Mars Attacks!

In case you haven't heard, we fans of the late, lamented TV show Veronica Mars have a lot to celebrate this week. In less than 1 day a Kickstarter campaign to fund a movie based on the show (something fans have been clamoring for since the show's cancellation 7 years ago) raised $2 million. As of this writing, they're still not 3 days into their 30-day fundraising drive and they're already approaching $3.3 million.

If you have never watched Veronica Mars, I implore you to do so. It is one of the smartest, most ambitious shows that has been on network TV in the last decade. Take a gander at the Season 1 trailer. It's got the noir-ish feel that permeated every scene of the show for its entire run:

It was unapologetically dark (who opens a series pilot with the lead character getting raped?), hauntingly funny and devilishly clever. Veronica Mars was a natural evolution of female heroine from Joss Whedon's Buffy. It had the same quality of writing, probably a touch better acting and much more mainstream appeal.

Back in 2007 I was one of the people who bought Mars Bars from the UK and had them shipped to the CW in a loosely-organized campaign to try and convince the network to renew the show. Looking back, I see it now as a harbinger of what's happening today. If several thousand of us back then were willing to shell out for a few candy bars to pay for our show, then what's going on now, with the internet as our tool, makes perfect sense. The only question that people should be asking, really, is "What took us so long?"

As thrilled as I am with this development, and as excited as all of the talk about how this could very well change the dynamics between fan bases and studios who own the rights to the universes and characters that we tend to obsess over, this week's events have given me a bit of pause.

The biggest issue that I have with the Veronica Mars campaign is that in the future I could easily see movie studios holding some of their properties hostage to campaigns like this one. They could, in effect, transfer the cost of production onto a fan base by refusing to make a movie unless they pay up, and then reap all of the rewards of the ticket sales if fundraising goals are met and the movie is made. Sure, the "investors" in the campaign get the cultural artifact that they want, but they end up having to pay for it twice.

The natural counter to that, however (this is where I argue with myself), is that if the "rewards" for lower-tier investment levels are digital downloads, DVDs or the like, then essentially fans are simply pre-purchasing things that they'd probably buy anyway, thereby voting with their dollars for something tangible.

On the other hand (man, I'm really argumentative today!)... When people, in effect, "pre-purchase" DVDs and digital downloads, they're really only shifting the distributors' post-theater revenue stream to the pre-production stage. In that scenario the studios are robbing Peter to pay Paul. They get to cash in immediately on the intellectual property instead of waiting for months and months for the production and distribution process to play out. And I fear what any entertainment executive will do when given the chance to lock in profits now by essentially eliminating all risk from the production proposition.

Clearly this does not end the tug of war between corporate producers and consumers, but it does shift the battle into a different arena, and, hopefully, we fans are at a bit less of a disadvantage here.

Pay No Attention to That Totalitarian State Behind The Curtain!

The world watches as China's journalists start chafing under the yolk of party censorship… and The Party wishes they weren't

We laowai tend to get into a lather whenever any kind of protest movement in China picks up steam, or whenever something going on here starts to penetrate into the front pages of the major dailies in the west or into the A block on nightly newscasts.

As such, the China expat Twittersphere has been all abuzz this week with the now well-documented goings-on down in Guangzhou at the offices of The Southern Weekly. I won’t re-hash what's been happening in this space since there has been excellent, extensive and exhaustive coverage of the events elsewhere (check out this, this and this for great summaries), but suffice to say, posts have flying around from every corner- from overseas looky-loos, local expats, pundits and journalists, including a friend, Jonah Kessel, who was on the ground on Wednesday documenting the fairly quiet gathering for The New York Times.

But yesterday things got more riveting when the police finally decided to get involved and put an end to the protests. Mark Mackinnon, the Beijing-based correspondent for Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, was on the edge of the crowd as the cops closed in and he sent out a series of updates to Twitter, letting people know what was going on in near real time.

When the police moved in, he was able to post photos, documenting the arrests.

What makes his posts even more remarkable is that the police knew that he was there and didn't remove him from the scene or prevent him from reporting. Just before things got serious he posted these notes about getting stopped by security officials.

