What a year it has been.
Despite the ups and downs, I am glad that we are here, now.
As for me, insights into the land of China greeted me even before the advent of 2011. And unlike many of my friends, I actually have come to embrace China in a rather unexpected way. I am well aware of the presence of China's hardware and its software that is going through a 'Work-in-Progress'. But instead of rejecting them, why not do the opposite?
You see, as economies develop, so does the software in the people. It will take some time before the Chinese are exposed to the ways of western civilization. But in the meantime, perhaps it would do us well not to think of ourselves as superior folks. That said, certain anecdotes are rather amusing. For instance, watching this documentary on how an American entrepreneur started a gym in Beijing, he related that some ladies did not know what to do with the treadmill and started to walk on it --- in their heels.
A funny thing happened while I was walking with a good friend of mine, down a busy street in Shanghai. Unlike Tokyo's Kabuki-Cho area which is first, a red-light district, attracting tourists to its sights, this was not a sleazy place but a street where tourists frequent for shopping.
I quipped that he needed a woman in his life. As if on cue, a lady pimp approached my friend and touted the services of 'pretty maidens who would be at his beck and call'.
The timing was so uncanny, I threw back my head and laughed!
We met 2 more male pimps on the way before my friend decided to put away the temptations of the world and be tempted by another kind --- food!
We sat down in a cafe (try not to think of Starbucks...try wooden stools and marbled top tables that well aged in a musty shop) and on that cold winter's night in Shanghai, we had a piping hot bowl of Soy bean milk coupled with Fried dough fritters (豆浆油条). A separate bamboo basket of meat dumplings topped it off.
China - love it or loathe it, you will be impacted by it in some way or another.
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