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Leaving home photo album, #1
We all do it, many times. As mentioned earlier
here, background
here, for me this appears to be the last time. My wife and I have followed my sisters and brother in sorting through and unavoidably thinking about all the objects, collections, projects, mementos, treasures, and other miscellany of our parents' lives.
Discoveries, not necessarily in order of importance:
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From my brother's high school year book, a reminder of why the Redlands High School Terriers were often so good in football. Check out our All-Citrus Belt League quarterback:
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From my dad's book case, a reminder that The Atlantic has always been ahead of the news. My dad was a toddler himself when this issue came out 80 years ago. Although he and my mom subscribed to the magazine when we were little children, he got this one later from a collector. The January, 1929 cover evokes a different world in some ways (click for larger) -- but check the evergreen story above the banner:
Continue reading "Leaving home photo album, #1" »
Who says newspapers print only bad news?
Now I have
a scientific explanation for why I am the most "mentally healthy" person you will ever meet. And I am particularly proud to have foreseen this medical discovery
fifteen years ago. Coffee was making me smart even then.
Next up on our nation's research agenda: the crucial coffee/beer synergy for the ultimate in mental and physical health.
And a sign that my higher reasoning and priority-setting powers are still intact will be my likely absence from this space for the next several days. I need to finish -- what is that term, again? -- oh, yes, an actual "article."
The 'Sleeping Chinese' exhibit (updated)
The first picture below is from the Qingdao Beer Festival in the summer of 2006 -- back when I made the rookie error of thinking that a "beer festival" would offer a greater variety of brands than I could find in the local shops. (The most exotic brew I found at the festival was Pabst Blue Ribbon, which had its own promotional tent.) This photo is of some construction workers who, as I later determined, had not been laid low by drink but were just taking a little break. The following shot is a standard street scene in Shanghai from about the same time. More in similar vein after the jump.
I mention this in connection with the fascinating collections of photos on the "
Sleeping Chinese" site. They're similar to what I'm showing here but vastly more numerous. In an introduction to the collection, the site's author, Bernd Hagemann, a German living in Shanghai, says this:
I gotta warn you! Before you click through my large collection of photos,you should not forget, what you hear and read daily in of your home country's media about China's boom.
They talk about "The Sleeping Giant". About "The Birth of the New Super
Power" or "The Awakening of the Red Dragon". Often with a strange kind
of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely
looks more peaceful.
Obviously this kind of analysis can be taken too far. Probably people have been sneaking catnaps even in the most aggressive, malign and dangerous of history's powers. But the sheer abundance of napping photos on the Sleeping site is one more illustration of why it's hard to maintain a 24/7 state of alarm about China's ceaseless rise if you're exposed to the way most people in China actually live and behave.
More photos below.
__________
Continue reading "The 'Sleeping Chinese' exhibit (updated)" »
Scarcity purchasing (updated)
It's been a year-plus since I last saw a bottle of Sam Adams beer in an import-grocery store in Beijing. So when I found some in a store recently, at a reasonable-for-a-luxury-good-that-has-traveled-a-long-way 11.6 RMB/bottle ($1.70), naturally I ... bought every bottle they had:
It's hard to avoid such behavior when you confront erratic supply situations: buy now, because you have no idea when the chance will come again. Of course the next forlorn Westerner into the store will think: Jeez, I remember years ago when I saw some good, flavorful beer in this place. Guess they can't get it any more.
This behavior is made all the more painful on the heels of reading the great New Yorker story on
extreme beer, which featured my former staple brew, Dogfish Head
60 Minute IPA, and realizing that in some parts of the world people can walk into a store and buy any kind of beer they want! Ah, but they don't have the adventure I'm enjoying here on the frontier. Plus those 20 bottles to work through. Slowly.
Update: Via the
Brezhnev.net blog from Shanghai, evidence that I'm not the only one to think and act this way. On the other hand, my wife and I have avoided the specific heartbreak described in that post by hauling Skippy and real mayo back with us on
provisioning runs from the US. (Mayo visible in this linked picture, PB not because we'd brought a lot the previous time.)
I will always find this topic interesting (language dept.)
Air China night flight, Beijing to Seoul. Air crew is Chinese; passengers, mostly Korean. And the language I hear around me, as the flight attendants yell "You must sit down! Our airplane is taking off!" or ask "Do you want rice, or noodles?" ?
Often those very words, in English. Chinese and Korean are both "hard" languages, with limited overlap in writing systems and virtually none in grammar. Though the cultures have interacted for centuries, these days speakers of one language are apparently less likely to speak the other than to know some English. The point is unsurprising but its manifestations are often interesting.
