Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

It’s golden week! In China October 1st is a national holiday – it’s the date the Commies officially took charge – but recently the holiday has been extended to a week, to ‘stimulate consumer spending’. Imagine if everyone in Britain took their annual holidays at the same time, think what chaos there would be; roads jammed, shops and holiday destinations swamped. Now reflect that China is three, four times more congested, and Shanghai is the most congested city in China.

I experienced it full face this morning, while trying to take my troublesome phone to China Mobile. I had taken it there before, two days ago. The ladies in blue had taken it away, and – so I thought – changed the battery, and what do you know, it had worked. It had worked for just long enough for me to take it to Starbucks and try to call someone and then it had jammed up again. No cow this time, just a blue screen. I’d tried charging it overnight and pressing all the buttons and so on, but nothing.

M suggested that the cow appeared because it’s a homonym. In the same way that bat and teapots are lucky because they both sound a bit like ‘prosperity’, perhaps cow – ‘niu’ – sounds a bit like some obscure Chinese word for ‘your battery’s fucked.’

It’s about a five minute walk from my hostel to China Mobile. Not today though. Just being on the pavement was like being right at the front at a rock concert. Or in a tube train at rush hour, if everyone in the train, rather then being stationary, were trying to get to one end of the carriage or the other. An American was filming a pedestrian crossing, whispering a commentary into his video camera’s microphone: ‘one billion people… a sea of humanity… crossing the road.’ There weren’t one billion people crossing the road, but there were certainly far more than could reasonably be expected.

So it took me quite some time to reach China Mobile. This time the lady in blue pressed the ‘end call’ button and what do you know, it started working. Well no one had told me, and the instruction were all in Chinese. I’m sure I pressed that button myself, many times. Why make the on switch the ‘end call’ button anyway? Could they not have explained how to do it the first time I went in? Or the second? I still don’t trust the thing… I went to Starbucks and as I geared myself up to squeezing through the masses for the return journey it started to rain.