Eric in Beijing

Smoggy Beijing

2011-11-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal had this article today called "Smog, Bureaucratic Waffling Add to Beijing’s Murk". I would be the last person to defend the CCP and the horrible damage they've inflicted on the Chinese people over the past sixty years, but I did have to comment on this photo and accompanying caption from the article:

My comment about this photo and caption is that in Beijing, and in China, people like this bicyclist wear cotton masks like some people wear scarves, that is, as a way to feel better in the cold. That bicyclist would wear the same mask even on a day with an AQI (air quality index) of 50 (which would be wonderful for Beijing).

Cotton face masks like that are so porous that they do essentially nothing to keep out pollution. To keep the pollution out, you really need to wear an N95 face mask.

Here's the real time AQI for Beijing, if you're interested.

Replay: Lee Kai-Fu totally looks like...

2011-11-02T19:00:00.001-07:00

I came across an article on Kai-Fu Lee presenting on something this week in Beijing, and I just had to re-post something that I still find hilarious. Whenever I see Kai-Fu Lee's picture, I can't stop thinking of my creative post.

The re-edited post, for your re-reading pleasure:

I had a few yuks recently from an email forward that came from this site, about celebrities that resemble animals, cartoons, and other stuff. Here are a couple good ones:

Lee Kai-Fu, a former exec at Google China, totally looks like...

... Droopy dog!

I think it's the slacky, hanging cheeks and the big round cartoon eyes that seal the deal here. If someone on that web site wants to use my material, go for it, just give me the credit.

WSJ video: living like cooped up rats in a Hong Kong apartment

2011-07-21T07:00:00.001-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has some great stories usually. However, this article and video showing four people living like rats cooped up in 150 square food apartment in Hong Kong is a little off.

Have a look:

The first thing that tipped me off that this article is a bit sensationalized is the tentant's name, "Yang Lianchun". This is not a Hong Kong Cantonese transliteration, it's a Mainland Chinese name spelled using pinyin. The article does mention briefly that she moved to Hong Kong from Mainland China, but they don't mention much more. She's moved away from a bad life in the Mainland to try and make it in one of the most expensive cities with a meager income, and now she's got an even worse life.

In the US, it would be like a fry cook from Big Boy packing up and trying to make it in New York City on $500 a month. It would be the same story: a tiny, cramped apartment, and an unpleasant standard of living. You'd be stuck there until you hit on something where you could start pulling in more income.

I've visited apartments of normal Hong Kong folks in Hong Kong, and yes, they are small, but they don't live live rats cooped up in a cage like this lady. This is the background they don't give you in the article. Normal Hong Kong people live like people, although much less square footage than in the US. With good interior design, you can do a lot with a small apartment.

My view of this lady is, hey, give it a go in Hong Kong, but if you can't hack it, suck it up and move to the New Territories, or just go back to the Mainland and get a government "iron rice bowl" type job.

The stupidest, or funniest, Chinese waidiren alive

2011-07-11T07:00:00.001-07:00

On a recent United Airlines flight to California from Beijing, I had the pleasure or displeasure, not sure which, of sitting directly in front of a 40 something Chinese man with a waidi accent in Mandarin (to be specific, a central China, chicken sounding accent). I got a nice earful of his chicken accent as I sat in front of him and he yakked loudly on his cell phone prior to departure.

Throughout the coach section where I sat (Economy Plus, nonetheless — it's like an upgrade from McDonalds to Burger King) there were two dozen college sophomore students, dressed identically with the same t-shirt bearing the name of their English language school. They were presumably headed to the US for a cultural tour including the wonders of California, I suppose things like 215 cards and In-n-Out Burger.

To my left sat two of these college sophomores, both female. They were quite well behaved, and didn't speak, snore, or bump me throughout the entire flight. These are my ideal seatmate for a trans Pacific flight. The the left of the waidi gentleman behind me sat two college sophomore boys.

The waidi fellow behind me, by comparison, would cross and uncross his legs, jostling my seat back. After one such jostle, I turned and stared at him through the gap between the seats. "What?", he asked in an irritated, defiant tone. I stared at him a few more uncomfortable seconds and turned around. As we neared the end of the flight in the US, the waidi gentleman loudly gurgled phlegm in his throat. It was not quite the full out Mainland loogie-hawk, of course, but the stage right before, kind of like a warm up loogie-hawk.

This is not my ideal seatmate on a plane.

To return to the story, at some point after the first meal during the flight, the show began. Mr. Waidi started his conversation with the college boy next to him. The dialog, in Mandarin originally, was something like this:

Mr. Waidi: So are you part of a educational tour to America?

College boy: [Describes the tour and where they are going]

Mr. Waidi: [Changes the topic] You know, they tip in restaurants in America. The restaurants aren't that great to eat at, but they are expensive.

College boy: Really?

Mr. Waidi: Oh, yes. You generally need to start at 10% for the tip, and if they do a really great job, you can go up to 20%.

[I bet the waitstaff loves this guy. The 10% tipper.]

College boy: I see

Mr. Waidi: [New topic] Luxury goods are a good deal in America compared to in Beijing. You should buy a Louis Vuitton bag while you're there.

[Yes, college students have the budget for Louis Vuitton. Good call, waidiren.]

College boy: Really?

Mr. Waidi: Of course. In America, a Louis Vuitton bag will cost only $1,000 or $2,000. In China it would be $3,000-$4,500.

College boy: I don't think I'll need to buy a designer bag.

[At this point I start to chuckle to myself as I picture this waidi ren with a shovel of pig manure in one hand and a $2,000 Louis Vuitton man purse in the other, traipsing around his hometown sludge pit in Henan or Hunan or Wuhan or wherever.]

Mr. Waidi: You should consider getting one for your father then. How's your father?

College boy: Oh, he's good.

Mr. Waidi: Yes, you should certainly get something for you parents.

College boy: Ok.

[Ha! I can picture this one even better. The father's sauntering around the village in a straw hat and flip flops, yellowed and moth eaten t-shirt rolled up to his nipples and exposing his belly fat, and under his left arm he has a Louis Vuitton bag. "My son made it in the big city, he sent me this fancy bag." This is great material. I love it.]

Mr. Waidi: High end golf clubs are another good thing to get.

College boy: Oh?

Mr. Waidi: Yes, in Beijing, the high end golf clubs are much more expensive. The golf stores charge a lot for them. America is a great place to get some good clubs if you play the game.

[At this point, I picture the gentleman at the edge of a farm near his hometown, sewage ditch right nearby, hitting Titleists with his $500 driver off into dried dirt.]

At this point my drugs (just kidding, only over the counter stuff for me, no Ambien or downers here, I'm 100% natural) began to take hold and I fell asleep.

After the final meal before landing, the pristine headlands of northern California were visible. We passed over the usual suburban scenery, and I got treated to this concluding dialog:

Mr. Waidi: [Speaking to the college boy] Look over there, I see a golf course. I don't remember there being a golf course in that area before.
College boy: Hmm.
Mr. Waidi: Yes, I really need to get over to that course.

My conclusion after hearing all these amusing stories and comments, spoken with an accent in Mandarin even worse than that of Mao Tse-tung or Hu Jiantao, is:

I get much more amusement sitting in front of a waidi clown for 11 hours than I have had sitting in front of a screaming baby or a barking Shih Tzu.
I occurred to me that this man was demonstrating his social status and value to a young college boy. Knowing that as single men, we will often demonstrate our social value to women, although not in such a pompous way, I can understand what he's doing. I can only assume that this was a drawn out pick up attempt, and at some point, phone numbers were exchanged. If I'm correct and this was a pick up attempt, I commend the waidi man and hope he does well. His game was pretty sloppy, but he was rather confident with himself.
If this was not a pickup attempt, then I must say that we need to really tighten up our visa interviews in whatever consulate issued this fellow a visa to visit our fine country.

If you're at a California golf course, and you're behind a twosome with a Chinese gentleman who drives fifty yards and carries a $3,000 Louis Vuitton man purse, you may have met my airplane seatmate buddy.

[Note: the Chinese term waidiren (外地人, "outside person") refers to anyone not from Beijing, Shanghai, or whatever big city you are in. In Beijing, the folks throwing litter on the street, spitting as they walk, and letting their children urinate in the gutter are more often than not waidiren. The easiest way to check is to verify the first three digits of a persons ID card, or shenfenzheng. This number is issued at birth based on the city of residence at that time, and does change if one moves in the future.]

People writing about being a john in China vs. in Canada

2011-07-05T07:00:00.005-07:00

The occurrence of the two similar stories, one in China and one in Canada, had good timing:

A Toronto cartoonist writes a graphic novel about being a john and gets a review in the New York Times
A Chinese man, from Guangxi province of all places, blogs about being a john and gets sent to prison for a year because of it. Sucks to live under a regime where expressing one's thoughts publicly get you sent to the gulag.

Check out the teeth on this Guangxi fellow. Did the VD make his gums get like that? Yikes!

White wine is not "baijiu"

2011-05-04T07:00:00.001-07:00

As I was browsing through the different varieties of Two Buck Chuck wine available at a Trader Joe's grocery store in California, I noticed a mainland Chinese mother pushing her toddler around in a shopping cart. As she walked past a display area with many bottles of white wine, she pointed to it and said to her child very clearly, "bai jiu" (白酒, literally "white alcohol"). The mother repeated the word a couple times so the kid could learn it.

This bothers me, because in Mandarin, white wine is not baijiu. White wine is "bai putaojiu" (白葡萄酒, literally "white grape alcohol"). She could have just said "putaojiu" (葡萄酒) to the kid to keep it short. Baijiu is a foul-tasting spirit distilled from sorghum and fermented horse manure, and usually comes in around 112 proof. Baijiu not even in the same family as wine. I use baijiu to dissolve the yellow, caked on urine drippings from the outside of my toilet bowl.

Many people in California are well educated about wine. The wine culture is not at the level as in Italy, but Californians tend to understand wine pretty well. Me on the other hand, I mix my Cabernet with Sprite, I put ice cubes in my chardonnay, and I drink pinot from a Solo cup like it's beer at a frat party, so I'm not one to talk.

But anyone should know that white wine is not sorghum-based baijiu. I disapprove of bad parenting, but it's not my place to get involved and correct how this lady wanted to educate her kid, so I said nothing.

Expat jokes about Singapore

2011-05-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've heard a number of Singapore-related jokes, which I thought I'd share. Although, in my opinion, making fun of Singapore is sort of like picking on the kids that ride the short bus to school. Singapore is a country (sort of) with an extremely short history, and a very small population, of course it's going to have some major issues.

Anyway, as I recall hearing it, the running joke about Singapore among expats goes something like this:

Q: What's the difference between Singapore and a petri dish?
A: A petri dish has more culture.

Joke number two was something about how on the sixth day, the Lord resteth, and then he picked up the Malaysian peninsula, shook it around like a sock, and all the garbage and human filth fell down to the southern tip of the peninsula, and called itself Singapore.

I found this second joke a bit mean spirited. I'm sure there are some good people in Singapore, after all.

And don't forget that Singapore has a great many wonderful food vendors and restaurants, which makes it a great place to visit in my book, racial discrimination and other issues aside.

Does anyone else have any good Singapore jokes they've heard?

Grammar at Sears

2011-05-01T07:00:00.003-07:00

Seen at Sears:

Chinese characters favored by yokels

2011-04-29T07:00:00.002-07:00

I saw these characters, "柔術", on the back window of an import pickup truck in California. I was trying to parse these mentally. I was thinking, ok, so 柔 (róu) is "tender" or "soft", then 術 (shù) is like "technique" or "skill". What exactly is "tender skill"? What's this Toyota pickup driving yokel trying to say exactly? I seemed at first like it must be something kind of pervy.

It turns out, though, that "tender skill" is how the Japanese write "jujutsu", which is like a type of karate. How cute is that? I think he needs a Hello Kitty to go next to the 柔術 characters. Tender kitty, tender skill.

The Toyota brand should have tipped me off that the characters should be parsed using Japanese and not Chinese.

Don't leave mass right after communion

2011-04-27T07:00:00.002-07:00

Having observed the tight religious restrictions in China, you come to appreciate some of the basic things that we take for granted, or even sometimes complain about in America.

This article, "China Detains Church Members at Easter Services", caught my interest:

The authorities stepped up a three-week campaign against an underground Christian church on Sunday, detaining hundreds of congregants in their homes and taking at least 36 others into custody after they tried to hold Easter services in a public square, church members and officials said.

It makes me downright embarrassed when I think of pretty much any mass I've ever been to in the US, including this past Sunday, where numerous folks up and scurried out of church right after they get their Communion.

These unfortunate Chinese Christians are getting persecuted and arrested for their beliefs, and we take it for granted that we have the ability to do whatever we want here in America.

The Chinese Catholics I've seen (in China, at least) are really into their religion. If the church is over packed and they have to listen to mass out in the courtyard with no kneelers, they'll spread out newspapers on the ground and kneel right on there.

I've seen too many spoiled Californians and other Americans who got it so good these days with their Hummer H2s and BMWs that they don't feel like they have to kneel during mass. I even saw one grown man going to Easter mass wearing flip flips into church. This man had young kids, nonetheless. I hope he scheduled a confession for later in the week.

