#china problems

China’s remarkable growth over the past few decades has been nothing short of awe-inspiring. Since President Deng Xiaoping began reforming the country’s economy in 1978, the world has witnessed the nation’s rise from an agrarian society to an economic powerhouse. However, recent developments have raised questions about the sustainability of this growth. In this blog post, we delve into the…

Tumblr has been blocked in China :-( 

               In Which I Take an Over Abundance of Selfies

My new phone has a front facing camera and back facing camera AND a makeup editing function. It’s a feature on Chinese phones, because in China it’s considerably more acceptable to Photoshop the heck out of your selfies. In addition to have a series of built in filters that rival Instagram, they add makeup to your face.

THUS, my new favorite pastime is taking selfies and putting makeup filters on them to see how silly I’ll look.

Things I’ve learned:

1)The eye shadow and lipstick is a bust. (First picture--its hysterical). It doesn’t read as real. However the eyelashes and skin blurring is effective in about half of the pictures.

2) This is a dangerous habit: After looking at pictures 2, 3, and 4 I can almost convince myself that they are real. Yes my skin is alarmingly pore-less, yes I’m paler, and of course the fun fancy-girl-bubble light filter is unrealistic, but I almost feel that the picture still represents me. AND then I look at the original picture, and realize I’m a crazy person. Real people have pores, and under eye cirlces, and fine lines (and I’m only 23 and I’m saying that). BUT my point is that, its very easy to convince yourself that you look like the edited version of yourself, and consequently want all pictures posted online to be overly edited.

While this blatant over editing isn’t as obvious in US selfie culture, it’s is in China and many of the Chinese girls on the Chinese version of Tinder have all of their photos edited like my experiments.

3) The editing software works a lot better if you’re already wearing makeup. In most of the pictures above, I’m wearing makeup. It’s my “I’m-not-wearing-makeup” makeup for work. It’s not perfect, but it evens out my skin a lot and pops my eyelashes. I tried out the filters on a photo of myself with absolutely no makeup one and the filters had some problems. a) It it couldn’t completely cover up my acne, b) It couldn’t find the edges of my eyes.--the eyeliner/eyelashes were all applied to my eyeballs, and c) the blush and lipstick looked extra ridiculous.

4) Taking good looking selfies is hard. The angle of the camera creates a fish-eye effect on my nose, which is not flattering. Tilting the camera up makes my nostrils look super big and my jaw look strange, so I’ve discovered the key to a good selfie is holding the camera above myself at an angle. It keeps my nose looking like a relatively normal size and it creates the illusion that my chin is more narrow and I have a little bit of a heart shaped face (when it is in real life oblong/rectangular). Also, turning the camera side-ways makes the image look different than holding it vertically. This has furthered my realization that I’m incredibly vain and self critical (portrait artist problems) but also that all selfies are somewhat contrived. No one just takes one selfie and is happy with it. We take at least 5 and then are maybe happy with one.

5) This software doesn’t work that well on men. This should be obvious, but I forced Benji to let me take pictures of him in order to try out the feature on his face. It was not as hysterical as I had hoped, but it becomes clear the pore less look doesn’t remotely work for men.

6) I really like close up shots of my eyes. I think they’re naturally really pretty, but also I’m endlessly amused the software’s spotty fake eyelash application. I end up with bottom eyelashes coming out of my eyeballs.

So ECNU has lovingly provided me with an apartment to stay on campus, and it’s wonderful. I have a incredibly reliable shower with hot water, a detachable shower head, and a king sized bed. Over all, nothing to sneeze at. It might be small, but it’s home for the next ten months and I appreciate it. That said, there are some things that don’t work like American apartments. My electricity is dependent on my key card being put in a slot by the door. I have a card (like in a hotel) that I use to beep open my door, and then I put the card in the slot.

My electricity turns on. So when I leave, my electricity turns off. Which means that I can’t charge any electronic devices while I’m out and about.

Benji discovered the hard way, that the washing machine also stops mid rinse, when you leave the apartment and take the key card out. However, strangely the refrigerator does not turn off when everything else does. While this is blessedly wonderful, because that way my food doesn’t spoil, I don’t understand how it works. To the best of my knowledge it’s plugged into a normal outlet just like all the other appliances.

But I digress. Now this automatic turn off feature has its benefits. You can’t accidentally leave the AC or the lights on all day. They turn off.

 So when the electricity shuts off, my internet shuts off (wifi and ethernet). That’s not a problem, unless you’re trying to download the new Apple operating system for your iPad. I thought I had found a way to cheat the system: When I left for lunch I pressed the “Pause download” button before disconnecting my electricity, hoping that when I came back I could resume my spot of 3 hours into the 10 hour download.

Sadly I was wrong.

I had to start all over again post-lunch.

But GOSH DARNIT I am determined to get that operating system. Its new features include the ability to use two apps side by side--a multitasking feature I’ve been praying for ever since Windows tablets started advertising their ability to do that several years ago. 

I cooked dinner for myself, rather than going out to eat because I was determined to get this download to work. At this point I’m 1.49 GB out of 1.83 and I have 2 hours left.

And then I’ll go to bed, and hopefully be able to leave my apartment in the morning. But seriously, I wish the internet worked like the refrigerator.