The Solid State Society 固态社会

At the Gates of Heavenly Peace on Christmas Day, 2009.

Emily and I stand before the Hall of Supreme Harmony on a cold Christmas morning.

Alone for a moment within the vast expanses of the Forbidden City.

Emily in the Outer Courtyard of the Forbidden City, looking out over that which is…forbidden.

The movie Avatar has been an enormous success in China. Even with the almost immediate supply of bootleg Avatar DVD’s that flooded local stores, the film has taken in a huge amount at the Chinese box office. It became the first film I saw in a theater in Shanghai and judging from the audience reaction, the Chinese love it. Whether it’s simply the effects or if something in the story resonates with the Chinese, I can’t say for certain. What I do know is that it has been a surprise phenomenon here, with the local IMAX always sold out three days in advance.

To cash in on the popularity of Avatar, a Chinese city named Zhangjiajie in Hunan province has renamed a mountain in the local national park “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” after the Hallelujah Mountains in the film. According to local sources, a photographer for the film took reference photos of the mountain for use in the film, and as such the on-screen mountains are modeled after the mountain in China. Ever interested in profit, the local government has launched a tourism campaign to capitalize on the fact.

According to the new tourism slogan, “Pandora is far, but Zhangjiajie is near.” The area now offers a “Magical tour to Avatar-Pandora” or a “Miracle tour to Avatar’s floating mountain. The connection to Avatar might prove a boost to local tourism but the cloud capped peaks are pretty darn majestic on their own.

Image from citszjj dot com.

Seras, my 80th level Retribution Paladin on World of Warcraft. According to the game’s internal clock, I have spent six full months in the past five years playing her. It’s unusual to think I’ve spent that long staring at the same character, exploring a massive virtual world, although I did charge her haircut and hair color about a year ago. Warcraft remains an entertaining hobby for me and I’m looking forward to the new Cataclysm expansion coming up.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

“Run!”

The 9th Doctor to Rose Tyler.

Run across rooftops, leaping from building to building as they collapse beneath you due to some distant, apocalyptic battle that involves giant robots. That’s the premise of Canabalt, an addictive little flash game from Adam Atomic.  In a rather post-modern fashion akin to films like Cloverfield, Canabalt does not attempt to set up a story or background, instead plunging the player directly into the action, racing out of a collapsing building in a desperate bid for survival. Canabalt’s little protagonist is caught up in events far bigger than himself, but he has no time or chance to figure out what is happening. Rather than trying to be a hero, the only goal in Canabalt is to see how long you can survive before an inevitable, sticky demise. The story, such as it is, can be guessed at from the background, where large robots appear to be battling each other, causing the havoc and destruction the player is attempting to escape from.

Controls are simple: you press the space, X or C button to jump from rooftop to rooftop. Your little on-screen avatar takes care of the rest, running like his life depended on it across rooftops, constantly picking up speed. Make a mistake in judging the distance to the next building and its all over.  A few extra obstacles are thrown in the way of the player, just to ensure things aren’t too easy.

Chairs and boxes appear on the rooftops, which slow your avatar down. These can be used strategically however, in order to slow your avatar’s breakneck pace and give an extra second or two of reaction time to the next jump. Birds, disturbed by your arrival, will take flight but aside from obscuring the screen slightly, have no effect.

The two real random killers are the plate glass windows and the robot fist /bomb/ shredder thing that will drop in your path.  The plate glass windows are set into the building you are jumping towards:  your avatar must crash through in order to keep running. Miss and you slam into the side of the building and slide down to a messy end. The bomb rockets crash in your path. It’s either jump over them quickly or be reduced to a red mist, according to the game’s description. The glass windows are the real game-ender though, as it can be exceedingly difficult to get the timing right to crash through, especially once the speed has picked up.

The frenetic pace and tragic inevitability of the player’s on-screen avatar’s demise lend themselves well to the replayability of the game.  Canabalt’s randomized buildings make each run different, some ending maddeningly quickly, others lasting long enough to make the sudden (and did I mention inevitable?) end all the more crushing. Since each run is only going to last a few minutes at most, Canabalt is a great little time-waster or a good way to spend a lunch break. The fact the game keeps track of the distance you ran gives an added incentive to beat the previous record.

Add in some catchy music and nicely minimalistic art to the simple yet challenging gameplay (and the mysterious backstory) and Canabalt is a fun game. Recommended!

Play Canabalt at www.armorgames.com

All along the watchtower
princes kept the view
while all the women came and went
barefoot servants too
outside in the cold distance
a wild cat did growl
two riders were approaching
and the wind began to howl

By the water at  Zhouzhuang, one of the historic water towns of China.  Crisscrossed by canals and bridges that date back centuries, Zhouzhuang is a window into the past of China, allowing a glimpse of old traditions and lifestyles. Due to its beauty and well preserved nature, it has become quite a tourist attraction, with large sections of the town filled with vendors hawking the same “handmade and one of a kind” souvenirs that can be found at almost any attraction in China.  Venturing out of the main streets and thoroughfares also avoids much of th crowds that surge into the town during holidays and weekends.  Away from the tourist areas, the scenic and idyllic nature of the town is better revealed.

Location: 31 degrees 6′53″N 20 degrees 50′44″E

Under a steel grey sky, Pudong and the futuristic skyscrapers of Shanghai. Although it was a particularly grim and cold day when I took this picture, the heavy pollution contributed to the dark skies above the city.

Standing amidst the crowds on Nanjing Lu, the most famous shopping road in  Shanghai and one of the greatest shopping streets on Earth. Nanjing Lu has a long history, dating back to the 19th century as a center of commerce in the city. Near both People Park and the historic Bund, the shops of Nanjing Lu mix modern architecture with classic buildings of Shanghai’s colonial past. All kinds of items, from clothing to electronics can be found along the road, a testament to the incredible transformation of the Chinese economy in the past 30 years. During major holidays, Nanjing Lu is a popular destination for revelers, including what I have been told is a rather interesting local tradition of thousands of people beating the daylights out of each other with inflatable hammers, toys and figures on certain days.

This photo is of women selling fish, shrimp and other foods to passersby in the watertown of Zhou Zhuang, a small historic town about an hour outside of Shanghai.

Upon arriving in China, I quickly noticed the proliferation of “engrish,” that mangled form of mis-translated and misspelled English. English is extremely common in China, with street signs written in both English and Chinese, ATM machines with English menus and products with English text (usually not very helpful). Although it is a testament to the “American Century” that English has become the defacto common language, the desire to use English is both practical and a hip, fashionable statement in China.  In addition, English sells. English text on a product, even if nonsensical, works because English speakers are not the target audience. The average Chinese person can’t read English very well (however, it seems to me that the number of Chinese who can speak English far outweighs the number of Americans who are proficient in another language).

The language itself becomes a signifier, the words become symbols, the actual meaning of which is rendered subordinate to the imposed “meaning”.  Stripped of definition, this signifier/signified relationship makes English characters a mark of “otherness” that speaks to a volume of cultural preconceptions about the West–just as Chinese characters carry an exoticness to Americans.

While at first I found it highly amusing, after a time it became somewhat depressing. In addition, other blogs cover this territory better than I would ever want to, so as a result I will not be featuring it prominently on this blog. However, since Engrish is a fact of life in China, here are three examples.

This is Elaborate Bacon. The text on the package reads “Western New Technic(r?) Offer Everyone High Quality Nutritive.” It’s “Piece in Heart, Fragrance in Mouth.”

They mean socks. A sign for men’s sacks is pretty funny, I have to admit.

Please don’t blook the fire hose cabinet.