We made a visit to the fake market the other night, after I stopped working.  JJ’s dad had to buy some shorts and I wanted to buy some t-shirts.  I had made the mistake of bringing like 3 t-shirts to China for a month-plus trip across the world.  Not the greatest idea considering it takes more than a day to wash a piece of clothes by the time I feed it through the miniature-size washing machine and then hang dry them in the bedroom in our cramped apartment.

The fake market was quite interesting though because this place was drastically different from the other fake market in the more populated Shanghai Science & Technology Museum area.  That place is designed for tourists and foreigners.  It is literally a step away from the underground subway stop and almost everyone working has a relatively decent grasp of English.  Plus, if you look around, half the shoppers or more are not Chinese; a pretty weird scene considering most places in Shanghai never have that kind of odd ratio.  The place we went to, known as Qi Pu Road, is like the fake market for Chinese people.  We did see an occasional foreigner here and there but for the most part, it’s all Chinese people looking for a good bargain.

Unlike the last times I’ve visited this place though, Qi Pu Road seemed to have gotten more crazy and more in your face.  Upon getting out of the taxi, we were immediately bombarded by a very small boy, in raggedy pants and a cheap plastic cup, shoving it in our faces as we stepped out of the taxi.  JJ’s father dropped 1 Yuan into his cup and he promptly moved on to his next victim.

On a side note, I find it hilarious that JJ’s father is the complete opposite of me in regards to giving money to beggars.  He tends to give money to the beggars who seem the most helpless, the most disfigured, the most sad.  We saw a person with literally only their upper body, no arms, no hands, no legs, laying on a piece of dirty cardboard, just beside a crosswalk.  JJ’s father automatically dropped 1 Yuan into her cup.  I, on the other hand, am way more picky and selfish about who I give money to on the street.  If the person is doing absolutely nothing and just begging, I would never give money to that person.  I absolutely can’t stand when mothers have a child in their arms and expect me to drop a coin in their cup just because they can use their small child to garner sorrow.  I do however like to give a coin or two to people on the street who are actually doing something, performing, drawing, performing some service.  Usually if I see anyone playing music, I give them money.

When the taxi drove away, we immediately were approached by several people who were asking us what we wanted.  It must have been funny for JJ’s parents because if they were alone, they definitely would not have received all the attention that we were getting because of my “rich” foreign face.  (Little did they know I was the massively cheap person that I am, in addition to mostly being there because JJ’s dad wanted to buy some shorts).

I noticed a few things right away while we strolled into the big mall and up the stairs as we followed our eventual ‘agent’ who was to help us find what we were looking for (how me makes any money is still a mystery to me).  First, a very large amount of people had tattoos.  Tattoos are not very common in China.  Every once in a while, I will see one, usually on a girl, like in the US.  But very rarely.  Inside this clothing market, I swear, 10-20% of the people I saw had some tattoo somewhere on their body.  Totally unheard of in China.  Second thing that was curious was that most of the guys were totally ripped.  Normally, its not that common to see a Chinese guy who is visibly buff, someone who lifts weights on a day to day basis.  Here however, almost every young guy salesman was visibly buff.  Very odd.  I guess they have so much free time that they use it to work out.

The funniest moment came at the end of our visit.  JJ’s father had already purchased his shorts and I was still looking for a few t-shirts.  We had just been to more than 4 stores, each store going through the same exact process.  First, we would find a shirt on the rack that looked appealing.  We would ask the seller for their biggest size, preferably XXL or XXXL.  They would then come back with an XL and either say that it was plenty big enough, that it would never shrink (which is just a complete lie) or that it would stretch after I wore it.  I would then try it on, after insisting that it was visibly too small.  It would be too small once I put it on (what a surprise), and we would move on to another store.  This store however had a hilarious seller.  Upon inspection of the shirt, we asked to try it on.  She surprisingly said “No”.  We had to go through the bargaining process and settle on a price before I was able to try it on.  We could not even try it on!!!  That was totally ridiculous to me and after a back and forth dispute about how ridiculous that truly was, we motioned to leave.  Immediately after we motioned to leave, she said “ok ok” and let me try on the clothes.  I just could not keep from thinking about if that strategy has ever in her life as a saleswoman worked on a customer, especially a Chinese customer.  To buy something in a conspicuous store, not even try it on, spend minutes of back and forth yelling about the price and do all of this before you even know if the piece of clothing will fit or not?  Utterly insane.

Now though, I have some awesome Shanghai t-shirts

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I didn’t think there would be a sequel to the toilet saga but nevertheless, it shall continue.  This time however, we are dealing with a side of toilets that China thrives on and countries like the US have never really experienced.  I’m talking about the squat toilet of course.