Shanghai food — barf!

2011-04-25T07:00:00.002-07:00

I could never live in Shanghai. The food is just terrible. Terrible beyond belief. Add that to the fact that they speak a strange dialect that sounds more like Japanese people imitating angry chickens, and you have a city that's very hard to tolerate.

Let me give you a little overview of the food offerings of Shanghai, which I was able to learn about through Safeway, purveyor of authentic gourmet foods:

Below: A Shanghai dinner for two, at a great price. Sounds like a good deal.

Below: What is this Shanghainese swill they're serving up here? Looks like something I saw in a latrine when I was in Henan province.

Below: No wonder Shanghainese people are so darn skinny, this food would give anyone the runs!

College girl conversation snippet

2011-04-20T07:00:00.003-07:00

After eating some fish tacos at a California strip mall, I walked past an outdoor table where three college-age girls were talking loudly. As I passed by, I heard this this snippet of their conversation. It was so unique that I can recall it exactly word for word:

"...It's like she was trying to suck my entire face inside of her mouth. It's so gross..."

I didn't get to catch what came before or after this sentence, but I'm very curious.

Must be something like this:

Article: "Shunyi to Be World's Largest Gated Community"

2011-04-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Check out this article:

A Shunyi residents' association has put forward proposals that would see the outlying suburb become the world's largest gated community. On Tuesday, March 29, the Shunyi Neighborhood Development Council published its plans to have a 100km perimeter fence erected around the district's central urban area, which accounts for 19sqkm of the district's total 1,000sqkm area.

Under the proposals, the fence would be 5m high, constructed of heavy duty steel railings topped by spikes, with a lattice structure ensuring the barrier's efficacy. Gates and checkpoints will be set up at various points to ensure residents can easily come and go without compromising safety. The Shunyi plans have been modeled on security arrangements at the Interlomas complex on the outskirts of Mexico City, currently the world's largest gated community.

Ai Weiwei is a dude, with a beard!

2011-03-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've frequently heard about this artist Ai Weiwei. I had always though it was a chick, though. Why would I think it's a guy?

"Ai" is the word for "love" in Mandarin, so I just assumed this was kind of a stage name, like "Prince".
"Wei" is often a transliteration for the English character "V". Sometimes, "Vivi" (short for Vivian), might be translated as "Weiwei" in Mandarin.

So in my mind, I had been thinking this person was like "Vivian Love". Obviously a girl, right? But in an article today, I noticed Ai Weiwei is actually a dude with a long stringy beard. Kind of like a younger, fatter version of Pai Mei from Kill Bill:

Upon consulting wikipedia, I see that his actual surname is "艾", not "爱" (love), as I had thought. I still think "Weiwei" is not a good name for him though. This is a dude that has the girth to call himself "Buster", "Bruser", or some other name you'd expect from a biker gang.

It really sucks that he has to flee his own country and work out of Germany to avoid being beaten by the police. Dissenting opinions and tough criticism should be thought of as good things.

Pound cake Chinglish

2011-03-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Had I been employed as the translator for this product, I would have translated it as "pound cake", since that's what it appears to be in the photo on the box.

Someone with a different opinion though it would best be called "SLICES THE CAKE".

This made me think of another Chinglish post I wrote about "It has some of Beijing's the cheapest mobile phones and SIM cards".

What is the obsession these translators have with doing everything in a bizarre present tense?

"It has some of Beijing's the cheapest mobile phones and SIM cards"
"[It] slices the cake"
"It puts the lotion in the basket"
and so on

The tenses in Mandarin are pretty basic. You add one extra character here and there, but it's way simple once you spend the required five minutes to learn it. It's nowhere near as difficult as in Slavic languages, for example, where you've got tenses, genders, and nominative/genitive/dative/accusative/instrumental/locative/vocative noun cases to remember.

I'm not impressed with Westerners that learn Chinese as a second language. On the other hand, show me someone that's learned perfect grammar in Polish or Czech as a second language, and I'll happily buy them a few beers, I'm so impressed.

Those Chinglish translations I've listed are puzzling to me because it seems they're going out of their way to use present tense, when you don't really need a complete sentence with tense at all.

Salon treatment or Chinese water torture?

2011-03-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

In case this billboard for a Beijing spa is unclear, what you have is a reclining woman with a bowl, suspended above her, dripping liquid onto her forehead:

I thought that was called Chinese water torture! I remembered seeing that on Mythbusters a while back.

"5 Things to Know About China's 2nd- and 3rd-Tier Cities"

2011-03-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

I've written about the tiers of Chinese cities before. I recently stumbled across this article, "5 Things to Know About China's 2nd- and 3rd-Tier Cities". There were too many big words in that article for me, so I only got half way through. Let me give you my much more concise version.

Here are five things to know about China's 2nd and 3rd tier cities:

Your kids can squat down and take giant craps that could fill twelve toilet bowls right beside a busy street, and no one will mind.
You can hack up greenish-yellow loogies whenever and wherever you want, and spit them everywhere on the street.
When you unwrap your Snickers bar or a Popsicle, everywhere is your garbage can. Just throw your rubbish anywhere on the ground.
"No Smoking" signs in restaurants are not for you to worry about. Those are just for decoration.
Watch out for reckless drivers — if someone hits you by accident, they will drive in reverse and run you over and over again to make sure you're dead and can't file a complaint. It's just like that Sopranos episode where Richie Aprile runs over Beansie, but worse. This is seriously something that I've heard about, I'm not making it up.

You don't have to leave Beijing or Shanghai to find out what these lower tier cities are like. My advice is to wait until the two weeks of Lunar New Year, and then stay in Beijing or Shanghai. Beijing or Shanghai during those two weeks is normal.

The other fifty weeks of the year, the transplants from the second and third tier cities are there, engaging in activities one through five listed above, and Beijing becomes a gigantic third tier city.

Salt-buyin' frenzy!

2011-03-18T07:00:00.001-07:00

Seriously, a mass run on salt at the supermarket? I guess their plan is that when the radiation from the Japanese reactor wafts over to China, they'll use the salt to preserve their bodies like a giant piece of beef jerky. Maybe they're expecting a scenario like the movie Alive. Other than that, what possible use could you have for this much salt?

If they were trying to ingest this much iodized salt as a way to reduce the risk of thryoid cancer, I think they'd melt like a slug that had salt poured on it before anything.

Here's some real pictures I took outside a Beijing supermarket. Not Photoshopped, these are seriously real pictures of actual signs.

Before: guidelines on buying salt (maximum two bags per person):

After: "Really sorry, we're done sold out of salt!"
Maybe they can add a line underneath, "and sorry, you're a moron for being part of a salt run!"

Look at this wonderful, civilized behavior (article from Wall Street Journal)
3,000 years of culture and history? And this is what you get, I guess.

More Chinese tree choppin'

2011-03-16T07:00:00.001-07:00

I found this blog posting very interesting: "Nanjing residents nostalgic for pre-Communist days as government uproots trees"

It seems that Beijing is the center of Chinese innovation when it comes to uprooting trees. Back in 2008, the local Communist Party Tree Chopping Committee was already way ahead of the pack.

Below is some of the Communist Party Neighborhood Committee boardroom discussion that I envisioned happening back then:

See my full post from 2008 for a good laugh (at the expense of some beautiful trees, unfortunately). You can just find-and-replace "Beijing" with "Nanjing". It seems like they've done the same stupid destruction there.

Sanlitun Chinglish of the day

2011-03-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

This Chinglish translation, seen in Sanlitun, is quite interesting:

I would translate "美甲" as "manicure". In this case, they did a character-by-character translation, so they came up with "American nails." Here's how I'd guess this mistake happened:

美: they translated this as "American", because "美国" (America) often gets shortened to the first character for things American, for example "美籍华人" (Chinese person with American citizenship) or "美式" (American-style something)
甲: nails, obviously

Put the two together, and you get "American nails".

This is an unusual mistranslation because there are plenty of other words where the first character is "美", yet Chinese speakers understand that the word has nothing to do with America.

For example:

美妞: this means "hot broad" or "hot chick" in Beijing slang, and would not be misunderstood to mean "American chick"

Learners of Chinese as a second language quickly figure out that characters must be interpreted in context. It was surprising to see a translation, presumably by a native speaker of Chinese, that didn't take into account the context of the characters, but rather did the translation character by character.

Pink Pringles

2011-03-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

These are grilled shrimp Pringles we got in Malaysia. I was expecting them to be the normal golden Pringles-color, but what do you know, they are as pink as Paris Hilton's Bentley!

They mostly taste like Pringles, with just a light shrimp flavoring. I'd prefer if they weren't so pink. All I can think of is all the food dye that's in there.

Here's another interesting thing with these bizarro Pringles:

Halal certified! Kind of important in Malaysia. Folks don't want to mistakenly scarf down chicharróns.

The other weird thing is they call them "Potato Crisps". They're totally the same as potato chips, so I'm not quite sure why they're calling them "crisps" there. This is probably from using some Google Translate computerized translation or something.

Anyway, these chips taste good, but I will avoid them in the future to stay away from the Red Dye No. 2. I'm sticking with my always-reliable Cool Ranch flavor chicharróns.

Wu Bangguo in the house!

2011-03-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

I now know why there was as military presence in the university district near my office in Beijing. Wu Bangguo, the number two guy in China, was cruising around. Here's a pictorial in Chinese, and here's a great article with a photo where he looks very paternal and leader-like. I'd love to get a shot of myself like that to use as my Facebook profile photo.

"Bangguo", in English, is a cool name — the first thing you think of is "bangin' chicks", right? — but he doesn't really have the pimp look that some of the other Politburo guys have.

If I had my pick, I'd want to see this one:

That's Jia Qinglin, the number four guy. Why meet him? Well, I can't figure out if he's the Paulie Walnuts of the Chinese Politburo, or the Silvio Dante of the Chinese Politburo. Not having met him in person, I'm leaning towards Silvio (below), for the obvious choice of having slicked back hair and a healthy tan.

Racial profiling, Chinese style!

2011-03-07T06:00:00.002-08:00

This part of an article in today's New York Times, mentioning "racial profiling", caught my eye:

Security officers and volunteers were present every few feet on both sides of Wangfujing and on side streets. There were police officers in black uniforms; civilian volunteers wearing red armbands; men dressed as street sweepers and officers disguised in plain jackets with telltale black wires running from inside their jackets to earpieces. Many of these men had crew cuts and carried videocameras or small shoulder bags; those with videocameras would occasionally take shots of the crowds.

Security vehicles of every stripe — squad cars, vans, unmarked buses with few windows — were parked on all corners.

Throngs of shoppers and tourists strolled the street, which is lined with luxury stores and includes a food alleyway with live scorpions squirming on a stick. The police seemed to be resorting to racial profiling to weed out foreign journalists. While Asians appeared to encounter little or no harassment, officers flanked by burly Chinese men pulled aside white foreigners to check their passports.

I guess I missed my chance to be racially profiled and harassed by burly Chinese men. Really though, any expat that's been in Beijing longer than a month knows that Wangfujing is a human stew of pushy shovey, garbage tossin', phlegm hawkin' waidi tourists, and there is really no reason to go there. Now there's yet another reason to avoid Wangfujing.

Of course China does plenty of racial profiling, it's essentially a mono-racial and mono-ethnic country, Uighurs and Kazakhs aside, of course. It's very efficient and easy to do racial profiling. One of the negatives you've got to accept if you visit or live in China is that you'll be racially discriminated against and racially profiled. Depending on your race, though, it can be positive racial discrimination, rather than negative. For example, folks will consider you to be wealthy, or well-traveled.

Before I make my next comment, let me say that I love freedom of the press and the First Amendment. This is one of the wonderful things about America. That being said, is there any possibility that the two reporters from the NYTimes article are not obnoxious and mouthy? I'd bet good money they're not American. Probably from somewhere in western Europe. I'm picturing a conversation like this:

"Vee are zee press! Vee have zee right to film here. You must not interfere wiss us."

I will say that I've been very entertained by this recent news-making in Beijing and Shanghai.

Mysterious death of Zhao Wei

2011-03-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Check out this article, "The tragedy of Zhao Wei ":

...there is one potentially great big story missing from everyone’s agenda — the mysterious death of Chinese college student Zhao Wei.

And yet, the chilling story of Zhao Wei, who was very possibly murdered by railway authorities on his way home to Inner Mongolia during the Spring Festival rush more than a month ago, goes to the very heart of the issues and anxieties that are of most immediate relevance to all Chinese, and could contribute to demands for change.

The story of this guy Zhao Wei sucks pretty bad. He was allegedly murdered by Chinese railway workers for mouthing off, and then all mention of his story got deleted from the Internet in China.

I wanted to point out that initially I thought that Zhao Wei the famous actress chick was the one who suffered the mysterious death. Who would have though that two Chinese people would have the exact same name. I think the headline should have been something like "The tragedy of Zhao Wei - a man with the same name as the actress".

You'll see below that the famous Zhao Wei is kinda cute, but her big problem is that she has a a square jaw like a kathoey:

Don't let those huge doe-like eyes distract you from that masculine, Schwarzenegger jaw. If you want to see a good movie with Zhao Wei, I recommend Painted Skin (画皮). It's a Hong Kong a movie about ghosts, where she is some kind of ghost that peels off her skin like those benevolent aliens in Cocoon.

