03.13.10
Posted in Pop Culture at 2:11 pm by Benjamin Ross
Back in late November, I set the goal of watching an entire Chinese television series 《奋斗》, and blogging about the process. I made good on half the deal. I finished the series about a month and a half ago, but thanks to several trips, grad school selection shenanigans, and other prioritizing, my blogging accounts dropped off. Watching 奋斗 was a tantamount experience, both linguistically and culturally, and I didn’t want to leave everybody completely hanging. So here are some of my thoughts. This post does contain a few spoilers, so if you plan to watch the show, proceed with caution.
奋斗 and I have had a rocky relationship. If it were my facebook girlfriend, our relationship status would be “it’s complicated.” Several episodes in I wrote the beginnings of a scathing blog post condemning 奋斗 as the worst television series I had ever watched. The plot lines are predictable; the characters static and subject to compulsive, unsounded, obsessions; the humor relies on formulaic, repetitive devices which could have been written by a class of high school sophomores; and the climax of the series involves an extended English quote from a Lionel Ritchie song. Yet I watched the series to term, enjoyed it, and was emotionally invested in several of the characters. In short, it was entertaining.
As a critic, one complaint which I consistently felt (and echoed on many Chinese message boards) is that the main characters’ “struggles” (奋斗 means “struggle”) are aided by a multitude of fortuitous situations and coincidences. Here are just a few.
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| The 奋斗 gang, clockwise from the top left, Lu Tao, Xia Lin, Xiang Nan, Huazi, Yang Shao Yun, and Mi Lai |
Two of the main characters have parents who are multi-millionaires with endless supplies of money, real estate, and employment opportunities. When the going gets rough, fu baba always comes to the rescue with a financial bail out, a new job, or a free loft to house the whole gang.
Xia Lin, the girlfriend of the main character Lu Tao, frequently wavers back and forth between whether she will pursue her opportunity to study in France. Unlike Lu Tao and Mi Lai, Xia Lin’s family is not wealthy. Yet, in the world of 奋斗 going to France to study abroad apparently doesn’t require much money. It also doesn’t require a visa either, as Xia Lin (and Mi Lai, Lu Tao’s ex-girlfriend) each make sudden decisions to study abroad. As one Chinese forum post put it “It’s as if France is next door to Beijing.”
Another character of humble origins, Huazi, pursues life as a small business man. He begins by opening a barbershop, then a cake shop, then a Thai restaurant, then a pool hall, all of which are wildly successful, and simultaneously managed by only he and his girlfriend. Speaking from experience here, running a successful barbershop in China takes many years of training, hard work, and building a customer base. Competition is cut throat, and most new shops go out of business within a year of opening. The chance of somebody with no tanning opening up four different enterprises in four different industries, and being wildly successful at all is laughable at best.
Another objection I have to the show is its message: put simply, the goal of life is getting rich. These values are promulgated by Yang Shao Yun, one of the female leads, and one of the most despicable characters I have ever seen on television. Yang Shao Yun falls in love with Xiang Nan, one of the main male characters, and against the warnings of their friends, they marry a few weeks later. As their marriage progresses, Yang Shao Yun continuously scolds and belittles Xiang Nan, whose salary of “a mere 10,000 RMB/month” isn’t nearly as much as Lu Tao’s. She also despises Xiang Nan’s car, an Autuo, and wishes that like Lu Tao, Xiang Nan would buy an Audi. On multiple occasions Yang Shao Yun threatens divorce, only to be talked out of it by a teary-eyed Xiang Nan, whom she continues to nag and berate. Their relationship is a continuous downward spiral of arguments and threatened divorces until finally Xiang Nan shocks everybody by agreeing to a divorce.
Once the divorce settles, Xiang Nan meets a new girl, Yao Yao, who is a successful attorney, and independently wealthy. Initially, Xiang Nan is intimidated by his new sugarmama, but these fears subside as Yao Yao reaffirms to him that she loves him for who he is, not for his bank account. In a symbolic gesture, she sells her Toyota sports car because she prefers to ride in his Autuo. Meanwhile, Yang Shao Yun falls into a bout of loneliness and depression, wishing she had Xiang Nan back. I took pleasure in watching the bitch crash and burn in the mess she had created. This also provided hope that 奋斗 was providing an anti-materialistic message after all. However in the end, just as Xiang Nan and Yao Yao are walking into the marriage bureau to apply for their marriage license, Yang Shao Yun shows up crying. The two reconcile and get married. Ouch! Bam! Kick in the junk! I wasn’t expecting that at all, and it left me questioning the motives behind the themes of the show.
奋斗 is geared towards China’s “80’s generation,” those born between 1980 and 1989. I would imagine though that much of 奋斗’s appeal is to rural Chinese of that age group who have never lived the city life as portrayed in the show. Remaining in their villages, 奋斗 provides a glimmer of a fantasy city world where opportunities abound and the streets are paved with gold. Most Chinese urbanites with whom I have discussed 奋斗 have dismissed it unappealing for the same reasons listed above. It’s too unrealistic and glamorizes the ugly, materialistic side of modern China.
As an American, watching 奋斗 was an invaluable experience. It improved my spoken Chinese, tweaked my listening, and provided a cultural window into the lives of Chinese 20-somethings, even if they were caricatures of real people. If I was Chinese, I probably would have never watched the show in its entirety, but using it as tool for cultural and language learning, it served its purpose.
I am now in the process of watching《蜗居》, a popular 2009 Chinese television show, which according to many of my Chinese friends is the most realistic TV program to come out of Mainland China in a long time. As I progress, I’m going to try to write more about 蜗居as well as the process of learning from television shows, which I am increasingly convinced is THE way for advanced speakers to continue improvement. I’ll try to make good on my promise to keep up on the blog this time around.
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02.25.10
Posted in Travel Log at 7:36 pm by Benjamin Ross
“The Mistake on the Lake,” the city where the river caught on fire, the home of Drew Carey: Cleveland bears the brunt of more jokes than any American city not known as “Motown.” Most of what you’ve heard is probably true, but this does not mean that Cleveland isn’t worth exploring for a weekend. Located at the convergence between the Midwest and the Rust Belt, halfway between New York and Chicago, Cleveland has exerted its fair influence on the course of American history. The latter half of the 20th Century saw much of this past glory wane, leaving much of the city as historical artifacts of American prosperity. Over the last weekend in January, I visited Cleveland for the first time since my baby teeth fell out. Here’s a photo log from my trip.
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| On July 2, 1796, a settlement on Lake Erie was founded and named after General Moses Cleaveland, leader of the Connecticut Land Company. The first “a” was later dropped, allegedly to make room for a newspaper ledger. The Cleavelend statute stands in the center of Public Square, the geographical center of Cleveland. No word on whether or not local teenagers have ever removed its head. |
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| My host/tourguide for the weekend was Ron Sims II. You might remember him from such films as The Haircut and No Size Fits All. Ron and I lived both lived in Fuzhou from 05-06, and did a fair amount of exploration of the Middle Kingdom together. Long before he was the famous “Black Man in China,” Ron, a native Clevelander, is a well-known Cleveland graffiti artist. Here he is striking a pose next to one of his murals near the West Side Market. |
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| Cleveland, first and foremost, is an industrial city. Although its peak industrial output days are past, a significant amount of production is still occurring on the Cuyahoga River. |
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| Cleveland’s downtown industrial center is known as “The Flats.” Located along the bank of the Cuyahoga, The Flats has seen occasional phases of attempted redevelopment as an entertainment destination in Cleveland’s drive to revitalize downtown. |
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| Sunset in The Flats |
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| Behind The Flats is Downtown Cleveland. Like The Flats, Downtown’s more bustling days lie several decades in the past. Cleveland’s population peaked in 1950 at 914,808, and by the 2000 census, had shrunk to 478,403. Much of this population decline was due to affluent Clevelanders fleeing to the surrounding suburbs. |
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| Cleveland is a prime example of the havoc suburbanization has wreaked on American downtowns. Once a thriving city center rivaling Chicago, much of downtown Cleveland is now empty and abandoned. Despite attempts to revitalize it, as well as three major sports venues in its immediate vicinity, downtown Cleveland remains an urban hole with little integration with the suburbs where much of its former population and economic activity now resides.
