There is Still Hope
Posted by MyLaowai on Friday, July 1, 2011
How does one go about describing doing business in China? I mean, really? Sure, there are all the obvious adjectives like “dishonest”, “shitty”, “dirty”, “filthy”, “corrupt”, “primitive”, “festering” and so on and so on. But whilst all those adjectives are certainly spot on and absolutely correct, they don’t really give people in the civilised world much of an idea as to what it’s like here in The Land That Time Forgot.
A good friend of mine describes doing business in China as asking someone to paint the fence white, and suddenly two dozen people are running around in circles looking for black paint (the fence, or what’s left of it after they’ve ‘fixed’ it a few times, is eventually painted red and then falls over).
And that’s a pretty accurate description in my experience.
Take an actual example: Two days ago I asked one of my employees to call the courier and arrange for him to pick up a small parcel the following day. Just that, nothing else. Within half an hour there were discussions regarding which courier to use, which country it was going to, how heavy it was, what rate was applicable, the whole nine yards. At this point I intervened and politely pointed out that I wanted the same fucking courier we have always used and that the weight, destination, colour, shape, and any other variable were nobody’s fucking business except mine, and could the person I had originally asked simply call the fucking courier and would everyone else mind awfully going back to work and doing 60% of the job they were actually hired to do?
The next morning I asked what exact time the courier was expected, because I had plenty to do and couldn’t afford to be sat on my thumb all day waiting for him. I was told “before 12pm”, which is about as much use as a chocolate fireman when it comes to accuracy, but is nevertheless the best one ever gets in China. Naturally, the courier arrived at 1pm. He picked up the parcel, and departed. You might think that’s the end of the story, but that’s only because you haven’t been paying attention these last few years.
I received a call on my phone today from the employee who arranged for the courier to come and pick up the parcel. It seems there are now many problems and matters of intense confusion, with the inevitable result that the parcel will cost twice as much to send, it will be sent on the wrong waybill, it might not get there at all because someone decided to re-write the address and now it’s not readable, there is no longer a destination city, the commercial invoice is missing in action, and what colour did I want the fence painted? Please keep in mind that this employee is one of the better ones.
This happens every single time I send anything by courier. And I do mean every. single. time.
And that, to me, is what doing business in China is like.
Have a happy weekend, my little croissants. I’m off to elbow an old woman in the back of the neck.
Wo Shi Laowai - Wo Pa Shui 
0112337 said
Ever heard the phrase, “the pot is calling the kettle black” Laowai?
Here in the U.S., it’s simple, everything runs on peasant’s common sense. There are only three companies to choose from to ship your package, and you can’t go wrong. When they give you a delivery time, that usually means they will deliver your package +/- 5 hrs. from the stated time.
Set up shop in Europe, then instead of debating with one another on finding the most efficient solution to ship your package, your workers MIGHT help you ship it the next day, AFTER the afternoon cappuccino.
MyLaowai said
Here in China, we have the peasants, but not the common sense.
0112337 said
Instead of complaining, have you ever thought about managing them better?
Don’t ever blame your own shortcomings on others, Laowai, first step toward failure.
Long Long Time Been Here said
I’m interested in the cure. Can it be performed by anybody or only qualified professionals and can it be performed on any individual?
MyLaowai said
Glad you asked, lao peng you. Post to follow on medical solutions.
Nips Are Great said
My experience:
1. Yellow runts do as little as possible all the time.
2. Whenever a yellow runt is instructed to do something he/she will provide a dozen excuses not to do it.
3. Then the yellow runt will make like he/she is about to do it but in fact just goes back to playing that fucking yellow runt internet farm game where the high-light is stealing from other yellow runt farmers.
4. Then after reminding the yellow runt to get his/her lazy yellow ass in gear he/she will ask, ‘Oh, you mean now?’
5. The yellow runt will complain about doing the task while doing it, even if it requires the least amount of effort.
6. The yellow runt will do a shitty job.
7. When you bring the yellow runt up on the fact that he/she’s done a shitty job they’ll say, ‘It didn’t need to be done anyways.’
8. On the exceedingly rare occasion when a yellow runt does something without instruction he/she will make like they’ve just invented the wheel and want some praise.
