Left Coast Cowboys

We’ve been invited to the San Francisco Symphony Gala. While we love the Symphony and have been attending for over twenty years, the idea of a gala means only one thing: the need to shop. And if you know me, you know how I feel about clothes shopping. I do it once a year whether I need to or not. . .and mostly at REI.

No, when forced to go shopping other than my annual two hour foray, I always quote Thoreau: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

So now I need to find a dress that will work among what Tom Wolfe used to call “The Social X-Rays”, the women who are aerobicized, Botoxed and coutured into a permanent holding pattern. I need to buy the kind of dress, which, if it is truly going to be the right kind of dress, is the kind you buy, don’t ask the price, wear it once, then give it to the maid because you couldn’t possibly be seen at another gala in that same old rag.

So I set off for Bloomingdales to see what I could find in the “Designer Department”. My goal was to find a cocktail length dress, because I did hold out some hope that I would wear it again. In fact, I was hoping that this would be the first and last time I would have to buy a dress for a gala and I could wear it to all two or three other galas I’m likely to attend in the rest of my lifetime.

As you might expect in the Designer Department, only Size Fours and under are on display. I gamely asked the sales attendant if they had larger sizes and would they admit it if they did. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Yes, we keep those in the back.” Hmmmm. If it’s so shameful to be over Size Four, I would wonder that any possible gala attendee would have the gall to show up at one, even if she did find one of the “too disgusting for display” larger sizes. As the sales attendant loaded me up with to-be-unnamed larger sizes, I spotted a dress that had obviously been put back on display by mistake. Because it was my size and it was even a Petite (which veteran shoppers will know doesn’t mean “for skinny people”; it means “for short people.”) I didn’t much care about the dress, but I wanted to try it on for the size to confirm that I really was that size and this wasn’t one of those stores that tries to make its customers feel good by putting a Size Eight label on a Size Fourteen dress.

Turns out all the dresses I’d picked looked better on the hangers than they did on me. Except the one I’d grabbed. It was so so on the hanger but developed a level of Fabulousity when it was on me. Or maybe it gave me Fabulousity. In any case, it looked great. It was comfortable. And it didn’t seem as if it was going to require huge amounts of spandex. That means I might even be able to eat at the Gala Dinner that preceded the Gala Concert. And even have Gala Cocktails that bracketed either end of the evening. Sweet!

When I went to have the dress rung up, the sales attendant informed me helpfully: “That’s a Tadashi. He designs for very interesting people.” From the way she said “interesting”, I knew she didn’t mean Cameron Diaz or Keira Knightly. She meant someone who was perhaps close to normal size.

“So which interesting person is he designing for?”

“Well, Queen Latifah, for one.”

Hey Sistah, Soul Sistah! Me and Latifah, we're twin style icons.

Queen Latifah!!! Incredible! If I have a style icon and an attitude icon, it’s got to be her. She’s big, she knows she’s beautiful, she’s got attitude and when she starts to lose weight, she talks about cholesterol and health, not couture. Queen Latifah! Yes!

I'll be going to the Gala with Latifah 'Tude. Here's The Queen reminding everyone that Big Girls are Number ONE.

This dress is going to give me a whole new way to approach this gala. I’ll be arming myself with Latifah ‘Tude and elbowing Mrs. Getty out of the way to get to the foie gras. (Actually, I can’t imagine Mrs. Getty has eaten much this decade, let alone foie gras, so this should be an easy goal.)

So here's the dress. Simple. Comfortable. No spandex required.

Here's the great detailing on the bodice.

Unfortunately, the only good shoes I have were chewed up by Oscar. So I had to get these. Who knew that since the last time I bought these kind of shoes, an inverse principle has set in dictating that the less material, the more expensive the shoe.

Now I’m more ready than I ever thought I’d be for next week. I just wish I could find one of those turbans Latifah used to wear. Now that would be an accessory that would get me on the social pages of the Chronicle.