As Ron describes it, “Most suburbanites are only Clevelanders on the weekend. They come downtown for a ballgame and then get in their cars and head straight back to their suburban existence. They never leave a very narrow corridor on any trip.” |
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| Much of Downtown Cleveland looks like this: Tall, empty, grey buildings; a few cars; no people. |
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| here’s another |
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| and another…the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland |
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| Tower City Center, this former rail terminal, was the tallest building in North America outside of New York City until 1964. Today, Tower City is the main retail center in Downtown Cleveland, and is also the focal point of Cleveland’s public transportation system. |
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| For a city with so many problems, Cleveland’s downtown is surprisingly well-planned. Public transportation, highways, and tourist attractions are all centered around downtown, and there is convenient pedestrian access to office space, restaurants, and all three sporting venues. |
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| Downtown Cleveland also sports a beachfront along Lake Erie |
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| Cleveland Browns Stadium |
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| Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame |
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| Cleveland is home to a small Chinatown, which was formerly consolidated around this building near 20th and Superior (see the faded letters on building facade). Today, Cleveland’s Chinatown has migrated south to “Asiatown,” where it is mixed with a Korean enclave. Cleveland’s Chinatown is sizable enough to support several exclusively Asian grocery stores, however most restaurants and other business cater to both American and Chinese patrons in order to maintain a large enough customer base. |
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| Still known as Ohio City, the land west of the Cuyahoga River was once a separate city from Cleveland. It was annexed in 1854 and its West Side Market is one of the top attractions for tourists and locals alike. |
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| the main hall at the West Side Market |
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| view from balcony |
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| Anther gem of the Near West Side, Ron took me to Bank News on Clarke, an old time magazine shop. |
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| Much of the floor in Bank News consists of stacks of magazines which look like they haven’t been sorted since the Reagan administration. In the back corner is an old school pornography room with magazines and posters which are probably just as old. Random piles of boxes are littered around the store, and the air is rank with kitty litter. Yet, Bank News is a surviving fossil of the days when most current information was disseminated in physical form. Their selection is massive, with magazines covering every topic imaginable.When paying for his magazine, Ron asked the proprietor, “How’s business?”
“I have no business,” he replied in a thick Eastern European accent. |
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| Most of the Cleveland’s housing stock consists of single family units such as these in the St. Clair Superior neighborhood. As Cleavelanders fled to the suburbs in the second half of the 20th Century, thousands of vacant houses were left behind. Cleveland now is home to some of the cheapest urban real estate in the US. In many neighborhoods, three and four bedroom houses can be purchased for under 100k. |
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| As a response to increasing violence in St. Clair Superior, a local Yoruba woman built this labyrinth next to a local school. Allegedly violence began dropping soon after its construction. Although its designer has since died, the labyrinth survives intact and neighbors still leave offerings of fruit in its center. |
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| Cleveland has a rapid transit system, “The Rapid,” but you wouldn’t know it unless you specifically sought it out. The “Red Line” runs east and west and connects downtown with the airport, but many of the areas serviced by the Red Line are sparsely populated, and generate little ridership. Two other lines, the blue and green, connect several suburban ares to downtown. With only one line serving the city proper, and no free transfers, it would be nearly impossible to rely on the “Rapid” as a primary means of transportation. With a similarly under-equipped bus system, car ownership in Cleveland is practically a necessity. |
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| This is a “Polish Boy,” a Cleveland specialty. A hot dog, often served on a hoagie, is topped with french fries, cole slaw, and BBQ sauce. Add pork shoulder meat, and you have a “Polish girl.” I ate about one of them per day on my trip. Food in Cleveland is cheap, and a Polish Boy typically goes for between $3 and $4 and an extra dollar or two for the Polish Girl. |
Cleveland is not for everybody. If your travel fancies include entertainment, modern architecture, and active street life, Cleveland is not the place to go. But for an extant slice of American industrial history, with an urban Midwestern feel and cheap eats, Cleveland makes for an interesting weekend trip.
For independent travelers, Cleveland is not an easily traveled city. With a sprawled, decaying urban core, and minimal public transit options, it’s not easily navigable for the unfamiliar and the carless. But with friends in the area, it is certainly worth a weekend trip. Only an overnight bus ride from the Windy City, I’m sure I’ll be back again, if anything, just for another Polish Boy.
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02.13.10
Posted in Down in Chinatown, Travel Log at 12:03 pm by Benjamin Ross
During my 3.5 years living fulltime in China, I set the goal of exploring as much of the country as possible. Before I returned to the United States, I had visited all but 6 of China’s 27 provinces, the majority of its provincial capitals, and tens of rural towns and villages. The way such extensive adventures were possible was by stringing multiple locations together on a single trip, and traveling between them over land. Sometimes I would start at home in Fuzhou and travel a circular path, leading back to where I started. On other occasions I would fly to a distant city, and slowly make my way back via trains and buses. A third option was to fly to one city, then travel over land to another, from which I would fly home. Due to China’s population density and predictable transportation network, this form of traveling was practical, thrifty, and allowed me to see more of the country than had I visited destinations one at a time.
It’s now been over two years since I returned to the United States, and my travels in China have left me curious as to how feasible this method of travel would be in my home country. In my early twenties, I traveled extensively through the U.S., mostly by driving. Now that I have repatriated, and given up car dependency (which I urge all to try) the time was fitting to test long distance ground transportation in the United States.
The itinerary for my recent trip to the East Coast was to fly to Boston on December 23, and then from Baltimore fly home January 7, leaving two weeks to meander down the coast. Though long distance ground transportation is the default in China, it remains foreign to most Americans, especially those not on the East Coast. While most Americans still prefer their jetliners and private automobiles, a unique marriage between China and the United States has blossomed on the East Coast: The “Chinatown bus.”
The “Chinatown bus” refers to several Chinese-operated bus companies (the ones I tried were 2000 New Century and Fung Wa) running networks throughout the Eastern United States. The buses provide frequent (sometimes hourly) transit between major cities including New York, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, with fares rarely exceeding fifteen dollars. Using Chinatown buses, I traveled from Boston to New York, and then from New York to Philadelphia, and finally Philadelphia to Baltimore, all for a total cost of 37 dollars. I did not purchase any of my tickets in advance, and my longest bus station wait was twenty minutes.
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| on way to Baltimore, via Philadelphia -> DC Chinatown bus. |
Trips on the Chinatown bus are standard service without frills. Like China, there are no bathrooms on the bus, no wireless Internet connections, and minimal excess legroom. There are also no karaoke videos, farmers carrying bags of dead fish, or random stops to avoid police bus-overloading checkpoints. (America does have its perks.)
Aside from occasional mechanical failure, the main difficulty Chinatown bus riders report is finding the bus drop off locations. In some transit points, such as Boston’s South Station, the Chinatown bus picks up and drops off inside the official station, running ticket booths side by side with American bus companies. In other locations, such as East Broadway in Manhattan’s Chinatown, buses operate out of makeshift bus stops and storefronts. Additionally, for those traveling within New York City, an ad hoc Chinese-operated bus services whisks passengers between the three Chinatowns for only $2.50 each trip.
The Chinatown bus service is nothing new for East Coasters. On the contrary, it has become the way to travel cheap from city to city. According to Jennifer 8. Lee’s The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, the Chinatown bus began as a service to shuttle Chinese restaurant workers from Chinatown to Chinatown between Boston and New York City. Buses were patronized almost exclusively by Chinese passengers until college kids got wind of it, and began using them to return home for vacation. It was then a matter of time until the Chinatown bus phenomenon went mainstream. In each of my Chinatown bus experiences, the drivers, conductors, and ticket sellers were all Chinese, while a majority of the passengers were not.