At this very moment I can hear out my window some little yellow runt screaming and it’s quite annoying.
Solutions:
Axe to the neck.
Bullet in the skull.
Dagger deep in the chest.
Or a piece of heavy equipment run over head or chest squeezing whatever passes as a soul out of the carcass and back to the Hell it came from.
But the best is a neutron bomb, ‘This intense pulse of high-energy neutrons is intended as the principal killing mechanism…. …neutron bombs are commonly believed to “leave the infrastructure intact”,… The neutron bomb was originally conceived by the U.S. military as a weapon that could stop Soviet troops from overrunning allied nations without destroying the infrastructure of the allied nation.[21]’ – thanks Wikipedia
Replace ‘Soviet troops’ with ‘Mainland Chinese population’ and Bob’s your uncle.
So…
Where’d the dog go?
Long Long Time Been Here said
What infrastructure?
MyLaowai said
You know: all the fallen down, red painted fences. And buildings and roads. And broken hospitals and fucked up schools… That infrastructure.
Long Long Time Been Here said
Would be worth something on the scrap market I suppose.
MyLaowai said
It won’t be many more years before the smart investors in China are all getting into the glowing molten glass business.
Bill said
Kudos, you have once again captured the true essence of red China! I will reblog part of this and point them to your site. Also props to Nips are great for bringing the ‘ha ha’ I will probably reblog part of his mini rant! Jia you lao wai!!!
Nips Are Great said
Bill,
I was being completely serious.
Don’t doubt it.
Bill said
Nips,
I concur, I too have been relegated to one of the circles of hell, thus found your comment not only witty but painfully true. Having said that, I am off to try out the new 20 mile bridge, anyone care to join me?
MyLaowai said
I have some coolies that we can throw off the middle. Kind of a christening with Chinese characteristics, like the way they always shoot political prisoners when they open new highways.
Bill said
MyLaowai- Is this not already part of the rich cultural history? I thought I had read that after harvesting organs from undesirables (non Han) their hideous forms are cast away so as not to pollute the local scenery…now I am confused.
MyLaowai said
Same same but different lah.
Reality of China, Mylaowai.com Style « Understanding China, One Blog at a Time said
[…] continue here https://mylaowai.com/2011/07/01/there-is-still-hope/ […]
Hans Dampf said
my two cents, hire a foreign PA, let them manage the shit. Pay them lots for the pain, but in the end totally worth it. ideally i recommend some psycho ABC chick
last, i stopped blaming people 2 months ago. It is not their fault. Truly isnt. Imagine NASA took you today and put you in a space station asking you to fix complex electronics and all your colleagues and bosses dont even speak a language you understand. Also, regardless of how often you try and listen, you can neither ever learn the language nor basically grasp you are on a space station.
So please… a little love for them Chinese space chimps huh? ;-P
0112337 said
Your “psycho ABC chick” is an Asian American, not a Chinese, she will cause more havoc than you because not only is she “old Chinese”, with a mentality that is before the revolution, completely out of touch with the modern Chinese reality, but she is also far, far, more aggressive than you as a result of insecurity, a traumatic childhood, and/or American society’s oppressive marginalization. She will be far more ruthless and far more awkward than her Chinese workers will ever be. Such a person will not be a good leader in that environment. She will most likely cause more harm than good.
On the other hand, I think the reason they are awkward is not because they are stupid, as in the space station effect, but rather because they are too theoretical and has no idea about how to create solutions based on independent empirical observations, or in plain english…creative, original, thinking skills. That is probably the case, unless, you own a farm fertilizer company and your workers are all peasants.
The downside of a very good theoretical education is that the student never learned to create original solutions from independent observations. Such a person may be a very good strategist, and he/she may even be more fitted to act as the leader than you, but as a worker, he/she sucks completely.
Hans Dampf said
a) my abc is mid twenties, eager, aggressive, 100% usa born and raised, full blown us education, and sufficiently empowered to get shit done. she causes pain, yes, but thats ok for me.
then again, it is not about leading a management team, but getting the clerks lined up and basic shit done.
Chinese as a leader is to my experience a total fucking shit show as people are so selfish, lazy, ignorant and fucking greedy, it is rather disgusting….
