Electric Cooking Grill

New Years same broken resolutions...

So somehow I've been on TV a lot lately here in Shanghai. A few months ago I wrapped up filming a tv show. Below are my impressions:

9/26/11 

So here I am in Denqing, China a small city from what I understand, sourounded by mountains and lakes. Fish seems to be a huge staple of the diet with lots and lots of fish bones. I’m here  for four days to shoot a documentary or a tv show or silent film or progaganda flick – I’m not sure which yet but we’ll know as the day progresses.

So in this filming thing I’ve been in I have a interpreter, Angela, who seems to be a very nice University Student  with very good English. I met the directors last night, very poor English and the fixer, that’s the guy on the ground the coordinates between the locals and the crew who speaks a little English but told me he is the King of M2 and gave me a bag of betelnut – so at least that’s off to a good start.

I’m writing this from a hotel that has rooms as high as 300 RMB a night for deluxe and as low as 50 RMB for an hour in a city where I might be the only foreinger. It made walking through a market last night very interesting. 

The air is still and grey here, I’m not sure if it’s the dirty haze of Shanghai or a natural fog and I’m just jaded, the weather is pleasant and air is sweet and perfumed by my favorite tree that seems to bloom only around this time of year. We arrived in a van last night and went to dinner at a small Chinese place with a meal that was a fear factor medley of fish heads, pigs tongue and surprisingly good churros for dessert. I met most of the crew there, we gam bai'ed the shit out of some tall boys of Tsing Tao and I amazed everyone with my left handed chop stick use. I have to say as an aside that learning how to use chopsticks as at a young age was one of the many gifts I can thank my parents for. If I wouldn’t have been able to do that  as well as not speak Chinese this whole China affair would become a fiasco.

Such as it were though, my left handidness gave us interesting conversation but apparently it means I’m very clever. With that illusion firmly planted in my crews thoughts we finished dinner, did some more rounds of beer shots and took a stroll in some sort of international food expo they were holding in the middle of the town square.

There were big garish communist bloc style building highlighted around the edge in the wonderfully typical Chinese style with bright glowing neon that shown through the murky evening sky. On the ground there were close to a billion people it seemed walking through what looked like a State Fair, there were  carousel rides with dragons replacing horses, bumber boats in what I can only imagine to be floating in nuclear run off, these weird bouncing trampoline things with babies strapped into them that might have been used for generators for the event. The ground was littered beneath our feet with strewn kebab and skewer sticks and napkins as we passed upon booth after booth of different and sometimes unusual food. All the represtentives of Chinese culture were out in force from all the many truly different and unique ethnictices of China. There were the muslim guys with lamb and smoke and dancing and other guys with huge cooper woks the size of a mall car frying stinky tofu in dark black oil. Every booth had music, some garish, some Beiber, as voices on loud speakers constantly streamed out a mess of words I couldn’t comprehend.

Then another shop selling Mexican style churros was near us and I had to stop and get a picture. The seller, recognizing that only a lao wei might know what it was offered me some for free and as the decadent glutton I am, accepted. The film crew took a photo of me eating it and then the frenzy started, more and more people started taking my photo. First five, then ten, twenty, one hundred,  till it became a flash mob of papparazi, people posing with me or touching me. My handler and some police that had been attracted out hustled me into a van and drove me strangly enough to a Wal Mart where we could grab some supplies for the next days shoot. It was very surreal, Wal Mart in this small city that had only seen my like from the comforting glow of a TV or magazine and here I was in the epicenter of Americana.

Yet the Wal Mart was still strangely Chinese as it was achingly American – the familiar blue and white colors and yellow smiley face hovered uncomfortably over distinctly non American products, fish heads, dries shrimp, baijiu. Where were the guns, the tackle boxes the blue vested elderely greeters? Where was the hot dogs?

We left and bought some fruit in an outside stand before getting back in the van and heading through the misty black night to the warm comfort of the hotel were I parted ways with my crew and waited for sleep in a big bed, in a strange city in my strange life.