Chinese in America have a long history of occupational specialization, first arriving as railroad workers in the 1860’s. When railroad jobs waned, Chinese entrepreneurs opened cleaners or curios shops. In the 20th Century, the invention of American Chinese food led to a boom in the demand for restaurant workers. This boom continues today and ultimately was the impetus behind the Chinatown bus’ emergence, now providing new employment opportunities for blue collar Chinese immigrants who traditionally worked primarily in the restaurant sector.
Much as Chinese restaurants influenced the way Americans eat (Lee claims the US has more Chinese restaurants than McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and Wendy’s combined) the Chinatown bus is now reshaping transportation on the East Coast. Whereas compared to flying, long distance trains offer only of nominal cost savings, the Chinatown bus offers comparable transit times with significantly cheaper fares. Its popularity has caused American bus companies to lower their own prices in order to remain afloat against their “made in China” competition.
Will the Chinatown bus ever become a major player in the American long distance transit industry, as the Chinese restaurant has with fast food? Probably not. Mass transportation efficiency, both long distance and short, is a function of population density. Barring major changes in land usage and urban planning, the East Coast will likely remain the only region of the country where long distance buses are a practical alternative to planes or private cars. So for the near future, Chinatown style bus transit outside of the East Coast will probably still require a trip to the Middle Kingdom. But for backpackers wanting an overland excursion, the East Coast and its Chinatown bus network allow for the ideal budget adventure.
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01.28.10
Posted in Down in Chinatown, Travel Log at 3:02 pm by Benjamin Ross
Outside of the Middle Kingdom and Southeast Asia , there is probably no spot in the world more Chinese than New York City. When people think of American cities with heavy Chinese concentrations, usually San Francisco and Los Angeles are the first to come to mind. It often comes as surprise that New York City now has, by far, the largest Chinese population in the Western Hemisphere, and is the primary economic, cultural, and logistical center of Chinese life in the United States.
Throughout the 19th Century and the majority of the 20th, most Chinese immigrants to the continental United States came from Guangdong (the Cantonese province) and settled in California. In an era when ships were the dominant form of international transport, the West Coast was the logical destination for immigrants from Asia. Well into the 20th Century, even as air travel became increasingly feasible, most Chinese immigration still passed through the West Coast, since this was where the established immigrant communities were located.
Then in the 1980’s a dramatic shift in Chinese immigration occurred. Rural peasants from Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, just north of Guangdong, began emigrating en masse to the United States. The immigrants from Fuzhou did not share business and kinship connections with the established Cantonese communities in California, nor could they understand the Cantonese language, the lingua franca of most American Chinatowns at the time. Without ties to existing American Chinese communities, and with the ease of jet travel, the Fuzhou immigrants had little reason to settle in California, as previous generations of Chinese had done. Instead, they flocked to New York City, where a formidable labor vacuum was emerging out of the booming Chinese restaurant industry.
Since the 1980’s the Fuzhou population, and by extension the Chinese population of the United States, has grown by unprecedented numbers. With the quantity of Fuzhou immigrants long surpassing that of the Cantonese, New York has now become the main port of entry for Chinese immigrants in the United States.
Most Chinese immigrants in New York are not from the city of Fuzhou per se, but rather the small villages and townships in its rural periphery including Changle, Lianjiang, Fuqing, and Langqi Island. As someone who spent three years living in and around Fuzhou, the topic of Chinese immigration has always been of particular personal interest. So during my recent stop in New York, I made it a point to visit its various Chinese enclaves.
New York City has three primary Chinese communities, the Manhattan Chinatown on the Lower East Side, the Queens Chinatown in Flushing, and the Brooklyn Chinatown in Sunset Park. Excluding San Francisco’s Chinatown, each of the three New York communities on their own are more populous than any other Chinatown in the United States. The following is a photo essay from four days in New York. Enjoy.
曼哈顿 · Manhattan
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| Manhattan’s Chinatown is located on the lower east side within a massive tract of tenement housing blocks, not far from the former site of Five Points, the immigrant neighborhood showcased in the Martin Scorsese’s film “Gangs of New York.” For much of the 20th Century, the area which is now Chinatown was New York’s Little Italy. |
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| The swarming, raucous, and grubby atmosphere of Manhattan’s Chinatown exemplifies the perfect marriage between New York City and China. With pirated DVD’s, fake Louis Vuitton bags, herbal viagra, and 50 cent patterned Chinese “famer bags,” there isn’t much you can find in China which can’t be purchased in Manhattan. It’s also probably the largest concentration of Chinese restaurants in North America, and at night vendors crowd the sidewalks hawking 烧烤 (Chinese skewers), 麻辣烫 (ma la spicy soup) and other Chinese street snacks rarely found outside of the Middle Kingdom. |
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| As New York’s oldest extant Chinese enclave, more Cantonese is spoken in Manhattan than anywhere else in the city. The Cantonese still form a solid population base on the Lower East Side, however they are rapidly being eclipsed by the Fuzhou influx. |
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| Chinatown’s boundaries are clearly delineated by its housing stock. As the tenements lie upper middle class residential high rises, which vividly contrast the immigrant housing in their shadows. |
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| Although Fuzhou-ites can be found in all parts of Manhattan’s Chinatown, the commercial center of the Fuzhou population is East Broadway, aka 福州街 (Fuzhou Street) |
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| For a particularly native experience, I recommend a perusal through the East Broadway Mall. With shops hocking phone cards, electronics, suits, and rice cookers, and a rudimentary basement food court selling authentic Fuzhou snacks and niblets, the East Broadway Mall (88 E. Broadway) could just as easily be located on a street corner in downtown Fuzhou. |
法拉盛· Flushing
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| Hop on the elevated 7 train, and take it to the end of the line in Flushing. Disembark, and one is immediately transported into the most concentrated Asian population in the United States. To the east lies Koreatown, rather quiet and subdued compared with the massive Chinese colony to the west, which by most counts has now surpassed Manhattan’s Chinatown in population. |
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| In terms of Chinatowns, Flushing is about as diverse as they come. Fighting through the crowds, one hears the sounds of Cantonese, Fuzhou dialect, heavily accented Northern Mandarin, Taiwan Guoyu, and shouts of “ma-sa-gee, ma-sa-gee,” all permeating through the noise and commotion. |
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| The center of the Flushing Chinatown is at Main Street and Roosevelt, the third busiest intersection in New York and the busiest outside of Manhattan. It is chaotic, cramped, and crowded, even by Chinese standards. Flushing has a plethora of authentic Chinese restaurants and street food, making it an ideal spot for adventurous foodies. Like many ethnic neighborhoods in New York, one can easily consume an entire meal in Flushing without ever sitting at a table or using utensils. This is Chinese street food at its best, as many vendors and storefronts offer a multitude of Chinese finger food, much of it unavailable anywhere else in the US, and all at bargain prices. |
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| After several rounds of street food grazing, I settled down to a meal at “Four Choise and Soup All Day Lunch Box.” |
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| “Four Choise and Soup All Day Lunch Box” follows a formula common among New York Chinese dives: 4 servings are chosen from a buffet, plus a scoop of white rice and a bowl of soup, all for the low price of $4.95. The fare at “Four Choise” was was a unique blend of authentic Chinese 快餐 (fast food) and Fuzhou-style American Chinese food, which I found surprisingly tasty, albeit in small doses. |
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| Owing to its comparatively low degree of commercialization and tourism, Flushing represents a less adulterated ethnic enclave than Manhattan’s Chinatown. With direct subway transportation to Manhattan, Flushing is an ideal destination for any traveler wanting to experience the Middle Kingdom on American soil. |
布鲁克林 · Brooklyn
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| With so many ethnic pockets in the city, even many New Yorkers don’t realize that one of the largest Chinese communities in North America is located in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. Of the three Chinatowns, Sunset Park is the least touristy, and the most completely and utterly Fuzhou-ified. Passing along the main drag, 8th Avenue, the glottal sounds of the Fuzhou dialect fill the surroundings with hardly a word of Mandarin, Cantonese, or English spoken at all.***
Sunset Park is the place to go for the most uncensored Chinese experience New York City has to offer. As the youngest of New York’s three main Chinatowns, Sunset Park is home to a higher percentage of new arrivals than the other two Chinese enclaves. And without bona fide “tourist attractions,” Sunset Park’s Chinatown is NYC’s least frequented by outsiders. Businesses such as fish markets and 网吧 (internet cafes) appear to have been lifted right off the ground from Fuzhou and transplanted into South Brooklyn. Most restaurants serve an array of authentic Fuzhou cuisine and snacks, making it quite possibly the only Chinatown in America where one would be hard pressed procure that famous chicken of General Tso. And most shop owners don’t even bother to translate the Chinese characters on storefront signs into English.