Added Extra: Rush to iTunes and get “The Dana Owens Album” and “Travelin’ Light”. Hear the Queen belt out standards and prove herself a worthy successor to Bessie Smith.

Still suffering from jet lag after flying in from Beijing Monday. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that I’m now logging late hours of Olympics watching on TV. But crops wait for no man, even Usain Bolt the world’s fastest man, so Wednesday I went up to Sonoma to check the state of the crops.
I was expecting a scene of devastation in the orchard since the pluots and nectarines were due to come ripe when we were in Beijing. I’d carefully netted them against birds, but expected to see them all dropped from the trees. Nothing. Both trees, having been bowed down under a bumper crop of fruit, were now picked clean. I didn’t even see any tell-tale pits around the trees. So either we have extremely crafty foxes who can lift up the nets, remove the fruit and carry it off to leave no signs. Or the vineyard workers who’ve been pruning and tying up the grapes in the nearby vineyards have been helping themselves to fruit snacks. I hope it’s the latter as I’d hate for all that fruit to go to waste.

Here's the sum total of our fruit harvest this month. A few pluots and one nectarine.

Back at our raised beds, our vegetables have gotten way out of hand, off the rails and into the realm of vegetable delinquency. There is no controlling them. They’ll be tagging the barn next.

Yes, the corn is as high as an elephants eye.

Our melons are looking especially menacing.

The Brussels Sprouts are decidedly feral.

But it's the tomatoes that are taking over! It's a gang turf war and the tomatoes are definitely the Crips.

On a very sad note, we’ve had to give up the fight to save the Coastal Live Oak that we’d moved from up at the house construction site. As you’ll remember from this post, it fell victim to a particularly evil indigenous beetle and a local arborist told us it had zero chance of survival. Seems these oaks just don’t take to being moved very well. It’s hard to live and learn on a farm when the cost is this high. No one told me losing a plant or tree would be as hard as losing a pet.

The unkindest cut. Removal starts.

Poor tree. Now it will be firewood for us this winter, since the barn living quarters have no heat but a small woodstove.

  It’s probably dangerous to post in this condition. We’ve been traveling since noon Shanghai time with a plane change and delay in Vancouver. The clock says we arrived six hours after we left, but we’re not even sure what day it is. And that’s not just jetlag. Posting from China poses its own Twilight Zone weirdness. I thought I’d keep everything coordinated by changing the time zone on my camera, my laptop and my iPhone to Beijing time. But then when I posted to Flickr or WordPress there was a warp in the space time continuum. Flickr and my blog kept thinking I was posting the next day or pre-posting. I guess, the servers for Flickr and my blog are on American time no matter what my laptop says. So the servers kept thinking I was posting for a day that hadn’t happened yet. I started trying to backdate or postdate things but that only made it more confusing. Believe me, Project365, I posted every day. It’s just going to take time to sort it all out.

Adding to our confusion, as we entered back into airspace where we started getting Western stories on the Olympics, we realized that we’ve been in a complete Olympic bubble. We really only had information about the events we were at, since there were few English sources of information. We had 8 sports channels available to us in the hotel, all of them on Central China Television and all in Chinese. If you think American coverage is too concentrated on the home team, you should see CCTV. For instance, in the coverage of the swimming, you might not even know Michael Phelps was in the pool as the camera and commentator kept a tight focus on the Chinese swimmers. I’m not saying the Chinse teams aren’t important for coverage, but let’s just say, they weren’t always the big story. In the race we saw, Michael Phelps was already out of the pool and had blow-dried his hair before the Chinese swimmers even touched the wall. And of course, we missed all the heated commentary that we are now just becoming aware of. Like Bela Karolyi threatening to bust a heart valve over the age of Chinese gymnasts. We were also surprised to see a Canadian paper discussing how Alicia Sacramone had “blown the Gold” for the Women’s Team Gymnastics. We were at that event and every one of the US team got a red flag or committed an error. Alicia was no more or less the problem than any of them. They were just all slightly off their game.