0112337 said
Would you rather have an Oxford educated European Che Guevara working for you? Why don’t you try that and let me know how it works out.
I would imagine that in this economy there are plenty of those guys hanging around in the European job market.
0112337 said
To my knowledge, there isn’t a single empire on this planet’s history that wasn’t powered by greed. On the other hand, the conquered nations were always ones that turned altruistic.
But that topic aside, I want to remark on something interesting I observed lately. Tibetan buddhism is really catching on here in the European American communities! My gosh, I had the good fortune to attend a Tibetan buddhism talk over here two weeks ago that was held by one of those legit old lamas from Dharamsala that was darned by the Chinese government, and there were only 3 asians in a room of maybe 200! Not a single black person, all white, and many of those people are from Europe.
What is going on? Have you Europeans finally gained the last level of enlightenment, seen the light, and understood the profound truths behind Oriental Buddhism, which was the religion that drove at least 2,000 years of Chinese social development?
I mean, I don’t know about what other Chinese people think, but I find this hilarious. After 400+ years of enlightenment, you Europeans and European Americans finally see the light and have become asian in the traditional sense. Eating low calorie diets, with salads and sushi being the preferred staples of the white collar elite, drinking tea, doing yoga, talking about non-violence, practicing feng shui, staying in tune with buddhism, practicing strange forms of existential spiritualism, advocating for animal rights, listening to meditative new age music, smoking drugs, roaming freely…etc.
Meanwhile, in asia, asians are increasingly adopting the ways of Europeans a la 17th century, adopting mercantilism and colonialism, believing in rationalism, science, and Christianity, having a Soviet style math and science education model which originated from 19th century industrial Germany, adopting Western names, eating bread, believing in free love, and animalism, adopting western corporate culture…etc.
It’s things like these which make me marvel at how stupid humanity really is. Who could have thought, a European style renaissance is taking place in East Asia, of all places…
But what is even more ridiculously tragic, in a truly tragically comedic sense, is that East Asia may be in line to merge with the European experience and go through 400 years of European nonsense, causing millions of nonsensical bloodshed, before finally rediscovering buddhism and traditional asian culture, again, but from Europeans, this time….
Human beings are truly very very stupid.
Rappy Pun Zelly said
Ah, but did you know it was Europoid people with strong cultural links to Europe that brought Buddhism to China? The Tocharians. Loads of their tombs in the Takla Makhan desert. Their bodies were better preserved than Egyptian mummies, and their clothes. Funny thing is, they had more advanced weaving than the Chinese at the time, used the wheel, chariots and horses before the Chinese and taught the Chinese how to build fortified cities. Sort of destroys the romantic notion of the Chinese cultural genius arising in isolation from the west, doesn’t it? So what did the Chinese gov do? Banned any further excavations of the tombs. They were going to show one of the mummies in the US, the beauty of Xiaohe, but pulled out at the last minute. Totally different story to what we hear in the media, but just look it up if you don’t believe me. They’ve even deciphered their language, which wasn’t hard to do because it was Indo-European and was based on a known script from India.
0112337 said
The Tocharians brought Buddhism to China? That’s very interesting. I will look into it and see what I can research out of that, but from what I know, the Tocharians were essentially what the Chinese called the Yuezhi, who were known to be a fierce barbaric people in the north that was often paid to fight off other, stronger, barbaric tribes that was harassing China’s northern borders.
I highly doubt they had wheel and chariots before the Chinese, because their time was roughly around the time of the Han Dynasty in China, which had one of the most advanced armies in the world. To say that the Han did not have the wheel and chariot is ludicrous… but not impossible. After all, true Chinese, and by that I mean the modern day Chinese south of the Yellow River, did not have horses in the ancient past. Northerners possessed horses, which allowed them to pretty much conquer the Southerners every time in ancient Chinese wars.
You might be right.
But, to throw in some spice to the thought, have you ever considered that perhaps, the Chinese may have been “European” or “Indo-European” at one point? Look into the history of the Tang Dynasty royal family and the stories regarding the sons of Cao Cao. If those stories are correct, ancient China may have been more of a melting pot than the pure racial propaganda the CCP is spewing out today.
