People whose existence irritates me...

1. the workers who only work on the apartment above mine at 6 am when I'm hungover.
2. people who wear mushroom skirts and spandex 3/4 length tights.
3. people who can't decide which side to move to as you pass each other and so they walk into you.
4. Chinese guys who think I'm Russian and ask how much I charge for the evening.
5. guys who sit in their minivans with their engines on and the AC blasting while they wait for their wives and girlfriends to finish shopping.
6. people who don't look before they spit.
7. people who decide they're not going to understand you before you even start speaking to them
8. people who steal your liquor under the guise of toasting you.
9. students who argue that my English is wrong because it's not what their Chinese teachers/textbooks said.
10. obnoxious white guys who yell loudly in English at servers and other people in the Chinese service industry when having a communication problem rather than learning some Chinese or bringing a translator.

You've been in China too long when...

1. you dream about eating kitten shishkabob
2. forks seem awkward and inefficient
3. you get excited and say "hello, laowai, hello" to other foreigners
4. you see chinglish signs and can't figure out what's wrong with them
5. you add the words "hen" and "de" after every adjective for emphasis
6. you don't blink or even look when crossing the road
7. you stop smelling things
8. you pretend not to speak English or Chinese to avoid having pointless conversations
9. you believe that everything in China is pirated, even the people
10. you set aside an entire day to accomplish what might otherwise be a simple task e.g. banking
11. you are comfortable carrying around large wads of money
12. you ask for a fa piao even when you only spend 5 kuai
13. you say fa piao rather than receipt and assume your readers understand that you want a receipt because you can scratch it to win money
14. paying 30 kuai for Starbucks and 5 kuai for lunch seems reasonable
15. you have accepted that every minute you spend here is shortening your life
16. the words 'beautiful' and 'lovely' and 'maybe' have ceased to have any meaning to you
17. you are surprised when you are not awoken by loud obnoxious construction at 6 am
18. you consider yourself more important than cars but less important than buses and you are afraid of all bicycles and motorcycles
19. you seriously suggest cannibalism as a solution to China's population problems
20. you don't step on cracks, lines, cracked tiles, loose tiles or anything that looks wet
21. ... feel free to add anything you think of
    

Things Chinese people like...

1. noise
2. rice
3. gaudy accessories
4. smoking
5. corn
6. tea
7. saying maybe, perhaps, possibly, etc
8. eating things other cultures consider too small to bother with eg. baby mouse, quail, crayfish, chicken palm
   
9. explosions
10. bad pop music
11. cabbage
12. oil
13. eating
14. fur covered scrunchies
15. Dr. Norman Bethune
16. running around like C3PO
17. pictures of themselves
18. status symbols... like McDonald's and Starbucks
19. perms and hair dye
20. perms and hair dye for their dogs
21. milk
22. other white things, especially if they can be consumed to make one's skin whiter
23. knife and fork
24. red and yellow
25. stockings
26. bright lights
27. Chivas and green tea
    

lama lama lama...

I love the Globe and Mail - because they have pictures like this. What would we do without pictures of the Dalai Lama's nose hair? I mean, really...

I had a salon class last week about life philosophy. I asked them to tell me things in life that were very important and then rate them. Number one on the lists was either 'love' or 'life'. When asked whether by life they meant cellular respiration or sentience, they replied the former, so thinking clearly wasn't that important. Number two was 'health' or 'luck'. I thought that was interesting. Their reasoning is that you can't have anything without luck. 'Freedom' was number ten on every list, despite 'job' and 'knowledge' being around the middle of the list. My class had seven girls and one guy. I explained that having a job and going to school are freedoms. They explained that by freedom, they meant being out of the house...

Randall is back in Canada now. I'm feeling a little gu dan de.

After I left Randall at the airport I met Angie for dinner and some guangjie (window shopping) before I headed back to Wuxi. We went to Windows Scoreboard, one of the Windows bars in Shanghai. I had an awesome grilled cheese sandwich and soup for supercheap compared to what western food sells for in Wuxi. Almost made me miserably cold all better. Then I took the train home with hundreds of other people and felt shitty again. I did have a seat. The train left ten minutes early. It really confused me. But, Shanghai is still hen awesome de. Must return.

It's cheaper to buy a Chinese baby and cook it then to go for a steak dinner in Toronto...

I have been requested by my readers to get my act together and post something. In fact, I have a list of things to talk about, so let's get to it.

First of all, I've been busy. Randall goes home on Saturday, so he's been travelling around quite a bit. Check out his blog in the next few days for some pictures and other interesting stories. I'll be headed back at the end of August. I have some sketchy plans to spend the week before school in Cuba, but more on that later.

