Every evening, without fail, I get the weather report as a text message on my cell phone. The weather reports in China (at least the ones that I've been getting) are quite different than the ones back home. They tend to offer little tidbits of advice at the end, such as "Tomorrow the temperature will be quite variable. Be sure to avoid eating spicy food." (I am not making this up). "Tomorrow will be unseasonably chilly. Be sure to wear warm clothing." Today was a new one - after telling me the wind direction and temperature, the weather report wished me a "Happy International Intellectual Property Rights Day!"
Very excited about it being Intellectual Property Rights Day, since that is what I'm studying here, I mentioned it to my teacher this morning. He already knew about it, of course, and told me that in honor of it being Intellectual Property Rights Day, the police had raided the underground pirated DVD market across the street and seized boxes and boxes of DVDs to be crushed by steamrollers in front of television cameras, and broadcast on the evening news: "Harbin Cracks Down on Piracy!"
As much as I'm a fan of intellectual property rights, I was kind of upset by the news - I really like cheap, low-quality DVDs! My teacher quickly reassured me, though, saying, "oh, just wait a few days, and it will be back." And apparently "a few days" is actually overestimating time - I ran into one of my classmates this afternoon, who told me he had just gotten back from buying DVDs. Confused, I asked him, "but didn't the police raid it yesterday?" "Really?" he said. "It looked just like it always does to me."
This is one of those times where I just know that I will never, ever understand this place!
