Extremes

Ok, I have been wanting to work through some things in the last couple of days, and I am absolutely certain I'll veer off-tangent again today, so I think I'll list what I can remember now. Moping, desire, meticulous, weather, shopping. Sounds fairly innocuous, but I'm sure I'll make whatever I come up with ridiculous and convoluted enough for me to cringe if I ever read my archives. Which reminds me of a gripe. I cannot access any blogspot sites in China! I can't get gmail either, so that bothers me. I'm basically blogging blind, and hoping all this makes it through, because I can't be bothered to actually save it.

Been doing a touch of moping recently, and realised that I actually quite enjoy it. I've been exiled to Shanghai to serve as labourer for my dad. Well, not exactly. I'm doing an internship, I suppose, and I guess I am learning quite a lot about doing business, the situation in the Chinese market and all that. I do wonder if I'm going to put it to any use though. One thing I have realised about China in the two weeks I have been here is that I don't like it very much. Aside from the weather, which can be awful anywhere, there are the rude people, the dust everywhere, the dirty streets, the greed so thick in the air you can smell it, the horrible driving habits, the way everyone speaks Chinese with accents so thick I have to concentrate like mad to understand them, the conceited yuppies who don't realise they have little indeed to be stuck up about, the weird social intricacies that get me stared at whenever I do anything, the way I can't order ice cream at Haagen Dazs without getting stared at for speaking perfect English, then downgrading it to make myself understood, the beer girls who perpetually hover at your shoulder while you order your food, the way waiters can never be found when you need one, the way the locals don't iron their clothes for work, the spectacularly unprofessional dress sense of the locals, the lack of a garbage chute or room in the apartment buildings, the complete lack of a decent English bookstore anywhere, the strangely limited shopping experience, the incredibly oily food loaded with msg everywhere, the way none of the Chinese software works properly on my computer, the way they censor half the internet, the ... uh ... I think that's about it right off the top of my head. I'll add ... um, no, I think I'll leave it at that. Wouldn't want anyone thinking I'm anti-China, would I?

The thing that strikes me about what I dislike about this country is that most of them can be found in some degree in most other countries. So what is it about their presence here that riles me so? Perhaps it is the way this country acts as a retroactive mirror for my own. I imagine if I were to step back 30 years in time, Singapore would be very much like China in many respects. In fact, in many aspects, Singapore is still like China. Several of the things that bother me about China can easily be found in Singapore. More interestingly, I actually enjoy them when I find them in Singapore. The more down to earth places in Singapore, I can enjoy, though I do not claim to be entirely comfortable in. Oily food is the best food in Singapore. Those who disagree clearly fail to appreciate the glint of oil all over any sort of hawker food. The people in Singapore, while polite, manage to be rude in an entirely different sort of way, ignoring you rather than pushing you aside. And I actually like being ignored while I browse through a store at my leisure, knowing that I can call a salesperson if I feel like being bothered. So it seems ridiculous that I am disturbed at finding the same things in China, when they are part of the reason I like Singapore so much.

The only explanation I can come up with (ok maybe I can come up with a lot more, but this sounds more dramatic) is that China represents an extreme. It is a land of extremes, and I have always been a person who values careful management and moderation. It is where I can find the most extreme instances of anything I care to imagine, and none of it is appealing. The more down to earth aspects of Singapore are magnified here, and I do not like them as much when there is no counterpoint of modernity and that indefinable quality I associate with developed countries. That is a strange quality, that seems impossible for any developing country to capture, no matter how controlled the setting. You can put the richest, most educated people in China together in a club, and somehow, there is something lacking. There is something that seems beyond the mere physical surroundings, and the conversation of the people, and the uniforms of the staff. There will be some indefinable thing that is missing. Perhaps it is merely my own mindset, knowing that beyond this tightly controlled veneer of sophistication, there teems a mass of chaos just beyond. Perhaps that is it. Order as opposed to chaos. Simplistic perhaps, and certainly unfair, for chaos exists in any society. Still, there is some quality of order you can find in the cities of America, Europe, even Singapore, that is utterly lacking in China. Having the trappings of modernity is one thing, having them integrated into the city in a vaguely logical and comprehensible order is another. There are hundreds of skyscrapers here, but they are placed so haphazardly that one is not reminded of New York City, but of fungus.

The extremes I find here are not moderated in any way. That bothers me incredibly, for it assaults my conception of desire. If I want something, and it is given to me, should I not be happy? Instead, I complain when too much is given. In that case, should I not be happier if it is not given in the first place? If so, then I did not want it anyway. Oh, I know, everything is about moderation. But moderation is a funny concept when you think about it. Moderation means that you only want something a bit. There is no division between want and not. The answer lies halfway. Yet some people claim to desire something without reserve. This is usually along religious lines, where they want to become wholly immersed in God or some such divine being. So I cannot truly want something unless I find that thing which I am willing to accept completely and without reservation. But that seems quite impossible. Even if I did want to become one with God, I would not kill myself this instant to achieve it. So even that is moderated. Those who do kill themselves to achieve it are labelled insane. Perhaps they are the only ones who are able to fully realise what desire is. What else is there to show that a person really wants something?

Ok, I seem to have managed to completely miss all the points I listed at the beginning. Oh, that last paragraph wasn't about the desire I listed. Ah well, some other time perhaps.