With texting, social media, VPNs and e-mail-based photo sharing services available to everybody, it's very, very difficult for the government here to keep a lid on anything that happens, whether it be a small protest or a train derailment. And it's next to impossible to do it if a western reporter happens to be there. Short of arresting and expelling all western journalists, the Chinese government just has to deal with incidents like this getting out into the public sphere. And that's a very new phenomenon for them.

Keeping up apperances

One thing that westerns need to keep in mind whenever they read about how secretive the government is and the lack of press freedom (especially when they read about people protesting against press independence), is that the concept of "face", or a positive public image, is very, very important to Chinese people culturally. Maintaining good "face" helps one's social status. It's a big reason why nouveau riche Chinese are so luxury label obsessed.

This idea of "face" translates upward. If the government has a good image, then, by extension, the whole country has a good image. How things appear is just as important here as facts behind the scenes. Sometimes it's even more important. (Check out these comments that Jackie Chan made to the Chinese media yesterday for a great example of how this works.)

So if this is true, and if strict government control over the flow of information is not only the norm but a cultural and political imperative, then reporting like this week's, and the kind that's been going on for the past year, has got to be particularly galling to the country's ruling elite.

Example after example can be seen where the Powers That Be have let slide Chinese citizens' exposure and criticisms of the corrupt practices of local officials. There are historical and cultural precedents for tolerating this kind of venting. It's an obvious move by the central government (as it was by the governments of dynasties past) to give the people an outlet through which to channel their anger and frustrations. When a local official is then sacked or prosecuted, the higher authorities in Beijing look like competent heroes looking out for the little guy instead of the corrupt enablers that they are.

But when chatter starts to touch on the practices and predilections of the highest level officials and/or leaders of the most powerful political cadres, the talk is snuffed out in short order via censorship, or "Harmonization", on online forums and traditional media blackouts. Good "face" is maintained.

Enter the foreign press. While they’ve been doing a good job for several years, it's in the last 9 months that Beijing-based western correspondents have begun to not only shine, but to start making the people at the top extremely uncomfortable.

2012 saw more major websites banned and more journalists expelled than at any time in recent memory. Al Jazeera was first when its correspondent, Melissa Chan, got expelled for undisclosed reasons (though many believe that her reporting on China's notorious "Black Prisons", combined with a critical Al Jazeera documentary on Chinese labor camps are what did her in), and the company has not been allowed to send in a replacement reporter since. Bloomberg was next when its website was blocked from servers in China in retaliation for its expose on the wealth of incoming President Xi Jinping. Next up was the New York Times, who just 2 months after launching their Chinese-language site, saw their website blocked for the first time since 2001 after they published an exhaustive report on the riches gained b the family of outgoing Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Blocking websites will only get you so far. More and more Chinese can easily get around the blocks. (China was Facebook's #1 country in terms of growth last year, even though the site is banned.) Domestic social media sites are censored, but not in real time and not completely.

The bottom line is that you simply can’t be the #2 economy on the planet (soon to be #1) and NOT allow an international press presence. Information is currency in today's world and if there's a lack of a data flow then people simply won’t do business with you. China's leaders know this.

So what to do? As of right now the Chinese government's policies towards press freedom and freedom of speech in general has got them looking like Tom Thumb sticking various fingers in a leaky dyke. Unauthorized information comes out fast and furious these days and it's nigh impossible to stop it.

Be careful what you wish for

What we're seeing are the consequences of a shift in media policy that began back in 2000-2001. China was bidding for the Olympic Games and they were making conscious decisions to open up more. The New York Times was unblocked in China and more reporters were allowed in and given greater and greater freedom to move around and report on what they saw.

Bidding for the Games in the first place (and the World Expo in 2010) was seen as China's "coming out" party. Domestically it was a source of pride and a marker in history. This would be the point when China stepped back onto the world stage and reclaimed its role as a central power after almost 200 years of living in the shadow of the west.

China got all that it wanted. Beijing became a veritable hive of foreign bureaus from every conceivable media outlet (The Hollywood Reporter even had a bureau here for a while). The world sat up and started paying attention. In a big way. After the Olympics, China emerged as one of the few bright spots when the world financial crisis happened, shining the spotlight even brighter on what was happening here, as people all over the world gazed with envy at their success and searched for things that they could emulate in their own countries.

This intense attention has only grown as the press has become more emboldened here and the government's reactions to what we in the west would consider normal reporting on the levers of power have seemed so overboard as to be laughable. Instead of preserving "face" their reactions are making them lose it.