Next topic: Noise. China is already one of the noisiest places in the world. It's one of their most favourite things. There will be a list on that to come. I woke up the last week at five o'clock in the morning to a full marching band marching around my apartment complex playing classic marching band music and loudly as they could. When Randall and I got up several hours later, he asked me if he'd dreamed it. I would have thought so, except that I'd heard this several times before on my last trip here. What was it? A funeral. Apparently, Chinese celebrate the death of a loved one by making as much noise as early as possible. I've heard suggestions that the person must have had a long life to get a full marching band. More noise is happening this week starting bright and early - construction/demolition of the apartment right above mine. I wake up not only to noise but noise so loud it makes my bed vibrate. I've taken to screaming at them and they're now waiting t'il 8 am to start. I should mention that I finish work at 9 pm and that I like to sleep.

We went to a restaurant called Chuan Meizi the other day. It means 'Sichuan Girls'. Very classic Sichuan restaurant. Dishes were quite good but not the best I've had, though they did show me our fish was fresh by putting it in a garbage bag and bringing it to our table still wriggling around. It was delicious though. As we were about to leave, half the police force in Wuxi, sitting at the table next to us, drunk off their respective asses, decided to come to our table with all of their beer and toast us continuously while trying to speak slurred Chinese or bad English or both. They were quite amusing, though, and insisted on showing us their badges... a lot. But, hey, if I ever have a problem in Wuxi, they can protect us. I tried to keep quiet about the whole illegal tutoring thing, but fortunately, they were likely too smashed to remember us at all.

Moving on, I have discovered that the watermelon family - the people who sell watermelon on the side street near my school - actually live there. They have a bed made of plywood on bricks with some bamboo mats on top and a bug net tent. They've used some bamboo poles and a tarp to make a kind of shelter with a laundry line and some chairs. The five or so of them live on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown Wuxi with a little puppy dyed orange and black to look like a tiger. Picture courtesy of Andis.

On the topic of animals, the CBC reported last week about a group of Chinese pseudo-activists who raised money to save a truckload of cats in Shanghai from hitting dinner plates in Cantonese restaurants (presumably, the Chinese blame the Cantonese for everything). There were about 800 of them and they were pretty freaked out. The full story can be found here. On the topic of cats, there's a small kitten about 8-10 weeks living outside my apartment and he keeps trying to follow us home. Given the situation with cats in this country and Alex's fondness for saving dirty animals, I've told her she can't take him in until we know he doesn't belong to anyone, we're certain the mother is gone, we're certain it doesn't have diseases and/or tumors, like the true blue kitten from two years ago, and she buys a litter box. More on that later.

Finally found my friend Rain's hair salon. I've been looking for it for months and holding off on my haircut. Very excited about how my new Chinese hair is going to turn out.

I went swimming with the school on Saturday. We taught two classes and then headed out to the pool for the afternoon. Once in, they wouldn't let me swim without a swim cap... so I chatted with the students at the side of the pool for two hours and then the foreign teachers buggered off to Starbucks. Speaking of which, we now have 'venti' in China. Believe it or not, venti DOES taste better.

There's some more I wanted to talk about with respect to contaminated Chinese food products and a business news magazine in support of the Communist Party which was shut down for no reason, despite being allowed to operate for over twelve years, but I think I'll save that for later, as well as the list of things Chinese people like.

We're all eating Chinese business strategy

According to the Globe and Mail today, trying to avoid eating Chinese and thus contaminated foods or purchasing other products made in China is futile. This is because the label "Made in Canada" means 51% of the production costs are incurred in Canada. This basically means that no matter what you do, you're going to be eating contaminated food, just like the rest of us. My thought is, though, if most of the shortcuts are being taken on exports, does that mean it's safer to live in China than it is to live overseas and deal with Chinese products? Then I thought, no, they're just as likely to poison themselves, where there are no international scandals to stop them. Anything to make more money.

The thing that strikes me is how the Chinese have absolutely NO concept of return business or the value of a repeat customer. It makes me think of the McDonald's sign, "99 billion served". Since there are only 6 billion people in the world and a large number of them are too poor to buy McDonald's, that means a lot of repeat customers. Seems like a pretty good business policy for them. Yet, China, a country desperate to make money and build its economy, has no concept of this. Just screw the foreigner for as much as you can the first time. Then they won't come back and give you any more money. No forthought. No concept of the future. I try to explain this to my students, and they seem confused. Ten kuai now is always better than a hundred over a few months. Only if you're investing it... in the Chinese stock market... Some think that the Chinese economy is on the brink of collapse, fuelled by growing distrust as a result of fraud, debt and tax evasion, piracy and other consumer rip-off schemes.

I see plenty of empty stores on my way to and from every day. I think to myself, hey, that used to be a great restaurant, or looks like it would have sold some cool stuff, if only it hadn't gone out of business. Now I know that the chance of going out of business in your first year is high, but it's always the same story here. They spend lots of money making it look shiny and pretty. Get lots of people in and then overcharge them. Then when the novelty is starting to fade and the original winning concept has been choked and mutilated beyond recognition, they screw over the one person who could have made the business sucessful in an attempt to make a fast buck. The business chugs along for a few more months and then collapses, leaving the real estate empty and desolate looking. That's business in China. And we're all eating it...