Machine Gun Funk

Like all foolish things I set out to do this with the greatest of intentions, to dig deep and commit myself to writing about the nuances and craziness of bar tending overseas, of living the crazy American dream of little work, lots of money and a maid that comes three times a week. Then, the darkness crept up on me, I started to say simple little things like:

It’s cold here now in my second year of Shanghai and I’ve been racked with this terrible cough for the last few weeks. Before that I was food poisoned and even worse then that, I started playing my xbox religiously - these are excuses as to why I haven’t been doing any writing of late - haven’t been detailing my adventures in vigorous, whiskey numbed prose punching out words to a silent computer screen that reflects blood shot eyes and a devilish grin.

I had to stop that though - lying in bed all day, refusing either to go to the gym or to write and sleeping, truly sleeping in my desolation and depression was getting to be way to emo for me. The thing is that it’s not that I haven’t been having new adventures, new stories and favorite new concoctions but it’s just been that I’ve had no reason to write them down. Which is stupid because if I don’t write it out, experience it digitally again then sometimes the thing is like it never existed at all.

I’ve changed jobs since my last real posting, I left the half empty bar where no one would go except for my friends to a new crazy awesome nightclub where the only people I seem to meet are my friends or people who’ve always pretended to be my friends, bass music,vodka, champagne, loud uncontrollable nights that don’t end until way into the next day crowing themselves in the glory of the cold cloudy Shanghai winter days. In a way I’ve made my piece with the dawn, that ugly hour that sends us frantically scurrying to our homes in fear of the coming of the light. I’ve made my piece now with hangovers and wear them like a three piece suit, top two buttons clasped, last button open with a big pocket square.

I neglected myself for the last few months, I’ve put on a few kilos, got a few more grey hairs maybe stared into the mirror to much about my own mortality. Which means, while I’m unmarried and doing a job I love I should do everything about it to live the moment to its fullest, to grab the Jameson by the bottle and drink it up like life flowing from a shot glass.

Debauchery and diatribes ahoy...

common people

A great cover of something I've been listening to a lot lately

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American style drinking versus Chinese Style drinking

I have a good friend out here in Shanghai who is from Singapore, named Karl. He's very well off, educated in the UK and an all around crazy guy, the other day he asked me why Americans don't buy bottles at nightclubs here but instead individual drinks? He told me, he just didn't understand it. As a Lao Wei or a foreigner as well as a bartender I always thought that with the exception of a few select spots,the cocktails in the mainland just sucked in general and this led to it being smarter and better to buy a bottle. It's one of those things I've noticed my entire stay, if there are a group of Asians they will almost always order a few bottles of either Champagne or Whiskey and Green Tea or Vodka and mixers for their table. In terms of Westerners, it's always rounds of drinks.

I thought about it a little bit, maybe it was due to the fact that most Chinese people I know don't like to rent - they buy. So renting an apartment is frowned upon here - you stay with your parents until you have enough money to buy your own place. Why buy a drink in a bar for 70 rmb (almost 10 US) when you can typically buy a bottle for around 700-1000RMB (or roughly $100-$150)?
In  the nightclubs - the local culture is to grab a table with your friends, order many, many, many bottles, girls,fruit plates, as you smoke lots of cigarettes and party all night.

In the States, while it's not unheard of getting bottle service at the club it's just extra VIP, balla status. Not the norm. In the States a huge mega dance club will have a big dance floor, huge bars and a small VIP section. In China, where the people are a little more conservative with how they’re perceived, the dance floors are much smaller and usually packed with Lao Wei and bottle service reigns supreme. There are even second and third tier cities where there is no bar, just a small dance floor, 300 tables, lots of black lights and Lady Gaga.