Yes, they do the WAVE in China. It went around the Bird's Nest five times until the Jumbotron told us "Quiet Please!"

Most Undercovered Big Story. I don’t think anyone is covering the true magnificence of the Jamaicans — men and women. They were fast, they were stylish,  they had the best bling and dreads and I swear they ran to a reggae beat. They never looked like they were even breaking a sweat. You can’t imagine what incredible athletes that tiny island fielded until you’d seen them lined up with other athletes for their events. When an athlete stands among a group of other Olympic quality athletes, and stands out like Shaq would among the middle aged players on the San Francisco Bay Club Hoops Club, you know you are seeing an extraordinary level of physical perfection. (Besides, what are the odds that the world’s fastest man would be named “Bolt”?)

Rats! All my photos of the Jamaicans were destroyed in a security scan that wiped my card. I had tons of shots of Usain Bolt.

Most hyped story that was worth all the hype. Michael Phelps. He really was that good. And from the reaction of his teammates and even his competitors, he seems to be the kind of nice guy who deserves all his success. At the heat we saw, his competitors were swarming around him to shake his hand and pat him on the back when he smoked them in the pool. And the first thing he did after winning was get out and wave to his Mom in the stands. Gotta love a guy like that.

One Area Where the Chinese Fell Down in an Otherwise Beautifully Run Games. Souvenirs, tat, Olympic crap. You should be able to buy everything from a water bottle to key chains to shirts, hats and doo-rags with Olympic logos. There should have been vendors everywhere. Particularly the bootleg vendors selling the tacky “Olympics Beer Drinking Team” T-shirts. Nothing. Nada. I don’t know if it was part of the Chinese Government’s promise to the Olympic Committee and luxury manufacturers to crack down on counterfeits, but you couldn’t find a single vendor with anything Olympic. Not even a post card. About the only thing you could buy on the street was a Chinese flag.

Most Amazing Military Effort. The armies of fresh-faced, uniformed University students who lined the routes to the venues, organized lines into the security checkpoints or just walked the streets of Beijing smiling and waving to foreigners. It was an impressive mobilization. Especially since some of them seemed to have no role other than to smile and call out “Welcome to Beijing.” Could you mobilize that many teenagers here? Could you get so many who were so unflaggingly enthusiastic about their jobs even when that job was just standing in the hot sun and being friendly?

Most Annoying Thing About the Chinese that Was Still Strangely Endearing. For some reason, the Chinese believe both wine and coffee must be served a thimblefull at a time — no matter how big the cup or glass. The hotel had fairly regular, if a bit small, coffee cups and wine glasses, but it was impossible to make anyone understand that it was possible to fill it up to a normal pour. So we resorted to just constantly signaling for refills, and the Chinese were completely Okay with that system. Did you know it takes 15 thimblefulls to get a normal glass of wine? Coffee was more problematic, especially when trying to make an early morning call while still jetlagged. Until we discovered the hidden cappucchino maker and the one barman who knew how to use it!

Armies of students, working for sponsors and for the Olympic committee, guided us around the city with smiles and waves.

And a special word about our sponsors, UPS. They had this whole event organized like an upscale summer camp for adults. There were meals and food available around the clock in the hotel, dozens of volunteers from the local University guided us around, hydrated us on the buses and enthusiastically explained things to us, often to hilarious effect, like the little girl who told us all about the “Net Burst” where we would see Athletics.

Jason, our camp counselor, was getting choked up to see our group of Campers get on the bus for the airport.

Two of our kids flex their Olympic muscles as they haul out drinks to the bus.