To reach the Sunset Park Chinatown, take the D train to 9th Avenue and walk one street west to 8th Ave. Chinatown runs north and south from 42nd Street to 68th Street.
***It is a common misconception that the Fuzhou population residing in New York (and all over the US) does not speak Mandarin. While the Fuzhou dialect is the preferred language, since the linguistic reforms of the 1950’s the vast majority of Fuzhou children have grown up bilingual, speaking both Mandarin and the dialect. Only a tiny percentage do not speak Mandarin, and this percentage is likely lower than that of those who speak Mandarin but no dialect. |
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| I stopped in for a meal in Sunset Park and you can probably imagine the novelty for the wait staff upon encountering a 6-foot white guy who can speak about 10 sentences in the Fuzhou dialect. After exhausting my limited arsenal of dialect, I chatted in Mandarin with the staff and several of the other diners, who were able to provide me with a detailed update on the constant state of construction in my old neighborhood in Fuzhou. Being several thousand miles away from your former home, and encountering a room full of complete strangers who recognize down to the address exactly where you used to live and work is an odd sensation to say the least.
The food served at the restaurant was typical Fuzhou fare. On the left are wontons, which in Fuzhou are referred to as 扁肉. The broth has a unique flavor which tastes quite different from standard wontons, or 混沌. Interestingly, the word 扁肉 is generally not understood outside of Fujian province, and the only place outside of Fujian (China included) I’ve seen it on a menu is New York.
On the right is a 包子 (bao), a steamed dumpling, common throughout China, but regionalized such that there is flavors vary from province to province (and country to country). The Fuzhou style 包子 is filled with sweetened pork, although quite different from the more common Cantonese 叉烧包 (cha shao bao), frequently served in most American Chinatowns. |
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| Similar to the “Four Choise and Soup All Day Lunch Box,” many restaurants in Sunset Park also offer 中国式快餐 (Chinese fast food). 快餐 is common throughout China, and can be thought of as the Chinese buffet which is actually Chinese (as opposed to your typical US Chinese buffet which is about as American as Hot Pockets). Also, 快餐 restaurants rarely offer “all you can eat” deals (another very American concept), and instead either charge per serving or offer a package such as 4 servings plus rice and soup for a set price. With stir-fried green veggies, pork fat, squid, and whole fish, this Sunset Park buffet looks just as it would back in Fuzhou. |
With its three bustling Chinatowns, each swelling larger every day, the Chinese are increasingly expanding their stake in the ethnic mosaic of New York City. Even in neighborhoods which have not been traditionally inhabited by Chinese, it can be difficult to find a street corner in New York where the sounds of Mandarin, or Cantonese, or the Fuzhou dialect cannot be heard. Much has been written about the Chinese (and specifically the Fuzhou) immigration pipeline into New York City, and further reading, I would recommend The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe (which I reviewed in July) or The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee. I still have more to report from my recent trip to the East Coast, and I’ll try to have additional posts in the weeks to come.
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01.17.10
Posted in Travel Log at 1:37 pm by Benjamin Ross
With the ease of international travel in the 21st Century, as an American it’s easy to forget the array of urban tourism that the United States has to offer. It had been since my roadtrip from Kansas to California just upon college graduation in 2003 that I had embarked on a true multi-stop adventure on American soil. So with two weeks off work over the holidays, I set off on a journey down the American East Coast, taking me through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Here are some of the photo highlights from the trip.
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| The first stop on my trip was Boston. Here’s a shot I took from the plane upon descent into Logan International Airport. |
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| Reno, NV likes to bill itself as the biggest little city in the world. I find this title more fitting for Boston. Although it is a prominent educational, cultural, and economic center, Boston, the city itself, is quite small in comparison to other major American metropolises. Even when you assume several of the surrounding municipalities figure into the urban core, Boston is still one of the US’s smaller major cities in terms of both area and population. |
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| One reason for Boston’s compactness is that much of its street grids align up with their original designs from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This means lots of narrow windy streets, some barely wide enough for a single car to meander through. |
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| The result of Boston’s old street grid is that it is arguably the most pedestrian friendly major city in the country (San Francisco also comes to mind). In four days, I was able to cover just about every city neighborhood on foot. |
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| With its curvy street grid and bodies of water surrounding the downtown, Boston is not an easy city in which to find one’s orientation. You actually have to know where places are physically located, as opposed to simply going by an address or cross street like you would in New York or Chicago. |
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| Boston’s downtown is a fine conglomeration of buildings from the past four centuries mixed in with modern high-rises. |
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| I spent several hours on my first day exploring Beacon Hill, one of Boston’s most affluent neighborhoods, with its federal-style rowhouses dating back to the 1700’s. |
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| Another one of my favorite walks in Boston was the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, a long, and uncharacteristically straight residential boulevard just west of downtown. Com Ave’s straightness is due to it being built on reclaimed marshland added to Boston in the 1800’s, hence many years after the original street plan was laid out. |
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| For my travels outside of the downtown area, I relied mostly on the “T,” Boston’s rapid transit system. A week pass on the “T” was only $15 and I generally found it easy to travel wherever I needed to go within Boston as well as several suburban locations, by using the “T.” As far as American transit systems go, the “T” is pretty swank, with comparatively modern infrastructure and rolling stock. I also got a rise out of the public service recorded announcements from Boston’s chief of police constantly reminding everybody to “pay youa faaaa.” |
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| Boston’s compactness makes it an ideal city for rail transit and the “T”’s per/mile ridership is higher than any American city other than New York. An extensive commuter rail network also connects surrounding suburbs and neighboring communities. |
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| Boston’s West End was a downtown working class neighborhood, which before its demolition, was home to much of the city’s Italian-American population. In the wake of Urban Renewal, and among much controversy, the West End was raised in the late 1950’s, ostensibly to make way for the Massachusetts General Hospital. Many elderly Bostonians will tell you the real reason was racism and xenophobia towards Italians and immigrants. This lone tenement is the last standing remnant of what used to be the West End. |
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| Overall, I have to say Boston is one of my favorite American cities. It has a historical charm, but also modern sights and sounds, local flavor but also a wide array of foreign influence, and an active street life redolent of Old World cities. Four days was the perfect amount of time to experience Boston, but I’m sure I’ll be back again to experience all New England has to offer. |
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| The second stop on my trip was New York. My plan was to do as much exploration of the five boroughs as I could fit into 4 or 5 days. |
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| At 71,000 people per square mile, Manhattan is one of the densest places on the planet, including Third World nations. To put that perspective, population density of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh is only 60,000 per square mile. |
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| What I found most interesting in my exploration of Manhattan was its economic diversity. In addition to the nation’s most expensive homes and commercial real estate, Manhattan is also home to numerous housing projects, immigrant enclaves, and various other low income dwellings. |
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| As much as I try to avoid tourist traps, New York does posses several spots which I would have kicked myself for not visiting, such as Grand Central Terminal (pictured above). While many American cities still have sumptuous rail depots such as Grand Central, the true beauty is that in New York (and much of the East Coast) these stations are still in heavy use by both commuters and long distance travelers, whereas in most other regions of the country rail transport has long since been replaced by airplane and automobile. |
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| I knew I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, but with a line wrapping itself halfway around Battery Park, an official visit to Lady Liberty would have likely consumed an entire day of my trip. Solution: The Staten Island Ferry. The ferry, which is the only form of public transportation to connect Staten Island with the rest of the city, is a free service (probably because nobody would ever go to Staten Island if it wasn’t free) and provides impeccable views of the Statue of Liberty as well as the skylines of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. |
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| Times Square is New York’s be-all-end-all tourist trap. By that, I mean everybody who visits the city clamors to see it, while everybody who actually lives there avoids it like the plague. While I can imagine the crowds and tourists becoming annoying after a while, I could certainly get used to receiving all of my news in ticker format. |
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| New York has, by leaps and bounds, the most comprehensive public transit system in the United States. My 7 day transit pass cost $28, and there wasn’t a single location I could not conveniently reach via subway. |
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| Once you leave Manhattan, many of the trains are elevated, which make for ideal sightseeing excursions. This “L” goes through Williamsburg, one of the more intriguing neighborhoods in Brooklyn, with adjacent communities of Hispanics, Hipsters, and Hasidic Jews. |
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| New York has more Jews than any city in the world other than Tel-Aviv, and one telltale sign was this dumpster, on which is written in Hebrew “shomer shabbos.” If you’re Jewish (or if you’ve seen the Big Lebowski) you probably know this implies “don’t even think about using this dumpster during the Sabbath.” |
