Wo zai Shanghai.
Living in china isn’t easy for any foreigner. It’s not just the language, but that barrier makes things exponentially more difficult. In my last post I spoke a little bit about feeling distant. Not being able to communicate in any meaningful way with almost most everybody certainly creates a void. Unless you spend every day studying Chinese, it’s almost not possible to learn it in Shanghai. As I’ve said before, it’s not really something you “pick up”…unless you’re a genus. I’m not a genus. I’m not even smart in any sort of traditional sense. One of my goals is to learn Chinese. OK, great. How is that gonna happen? I’ve been here for a year, and I cant express feeling, inquire about relationships, culture, reasoning…all these sorts of things. Qu zhu che ren do my “qu”ing, fandiens give me my mifan, and nupengyous provide xing. It’s frustrating. I feel like at this point, I’m missing out on a lot of the great experiences of China.
I woke up today on my kingsize mattress in my white room laying facedown, arms and legs spread wide with my phone in my hand. Not very atypical for me. As always, I went to bed too late. I was talking to a Shanghainese girl on Skype who I met in November. She wanted to be with me then, and I haven’t really seen her since December (I think). The only real link to us now was that she dated one of my good friends who has since moved to HK. She was in her mother’s bedroom and she let me watch her on her video camera. I could see her mother lying behind her in her bed, still dressed in the day’s clothes. I find that very odd, moreso if we weren’t in China.
I hit the snooze button on my phone again. It’s 8:30. I could hear the jackhammers outside destroying the old Chinese buildings. The old structures have real personality. If they were kept up nice, cleaned, and decorated, they could be similar in appeal to a European style town. That will never be. As soon as the jackhammers stop, skyscrapers will go up.
I’m not even sure why I hit my snooze button. Twenty minutes of jackhammer filled tossing doesn’t really make any difference in the day…at least not a positive one. As I walked to my bathroom, I could hear what sounded to be dinner table banter in the apartment next to me. The window was open in my bathroom. If both me and my neighbor opend our windows, we could watch each other shower. I’ve thought about that before. I’ve wondered “what if there’s a real beauty who bathes with her window open”. One can only imagine the possibilities.
It’s now almost 9 and I’m running around trying to figure out what feels right to wear today. It’s Friday. No need to be dressy. It’s much more practical to put something stylish on, as sometimes work is late and there’s little time for an at home stop to change when trying to make a dinner with friends. Even though tonight is dinner night, I put on the black Daktronics embroidered polo shirt. Fuck it.
It’s raining today. I’m not sure why that doesn’t bother me today. Not consciously at least. I almost forgot the umbrella that “a girl who I met one night” let me borrow in hopes that she would get the chance to have it returned. Nope. The weather outside reminded me of early fall back “home”…before all the trees saturated themselves in color. Usually my face is contorted with disgust from the exhaust and various assaults of stench.
I didn’t mind that it was raining for once. Even as I stood for a cab. At 9:20, I’m usually quite frantic. I somehow missed 2 available taxis. It’s ok, it’s Friday, and it’s raining. These things happen. Finally my driver stopped for me. “eyh…Ni Hao, ni qu nail?” “Guang Zhong Xi Lu!” “Guang Zhong xi lu, dui budui?” “Dui...Ma Xi Chen, you gui! Qing kuai yi dien.” “ah, haode.” This is the conversation I have 5 times a week, and then repeated in similar manner later each night. I’m really sick of it. I now have little to no patience when they don’t know where to go. Luckily, today he’s spot on. Sometimes I’ll call a friend or family member in the cab, eat breakfast while I wait. I finally found a baosi zao fandien by my place. They have dou sha bao. F yea. $0.35 for 3 steamed red bean “dumplings” (or “steamed dinner roll with filling”). Today I felt determined to learn some hanyu. Chinesepod.com on my ipod. After 20 min of listening, I know I wouldn’t remember much, if anything I had learned.
Finally, 9:40…I’m at work. Almost an hour late. It’s ok, I’m the “boss”. I check up with my tong shi ren to see what they’re working on. Yvonne, my account exec messaged me before I left my house that she would be out sick this morning with “lady ache”. David, the Shanghainese 30 something married ex-freelance animator was compositing the previsualisation of a display system for a Taipei stadium that he rendered out the night before. Mentalray rendered…sweet, looks good. Better than I could have done even; better than I would have cared to make it. Sofia, my newest hire, came from Chengdu, the capital of “spicy” Sichuan province in middle china. She has an amazing work ethic. Knows a bit of Maya, but no AE. She’s working on a simple animation in AE now. She speaks very little English and isn’t fun to try to communicate with. Even though she’s 23-something her behavior is likened to a cute child trying to get her way. The western idea of “professional” doesn’t exist here. I do like to have her around…she’s youthful, cute, and cheery. She usually hums something and will loudly announce events such as lunch and when its time to go home….which is always late. I’m still frustrated. She doesn’t make any sense to me.
