English Banditry (Entries tagged as china)

Chinese Cable TV: Top entertainment value for your dollar.

nospam@example.com (your host) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:24:00 -0700

[Deactivate Chinese ability]

A charismatic speaker stands before a crowd of several thousand Chinese students of all ages. They raise their hands and shout out as male and female attendees alike have tears running from their eyes. Obviously a very mesmerizing preacher has taken it upon himself to lead god's lost little children to the salvation which can only be known through the salvation of the lord and savior Jesus Christ. But how on earth is such a thing being permitted on Chinese state-controlled television?

[Reactivate Chinese ability]

"Do you realize the sacrifices your parents have made to send you to college?" (The camera pans to more students driven to tears.) "Repeat after me, I - will - not - let - my - parents - down, I - will - learn - English - well." (Attendees all repeat after him in unison). Is this guy a fucking English Bandit manufacturing machine or what? If they're going to be this crazy to make me their "tool" should I feel any remorse if someone shouts their English at me like this and I spontaneously bop the little jackass in the mouth? Welcome to the future of China and a crazy ass dude named Li Yang's genius ploy to become filthy stinking rich: Crazy English.

Wikipedia reads:

His method can be described with the quote "To shout out loud, you learn." Students practice his technique by going behind buildings or on rooftops and shouting English.

Chinese TV is a barrel of laughs, though I'm not exactly sure if the remaining 1.4 billion are laughing their guts out for an hour at a time like me. For my 60 yuan every 6 months, I'm really getting top value for my money!!!

Continue reading "Chinese Cable TV: Top entertainment value for your dollar."

The McDonald's Incident

nospam@example.com (your host) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:31:59 -0700

Practical Jokes Taken Too Far

The Chinese are real practical jokers. Sometimes it seems they can't take anything seriously. The station master of the Shanghai city subway system seems to be the biggest joker himself, and this morning again he caught me with one of his dirty tricks.

One of the survival strategies I employ during the commute to and from work is to keep earphones in my ears and a PDA screen glued to my face at all times. It may sound like an annoying anti-social behavior, and surely the people who have to avoid me because I am about to walk right into them without looking probably think I'm a dick, but after getting way too angry and frustrated at the impenetrable mass moving human wall that pervades the entirety of all public areas in Shanghai one too many times in the past years, I realized the best way is to just forget it exists, forget that I cannot possibly hope to ever move more than 20% faster than the slowest mosier in the crowd, and just assume the identity of a slow motion human pinball.

The problem happened when, gazing with full attention at my PDA screen, I stepped on to the upward-bound escalator at my destination station. The spontaneous sensation of an earth-quake took to my senses as the masses of humans around me moved upward on the escalator as in correlation with my expectations, but my own body, in contrast, seemed to have no stair propelling it forward and upward along with them. I lost my footing and very nearly fell on my face when I came to realize that once again the station attendants must have randomly decided to pull the "turn the escalators off in the middle of rush-hour" prank. As I climbed the stationary escalator steps all the way to the top, a strong feeling of sea-sickness overwhelmed me. The last time this had happened, I was nearly to the top when the steps suddenly stopped moving.

The thing is—this kind of shit happens every day here in Shanghai. One week you go down to wait for the subway to work and see that every single one of the time-till-arrival LCD TVs have gone missing. A week later they magically reappear, but they won't be there more than a few weeks before they disappear again. Another day the screens will work all day, but when the last train for the night in a particular direction has left the station, station personnel will turn the screens off to "trick" everyone into waiting for a final train that will never come.

In the office I work in, the handle for the faucet in the lavatory has disappeared randomly and inexplicably, as in the "here's a sink but you can't wash your hands after taking a dump" prank, more than 10 times in the past few months. But, that's not nearly as good as when you put soap on your hands FIRST and then realize the sink faucet handle is there but is glued in place. I shit you not!
WHEN IN THE AIRPORT, THE ASSIGNED GATE NUMBER FOR MY FLIGHT WAS CHANGED 2 MINUTES PRIOR TO THE FINAL GATE CLOSING CALL ON THREE OCCASIONS! I ALMOST MISSED THE FLIGHTS! AND I KNOW THOSE FUCKING JOKERS IN THE AIRPORT WERE TRYING TO PULL THE PRANK ON ME BECAUSE THEY SAW THAT I WEAR HEADPHONES TO PASS THE BOREDOM AND THOUGHT I WOULDN'T HEAR THE ANNOUNCEMENT.
City workers in Shanghai actually booby trap the sidewalk tiles such that when it is raining, if you accidentally walk across the wrong tile you will be sprayed with a puddle of cold dirty water. The bastards are experts at disguising the "trigger" tiles as well, so the only safe way is to locate them in advance on a dry day, and then avoid them any time it is wet out.
It seems there may even be a competition for cruelty in pranks going between the various city management groups, as recently I have observed that the subway station master has upped the ante. Previously I had assumed the warning beeps and flashing lights which proceed the subway door closing were computer controlled and thus could not be omitted by human error. I was disturbed to learn that such is not at all the case when the subway conductor nearly succeeded in slamming the subway doors on a woman's face with NO WARNING AT ALL!