Karl keyed me in the fact that the Chinese are very communal. This goes from the way they eat, in terms of big family style shared plates, the way the families live together as a group and how most holidays are centered around spending time with relatives and loved ones to the the way they drink. A bottle bought for the table is the ultimate showing of community. It's a little feudal as well, Karl explained to me, when he orders a bottles at the club, it's now his table - he's king of the table. The girls, the booze, he's host of the table and it's in a way holding court and  as always  I am the strange and ruggedly handsome visitor from a strange and far off land. There is more to it as well, at a Chinese table there are tons of drinking games, dice, things with your hands, all designed around getting everyone at the table, involved together, communicating, getting hammered drunk and bonding over distilled grain products.

In a western table with individual drinks the conversations turn more individual, one on ones. If we are westerners together at a bar are conversations are for the most part centered around groups of two's and threes. Obviously the exception is for birthday groups or bachelor/hen parties but that is not the norm.

So next time you're at a bar or a club in the States and you can afford it, or grab your friends and pitch in for a bottle. If anything, a shared bottle at a table is much like a campfire in that everyone gathers around it, it's sparks conversations that you might not of had before, it creates memories and hell, it's a lot easier then going back and forth for another round of Appletinis. If anything, you've got a story to tell. Play drinking games, cheers loudly with friends and bond over that booze - it's one of the reasons life is great in the first place.

I wanted to make some kind of bold statement about the differences in mindsets is that Americans are a nation of individuals, we've been told since our birth to be unique, to stand out whereas the Chinese are taught from the beginning that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down hardest and that conformity was the name of the game - I wanted to make some far reaching metaphor about Justin Beiber and Chairman Mao but it's getting late and both Karl and the KTV are calling and you never want to turn down a KTV with Crazy Karl....

Cheers,

To iphone or not iphone

An American Bartender in Shanghai
by Logan B.

My name is Logan and I am iPhone junkie. I'm that jerk that's surgically attached to his phone, eyes glazed over, charger always near, four squaring my location, twittering random and pithy one-liners to my 44 followers, updating facebook stats in the backs of dark bars about my random Keroac-ian escapades and generally hooked on the apps be it Angry Birds or the extremely useful Google Translate or the slightly less useful Fingerzilla.

Then the unthinkable happened.

I lost my god damn iphone, not once but twice. No longer could I be in my electronic security blanket, skyping with my friends back home in the states as I drank my way through the middle kingdom - I had to look up in the world again and pay attention.

To quote the wicked witch as she lay melting from Dorothy's pitched bucket of water, What a world! What a world!

See the second time I lost my iPhone was a few Sundays ago, it what can only be described by the musical styling of the Rick Derringer song, Real American. We had started out with some Sunday drinking at an American  bar that specialized in hard to find in China bourbons and whiskeys, usually in China when a liquor is hard to find and then it’s found it means either its been smuggled in (see our column about my exploits in Macau for more details) or it’s a fake. Whatever the case the booze was esoteric as it was intoxicating. Lots of the special edition Makers 46 served on the rocks, followed by round after round beer served by cute Chinese girls in country western outfits.

At this point no one was saying the word drunk, we were about 6 whiskeys and 6 beers into it per person,  my Shanghai drinking crew, the Mooncake Mafia and I when we decided, like the aforementioned Rick Derringer song that we wanted to be  Real Americans and fire some high powered automatic rifles while smoking cigars and sampling lots of different distilled spirits. This being Shanghai, China where everything is possible for a price, it took one quick glance on my iPhone App HiShanghai to find an excellent if not janky  shooting range that happened to also have a KTV in it. This means, Justin Bieber music blasting out the speakers, tons of beautiful and semi apparelled KTV girls and .357 smith and wesson hand cannons.

In about ten minutes we appeared, eyes glazed and booze reeking at the gun range, tucked off the main thoroughfare of Haui Hai Lu and Sinan Lu and up a sketchy looking elevator.

We walked in, pointed to a gun menu, picked girls out of a line up, fiddled with stereo and in no time were blasting more rounds then Jason Stratham in both Crank 1 & 2. It was an epic masterpiece of gun smoke, Jay Z, whiskey and green tea and cigarettes.  

30 minutes and near 3.600 RMB later we were back on the street, strangely sober, crazy haired and refreshingly more alive then ever before.