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| Also in Williamsburg’s Hasidic neighborhood, I passed this specialty shop selling “designer coats.” Every single garment in the shop was pitch black. They were all out of thongs. |
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| In addition to its concentration of Jews, New York also now has more Chinese residents than any other city in the Western Hemisphere. New York’s original Chinatown is located within a sprawling expanse of tenement housing stock on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In the past, this area was home to Manhattan’s Little Italy, which except for a 2 or 3 streets, has now been completely swallowed up by the expanding Chinatown. |
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| Referring to “Chinatown” in New York is becoming increasingly ambiguous as there are now actually three bustling Chinese enclaves in the Big Apple. In addition to the community on the Lower East Side, Chinatowns also exist in the Flushing, Queens (pictured above), and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I am working on a more detailed post on Chinese New York which should be coming in a few days. |
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| Due to the constant influx of undocumented immigrants, there is no feasible way to accurately count the number of Chinese currently residing in New York City. However, I’m willing to guess that as far as New York’s foreign population goes, the Chinese are definitely top 10, possibly top 5. |
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| One unique aspect of the New York Chinese community is that it is predominantly of Fuzhou origin. Whereas most American Chinatowns are still composed of a majority Cantonese (specifically Taishan) population, New York’s Cantonese population has been dwarfed by pipeline of Fuzhounese pouring in over the past several decades. |
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| By my count, Queens is quite possibly the single most ethnically diverse locale on the planet. After my trip to Flushing, I followed the elevated tracks of the 7 train on foot, en route through a kaleidescope of ethnic neighborhoods such as Corona (pictured above), one of New York’s main Hispanic enclaves. |
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| Due to its population density, New York is one of the few American cities where mass scale street vending is feasible. Vendors such as the one pictured above, can be found on nearly every street corner hawking fruits, vegetables, hot dogs, falafel, DVD’s, watches, bagels, iPods, women’s underwear, or a multitude of other household goods (yeah, it’s basically just like China in that respect). |
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| Relative to its population density, New York actually appears to have a relatively low number of homeless people living in the streets. I noticed this to be the case even when visiting poor neighborhoods in the South Bronx. |
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| While I was able to see the majority of Boston in 4 days, this was certainly not enough time to adequately explore America’s largest metropolis. New York is enormous, in terms of area, population, and population density. This was only my second visit to the Big Apple, but I can say with Schwarzeneger-esque certainty “I’ll be back.” |
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| Next stop on my trip was Philadelphia, and what would be more fitting than commencing my travels with an authentic Philly cheesesteak? |
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| Philly has 2 “famous” cheesesteak spots, Pat’s and Geno’s, both located on the same street in South Philly. Locals have conflicting viewpoints on which is tastier, and many will even tell you that the best cheesesteaks are at neither. I tried Pat’s. It tasted about as good as it looks in this picture. |
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| Philly is an interesting town, and the setup actually reminded me a lot of Chicago, with a downtown of skyscrapers and high-rises, surrounded by a checkerboard of diverse neighborhoods. |
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| The difference however, is that much of Philadelphia is still suffering from the massive white flight and ensuing urban decay of the 50’s and 60’s. This has left many of its neighborhoods outside of Center City (that’s what Philadelphians call their downtown) in a crumbling state of neglect. |
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| Center City, for the most part, is still in healthy shape as droves of city dwellers and suburbanites alike flock downtown every day for work, shopping, and nightlife. |
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| Philadelphia doesn’t receive many accolades for its architecture, but I was a big fan of the downtown skyline, especially with its matching blue toned buildings. |
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| In the geographic center of Philadelphia stands the City Hall, which when it was built in 1901, was the tallest habitable building in the world. |
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| Alright, I know I’m going to get some heat for this, but the Liberty Bell is possibly the most overrated tourist attraction I have ever seen. Even after reading its history I can’t get over the fact that a) it’s basically just a bell and b) it’s much smaller than it appears in middle school social studies textbooks. I can think of at least 10 tourist attractions in Philadelphia alone which are more worthwhile. |
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| One of which is Elfreth’s Alley (pictured above), which is claimed by many to be the oldest continually inhabited residential street in the United States. Most of the housing stock dates back to the early 1700’s. |
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| Another Philadelphia neighborhood which I joyfully explored for several hours in single-digit temperatures was Society Hill, which contains the largest concentration of 18th and early 19th century housing in the United States. |
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| In the intermediary area between the skyscrapers and antebellum row houses of Center City and the sprawling tracts of suburbia, much of Philadelphia is in a state of severe urban decay. |
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| Scenes such as these two above, taken in North Philly near the campus of Temple University, are common throughout much of the city. Philadelphia’s former status as a manufacturing powerhouse and the ensuing evaporation of jobs to globalization has left the city with a massive population urban poor inhabiting the inner city’s dilapidated housing stock. |
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| Philadelphia’s economic troubles are overtly apparent in its public transit system, appropriately called “SEPTA.” SEPTA stands for “Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority,” but to most people the name sounds more like a particular adjective which could accurately be used to describe the system as a whole. Fares are still paid using tokens, and day passes must be shown to SEPTA employees, who using a whole puncher, hand mark each pass before allowing the customer to pass the turnstile. Unlike the Chicago “L” however (America’s other ghetto-fabulous public transit system) SEPTA’s coverage is not comprehensive, and consists of only two subway lines which intersect at a massive unused underground mall/public urination ground below City Hall (pictured above). Thus, unlike New York or Boston (or Chicago), I would imagine surviving in Philadelphia without a car would present significant transportation obstacles. |
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| Philadelphia does show signs of a resurgence, and areas such as Northern Liberties (pictured above) are experiencing gentrification as young professionals flock back to the city. Philadelphia’s proximity to New York and DC, and its affordable housing (not to mention its GDP, which is still 4th in the nation) are proving to be driving factors in Philly’s urban revival. |
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| Let’s put all that serious stuff aside and get back to what’s truly important–food. This was Philly Cheesesteak #2, purchased from a street vendor in Center City. At $4, it was about half the price of the cheesetake from Pat’s…and it tasted about half as good. |
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| The real culinary sleeper from my trip however was the Italian hoagie which I sampled in South Philly’s Italian Market. Although the cheesesteak receives most of the fanfare, I’d say I enjoyed the hoagie almost as much. |
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| I planned my stay in Philadelphia to coincide with the Kansas v. Temple basketball game at the Liacouras Center. As Jayhawks fans from DC, New York, and Philly all descended on the Temple campus filling up half the arena, this quite possibly was the largest congregation of Kansans ever assembled in the city of brotherly love. KU won 84-52 |
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| “Aaaaaa-driannnnnnn”…(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) |
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| Philadelphia is definitely the most underrated city on the East Coast, and possibly in the country as a who;e. People love to rag on it, and with good reason. It’s old, grey, run down, and is easily overshadowed by New York, DC, and Boston. But Philly has a unique charm (not to mention enormous historical appeal) which comes in no small part from playing second fiddle to its neighbors. It’s hip, affordable, unpretentious, and at its heart, a down home blue collar All-American kinda town. With America’s inner cities currently in the midst of massive urban regeneration, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Philadelphia as a major benefactor of this trend. |
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| The final stop on my trip was Baltimore, where I only had two days to spend before heading back to Chicago. The highlight of my Baltimore stay was the Lexington Market, a venue of exchange which has existed on its current site downtown since 1782. Today, the majority of the patronage and many of the businesses owners are African American. |
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| From crabcakes to fresh vegetables to homemade doughnuts to pig legs, and even raccoon meat (no joke), you can find just about anything at the Lexington Market. Mixed in with grocery vendors are restaurant stalls which hawk prepared Baltimore seafood, Southern style fried foods, and yes, American Chinese food, which these days seems to be just about everywhere. |
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| This shot is from one of the Southern joints. I had tried pig tail before (although never at an American restaurant), and I don’t even know what smoked jowels are. Unfortunately at the time of this picture, I was already stuffed full of crabcakes (another highlight of Baltimore) so not much to report here on taste. But it does look enticing though, eh? |
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| After 4 days in Boston, 4 in New York, 4 in Philly, and 2 in Baltimore (pictured above) I headed back home. With so many major cities in close proximity, all easily accessible with public transportation, the American East Coast makes an ideal destination for a multi-week backpacking excursion.