There are historical records indicating that a lost Roman Legion deserted and assimilated into a town in modern day Gansu. They were sent to the fight the Parthians, who captured them, and regrouped them into their army. They were then sent to fight against the Chinese, but they deserted and settled down.
Lastly, check what you write, the Beauty of Xiaohe was on view in Californian and Texan museums for close to a year.
Epitope said
I don’t know if Chinese were European at one point (or the other way around), but according to current theory, all humans come from Ethiopia, and we all share 99% of our DNA, Europeans, Chinese, Africans, Aborigines, everybody. And 98% of our DNA is shared between humans and chimpanzees. All living beings on Earth are intertwined in the splendid tree of evolution, you are what you eat, and will become what eats you. There is a little of Pinochet in everyone of us: his body was converted to CO2 and then inhaled by people, animals, plants, … that CO2 was metabolically transformed into biologically significant compounds in our food and bodies, becoming structural proteins making up the epithelia of our skin, our organs, or voltage-gated channels managing the electric currents in our brain, giving rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. One cannot dissociate a people from another one, we are all the same.
But a rat is still a rat.
Epitope said
Forget about that last sentence. I tried to be critical of China in a way similar to mylaowai’s, but I do not have his wit or talent. I actually like you, 011, I think you bring an interesting competing point of view to this blog. I just had a bad day today. Sorry.
We are all people – 99% similar- , but I had a few bad experience in China, so it’s hard to focus on the positive.
MyLaowai said
Maybe I’ll pick up where you left off. I got the point you were making, at any rate :)
Rappy Pun Zelly said
I don’t know what you’re spouting about the Han dynasty for; the mummies they’re finding go back nearly 4,000 years ago, before China even had any history (Xia and Shang eras were prehistorical). Anyway, just cos they were mentioned during the Han dynasty, that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist before then, does it now? I mean come on now.
I can’t find any references to Beauty of Xiaohe being exhibited in the US, but loads of news about the Chinese government pulling out at the last minute. Don’t know where you’re getting your info, 011, but then you are American so you might be in a better position to know about these things than I am. What I can find on the Internet is lots of notices about how excited these museums are about the fact they are GOING to exhibit the mummy and others about the Chinese government pulling out.
Basically, these mummies are pretty recent finds but the government has banned further excavations of them. Oh, and they are conspicuously Caucasian. I was watching a documentary about them on Youtube and the experts looked at one of the mummies and said “Now this cloth isn’t Chinese, the weaving techniques are much too advanced to be Chinese.” Also, some of them wear clothes that are the same as the European Celts wore, evidencing links to Europe. It seems like they integrated with the Uighurs when they arrived and in regions where they used to live, the Uighurs have much more Caucasian features.
Whether or they are the Yuezhi is debatable. But I wouldn’t put too much credence to Chinese versions of their own history because the emperors suppressed any unofficial histories and only let the hyped, exaggerated versions remain, pretty much like they do now. I quote from http://www.sacu.org/historysurvey.html :
“Official history made an early debut in China. Qin Shi Huang, the “First Emperor” who was buried with the Terracotta Warriors in 210 BC, initiated a virulent propaganda campaign that aimed to eradicate any historical records that clashed with his official line. Subsequent dynasties followed his lead, with the result that official history became very much the norm. This, and the fact that literate Chinese were almost all civil servants, created a very different situation from that in the West. In the Christian world, most literate men were churchmen, often ascetic monks railing against the practises of temporal rulers. Disgruntled clerics like Gildas and Gregory of Tours, with their disdain for secular powers, were part of a very different tradition from that of China, where the alliance of the literate and the powerful developed a “party line” far earlier. The term yeshi, “wild history” is applied to writings that are not written by imperial historians – but this “wild history” is so common in the West that no specific term for it has developed. It is surely significant that Western historians use “official history” to designate a specific subset of “history”, while in China, “wild history” is the smaller subset.”
It’s all bleeding edge stuff and your views are hopelessly out of date and just the standard boring old, stuffy, Procrustean party line.
Oh, and the idea of the Emperor ruling by mandate of heaven was borrowed from the Gökturks, the “celestial Turks.”