The thing is, pranks are really cool and all but, myself, coming from a culture in which they are generally reserved for friends, acquaintances, and enemies, I have had a lot of trouble adapting to the Chinese prank style of giant corporations (i.e. "melamine poisoned milk and the kidney stone joke") and, indeed, the city government itself (Mr. Subway Station Master) trying to fuck with me. That's why it's very hard for me to condemn my fellow expats when they get fed up with this shit and do something incredibly anti-social about it thinking, mistakenly, that they can "teach Chinese to stop pulling these ridiculous tricks".

McDonald's Crosses The Line

(This is not a work of fiction.)

It was pouring cats and dogs outside. A young foreign man entered a Shanghai McDonald's both hungry and with an intense pressure in his bladder. Longing for a swift and relaxing visit to the little boy's room, our hero was not looking forward to yet another round of Chinese practical jokes. He marched swiftly to the bathroom only to stop unexpectedly, dumbfounded with exasperation that the door refused to open. He opened his eyes wide to take note of his surroundings. Oh not again! The Chinese had succeeded in pulling the "we know you really have to piss, that's why we're going to fuck with you and close down this whole bathroom" prank yet again. A sign was posted on the door that directed the would-be race horse urinator to climb several flights of stairs with his already painfully full bladder and expel his waste in a porcelain bowl on the third floor.

"No! Not today I'm not", he thought as he smiled smugly at the ingenious Chinese sign. Taking no further consideration of his surroundings, the man spontaneously whipped out his cock and began spraying a stream of dark yellow urine on the battered wooden door. A stream, not dissimilar except in size to those left on department store floors across China by children with open-crotch pants at the direction of their parents, flowed swiftly down and away from the door itself. A river of yellow spontaneously streaking across a large expanse of the floor further magnified the conspicuousness of an already larger-than-life utterly inconceivable spectacle.

Soon, a nearby security guard took note of the odd event transpiring. Shocked far beyond the wildest expectations he had had in 15-odd years of humdrum play-with-your-cell-phone-and-act-official guard duty, the poor man's mind couldn't even begin to conceive of a possible appropriate response to this obvious violation of the building whose sanctity he was employed to protect. The guard approached from a distance, rustling his keys enough in the process for our hero to take note of his presence, and then stopped dead in his tracks gawking and thoroughly disoriented. Our hero, having a bladder still not satisfactorily relieved from its prior state of fullness, took note of the guard's presence and returned to the more pressing matter of pissing at hand, literally.

A few seconds later, a practical eternity to the guard and any other passersby happening to pay witness to the absurd sight, the otherwise respectable young man pulled the elastic flap of his underpants over his cock and zipped up his fly. Nonchalantly he returned to the table he had come from to join his friend and enjoy a fine meal.

A few minutes later a more official looking head security guard approach the table. In Chinese he said sternly, "Which one of you just took a pee on the door over there?" The two foreigners seated at the table, our hero included, feigned inability in the Chinese language and continued their conversation in English. The head guard repeated his words, but, assuming doing so in a language that wouldn't be understood by the "foreigners" was in vain, he soon gave up, turned, and left.

If we were to discuss the greatest virtue Chinese have, I think with little doubt I would have to say it is: tolerance for one's fellow man. Damn!!!