This afternoon, I went with JJ to meet her friend at a pool hall.  We were playing game after game of cutthroat, which was pretty funny considering we were all so bad and kept scratching, making the games last forever.  At some point, I felt the urge to go #2.  It hit me that this place could potentially have bathroom issues.  I started to have a minor panic attack, constantly worrying that the bathroom inside this pool hall might not have toilet paper.   It was definitely not my usual character to get so worried about something like this.  Eventually I ended up buying a pack of tissues from the counter, with the help of JJ, and proceeded to walk towards the back of the hall to the bathroom.

Little did I know that my minor panic attach did not serve me well because I had unfortunately been worrying about the wrong state of affairs.  Instead of thinking about the stupid lack of toilet paper this bathroom might have, which it turned out it did have, when I entered the stall, I found it was the squat toilet that I was to deal with.  Ughh.  First thought was:  ”Oh shit.  I forgot about those.” (no pun intended).

Now I don’t know if I am just out of practice, or if I never really was properly trained in the correct technique, but those kind of toilets are damn impossible to use.  Being a 6′ 3″ guy, a little overweight, not the most flexible guy in the world doesn’t help my situation either.  But still, I really don’t know how one is able to perform without being incredible uncomfortable, strained and constantly worrying about either losing grip of the walls and falling right into the hole or getting your pants filthy as stuff drops from your body to the toilet.  (If that wasn’t graphic enough).

This time though, I topped it off in the disgusting department.  I did my job, had an uncomfortable experience like usual, got up, got my shorts back on and then realized something awful.  My shorts had been laying directly on the ground while I was doing my business.  Instead of just laying on the ground though, because this was a squat toilet, they lay just beside the hole, near to where the foot imprints were.  It just so happens that this area was wet, presumably with pee but I sure hope not (But that little guy on my shoulder keeps telling me it is still pee).  The result:  about two inches of shorts were soaking wet.  As I walked, they touched my leg.  Then I had the even more uncomfortable experience of either hiding it and continue playing pool or reveal this bit of news to JJ and proceed from there.  I ended up telling JJ and continued to play pool.  What fun that was.

The underlying question remains though.  Why in the world would any place still have those kind of toilets.  We were playing pool in a rather fancy place, it certainly wasn’t cheap by Chinese standards and I counted the pool tables, 22 in total.  That is thousands of dollars in equipment, plus rent, tournaments.  This place can’t afford a real toilet?  I’ve heard from multiple people that they prefer the squat toilet to the normal toilet.  Some of them are even my age!  I can understand cultural differences to an extent but this one is beyond me.  Any person of any significant size should find a normal toilet 1000% times more comfortable during the the #2 job.  I just don’t understand.  Are there actually people out there that are comparable to my size that don’t have a real problem with the squat toilet?  Am I missing something here?  Are there any benefits whatsoever to squatting?

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I have had some pretty awful experiences recently with toilets and its gotten me thinking.  What is so god damn difficult about making a toilet?  Why have we advanced at such a ridiculous rate in the past few decades in terms of manufacturing, amazing strides in technology and yet, still I have toilet problems?

If you were to take a ride in the plutonium-powered DeLorean time machine back to the 1970’s (Back to the Future references, FTW!), you essentially would have seen the exact toilets we have now in the US.  Present day Shanghai however is a different story.  I’ve lived in three places on my own here.  The first two places, relatively luxurious three bedroom apartments both had subpar toilets.  I have decided to begin rating toilets on a new scale I developed that tells how often they plug up and this is the problem I have with toilets today.  They simply plug up way way way to much.  Most toilets in the US have a rate of about 10%.  That means 1 out of 10 times, the toilet is plugged and I need a plunger to fix the problem.  (Either that or I just never visit this bathroom again….  This strategy doesn’t work so well in the company office).  The first two places in Shanghai had a rate of 25%.  1 in 4 would require additional plunging!  Lately though, the rating has further slipped.  My current toilet has a 50% rating in this apartment I’m rating.  To make matters worse, it has no plunger so I’m forced to use one of those toilet cleaners as a plunger to prevent disaster.