“Zao shang hao wode tongshi ren!” I sit down and check my mail. Nothing new. Ok, time to open After effects and finish the opening animation for the Golden Charming, an under construction high-end KTV located in Hangzhou, “the most beautiful city in China”. High-end KTVs are expensive broths with singing and green tea-scotch drinking. I’m doing an animation for a whore house. Fuck. It seems there is little done in china that doesn’t in some way end up relating back to things such as this. There is such a defined separation between men and women. Women who have sex are “bad girls”, while it’s expected and accepted that men will make local at the brothel and girlfriend’s bed. Everybody is still having sex, but women are burdened with the idea that they have been “bad” and unworthy. Virginity at marriage is a big issue for women. If they aren’t virgins, then who would want to marry them? From what I understand, women don’t mind about their man as long as he provides and takes good care of her. Marriage is more of a contract here.
Needless to say, I’m not motivated to complete this animation, or make it look good. “what if because of this animation, one single person visits a “KTV” for the first time?” Yeah, I don’t really want that on my shoulders. But this is my job right? David has done most of the animation with my direction. Does that make it any better? I need to stop talking about this now though. I’ve had a lot of motivation issues while in china. I don’t care about advertising. Daktronics provides the medium for the advertising. Great. This isn’t what I went to school for. This was just my food in the door of the animation industry. This was just my ticket out of the US and lining in my pocket while in Asia. What do I really want to do? This isn’t it. I don’t care if company X sells product X to soon to be X’ed Zhongren. This is not my aspiration.
“Chi fan!”. Ai’s voice isn’t soft or comforting. I trudge to the lunchroom and eat some sort of vegetable that resembles the look of thickly sliced ginger and the taste of a crunchy potato. Tofu soup seasoned with cilantro….and of course, rice. I find it crazy that Chinese people eat rice in some form almost every single meal. They are surprised to find out that westerners don’t have a “rice equivalent”. Maybe wheat? Na, it’s not the same. The food really has started to tax me. Shanghainese food is mostly flavored with oil and salt. Not olive oil. Corn or soybean. It gives a real heavy feeling in your stomach after eating stir fried anything. Today to compliment the veggie and tofu soup was a fried river fish. I’m done with this kind of food. It’s not because it’s the whole fish deep fried with no seasoning and that you have to meticulously spit out its bones…actually it is. It doesn’t taste good. Once again, no seasoning but oil and salt. Do they honestly like the taste? Not eating it…especially with last nights dinner “victory”. I made black bean burritos for the first time since I moved here. If you know me at all, you understand.
Ten minuets later its 11:40 and I’m sitting back at my desk. Lunch is frustratingly early. I haven’t had a “real” lunch “break” since I came to china. That’s changing. I don’t care. I need to get outside and get away from the cubicle and 40 inches of monitors that obstruct my vision. I grabbed my keys and jumped on the Daktronics bike. That alone is pretty cool. It has stopped raining and for once, there was a sweet smell in the air of fresh flowers. Yeah! That’s more like it! If I know myself at all, I know that a double espresso will lift even the lowest of spirits. Starbucks it is! 10 min bike ride to “little Brookings”, an “international” shopping square that has more commercial activity than the small town that I left in South Dakota. I recently changed my “coffee of choice” from a cappuccino to espresso. Here’s why: 1. Chinese people don’t know how to make coffee correctly. 2. Neither do starbucks employees. The Chinese version of cappuccino is mostly milk with hints of coffee. I want the opposite. Mostly coffee with hints of milk.
1:20 and I’m back on my bike. Feels good to have the caffeine pumping through me. There’s a new vibrance in my step and a new positive disposition. On my way back I start thinking about “what I want to do”. I don’t know how much longer I can work where I’m at. I’m not happy despite all of the perks and benefits of my job. The title alone is something that many will never aspire to. I sign my name with “Studio Director, Motion Graphics Artist”. I’m in china, and everything here is fake. Myself included. That postscript didn’t’ come from years of learning design and even more years proving myself to esteemed industry veterans. They needed somebody willing who was “creative”. I couldn’t have been more willing for an opportunity like this. It’s different than I thought it would be and now so am I. Taking a few months off and traveling seems like a good idea. By myself, throughout rural china. Tents and motorcycles. Total submersion would be both wonderful and horrible. What about school? I want to actually learn this Chinese stuff. What about animation? Art? Design? Could a Chinese university provide all that for me? Would I be happy going back to school? I never liked school much. I’m not good at fitting myself into any mold. I’d rather fit the mold around me.