Back to the news story, I hope the family of the male Zhao Wei can find some justice and not be swept under the rug by the Chinese authorities. You don't beat a college student on the train to death for mouthing off. I can't imagine the type of riot that would happen if this sort of thing were to have happened to some college student on Thanksgiving break taking Amtrak.

WSJ link: "Why Breakfast Matters for Chinese Tourists"

2011-03-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

This was an insightful article in the Wall Street Journal, and is an experience I can relate to. I really enjoy normal Chinese food, but I just love to complain about my distaste for the traditional Chinese breakfast.

From the article:

Being able to get their own kind of food is one of the top concerns for outbound mainland Chinese travelers, a group that is estimated to reach 100 million in 2020 by the United Nations World Tourism Organization. And the issue seems to be an Asia-specific phenomenon. “This is not a concern amongst our American or European customers,” says Mr. Roche.

Taking the cue, top-end hotels such as the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park London, which boasts restaurants from celebrity chefs Daniel Boulud and Heston Blumenthal, offer a full Chinese breakfast of noodles. And guests can choose between chicken or fish congee at the Shangri-La Hotel Paris, should Western alternatives not appeal.

Note that the other sounds like a moron by saying "full Chinese breakfast of noodles". This part makes no sense. There are many components to a Chinese breakfast, as I describe below.

During my travels in China, I get cranky when I have to constantly eat Chinese rice-gruel and plain mantou for breakfast. I understand what the Chinese tourists in the US must be experiencing.

Here's a photo of a garden-variety Chinese breakfast from an old blog post of mine:

From left to right what you see is:

steamed mantou
cucumbers, I think
often-seen fermented red substance, which makes me gag
hastily cooked hardboiled eggs, where the shell sticks to the egg when you're trying to peel it
tofu-vegetable concoction
soft tofu
rice gruel

If there were at the very least a pot of coffee, maybe that would mask the taste of the things I'm not a fan of.

If you'd like to read more, breakfast-related comments have been an ongoing theme in my blog:

Chinese senior citizen Juggalo in my apartment building!

2011-02-28T06:00:00.001-08:00

As is my routine, I walked into the elevator in my apartment building after work one evening recently. There was a 70 year old Chinese man in the elevator with this hat on:

How awesome is that?! A Chinese Juggalo (Insane Clown Posse fan) in my own building! I complimented the gentleman on his cool hatchet man hat, but it was pretty clear from his response that he had no idea what was on it.

On a similar note, we were driving around Beijing recently listening to the local radio station, and an ICP song came on. Beijing seems to be really embracing Detroit hip-hop.

I'm very pleased to see that Kid Rock, that phoney-baloney who is actually from Romeo, Michigan but pretends he's from the Detroit ghetto, is thoroughly ignored here in Beijing. Does anyone else get annoyed by Kid Rock? He feels the need to plaster his autographed photo at every joint around Detroit, on his seat at the Pistons, and who knows where else. Too much of an attention-seeker for my tastes.

"Be Careful of Kowtow"

2011-02-21T06:00:00.003-08:00

This was beside the escalator at an H&M store in Beijing. Isn't it a great sign?

Somehow they've translated "小心碰头" as "Be Careful of Kowtow". For your reference:

kow·tow
/ˈkaʊˈtaʊ, -ˌtaʊ, ˈkoʊ-
–verb (used without object)
1. to act in an obsequious manner; show servile deference.

I'm surprised no one has pried this sign off the wall with a putty knife and taken it as a souvenir by now. What a great collector's item!

Non-compliance with fire codes at Mango

2011-02-19T06:00:00.002-08:00

Clearly the owner of this Mango clothing store in Beijing has something against the fire marshal. He's put a U-lock on the emergency exit during business hours. I love the two little fire extinguishers beside it.

I suppose that in the event of a real emergency, customers could throw the fire extinguishers through the glass door and create an exit.

An inappropriate menu item

2011-02-17T06:00:00.002-08:00

This was seriously on the newly printed menus at Yipinzhou (一品粥), a chain restaurant in Beijing.

Yes, it's "cake made by rumpkin".

Houhai ice skating photos

2011-02-15T06:00:00.003-08:00

Beijing's Houhai pond freezes solid enough to ice skate for about 3 weeks in January. December and February are a little too warm for solid enough ice. Here are some cell phone pictures.

An old school Beijing roasted sweet potato vendor, parked right out on the ice. Check out the sticks of sugar cane. This guy almost seems out of place these days:

I think this guy here used an empty can of Wanglaoji (王老吉) to create a makeshift bowl and smoke a brick of Xinjiang hash. Check out his green Eco-Friendly Shopping Bag with the four marijuana leaves plastered on it, and the way he's slumped over his ice-chair, randomly poking holes in the ice with some long pieces of metal. Definitely spaced out. I bet that bag is full of Doritos and Twinkies.

Not a stone's throw from the spaced out guy is a happy family playing on an ice chair. How cute is that father and kid?

Signs that you slept in class a lot during high school...

2011-02-13T06:00:00.001-08:00

...you put a giant decal of your country on the hood of your car, with the country's name spelled incorrectly:

This is seriously a real photo, I took it near the US embassy in Beijing. How crazy is that!

I get irritated when Americans hang the flag vertically with the union on the incorrect side, but this car decal fellow proves that the situation could be much worse. I've not yet seen anyone with a big decal of America on their hood with text reading "The Yoo-nited Staytes of Umerica". Americans are worried about China overtaking us, bu I think we're still ahead in this game.

Note that this particular individual has included two islands to the south of mainland China, but we won't get into that political discussion.

My response: "Why Home Depot Struggles and IKEA Thrives in China?"

2011-02-11T06:00:00.001-08:00

This China know-it-all has a blurb in Forbes titled "Why Home Depot Struggles and IKEA Thrives in China?". Don't waste your time sifting through the author's rambling article. I can tell you the answer to the question in one picture below.

This photo is from one of my classic blog posts in 2008, "Ikea shopping madness!"

No offense intended here, but anyone who's spent time in China will tell you that Chinese folks love to snooze, especially at Ikea. Now where are you going to catch some z's at the Home Depot? On a stack of splintery pallets by the loading dock? On the stack of bags of potting soil? On a rack of 2x4s? By the paint mixer?

Ikea clearly has the upper hand here. There are dozens and dozens of comfy sofas and beds to sprawl out on. Who needs one of these Sinologists to tell us what's what?

Signs that you need a job...

2011-02-09T06:00:00.002-08:00

...when you're seriously considering "eeko" brand shoes.

I snapped those with my cell phone in a Beijing mall recently. Copyright infringement, anyone?

Just as amusing as the "eeko" brand itself was the fact that the display in the photos above was located about ten feet from a legitimate ECCO shoe display.

For reference, this is what they're imitating.

Monday morning fireworks surprise!

2011-02-06T17:00:00.000-08:00

Monday this week was still a public holiday in China. It's the fifth day of the Lunar New Year (初五), and everyone is off from school and work.

I thought I'd enjoy a few extra hours of sleep in the morning, but it turns out I wasn't able to. I guess all of the farmers and migrants where I live in Haidian District found some extra firecrackers and mortars that they didn't shoot off on New Year's Eve, and they all united in shooting them off Monday morning.

So much for extra sleep!

Chinese folks might try to convince you that this fifth-day-of-lunar-new-year-morning fireworks craziness is related to something called "po wu" (破五). Malarkey, I say, I'm sticking with my all-the-migrants-found-some-extra-fireworks-in-their-pantries theory.

How we do in Beijing

2011-02-05T06:00:00.001-08:00

If you're a Chinese person from outside of Beijing, aka a waidiren (外地人), you probably drank your baijiu during Lunar New Year like this:

You used a tiny little glass that looks like it was from your daughter's tea party set, you take tiny little sips of liquor, and you make a big show about finally finishing the glass an hour later. "Gan bei! Gan bei! Gan bei!" over and over again.

That's weak. This is why people from Beijing call you guys "南方鸡子" (little southern chickens).

Here's a snapshot from our Lunar New Year's family dinner in Beijing:

Beijing folks will just take a regular old 6 ounce teacup, fill it to the brim with 100 proof baijiu, and suck it down like it was beer during their meal. No repetitive ganbei's or showiness required, just sorghum liquor goodness.

Note that when I say "Beijing folks", I'm not referring to waidiren transplants that just happen to be living in Beijing for work or because they bought a house there and transferred their hukou, I'm talking about people that have been born and bred in Beijing. There is a huge cultural difference, and a large divide in the respective drinking cultures.

Southern Chinese drink huangjiu in tiny glasses and make a big deal about it; Beijingers and northern Chinese nonchalantly suck down giant cups of 100 proof baijiu.

Hot pot pictorial

2011-01-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

These are some pictures I took at a very typical Beijing hot pot joint, Kou Fu Ju. I personally think that boiling is the least from ideal way to cook meat. Korean barbecue is a lot more flavorful. Anyway, in the winter, I'll let myself be convinced to have some hot pot.

Below, we have an old school Beijing hot pot, heated by some coals in the base. You throw your meat and vegetables in the water, let it sit for a while, then dunk them in your bowl of dippin' sauce, and chow down. Note that if you are eating cow stomach, you just dip it in there for about ten seconds, holding onto it with your chopsticks. Any longer and it will be hard and rubbery.

Don't mistakenly think that this is a plate of carpaccio and go gobbling it down raw — typical newbie mistake. If you did that, you would vomit and have diarrhea so bad, you'd wish you were dead. What this photo shows, in fact, is a plate of thinly sliced beef meant to be cooked in the hot pot.

Beijing people prefer to dunk their hot pot stuff in a bowl of sesame paste with cilantro mixed in. I'm fine with sesame paste , but I've gotten bored with it. These days I typically order a concoction they call "seafood sauce" (to the right in the picture below). To the left is a plate of not potatoes, but daikon. When cooked, you can tell the difference between daikons and potatoes because daikons have a slippery, gooey film on the outside, whereas potatoes do not.

What do you guzzle as you eat hot pot? I prefer several bottles of cheap beer. Chinese guys prefer to drink 112 proof baijiu like fish until they're drunk as skunks.

Most hot pot places in Beijing are halal-oriented, so expect confused looks from the waitress if you say, "I'd like a plate of sliced pork, please."

When waidi peasants come to live in Beijing...

2011-01-16T06:00:00.001-08:00

They might have this conversation:

Waidi peasant number 1: I's a gonna wash my clothes today.

Waidi peasant number 2: You should. You stink like a hog.

Waidi peasant number 1: But where shall I dry them?

Waidi peasant number 2: Hang 'em on a string between two trees on the side of a busy road. It's only minus 10 degrees today. They'll dry in no time.

And the end result:

The innovation and thought process of these country folk that migrate to Beijing are amusing.

Perhaps I'm completely wrong, and this was the actual conversation:

Waidi peasant number 1: My broke ass ain't got no clothes dryer, so I need to dry my laundry on a string by the side of the road. But it's below freezing today. How can I dry my clothes? They're just going to freeze?

Waidi peasant number 2: Fool, as you'll recall from science class, ice can evaporate through process by sublimation. Take your government cheese-eating butt and hang your nasty laundry out there by the road. It'll be dry by sundown. Maybe if you'd taken better notes in high school, you wouldn't be having to dry your clothes on a string by a dirty road in freezing temperatures.

Who knows.

"I am safety driver"

2011-01-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

Saw this ridiculous sticker on the back of a car in Beijing:

A close up of the part I thought was amusing:

Makes you want to pull this guy out of the driver's side window and beat some grammar into him, right? Or maybe I just have some anger control issues.

Beijing Jackass: shopping carts

2010-12-15T06:00:00.001-08:00

Is there anything more entertaining than that "shopping carts" bit from Jackass? You know, the one where one guy gets in a shopping cart and gets pushed at full speed into a bush or over a curb, while a heavy metal song by CKY plays in the background?

It seems that Chinese boys are getting into the activity these days too. Who cares if it's a few years late. Jackass is awesome.

No more coffee filters!

2010-12-13T06:00:00.001-08:00

For as long as I can recall, I've purchased my paper coffee filters from one of the local 7-Elevens in Beijing. During these past couple weeks, every single 7-Eleven I've been to has stopped stocking coffee filters. Bizarre.

I've had to order my filters on Taobao.com, the Chinese eBay. How are Chinese folks brewing their morning coffee these days? How is this lapse of judgment by 7-Eleven going unprotested by Chinese people? I don't understand it.

Maybe people are dealing with it by doing the college thing where you substitute several sheets of toilet paper as a coffee filter. I could never get that to work in college — it always made my coffee taste like shit. (Ha.)

Kit car Ferrari

2010-12-11T06:00:00.002-08:00

Is this a real Ferrari California that I saw this week in the parking lot of the Beijing Shangri-La hotel?

Yeah, right. I think not. Obviously a kit car, probably purchased on Taobao. They can counterfeit anything over here.

Kit car Ferraris have been the rage in Beijing since at least 2005.

Das Racist in Beijing

2010-12-09T06:00:00.002-08:00

Das Racist has two interesting blog posts (here and here) from during their recent concert. I love this photo they posted, which was captioned "This guy insisted we take a photo with him":

They have some very astute observations regarding the ABV beer. Why does Chinese beer have such a low alcohol content, and then baijiu is 56% alcohol?