So what next?

China can not simply imprison or expel everybody who writes unflattering things. And western journalists can not sit idly by and let things go unreported because, unlike their Chinese colleagues, they not only have an outlet for reporting what they see, but they have an imperative (i.e. demanding editors and a ravenous-for-news public). Too many people have access to too many avenues of communication for that to be feasible. And western reporters have found many willing sources of information. People will talk to them (though not at the highest levels). Weibo conversations can not be censored fast enough before they are captured and re-printed on sites outside of China.

The Chinese government craved the spotlight. It wanted to showcase all of its accomplishments, of which it has many to be proud of. But what the leadership was either unprepared for, or simply did not imagine would happen, is that the spotlight that is now on them has started to expose the seedy underbelly of their operations.

Up until recently they've been fighting back in the way that they always have, by exerting more and more control. The new administration isn’t quite installed yet, and even when it is, most of the members of the Standing Committee will be old hands left over from the previous cadre, but I would not be surprised if over the next year or two you start to see some loosening of the reigns. I think that China will focus more on internal information controls and worry less about what foreign reporters are doing. As a younger generation moves up within the party's ranks, a generation who has grown up fully exposed to the west, you'll even start to see a more sophisticated media strategy evolve- one that doesn’t depend so much on the crude bludgeon of walled-off websites and expelling journalists.

China's Impending Foreign Direct Investment Armageddon, Part 2

Shifting the financial center of gravity from west to east

Last time, I bought you up to speed on what's been going on with the brouhaha between China and the US over Chinese companies that are listed on US markets. It's clear that we're on the verge of what could be a pretty major confrontation that could shift the focus of China's capital markets from the US back to China.

There are other, smaller legal skirmishes going on, like the dust-up between VisionChina Media and the Supreme Court of New York. The court has entered a judgment against them for $60 million, but VisionChina refuses to transfer any funds from China to pay the fine, saying that Chinese law does not allow it to. The court has now held them in contempt. Will warrants be issued for the arrest of executives? Will they be kicked out of the market? It's hard to say.

Nobody is quite sure what's coming next in this fight. Both sides have legitimate claims against the other. The US says that if you're going to use our markets to raise capital, then you've got to play by our accounting and disclosure rules. China says that you can’t send US government officials into China to impose US law on Chinese citizens. So who's right?

Well, both sides are right, and both sides are wrong… which is why we're at loggerheads.

I'm pretty pessimistic about all of this in the short term. I heard a great point brought up on a recent Sinica podcast about this issue. Basically, both sides are kind of spoiling for a fight. And since they can’t safely engage with each other in any other area without risking serious hostilities or dramatic diplomatic consequences, they may be willing to refuse to come to any kind of agreement here.

If that happens, you'll see a full-on retreat from the US by Chinese companies, which will result in billions of dollars of value being wiped off of the ledgers of US markets. That's not a good thing. Those companies will then start looking for new places to trade their shares. Where will they go? Reputable companies like Baidu don’t want anything to do with the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchanges. They're so corrupt as to be laughable. And places like London and Singapore will have the same kind of sovereignty issues to deal with. The logical thing for China to do is to facilitate the move of companies from US markets to Hong Kong.

But that's not really as easy as it sounds. There are currently questions in Hong Kong about the accounting practices of some of the mainland China-based companies that are already listed there. Hong Kong has a brand to protect, too. They certainly don't want to ruin the good thing that they've got going by infecting their markets with a bunch of unreliable companies whose numbers can’t be trusted.

If the Hong Kong markets were to develop an acceptable processes for handling mainland China-based companies, you could see an avalanche of IPOs there. There is a huge backlog of companies on the mainland who would love to go public, but the corrupt and inefficient processes in China mean that only a fraction of them get to list. And after they do, trading is severely suspect and there isn’t much capital to be had. If they could be given a roadmap to follow that would let them access international capital markets through Hong Kong they'd jump at the chance.

If you saw more companies make the leap to Hong Kong, it could put even more pressure on China to float its currency, or at least ease their controls and provide some more outlets for moving it across borders. This would be an unequivocally good thing for the US. The Yuan would rise, more Chinese would be able to buy US exports and there would be less incentive for US-based companies to move their manufacturing here. (Though that process is already well in motion for other reasons.)

