Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

This Blog was Invented in Xi'an 5,000 Years Ago

Archive for November, 2010

Wang Bei Snuffs It.

Posted by MyLaowai on Monday, November 29, 2010

Guest Post

Wang Bei, 24, a former contestant on Super Girl, China’s version of American Idol, died on November 15th during “facial bone-grinding surgery” in Wuhan. Official reports cite an “anaesthetic accident” as the cause: “Wang’s jaw suddenly started bleeding during the procedure, blocking her windpipe and causing her to suffocate.”

Yeah right, do you believe this? I didn’t, so with my usual apathy and luck-lustre approach, I began ringing my contacts at her hospital. Chinese nurses are very obliging, especially when they know you have photos of them with you in the KTV where they worked during their training.

Lead Surgeon, Wang Hung Lo, couldn’t resist his natural impulses after he heard that the reason for her surgery was to increase her mandibular extension so she could please foreign judges as much as their Chinese counterparts. He had to sample it for himself whilst she was unconscious, an act routinely performed in KTV’s across the country nightly. Unfortunately, he choked her, the anaesthetic having shrunken her thorax. He can be found at his usual job of janitor at the local bathhouse. He regularly moonlights as a plastic surgeon.

“It’s just like taking out the trash”, he said when I interviewed him. “You peel the skin back like removing the bin liner from a soggy waste basket, then scrape on the bone just the same as scraping week old phlegm off the sides of the bin. Easy work. I get my mum to stitch them up afterwards, she is famous for her embroidery.”

However, the real tragedy is that I had advised her to not worry about the mouth, a tight fit is a good fit, but rather she should get a boob job, as, like the vast majority of Asian women, she was as flat as an airport runway. You can ignore my advice, but be aware there will be consequences.

– DaBizzare.

Wang Bei
Wang Bei. China’s Superbint.

Posted in Guest Post, Newsflash, Sex Sex Sex | 8 Comments »

Fire

Posted by MyLaowai on Wednesday, November 17, 2010

There has been a bit of a fire in Shanghai. Actually, it was rather a large blaze by all accounts, seeing as how a large apartment building caught fire, killing dozens and injuring many more.

Now, you all know me and you know I’m not one for shedding crocodile tears. If there’s one thing I hate about Chinese society above all else, it’s the sheer hypocrisy that permeates every aspect of life here. So, you won’t find me bleating on about some dead people I don’t know, didn’t want to know, and am not going to miss. Sorry if you think that’s a bit harsh, but quite frankly I couldn’t care less. Whether they die today in an apartment fire, or die in a few years time in a nuclear fire when they piss off a few more of their country’s neighbours; it’s all the same to me.

But there are a few points worth mentioning, because they tell you plenty about the Chinese way:

1. A fire in Shanghai gets a lot of press coverage. A fire in the countryside, or in a provincial city, wouldn’t rate a text message, and if you did make a story out of it, you and your family would be taken away, declared insane, and tortured to death. Shanghai matters because it’s highly visible, and that’s that. Face matters. That’s the Chinese way.

2. Within hours the head of the Public Security Bureau (China’s version of the KGB) was on a plane to Shanghai, to say how much he sympathised with the families blah blah blah. This is a guy who is responsible for thousands of murders every year. But hey, none of those are in the public eye, right? That’s the Chinese way.

3. Before the fire was even properly out, before the Origin & Cause investigation had even had a chance to begin, eight people were arrested. All of them from the countryside, so they won’t be missed (and if they are missed then their families can be forced to keep quiet, far from the eye of the foreign press). Why? Because someone must be blamed. It doesn’t matter what happens, it doesn’t matter who is responsible, and it especially doesn’t matter what the truth is, someone will inevitably be blamed, and that person will be the person who has the least power to defend himself. That’s the Chinese way.

4. New and ‘more stringent fire regulations’ have been ordered. Of course they have been. Nothing will change, and buildings all over China will continue to do good impressions of Roman Candles every few days, but the main thing is that the mandarins in Peking have made a proclamation, and the good folks of China believe them. The Party Bosses could order the moon to fly backwards, and The People would actually believe it happens. That’s the Chinese way.

5. For the next week, sales (and prices) of smoke hoods and fire extinguishers will increase, and so will sales (and prices) of various magical remedies for being burned to death. Little bags of magical twigs and various bits of lawn clippings will outsell smoke hoods and assorted magical incantations will take place in many homes. No one will actually consider how to get out of a building that is on fire; no one will walk the stairs down to the ground as a test-run; no one will invest in equipment to rescue people above the fourth floor; no one will unlock any of the fire exits; and no one will stop shooting fireworks at other apartments. This is the Chinese way.

I hate the Chinese way. I really do.