Their concert was great, but the acoustics at Yugong Yishan, the small club where it was held, were less than ideal. If you hadn't heard the lyrics previously, you'd have a very hard time understanding them during the live show.

Chinese supermarket ineptness: the beansprout

2010-11-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

Today I walked into the local grocery store, Vanguard, and I was just about to grab one of those little plastic shopping baskets near the entrance. A husky male employee, charged with monitoring the exits for shoplifters, at that very moment discarded a rather large crumpled ball of paper right into the stack of plastic baskets. The paper landed in the very basket I was ready to pick up and use for my shopping.

"Hey, beansprout!", I remarked to the boy. ("豆芽菜", in Mandarin)

He looked at me incredulously, trying to figure out why I was talking to him, and if I was a troublemaker.

"Hey there, you just chucked your garbage into the shopping basket," I said to him again. I picked up the basket on the top of the stack with his trash in it, and handed it to him.

"Oh, that accidentally fell in there," he said back to me.

"Don't worry. I'll mention this to the store manager on my way out later, " I said. I then picked up another basked from the stack and went on with my shopping.

I never did find the store manager, although I asked the cashier as I paid for my items.

A Hong Kong Jackass!

2010-11-24T06:00:00.001-08:00

This is several weeks-old news, but did everyone see this story about the Hong Kong guy who dressed up as an old white man and took a flight to Canada?

Obviously, he is a huge Jackass fan, much like myself. I can't get enough of anything related to the show. Doesn't matter if it's the original Jackass crew, Viva La Bam, Steve-O, or The Dudesons. Last time I had a trip to the US, first thing I did when I had free time away from the office was to check out Jackass 3D in a theater. That was the first movie I've ever seen where I had to literally close my eyes to prevent myself from vomiting. What innovative work.

Anyway, the Hong Kong guy is obviously copying Johnny Knoxville's character from Jackass Number Two, where he dresses up like Bad Grandpa and gives his grandson whiskey and cigarettes at a Hollywood hamburger joint.

All Hong Kong people have gone up a notch in my book thanks to this guy. Awesome job.

Unreadable subway cards after x-ray scanning

2010-11-21T06:00:00.001-08:00

If you've stayed in Beijing longer than a week, you'll have purchased an yikatong, which is the local, rechargeable subway card. It saves you lots of time, since you'll not have to line up and buy a single-trip card for each subway journey you make.

I have my card with me even when I travel outside of Beijing. This is because I'll often take the airport express subway line to the airport, and I'll save time by swiping my subway card when I ride.

The problem with this, however, is that when you are traveling, your luggage will invariably go through like twenty or more x-ray scanners per trip. I've noticed after three or four different trips, when I return to Beijing, my card is only swipeable half the time.

I end up going to the service booth at the subway, returning my card, getting the deposit and money on it returned to me, and then buying a new one. I can't figure out what's up with this.

I take my credit cards, my work badge, and other similar cards on the same trips, and I've never had any problems with them after many years. The Beijing subway yikatong seems to be very delicate.

Heaven forbid your card becomes completely unreadable. Then you have no way of getting your money off the card, except to travel to Xizhimen somewhere to a special office. I currently have one such card with about $10 on it. It's just not worth it for me to waste one or two hours traveling and waiting in line for that. I've thought about delegating the task, or just giving the card, to my cleaning lady.

Communication difficulties on China-US flights

2010-11-19T06:00:00.003-08:00

You'd think that if people are traveling to the US, they'd typically speak some English, right?

I'm not quite as crazy as Michael Douglas's character in Falling Down (You come to my country, you take my money, you don't even have the grace to speak my language...), but I do expect some level of English from foreigners traveling to the US.

On a recent China-US flight, and on the return US-China flight, I had several interactions with my fellow passengers that went like this:

I get up from my seat, walk down the aisle to the toilet. I see a bunch of people mulling about near the toilets.

Me: "Is this the line for the head?"

Random Chinese passengers: <blank stares from the group>

Me: "Is you all waitin' on the bathroom here?"

Random Chinese passengers: <more blank stares from the group>

At this point, I just assume no one is actually waiting on the head, and I jump into the restroom as soon as it's empty.

I think that the whole communication problem is my fault. Probably, the toilet on an aircraft can't be referred to as "the head", and this is where I went wrong. Head can only refer to the toilet on marine vessels.

I'm going to make sure to adjust my terminology on my next transpacific flight. Hopefully things will go more smoothly.

Video: Beijing car fire

2010-11-17T06:00:00.002-08:00

How rad is this?! Just happened come across this car fire during a taxi ride.

Billowing black smoke, giant flames engulfing a black car, but everyone pretty much goes on about their daily lives. Old ladies on bicycles cruise by, buses continue on their routes, and traffic runs as usual.

I love the policeman running from left to right in the second video. Looks kind of like a video game character.

No one was harmed during the burning of this Audi, don't worry.

Kind of gross

2010-10-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

At a Beijing lunch buffet: "Black Bean with Cream"

From Fight Club, we should all know to avoid anything with cream at a buffet or banquet.

I didn't actually taste or ingest this concoction. It's one of those things that you have a pretty good idea will be kind of gross without even trying it.

A sign that you're doing well in life

2010-10-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

When your urinal is chock full of fresh ice cubes:

From Maison Boulud à Pékin.

The perfect gift for someone you really dislike

2010-10-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

Saw this at a local thrift market in Beijing. It'll be the perfect gift next time someone I really dislike mistakenly gives me a wedding invitation. (Just kidding, of course)

I suppose melamine in your chopsticks is better than melamine in your milk.

Sign in the Beijing subway

2010-10-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

I snapped this photo on one of the line 1 subway stations in the sticks of Beijing. Notice anything funny on the sign below?

A more obvious photo:

Wouldn't want to mistakenly go to the Pet Sematary. Good thing they point out that this it's the People Cemetery.

[This sign is actually a mistranslation of 人民, which should be "People's", as in "People's Republic of China"]

Making change in a store: China vs. Norway

2010-09-21T07:00:00.001-07:00

In China:

Cashiers in China are change hoarders. It doesn't matter if they're working at KFC, Wal-Mart, or a local convenience store. At least once per day in Beijing — not exaggerating here — I will be asked by a cashier if I have exact change, or close to exact change. Transactions in China are much more cash-based than in the US, where we tend to use credit cards a lot more, which may explain the focus on conserving change.

You'd think that in such an environment, the store manager would delegate someone to run over to the local bank in the morning, and get bundles of ones, fives, tens, and some other assorted change. In China, there really are no large bills. The largest note is 100 yuan, or about $15. I'd have no problem being asked for smaller bills if, for example, I were trying to buy a pack of gum with a $100 bill.

One positive about this change hoarding mentality is that it's incredibly easy to get rid of all your loose change. At one point I had amassed probably 10 pounds of Chinese coins. And there's no Coinstar to be found! "What to do?", I thought.

So I got some Scotch tape and taped my various coins together so they were in little bundles of 1 yuan, 5 yuan, or 10 yuan, depending on the denomination of the coin. I took them with me in my little fanny pack to the local market, and boy, you would not believe the positive reaction I got. Every single merchant I bought vegetables and meat from wanted my coin collection. Some of them even traded me paper bills for the coins. I thought it would take me a month to get rid of all those annoying coins, but I dumped them all in about 20 minutes.

I can't imagine the look of disgust the cashier at Safeway would give me if I tried to pawn off a few rolls of pennies and nickles on her.

In Norway:

My experience has been that Norwegian cashiers get confused if you try to help them save their change. They have no interest in giving you the most efficient amount of change, they just want to give you your change and go to their smørbrød break.

Example: My total at the local RIMI grocery store came to 236 kroner. So I pull out:

one 200 kroner note
two 20 kroner coins
six 1 kroner coins

To put it simply, my bill was 236, and I gave 246. The result is that the clerk only needs to give me one 10 kroner coin back as change. A cashier in Beijing would love me for being so considerate.

The Norwegian cashier, upon taking my various kroners, blanked out completely for about five seconds. She just stared in bewilderment at the pile of money I handed her, and then, a look of realization. "Ohhh", she said, finally (or something like that in Norsk), and fished out my 10 kroner coin.

"It places the lotion in the basket."

2010-09-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help but think of Silence of the Lambs when I walked by this Chinglish sign the first time:

"It has some of Beijing's the cheapest mobile phones and SIM cards"

Something that costs the same in Norway and China

2010-09-15T07:00:00.001-07:00

Nearly everything in Norway is way more expensive than in China. A glass of regular local beer at a restaurant in Norway will run you about $13. In China, a glass of beer at a casual outdoor place is $0.75, or at the most $5 at an upscale restaurant.

I've uncovered one item, however, that is nearly the same price in both countries: frozen Chinese crayfish. Check it out.

"Kinesisk Kreps" in a Norwegian RIMI supermarket, $9.62 / kg.

"香辣龙虾" in my local Beijing supermarket, $9.17 / kg ($7.68 / kg on sale)

Who would have thought? Anyway, you won't catch me eating these crayfish. My local sources in Beijing indicate that these crayfish swim and root in raw sewage. Not something I'm looking to ingest.

Pinky nail freak

2010-09-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is a dude on the Beijing subway with a very long pinky nail. I've seen longer ones, but this one is still pretty gross.

This picture makes me lose my appetite, so I just had to share it. Enjoy.

Why would a man want to grow a long pinky nail like this in the first place? I think it's very unsanitary.

Rice washin' stick!

2010-09-10T07:00:00.002-07:00

I seen this thing in a Beijing supermarket: a Japanese-branded "rice washin' stick" (洗米棒). (My personal translation of the product name)

Who would have thought you'd need a whisk-looking plastic thing to help you wash your rice? I usually just add water to the rice I get at the supermarket, turn on the rice cooker, and 20 minutes later, boom, perfect rice.

This is apparently how you use it (found on Google image search).

Dressing like a Ho

2010-09-08T07:00:00.002-07:00

Spotted in the Kerry Center mall in Beijing:

What type of "Ho" is the model trying to be? Perhaps this is the slutty secretary look.

Beijing duty free booze

2010-09-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

This post is meant as a reference point for expats in Beijing. What I've got here are bunch of pictures of the most recent booze selection at the Beijing airport duty free. Keep in mind that you can get all or most of these things on the way back into Beijing, not just on the outbound.

Below each photo, I've listed how much each thing is, and what the same thing would cost in California at a retail store.

Too expensive: Bacardi 1 L: CNY 102 (Price at BevMo in California for 750 ml: CNY 75)
Good price: Bacardi Gold 1 L: CNY 102 (Price at BevMo in California for 750 ml: CNY 108)
Good price: Bombay Sapphire 1 L: CNY 137 (Price at BevMo in California for 750 ml: CNY 136)

Good price: Absolut 1 L: CNY 130 (Price at BevMo in California: CNY 136)

Too expensive: Belvedere 1 L: CNY 287 (Price at BevMo in California for 750 ml: CNY 204)

Normal price: Baileys, 1 L: CNY 143 (Price at BevMo in California: CNY 142.63)

Good price: Bowmore Scotch 12 Year, 750 ML: CNY 219 (Price at BevMo in California: CNY 299)

Good price: Cointreau Liqueur, 1 L: CNY 157 (Price at BevMo in California for 750 ml: CNY 217)

Bicycle monopoly

2010-08-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

It was big news recently, when Chinese president Hu Jintao's son, Hu Haifeng, was granted an exclusive deal on all bicycle sales in Beijing. Here's a local vendor who must be part of this newly-created monopoly:

I suppose it's also possible that this is just a case of someone translating "自行车专卖" as "bicycle monopoly" when it should really be something more like "specialist bicycle shop".

Sad cats

2010-08-29T07:00:00.002-07:00

Outside the back of a local restaurant I pass by frequently, the kitchen staff have had two stray cats tied up with nylon string for a couple weeks

They appear to be giving the cats food scraps, so they're reasonably fed. My limited experience with cats tells me that these cats probably don't enjoy being tied up near the garbage dumpsters any more than they'd like to go for a walk on a leash.

"These cats are being fattened up for the soup pot, or for the kebab vendor", you say. Well, if this were southern China instead of northern China, or if it were a Cantonese restaurant, then I'd agree with you. But these are most definitely being rehabilitated and raised as pets. They are sad lookin' cats though.

Chinese albinos

2010-08-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

It might be sort of politically incorrect to talk about this, but I am just fascinated when I see Chinese albinos. When I've encountered white folks with albinism, I think they might be able to pass for Irish or Scandinavian, so I tend to not be too interested.

Chinese albinos are something else, though. They have all the typical Han Chinese facial characteristics, but with white-pink skin and bleach-blond hair, as you'd expect. Last time I encountered one, I tried to snap a picture with my phone camera, but I didn't focus properly.

I debated simply throwing it out, but I found that you can still get a good sense of the contrast. And the blurriness maintains the anonymity of the subjects:

I'd say that I come across a Chinese albino every two to three months. Considering that this country is very densely populated, I'd say the incidence of albinism must be pretty low. Or they all stay indoors. On the other hand, I see Chinese little people (I know the politically correct nomenclature there) every few weeks.