China Postal: The Consistency Of Our Service Never Changes, Only The Assholes That Do It Do!

nospam@example.com (your host) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:46:48 -0700

In this ever changing age of technology, it's always comforting to know that some things never change: people cheating on their wives, computer crashes, students' lack of enthusiasm for school after returning from the summer holiday—and the Chinese postal service beating the living fucking hell out of your packages with a baseball bat before delivering them. I assume my birthday present didn't look like this a few days ago when my parents sent it:

The good thing about all of this, though, is that they were polite enough this time to affix a sticker to alert me to the fact that they bashed the piss out of my gift before giving it to me. Kudos to the genius who thought of that. If I hadn't seen the sticker there, I might have just assumed it was a modern art box design. This is definitely an improvement over a box I shipped from China to the USA five years ago which they had beaten the shit out of then poked a hole in the side and poured in dirt to mix with my books and clothing, but to which no such sticker had been attached.

The other really great thing about the Chinese post office is that THEY WON'T EVEN ACTUALLY DELIVER. That's right—if you get a box, they'll send you a postcard which says: "We have your box, come get it your damn self cause we are so busy bashing the fuck out of people's packages we don't have time to come give you". Of course, pray to god the sender didn't write your name in Chinese on it, because if you're like me—having graduated long ago and pitched my only ID (my student ID) that actually had my Chinese name on it—you're going to have a helluva a time trying to convince the counter lady that the English letter composed name printed on your passport is the "equivalent" of the Chinese name on the box. And, yes, you do need to take your passport. No, they won't let you use the postcard as "proof" that it's your package.

Tits In Motion

nospam@example.com (your host) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:51:00 -0700

This might just be one of those days when a picture is worth a thousand words:

Yes, small titted chicks, there is hope — as long as you can read Chinese, you can get this book and find out the diet and tit message techniques that will take you up one cup size or more in no time flat.

IANAD: THE ABOVE POST IS NOT INTENDED NOR IMPLIED TO CONSTITUTE MEDICAL ADVICE, DIAGNOSIS, OR TREATMENT. ALWAYS VISIT OR SPEAK TO A QUALIFIED HEALTH SERVICE PROVIDER IN PERSON PRIOR TO STARTING TO RUB YOUR TITS ACCORDING TO A CRAZY CHINESE BOOK ON A DAILY BASIS IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO INCREASE YOUR CUP SIZE IN LIEU OF PROVEN AESTHETIC SURGERY BREAST AUGMENTATION METHODS SUCH AS SILICON IMPLANTS.

Chinese Girl Culture

nospam@example.com (your host) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:44:11 -0700

[View Polish Version]

Looking at the title thinking I'm going to talk about something in China similar to the cuteness movements of Japan, plastic surgery of Korea, or fashion of elsewhere? Hardly. Haha!

Seat Relocations

In China, if you're a guy, there's a heck of a good and simple way to find out if girls think you are disgusting or stinky slime-bag. Find a seat next to a girl on a half-crowded bus or subway, and see how quickly she relocates to another spot should a seat between two girls, or next to a less disgusting male open up. Girls have no hesitation WHATSOEVER. (And it makes good sense -- it's congruent with the Chinese public behavior philosophy of "People You Don't Know, Don't Exist.")

Just the other day a real weirdo plopped down three spots to my left. The attractive girl two to the left immediately relocated to my immediate left. I thought she might have been between a rock and a hard spot with that move -- because just being a strange alien foreigner gets me some automatic "move away" points. Much to my surprise, when the weirdo looking dude disboarded, the girl did not relocate, but stay in the spot next to me. That's a first!

Being Naked

Compared to their Western counterparts, a lot of Chinese girls seem to be natural born nudists. Just ask the nearest chick you know who lives with a female roommate if either of them has any inhibition in walking around the house ass-naked or sleeping that way year-round. The cold winter nights pose no particular problem, as roommates are liable to sleep ass naked in the same bed to keep each other warm. Absolutely no lesbianism involved, just pure sisterly love and caring.

One of my friends who stayed in a hotel room with a whole troupe of females relayed to me the fascination it held for some Western chicks observing a spontaneously formed Chinese chick nudist colony for the first time. (Being that he is a male, I haven't the foggiest how he ended up there.)

Lonely Nights

Again in stark contrast to their Western counterparts, I know of numerous Chinese girls who find it very troublesome to have a roommate that often travels out of town or stays many nights at a boyfriend's place. They want somebody to share their bed and keep them company at night. In some cases it's also a matter of feeling unsafe (or downright terrified) being alone at night.

