I’ve been waking up with the sun lately. Why, I don’t know, but I’m dragging a little since I never want to go to bed. But, there is a nice bonus waking up so early though: Shenzhen is a different city between 6 :00 and 7:30 AM, at least where I am. It’s quiet, peaceful, and still. If you want a coffee or a decent breakfast, forget it. Note I said decent breakfast; you can get the hard stuff like the egg pastry thing or various bao zis for about 15 cents. But it really seems like the only ones stirring are the old folks practicing Tai Qi and musicians. When windows are open, I can usually hear the sounds of a solo violin drifting in. I sometimes hear an er hu (the “Chinese violin”, a two-stringed instrument that will conjure up images of the East when you hear it) or someone practicing piano scales. Maybe Shenzhen is so loud at all other times that I just don’t notice them. But I do appreciate the mornings that much more.

Maybe it has something to do with the amusement park, “Happy Valley”, across the street from me. As I’m writing this now, it’s nighttime and I can hear the screams from the folks on the various rides, and the DJ blaring out something in Chinese, occasionally a word or two of English for pizazz, and the music. I’ve got one distinctly Chinese pentatonic melody stuck in my head.

But just now, I heard an electric guitar playing a section from the music from the tragic tale, “The Butterfly Lovers”. That’s basically China’s “Romeo and Juliet”, by the way. That immediately got my attention because I was working on a guitar transcription of the “Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto”, a very popular piece written back in the fifties by two Chinese composition students. The piece marries traditional Chinese melodies with a traditional western orchestra. Therefore…when the Cultural Revolution gained steam, these two students landed promptly in the big house. Hearing the electric guitar version fifty years later on the 19th floor of an apartment tower across from the amusement park inspired me to write this post and to consider continuing to finish the transcription.

Looking eastward at dawn

Have a look at this news story.  Seems like most folks in the US are already aware of Microsoft blacking out the desktop of pirated versions of XP and Vista for users here in China.  Some people I know working in other companies have asked me how to fix it.  I don’t readily volunteer an answer and instead deflect the question by asking, “Oh, is your company having this problem?”  They always answer “Yes”.  There’s an easy “fix”:  turn off the updating feature.  This is the way that new software for managing piracy manages to get into their systems (note the ridiculous righteous indignation from the Beijing lawyer).

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I learned my first Chinese “slang” character, for lack of a better term.  Apparently, this is around a year or two old.  Amazingly, it’s already part of my input method on my PC at work (it’s not on my Mac).  Anyway, the character is “Jiong” (tone 3).  It means something of a cross between unhappy and embarrassed.  Notice the character below.  All of the strokes are “legal”, for lack of a better term, Chinese strokes used for writing the script.

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(above) Miss Li will make you feel “jiong”.

(above) I thought one of Apple’s latest ads going after the heavy advertising spending for Vista was pretty funny.  In the US, we’re used to seeing advertisements like this where one company goes after another in a healthy competitive spirit.  Other than this one on youtube, it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a legit ad produced in the US, so the ones that usually come to mind when I think of “competitive advertising” are the car commercials a la “Ford doesn’t have it!  Chevy doesn’t have it!”

(above) Hypothetical 7’s “Crazy Willie” pokes fun (inspired by a video we did back one summer).

Well, though I often enjoy teasing colleagues back in the US of the various ironic ways that China is more free than the US, I did learn that this sort of adversarial advertising is illegal in China.  In fact, you cannot say or mention the name of another company or their product in your advertising.  You can’t suggest the name or product that you compete with in your advertising.  If you do, you’re ripe for a big lawsuit.  Why?  Because, so I’ve been told, the Chinese government doesn’t want to encourage bickering or rancor between companies.  They imagine that because the capitalist competition is so fierce that the volume will be so bad as to be unbearable.  That level of free speech just conjures up all sorts of bugaboos.  It sort of reminds me of watching movies in the theater here in China.  I just saw “Wanted” in the theater at Wang Xiang Cheng (Mix City).  It was blatantly obviously when sections were cut out.  One string of scenes, the “training scenes” was so pockmarked with cuts that it was almost like advancing chapters on a DVD one after the other.  I picked up the DVD a couple of days later and saw they’d cut out Angelina Jolie’s brief backside nude moment and several of the more graphically violent training scenes around it.  Well, it’s still come a long way from the days of the Cultural Revolution scenes that The Red Violin depicts.

With the recent scandal about tainted milk causing kidney stones and worse, Chinese entrepreneurs have taken the opportunity to instill confidence in the milk industry with some really classy stuff.  I will be on the lookout the next time I visit the store.  And, no, I drank no contaminated milk.

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Mmm…classy.