As a side note, readers might be wondering why I did not include Washington in my itinerary, and the answer is twofold. Firstly, I had already been to Washington, twice. The other cities (sans New York) I was all visiting for the first time. Secondly, a focus of my trip was to explore the older of the urban cores of the United States, thus my stop in Baltimore as opposed to the nation’s capital. Expect more posts on more specific aspects of the trip in weeks to come. |
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01.02.10
Posted in Travel Log at 9:13 am by Benjamin Ross
Time for another short update…I’ll have more thorough write-ups and pictures once I get back to Chicago. I’m in Philadelphia now, after 4 days in New York City. I had previously been to New York only once, so I spent a majority of my time exploring, riding around on the subway and exploring the city on foot. In New York, I was especially interested in its Chinese communities, as the major influxes of immigration for the past couple decades have been coming from Fuzhou, and I spent considerable time exploring New York’s three Chinatowns. My travels in New York also reinforced how effective public transportation can be when people reside in high density urban areas, as opposed to the suburban sprawl which has overtaken the US throughout most of the last half century.
Here in Philly and at my next stop in Baltimore, I plan to explore a cities which have seen more prosperous days in years past. My initial impression of Philadelphia is that the city looks and feels a lot like Chicago, only without much growth and development over the past fifty years, and considerably less ethnic diversity. I’ve already had my first cheesesteak (Pat’s) and today am going to see my first Kansas basketball game since moving back to the US (They’re playing Temple). Go Hawks! I’ll have more in-depth updates when I get back.
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12.27.09
Posted in Travel Log at 10:10 am by Benjamin Ross
Well, it’s a rainy Sunday morning, and I’m just about to wrap up my four plus day stay in Boston. I’ve spent most of my time wandering various sections of Boston and the surrounding communities and have taken a lot of pictures, but am going to wait until I get back to Chicago for a more thorough update. I must say though that Boston is definitely one of the more livable cities in the United States. Thanks to it being so old and so much of it developing before the automobile, most of the city is a maze of winding narrow streets, all scrunched together in no particular pattern, with many of them leading either in circles or dead ends. I’m sure driving is horrendous, but as far as exploring the city via foot and public transportation, nothing could be more ideal.
I’ve spent the past four days exploring some of the oldest (and best preserved) luxury neighborhoods in the country, such as Beacon Hill, and my own personal favorite, the South End, a well as some of the more run down parts such as Roxbury and Dorchester, where my Grandpa (and most elder Bostonian Jews) grew up. I was warned by several people not to explore these neighborhoods out of safety concerns, but have found that the hoodier parts of Boston are not nearly as scary as some of the neighborhoods on the South and West Side of Chicago I’ve had to travel through for work. The major reason for this I am postulating is that Boston was never as heavily industrial as Chicago, and therefore the deindustrialization of the second half of the 21st Century didn’t hit quite so hard. In this respect, I am quite eager to see the contrast with Philadelphia, which I am guessing will have as much, if not even more, blight than Chicago.
Boston also has an excellent smattering of ethnicities. Unlike Chicago where ethnic boundaries generally have clear boundaries and don’t mix, Boston’s ethnic enclaves feel more eclectic. On one street you might see a Brazilian restaurant, a Chinese bakery, and an Eastern European deli. The Chinatown is located essentially downtown, in an area which is gentrifying. I encountered significant quantities of Chinese people, and Chinese businesses all throughout the city, so I’m guessing the population isn’t necessarily centered around Chinatown. I also visited the new satellite Chinatown located in Quincy, south of Boston proper. It isn’t large, but I imagine as rents are increasing in Chinatown, more and more Chinese are relocating to Quincy. Seemed like most residents of both Chinatowns were either from Taishan or Fuzhou.
In a few hours I’m off to New York City, currently the home of the largest population of Chinese in the Western Hemisphere. Chinese New York is especially of interest to me because it is the hub of the Fuzhou > US immigration ring which spans the globe, sends millions of dollars to remittances to China, and millions of pounds of General Tso’s chicken down the throats of Americans in cities and small towns all across the US. I’m also going to be looking at two universities, visiting some old friends, and hopefully exploring as much of the city as possible via foot and public transportation as I’ve done in Boston. I’m going to be taking the infamous Fung Wa bus to New York, which several Bostonians have advised me against doing, but hey, how much more dangerous could it be than one of those rural buses in China? More updates to come.
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12.22.09
Posted in Announcements, Travel Log at 10:22 pm by Benjamin Ross
This past Thursday I sent in my last grad school application. On Friday I turned thirty. And tomorrow I am embarking on my first significant journey of my thirties. It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled extensively in the United States, with my last major trip being my road trip from Kansas to California in 2003. And with all the China excursions in the middle, it’s due time to explore more of my home country.
One of the most crucial skills I learned during my 3 plus years in China was the benefits of efficient circuitous traveling. In other words, choosing a starting and ending point, then traveling from start to finish with short overland trips, stopping frequently along the way, and always leaving room for improvisation. By my measures, the only region in the US which this can be accomplished with any degree of efficiency is the East Coast. So here’s my itinerary.
I fly into Boston the morning of 12/23. I head back to Chicago from Baltimore on 1/5. In between, I’m also planning multiple day stays in New York City and Philadelphia.
The reasons and goals for this trip are multi-fold. First and foremost, over the past year I have been reading extensively from the literature of urban sociology. As this is my hopeful future field of study, I want to take the chance to experience some of the earliest examples of urbanization in the Americas. Thus, I’m going to be shying away from the typical tourist draws and instead focusing on ethnic enclaves, transportation systems, sites of gentrification, areas which have experienced significant urban decay, and several of the districts and neighborhoods specifically studied in Sociology texts I have read. And yes, I will be visiting multiple Chinatowns along the way.
I’m also going to be catching up with various family and friends whom I haven’t visited in a very long time. My uncle my six cousins will all be in Boston for the holidays; Yueting, my best friend from Fuqing, is currently studying in Philadelphia; and I have various friends from college, Kansas City, and Jewish summer camp smattered throughout the East Coast. I’m also going to be scoping out several of the schools where I applied.
From a logistical standpoint, I am curious how my travel methods and techniques I utilized in China will translate into American public transit systems. I have lived without a car since I moved to Chicago in 2007 and am eager to further test what I hope will be the future of transportation in the United States. The circuitous travel method would never work in the Midwest, South, or West without a car, but I am confident I should be able to make all my destinations out East via subways, commuter trains, and of course the now-famous Fung Wa Chinatown bus service.
I’m going to be writing updates along the way, but probably will hold off on thorough write ups until I am back home since I’m going to be squeezing a lot into 2 weeks. I’ll also be tweeting a lot, so follow @BenRoss if you want to keep tabs. Oh, and as for finishing 《奋斗》, that’s going on the backburner until I get back. More updates from the road. Leaving for Boston in less than 12 hours.