The problem with animators is that our molds are constantly in motion.
I woke up today on my kingsize mattress in my white room laying facedown, arms and legs spread wide with my phone in my hand. Not very atypical for me. As always, I went to bed too late. I was talking to a Shanghainese girl on Skype who I met in November. She wanted to be with me then, and I haven’t really seen her since December (I think). The only real link to us now was that she dated one of my good friends who has since moved to HK. She was in her mother’s bedroom and she let me watch her on her video camera. I could see her mother lying behind her in her bed, still dressed in the day’s clothes. I find that very odd, moreso if we weren’t in China.
I hit the snooze button on my phone again. It’s 8:30. I could hear the jackhammers outside destroying the old Chinese buildings. The old structures have real personality. If they were kept up nice, cleaned, and decorated, they could be similar in appeal to a European style town. That will never be. As soon as the jackhammers stop, skyscrapers will go up.
I’m not even sure why I hit my snooze button. Twenty minutes of jackhammer filled tossing doesn’t really make any difference in the day…at least not a positive one. As I walked to my bathroom, I could hear what sounded to be dinner table banter in the apartment next to me. The window was open in my bathroom. If both me and my neighbor opend our windows, we could watch each other shower. I’ve thought about that before. I’ve wondered “what if there’s a real beauty who bathes with her window open”. One can only imagine the possibilities.
It’s now almost 9 and I’m running around trying to figure out what feels right to wear today. It’s Friday. No need to be dressy. It’s much more practical to put something stylish on, as sometimes work is late and there’s little time for an at home stop to change when trying to make a dinner with friends. Even though tonight is dinner night, I put on the black Daktronics embroidered polo shirt. Fuck it.
It’s raining today. I’m not sure why that doesn’t bother me today. Not consciously at least. I almost forgot the umbrella that “a girl who I met one night” let me borrow in hopes that she would get the chance to have it returned. Nope. The weather outside reminded me of early fall back “home”…before all the trees saturated themselves in color. Usually my face is contorted with disgust from the exhaust and various assaults of stench.
I didn’t mind that it was raining for once. Even as I stood for a cab. At 9:20, I’m usually quite frantic. I somehow missed 2 available taxis. It’s ok, it’s Friday, and it’s raining. These things happen. Finally my driver stopped for me. “eyh…Ni Hao, ni qu nail?” “Guang Zhong Xi Lu!” “Guang Zhong xi lu, dui budui?” “Dui...Ma Xi Chen, you gui! Qing kuai yi dien.” “ah, haode.” This is the conversation I have 5 times a week, and then repeated in similar manner later each night. I’m really sick of it. I now have little to no patience when they don’t know where to go. Luckily, today he’s spot on. Sometimes I’ll call a friend or family member in the cab, eat breakfast while I wait. I finally found a baosi zao fandien by my place. They have dou sha bao. F yea. $0.35 for 3 steamed red bean “dumplings” (or “steamed dinner roll with filling”). Today I felt determined to learn some hanyu. Chinesepod.com on my ipod. After 20 min of listening, I know I wouldn’t remember much, if anything I had learned.
Finally, 9:40…I’m at work. Almost an hour late. It’s ok, I’m the “boss”. I check up with my tong shi ren to see what they’re working on. Yvonne, my account exec messaged me before I left my house that she would be out sick this morning with “lady ache”. David, the Shanghainese 30 something married ex-freelance animator was compositing the previsualisation of a display system for a Taipei stadium that he rendered out the night before. Mentalray rendered…sweet, looks good. Better than I could have done even; better than I would have cared to make it. Sofia, my newest hire, came from Chengdu, the capital of “spicy” Sichuan province in middle china. She has an amazing work ethic. Knows a bit of Maya, but no AE. She’s working on a simple animation in AE now. She speaks very little English and isn’t fun to try to communicate with. Even though she’s 23-something her behavior is likened to a cute child trying to get her way. The western idea of “professional” doesn’t exist here. I do like to have her around…she’s youthful, cute, and cheery. She usually hums something and will loudly announce events such as lunch and when its time to go home….which is always late. I’m still frustrated. She doesn’t make any sense to me.
