The speed at which this city is changing gives a strange sense of illusion. Without warning, a familiar shop might suddenly be gone one day, replaced with bamboo scaffolding. A week later there’s an empty megaplex. Space itself is moving around people, as people move within it. Some will try to hold onto patterns, familiar routines to make sense of it all: dancers in the morning, fishers by the river at night. It is by no means a comfortable city. You will choke on unapologetic fumes and stifling heat. A friend once described it as raw, like its inhabitants, who will turn from anger to glee within seconds.

A year is hardly enough time to scratch the surface of the complex, shifting physical geography of the city, the networks that people move within, or the languages they speak. It was very fortunate to have experienced Wuhan at this point in time – in a few years it will have changed into something different. A wonderful city and dear friends will be missed.

Mmm bucket o’ shrimp.

Boom. I have just achieved level 5 mastery in ‘ethnographic interviews.’ 4 hrs and 31 minutes, with 5 people. Simultaneously. Entirely in Chinese. Mwahahahahahaha. This skill may some day prove useful. Also another picture of Wuhan during the eclipse.

So there’s this NYT article about a WTO ruling that should allow Western companies to more effectively sell certain types of entertainment content in China. I was all prepared to write a longer post on reputation networks in illegal DVD markets. Instead, I will simply post a picture of a cat sleeping on top of pirated DVDs:

So I wanted both of these to be black and white, but if the first is grayscale, it makes this sweet old woman appear as though she does not have any pants on.

In this one, the child is in fact wearing no pants. Apparently there is something to be said for no diapers from an environmental perspective? Like cars and air conditioning, diapers seem to be one of the first things purchased when people have enough money to do so. Until then, solutions must be found. This is one of the better such solutions.

It’s too bad this photo didn’t turn out better. Light was quite poor. I suppose I can just claim it’s avant-garde realism, the signature motion blur adding to the gritty reality and irony of: three members of the People’s Armed Police (you know, the Communist paramilitary organization, more recently known as Uighur-dissident-suppressing-jackbooted-thugsdefenders of order) posing for photographs during the full solar eclipse.

Boat on the Yangtze River. What is this stuff? I have cranked up the contrast. Here’s the original. Sulfur? The contrast was quite stark with the brown water.

Aside: during a day trip to the Three Gorges Dam [about a month back], one of the bus-tour operators asked everyone ‘why is the water so brown?’ This gentle, ~70 year old man from Guangzhou yells out “POOP!” Smiling, the tour operator explained that the red/brown color was actually due to sedimentation [doubt that's *all* there is.]

It is good, however, to know that scatological fascination continues to be a relevant mode of discourse no matter how old and respectable one becomes.