Speaking of disaster, beware.  Do not eat a meal while you read this next depiction of events.  I fell on the wrong side of the 50% rating this morning.  Naturally, the water in the toilet rose to about half the bowl.  I waited for the backup supply of water to fill, opting to make it a 2nd attempt at flushing without using the modified plunger / toilet cleaner.  I then flushed again when the water had filled in the backup tank, and again, water rose higher in the toilet bowl.  In the past, when it gets this high, it occasionally would eventually go down, flush and my problems would be over.  This time however, I was not so lucky.  The water just kept rising and rising.  At the very same moment, I happened to be looking at something else in the bathroom and when I turned my head, a meniscus was forming inside the toilet bowl.  I leapt forward to grab the toilet cleaner and stuck it in the toilet as soon as I possibly could in order to save spillage from occurring.  The good part was that I averted disaster and it started to flush as the water drained down.  The bad news was that I was so quick to jam that toilet cleaner thing into the toilet, I went too and my hand, all the way up to my wrist, went in the water.  Ewwwwwwww.

So back to the question at hand, which is why are the toilets still so shitty and why are they even worse at places in Shanghai?  Is it really that difficult to make a toilet that doesn’t clog?  If I wrote backend code for Tapulous that only worked 90% of the time, Tapulous would be in a heap of trouble.  If anyone did anything that only worked 90% of the time, they would be in a heap of trouble.  Why do toilets get away with it?  I suggest instead of all these crazy engineers working to perfect the next technology in high-definition tv’s or the next chemical engineers discovering crazy cures for disease, can we assign a group of engineers to create a very inexpensive toilet that always works.  I never want to use a plunger again (or a toilet cleaner)!

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Last night JJ and I, along with her parents, visited a XinJiang restaurant in Shanghai.  For those of you who are not familiar, XinJiang is the area in the northwest part of China. Being so close to other countries means that it has a rich history of diversion, with boatloads of ethnic rivalries between people of many different kinds of cultural backgrounds (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkish and all those crazy countries ending in “stan” with lots of k’s, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan). Also, most of the area is home to religious Muslims, which is a strike contrast to the rest of China, which is pretty much areligious.

In Shanghai however, XinJiang culture and people are pretty much stereotyped and typecasted down to having restaurants and street food and not doing a whole lot else (at least from my own experience). I cannot think of a single instance of seeing someone from XinJiang not working as either a street seller, selling XinJiang meat skewers and barbecue, random Muslim cake or working at XinJiang restaurant. It is kind of an interesting phenomena to look at how XinJiang people in China are treated and thought of, at least in big cities in Shanghai, as compared with the transformation of race relations in the US over the past century. China as a country is remarkably different by the simple fact that there is very little diversity in their people as far as appearance is concerned. They don’t have to deal in large proportions with how people naturally and unnaturally treat other people who look stagnantly different than them. This is why I would get loads of people staring at me when I visited places in and around Tibet, simply because most of them don’t see ‘white’ people very often.

Oh and by the way, XinJiang people are notorious in China for being thieves. I can’t really verify that its actually completely true, although I have a suspicion it is. Basically my interpretation of it is that local governments in Shanghai and elsewhere have in the past struggled with providing equal rights to people from XinJiang. It’s hard for them to get decent jobs, hard for them to find decent housing and if they do migrate to Shanghai or other big cities, they have a much higher percentage of becoming poor, homeless and eventually resort to crime. So in order to balance the playing field, the government acts leniently towards people from the XinJiang area when they get in trouble with the law. Probably over the years, this policy has backfired and you have loads of XinJiang people, surviving in Shanghai by stealing and pick-pocketing, mostly because the punishments for crimes like these are sparse and jail time is little to none.

So, there is definitely no intermingling between XinJiang people and run of the mill Chinese people and the weird thing is that there is this feeling that they are kind of not the same, but at the same time, they are ‘Chinese’ (In relation to them becoming independent or whatever crazy ideas they seem to have every few months…). Like at this restaurant we visited last night, there were two obviously looking XinJiang people, acting as waiters and everyone else was looking more like Chinese people. This was the kind of place that was pretty nice, somewhat busy and not incredibly cheap like other XinJiang restaurants I’ve been to. I kind of got the feeling that there was a sense that if it was all XinJiang people, the business would not be trusted, would be less credible and would in reality receive less business because probably a percentage of Chinese people would avoid a place that was seen as maybe too ‘XinJiang’ess.

The most curious thing about the event of course dealt with JJ’s parents.  They had never in their life eaten XinJiang food.  Never once.  Now I can understand them not liking it, or even not outwardly not liking XinJiang people, but never to even eat XinJiang food in their entire life?  That would be like an American who couple, 60 years old who had never in their life tried New England Clam Chowder.  Of course they might not like it, but to never try it?  Just so weird.  XinJiang food is everywhere in Shanghai, I’ve probably had it 20 times, just in my short stay in Shanghai in the past few years.  And to top it off, a good majority of the food is lamb, which JJ’s father loves!  So in addition to never trying it, they really enjoyed the food.  SO strange….

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