Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

Another Harmonious Day in Socialist China
Part 1 of 3

It has been another night of complete insomnia, which on this occasion was happily mitigated by a passing Sichuan lass who has lost her job for the second time this month and is seeking refuge in between the legs of her local meal ticket, err Laowai lover. Sure sure, she can actually achieve orgasm each time she puts out, for the first time her life, but we all know I am either seen as a walking escape route from the Glorious Motherland We Love So Much, or a meal ticket. It has its advantages for us; so much pussy I can’t remember their names for more than a few days. But that is not the reason I am writing this.

Nor am I writing because hiding in my pocket is a pendant from a local whore who comes to bang my brains out for free on quiet nights. Yes, when I met her we played the ancient game of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” and verily we inspected each other’s health documents. Yes, that’s right Chinese guys, if your local ho is slopped out and loose, it isn’t from the expensive servicing she provides you on the regular occasions you decide to use her services so long as you wrap up because your local girls won’t touch you with a 10’ pole, it’s because she is banging Joe Laowai for free on the side without a rubber and actually enjoying herself. The money you pay her gets used to pay for my meals, so now when you bang your local ho you can feel proud that you are also helping to pay for a laowai’s dinner at the same time.

So, being unable to sleep, I went into the kitchen to make some malt soy milk to help me sleep. Because of the strange hours I work, and the enormous amount of unpaid overtime I have had to put in lately, I haven’t had a chance to go shopping for basics like fresh cow’s milk (a recent Chinese invention of great intrinsic value for me) so I had to resort to the powdered soy crap I keep in the cupboard to make proper bread with; being that Chinese bakers seem to think that western bread should be a dessert and as such liberally dosed with either sugar or sweet prunes / beans / unidentifiable vegetable matter. I read the instructions for actually turning it into a semi-tolerable drink; add 200ml boiled water. “Boiled water?”, I thought to myself. “Oh of course! This is CHINA! Don’t touch any water unless it’s been boiled to kill a small percentage of the nasties living in it.” But that is not the reason I am writing this.

While I was waiting for the water to boil I couldn’t help but muse over how powerful Chinese gas stove burners are. Why do they have to cook their food so quickly for? I mean, if they go to a restaurant, they are happy to waste hours haggling over the menu, deciding on the exact proportions of which ingredients each dish should have, and changing their mind a half dozen times, none of which really matters because most of it will be wasted and thrown in the bin uneaten anyway. So this being the case, what’s a few minutes more of cooking time? Maybe it is healthier this way? Like the way we mustn’t drink cold liquids, go to sleep before 11, swim in freezing water and eat more unidentified vegetable matter known as Chinese medicinal foodstuffs? But – if that is the case, why is it that I catch a cold well after all my Chinese comrade in pens are down and out? And why is it that Chinese men like to go out and drink until someone in the group is hospitalized? I mean, we don’t finish before 11; otherwise it would be unfair to our KTV Xiao Jie to run out on them so early when they haven’t finished drinking our beer yet. And the competitive drinking and smoking competitions can hardly be called healthy either. Yet, time after time, when I ask my companions why our planned rematch didn’t occur they reply “I was not healthy enough to return.”

But this is not the reason I am writing this either. That will have to wait for another post.

– DaBizzare