Have Boa, Will Travel

Then there's this truck, which appeared parked by the side of the road one morning. By the afternoon, it was gone. Really wish I could have seen the show, wherever it was...

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility

If you were the Executive of the Tobacco Monopoly, what would you do with the power at your disposal?  This particular Executive seems to be hanging out in his van playing video games on his cell phone.  Sounds like a reasonable choice to me...

Just when you thought it was safe...

I know this post is a little bit late for Halloween, but may I humbly present...



Yet more scary looking kiddie rides!  Yes, it has been a long time since I've featured them on this blog, but the profusion of scary childrens' rides continues unchecked on the streets of Chengdu, with yet more species being discovered (and more flagrant copyright violations..) every time I go into town.  Besides the Skitch copy above, if that's what it is, there has also been a notable Transformer upswing.  I'm pleased to report, however, that the ever-popular Xi Yang Yang and his cartoon sheep companions continue to hold their own.
 


Also of note - no matter where you go in China, or what the ride, the color palette remains exactly the same.  Don't believe me?  Check out the earlier installments of the series here and here. 

Captain Cynical Strikes Again!

Don't know what it is about a camera, some simple photo editing software, and a crowd of people in a heavily touristed area, but combine me with these three elements and you get (cue theme music) ...


...Captain Cynical!


 Fortunately, Captian Cynical sometimes finds some interesting groupings of people...


... or a funny bit of Chinglish here and there...


...or combinations of things and people that are just plain weird, but in an interesting way.

Good thing that Cpn. Cynical occasionally delivers the goods, isn't it?  Cuz otherwise, I wouldn't dream of posting his stuff online.  (After all, the internet is a very serious place, is it not..?)

Wow!!

 

Photos cropped from a kid's talent/variety show on CCTV (China Central Television), around a year ago or so.

More Beautiful

Because, really, can't we all use a bit more Ve in our lives?

I've got to stop watching documentaries right before going to bed...

I woke up this morning in the middle of a lucid dream where I was part of a documentary crew assigned to follow Jesus on a peacemaking tour among the gangs of South Central L.A.  (Apparently, He's still a very good negotiator in such matters.)  I was puled from the camera crew at the last minute because the main gang that we were following had just registered their name as a registered trademark, and the producers of the documentary were worried that the gang might sue us for copyright infringement if we accidentally caught Jesus mentioning the name of the gang on camera.

(No, I don't usually post my dreams to Anywhere, but this one seemed very apropos of, well, something, anyway.   Not to be sacrilegious or anything, but isn't there a rule that states that when Jesus appears to you in a lucid dream, you have to share it on some form of social media?  Think it's in the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew somewhere - I'll have to look it up to be sure...)

Put me in the middle for the time being...

Jet Lag (among countless other situations) in a nutshell..

Image: Null Set, by James Barron

Fixed

Don't know if this proves that the Chinese are in no way capable of taking over the world, or in fact the total opposite, but here, for what it's worth, is a repair job that I noticed in the mens' room in the new high speed section of the Nanchong train station.

Yes, the only thing connecting the bottom of that urinal to the floor drain is a green plastic iced tea bottle. And yes, in fact, every single urinal in the bathroom used a different kind of soda bottle for the exact same repair in the very same position. And no, I did not stand around documenting them all photographically - I got enough strange looks by being a foreigner with a camera in the mens' room as it was....

It's Late

but I'm going to post a picture anyway, if only for momentum's sake...



I was taking a bus during rush hour, and at every red light, the driver would lean back, close his eyes, and start snoring gently. When the light turned green and the bus ahead in the line of traffic started moving, he would awake with a start, gun the motor, and drive ahead until traffic was stopped at the next red light, at which point he would tilt his head back, and start the procedure all over again. Seemed like a workable system to me...

Don't think I've got very much to add to this one

I mean really, what's there left to say?

Meanwhile, back in Shanghai...

...they have charging stations for mobile phones that are quite handy. Do they have these in the States yet?



The best part? There's even an ultraviolet telephone sanitizer at the bottom, just so you don't get a virulent disease from your Nokia.

Can I interest you in an eye care massager?

What I love about China: I can be sitting in my office in the English department, grading papers, and someone can walk in out of the blue and try to sell me a pair of opaque sunglasses with bumps on the back. Thankfully, my Chinese is good enough that I could A: understand the main gist of what she was asking me, and B: politely tell her that I was not interested.

Stoking up the blog fires again...

...and what better way to get back to blogging after a three week break than a picture or two of scary dancers in bunny suits looming over tourists in Tienanmen Square in Beijing?





Yeah, you heard me right.



Ahh, China. What more can I say?



It's good to be back on the blog - more to follow...

Equal Opportunity Surrealism

Just so you don't think that the Chinese have the market cornered on the surreal signage here, a sign found in a Western Bar advertising televised ...rugby matches? ...Aussie rules football? ...animal cage fights? Well, something Down Under-ish, anyway.



Someone help me out here - does a bulldog really have a fighting chance against a dragon? And is the shark vs. rooster matchup on land or in the ocean? (If it's on land, I'll give 3-2 odds on the rooster, provided it can run fast enough.) And what is a Rabbitoh, anyway?

(Full disclosure: I come from a region where people proudly cheer on Hoosiers, so I really don't have much ground to stand on here...)

Next up, Picasso's Orange Period...

Speaking of history, now might be a good time to throw in some Rembrandt. More specifically, a copy of the Night Watch, seen in a storefront in the faux antiques market section of Chengdu. Except it's a little more like the Day Watch, isn't it..?

History Lesson

What does my home state of Illinois have in common with the Eiffel Tower, the world's first steam engine, and what looks to be a scanned portrait of Henry the Navigator? They're all on the cover of a notebook I saw for sale in our local stationery store, of course. (Sorry about the blurry picture - I know I should've bought the thing...)

Your freindly local... um, say what?

"Hey, honey? You free? I was wondering if you could pop on over to SCSHHSYYXYZRGS for a sec and pick up a few things..."

"Go where?"

"SCSHHSYYXYZRGS."

"Where?"

"SCSHHSYYXYZRGS!!! You know, the place with the ... stuff. Rhymes with DJVKHSYYXYRGS!"

"Oh yeah, yeah, SCSHHSYYXYZRGS! Sorry, for a second, I thought you said LVMCHSYYXWDFS, and they're closed Mondays."

"No, LVMCHSYYXWDFS went out of business last month."

"LVMCHSYYXWDFS went out of business? You've gotta be kidding me..."

It's a documentary! It's all really happening!

Helping us get the week off to an appropriately surreal start is this post from If we don't, remember me, a blog that features oddly subtle animations from all kinds of movies. Strangely addictive, and poetic to boot.

A room with a view

Another thing that I've seen for the first time in China, again from our trip to Zigong: A hotel bathroom with a glass wall facing the room. You can (and we did) lower the blind for privacy, but its translucence meant that it made leaving the bathroom light on for the kids problematic. As the old saying goes, "People who live in glass houses should dress in the basement."