When I've seen Chinese albinos interacting with their friends, they seem to be accepted as anyone else in their peer group. There appears to be no special treatment, and no one is over-focused on their melanin production defect. I think that's pretty cool.

Here's a clearer picture of a Chinese albino. (borrowed from here)

KFC Grazing Bucket

2010-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is seriously a current feature on KFC's menu in China:

A Grazing Bucket! I love it. The Chinese characters translate to "Colorful bucket for the whole family", but "grazing bucket" is so much better.

They should offer this in the US with the same name.

Dialogue during my last visit to a Beijing KFC

2010-08-07T07:00:00.002-07:00

I stopped by the neighborhood KFC to pick up some of their delicious KFC McNuggets and mashed potatoes for lunch one day this week. (I don't think those McNuggets are even on the menu in the US. We just have popcorn chicken and chicken strips if you want something boneless.)

This is the conversation I had with the cashier girl.

Cashier: ［举者手] 这边点菜！(Raises hand. "I'm open over here")

[I walk over to the cashier]

Me: 你好！一个上校鸡块，一份土豆泥，一个玉米玉棒，中杯可乐。在这儿吃。("Hi. One thing of KFC McNuggets, one thing of mashed potatoes and gravy, a corn on the cob, and a medium Coke. For here.")

Cashier: 在这儿吃吗您？ ("Sir, is that for here or to go?")

Me: 在这儿吃。 ("For here.")

[The cashier pulls out a color brochure from behind the counter with some new chicken sandwiches that KFC just came out with. She starts to point at the pictures.]

Cashier: 要不要尝一下新出的汉堡？ ("Are you interested in trying our new hamburger?")

Me: 汉堡！肯德基现在有汉堡吗?! (Feigning surprise: "Hamburgers! KFC is selling hamburgers now?!")

Cashier: 恩，对。尝一下吗？ ("Yes, would you like to try one?")

Me: 那个不是汉堡。里面是牛肉吗？ ("That's not a hamburger. Is there beef in it?")

Cashier: 牛肉，是吗？ ("So you want beef?")

[This last sentence kind of annoyed me. In Mandarin, it's sort of a passive aggressive way to make fun of a non-native speaker's language ability. She's basically pretending that she's not following my thought process due to the word "beef". This, of course, encourages me to go a little further. ]

Me: 那个不是汉堡，是个鸡肉三明治。 ("That's not a hamburger. It's a chicken sandwich.")

[The cashier looks confused and can't think of what to say next.]

Me: 上面写的是"鸡腿堡"。它不是汉堡。 ("On the menu they've written 'Chicken leg sandwich. It ain't a hamburger.")

Cashier: 哦。 ("Oh.")

[The cashier rings up my total]

Frequent readers of my blog my recall my entry on the misuse of the English words "poker", "hamburger", and "play".

I get just as irritated by the misuse of loan words from English in Mandarin.

A hamburger contains beef. Chicken meat and a bun is a chicken sandwich. Very simple. Irritates me almost as much as people littering and taxi drivers hacking loogies. The funniest thing is that my feedback went completely over the head of the KFC cashier. It was a fun talk though, anyway.

Henan woman is a dead ringer for Mickey Rourke

2010-08-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was going through my photos from my recent Henan trip, and I spent a lot of time staring at these several photos of a cucumber vendor:

I thought to myself, "This lady's a dead ringer for Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler." She totally has the same look as him in that scene after he buys some 'roids and shoots up:

Is it just me, or does this Henan lady look almost the same? Please tell me it's not just me.

Smokin' monkey

2010-08-03T07:00:00.002-07:00

Yuntai Mountain in Henan province, which I visited recently, is situated in a lush forrest. There are many macaques that are active in parts of the park. Just in case tourists don't have the chance to encounter any monkeys during their visit, the park management have considerately arranged a massive monkey cage. The cage is constructed from a double layer of oxidized chain-link fence, with a bare concrete floor. Inside the cage lives an entire troop of macaques. The baby monkeys are small enough to slip out of the chain-link of the roof, but the adults are too large to get out.

Along with plastic bags, Coke bottles, and other garbage, some tourists throw their cigarette butts through the chain-link fence to the macaques. The macaques seem to consider the butts to be a wonderful delicacy. Here's a juvenile macaque that sort of looks like he's smoking a cigarette butt:

I find it fascinating to observe primates. I'm like Al Pacino's character in Donnie Brasco — I love to watch animals. You can probably guess what my opinion is on the habitat and treatment given to this particular troop of monkeys.

An Ohio State joke?

2010-08-01T07:00:00.002-07:00

I'm not smart enough to figure this one out. Maybe someone can explain it to me:

I spotted spotted and photographed this clueless girl on a recent trip to rural Henan.

For those unfamiliar with the Big Ten, what we have here on this clueless girl's head is a Michigan cap using the Ohio State color scheme. This is interesting due to the intense Michigan – Ohio State football rivalry.

CPC happy birthday banner

2010-07-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

I felt a wave of Nineteen Eighty-Four rush through me when I spotted this gigantic banner hanging across the road during a recent trip to Zhengzhou:

Translation: "Congratulations to the Communist Party of China on their 89th anniversary"

You don't tend to see such large, ominous banners like this in Beijing. That huge hammer and sickle on the left side of it makes me think of Big Brother.

Check out the Peace Doves in the upper right of the banner:

Doves are so appropriate for the CPC — the fun, inclusive club which has organized such past peaceful events like this, this, and this.

The Chinese mafia

2010-07-28T07:00:00.001-07:00

Organized crime in China is out of control. Gang bosses extort protection money from shop owners. Attacks go unreported out of fear.

Just look at what happened to these poor mannequins:

...suffocated and put on display as a warning to the other mannequins to pay their protection money on time!

When you're having a bad day...

2010-07-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

...look at these photos, and say to yourself, "At least I don't have to sleep on the floor of the Beijing West Train Station tonight." I took these photos recently after a late night train back to Beijing.

These are, for the most part, homeless folks in Beijing that have to resort to camping out on the floor of the train station each night. They could very well return to their home cities and get looked after by the government, but they're in Beijing trying to scrape together more cash than they would otherwise be able to.

And no, they're not tourists hoping for an early start on the morning train. Take a close look.

Those Shunyi expats got it rough!

2010-07-18T07:00:00.006-07:00

I thought I had a rough life. Every day I'm in the office, eight to six, sitting in front of a computer terminal. And damn, pushin' those buttons on the keyboard is hard! I've got the beginnings of lower back pain, carpal tunnel and the myriad other hazards of being a white collar worker. Not to mention, I'm always talking on the phone and getting a hoarse voice. Man, it's rough a rough life being a white collar office worker in Beijing.

Some white folks in Beijing have got it real bad. Check out this Irish lady's rant in City Weekend magazine. I had to scan the whole article since I couldn't find it on line. I've interjected my condescending comments in line.

Comment: Yes, let's talk more about drivers, since all of us working here in Beijing are well-to-do Fat Cats with our own personal chauffeurs, gardeners, cooks, and masseuses. Please continue! We're all very interested in this topic.

Comment: It sounds like your family has had a very hard life here in Beijing. It must be such an ordeal to have a personal chauffeur. I can't imagine the pain and challenges their family must be going through.

Comment: I feel the author's pain. She's had to make so many hard decisions: will the chauffeur take the dog outside for shit? Will the chauffeur carry our groceries into the luxury villa? Having a personal driver sounds like such a pain. The grief she she must be going through.

Comment: Those other families sound so horrible. They're so looking down on The Locals, totally unlike you.

Chauffeurs planting flowers for their European colonial overlords! What is Beijing coming to? It's horrible. I can' t imagine the moral dilemma this author is having, keeping quiet while her friends engage in such horrible behavior.

Next Sunday mass, we ought to take up a special collection for this poor family from the Old Country. I'm already saving up my spare change. My heart goes out to the author, and all the other families going through the same pain while in Beijing.

Now back to me: I've been paying a cleaning lady from Henan to come over to my rat-infested Apartment of Filth once per week for two hours to mop the disgusting floor and wipe the yellow dribbles off the exterior of my toilet bowl. And I thought I was an upper class, imperialist fat cat shit for hiring a cleaning lady. I feel so much better after reading about this Irish woman's difficult life. I had even though that I was doing well compared to the other kids on the block because I could afford to pound Heinekens at 7 kuai instead of local Yanjing beer at 1 kuai a pop.

This City Weekend article is a reminder to all of us normal folks: the actual rich people stay rich by making the rest of us common mutts think we're doing well for ourselves. But really, the Shunyi expatriates of the world still keep most of the pie for themselves, and leave just a few crumbs for the rest of us workers to fight over.

It doesn't matter if you're in Beijing or in Boston, we regular peons just get the crumbs, while the upper crust worry about whether or not their chauffeurs and butlers need to scoop the poop.

The seeping flood of diarrhea

2010-07-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

We had Korean barbecue one night. Two-thirds of the way through the meal I excused myself to use the lavatory. Chinese beer is like 3% alcohol by volume, so you need to drink a lot, and quickly, to get the smallest of any buzz. (Does anyplace have San Miguel Red Horse around here?)

To the right side of the urinal I was using were a couple squat toilets, on a platform about 6 inches higher than the floor I stood on. The doors to the stalls were shut, and inside they were empty. I couldn't help but notice a seeping flood of nasty red-brown diarrhea seeping out of the front of one of the closed stalls. This is how it looked from where I stood:

The toilet stall door is shut, but you can kind of glimpse part of the squat toilet underneath the crack of the door. On the side of the squat toilet nearest the door, there's all this nasty diarrhea spread all over the floor.

I should have waited until I was all the way done with my dinner instead of just two-thirds done. I had a really time getting over this nasty men's room.

I can't figure out how someone could leak that much filth over the wrong side of the squat toilet. As you may know, when you use a squat toilet, your butt faces the far wall, and you squat down facing the door of the stall. So if someone came up and opened up the door to your stall, they'd see your face, and not your butt.

Any floods of defecation and filth would presumably end up at the back of the stall. There's no possible way it could leak out the front of the stall like that, unless someone intentionally used the toilet in the wrong direction, and intentionally sprayed all over the floor. There must have been some really sick individual in the restaurant that night.

The 7-Eleven coupon

2010-07-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

The other week we went out to eat at a branch of the fashionable Bellagio restaurant chain in Beijing. The Taiwan-themed restaurant quite appropriately had some newspapers from Taiwan in the waiting area. I paged through one of them as I waited for the hostess to get to our number.

On the front page of the China Times was a 7-Eleven coupon for buy one get one free:

I wasn't quite sure what products the coupon was for, or if I could even use it outside of the ROC, but I decided what the heck. I semi-discretely used my pocket knife to cut out the coupon and stuff it in my pocket for another day. The other waiting patrons stared as I appeared to be destroying the newspaper for no good reason.

Fast forward to several days later. On a trip to my local Beijing 7-Eleven, I asked one of the stock boys about the coupon. The stock boy had no idea if I could use it, so he went to the back room to consult with his manager.

Short story, I couldn't use the coupon. As I suspected it was only valid in Taiwan. So much for that whole one country, two systems malarkey. As far as 7-Eleven is concerned, it's definitely a two country, two system deal.

It was kind of funny though, when the stock boy came out, he said to me, "Even if we did accept this coupon, ain't you seen here, it's already done expired. Look here, the valid dates are 99/7/2 - 7/11. Fool, you done brought an eleven year-old coupon."

Check it out:

I didn't argue with the stock boy, but I'll point out here that it says "99" because in Taiwan, they start counting years from 1912, the birth year of Chiang Kai-shek, the supreme leader and founder of the nation. Or something like that.

I can't help but wonder what all that great loot is on the coupon. They had none of the wonderful products pictured on the coupon at my local Beijing 7-Eleven.

Here's the selection on the

From left to right, I think this is what everything is:

a milky Japanese liquid called "Dakara"
another milky drink called "多多"
probably very similar to 1 and 2
"可口" brand dog biscuits / people cookies
half and half, maybe?
A drink called "EP". EP, of course, stands for "ectopic pregnancy", an abnormal pregnancy that occurs outside the uterus. That's creative birth control for ya!

Change hoarders

2010-07-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here's an anecdote that anyone living in China longer than a week will relate to.

We were browsing around at the upscale Shin Kong Place mall in Beijing over the weekend. We noticed a small coffee bar (I think it was called "Red Cuppa"), which had about six tables for customers in its seating area. In addition espresso, they were selling some pastries and gelato. We picked out two flavors for a medium cup to go, and the bill came to 23 yuan ($3.40).

The coffee shop had two employees helping us: one young man behind the counter, scooping the ice cream and tallying the bill, as well as a young girl — a trainee — who was on our side of the counter next to us. The trainee mostly hovered around and stared at us. She looked excited and bored at the same time. I'm sure everyone can relate to the frustration of being a new employee and trying hard to contribute.

After we ordered, I pulled out my fat money clip to pay the bill, and started flipping through my money to find some change. (My money clip is fat because I stuff the middle with lots of 1 yuan notes.) I always try to keep some 10s and 20s in my money wad for the cabbies, for those quick trips around town. I once saw a Beijing cabbie pull a tire iron out of his trunk and chase down another guy, and for all I know, that could have been because the customer tried to pay for a 10 kuai ride with a 100 kuai note.