“Zao shang hao wode tongshi ren!” I sit down and check my mail. Nothing new. Ok, time to open After effects and finish the opening animation for the Golden Charming, an under construction high-end KTV located in Hangzhou, “the most beautiful city in China”. High-end KTVs are expensive broths with singing and green tea-scotch drinking. I’m doing an animation for a whore house. Fuck. It seems there is little done in china that doesn’t in some way end up relating back to things such as this. There is such a defined separation between men and women. Women who have sex are “bad girls”, while it’s expected and accepted that men will make local at the brothel and girlfriend’s bed. Everybody is still having sex, but women are burdened with the idea that they have been “bad” and unworthy. Virginity at marriage is a big issue for women. If they aren’t virgins, then who would want to marry them? From what I understand, women don’t mind about their man as long as he provides and takes good care of her. Marriage is more of a contract here.
Needless to say, I’m not motivated to complete this animation, or make it look good. “what if because of this animation, one single person visits a “KTV” for the first time?” Yeah, I don’t really want that on my shoulders. But this is my job right? David has done most of the animation with my direction. Does that make it any better? I need to stop talking about this now though. I’ve had a lot of motivation issues while in china. I don’t care about advertising. Daktronics provides the medium for the advertising. Great. This isn’t what I went to school for. This was just my food in the door of the animation industry. This was just my ticket out of the US and lining in my pocket while in Asia. What do I really want to do? This isn’t it. I don’t care if company X sells product X to soon to be X’ed Zhongren. This is not my aspiration.
“Chi fan!”. Ai’s voice isn’t soft or comforting. I trudge to the lunchroom and eat some sort of vegetable that resembles the look of thickly sliced ginger and the taste of a crunchy potato. Tofu soup seasoned with cilantro….and of course, rice. I find it crazy that Chinese people eat rice in some form almost every single meal. They are surprised to find out that westerners don’t have a “rice equivalent”. Maybe wheat? Na, it’s not the same. The food really has started to tax me. Shanghainese food is mostly flavored with oil and salt. Not olive oil. Corn or soybean. It gives a real heavy feeling in your stomach after eating stir fried anything. Today to compliment the veggie and tofu soup was a fried river fish. I’m done with this kind of food. It’s not because it’s the whole fish deep fried with no seasoning and that you have to meticulously spit out its bones…actually it is. It doesn’t taste good. Once again, no seasoning but oil and salt. Do they honestly like the taste? Not eating it…especially with last nights dinner “victory”. I made black bean burritos for the first time since I moved here. If you know me at all, you understand.
Ten minuets later its 11:40 and I’m sitting back at my desk. Lunch is frustratingly early. I haven’t had a “real” lunch “break” since I came to china. That’s changing. I don’t care. I need to get outside and get away from the cubicle and 40 inches of monitors that obstruct my vision. I grabbed my keys and jumped on the Daktronics bike. That alone is pretty cool. It has stopped raining and for once, there was a sweet smell in the air of fresh flowers. Yeah! That’s more like it! If I know myself at all, I know that a double espresso will lift even the lowest of spirits. Starbucks it is! 10 min bike ride to “little Brookings”, an “international” shopping square that has more commercial activity than the small town that I left in South Dakota. I recently changed my “coffee of choice” from a cappuccino to espresso. Here’s why: 1. Chinese people don’t know how to make coffee correctly. 2. Neither do starbucks employees. The Chinese version of cappuccino is mostly milk with hints of coffee. I want the opposite. Mostly coffee with hints of milk.
1:20 and I’m back on my bike. Feels good to have the caffeine pumping through me. There’s a new vibrance in my step and a new positive disposition. On my way back I start thinking about “what I want to do”. I don’t know how much longer I can work where I’m at. I’m not happy despite all of the perks and benefits of my job. The title alone is something that many will never aspire to. I sign my name with “Studio Director, Motion Graphics Artist”. I’m in china, and everything here is fake. Myself included. That postscript didn’t’ come from years of learning design and even more years proving myself to esteemed industry veterans. They needed somebody willing who was “creative”. I couldn’t have been more willing for an opportunity like this. It’s different than I thought it would be and now so am I. Taking a few months off and traveling seems like a good idea. By myself, throughout rural china. Tents and motorcycles. Total submersion would be both wonderful and horrible. What about school? I want to actually learn this Chinese stuff. What about animation? Art? Design? Could a Chinese university provide all that for me? Would I be happy going back to school? I never liked school much. I’m not good at fitting myself into any mold. I’d rather fit the mold around me.
The problem with animators is that our molds are constantly in motion.