If you ever get a chance to go on a corporate sponsored sporting event, that’s the way to go. If UPS is handling it, even better. After all, their business is moving things safely and quickly from one place to another and that’s certainly what they did with us. Special mention: they even kept me on-line and blogging on the frequent occasions when, as we were informed by the staff, the government had “Closed the Internet”. (As we were leaving, we were told that the Government had shut down Wi-Fi in all the airports. Guess they didn’t like my blog.)

Another Sad End of An Era. The Chinese government has also cracked down on “Chinglish”, sending language experts out to correct the mangled English that is always such a fun aspect of Asian signs. I think it was a mistake. No more “Racist Park”, which was the former sign on a park dedicated to showcasing the culture of ethnic minorities. No more signs on fresh sowed lawns that urged pedestrians to “Be kind to the slender blades of grass”. I guess we’ll have to look to Malaysia to uphold this grand tradition.

If in doubt, read the rules!

So Was It Real or Was it Faked? Granted we were shielded and most certainly we were coddled, but as I said in an earlier post, I don’t think that level of friendliness and warmth can be faked that consistently and for that long. No matter what was mandated, I have to think we were seeing the Chinese people. Would we go back to China again? In a New York minute. In fact Andy decided he wants to do even more business in China and ordered me to look for Mandarin classes he can take.

So thanks, Beijingers! Thanks UPS! We had a fabulous time.

P.S. Oscar and Lucy say that people who take off to the Olympics and leave their dogs behind probably don’t deserve to have dogs.

And Oscar’s hoppin’ mad about the Nastia Liukin score. He’s not blaming the Chinese, they were great. But that Australian judge is going to get his ankles bitten if he ever comes to San Francisco.

Oscar sez "Nastia Liukin wuz robbed!" Just one terrier's opinion.

 Did I mention how hot it is in Shanghai? So hot that within 5 minutes of stepping outside, you are dripping with sweat. So hot that within 15 minutes, your clothes are as drenched as if you’d just jumped in a pool. So hot, that sweat pours down your face and into your eyes practically blinding you. It was 96 degrees with 83% humidity. Then at night, it cools to a balmy 94 degrees. We knew it was REALLY hot because even the Chinese were staggering around and sweating. Well, the men were. Most of the women were just lightly glowing under their parasols.

From past trips to the Asian tropics, we’ve always found that heading to a garden is a good way to beat the heat. So we had the Concierge write out the Chinese characters for the Yu Yuan Gardens which are pleasure gardens dating from the Ming Dynasty. But the driver, who spoke no English, dropped us off in a shopping center where we spent at least an hour wandering around wondering where that garden was. The Chinese government is starting a big campaign to get as many citizens as possible to learn English, so some streets and areas are signed in English, but there are no directional signs. So we were in the Yu Yuan Gardens Shopping Center, but it most decidedly did not look Ming Dynasty.

Luckily, we were rescued by a herd of students from the local Art College who were trying to drum up traffic for their gallery. They said we should come to their gallery and then they’d find someone to lead us to the gardens. And as you can imagine, we didn’t get out of there without buying something.

I purchased two brush paintings on rice paper from local Art student, Ting Ting.

Then gratefully, we followed another student to the Yu Yuan Gardens which had been behind the shopping center the whole time. Ah, the solitude of nature, shared with just us and a few hundred thousand of our closest Chinese friends. Turns out, this is kind of the Golden Gate Park of Shanghai and everyone was there. The bizarre thing is that the garden is probably only a few acres, but is set up as an intricate series of twisting, narrow alleyways and hidden areas for contemplation, that you walk for what seems like miles around in it.

Unlike a lot of China's great treasures, this complex and its stone mosaic floors survived the Mao era pretty much intact.

Much of the complex is like a rock garden with volcanic rocks with lots of weathering being preferred. Apparently, architects and Fung  Sui masters would search China and find just the perfect rocks that suggested mountains in miniature to set up in just the precise spot. Sounds like our man Felix, who builds our stone walls in Sonoma!

Every rock is selected and placed precisely for a certain effect. Our stone mason, Felix, would approve.