I did read a thesis the other day that put forth the case for Chinese being an Indo-European language. It had quite an impressive lists of cognates between proto Indo-European and the oldest reconstructed pronunciation of Chinese. It also stated that an examination of the earliest attested Indo-European language, Hittite, demonstrated that noun declensions, a salient feature of IE languages that would be totally alien to a ruthlessly non-inflecting language like Chinese, were a later feature, as were Chinese tones. Did you know ancient Greek was tonal? However, the Hittite language on the Hittite Wikipedia page seems to have noun inflections, so I don’t know what to make of it. You can find it online if you look.
Rappy Pun Zelly said
Look, I’m not saying that the Chinese were stealing the white man’s technology and culture even in prehistoric times, but that case could certainly be made. What I am saying is that the whole fragile basis of Chinese nationalism is on shaky ground and all it takes is “Whoa, take a look under this stone in the Takla Makhan desert, what clothes is it wearing, what’s written on these plates, can you date this for me” and suddenly the whole jerry-built edifice of Chinese nationalism, built as it is on selective memory, exaggerated claims, smoke and mirrors basically, comes ignominiously crashing down to a pile of outdated stinking rubble.
It’s nowhere near as cut and dry as the nationalists would like to imply, but that’s what the Chinese way of teaching history would seem to imply with its multiple-choice exams and rote learning. The view into the past is very murky indeed and subject to interpretation, but the more lines of evidence we can put into service, the clearer the picture becomes.
Oh, and I wouldn’t put much credence on the Chinese use of the word “barbarian.” I once remember seeing a book in Beijing Foreign Language Bookstore a few years back. It was one of those book about China written in Chinglish for the benefit of the unenlightened foreign barbarian. The title was something to do with how foreigners and Chinese view each other and the picture on the front cover was amazing. It had a foreign man and a Chinese approaching each other to shake hands and there is a thought bubble coming from the head of each man. The foreign man is looking at the Chinese and imagining a mandarin from one of the old imperial governments, hands in sleeves, bowing graciously, whereas the Chinese is looking at the foreigner and imagining a monkey jumping up and down with a banana in hand. I was a bit disgusted at the time and wandered how they could entertain such hallucinations when the average chinese you see walking down the street is anything but … well, we’ll not go into that. But now, I kick myself for not having bought it. I can’t seem to find it now. Perhaps there were complaints. Anybody else remember seeing it and know what the exact title of the book was and where I can get it?
Rappy Pun Zelly said
Never some implausible theory of a lost Roman legion to try to cover up the existence of a whole civilization.
Rappy Pun Zelly said
Look up Tarim mummies on Wikipedia. There were Roman accounts (Pliny the Elder no less) of peoples living in the present northwestern territories of China having blond hair, being tall etc., and also similar Chinese accounts, I believe, but were always dismissed in the past. The documentary on Youtube is called The Tocharians, Indo-Europeans of the East. It’s all absolutely fascinating.
0112337 said
Rapunzel,
1. There are very few documentation of the Tocharians from ANYONE. The best parallel to the Chinese sources are the ancient Greek ones, from historians in the Greco-Bactrian empire, but that is still around 250-100 BCE. This means modern historians don’t have many ancient sources to fall back on from ANYONE on this subject, thus the statements in that youtube video are hard to verify.
I am not convinced the Tocharians were around 4000+ years ago and I don’t have the time to fully research this because I am not as racist as the people in that video and I simply don’t care. China was a melting pot ever since the ancient times, and it is becoming more and more like a melting pot today, which is how it should be. Using racism as basis or justification for state sovereignty and/or territorial claims is retarded, something which I don’t want to get into.
If you flat out reject Chinese sources BECAUSE they are Chinese, that makes you ignorant, bigoted, and racist, AND it makes you sound less credible. Don’t do that.
It is an interesting video.
2. Washington Post from March, 2011 on the Beauty of Xiaohe;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/02/AR2011030206371.html
3. Government bans on excavations is not always as sinisterly motivated as you think. The Chinese archaeological society is very poor, and it lacks the funding, talent, and equipment to fully fund research. I have read stories of where archaeology scholars would open up an old tomb in the 70s, see a corpse looking almost life like, with skin still vibrant thousands of years after burial, but upon interaction with oxygen, evaporated into dust. In the West, scholars have the technology to preserve a tomb upon opening it, this technology did not exist in China in the 90s, and so, rather than destroying more tombs, the government decided to ban any further research until it got more funding.