Posted in Ask MyLaowai, China, Newsflash | 13 Comments »

An Open Letter to All English Students in China

Posted by MyLaowai on Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Guest Post

Dear Student,

So you want a Laowai to be at your beck and call to help you improve your English? Yes, I came to China just so I could devote my life to licking your butt and helping you every way I can. What will you do to help this friend in return? Oh, teach us Chinese? Come on, WAKE UP.

#1: You want a private Laowai tutor? It’s 150+/hr. A Chinese tutor for us, at most, is 50/hr. What qualifications do you have to teach us Chinese? Oh – NONE. Is your English even good enough to DREAM of being a tutor for us? No.

#2: How many THOUSANDS of Chinese people give us the same ridiculous offer every day?

#3: You want a penpal? Look outside China. Oh yes, a few problems with that:
a) Your government blocks many of those websites in case some foreign scum dares to talk about the (non-existent, of course) problems your country has.
b) Much to your amazement, very few Laowai have got ANY time to talk with a person from your xenophobic backward country. Oh yes kiddies, scream blue murder all you like, but for god’s sake, me and my buddies here (in China) have to do without electricity or water for sometimes days on end. My workmate here lives in the “second best community in this city”. His home here is worse than a slum in America. At least said slums have the water, telecommunications, and electricity INSTALLED in the fricking walls and not draped around the outside. The list grows on. You have LITTLE to offer us, and we, even if it’s just our native language, have much to offer you.
#4: You wanna improve your English? Pay for a tutor. Oh, sorry – you want it for free? Visit my blog and knock yourself out. And when you do, be very thankful I bother to spend any time giving away my vast experience for FREE! What do you give away for free of any value? Huh? Oh yeah… NOTHING.
#5. Don’t go trying to chat with me every time you have 5 free minutes. I don’t have free time, I am a dedicated teacher and spend my time developing materials that I place on my blog (or in my school’s text books) that MANY people can benefit from. I will happily block you if you try. Why spend my precious time on just one person? I’d rather spend it helping thousands.

You claim the people around you only speak Chinese. Bloody hell, what about your classmates in your English class? Hell, what about you!!! You ALSO speak Chinese every day! Why don’t you try speaking English to your classmates and encourage them to do the same? Sure, it might be BAD English, but any practice is better than NO practice!

I hope to see you actively participating in a chat group. I really do. Because most of you ignorant bastards want to learn English but don’t want to participate. As I don’t know you at all, this means you haven’t said ANYTHING in our group of any note whatsoever. I also reckon that this entire conversation is above your head. For the next few weeks, work with your Chinese friends to comprehend this letter. That will help your English no end, and I haven’t had to waste a single minute on you, other than this message which I will share with the ‘world’ (= China, you folks really have trouble believing there is more to the world than your precious homeland) to help offset the waste of time that I know it to be.

Oh yes, I can hear more screams of protest at this latest statement. “We are almost the biggest economy in the world.” Lets examine this in detail:

#1: Your GDP PER CAPITA is woeful. It’s only big because you have 1.6 billion peasants running around trying to buy clean water, untainted food and a dogbox to live in. And failing.

#2: Your innovation capabilities are almost non-existent. You specialize in R&D: Ripoff and Duplicate.

#3: If you were to actually be able to account for REAL expenditure, you would be (by far) the largest economy in the world. Unfortunately, graft, bribe, deceit and fraud aren’t actually counted in the GDP, let alone whores, KTVs, street vendors and the like. You don’t just cook the books, you eat them as well! [note from ML: in fact, prostitution does account for some 15% of GDP, and is the only state-owned business making a profit]

You call me “good friend” and you haven’t even read this article. You know NOTHING about me. You aren’t my friend, and most likely never will be. Acquaintance? Maybe. Friend? You Chinese love to call anybody your friend, your brother etc, but am I really? Did you help me this week? Last week? In the last year? Christ. My friends look after me, worry about my problems and try to help me. An unknown student begging for free English practice is NOT my friend at all. To make it even more insulting to us, I know that many ethnic Chinese English teachers suggest (demand) their students make foreign friends so you can send us class surveys, correct your homework and so. Sorry, no go mate.

I love this country of yours, but I am so fed up with people expecting me to do something for nothing when I have to pay inflated prices for everything. Who will pay my rent if I spend all day being your private English tutor gratis? We can go back to an old quote and paraphrase it a little. “Ask not what a foreigner can do for you, but rather, what can you do for a foreigner?” Peace out little sibling.

Da Bizarre
Experienced, QUALIFIED Foreign Teacher

Posted in China | 72 Comments »

Great Kid, Don’t get Cocky.

Posted by MyLaowai on Thursday, November 4, 2010

Expo 2012

Posted in Festivals et al, Motivational! | 14 Comments »