We walked down the street, energetically buzzing to our friend Wiki’s excellent cafe, where she was sitting with an Israeli drinking Chivas. That really made me reflect on the truly international aspect of Shanghai - sure, it Chinese here, that is a given but also, it’s a huge diverse group of French, Italians, Canadians, Africans, Arabs, Colombians, Americans, Belgians, Australians, just a whole hodge podge of different cultures and beliefs but its not a melting pot like back in the states, Shanghai is still more of a salad bar. The people are all here, just not tossed and seasoned yet.

After we finished her bottle we debated on ordering another bottle from Sherpa’s the Shanghai delviery service. Based on similar Western concepts like Waiters on Wheels they deliver food from a vast majority of restaurants all over Shanghai - the nice kick is that they also deliver liquor and cartons of cigarettes as well as mixers and ice. Instant party, natch China.

We decided against it and hopped into cabs after that back to my bar to meet up with my old friend John Jameson, in the cab I used an app to show the driver where we wanted to go - I didn’t have to say a word, just showed him the screen, easy as pie.

When we arrived we noticed that there was a private event going on - Chinese break dancers were busting sloppy windmills to mando-pop as a row of Chinese girls in playboy bunny outfits did some poorly choreographed dance moves partnered by local guys with bad haircuts and shiny silver suits.

I went to pull out my phone to take a video and post it to facebook - my incredulity at the situation maybe more of a mask to hide the strangeness I found at the whole scene- here I was a million miles from home, truly and completely at the mercy of my friends and luck, using this little hand held wonder to act as a shield between me and the amazing world going on in front of me and it wasn’t in my pocket.

It was gone, my precious. I freaked out - what would I do if I couldn’t upload something to youtube  or download a viral video and make it into a ring tone to play ironically? I was scared, I was frantic, of the two things I need in this physical world, coffee and my iphone  -I was out and I’m pretty sure I would have done without the coffee.

The world around me was so strange, I couldn't share - just absorb it. The food I ate the rest of the day, street meat vendor octopus on a stick - the double magnum bottle of Dom Perrignon Champagne I gulped down later that night at the nightclub, there was no barrier, nothing to let me record and live vicariously through digital means.

Later that night when I stumbled into a cab I actually had to speak to the driver, it was then that I realized I’ve been here almost a year and depended on my apps for everything. I could barely get by to my own house with the sorry amount of Chinese I could mumble. I had a moment of clarity, I realized life without my technology would be hard, it would be boring at times during long commutes and meetings, it would be frustrating in strange cities but always it would be real an adventure and mine. Not to be instantly shared and tossed head long into the data stream of updates and tweets but instead savored like a single malt whisky. I’d have to learn Chinese, I’d have to pay attention to reality and not the augmented version. I still love my internet, my tech, my social media but now I understand they have their place just as I have mine - or maybe Steve Jobs didn’t have a hard drinking, fast living,  American bartender  in Shanghai when the him and the boys in Cuppertino designed their shiny piece of trouble. Whatever the answer, I’m less connected digitally then I have ever been but more here in the now as well.

Cheers.

Shanghai, I love you

Shanghai, you filthy, wholesome, intoxicating, red faced, cigarette smoking, green tea and whiskey drinking, neon overloaded, fake rolexed, pink money stained, freshly minted millionaire of a technical metal masterpiece, glass filled and people full metaphor of excess and traditionalism, this is my breathless and bleary eyed, bajiou breathed primal scream from the comfort of your warm embrace.

Shanghai, you are noodles in the evening, noodles in the morning and noodles, noodles, noodles, spilling out of taxis, snaking around long metro lines, into the streets, spilling hot soup that rises like steam from dumplings over Huai Hai Lu, the far off barely remembered sounds of rickshaws makes way to the click clacking of iPhone as the new generation of thieves and KTV girls mixes with the suits, the pioneers, artists hell bent to change the direction of the wind, cloud bursting missiles showering similes of better city better life over fake dvd markets and foot massages that go all the way up. In call tailors out call services, exploding over the night like with  all the persuasiveness of the homeless ladies screaming down the streets with flowers, half asleep babies dangling off their arms like cigarettes, grasping in the ice cold winter, hanging like icicles of the pockets of drunken lao wei, yelling indecipherable Chinese, lost on frozen ears in the madness of the boozy blackness.