The roofs of the many pavilions were covered with fanciful stone figures like this frog.

Many of the Gingko Biloba trees, like the one here, are over 400 years old.

By this time, we were practically hallucinating in the heat. And when we tried to go to one of the various refreshment stands, they were also selling what the Chinese affectionately call “Stinky Tofu”. Stinky doesn’t even begin to describe this fermented treat. Suffice it to say that we couldn’t get within 10 yards of one of the stands without starting to gag.

Andy had actually lasted an amazingly long time wandering around and looking at sights. So when he got that “Colonial Look”, I knew I needed to take him back to the hotel.

Let me explain. This is an affliction that hits Andy any time we are in a former British Colony, possession or sphere of influence. Especially if it’s in the tropics. Andy can stand about three hours of looking at architecture or temples and then has to be whisked back to some bastion of former British glory. Think the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Penang, the Oriental in Bangkok or Raffles in Singapore. Once there Andy requires that white gloved attendants serve him many gin and tonics (for the quinine, he says, to prevent Malaria) while he muses, “This place would be run a lot better if the British were still in charge.”

We spent the rest of the day at the Ritz-Carlton pool sipping fruity drinks. This is Andy, before he was served his first much-needed G&T.

Call us idiots, but we decided at that point that the Ritz Bar, which featured a full range of Martinis and an all girl band done up like Shanghai beauties of the Thirties, was as good a place as any to soak up Shanghai culture. (Sadly, no photography allowed in the bar!) After all, the decadent Colonial experience, when Shanghai was considered the Paris of the East, is probably best evoked in a marble bar (with lots of air conditioning.)

So for the remainder of our day, we reveled in the slightly decadent atmosphere of an old Josef Von Sternberg movie set in Shanghai. Think Gene Tierney in The Shanghai Gesture or Marlene Dietrich in The Shanghai Express. Our only break was to go to the spa and indulge in 90 minute Traditional Chinese Massage. (Think very intense sports massage with accupressure.)

In this film, Gene Tierney is seduced by Shanghai and Opium to fall into the clutches of Madame Gin Sling and her infamous gambling hall.

In the Shanghai Express, Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong are politely called "adventuresses" as they ride a train through war-torn China to Shanghai.

Our pool and lobby idyll, along with a dinner at a rooftop restaurant where we watched a fierce Shanghai thunder and lighting storm, completed our Day Two in Shanghai.

The Olympic portion of our China trip is over, but I feel like we saw everything. We saw Michael Phelps swim, Bolt run, the US women gymnasts medal and Kobe and crew trounce their opponents.  So we set off for a two day stopover in Shanghai before heading home. And we landed right in the middle of the REAL China or at least the China that resembles what I’ve come to think is typical of much of Asia.

Beijing was almost too good to be true: everything new, up to date and modern, not a speck of trash on the street, everyone friendly and smiling. I’d heard that the Chinese government had agreed to crack down on street vendors who sold unlicensed knock-offs. But you couldn’t buy ANYTHING on the street. There were no postcards to be had, no stands selling Olympic stuff. There was one licensed “SuperStore” that sold official Olympic gear but it was miles away from the venues.

Then Shanghai: noisy, dirty, unbelievable wealth next to unimaginable squalor, street vendors everywhere, aggressive panhandlers hassling you to buy fake Rolexes, and millions of people living out loud and living in the streets. It’s what we’ve come to expect– and kind of enjoy about Asia– after visiting Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand. I’m not sure why it’s so different here. Has the Chinese government remade Beijing, but not bothered with Shanghai? Or are Beijingers naturally like the reserved, quiet Lutheran Minnesotans while Shanghainese are like loud New York Italians? (Count the stereotypes in that last sentence.) I’d heard that the government was encouraging Beijingers to ensure that foreigners had a good Olympics. And I’d seen the vaguely Big Brotherly affirmations posted on walls throughout the City: “Maintain the Olympic Spirit”, “Make Your City Proud with Olympic Attitude”, “Practice Olympic Courtesy”. But as one of our UPS hosts said, who’d been here off and on for a year preparing for this, “You just can’t fake this kind of warmth forever.” So I’m going to believe that the Beijingers may have followed orders in small things  – like refraining from eating garlic and not pushing in subways — but that the friendliness we experienced was real.