As pessimistic as I am about the short term prospects for a deal between the US and China, in the long term I think that this confrontation will end up being a good thing. As I first said 18 months ago, the US forcing Chinese companies to adopt western accounting practices, and China better policing its markets, can only be a positive for the world's economy. Giving more people access to investment opportunities in China will help to not only open the market even further, but it will also help to develop China's business community in ways that will be very beneficial to the burgeoning middle class here. Who knows, maybe a mass of Hong Kong listings from Chinese companies might even lead to some truly public, accessible investment vehicles that middle class Chinese could take advantage of. That would have a tremendously positive effect on housing pricess, upward mobility and inflationary pressures.

Time will tell. Stay tuned!

China's Impending Foreign Direct Investment Armageddon, Part 1

The biggest China story for 2013 that you're not hearing about

There’s a showdown brewing that could presage a historic shift in world capital markets, but because of the western press' preoccupation with the US presidential election and China’s change in leadership it hasn't garnered much coverage: The looming "fiscal cliff" faced by Chinese companies that are traded on US stock markets and the investors who have bought in to them.

Case in point, check out this post from the Council on Foreign relations' website. In it, they list the "Changes and Challenges for China in 2013", but nowhere is this issue mentioned. This is, I think, a tragic oversight, because what’s going on could have more real word effects on people’s lives (in China, anyway) than the hubbub over the South China Sea.

It's a complex situation that is wrapped up in legal and political knots on both sides of the Pacific, so I'm going to break this post into two parts in order to keep it readable. First up, a primer:

Chinese companies have been listing themselves in US markets for years. Right now, shares of just over 200 companies are being traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the NADAQ and the AMEX markets. China has the largest number of companies of any country outside of the US trading in our markets today.

There are lots of reasons why a company might want to trade on a US stock market, but in China the most common are 1) prestige, which allows companies to compete for more international contracts; and 2) access to capital, which is in short supply in China since Chinese banks, which are state-owned, make almost all of their loans to other state-owned companies. Money from foreign markets/investors, or “Foreign Direct Investment” has been one of the few sources of capital that small- and medium-sized businesses have had access to and it has been one of the main drivers of China’s economic growth over the past decade.

These issues, coupled with the difficulties conducting transactions in Yuan (due to China's strict currency controls) led to a boom of listings by China-based companies on US markets from 2008-2011.

Many of these companies’ listings were done through “reverse mergers”, which are pretty shady deals. Basically, a Chinese business buys out a bankrupt or otherwise defunct company in the US that still has a valid stock ticker and then just starts trading under that ticker. This method is much easier and faster than the normal process, which requires all sorts of regulatory hurdle-jumping and accounting disclosures.

Of course, these quickie listings don’t allow for the kind of weeding out of companies with secretive or blatantly fraudulent accounting practices. In 2011, a series of reports were published by investment research firms that exposed many Chinese companies' corrupt dealings and falsified disclosures. Investigations by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were launched and delistings ensued. As a result, we've see a massive devaluation of Chinese companies in US markets since then. This has not only led to many companies closing down or going private, but it has wiped out billions of dollars of investors' wealth.

This drama has been playing out for almost two years and you can read my August 2011 post about the reasons behind the reverse merger boom and bust here. In it, I broke down the phenomenon and speculated that even though you'd see lots of companies fold, it could turn out to be a good thing for China's economy.

[Companies that survive will] set the stage for a new era of Chinese corporate governance. In the end, it will be the companies that decide to adhere to the rules of the Western game that will be successful. Their success will breed imitators here (it's what the Chinese do best, after all) and just as Big Macs and blue jeans helped to conquer to Soviet Union, the Chinese's own drive to get rich and access Western markets will drive them ever further towards our way of doing business.

While I still hold to that idea, it appears that the timing of this evolution could be significantly delayed, and/or the context of it radically altered. The investigations that the SEC launched have since turned into lawsuits, with the US government seeking court orders against US-based accounting firms and their Chinese clients for internal accounting documents. In effect, they're trying to apply US law to companies that are based in China.