My money clip had some 1s, some 20s, a 50, and lots of 100s. I pulled out a 50 and three 1s, so that the cashier could give me a 20 and a 10 for change.

It turns out that while I had been rifling through my money, the hovering salesgirl had been watching my every move like a hawk. As discreet as I tried to be when looking through my cash, she had inventoried the full contents of my money clip. As soon as I pulled out the 50 yuan note, she exclaimed loudly, "Hey, I seen a 20 in there. Just give us that 20."

I turned to face the male cashier, gave him a polite smile, and continued to pay with my 50 yuan note. I think he was embarrassed by his trainee. Clearly, she had spent previous time working at a local market bartering with customers over 1 and 2 kuai trinkets, where asking for exact change is the norm. The cashier gave me my expected change, and we were on our way.

I think that when you're paying triple-price for Chinese gelato, customers are allowed to pay for their purchases with whatever bills they want. If you run a cash-based, retail business, it's part of your job to visit the bank every day, or however often it takes, to make sure you've got plenty of change on hand. I've noticed this change-hoarding mentality more and more lately, even at places like KFC, where you know they have tons and tons of cash.

If you're in China, make a point of paying for all retail and food purchases with 100 kuai bills, and see how often they give you guff about not having proper ling qian.

Un-toilet trained kids

2010-07-09T07:00:00.002-07:00

We've all seen the babies with open-crotch underwear and pants (开裆裤). You know, where the baby needs to do a number one or number two, and mom scoops the kid up, opens their legs like the Thanksgiving turkey, and they spray the contents of their bladders into whatever gutter or tree is nearby? It's a great thing for the environment, and surely cuts down on landfill waste a lot. Definitely old news about the open-crotch pants. I'm very used to seeing the Thanksgiving turkeys, and babies walking around half-naked. It's very natural and normal after a while.

One day this week, however, I saw two instances of waidi (transplant) parents letting their very old kids urinate and defecate in public areas as if they were still two years old. Two in one day.

Instance one: the giant crap into a Ralph's bag

(Probably not really a Ralph's bag, but wouldn't that be odd if it were.) I was walking through a crowded, well-maintained area of Beijing. Many people were going about their lunch break, hustling about in their office attire to get to their next meeting. To the left of the sidewalk, I saw a six year-old girl squatting over a plastic shopping bag. The non-Beijinger mom was squatting beside the six year-old with one hand on the side of the bag so it didn't blow away in the wind. The six year-old proceeded to take a crap so huge that an NFL linebacker would be proud of it. It plopped out right into the center of the plastic bag. This happened literally twenty yards away from a public toilet inside of an office building. On the steps of the office building were a gaggle of office workers, witnessing the giant crap, like the audience at an amphitheater.

How can someone let their older child, who should be toilet trained by that age, do something so inappropriate in a public space, in full view of tons of office workers? You can't blame a six year-old for anything, of course. This is one hundred percent bad parenting, and a case of a transplant acting like a countryside yokel in a place where you should act like a civilized person.

Instance one: pee-pee in the garbage can

Beijing, as of the 2008 Olympics, has a bunch of new subway lines and trains that would be the envy of any big city. I was waiting for the train in one of these fancy new subway stops, when I observed another mom, a non-Beijinger, who had picked up her five year-old daughter and was balancing her over the top of a three foot tall trash can. The kid was taking a nice, long pee into the trash can, right there in the subway station, with at least two hundred commuters mulling about. Don't kids know that Oscar the Grouch lives in a trashcan? Aren't they worried about that?

Again, there was a public restroom in this fancy new subway station, right on the platform, not fifty yards away. Amazing, stupid parenting again.

Solution

Idiot parents: here's how you solve the problem of having to let your six year old crap and pee in public like a misbehaved dog:

Read this article on potty training. Here are the two key points:

"Most children have a bowel movement once a day, usually within an hour after eating."
"Most children urinate within an hour after having a large drink."

Let me translate that back into Mandarin just in case:

你的崽子每日会拉一次个巨大屎。它一般会吃饭后一个小时拉。
你的崽子喝饮料后一个小时之内会撒个大尿。

[Note: Please leave a comment with a better translation if you have one, thanks!]

From what I can see in that article, kids are supposed to be basically potty trained by 2-3 years old.

I think with some rough math calculations and very basic advanced planning, our idiot parents can start to integrate themselves more into mainstream society.

Street crabs

2010-07-07T07:00:00.001-07:00

I encountered a waidi street peddler sitting on a curb near the vegetable sellers outside my apartment complex. This particular peddler had a large, plastic wash basin at his feet containing several huge crabs. They looked kind of like Dungeness crabs.

I was very interested because crabs in China tend to be of the river variety. River crabs and lake crabs are a lot smaller than ocean crabs. The local crabs have good flavor, but not much meat. I need Dungeness or king crab, something with lots of chunky meat. I can't be bothered to do lots and lots of picking for an ounce of crab meat.

I walked over to the peddler, and said to him, "So you got some crabs, huh?".

"Sure do," he says to me.

I looked down for a close-up look at the basin full of crabs. Immediately, one thought came to mind: "F no."

These were not spunky, creepy crawly crabs, trying their hardest to escape from their enclosure. No, this peddler had a plastic bin full of dead crabs, sitting unrefrigerated in the mid-afternoon heat, which happened to be in the low 90s that day.

If there's one thing to avoid, it's rotten shellfish and crabs. Crabs go bad like crazy once they've died. Ever watch Deadliest Catch, and notice how when they get to the crab processor plant, they end up having to throw away lots of crab carcasses from the holding tanks of the ships? That's because there's too much that can go wrong from steaming and eating dead crabs. You don't know how long they've been dead, and how much bacterial growth there is. Sure, you can give it the old smell test, but that's not a sure thing.

If you want to save a few cents, be my guest and sort through the dead crab bin at your local Korean grocery store, or buy dead crabs from the waidi ren on the street. I'm holding out for fresh, live crab myself.

No summer berries in Beijing

2010-07-05T07:00:00.002-07:00

No matter what the season in Beijing, I rarely can find several types of fruits and berries. I would say that the things I'm looking for are pretty common in the US, but not apparently not in China. In particular:

raspberries
blueberries
grapefruit

In Beijing, I can find bayberries and mulberries from street peddlers occasionally. Try getting that at your neighborhood Safeway.

Despite those exotic offerings, there are never any blueberries or raspberries.

The only place I've found to get fresh blueberries and raspberries is at Jenny Lou's, an expensive imported goods store. The berries at Jenny Lou's are usually frozen. Last time I bought about 8 ounces of raspberries for around $2.50, and when I thawed them out, I discovered at least half of them were mushed and squished together. The only thing I could think to make is raspberry pancake topping.

Lack of phone etiquette

2010-06-29T07:00:00.002-07:00

I've been getting more annoyed than usual by poor phone etiquette in China. Here are two things that people could do to cure the majority of the phone etiquette problems I've experienced:

1. Leave a voicemail message

I often find that I have voicemail messages waiting for me after having been away from my phone for a while. However, ninety percent of the time, I check my voicemail box only to hear complete silence, or the sound of someone hanging up right away. Sometimes I'll have a half dozen messages of just the [click] sound of someone hanging up.

This happens with people from all walks of life. Off the top of my head, I've had the voicemail problem with:

highly educated job candidates
people delivering fast food lunches to me
package delivery workers
colleagues and friends of mine

Through the wonders of caller ID and other tools, you can figure out which slacker is messing up your voicemail box.

Leave a flippin' voicemail message for me, that's what it's there for. It seems like the only people who leave voicemails for me are people calling from the US.

2. Announce who you are when you call

Tell me who you are when you're calling me. This is a big thing with me. I don't have ESP.

It's one thing if your good friend calls and says, "Hey, what up bro?" You know the voice, so he doesn't need to say, "This is Bob, what's up?". It's a different thing all together when a complete stranger calls and doesn't announce who he is.

I have at least three calls a week to my cell phone in China that go like this:

Caller: "Wei?" (Hello)
Me: "Ni hao." (Hello)

[At this point, I'm waiting for the caller to introduce himself.]

Caller: "Wei?" (Hello)
Me: "Ni hao." (Hello)

[Now I'm mildly annoyed, but I'm willing to give it another shot.]

Caller: "Wei?" (Hello)
Me: "Ni hao." (Hello)

[The Wei - Ni hao routine has to happen three times, for some reason. Always three times.]

Caller: "Ni shi Eric ma?" (Is this Eric?)
Me: "Qing wen, ni shi shei?" (Can I ask who's speaking?)

[The guy is calling me, so he knows who I am. He needs to tell me who he is.]

Caller: "Ni shi Eric ma?" (Is this Eric?)

[Many times, I hang up the phone right here. I can only tolerate poor manners for so long. Do I want to do business with someone that has social interaction skills that are this bad?]

Me: "Qing wen, ni shi shei?" (Can I ask who's speaking?)
Caller: "Wo shi ..." (Finally he introduces himself.)

When you call a stranger or a customer, you need to say right off the bat who you are and who you'd like to speak with.

For example:

"Hi, this is George Costanza from Vandelay Industries, calling to speak with Mr. Smith about his order for latex."

The once sentence contains it all: his name, where he's from, who he'd like to speak with, and what he's calling about. One sentence, and you know exactly what the person on the other end of the line wants. This is the guy I want to do business with. This is who I'd want to be my latex salesman.

I hope that some of the mouth-breathing recruiters and salespeople that waste my time on the phone get a glance at my advice here and can step up their phone manners.

My third annoyance is all those junk text messages from pizza parlors, discount sushi outfits, and credit cards that I get all day long on my cell phone. Is there a way to unsubscribe from those like there is for email lists?

New beers at 7-11 in Beijing

2010-06-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Not all of us are Fat Cat Expats that live on the east side of Beijing, with a full time staff of servants and easy access to April Gourmet and Jenny Lou's. For those half-pat folks like me, we have to do a lot of our shopping at local supermarkets and stores like 7-11.

During the last few weeks, 7-11 has started carrying more imported beers at reasonable prices.

Initially, 7-11's imported beer selection consisted of (BeerAdvocate grade in parenthesis):

Carlsberg (C+)
Asahi Dry (C-)
regular Asahi
Corona Extra (D)

Now, 7-11 has also added these:

Not spectacular beer, but it's great that they've expanded their selection.

7-11 also has that wonderful malt beverage, Smirnoff Ice, so you can buy a couple bottles and partake in that gay Icing game that's been in the news recently.

See this older post for more on beer available at local supermarkets in Beijing.

Open umbrellas indoors

2010-06-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

What do you think's going to happen to this saleslady for opening so many umbrellas indoors?

Four umbrellas, so four days of bad luck? Quadruple bad luck? Maybe this?

According to one explanation of the superstition, the bad luck only occurs if the umbrella hasn't yet been used outdoors.

Chinese are generally pretty superstitious — many office building elevators here omit all floors that include the numeral '4', since four sounds like death in Chinese — I wonder how this saleslady could do something so blatant like open four unused umbrellas indoors.

If you read some Chinese, here's a classic blog post about me warning someone about carrying an umbrella indoors.

Video: Irate man buying shoes

2010-06-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a little video clip I filmed and subtitled myself. It's of a Shopping Mall Dispute I walked into the other week. I'm sure I've misunderstood most of the Mandarin being yelled, but I tried my best to translate it.

Several minutes into this loud, public dispute, a team of between ten and twenty adolescent security boys descended on the scene. They did a good job of hanging back, observing, and doing as little as possible to get involved in diffusing the scene.

One things for sure, that older gentleman has seen Harsh Times one too many times if he's shouting things like "I'll kick your teeth down your puke hole!" at salesladies.

Hitchin' a ride in a septic tank?

2010-06-17T07:00:00.001-07:00

I seen this truck on the Fourth Ring the other evening. What kind of tank is he sitting in?

Noshin' on raw vegetables

2010-06-12T07:00:00.001-07:00

Raw cucumbers and fried bread

While waiting for the Beijing city bus one morning this week, I observed a high school girl standing near me. In her right hand, she held a long, thin, prickly cucumber. In her left hand, there was a folded wad of greasy, fried bread.

As she stood there, waiting for her bus, she would take a bite of cucumber, chew, and swallow. A couple minutes later, a big mouthful of fried bread. I'm thinking to myself, "Vegetable group, bread group. Vegetable group, bread group. Vegetable group, bread group."

For me, I'm usually double-fisting donuts, so it's more like, "Jelly donut group, glazed donut group. Jelly donut group, glazed donut group. Jelly donut group, glazed donut group." And then a swig of juice or coffee every now and then to wash it down.

I think that the bites of cucumber must be a great way to offset the grease from the bread. I should try it sometime with my donuts.

Raw tomatoes

Another amusing sighting of a vegetable nosher I had was on an international flight back to Beijing last month. I was sitting next to an 80 year old Chinese woman. I don't think she spoke a word of English.

The woman had moderate osteoporosis, and was overweight by twenty pounds or so. She was so curled up and rounded that she reminded me of a grey-haired Sonic the Hedgehog, you know, when Sonic curls into a ball to attack his video game enemies?

