carelessly left unattended. I replaced it almost immediately, and ever since have always made sure I've had one. When my music collection ballooned past the original CDs I owned, I made sure I purchased an iPod big enough to contain all of it. I use my iPod even though I own a smart phone that has its own MP3 player. I use it even though there's Pandora, and Spotify, and so many other wonderful new services for us music junkies to enjoy. I use it even though I'm rarely far from my laptop, which has all of my music and then some.
My current iPod holds 160 GB of music. I use 159 of them. To some, having so much music on hand is an overindulgence. But to me, my iPod holds much more than music. It holds memories. When I listen to an album or song, I am immediately teleported back to the bungalow in Thailand, or to my freshman dorm room, or to the middle school playground when I first heard people talk about this interesting new band called Nirvana. Having all of that music on hand is a blessing. To have it all on a device the size of a playing card is nothing short of miraculous.
So- in respect to the passing of Steve Jobs, all I can say is: thanks for creating the iPod, bud. You have no idea how much it has meant to me.
Plus Ca Change
One of my favorite movies as a kid was Defending Your Life, a 1991 film starring Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep. The premise is this: Brooks plays a middle-aged man who dies in a car accident and finds himself in a strange land called Judgment City, where he is placed on trial. The charge? He didn't exhibit enough bravery in his life. Before a panel of three judges, Brooks' court-appointed lawyer shows video clips from Brooks' life in which he proved himself to be brave, while a prosecutor showed clips of her own in which he showed the opposite. To say anymore would spoil the story, but suffice it to say it's a funny, sharp, and enjoyable comedy.
Anyway, I couldn't help thinking that it was ahead of it's time after reading this paragraph:
Facebook Timeline is the best change Facebook has ever made.
Here's what'll happen once the Timeline profiles are launched: Your Facebook profile will go from having one central column to two, with boxes of text, photos, videos and even maps of your favorite locations. Rather than just displaying your most recent activities, your profile will become a scrapbook documenting your entire life, all the way back to your birth. Facebook will become a record of your existence: All your memories, your victories and your defeats, your loves, your losses and everything in between.
Mind you, I pulled this from a CNN article, not from a bad science fiction script. I hope Albert Brooks demands royalty payments from Mark Zuckerberg.
I wonder if in a few weeks I'll wake up, and find the following status update somewhere on my page:
September 3, 1985
First day of Kindergarten. Smeared some paste on myself. Played kickball. Ate some ice cream. Nap time rules!
(Actually, that would be oddly appropriate for grad school, too)
Facebook is a survivor. Every time they make changes, people howl and scream and say how much they hate Facebook and that they're going to quit....and it doesn't happen. It's too ingrained in our lives; too useful for event planning and crowd sourcing info and voyeuristic peeks at your high school girlfriend's photo albums.
I prefer Google+, really. I don't like how Facebook makes it such a hassle to control your privacy settings. Without thinking, I connected my Spotify account to Facebook the other day and thought- shit!, I don't need all of my friends to know I listened to Right Said Fred. All morning long.
But the idea of getting out of Facebook completely just doesn't seem feasible, like cutting your landline phone service would have been a generation ago. In a year nobody will even remember what the old Facebook looked like.
Some News
Been awhile since I've written anything. I blame grad school. Anyone who says that being a student is easier than working didn't go to SIPA. That aside...
I'm pleased to announce that I'll be working with Asia Society this autumn as an online reporter and blogger. This week, as numerous heads of state arrived in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly, a number of Asian leaders headed a couple dozen blocks uptown to speak at Asia Society. I was fortunate to be present at two events; in one, the US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter spoke with USAID administrator Rajiv Shah about developmental challenges in that country, and in the other Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina touted her country's potential as a destination for foreign direct investment. You can view my write-ups here and here. Also, keep an eye on the Asia Society blog, to which I'll be contributing regularly.
September 11, 2011
There are numerous advantages to not owning a television. First, you're spared the cultural wasteland that is American TV, complete with its Jersey Shores and Fox News and other aggressive forms of brain damage. But second, you can choose to opt out of national rituals like the 9/11 anniversary veneration.
I mean no disrespect to the families of the victims of that terrible day. I don't deny them their right to mourn- nobody would. But turning the 10th anniversary of 9/11 into a mass media spectacle was overwrought and inappropriate, and did a disservice to the victims- all of the victims.
9/11 didn't kill just 3,000 people. Many of the dead of Afghanistan were victims of 9/11, too. Not to mention those killed in Iraq, a country which had nothing whatsoever to do with the event. The American-led invasion of both countries were justified as responses to the 9/11 attacks, after all. Any reckoning of the death toll would have to include the innocent victims of these wars- as well as the soldiers who fought in them.