The Chinese government isn't having any of it. Saying that any disclosures to US regulators would be a violation of their sovereignty, they're telling the SEC that not only can they not see Chinese bank/corporate documents, but that any accounting firm or corporation based in China that hands any of these documents over could be subject to the State Secrets Act. Violation of that law carries penalties like life in prison or the death sentence.

Given those consequences, its understandable why US accounting firms are loathe to demand that their Chinese affiliates (which are, buy law, at least 50% owned by a Chinese concern) hand over anything. And so… a stalemate.

Both countries have a legitimate beef with the other. On the US side, the government has a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of its capital markets. As far as they're concerned, Chinese companies have chosen to sell their shares in the US and they should follow US disclosure and reporting requirements. On the China side, the government doesn’t see any reason why they should subject any of their citizens or corporations to the laws of a foreign country. In their minds, Chinese disclosure and reporting laws should suffice for Chinese companies.

This pissing match between the SEC and the Chinese government reached its final stages in early December when the SEC went to federal court to compel the US-based accounting firms to give regulators access to the accounting documents of the Chinese companies that they're investigating.

The result of this suit will have a lot of very important consequences. And they'll manifest themselves very soon. The case, by law, must be acted upon by November 2013. This means that the SEC must come to some sort of arrangement, or the Chinese branches of the accounting firms must hand over their internal documents by then, possibly in violation of Chinese law, or… well, nobody is quite sure what happens after that.

In part 2 I'll get into what I think will go down and what the benefits/concequences to China and the US might be.

Humbug

Does Living in China Drain Your Claus-o-Meter?

Christmas kind of snuck up on me this year, my annual participation in SantaCon notwithstanding. One of the things that I've always liked about living in Beijing is the lack of Christmas hype. Sure, malls and residential compounds in the expat sections of town festoon themselves with some lights and a little bit of holiday regalia, but it's nothing like it is back home in the US. So long as you're not in a Starbucks or a big mall, you don’t hear Christmas music. There's nobody to buy gifts for, no family drama to fret over and no social pressure to show up at holiday parties. In effect, Christmas is "celebrated" here kind of like Cinco de Mayo in the US: As an excuse to party.

I wrote extensively about this back in 2008 when I was still in a bit of cultural shell-shock, and while everything that I said back then still holds true, now there's one caveat: I just don’t get jazzed up for the season anymore.

I think that I may have reached the point where I've been separated from Christmas long enough that the "Christmas Spirit" has been drained from me. It just doesn’t exist here, which is probably why Santa Claus doesn’t visit.

This year I actually found myself getting annoyed at the "Merry Christmas" text/WeChat/WhatsApp messages from westerners and the "Merry Xmas" messages from my Chinese friends. I felt like yelling, "Hey! 1) I'm not a Christian and 2) I'm not in a place that even recognizes the holiday. It's a regular work day here!"

Of course I always appreciate the thoughts of my far-flung friends who send me their good wishes, but they feel more meaningful to me when they come on random days all throughout the year. (Which they do, I am very happy to say- I have amazing friends!) On Christmas itself I kept wishing that there was a function on Facebook and on my SMS and messaging programs that would've let me block the Christmas messages.

Even during my first 2 years in Beijing when I was nominally observing Christmas as a cultural phenomenon, it was always in the context of people who didn’t have the holiday themselves and served more as a touchstone to my origins than a holiday in any sense of the word. (During my next 2 years I was with living with a Russian woman, and they don’t have Christmas.)

After 5 Christmases in China it feels like I'm not a part of it anymore, and that makes me feel like I don’t really want anything to do with it. I don’t even want to think about it.

It could be that this "de-Christmas-izing" is symptomatic of something larger. Sometimes I feel like there's been a foundational shift in my cultural identity. Whether it's my worldview (which is much larger now), my political stances (which are much more pro-business and free-market yet even more socially liberal than they used to be) or my utter lack of homesickness, there is definitely something different about me compared to when I was living back in Boston.

In my core I'm the same person that I've always been. As my friends who have visited me here have all agreed, I'm not different, I'm just more me than I ever had the chance to be back home. But even if I haven’t changed inside, what I respond to and what seems important and affirming to me most definitely has. I'm not sure of I can get back to the old feelings that I used to have about this season.

And I'm not sure that I want to.

US Blood for Chinese Oil

How the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have set the stage for a possible "Chinese caliphate"

Reuters has a report today about Exxon's divesture from Iraq's southern oil fields and how China's state-owned CNPC is the top-bidder for the drilling rights that they're abandoning.