The tragedy is, although the scholarly sector still lacks in funding, the private sector has gotten more funding and developed the technology, through Western demand. Tomb robbers rob more tombs today than the archaeological society can excavate, and most of these priceless ancient artifacts are sold and shipped to the West through Hong Kong. There is a chance that you might find your Tocharian artifacts right next door in your local British antique shop. You might not even realize it.
4. Yes, Qin Shi Huang did burn books and kill deviant scholars, but do European scholars dare to write histories or express themselves in ways that contradicted the Christian faith from…oh..I don’t know…ever since the fall of Rome to the 19th century? In most of that period, anti-Christian statements would have landed you a place on the bonfire. You really don’t think the Church might have suppressed some “Ye-shi” ? Even the bible itself has been suppressed. Your Catholic Church CHOSE how you should fundamentally perceive the world and God.
5. Are my lines boring and “Procrustean party like” ? Well, good! They may be old and crusty to you, but certainly not to your fellow Westerners reading this in the West. It’s fascinating to them, truly, you can ask them yourself!
6. Mandate of Heaven did not come from the Gokturks. That’s bullshit. MoH started in the Zhou dynasty, which ended 300 years before the ancestral tribes of the Gokturks came into being.
7. Unfortunately I don’t know much about the Hittites except the fact that they were one of the first ancient peoples to have iron tools and they had some very impressive stone lions at Hattusha (?) in modern day Turkey. The Chinese language is not Indo-European, that’s also bullshit, don’t believe it.
8. “Chinese were stealing the white man’s technology and culture even in prehistoric times”
This cracked me up, made my day, thank you.
9. ‘ I wouldn’t put much credence on the Chinese use of the word “barbarian.” ‘
You shouldn’t, it’s Chinese ignorance, that is passed on since at least 2,000 years ago. I do it for laughs, you shouldn’t put much credence on it.
“The foreign man is looking at the Chinese and imagining a mandarin from one of the old imperial governments, hands in sleeves, bowing graciously, whereas the Chinese is looking at the foreigner and imagining a monkey jumping up and down with a banana in hand.”
Hahaha….This is great. Ignorant people in northern Dongbei (Manchuria) still call Russians, or your modern day Tocharians, “毛子”, or hairy beings, in racial slurs. That’s because there are many stories of these Neanderthals beating people when they get drunk. Not much changed since, as you claimed, 4000+ years ago.
10. Research the village of 骊靬 (liqian) regarding the stories about the Romans.
0112337 said
And look Punzel, if I were a Chinese nationalist, I would not openly criticize my nation. I am a pragmatic libertarian that does NOT espouse nationalism. I criticize the East and the West. I condemn stupidity as I see it from both sides. If the CCP tries to eradicate Uighur culture in Xinjiang, I would be the first to condemn it, by the same token, if there is a draft here in the United States, I would be the first to flee, and if there is an uninformed Westerner that is trying to promote democracy in China I would be the first to silence that person because he/she simply don’t understand what is going on. Just because I speak on China’s side doesn’t mean I am a fanatical nationalist, it just means I am not speaking on YOUR side. My statements are meant to show Westerners what the other side is saying and most importantly give them a taste of what they are thinking. Most Chinese people would probably think I am ridiculous for shaming the nation with such direct behavior.
Don’t try to know me, that’s not the point. This is cyber space, one of the only realms where we can be brutally honest with one another without too much consequences…where we can try to understand our culturally constructed psyche, be completely ridiculous, and still go out the next day interacting with one another in the real world like respectable, sane people…bound by social restraints, as if nothing happened. It’s a rare opportunity to cherish! Enjoy it and don’t ruin the fun. The host of this site is only spoiling things by trying to pinpoint where his posters are writing their posts.
Consider my ideas but don’t consider me. My ideas may not reflect the general feelings in China, since China is so diverse, but it’s somewhat representative of how Northern Chinese people view things, how people from my region, in my circle of acquaintances and friends view things. If you don’t agree, then challenge it, and so we can both understand the topic better.