At one point during the flight, I saw my elderly seatmate pull out a giant zip-lock bag of goodies. Fruits, crackers, and other snacks. I thought to myself, I should have thought ahead and done that to, because these Air China in flight meals are unbearable.

In my peripheral vision, I saw that the woman was munching on bright red Jonathan apple. Something was out of place, though. I didn't hear any crunching and munching sounds, like you usually hear when someone's eating an apple. I wondered, what, did she take her dentures out and try to gum the apple to death?

I spun my head ninety degrees to observe my seatmate's habits in more detail. It turns out it was not a Jonathan apple that she was sucking on, but a medium sized, raw tomato. She was totally gumming it, and hard. She was sucking and gumming that tomato like there was no tomorrow. I don't think any teeth came in contact with the tomato. It was amazing.

These New Age California people think they're so hip with their vegan lifestyles and raw foods movements. I'm telling you, Chinese folks have been doing these things well before Californians, and they don't do it to be cool, either. Californians and other New Age type people in America are very direct about telling you all about their dietary habits. "I'm a vegetarian.", "I'm a fishitarian — I don't eat any meat except seafood", "I eat only raw, unprocessed foods", "I only buy organics".

I've got a lot more respect for the Chinese as far as this goes. They eat what they want because they like it, and they don't need to tell everybody around about their habits.

"Woman stabs nine on China sleeper train"

2010-06-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

From this article:

Nine people asleep on a train traveling through northeastern China were stabbed in the early hours of this morning by a woman armed with a 15-cm-long knife.

The woman struck at around 2am, slashing at passengers sleeping in the lower bunks of a carriage and causing widespread panic in the darkness, as the K7019 train from the northeastern city of Harbin to northern Hebei province chugged south.

On a Chinese sleeper train, there are typically 3 levels of bunk you can reserve: lower, middle, and top. The lower bunk is the most expensive, the top bunk is the cheapest.

I always found this pricing structure a little strange. I would much prefer the security and safety of the top bunk. I feel like a cat up there in the top bunk, surveying the terrain for prey and other predators. Another problem with the bottom bunk is that strangers and seat mates will make themselves at home sitting on the bottom bunk during daytime hours.

This train stabbing incident is another strong point for choosing an upper bunk. You'll be that much further from knife wielding crazies.

Important notice: no hot water

2010-06-04T07:00:00.001-07:00

This "Important Notice" was posted in the elevators of my apartment building over the last weekend.

The gist of it is that my apartment management needed to do some work on the hot water boilers, so they had to turn off the hot water for all the buildings in the apartment complex.

They list the effected period as May 31, 2010 6:00 AM to June 3 8:00 AM. I optimistically thought that this meant that for four days, they would work for two hours each morning, 6:00-8:00 AM, during which time there would be no hot water. No sweat, two hours a day is no big deal.

It turns out, though, that the hot water was off for the entire three day period. I mostly use hot water for showering, but thankfully I could take a hot shower at the gym instead of a cold shower at home. When there was no other choice, though, I used my huge stock pot to heat up a bunch of water on the stove if anyone wanted a hot sponge bath.

I did take one freezing cold shower out of necessity. Mostly it was because I was too lazy to go to the gym or a local swimming pool to take a hot shower. I showered the same way you would in a boat head. My technique was to grab the hand held shower head, turn on the cold water, and quickly spray all over my body for a total of 10 seconds. This minimized the unpleasantness. Then I turned off the cold water and lathered up with shampoo on my head and soap all over my body, and I did another quick rinse off for about 20 seconds. It seemed to mostly work.

The boisterous Ohio State fan

2010-06-02T07:00:00.004-07:00

On a recent Europe vacation, we visited the Acropolis in Greece. I had worn my University of Michigan t-shirt that day, one with a very small, two-inch block 'M' logo on the lapel. I'm by no means a big football fan, more of an academic supporter than anything else. Of course, the colors aren't bad.

So, while minding my own business as I walked around the Acropolis, I was surprised to hear a Midwestern accent boom out from behind me, "Michigan, huh? You know what we say to people from Michigan in Ohio, don't ya?"

I cast the older gentleman a sideways glance, ignoring him and continuing on my way.

"Booooooo!", the man cried out at the top of his lungs. "Booooooo!"

I didn't dignify his Ohio-ish behavior with a response. Several minutes later, though, it occurred to me how I should have handled the situation. I suppose I was too spaced out due to lack of coffee and the jet lag, so I was way too slow with my comeback.

Good thing I can write about this on my blog. Here's how the situation should have played out, had I been more on my game:

Ohio State gentleman: "Michigan, huh? You know what we say to people from Michigan in Ohio, don't ya?. Booooooo! Booooooo!"

Me: "You know what I say to your son at the drive through, right? 'Don't forget to give me some ketchup with my fries.' "

Who would have thought Ohio State fans have such low self esteem? It must be the economy down there. I thought Southerners were hospitable and friendly.

I was surprised to encounter this kind of rabid man in an exotic locale. I've worked with and am friends with plenty of people from Ohio, as well as people that have graduated from schools like Michigan State. I wonder how the fellow I met saved up enough unemployment to pay for his plane ticket.

Iron Man 2 movie censorship

2010-05-31T07:00:00.001-07:00

Finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 over the weekend in a theater in Beijing. I was all excited to write a detailed post on the censors' garbling of the words "Russia", "Russian", "North Korea", and permutations thereof, when I read through the Shanghaiist's wonderful summary.

That's what I get for sleepin' on the job. Here are two posts I wrote in 2007 and 2009, respectively, detailing essentially the same type of censorship they did in the Transformers movies that played in China:

Lessons in bidet usage

2010-05-29T07:00:00.004-07:00

There's nothing worse than taking a number two and only having dry toilet paper to wipe with, is there? I prefer to carry a little pack of Wet Ones when I can (thank you Howard Stern for the tip), but if I don't have them I'll make do-it-yourself Wet Ones with the restroom's paper towels and some water.

I was very pleased during a recent trip to Europe to find that Italian hotel bathrooms come equipped with bidets. I didn't grow up with a silver spoon, so I've not had any training with how to use these things. All I know about bidets is from what I've seen in Crocodile Dundee, where he turns on the bidet, and the water spurts up from the middle of the bowl three feet high.

This is how the bidets look in Italy:

Note that there is only one hole at the bottom, which is for the drain. I thought that bidets have two holes: one for the drain, like a regular sink, and then another water spout, right in the middle, to shoot a stream of water upwards onto your nether bits.

I was totally perplexed. The only way to get water to come out of the bidet was to turn on the main faucet, in which case it sprayed directly downwards, like a regular wash basin. I'm thinking, what's going on? Don't you folks know that my B-Hole is upwards, not down?

So my first morning at the Italian pensione, after a very productive eight-ounce bowel movement, I decided to try and figure out the bidet.

I think to myself, "Ok, so the water doesn't spray upwards like in Crocodile Dundee. That must mean I'm supposed to plug the bidet, fill the bowl to the brim with water, and then sit my filthy rear end in the water and swish it around."

I proceed to fill the bidet up with water, as you can see in this picture:

Just before I plop my rear end in the bowl of water and make it look like Lipton tea, I have a realization: maybe the head of the faucet swivels!

I try swiveling the head faucet. It moves! After you use the toilet, you can point the faucet head of the bidet in the appropriate direction, and position your rear end in front of it to get a complete cleaning.

Here's the faucet pointing as far upwards as it will go:

It only points horizontal, but it's enough to get the job done. I thought I knew everything about bidets from Paul Hogan, but now I know different. Happy bideting.

Article: "When Hipsters Move in on Chinese: It's Ugly"

2010-05-04T07:00:00.002-07:00

Flipping through a copy of the Village Voice, I came across this interesting article, entitled "When Hipsters Move in on Chinese: It's Ugly". The author discusses the gentrification of some Chinese immigrant apartment buildings in Manhattan, and the ensuing conflicts with the wealthier "hipsters" that displace the previous tenants.

Here's a few paragraphs:

The new tenants, mostly white, are in their mid-twenties. Many go to nearby art colleges—Parsons, the School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union—or are working their first jobs out of school. Some commute to schools in less desirable places, like Long Island. Many have moved in within the past year; their apartments have that Ikea/thrift-store feel. The other residents are working-class Chinese, most of whom immigrated to New York from Fujian province in the '90s.

...

The newcomers are mostly surprised—or thrown off—by the buildings' long-term Chinese tenants, who chat with each other in a strange language, leave their doors open so their neighbors can see them eating soup in their boxers and sandals, and let their children play in the hallway. These newcomers, meanwhile, do their thing: They rush out of the buildings with their cell phones pressed to their ears, go on Snapple runs because there's no food in the apartment, throw house parties, and stumble home drunk from nearby bars.

...

One thing I need to add right off, is that not all Chinese people are the same. Some older Beijing people might occasionally be seen in their pajamas, but if you see anyone eating soup with their doors open, wearing boxers and sandals, they're guaranteed to be one thing — waidiren. They're definitely not people from Beijing.

In the Village Voice article, the Chinese immigrants they're talking about are all migrants from the southern province of Fujian. They're the same transplants you see in Beijing and Shanghai spitting on the sidewalk, throwing ice cream wrappers in the gutter, pushing and shoving to get on the subway, sneezing without covering their mouths, and letting their kids take long, slippery bowel movements in the gutter.

The difference between a Fujianese migrant and a person from Beijing is as pronounced as the difference between a gang of Gypsy thieves roaming the streets in Italy and a group of German mechanical engineers. I suppose that to an author unfamiliar with the different regions and people of China, the details could be overlooked.

If I were editing the Village Voice, I'd have done a find-replace and changed all mentions of "Chinese" to "Fujianese" in that article. It kind of irks me that everyone got lumped together with the litterbugs and spitters from Fujian.

It's a good article to read from start to finish if you have the time.

What do Shanghai and Rochester, NY have in common?

2010-04-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

What do Shanghai and Rochester, NY have in common? People in both places want their discount fried chicken! If they can't get it, they're mighty upset, and they're going to mope around and complain until they get the half price chicken they rightfully deserve.

Shanghai residents were angry after their KFC coupons were no longer honored:

A coupon that was available online (one example) offered KFC’s normal 64 RMB Family Bucket meal for half price (32 RMB). The coupon was valid throughout the country and only on Tuesday yesterday. Many Shanghai residents printed this coupon and brought it to their local KFC where they were eventually rejected.

First thing I thought of after reading about the Shanghai KFC situation was last year when Popeye's was in the news because they ran out of chicken in Rochester, NY. I still get a kick out of the news segment. Check it out:

I can totally understand getting upset about Popeye's running out of chicken. As far as fast food chicken goes, it's awesome, and the sides are great — mashed potatoes and cajun gravy, coleslaw, biscuits. KFC is another thing, though. I consider KFC is in the same category as my neighborhood jia chang cai restaurant that sells stir-fried cat meat. I feel dirty after I eat KFC. You wouldn't find me moping around a KFC for four hours because I couldn't get their half-price chicken combo.

There was a very insightful comment from a reader on the Shanghai situtaion:

a little scary that they organize so fiercely over chicken coupons but never for the right to read any kind of book they want to or listen to any kind of music they want to

Disturbing bulk purchase at the grocery

2010-04-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

There was a strange man in the checkout line in front of me at the supermarket. He looked and acted like a Chinese version of Mr. Harvey from The Lovely Bones. The man had a shopping cart loaded to capacity with 21 five-liter jugs of cooking oil. His bill came to something like 750 yuan ($110).

I can't imagine one person having a need for that much oil. I buy a one liter container of oil, and it usually lasts me six months. What is this guy doing with all that oil, deep frying horseshit and twinkies for every meal, every day of the week?

I think what it really was is that this guy's got an insatiable oil fetish. He's probably planning to fill up the bathtub completely with glistening, fresh oil, and have his Wenzhou¹ hooker take a bath in it.

There's no other possible reason. The oil fetish theory is the only one that makes sense. Who could possibly use that much oil for cooking? When you make a stir-fry, you use two or three tablespoons at most. This guy purchased 7,101 tablespoons worth of oil. At three tablespoons per stir-fry, that's still over 2,000 dishes.

Now, a bathtub typically holds 45-50 liters. Supermarket Mr. Harvey bought 105 liters of oil. That's exactly how much he'd need for two bathtubs full of oil for his oil fetish. How crazy does my theory sound now?

Wenzhou¹: Wenzhou is a southern coastal city whose main export is escorts and hookers. In China, everywhere you go you can find barber shops with signs that read "温州保健" (Wenzhou massage) in the window. This indicates that the salon in question is in fact a prosti-barber shop.

"I'll whup ya!"

2010-04-04T07:00:00.005-07:00

My favorite Chinese word this week is "抽" (chōu). I previously knew that the verb chōu could mean "to take out" and "to smoke". This week, I accidentally discovered that it can also be used as Beijing slang to say "I'll kick your ass!" (我抽你!, literally, "I'll whip you!")

You might wonder how I made this accidental discovery. Well, I was going about my own business, crossing a small road - in the pedestrian cross-walk, mind you - and I had the green "cross" sign for my direction. All of a sudden, a Beijing taxi came careening towards me, and stopped just inches beside me, while I was legally in the crosswalk. The driver laid on his horn for a good five seconds or so, even though I had the legal right of way and I'm a pedestrian. I guess I wasn't moving fast enough for him.