Things Chinese people eat, or say that other Chinese people eat

1. "dragon bones" ie dinosaur bones - true
2. babies - may be true, apparently women eat the fetuses of abortions and miscarriages - good for the skin
   
3. dogs - true, but it's a delicacy
4. cats - may be true - Justin insists that street vendors substitute stray cats for beef to save money, not that far fetched considering everything else that is fake or tainted
   
5. snake - true
   
6. eel - true, and boney
   
7. pig brain - true, used in hot pot
   
8. live baby mice - true
   
9. live "drunk" shrimp - they put them into a pot of baijiu and wait for them to get nice and inebriated
   
10. chicken feet - true, and it's an honour
    
11. scorpion - true
    
12. ants - true
    
13. pig rectum - true, and chewy
    
14. duck rectum - true
    
15. duck tongue - a very expensive dish, only because it takes a lot of ducks to make a plate of their tongues
    
16. shark fin - expensive for the sake of being expensive, though often substituted with rice noodles, 'cause the people eating it are not exactly connoisseurs, just monied
    
17. monkey brain - may be true, apparently they have a special table they use to restrain the live monkey, smash its head in, remove the skull cap and then eat the delicious raw brains from
    
18. elephant trunk - likely true
    
19. panda - true, though it comes with jail time if you're caught
    
20. bear paw - true, also expensive for the sake of being expensive
    
21. bear bile - true, this is a major industry - animals are implanted with a tube from which to drain the bile and they are kept alive for years and "tapped"
    
22. pearls - true, 'cause you are what you eat...
    
23. donkey - may be true, apparently cooked by tying down a live donkey and pouring boiling water over it until the meat is cooked

mmmmmm... boney...

The interweb is especially horrible today. Sites loaded through a proxy are actually faster, which means that the govenment is up to come kind of shit, as usual. As a result, I can't read the news, one of my few foreign pleasures, and thus have nothing to rant about. So, DINOSAURS!!!

This comes as no surprise to those living in China, but for those who have no China-sperience, Chinese people eat dinosaurs. Well, their bones. This gives way to a new list I will call "things Chinese people will eat".

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) incorporates a lot of interesting cures, and aparently "dragon bones" are among them. Villagers in central China (and probably any other place that has dinosaur bones) dig them up and put them in soups or grind them into power. Apparently, "dragon bones" are used to cure dizziness, leg cramps and fractures because they are high in calcium. Too bad it doesn't quite work that way. The villagers, upon discovering that the bones were from dinosaurs and not dragons, "donated" 200 kg to the Chinese Academy of Sciences for research. At an average sale price 4 yuan a kg, their donation amounts to 800 yuan - which is a lot of money for a villager. To give you a feel for the value, it's about what a fulltime McDonald's employee might make in a month here in the city.

This info and picture comes from the CBC.

now with a "made in china" warning label

More things that are tainted or counterfeit from China, according to The Guardian and The Globe and Mail.

1. blood protein (fake)
2. children's snacks (additives and preservatives)
3. other snack foods (salmonella)
   
4. farmed fish (growth hormones and additives)
5. fireworks (dangerously unpredictable direction)
6. birth control pills (fake)
7. HIV medication (fake)
8. vaccinations (fake)
   

dogs and pollution

This picture care of the Globe and Mail - a dog trained to pick up groceries for its owner in China.

On another note, the World Bank has completed a report suggesting 750,000 people die prematurely every year as a result of pollution in China. SEPA, the wonderful government organization in charge of doing nothing about the Wuxi water problem, has demanded that the world bank suppress this information because it "could be misinterpreted" which might cause "social unrest". By social unrest, I assume they mean rational human concern. SEPA stands for the State Environmental Protection Agency.

water, water, everywhere and, well you know...

Yesterday it rained, and then it rained some more and then it continued to rain until about noon today. My kitchen floor is covered in water from a leak I can't find the source of and all around my complex is flooded, too. I saw a bunch of people building bridges over small lakes and hauling stuff out of their flooded first floor apartments. The small store that sells drinks and cigarettes and ice cream left their two freezers out and they were half submerged this morning. No doubt they will still attempt to sell this merchandise. People were having fun playing in the flood water.

I, however, possess an understanding of the Chinese sewer systems and avoided the water the same way I avoid falling into the toilet. Sure enough, as I walked to the school, I saw all the sewer lids off in an attempt to drain the water. Since the sewers are all flooded, this is useless and just allows the sewage to escape into the street. Beware the sewer "fish".

Now the sun is out and is making it unbearably humid. Another wonderful China day.