Words Fail Me

 I’m in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province (not Shanxi province, which is different as you may recall.)  It was also the capital of many dynasties all the way back to the Qin, although under many different names.

The current name 西安 means “Western peace” but that might have something to do with promise of the 40 foot tall rectangular wall all the way around the heart of the city.  And the wall is even thicker than it is tall.

The Chinese have a wall fetish.

Fuckin’ magnets.  How do they work?  I’m on the MagLev train to the airport to fly to Xi’an.  Just hit 431km/h. 

A subsidiary of He-Man Woman Haters Industries.  A division of the Little Rascals Group.  

Took the Metro Line 1 (closest to my apartment) to its southern terminus in Xinzhuang.Then connected from Xinzhuang to the Metro Line 5.  From Line 5, went past the suburbs (highrises surround by green space), past the Johnson & Johnson and Ovaltine factories (seriously), to the final terminus (redundant.)  It’s difficult to describe what I found out at the Minghang Development Zone.  Quiet.  I heard the wind in the trees.  It was almost like being in Burbank or the city of San Bernardino or Grand Island, Nebraska.  But instead of single family homes it was tree-lined streets of commercial buildings.Some even had newly-built fifteen foot walls with shards of glass embedded at the top like barbed wire.  Protecting more trees and buildings and God knows what.   Previous terminus adventures can be found here, here, and here.

 The foyer to a “chili bowl” place by work has these decorative bottles with colored liquid in a small fountain. 

If I’ve learned anything from RPGs it’s that I should gather all of them because they must be elixirs or plasmids or something. 

Pro-tip:  don’t watch Kurt Cobain:  Montage of Heck while in the middle of an existential crisis.  It is, however, a good reminder of the interplay between pharmacology and mental health.

Last weekend, I finally burned through my American supply of antidepressants.  And although, months ago, I had made sure to arrange a Chinese supply, I didn’t start taking them.  (This was out of sheer laziness.  Because — yes, this is the real reason — here they come in blister packs of seven pills apiece instead of bottles of a hundred.)

Careful examination of the packaging did not fill me with confidence.  I found this tiny logo:

The only thing worse would be if it said HankCo.

 I stumbled on these on a path around Meilan Lake.  At first I thought to file the photo under “know when to walk away” but I realized it ought be filed under “know when to run.”

Metro line 9 ends, um, abruptly. Nothing Keanu Reeves can do about that.

Meilan Lake feels like a tired old resort town but there are plenty of couples taking wedding photos everywhere.

Previous terminus adventures can be found here and here.

Took Metro Line 1 (the one closest to my apartment) beyond the Pale — out where a lot of the stations have 村 (“village”) in their names — to where it emerges above ground. Then took a cab (taxis are orange in North Shanghai) through a patchwork of tiny farms and vast factories to Meilan Lake.

Previous terminus adventure can be found here.

 Eli & I picked up the shirts we have made.  Printed on the bag was this inscrutable “thank you” message.  

 Cali-Burger is an In-N-Out Burger knockoff.  Even down to the palm trees on the logo.  The only difference I found was no Bible verses on the cups. Oh, and the French fries are better.  (So Cal heresy, I know.)

 Took the metro Line 13 (which I now call the “Breast Cancer Awareness Line) all the way to its last stop.  So far out that Shanghai had run out of skyscrapers.But I still found an IMAX theater.