Versatile Utensils

Just as Chinese seem to put no limitations on brands and enthusiastically buy Playboy dress clothes or Pepsi footwear, there is no artificial cultural limitation imposed on the use of electric appliances. Take for example the blow dryers supplied in public showering facilities. The bush down there ain't so terribly different from the head of hair up top, now is it? Who has a good reason not to spread'em wide and blow that crotch dry? Keep from catching cold!!!

Lesson Learned: Don't Ask My Coworkers ANYTHING ANYTIME ANYHOW ANYWHERE

nospam@example.com (your host) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:01:38 -0700

JLPT here I come, baby! If I can pay the 350 kuai within the 72 hours before my registration expires, I am going to HEILONGJIANG University. And with all this, I have learned an important life lesson: never again will I ask my Chinese coworkers ANYTHING.

First yesterday I was trying to fax a copy of my passport to make sure I get into the test without any issues. I don't know how to dial long distance in China. I've always used a special IP discount code for my cell phone. But I sure as shit can tell you how to dial normal numbers in the country I grew up in, and I sure as shit wouldn't pretend I knew if I didn't. So I ask the Ayi if I just dial as it's written, and she says yes. It's not working. She gets some random guy to help me. The whole thing about helping people is that you shouldn't even try if there is a better than 50% chance you will just make things worse. He had no idea how to dial from SHANGHAI to BEIJING, but just kept trying all sorts of random shit. Finally he conclusively tells me "oh, it's a wrong number". In the process he managed to use the fax machine to make 3 copies of my passport. Thanks again.

Continue reading "Lesson Learned: Don't Ask My Coworkers ANYTHING ANYTIME ANYHOW ANYWHERE"

How Not To Register For The JLPT In China. 太FUCK了

nospam@example.com (your host) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:21:00 -0700

Well this blows. I thought I'd be safe registering for the JLPT 日本語能力試験 in Shanghai if I did it within the first week (out of three) of which registration is open. It's a shameful testament to my understanding of China's culture (or population? a little of both to be sure). TEST PSYCHOS! So I register (to be eligible to pick a testing location) on the website, but it's not liking my lack of Chinese name and the space between my first and middle name. So I had to waste the morning faxing them and on the phone getting that straightened out...

And with all that effort... I neglected to do any web searches and find out the pure insanity of this country. The essential literature:

Secret Techniques to getting into the JLPT level 2 test. It has lucid beautiful details about the best and fastest web browsers to use, recommended locations with the fastest connections to the internet, auto page refresh techniques, and reference details about page refreshing hotkeys, etc.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE! From this I see there are nearly 25,000 seats in Shanghai alone for Levels 1 and 2. EVERY SEAT IN THIS ENTIRE GODFORSAKEN COUNTRY WAS TAKEN IN 21 MINUTES! Twenty-one MINUTES!!!

I'm not just a week too late --- by 21 minute interval standards, I'm a lifetime too late.

My last inkling of hope is that every day at noon a few seats from idiots that screwed up on paying their 350 RMB testing fee will be released. . . I'm not liking these odds.

On Idiocy: An Open Letter to the English Bandits Of China

nospam@example.com (your host) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:07:53 -0700

Yes, I mean you, asshole.

STUDYING IN JAPAN

Maybe you were the son of a bitch Chinese foreign student at a party in Japan. When I approached you ever so politely in Japanese, you responded in your retardo English. You asked me things like "How long you study English?”, things I will never understand. As polite as I was to you, you continued to break rapport through our entire "broken" conversation as you tried to burgle my English. Your English is a piece of shit, but you, being the arrogant mother fucker that you are, continued to vomit your disgusting infected wound of an excuse for "English" upon me. I don't know what kind of a tramp you had for a mother, but she certainly didn't teach you the proper manners of polite society. You have a lot of nerve treating another person like you tried to treat me. I did not come all the way to Japan to help a stupid Chinese boy like you who didn't learn English for a shit review the basics of English he should have mastered by age 14. As cool as you thought you were, you sure as shit didn't impress me. There are a million non-native English speakers in Europe and around the world who could walk circles around the ability you MIGHT gain IF AND ONLY IF you were to spend every waking moment of every day for the rest of your worthless joke of a life studying English. I'm sure your little Chinese buddies standing behind you were impressed by what a badass you are, but in the REAL world you were the jackass. The joke is on you, because while you thought you were showing off -- you were the fool. I was replying back to you in perfect Polish and you didn't even notice the difference, YOU STUPID FUCK.

Continue reading "On Idiocy: An Open Letter to the English Bandits Of China"