Shanghai you  are a silk evening gown, the bottoms trailing along the Bund passing Euro Trash dick bags and immaculate Jazz age buildings kept between wars and revolutions, the sudden scream of bombing runs can almost be over head among the din roar of the gathered crowds of debauchees and custom made suits, tailored by chiseled hands, gnarled and stained and smiling with your Shanghai-ren secret language and sibling less children who are left to fend for themselves in the digital revolution, fading from Mao like the receding hairlines of so many of the fat Western business men that your daughters flock to in outstanding droves, lemmings rushing to the cliffs, champagne in one hand, pouty lips and big eyes, pale skin cream white faces, long, long, long, long legs and short, short, short, short skirts, embracing destiny stoic and chic.

Shanghai you are smog thick and graffiti free, recycled cooking oil and contaminated tap water, racist tooth pastes and a corruptible incorrigible, a super fine slick that sticks to the roof of the mouth, flicking with the tongue and foul odors that make way to mind blowing light displays, loud fireworks, loud life, quiet homes, clinically insane by committee, traditionally inappropriate by real politik, insatiable hungry for more and carrying the world on and on and on.

Shanghai you are beautiful, you are my mistress and third love, you are coquettish smiles and xiao long bao, you are like all others I’ve loved, doomed to be cheated on, older then me, wiser then me and way more wealthier, with more friends and intensely jealous of all my wasted potential, you are my booty call and current steady crush, wrapped up and steamed then slightly fried and sold back for 5 kwai, lost in vinegar, slurped up with broth in a dirty hole in the wall over cafeteria style tables and long bottles of green Tsing Tao and people hacking up spit, served with an soy boiled egg and some tissue paper.

Shanghai you are a mess, leftovers from the last nights party, waiting penitently for the Ayi to clean everything up in silence, cold water pipes bursting and flooding cozy french concession apartments with modern flat screens and squat toilets, outside kitchens and washing machines with no dryers, laundry left outside to air dry, lipsticked smeared champagne flutes softly spilled out on the ground, a hapless, single minded portrait of over filled ashtrays and puddles of vomit in the sidewalk

Shanghai, you are too much and you are not enough, a tug of rope of 22 million people and expired expats exhausting one last git into the calamity of the nigh time insanity, familiar and strange like weird flavored potato chips, cool cucumber, shrimp hot pot, beef curry and whitening creams and tanning salons, strange named locals, Yellow, Puppy Chow, Elvis, Gold and terrible cocktails, fake booze bottles, fake clothing and genuine people, looking for worldly outsiders to seduce and take away like a doggie bag.


Shanghai you give me hangovers in my soul, my spirit crushed after every nights heavy drinking, a little piece is lost of myself in every shot as the glint in the eye gets ever brighter and the ruckus starts again, long lasting superior night bred, whirling carousel of so many faces, so many girls and songs and bass, and bass and bass and there it is again, that dragon we’re chasing after, long serpent tail flickering threw the night, so close to reach out and grab it, one more shot, one more club, one more, it’s the only one, the one, then more, then one more the only thing, shots become bottles become buckets becoming crazy, one more, the dragon closes in and flirts in the night runs away tail zooming through the next door, the next club, spilling dice, taxi cab Chinese, trumpet blaring, singing down the street, that we are almost there, the dawn slowly opening its blood red eyes, the dragon just ahead of us, its Mao and the late nights, Brazilians and Nigerians, Models and ex Cons, so close to grabbing it, then the Sun is up in entirety  yelling at us like an old man to get off his god damn lawn, out of the corner of the eye you can see as the Dragon races back into the sky, chased but never caught, like every other night becomes shampoo instructions, wash rinse, repeat.