Much else besides human life was lost, as well. The past ten years have brought us color-coded terror alerts, yahoos raging against Sharia law, "don't touch my junk", "you're either with us or against us", "they hate us because of our freedom", decent people having their patriotism questioned, television hosts silenced, enhanced interrogation techniques, and secret prisons. These are the sorry cultural byproducts of the 9/11 attacks, or more precisely our reaction to them.
I was hoping that part of our 9/11 anniversary ritual would include a reckoning of how much has gone wrong in these past ten years, and how we might begin to regain our national footing. But I'm not holding my breath.
On Remembering 9/11
I generally like Tom Engelhardt, and agree with a substantial amount of this column, but his objections to the construction of the Freedom Tower and our 9/11 remembrance more generally are off-base. Of course, the "Freedom Tower" is a ridiculous name and reminiscent of the worst rhetorical excesses of the early Bush years. Engelhardt, though, thinks we should just forget about the whole thing:
Let's just can it all. Shut down Ground Zero. Lock out the tourists. Close "Reflecting Absence," the memorial built in the "footprints" of the former towers with its grove of trees, giant pools, and multiple waterfalls before it can be unveiled this Sunday. Discontinue work on the underground National September 11 Museum due to open in 2012. Tear down the Freedom Tower (redubbed 1 World Trade Center after our "freedom" wars went awry), 102 stories of "the most expensive skyscraper ever constructed in the United States". (Estimated price tag: $3.3 billion.)
Eliminate that still-being-constructed, hubris-filled 1,776 feet tall building, planned in the heyday of George W Bush and soaring into the Manhattan sky like a nyaah-nyaah invitation to future terrorists. Dismantle the other three office towers being built there as part of an $11 billion government-sponsored construction program. Let's get rid of it all. If we had wanted a memorial to 9/11, it would have been more appropriate to leave one of the giant shards of broken tower there untouched.
Engelhardt's point, which he makes in subsequent paragraphs, is that 9/11 led to all sorts of negative consequences due to the terrible decisions made by the Bush Administration. I don't deny this, and in fact said largely the same thing in my last post. But what does Engelhardt think leaving the "giant shards of broken tower untouched" would have accomplished? It certainly wouldn't have prevented Bush from going ahead with his foreign policy. Nor do I think erecting the tower more than a decade after the attacks will lead Americans to reconsider their opposition to the Iraq War and other unpopular elements of Bush's foreign policy. It isn't like we Americans commemorate the day Bush stood up and announced "mission accomplished".
Rebuilding a structure that was destroyed in an act of war isn't hubristic. It's common. Has Engelhardt been to Rotterdam, Berlin, or Tokyo? All three cities were destroyed during the Second World War, and all three were painstakingly rebuilt in the years after the war's conclusion. As far as I know neither Engelhardt nor anyone else has seriously suggested they shouldn't have.
Pointing out that the decade since 9/11 has been disastrous for the US is fair enough, but arguing that trying to rebuild the towers was a bad idea simply doesn't pass muster.
The 9/10 Presidency
Anne Applebaum concludes her most recent column at Slate with this sentence:
Ten years after the events, I now find myself asking: Could it be that the planes that hit New York and Washington did less damage to the nation than the cascade of bad decisions that followed?
Could there be any doubt that this is true? No one is doubting that the 9/11 attacks were damaging, much less me. But the attacks represented a culmination of al Qaeda activity against the United States, not the beginning. al Qaeda's bellicosity toward the United States was every bit as potent on September 10th, 2001 as it was on September 12th. The only difference was that the broader American public finally began paying attention.
Any American president to the right of Noam Chomsky would have gone into Afghanistan and uprooted al Qaeda forces there. But aside from the Bush Administration's halfhearted effort in that country, what's striking is how much of his presidency conformed to established Republican Party goals. In economic policy, would things have been different under Bush had it not been for 9/11? Probably not. After all, not even fighting two wars at the same time was enough for the President to favor government revenue increases. The invasion of Iraq, too, had little to do with the attacks other than that the attacks made the invasion politically feasible. Tying Saddam Hussein's secular nationalist regime to al Qaeda represented nothing more than an attempt by the Bush Administration to provide ex post facto justification for the invasion once the weapons of mass destruction proved elusive. But because both Saddam and Osama bin Laden were Arabs hailing from the Middle East, the Bushies figured the American people wouldn't be able to spot the difference. They were right.
What 9/11 changed, albeit temporarily, was the political alignment of the United States. For a brief moment, domestic opposition to the Bush Administration ceased as the country rallied behind its leader. Bush, for his part, used this opportunity to push through a set of policy goals favored by the Republican Party since at least the Reagan years. The Democrats, cowed by accusations of disloyalty, did nothing. The last ten years of American history will be remembered for 9/11 and its aftermath. But what's important to remember is that the situation we find ourselves in today results not from the actions of foreign terrorists but by the deliberate policy choices of the American government. We are now just dealing with the consequences.