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has emerged as the frontrunner to take over Iraq's West Qurna-1 oilfield from Exxon Mobil, a move that would diminish Western oil influence in Iraq a decade after the U.S.-led invasion.

This has HUGE implications, in addition to the reasons laid out in the story. The most important, immediate concern is the effect that this move will have on the status of Kurdistan and the very viability of Iraq as a unified state.

China's stealthy advance in Iraq, supported by piles of cash, has already given it a formidable position in prized southern oilfields, and through Chinese oil company Sinopec , its reach has extended into the northern Kurdish region… Kurdistan has upset Baghdad by signing deals directly with oil majors such as Exxon and Chevron, providing lucrative service contracts and better operating conditions than in Iraq's south… With oil majors now shifting their focus northward to sign deals with Kurdistan and away from Iraq's southern oilfields, leaders on both sides are warning of the risks that the dispute could slide into an ethnic war.

That sounds pretty bad.

(An aside: Though it would most likely lead to war, there is an argument to be made that a stable, independent, peaceful, democratic Kurdistan would be a boon to the region. Turkey would have to settle a lot of internal issues for that to happen, however. And the Kurds in Syria might have something to say about it, too. But I digress…)

Even if a new sectarian war is averted it still doesn’t look good. The oil that Chinese state-owned companies pump out of the ground doesn’t flow into the global market like oil pumped by Exxon or Shell. It goes straight back to China. That means when China secures oil rights, it actually secures them. China will be the world's #1 consumer of oil very soon, and they're not looking to share. That's a radically different macro-economic philosophy than what has dominated the world for the last 60+ years.

If this deal goes through, China would be the central player in the Iran-Iraq arena. Iran's biggest oil customer? China. Most consistent veto vote against UN sanctions on Iran? China. This would also mark an alignment of business interests across Iran and Iraq that hasn't existed since the days of the Ottoman Empire and will, as a result of these new alignments, give the Shiites much more power in Iran than Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries will be comfortable with. Saudi Arabia is already bristling at Iran's current level of involvement in Iraq and their meddling in Yemen. This could seriously ratchet up regional tensions.

But that's not what really concerns me, because, in the end, the oil business is a business. So long as the wheels are being greased, things will remain relatively stable. (Iran's nuclear ambitions notwithstanding.) And if there's one thing that China's good at, it's laying out the cash to make things work smoothly.

No, what really makes me shudder is when I think about Afghanistan.

Fast-forward 2 years and you'll see China pulling the same game in central Asia. In areas that the US has secured in Afghanistan, Chinese companies will swoop in and buy up mineral rights. It's already happening. There are massive deposits of all sorts of minerals in that country and Chinese companies have no problems dealing with corrupt governments or local warlords. So long as the supply routes are secured ("Thanks, US Army!"), they'll jump right in and make a killing, securing (there's that word again) for themselves tons of gold, copper and other rare earth minerals that the entire world needs.

Once that's done, you'll have what amounts to a China-dominated natural resources market that stretches from the southern Iraqi oil fields, across Iran and through to mines in northeast Afghanastan. Railroads and pipelines will not be far behind (they're already in the planning stages). All of a sudden, China will have a large measure of control over a huge swath of central Asia and the Middle East. And it'll be in large part thanks to a decade of belligerent American steps, including 2 wars and the isolation of Iran. (And as a bonus: In this scenario, US naval dominance in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean wouldn't be as important anymore.)

As ominous as this all sounds, it's important to remember that China isn't necessarily out to dominate anybody. Nor are they trying to push the US out of any particular region for ideological purposes, like the USSR during the Cold War. Instead, China's #1 stated foreign policy goal has always been to make China self-sufficient. In effect, "We will feed ourselves," and "Nobody fucks with us ever again."

But they are our major economic and systemic competitor. The situation now gives them a clear opening to make incredible gains. It has exposed the debacle of the Iraq invasion and botched early years in Afghanistan as not only a massive military, economic and foreign policy blunder, but it has proved to be a geopolitical disaster the likes of which we haven’t seen since Vietnam.

I hope that the Obama team sees a way out of this. Because I don’t.

