Anyone who has taken a bus, a taxi, or the subway in Shanghai will be aware of the award-winning exploits of those zany friends of language learning, David Wu and his buddies Jim and Rich.

David, referring to himself in his blog as a Superstar Entertainer in China, is almost single-handedly responsible for teaching Diligent Chinese Citizens such fantastically useful English words as ‘vator (apparently this is what normal people refer to as a ‘lift’). As he says of himself:

“Yes,I’m sort of know around as the, “English Teacher” on T.V. Ever since Channel V’s “Go West” program came out, learning English has took on a whole different meaning.”

No Shit.

David, not only are you the most annoyingly wet twat I’ve ever seen whilst hanging on for dear life in the back of a Shanghainese taxi, you are also a complete and utter Wet Pussy. And we all know what that means, don’t we?

David Wu – My Wet Pussy Award, February ’08

So we are now in the Year of the Rat, apparently. My question is, why do Chinese name their years after the  food they eat?

I mean, we don’t go around saying “This is the Year of the Sirloin Steak”, do we? That would just be silly.

I haven’t written so far this month, and so I thought it would be nice that the first post of the New Chinese Year (which has nothing whatsoever to do with the relative orbital positions of the Earth and the Sun, but instead involves the number of times that the Moon has flown around China) would be something positive and happy. Here goes…

For the last two weeks I’ve been eating really wonderful, healthy food. Reasonably priced at that, too. The booze has been second-to-none, and has gone very well indeed with the fresh lobster. I cannot recall hearing a single disparaging remark about foreigners made whilst in my presence, and the vast, overwhelming majority of the people I have seen have been smiling. Quite a few people have greeted me with a genuine “Good Morning”, and there has not been a single case of surliness. The air has been clean, and I have not had to blow crap out of my nose for two weeks. The sky has been blue. So has the sea. I do not recall a single case of ‘mushroom farm in the mouth’ bad breath, and everybody I have met has been washed and clean. Taxi drivers have taken me where I want to actually go, and, on the one occasion when a mistake was made, the driver shut off the meter and corrected his mistake. I have been able to buy a full range of normal consumer items – in sizes and colours that people actually seem to want. Nothing I have bought has broken yet. I have been surrounded by an ancient and fascinating culture that has kept up with the times, and by people who have something to be proud of yet don’t feel the need to shove it down your throat at every opportunity. In short, the last two weeks have been very pleasant indeed.

Anyway, I’ve just arrived back in China. Normal programming will resume.

Problem One

The Chinese Communist Party permits the price of coal to rise, whilst capping the price of electricity at a ridiculously low level. The effect of this, naturally, is that for every watt of electricity generated, the generating companies loses money. The more power that is generated, the more money the companies lose. The generating companies, therefore, reduce their production of electricity to a low level. No big surprises there.

It gets a bit cold, and the Chinese Communist Party, realising that cold people are more likely to be rebellious people, orders the generating companies to resume full output, and further orders all transportation networks (road, rail) to give priority to shipment of coal to the power plants.

Along comes Spring Festival, when half a billion lemmings decide to travel across the nation in order to give their money to their parents so that they can lose it gambling at Mahjong. But wait – there are no trains. Why? Because all the trains are busy transporting coal.

Problem Two

The Chinese Communist Party caps the price of diesel at the pump, apparently unaware that the price of oil has long since hit USD$100 per barrel, and is still climbing. The refining companies, quite naturally, reduce their production of diesel (and what they do produce is made with high-sulphur content crude which nobody else wants).

With no diesel, heavy road transport and farm machinery grinds to a halt, which means that consumer goods and other products cannot be transported from A to B. The first result of that? Shops with nothing to sell. The second result is that farms produce less, and what is produced cannot be transported to market.

Solution

The Chinese Communist Party announces that the weather in China is the worst in fifty years, and that road and rail networks are paralysed as a result. Chairman Hu goes to talk to some coal miners to encourage them to produce more coal. Foreign media totally buy into the story and the Chinese Communist Party is again let of the hook thanks to the happy gullibility of the Free Press.

The End. Until The Next Time.