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12.13.09
Posted in Pop Culture at 3:54 pm by Benjamin Ross
Well, I’m just over halfway finished with 《奋斗》 and wanted to check in with a few updates and observations. So far, I still agree with everything I previously wrote as to watching the show being an extremely efficient acquisition method. I’ve been spending about two hours a day to watching the show (time I probably should be devoting to grad school essays), and have already noticed improvements in my speaking ability, listening, and vocabulary.
As for the show itself, it’s entertaining…for me. If I were an educated Chinese person, I probably would have given up watching at about the fifth or sixth episode. First of all, the plot, while never dull, repeatedly rests on a series of ridiculously coincidental events. The main character, 陆涛, is an aspiring architectural student and just after he graduates college, discovers that his biological father 徐志森, whom he had been told was dead, was actually alive in the US, and moving back to China. 徐志森 just happens to be a millionaire real estate developer, and offers 陆涛 a job working for his company. After working for 徐志森 for several months, 陆涛 receives an offer to work for one of the top architectural firms in China. He leaves his 徐志森’s company to take the job. However, soon after he starts the new job, he is informed of an impending project with a new client. Who is this new client? Yup, it’s 徐志森’s company. So 陆涛 starts cooperating with 徐志森 on the new project, but soon faces a new nemesis. His stepfather, 陆亚迅, just happens to work for the 规划局 (Planning Bureau) and attempts to thwart 陆涛 and 徐志森’s real estate venture. The situation further complicated when 陆涛’s ex-girlfriend, 米莱, whom he had dumped in favor of her best friend 夏琳, goes into the real estate business (her father is also a millionaire real estate kingpin), solely as an chance to win back 陆涛.
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| Clockwise from the top left, 陆涛, 夏琳, 向南, 华子, 杨晓芸, and 米莱 |
In another unrelated scene, 杨晓芸 and 夏琳,who are close friends, run into each other at the abortion clinic (not entirely unbelievable based on the prevalence of abortion in the Middle Kingdom). However, neither of them is aware the other is pregnant, even though they talk every day. They both just happen to be waiting in the same line to get their abortions, on the same day, at the same abortion clinic. Now I guess this would all be somewhat plausible, if the story happened in some small village where everybody knows each other. But 《奋斗》 takes place in Beijing.
My other criticism of the show is its underlying message: essentially that the key to happiness is to make as much money is possible so you can buy a nicer house and car than your peers. In Chinese, this is called 瞎攀比, a phrase which is evoked frequently throughout the show. This is especially depicted by a character named 杨晓芸, who marries 陆涛’s friend 向南, shortly after their first date. 杨晓芸 is the prototypical 80s generation materialistic bitch, and constantly scolds 向南 because he doesn’t make as much money as 陆涛, and he drives an ugly old station wagon, as opposed to 陆涛’s Audi (陆涛 became a millionnaire just over a year out of college, so he’s not exactly an easy act to follow). 向南 for his part, is unsuave, whiney, oblivious to the needs of women, and convinced his wife regards their marriage as “heaven.” The couple are constantly at ends with one other, and 杨晓芸 refers to her marriage as the worst decision of her life. In one scene, while shopping in a mall, 向南 makes a comment about 杨晓芸’s mother. 杨晓芸 starts hitting and slapping him in public, as 向南 yells back, and a crowd gathers. The scene ends with 向南 crouched on the floor, surrounded by bystanders snapping photos with cell phones, crying, and yelling “She stole my heart. She stole my heart.” The two are painful to watch and I am eagerly awaiting the episode where they finally get divorced and vow never speak to one another again.
All that being said, the show does have its bright spots. My favorite character is the third lead male role, 华子. Unlike 陆涛 and 向南, 华子 did not go to college, and therefore has to take the blue collar struggle through life. He gets fired from his job as a used car salesman, and decides to open a barbershop, and then a cake store, with his girlfriend Lu Lu. Lu Lu is sweet, caring, not materialistic, and unlike the others, is not from Beijing (coincidence???). She appreciates 华子 for his character, (not his bank account), and the two have the healthiest relationship in the show. 华子 for his part is a joker, and provides most of the show’s comic relief, often in a self-deprecating fashion, as he is the only one who is not 白领 (white collar). He’s also by far and away the best actor of the cast.
《奋斗》 is entertaining enough that I’m going to continue watching the entire series, but from an artistic perspective, I’m starting to comprehend why my Chinese friends always tell me that Chinese shows are so lacking in quality. The cinematography is fair, the acting for the most part is sub-par, and the plot could have been concocted by a high school screenwriting class. Multiple Chinese friends have recommended that I watch the show 《蜗居》 which they say is both artistically worthwhile, and extremely controversial right now. So I think that’s going to be the plan once I finish with 《奋斗》 . In the meantime, I plan to watch 《奋斗》 in its entirety, and would be interested to hear comments from anybody else who might be watching.
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12.04.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:11 am by Benjamin Ross
Well, it’s that time of the year again. We are near the end of the college football regular season, and it’s about to re-open the annual BCS bitchathon: how the system isn’t fair; how teams from non-BCS schools get marginalized by the process; how we should just stop all the insanity and move to a playoff. Ever since I was about 6 years old, college football has been my favorite sport of choice, the dynasties, the rivalries, the fight songs, the running quarterback; College football has all the excitement of the NFL, but also packed with the tradition that made America fall in love with baseball…which is why it is so difficult to experience the utter mess that the sport turns into every December.
All things considered, the BCS is actually going to work out pretty well this year. Barring the unexpected, the two best teams from the two best conferences (the Big 12 and SEC) are going to meet in a be all end all, national title game. Sure, TCU, Boise State, or Cincinnati could probably take 2 out 10 against Texas or Florida, but put any of those three teams in the Big 12 or SEC, and I give it 1 out of 100 odds they run the table. But I digress. More often than not, the BCS does not work out as cleanly as it will this season (assuming Texas beats Nebraska) and a system which is intended to leave us with a clear cut champion often raises more questions than it answers. With all the annual talk of reforming the college football postseason, I would like to offer two solutions to the post-season predicament, the first would be my own choice which I think will appeal to some long time fans and most purists, but not the public at large. The second will appeal to a much broader audience, and would probably be the most practical way to end the controversy once and for all. Either one would be an improvement on the system currently in place.
Solution 1
I grew up a Missouri Tigers fan in the 1980’s. Along with Kansas and Kansas State, Mizzou was a perennial bottom dweller in the old Big 8 Conference. We were usually good for a couple non-conference wins, an easy victory over K-State, and if it was an exceptionally good year, possibly beating Iowa State and Kansas. It seemed like just about every year we were 3-8. On the other end of the spectrum were Nebraska and Oklahoma. Back then, the winner of the Big 8 automatically qualified for the Orange Bowl and for the first 10 years of my life (the entire decade of the 1980’s) the Big 8 was represented in the Orange Bowl exclusively by either the Huskers or the Sooners. I have vivid memories of watching my struggling Tigers year by year play against the two perennial Big 8 powers. Usually somewhere in the middle of the third quarter when the score was 49-7, fans from the other side would begin throwing oranges out onto the field in anticipation of their looming Big 8 championship. See, back then going to the Orange Bowl actually meant something. It was the prize for making it through a grueling Big 8 season on top, and afforded the winner a chance to prove their muster against an at-large power such as Miami or Notre Dame. Sure, there was still a figurative national championship, but the Orange Bowl in and of itself was a goal any Big 8 team shot for from the first day of the season. As a kid, I remember dreaming of a Chiefs Super Bowl, a Royals repeat in the World Series, and ultimately a Missouri victory in the Orange Bowl so that I could experience the joy that fell on Oklahoma and Nebraska fans every other year.