The Cure for A Hangover is to Go Back

It’s been exactly 1 month since I got back from my epic trip across Europe, and while I’ve been remiss in documenting it (an issue which will be remedied in short order), I find that I am just getting over something of an Olympics hangover. Or a life stage hangover. Call it whatever you want, but I’ve been in a bit of a funk these past few weeks.

I finally feel like I’ve snapped out of it, and one of the things that seemed to bring my current attitude problems into focus for me was an article that I read today (which reminded me of this piece and this one as well) about the post-games hangover that London is going through right now and how they're trying to harness all of the great energy that they generated into more great stuff in the future. After throwing an incredibly successful Olympics, and an equally impressive Paralympics, the citizens of the Olde Towne (and Great Britain in general) are scratching their heads and wondering, “Now what?”

While I can’t answer that question, and before I get on to my self-indulgent, exhaustive documentation of my entire European excursion, I did want to take a few minutes to write a little love note to the people back in London.

I heard from plenty of people who said that it would be folly to head to a city like London during the Summer Games. The streets would be mobbed. Traffic would be a nightmare. Security would be overbearing and cause massive delays. Prices would be outrageous. The Tube would be jammed beyond hope of use. As we now know, none of these fears came to pass. The Olympics were pulled off smoothly with an aplomb and panache that I honestly did not think would be possible.

I never for a moment believed that anything would be able to top the organizational marvel that had been Beijing 2008. Opening and Closing ceremonies aside (which were a wash, IMHO), after seeing such precision in execution of logistical plans and unwavering enthusiasm from the population, how could crusty old London ever hope to match what the Chinese accomplished? After all, hadn’t they invested billions of dollars in new city-wide transportation and other infrastructure just for a single 16-day event? From new subway lines to a revamped fleet of taxis to the closing of factories Beijing moved heaven and earth (almost literally) to roll out a red carpet that will not soon be forgotten.

It just so happened that I arrived to start my new life in Beijing on 8/8/2008 - Opening Day of the Games. In the months before I moved here, so I’m told by those who were there, there was a mass exodus of locals who fled the city. Some were forced to leave due to a visa crackdown, while others feared the crowds and… well, I’ve never gotten a clear answer on what other things people were afraid of. There seemed to have been a nebulous sentiment that BAD THINGS COULD HAPPEN that affected people here. Not too unlike what the people of London had been feeling over the past year (though for vastly different reasons).

Of course it was all so much paranoia. Beijing in August of 2008 was a joy to behold and having been there for all of it is one of the singularly important and transformative experiences of my life.

How could London possibly compare?

I don’t think that my life will be as altered by London 2012 as it was by Beijing 2008, but that’s an issue of happenstance rather than circumstance. (I’m not in the middle of an inter-continental move or such a drastic life change right now). Experience-wise, though, I struggle to find the words to express just how good a time I had and how thankful I am to the people of the city who made it all happen.

From the moment my girlfriend and I stepped off of the train from Brussels into Kings’ Cross station, it was evident that this would be more than just another fun stop on our trip. Greeters offered us Snickers bars and bottled water while we waited to go through Immigration. Flags were hanging everywhere. People were smiling. The weather was even ideal.

Each day we experienced some form of kindness from somebody and London found a new way to make us happy. Whether it was a surprisingly cheap meal, an uncrowded tourist attraction, a free ice cream after getting off of the commuter train at Wellington station or a helpful volunteer, there was always something good happening to us. We met people who were not only willing to give a couple of hapless tourists directions, but who seemed eager to engage us in pleasant conversation, wondering if we were having a good time or offering tips on how to best experience their city.

London is an amazing metropolis. The museums are overwhelming. The subway is great. The parks are lovely islands in the ancient, scalable urban landscape. There is an abundance of great food to be had… and that’s just scratching the surface. After 10 days there I wanted more. My current employer has an office there and I have found myself glancing at the internal job postings these days, checking to see if a position is opening up in it. Beijing is most definitely my home for now, but I find myself taking flights of fancy lately and if an opportunity ever presented itself to move there I would be hard pressed to turn it down.

In the end, I think that’s the greatest testament to the job that the people of London did last month. They made me, an avowed New Englander (who is almost arrogantly proud of our Revolutionary history) and rabid sinophile, seriously consider uprooting myself to give living there a try.

Good show!

More to come…