Day 34: Li Bin's Studio, Chinese Language, Food Safety and Censorship Speakers

Monday, June 9

Photo 1: Li Bin's 'sketch' for his Nelson Mandela painting

Photo 2: Obligatory panorama of the studio

Photo 3: The selfie game is strong in a room of creativity

Photo 4: Forcing smiles after Dong Laoshi showed us who was boss (Food was amazing though!)

Photo 5: !@#!$@#! aka the Chinese plays mind games with censorship

My hotel room in Shanghai is pretty awesome. I'm on the 11th floor in a corner room so I get not one, but two windows of the Shanghai cityscape. One of them, which happens to be across from my bed, fills the room with the glow of the morning haze. There's nothing like being greeted by Shanghai's city pollution at 5:30 in the morning, a treat I get for forgetting to put down the window shade last night. But whatever, I'm not as bothered by China's pollution as much as I'm unnerved by the ghost that haunts our hotel room. The ghost is somewhere in the bathroom, in the pipes I assume since it only makes noises whenever the toilet flushes or whenever we take a shower. For those who know what a harpsichord sounds like, bless your soul because those are the sounds I hear every time, eerie tones that go along with the sound of flushing water. And for the skeptics, I'm convinced it's a ghost because the only other room that has those eerie sounds is Kim's and Conley's room, which is right across from Mika's and my room. It's okay; I think it's friendly, though it sucks knowing that a supernatural being watches you do your business. Maybe it has some courtesy but I'm not sure, I don't frequently encounter ghosts let alone a Chinese ghost.

As I hear the ghost singing away while Mika takes her morning shower, I somehow block the noises and start working on some essays that are due at the end of the dialogue. I'm in my zone, becoming a typing zombie as I get down the points that I think need to be mentioned. Then again, it's early in the morning and nothing I think at this time usually makes much sense. Yet I can't fall back asleep because the muse of the bathroom is too loud, this is a big 矛盾. Somehow, I lose track of time and end up almost missing the meet up time at the lobby at 9:00. I want to blame it on the ghost but I don't want it to get angry. I also didn't get any breakfast so as our group was walking to the subway, I ran ahead to buy some Oreos and a bottle of water. It's not much but I heard it may have been better than the hotel's free breakfast.

After a series of transfers, we arrive to our destination. Almost. Because of schedule changes and slight delays, we had to hurry over ASAP, so we all hailed taxis to drive us two minutes straight down to Li Bin's home studio. Yea, I did say we were in a hurry so I guess that trip was worth it. Anyway, Li Bin is an ex-Red Guard who chose the life of a political painter. And by political painter, I mean adding really subtle humor and symbolism in many of his works. He started painting since he was around 12, so I was just super awe inspired by this guy with a great jolly personality. He was super friendly to all of us and even fed us with watermelon and took pictures of us to use as references for his next painting. Not going to lie, I think I cheesed super hard while he was taking my photo. 茄子 to the extreme!

We went back to our hotel area to grab lunch and I was supposed to go with Jonny and the others for this choose-your-own-food-to-put-in-a-soup kind of meal. But then Dong Laoshi tempted me away with Hong Kong style lunch, which was conveniently located in front of the subway. And Hong Kong food speaks to my soul like no other, so I guess the Shanghai food adventures will have to wait a bit longer. By the way, if anyone has eaten with Dong Laoshi before, then they know how sneaky she can be when paying for the bill. Luther, Jimmy, and I offered to split amongst us three and I even stole the bill away from her hands, thanks to the years of practice I had eating at dimsum restaurants with my family. All to no avail because at the end of our meal, she slapped down her money on the table and Jimmy, Luther, and I were left gaping with our mouths full of delicious food as Dong Laoshi suavely left to prepare for the speakers. That's some next level authority right there. 'Next time,' we all thought as we finished our meal feeling like we got served. But it was all good food so it was a good lunchtime.

We had two speakers almost back-to-back. John Pasden spoke about learning the Chinese language as a foreigner, giving us great anecdotes about how he made the executive decision to abandon his life plan in pursuit of Chinese. And he gave us tips, or rather, the secrets to greatly improve your Chinese 水平. I shall only disclose one as to keep you all on your toes: learn to love to talk about random crap. Like how cool Dong Laoshi was at lunchtime. Or how I have a ghost in my bathroom. So as long as it's all in Chinese it's all relevant. Wu Heng was the second speaker and he spoke a bit about his food safety database and censorship in China. The way he describes it makes it feel like the Chinese are playing a dangerous tug-of-war with the government as well as their food. The Chinese are great at making up new words to get around sensitive 'banned' words and sometimes smart enough to eat enough different foods to avoid being poisoned. As Wu Heng said, people learn to rotate their poisons in China.

I think that's what they said anyway. Again I can't be too sure, I'm writing this sleep deprived and after hours of sitting in that nasty conference room with a sorry excuse of a 空调. What air conditioner blows hot air, I will never know but if you guys ever need a room like that, it's located on the second floor of the Magnificent Hotel (hehe, magnificent). We all melted in that room but the nice break between speakers gave everyone a breather. Except Jimmy. He kinda curled into a ball on one of the nearby couches and slept away like a cat, hehe. I wish I had the picture to prove it to you but alas, I failed to whip out my camera in time. Oh well, another day I suppose, although we don't have much time until this dialogue ends. Challenge accepted anyway.

- Bobo

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