This is not to imply that English will get you far in either place.
And speaking of universal languages, it may not be hard to guess where I dined in Seoul this evening:
Two airplane-related items
1) My article from the May Atlantic, about Day Jet, is now up at the web site. Narrated slide-show available here. This is kind of a high-concept narration, in that what I'm talking about doesn't have all that much to do with the pictures displayed. But maybe you can look at the pictures with one half of your brain and listen to the words with the other.
2) Last month I mentioned that the first microbrewery in Redlands, California would soon open -- and right at the local small airport! Now I can attest first-hand that the Hangar 24 craft brewery is up and running and making very good Pale Ale and Orange Wheat Beer indeed. Its output is still mainly for restaurants or bars or a few local retailers, but on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday afternoons it offers on-site tours and tastings. Next events: Air Show/Beer fest on May 10; formal Grand Opening on May 31. I expect to miss them, but think of me if you attend.
The brew vats:
The beer taps, operated by Jessica Cook, wife of brewmaster Ben Cook:
I was born too soon, part 9,482
This week my home town of Redlands, California, (a) opens its first craft/micro brewery, which (b) is in a hangar right at the local small airport!
Ah, had this been true in the olden days, when I was in California and using this airport. Back then, the hangar was the headquarters for a flying-missionaries' group which has since moved to Idaho. Who says there is no theory of human progress.
I've had my complaints about this airport's management, which I'll now put in the Easter Sunday permanent-forgiveness file. If, unlike me, you are within driving or flying range of Redlands and its little KREI airport, go check it out. (And yes, yes, yes -- keep the people doing the drinking separate from those doing the driving or flying. Perhaps with this in mind, the brewery will mainly be a sampling-and-sales outlet, not a sit-down-and-guzzle site. No joke: I love my beer but have been fanatical about never having any for at least 12 hours before getting in a small airplane.)
Redlanders, enjoy!
Japan is a way better place than it used to be
Haven't tried any of 'em yet, though.
(For those joining the story late: brewers' cheapskate reluctance to use hops is generally the bane of the dreadful Asian beer industry.)
Taster's update after jump:
Continue reading "Japan is a way better place than it used to be" »
A man and his beer: Beijing edition
All memories of the last year-plus in Shanghai are fond. But I realize that I took too long to bow to the inevitable: months ago I should have called off my quest to find actual good beer in China and instead made my peace with the thin, weak, rainwater-bland local brews. All in all it's a minor cost of the major adventure of being here.
Here is what I finally got hold of in Shanghai:
And here is the representation of my new beer philosophy as I start my new life in Beijing:
That's a little can of Beijing Beer in the foreground, among devotional Mao-era figures. It and (the identical-tasting but oddly more popular) Yanjing Beer are cheap, are available everywhere, and require no thought or effort to locate or wash down.
Going local, step by step
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Question for the ages, from the Int'l Herald Tribune
"Why aren't there better beers in Asia?"
In the IHT today Jeff Boda dares ask the question that so often runs through my mind these days. Most often, when I confront the depressing choice among local Tiger, local Carlsberg, local Suntory, local Heineken, and of-course-local Qingdao or Snow in a neighborhood restaurant. Talk about a distinction without a difference! I might as well just have a REEB.
Even the brave Boda is not daring enough to hazard an answer. (My hypothesis: hops are the one expensive ingredient in beer, so the breweries don't use any.) But his story says enough to break my heart:
There's hope brewing in Japan. Thirteen years after it legalized microbreweries, the country has produced craft brewers who can hold their own with the best that the United States and Europe have to offer. Their pale ales are as refreshingly hoppy as Sierra Nevada, the benchmark in the United States.
Where were you, Japanese microbrewers, when I lived in your country? And why aren't you in China now? Just wondering. Crying in my beer, you might say.
Class all the way! Qingdao Beer Festival mascot
Courtesy of CRI English.com, a look at the mascot for the upcoming 17th Qingdao International Beer Festival:
A sign of my own progress toward sadder-but-wiser status: last year, I was gung-ho to get up to see Qingdao and sample Chinese beer at its finest. Qingdao itself is very interesting. But as for the festival, now I realize that.... it's the same old Chinese beer, just in larger volume and in somewhat cheesier surroundings than normal:
But who knows -- everything is changing and "improving" so rapidly here in the New China, I may just have to give it another chance.
(Yes, I know that the signs are for Budweiser -- not technically Chinese but, in context, perfectly at home amid watery Chinese beers.)
