China - from Justin

Yesterday I went to Justin's house to pick up the shirt he bought for me in China. He showed me all the pictures that he took and we had a nice long conversation about our motherland. There are for sure a lot of "problems" in China. The poverty gap is very apparent. On one hand, there are people living in crappy concrete/brick boxes with mouse turd on their beds. But on the other, you have people living in high rises with a $300 RMB maintenance fee (most people make ~1000 RMB a month). Pollution is very bad in the cities. In all of his pictures of the cities, you can't see the blue sky at all. It is basically a grayish brown NO2 haze during the day and his night shots look like the result of a Photoshop blur filter. He told me stories of how his families and coworkers were all amazed by pictures of the blue Vancouver sky on his laptop. I think the people there are just ignorant because of all the censorship that goes on in China. Apparently they are lucky enough to get HK news. BUT, it is dubbed, traditional changed to simplified, and censored! Whenever an "inappropriate" story is about to air, it will get cut off, and a totally different news clip will get inserted, with a different anchor and a different set! The Internet there is also censored as everyone should know. Haha, he had such a hard time with the Internet. In additional to all the 404s, he had weird people who kept trying to add him to their MSN.

I think the biggest thing that irked him is the whole facade that the CCP maintains to glue it's regime together. He volunteered at some government organization that visits orphanages, senior homes, and other needy places during his stay. Everything there was for show; everyone was there for the final photo op. Most of the effort was spent setting up the donated goods, the food, moving children to the right places, etc., and then *click! Immediately after that, everyone runs away and some even with the stuff that they supposedly "donated". At his office, everyone was so relaxed; the guys play MMORPGs and the girls eat junk food and talk on their cellphones. Communist complacency at its best, though government jobs here are just as bad ;).

Anyways there are some good things: cheap counterfeit goods :). He showed me some of the funniest pictures, like a fake Chinese Echo and a fake Benz haha.