World Expo in Shanghai
There is a big pit of earth in Shanghai that is being dug furiously in preparation for the World Expo here in 2010. Some believe there will be a huge ramp up till then and what follows will be the denouement.
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Year: 2007
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Unnecessary chaos
East meets west never on the same clock – I think back to E.M. Forster’s Passage to India, where the priest dances wearing socks with clocks near a sign that reads GOD SI LOVE [syc] in an antithesis to Western linear time – I read Jeremy Rifkin’s Time Wars around the same time and understand now, here in China, that there is no synergy between East and West and never will be. When West meets…
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My box of wishes
I dumped all the wishes out of my prayer box the other day in a fit of something. And now my Chinese friends have filled the box with wishes for me – all written in Chinese characters. One of these has now become my sister at large – I text her after she left Shanghai for the states for a man, with only these wishes, “stay single, my friend,” – she wrote back, “I will,…
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“Rachel, Rachel, where are thou?”
“Everywhere unfortunately” wrote my 8th grade teacher – a hottie – on the blackboard in some sort of flirtatious way that was in hindsight inappropriate. And so I met a woman whose name is Rachel, who said “nice name” and sat down across from me and she looked at the prayer box pendant hanging from my neck and said, “I have one the same,” and then simultaneously we both said, “my sister gave it to…
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Mandatory evacuation
I was sitting in a Shanghai office building in a glass conference room when the government issued a mandatory go home now, there is typhoon coming, order and I watched from behind the glass as workers ran down the hall and towards the elevator. I turned to the people I was meeting with, one a Mickey Rourke look alike and asked calmly if we should be panicking at this point or not and all of…
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The riches of water
As in all things in China there is a saying – where there is water there is riches – when a Chinese person found out I was from New Orleans – land of Katrina – and was now sitting as a target for Wipha – she said, “you are fortunate, lots of water.”
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Let the universe guide you
the other day a reporter called and was trying to find the way through a complicated issue – I said, let go of all the chatter and let the force guide you to the answer – he found it lickety split – and there you have it – the noise, the voices, the constant clanging in your head distracts from the way – let the universe guide you was my horoscope today – and then…
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Lost in Translation
A day spent waiting for typhoon Wipha to do her thing again, and a full agenda of meetings where my every word had to be translated once, sometimes twice, and by the end of the day, I felt that much further away from my subject matter as I stared out the window at the wind blowing and the intermitten heavy rainfall. Driving along the roads where people went by on bikes with large umbrellas opened…
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Walk on by Wipha
The preview of coming attractions with floods, torrential rains, high winds by midnight was quiet when that was supposed to be the time we were bracing for the big one – it appears Wipha has skirted Shanghai and for the time being it’s a little quieter than usual because schools closed – and there is speculation we might be getting another bout coming through.
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22 million people and a woman feels safe
We dropped a female friend off at almost 3 this morning to walk home by herself. A city of 22 million and she fears no one. In my city of 250,000, we fear everyone and a women never walks alone at three o’clock in the morning.