Beer in Shanghai: the experts speak
My friend Jarrett Wrisley has a very nice article in SH magazine about the results of a scientific taste-off to determine whether standard Chinese beers are as bad as they seem (yes), and to rate some of the promising new entries to the market (including these). The expert panel at work:
As with my own venture into scientific beer study eight years ago, Sam Adams Boston Lager did very well in this assessment, along with fellow U.S. imports Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Rogue Dead Guy Ale, plus the locally-brewed Henry’s Pale Ale and Castle Oktober dark. Life continues to improve.
Reason to live, cont. (Beer in Shanghai dept.)
Purchased yesterday from the young heroes working to improve life in Shanghai:
Foreground: beer skyline. Background: Shanghai skyline, east side of People's Square.
Reason to live: beer in Shanghai, cont.
Now that I have spent 24 hours in America, where every product is available every place all the time, this observation seems pathetic, but: this was what I was excited about the day I left Shanghai.
The best news I have heard on the globalization front in a long, long time is that into the sea of indistinguishable, flavorless, soulless, depressing Tiger, Chinese-Suntory, Chinese-Carlsberg, Qingdao, REEB, and the rest of the sorry lot will soon arrive.... good beer. Great beer! Rogue Dead Guy Ale!
Continue reading "Reason to live: beer in Shanghai, cont." »
Beer in Shanghai, part 3: Sam Adams crisis is over
It makes my head hurt to think about this, but about 21.7 million containers left the port of Shanghai last year. (These are the standard 20-foot long metal boxes that go from freighter ships to railroads or trucks and are called TEUs in the trade.) On a round-the-clock basis, that's more than 59,000 TEUs per day, nearly 2500 an hour, two every three seconds. This year the port of Shanghai will send out significantly more.
I know what's in the containers as they leave. Computers. Toys. The world's supply of electric toothbrushes I saw manufactured at a nearby plant. Shoes. You name it. Rather, you buy it.
What's on the ships when they return? I don't know - actually, I'm looking into it, and it's a subject for another day. (Maybe it's dollars, to pay for all the stuff?) What I can say with relief is that the container with the spring 2007 shipment of Sam Adams beer made it safely into port. The stores that were sold out across the city last week have been resupplied. Thank you, Sam Adams company; thank you, Port of Shanghai stevedores who labored to serve the public through the Chinese New Year holiday.
That leaves only 21,699,999 containers to account for.
Beer in Shanghai, part 2: challenge
In the last few months, in a dozen cities in mainland China plus Hong Kong, Macau, and various sites through Vietnam, I've had a chance to try a large range of Asian beers. The local mainstays around Shanghai: Tsingtao, Snow, REEB, plus the Chinese-brewed (ie, watery) versions of Carlsberg, Tiger, Heineken, Bud, Foster's, San Miguel, Asahi, Kirin, and Suntory. In the north, Harbin and some other beers I now forget. In the south, Haizhu, Kingway, and Pearl River beers. Beijing Beer and Yanjing Beer in the capital. Exotic variants like REEB DARK (ugh) and Tsingtao Light (UGH!!). In Vietnam, BGI, 333, Saigon, and Bia Larue.
Yeah, there are differences.
Continue reading "Beer in Shanghai, part 2: challenge" »
Beer in Shanghai, part 1: lament
Sam Adams clean sold out at the usual-suspect supermarkets! Arrggh! At 12 kuai per 12 ounce bottle (just over $1.50), or not that much more than beer-store prices in the U.S., this was the main retail alternative to the hopeless, hopless local brews. Sure, it's six times as expensive as REEB or locally-made Tiger, but it's fifty times as good. This is a rare illustration of the "life in Shanghai"= "life in the Klondike" hypothesis, as we wait for the next shipment of provisions to arrive.
Purely local interest: good beer in Shanghai!!
Lots of things are good and interesting about today's China, but beer is not among them. It's cheap and abundant, but also watery and bland. Many of the tales of heartbreak in Tim Clissold's Mr. China relate to the frustrations in trying to start beer factories in China. I have heard from a veteran of the industry one plausible-sounding hypothesis about the root of the problem: Companies hire a foreign brewmaster, who lays out steps 1 through 10 in producing a genuine, good beer. Then the brewmaster goes away, and his local successors figure that they can turn out more beer faster if they skip steps 2, 5, 8, and 9.
Continue reading "Purely local interest: good beer in Shanghai!!" »
Two things to love about Duluth
I have spent a disproportionate amount of my life in three cities: my home town, Redlands, California; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Duluth, Minnesota. "Disproportionate" in terms of these cities' esteem in the world's eyes. No one asks you why you are living in Washington DC or Tokyo -- although they probably should. But Duluth?
Continue reading "Two things to love about Duluth" »