Shanghai is a whole different story, but not a bad one. First of all, we’re back to being about the only white faces on the street. And the street vendors and beggers are convinced we’ve got loads of cash and are ready to spend it. We strolled down to the Bund, the elevated waterside pedestrian avenue that is the favored hangout spot for everyone and his cousin. Children were pointing and staring at us, flocks of people tried to shine Andy’s shoes (even though he was wearing Tevas) and everyone had a fake watch to sell us.

The Bund is where everyone hangs out. You can see Old Colonial Shanghai on one side. And sleek modern Shanghai across the river.

However, I did become someone’s “Western Friend”. A woman walking with her husband, daughter and mother came up to me and asked me if she could take a picture of me with her mother. She explained that her mother was from the provinces and had never been to a big city before. There were three things she wanted to do: spend time with her granddaughter, walk on the Bund, and have her picture taken with a “Western Friend”. Well, that’s what the woman said. Her mother probably said, “I want my picture taken with one of those funny foreigners.” But I cheerfully posed for pictures and even grabbed Andy so they’d get two for the price of one. And gave everyone a Fuwa pin. Now I guess my picture will have pride of place on some wall in Sichuan Province.

Mom just wanted her picture taken with one of those crazy foreigners. The little girl wasn't so sure, even after I gave her a Fuwa pin.

Crocs are the kids' shoe of choice here. And there are two ways to keep cool: an umbrella or a handkerchief.

Next stop was Shanghai’s famous street markets. There’s one for everything you can imagine: pets, antiques, fish, meat, clothes, sex toys. . .

Whole, heads or livers. You can get anything at the Shanghai street markets.

Two things that immediately struck me. The meat market didn’t smell as bad as you’d think it would given that people had probably been gutting fish and poultry for hundreds of years and throwing them in the open drains. Well, the market smelled and we disinfected our shoes after walking in it. But when you got close to the produce and meat, it was the freshest I’ve seen outside of the Sonoma farmer’s market. Each vendor seemed to bring only what they thought they could sell that day. Most of the animals were brought in live then “processed” there. So no refrigeration, no coolers and no one seemed to be getting sick.

There were miles of aisles of animals at the Pet Market. But the most popular were crickets and birds.

Second thing that struck me: the Shanghainese seem to be cheerfully ignoring the government edicts against shoving, spitting and especially against men taking their shirts off. Apparently, the government thinks this is high on the list of things that will offend foreigners. The Shanghainese don’t care. And at 98 degrees and nearly 90% humidity, who blames them.

The government says "Keep your shirt on". The Shanghainese say, "Fuggeddaboutit".

As I said, there is a market for everything. But the very best one is the Mao Memorabilia Market. Imagine miles and miles of stands selling the best Mao kitsch ever. We stopped at one stand to buy a bag and a porcelain statue. The proprietress could see immediately that we were connoisseurs and took us up what must have been three hundred year old stairs to view her secret stash of the best Mao stuff ever. Andy suddenly had “shop lock” and couldn’t decide between the large seated smoking Mao or the statue of Mao subjugating the oppressors of the people. He settled for a copy of The Little Red Book. Some light reading for the plane.

I could have spent all day and all my money at the Mao Market.

Up the rickety steps to the Secret Mao Annex.

Making a purchase in the Secret Mao Annex.

I still say we should have bought the one of Mao having a relaxing cigar.

That about wraps up Day One in Shanghai. Next up, Ming Dynasty era gardens and more of Old Shanghai. See my pictures from Day One here.