Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

Typhoon Wipha, easily the most devastating storm to hit China in more than a decade, slammed into Shanghai in the early hours of Wednesday morning, bringing with it 200Kph winds and torrential rain, and leaving death and devastation in it’s wake. More than two million people were evacuated, the largest evacuation in sixty years, all flights were cancelled, and more than 700 homes destroyed.

At least, that’s what the State-run media would have us believe. Oh yes, and also those lazy bastards who claim to be journalists / reporters, and who work for the Western media, who seemed content to parrot every word of it verbatim, without once ever thinking of actually checking to see if any of it was actually true.

I, on the other hand, as a mere person who was actually there, saw nothing untoward. There was a slight drizzle, tending towards light rain at times, but clearing. There was a bit of a breeze, but although one of my outside pot plants got knocked over, it wasn’t enough to prevent me lighting a cigarette outside. Then again, perhaps I just spent my entire day in the eye of the storm (an eye which, conveniently, followed me around the city as I went about my business).

So, Where Was Wipha? And where now is the credibility of the fuckwit journo’s who were completely happy – yet again – to parrot something they’d been told by the Chinese Communist Party? It isn’t like this is the first time, indeed there would be very few days I don’t see the same stock copy reprinted for the benefit of readers of the New York Times, Washington Post, most of the English papers, and the worst of the worst – CNN and AP. Even the BBC does it at times (sorry Auntie, but you do). And the day that Fox ‘News’ ever reports a fact, factually, will be the day that I eat my cardboard baozi.

From typhoons to exports, Taiwan to Government statements, there are so many falsehoods, cover-ups, and outright blatant lies told by the people and Government of China, that one hardly knows where to start – and it is all reported faithfully by the lazy arse journo’s whom we entrust with our own information supply. Sure, there’re a few out there who know their trade, ask questions, actually listen to the answers, and then report it in a meaningful way, but when it comes to China I could count them all on the fingers of one hand. It’s worse still when those same reporters actually start to invent their own stories to support what they’ve been told to write coughCNNcough. There’s an easy test, of course – when Chinese are speaking, look closely at their mouths. If the lips move, then they are telling a lie.

Anyway, having got that off my chest, I’m just going to sit back and wait for the next terrible flood in which the same village is again washed away with tragic loss of life, the same 650,000 people lose their same homes, and the same soldiers race against time to build the same makeshift sandbag dike. Not that I’ve ever even heard of anyone who has ever actually seen any of it, but hey it’s a good story all the same, right AP?

Or you could simply get your news from people who are actually there. If it isn’t too much trouble.