Can you imagine yourself driving in the parking your neighborhood Safeway grocery store, some pedestrian crosses in front of you, and you screech to a halt inches from him, and then you add insult by blowing your horn for an extended period of time?

So I stopped walking, right in front of the cab, as he blew his horn. I gave the driver the evil stare down for few seconds. Nothing too extreme, just a little message that I wasn't pleased with his disrespect for pedestrians and disregard for motor vehicle regulations.

After a few seconds, I continued across the street and went on my way. I guess my evil eye got his goat, because the cabbie pulled over to the curb where I was walking and started shouting at me though the passenger window, across his customer that was sitting there:

Wǒ chōu nǐ! Wǒ chōu nǐ! Wǒ chōu nǐ! (Literally: "I'll whup ya!, I'll whup ya! I'll whup ya!")

I thought the cabbie was a countryside transplant with poor Mandarin skills, and he was trying to say Wǒ cào nǐ! ("I'll f-ck you!"). That curse wouldn't have made a lot of sense.

I politely responded to the crazy cabbie, "I have the right of way, that was a green light."

It was a productive day. Despite being a victim of both simple and aggravated assault in the space of a couple minutes, I learned some great Beijing slang, and I helped a taxi driver better understand pedestrian right of way.

Watch out for those Beijing cabbies, they're a crazy bunch!

Collectivist drinking

2010-04-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was reading about how China and Asian countries have a collective mentality, while in the West, we're more individualistic:

A collectivist culture is one in which people tend to view themselves as members of groups( families, work units, tribes, nations), and usually consider the needs of the group to be more important than the needs of individuals. Most Asian cultures, including China's, tend to be collectivist.

It occurred to me that over the past weekend, I had a collectivist drinking experience at a bar.

In America, when you go to a bar, lounge, or club, you order your own cocktail or other drink. Sometimes your buddy might order a dozen tequila shots or some other shooters so everyone can have a quick bonding experience, but for the most part, you pick your own drinks. And of course, when you throw a house party in college, you might make a big bowl of jungle juice to share.

The fascinating thing is that in China, it's common to share a big cocktail with friends in an establishment outside your home. It seems to happen more when out with younger people at a bar or club, where everyone shares the same cocktail.

During our recent night on the town, the ground we were with, totaling around ten people, ordered two different group cocktails:

Group cocktail 1: The waiter brings out a fifth of Macallan 12 Year, five cans of Watson's club soda, and a glass carafe filled to the brim with ice cubes. He dumps in 1/3 of the scotch, half the soda water, and pours everyone a glass.
Group cocktail 2: Same thing, carafe of ice, but this time a fifth of Bombay Sapphire, diluted with club soda.

When I've been in situations like this, I'll skip the soda + liquor + ice concoction and just drink the scotch or gin neat. I'm on a budget and typically stick to the cheap well brands myself, so it's a real treat when someone orders higher end stuff. No sense diluting it with soda water or Coke.

I've heard that when you drink unmixed liquor, it's much easier to tell if you've been slipped fake booze, so that's another plus.

Why McDonald's doesn't kick the bums out

2010-03-31T07:00:00.001-07:00

I now have an answer to my complaint about passed out stewbums in Beijing McDonald's.

McDonald's employees don't mess with these guys because there's a very serious risk of being stabbed to death:

A 24-year-old employee in a McDonald's restaurant in city's downtown Xujiahui area was stabbed to death early in the morning, police said.
...
The employee, surnamed Li, was stabbed as he tried to stop a customer sleeping in the restaurant

Yikes! That is absolutely horrible. I would totally support McDonald's employees being given tasers so they can tase these passed out, crazy bums.

Encounter with crazy antisemitic, anti-American man

2010-03-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the Chinese Proficiency Test section at a small Beijing bookstore with my girlfriend recently. As you would expect to find in that particular section of the bookstore, there were a handful of Westerners and other non-Chinese-looking folks there, flipping through the books.

Suddenly, from ten feet away, I heard a middle-aged Chinese man start to rant loudly in semi-intelligible English. The man was had long shoulder length, ratty hair, and sloppy, partially dusty clothes. He was angry about something, and very disturbed. Using my Jason Bourne-like insticts, I rapidly identified escape routes, items I could use in our self-defense, and physical vulnerabilities of the irate man, all in a matter of seconds.

The crazy man started ranting at first with the f-word in English, which he followed with some unintelligible gibberish that could have been English, a Chinese dialect, or heavily accented Mandarin. He then ranted something in English something about "Americans". The crazy man yelled to no one in particular. He sprayed spit while he shouted, and you could see he was missing one of his front teeth — maybe he started a fight with the wrong bouncer in Sanlitun.

The crazy man appeared to be staring directly at one specific person. He directed his comments at a college-aged blond girl standing right beside us, who was also perusing books. The crazy man continued his rant to anyone that would listen, and the blond girl explained to everyone standing nearby that the man had tried to hit on her, she didn't pay attention to him, and then he became irate.

The crazy man ranted loudly for another three minutes or so. He switched between English, waidi ren-accented Mandarin, some type of countryside Chinese dialect, and finally German. The German really surprised me. He essentially repeated over-and-over these phrases:

"F-ck Americans!"
"Don't help Americans!"
"别帮美国人!" ("don't help Americans" in Mandarin)
"Jews!"
"Juden!" （"Jews" in German)

The anti-American comments are nothing to be surprised at, but the antisemitism is unusual. I can't say that I've ever personally encountered anything like that in China. It was very bizarre.

My Chinese friends tell me that mental health care in China is still developing. After seeing this kind of wild behavior, I believe it. It seems like there's a real need for accessible counseling. If he can speak three languages, this man must be a a pretty intelligent individual, but he's in need of some basic counseling, and maybe daily antidepressants.

I think this experience was indicative of a need to improve mental health care resources in Beijing and in China.

Boiled goose!

2010-03-27T07:00:00.004-07:00

I didn't pay much attention to Lonely Island's "Boombox" song when I first listened to their album. After the accompanying video aired recently on SNL, I just can't get enough of the song:

This music video is what I watch on TV first thing in the morning and then again last thing in the evening.

"Boiled goose" just sounds so unappetizing. Is there any kind of poultry that wouldn't lose it's flavor after boiling? I love the visuals that go along with the boiled goose lyrics:

It occurred to me that Chinese cuisine has a lot of boiled meat dishes: 水煮鱼 (hot and spicy boiled fish) and 水煮肉 (hot and spicy boiled beef) are the first that come to mind.

After a quick image search for "boiled goose" in Chinese (水煮鹅）, I have to say, the Chinese chefs make this dish look a lot more presentable than those nasty goose carcasses in the Lonely Island video. Five thousand years of research on how to boil meats has it's advantages!

Check it out:

I know which boiled goose I'd pick.

Man vs. Wild: China

2010-03-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

If you're a little disappointed with No Reservations: Harbin, I highly recommend the Man vs. Wild episode from couple months back. It looks like they filmed it in Guangxi or Guangdong in the jungle.

This was one of my favorite Bear Grylls adventures. I'll not spoil the whole thing, but here's the highlights:

Bear Grylls running like a mad man through an alley and down a busy Chinese street to hop a ride on a pig delivery truck

Bear making a tennis racquet out of wood and vines, and using it to swat some bats down for his supper

Catching a live frog, pulling the skin off, and eating it raw

Making a rodent trap out of logs, which catches a bamboo rat, and then roasting it for his breakfast

I'm sure some of these things were planned out and staged, but it's a great show.

No Reservations: Harbin

2010-03-23T07:00:00.002-07:00

I've been to Harbin in the winter before (old posts here and here), so I was very interested to see Anthony Bourdain's take on the city during the latest episode of No Reservations.

I like this narrative from the beginning of the episode, as Bourdain is gobbling down some ice cream:

I have to say, the cold is not the only factor here. There's a sort of constant haze of coal smoke. Gives it sort of a stuck-in-the-garage feel to breathing here. It's the carbon monoxide that makes it delicious.

When I visited Harbin, we found it hard to find any decent food. My Chinese sources tell me that up until a couple decades ago, northeast China basically had no fruits and vegetables. People there lived mainly on meat and grains, so it's natural that their culinary advancement has been stunted.

Since good food was hard to get, I was very curious what culinary delights the No Reservations team would find in Harbin. After watching the episode, I can say that Anthony Bourdain seems to have had pretty much the same experience as I did in Harbin.

Bourdains' local tour guides were just average. Here's a quick sampling of where they took him:

Boiled dumplings and beer at the Ol' Dirty Dumpling House. Look at Bourdain's thrilled look:

Bourdain's guide, the Chinese guy with a comical Irish accent, was kind of amusing.

This young couple, who took Bourdain to a kebab joint, was as exciting as a pair of socks:

Why they would take Bourdain to a dumpy kebab place is beyond me. Greasy meat on a stick served over a plate covered with a plastic bag taste good only after a night of excessive drinking. When you're sober, they're just no good.

To top things off, the exciting couple gave Bourdain a skewer of silk worm larvae. This is gross, nasty stuff. Chinese people go out of their way to eat silk worm larvae, so why would you give it to Bourdain? Anthony Bourdain is big into organ meat — sweet breads, brains, stomachs. Bear Grylls is the guy that's always eating disgusting bugs and worms.

Notice that the guides always gave Bourdain that horrible Snow Beer to drink. (consistent 'D' rating on Beeradvocate).

I think the best part of this episode of No Reservations was when they go ice fishing at the end. Check out the episode's web site. The whole episode is on YouTube.

My views on: "What do Chinese want from a car?"

2010-03-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed this post entitled "What Do Urban Chinese Youth Want From A Car?". The quick summary is that they want:

input ports for their MP3 players
cup holders in front of air conditioner vents to keep beverages cool
sunroof
steering wheel with lots of buttons on it

The post provides a good assessment. But let me give you my off-the-cuff list of what Chinese folks really want in a car. I'm pretty observant, and this list comes from what I've seen of the cars of Chinese in China, as well as in other places like California.

My list: What Chinese folks really want in a car

Solar powered, moving Flip Flap Plant on the dashboard
Stylish seat covers
windows tinted enough for vampires
random junk dangling from the rear view mirror
Huge "实习" (new driver) sticker on the back

Anything left off my list? I was going to have "Box of Kleenex in a fancy holder by the rear window", but that could happen anywhere.

"Hey, Laowai, no comparison shopping allowed!"

2010-03-19T07:00:00.002-07:00

Funny story recently:

I was killing some time in Sanlitun Village browsing around a branch of this new electronics store called Sun Dan. It's the closest thing I've seen in China yet to Best Buy.

I was interested in some of the new 3G cell phones. Sun Dan has a great selection of floor models, so I walked around, looking at different phones.

As I played with each cell phone, I would make notes on a scrap of paper so I could review later on which phones were my favorite.

I was happily playing around with these cell phones for a while, when out of nowhere a homely sales chick comes up, gets all in my face, and says, "你不能写。" (You're not allowed to write.)

For those of you that speak Chinese, you'll notice that she used the familiar second person "你" and not the formal "您" that normally gets used between a salesperson and a customer.

Another quick language fact: "能", the verb in that sentence, can mean "allowed to", or it can also mean "able to", as in the sentence Spider-Man is able to detect impending danger with his spider-sense.

Making use of the multiple meanings of 能, I looked up at the sales girl, and I say, "Really? But I am writing right now." My implication was, "Hey, you're claiming that I'm not able to write, but here I am, writing."

The floor manager was standing within earshot of us. I walked over to him and politely suggested that he focus a little more on managing his sales associates.

I find it bizarre that a store would be paranoid of customers doing a little comparison shopping while they browse. It's every more bizarre that a sales person would risk their commission by irritating a potential sale like that.

Gauging your accent in Mandarin

2010-03-17T07:00:00.004-07:00

As a Westerner speaking Mandarin as a second language, have you wondered how funny your accent sounds to native speakers? Chinese people tend to be very nice about judging foreigners' accents. Unless you're very good friends with a Chinese person, they'll probably not tell you that your accent is horrible.

As in any foreign language, students of the Chinese language typically make progress from one level of fluency to the next. Here's my list of how I think our laowai Mandarin Chinese sounds to native speakers as we progress through the levels of fluency:

Level 1 (beginner): to native Mandarin speakers, your accent sounds like Tom Hanks' character in The Terminal, Viktor Navorski (before his English improves, during the first part of the movie).
Level 2 (intermediate): to native Mandarin speakers, your accent sounds like The Festrunk Brothers (the two wild and crazy guys from SNL).
Level 3 (advanced): to native Mandarin speakers, your accent sounds like Borat Sagdiyev .

After you get to the Borat level, you're very fluent, but with a pretty obvious accent. The nice thing about Mandarin, however, is that since so many wai di ren (transplants/out-of-towners) speak horrible Mandarin, you won't be identified as a Westerner over the phone. Native speakers will often be fooled into thinking you're some random wai di ren.

I think I'm somewhere in the Borat level currently. If I ever get to Level 4 (super-advanced!), I'll come up with a fictional foreigner from some American movie or sitcom to equate that level to.

I've got Level 5 (super-duper advanced) figured out already: the equivalent accent is Christoph Walz.