Xinhua – Guidebook spells out etiquette for tourists

I’m not sure which is the more interesting here, the etiquette guidebook or the fact that the Communist Party of China Central Committee has a Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee. Anyway… the guidebook sounds like a good idea … I wonder if I’m alowed to contribute suggestions?

The sky over 滨江 (bīn jiāng) the area to the south of the river here in Hangzhou. It was about 17:00 on a Saturday if memory serves (it was a few weeks ago), I was there measuring how long it would take on an ebike for M. If you’re interested I think that it would take about 40 mins each way from the east end of 庆春路 (qìng chūn lù) each way but it’s a bit difficult to tell because The Muppet Show called 1/2 a dozen times and I lost track of time a little bit. Easily doable though. Worth the 2 hours and carting the ebike up in the lift for the number 4 bridge to get this moment / picture.

Down here at The Muppet Show we’ve recently had some desks repositioned. Not being skilled furniture profesionals we got someone in. Clearly he has a sense of humour, can you spot the difference between these two desks that are next to each other…

Ok, so we’ve been post free for over a week now but the truth is that I’ve not done anything apart from work (that’s actually ever so slightly not true but we can have a conversation about shin splints later). Any-hoo I ended up getting a taxi back here to The Muppet Show (i.e. work) this morning, which apart from reinforcing my conviction that e-bikes are the only way to travel, also gave me time to ponder. What I ended up pondering was what could I, your fearless correspondent, here on the front lines of the globalisation tell you about what is hip here in 中国 (zhōng guó, China), what follows are my poorly considered thoughts on the subject.

1. 2008, Olympics, Beijing 2008: it’s only 2006 I know but this is everywhere, t-shirts, soft drink containers and my personal favourite e-bike livery, it seems you can’t shift an e-bike these days without having ‘2008’ form a key part of its livery. I’m excited about how exciting it’s going to be come 2008.
2. English on yr t-shirt: don’t think this is particularly new but any English on your shirt is good, Nike’s ‘World Without Strangers’ seems terribly popular. D bought a t-shirt recently (I assume because it made her laugh) that has ‘Angle brings you happy!’ emblazoned across the bottom.
3. Cars you can draw: this one is two fold, first of all the car has to look like an old Lada (they sell a fiesta saloon here) and the bigger the better this is not new but for me as a would be environmental conscious poor person who lives in the centre of a city: I’d quite like a cool hatch back that is cheep to run an looks good. Not to be forced by peer pressure to buy 2 litre Passat.
4. Carlsberg: it only struck me yesterday how much of a hegemony Carlsberg had on the draught larger market.
5. Not getting a tan: we’ve talked before about staying covered up in summer before and it’s still seems to be important not to look like you spend to much time outside. Personally I’d quite night not to look quite so ghost that’s been given a fright but hey.
6. 麻将 (má jiàng, Mahjong): not sure this has ever dropped off the hip list but it struck me the other day how popular it still is. Ten to fifteen of us having dinner in a bar for some friends birthdays the other day and all of a sudden someone mentioned Mahjong and the pub time was cut short and we all took off back to someone’s gaff for Mahjong. FWIW us non Mahjong players had great fun playing poker for tooth picks.
7. E-bikes, yeah, yeah I know I go on and on, but 2 new e-bike purchases this month amongst the 老外 (lǎo wài, foreigners) at our company alone and two more pending. There has also been a few new ‘cool’ e-bikes seen on the road ridden of course by hip young things. Big up the e-bike riders!
8. White headphones: one of the nice things about China is you don’t have to worry about getting held up at knife point for your ipod or nikes, hence white headphones are super cool and pretty much ubiquitous.
9. The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest: it’s back again, though rumour has it the public voting has been removed (hmm), it’s as popular as ever and has already spawned one copy cat show. It’s only a matter of time before China has it’s own I’m a Celebrity Get Me Back on the Telly.
10. Finally, very small denim shorts: thankfully just on girls. A fashion that has my whole hearted support.