The thing is, college football has always had a unique distinction among spectator sports in that multiple teams can finish each season with a win. It doesn’t always have to be all about being #1, especially when you have 120 teams in the FBS. And college bowl games were a perfect system for multiple teams to go out on top. The bottom line was that the old college system was unique. You didn’t have a clear cut “#1” each season, but you did have several champions. And to the fans and the players, those championships, be it the Orange, Sugar, Rose, Cotton, or Fiesta Bowl, meant something. Back then, even just the opportunity to play in a bowl meant something. In 1985 there were 15 bowl games. Today there are 34. Over half of all 1-A teams make it to the postseason, and any team which can finish 6-6 and at least 8th in a 12 team conference has a pretty good shot at making it in.
These days bowl games are a consolation. Does anybody even remember who won the Orange Bowl last season? I sure couldn’t without checking Wikipedia. In fact, who knows if it’s even called the Orange Bowl anymore? They’ve probably renamed it the Geiko.com-save-an-extra-15% Winter Classic. Between the elimination of conference tie–ins for major bowls, overblown corporate sponsorships, and the cornucopia of new bowl games featuring mediocre teams with losing conference records, everything which was once unique and special about the bowl system has long expired. So here’s solution 1:
-Get rid of half of the bowl games, including all of the ones with .com in their name.
-In order to make the post season, a team must post at least 7 wins against FBS teams and a .500 winning percentage in conference games.
-Speaking of which, what is the deal with this Football Bowl Championship Subdivision (FBS) nonsense? Let’s save ourselves some syllables and go back to calling it “Division 1-A.”
-Big 12 winner goes to the Orange Bowl; SEC champ to the Sugar; Rose Bowl reverts to Pac 10 vs. Big 10. -Divide the remaining bowls up with subsequent conference tie-ins, so nobody can get complained of being snubbed because they couldn’t promise to sell enough tickets.
I like this system because it brings back what was once unique about college football. True, there wouldn’t always be a clear-cut champion, but is that really all that different from the current system? Remember when Auburn went undefeated and didn’t get a crack at the title, or when LSU won it with 2 losses? If you’re going to do bowl games, at least allow them the significance they deserve…which brings me to solution 2, which involves eliminating the bowl games altogether.
Solution 2
If the goal of the college football season is to determine a national champion (something I don’t agree with, but I know many fans would) then the only fair way to end the season is through a playoff. Consensus about a playoff is pretty one-sided. Other than the corporate executives with their sponsorships of all those silly bowl games, college football fans across the country are generally in agreement that a playoff would be the ideal way to end the college football season. The question then lies, how do we structure the playoff? I believe there is an extremely simple and fair solution to this problem, and it would make postseason college football one of the most exciting and anticipated events in sports.
Before we go into the details of Solution 2, let’s take a look at the restructuring of college football which has been occurring over the past two decades, and which will be integral for this plan to work. Back in the old days, most conferences had between 8 and 10 teams. In 1991 the SEC became the first conference to expand to 12 with the addition of South Carolina and Arkansas. This expansion also allowed the SEC to become the first conference to host a postseason championship between the winners of its two divisions. While this was a marvelous idea in theory, SEC championships, like BCS bowls, are hardly memorable unless they have national championship implications. The Big 12, and then the ACC, later followed the SEC’s footsteps in expanding to 12 team conferences with a championship game to conclude their seasons. But again, these championships hold little significance when the national championship is not on the line.
In order for Solution 2 to work, this movement towards 12 team conferences will need to be continued to the point where Division 1-A (sorry, we’re not calling it FBS anymore) consists of 5 “power conferences” each with exactly 12 teams each. The good news, is we’re already half way there. The question however remains what to do with the 2 conferences which still don’t have a full house. Here are my suggestions:
-Put Notre Dame in the Big 10. The Big 10 has wanted the Irish for years, and with their present stretch of mediocrity, it wouldn’t be too surprising if at some point NBC dropped their television contract, which could hopefully necessitate Notre Dame finally joining a conference.
-Expand the Pac 10 to the Pac 12. There is no shortage of quality programs out West, and the Pac 10 shouldn’t have trouble finding 2 schools who would fit right in. My vote would be for BYU and Boise State. BYU has been the most consistent non-BCS conference school in college football history. They have won a national championship, produced a Heisman Trophy Winner, and year after year show they can play with top tier national competition. And for Boise… since they joined the WAC in 2002, the Broncos have miraculously lost only 1 conference game. While this alone might not make them a national contender, it does render them at very least, an above average Pac 10 team. Moreover Boise’s football success is not entirely a recent phenomenon. The Broncos also pulled 4 undefeated conference seasons in the 1970’s as a member of the Big Sky. Combine that with a BCS bowl win in 2007, and you have a program certainly deserving a spot in the new Pac 12.
-Big East. The Big East is currently one of the 6 BCS conferences, but in my plan, it’s going to get left out of the “Power 5.” The Big East is a basketball conference, and it always has been. Back when Miami and Virginia Tech were members, the Big East had two consistent football powers, which is probably to this day why they still have a spot in the BCS. With the Hokies and Hurricanes gone, the Big East is now an easy ticket to the BCS for whichever above average team decides to run the table any particular season. Under Solution 2, the Big East joins as the WAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, MAC, and Sunbelt as 1-A conferences without the “power conference” distinction.
Ok, so let’s just pretend for a minute that Notre Dame is in the Big 10, Boise and BYU become members of the new Pac 12, we now have five 12 team “power conferences” in Division 1-A. We are now left with the perfect scenario for an action packed, equal-opportunity NCAA football playoff. Here’s how it works.
-Scrap the bowl games altogether. If a playoff is implemented, bowl games will lose even the small scrap of relativity they still possess. Sure, college football won’t be the same without the Meinke Car Care Bowl, but the simple fact is that bowl games and a playoff are mutually exclusive.
-With 5 power conferences, each with 12 teams and a championship game, winning the division, and the conference championship game will finally receive the attention and focus that these distinctions warrant. This is because winners of each conference championship will receive 1 of the 5 automatic bids to the 8 team NCAA College Football Playoff.
-Determining the final 3 slots will be done using the existing BCS formula. Yup, you heard right. We aren’t scrapping the BCS completely. The three teams with the highest BCS rating but which did not automatically qualify would receive “wildcard” bids to the playoff. The reason to use the BCS formula to determine the 3 wildcard spots is twofold. Firstly, it allows a team which has put together masterful regular season but lost its conference championship, the chance to make the postseason. Using this season as an example, that would likely mean both Florida and Alabama making the postseason. Secondly, it gives teams from non-power conferences a legitimate chance to make the postseason, as long as they finished the regular season undefeated. Thus, a team like TCU this year would have their shot at the title. Additionally, the BCS formula would be used to determine the seeding order of the playoff, with the three lowest seeds automatically going to the wildcards. This system works because a) automatic bids mean winning in the regular season remains crucial and b) any team can control its own destiny to the postseason. For a power conference team the goal is: win your conference championship ; for a non-power conference team: go undefeated, and under most circumstances this should earn a wildcard.
There you have it. 8 teams, 7 games, 1 undisputed champion and everybody has an fair shot at the prize.
While fixing college football is easy to do on paper, it’s going to be a long time before any new change is implemented. As much as I like to fantasize, solution 1 is never going to happen. Those who prefer a return to the old system are few and far between, and any plan which provides even more controversy over the national championship is unlikely to receive much traction. I bring it up because too often it’s easy for people to forget that at one time college football actually had a postseason which was exciting and memorable.
Solution 2 however, I believe is doable, and in effect, we are already halfway there. The movement towards 12 team conferences is already halfway complete, and with the current trends in college football economics, I wouldn’t be surprised if the other 2 conferences were to follow suit sometime in the not too distant future.
As for the postseason itself, as fair and logical as I believe Solution 2 is, it’s going to take a lot more than fairness and public opinion to bring about a playoff. College football bowl games are big-time operations which in effect are their own entities separate from any amalgamated system. Convincing executives and investors to scrap the bowl hubbub and big name corporate sponsorships in favor of a playoff system which likely will bear them little benefit is not going to be an easy sell. What’s needed is an entire system overhaul which will likely require decades to implement, prepare for, and to allow time for contracts to expire. If implementing a playoff were that simple, it would have already happened years ago. So for now, all we can do is sit back, dream, and make our picks for the upcoming San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. I wonder what it’s like to win one of those.
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