Despite how much I despise this Mylaowai on a cyber level, due to his sniveling bitchy nature, I find his site oddly fascinating, like hot pepper, self hurting but highly addictive. It’s a place where I can have a little fun, get to know a bit more about how some of you Westerners really think about certain things, engage in some mental pornography.
Epitope,
Thanks for the input, but truth be told and I say this without trying to be rude, I could care less if you like me or not. I don’t know you and you basically (I think) don’t know me. I am not here to help you like China, and trust me, I couldn’t care less if you liked that country or not. If you don’t like it, you can leave. If you choose not to leave, then you shall either conform or suffer in silence, and that’s the way it should be. You see, this is the mentality I have been trying to instill in other Chinese people for a long time. I am telling them to live for themselves. They care too much about how you fools view them to the point that, as shown during the Beijing Olympics, an entire city of 20+ million people went insane by 砸锅卖铁 and mobilizing everyone to serve you unworthies so that they could change a racist stereotype. This is beyond ridiculous for an ancient nation with around 5,000 years of culture and civilization.
So yeah, that’s my take on things, and rest assured if by coincidence you and I meet in real life in China, and you piss me off, I WILL make your experience worse than anything you ever experienced over there.
:)
Rappy Aduelli said
No, 0112337, you are wrong. The mandate of heaven came was a feature of Altaic culture copied by the Chinese. I quote:
Göktürks is said to mean “Celestial Turks”. This is consistent with “the cult of heavenly ordained rule” which was a pivotal element of the Altaic political culture before being imported to China.
YOU ARE WRONG!
“If you flat out reject Chinese sources BECAUSE they are Chinese” Did I do that? You are treading philosophically unsound ground there mate because that’s the straw-man fallacy, that is. Chinese sources are just one source, not the last word. I remember this Chinese girl boasting that the word Turk came from ancient Chinese. Basically her reasoning was that because it appeared as Tujue in ancient Chinese sources, it must have come from Chinese for some stupid brainwashed reason that seemed logical to her and her alone, and probably her friends as well. You can just imagine it can’t you? “Chinese: Who are you? Turks: A tribe, some tribe. Chinese: Well, what tribe? Haven’t you got a name? Turks: Dunno. Can you think of a name for us? Chinese: How about Turks? Turks: Cool.” Makes sense tho’ when you think about it.
I see you’re playing my favorite card there. Playing the racist card is just a big manipulative cop out. Political correctness is one reason why I left my homeland behind. I just read this story about this bent copper (i.e. corrupt policeman) that got to the top by playing the race card and reeked havoc back home. Ha ha, surprise surprise. You had it coming to you, you stupid big girls’ blouses. Everyone’s so scared to say anything that might be construed as racist, unless it’s against Americans.
Yes, this place is a bit like mental pornography. I always promise myself I’m going to kick the habit but keep coming back.
How are you getting on with your platonic marriage? I hope you remember the old Chinese philosopher who said you shouldn’t do more than once a month if you’re over 40, or was it complete abstinence for over 40s? You might find it difficult but remember, if some random ancient Chinese philosopher X said it, it’s got 5,000 years of history and is no doubt for the best.
Now the Chinese are playing the savior of Italy card. Hey, they gotta park them Euros somewhere, haven’t they, so why not blow a trumpet about it while you’re at it? I’m just waiting for the big China crash after which people will stop all this China worshiping, as happened in the late 80s with Japan. I remember watching this fascinating documentary back home about some spotty kid delivering lunchboxes on a scooter in Tokyo in the late 80s. Even a spotty pizza delivery boy was worthy of a documentary if he was Japanese at one time. Goodness knows what documentaries they’re making about China now. Some stunted guy who collects the leftovers from restaurants to make pig swill? The people that refine discarded cooking oil from gutters to sell as new? Whatever it is it’ll be pointless crap.
And in parting, I just have one last question about traditional Chinese culture that I thought you could perhaps help me with. What’s it for?
Rappy Aduelli said
“There are very few documentation of the Tocharians from ANYONE. The best parallel to the Chinese sources are the ancient Greek ones, from historians in the Greco-Bactrian empire, but that is still around 250-100 BCE. This means modern historians don’t have many ancient sources to fall back on from ANYONE on this subject, thus the statements in that youtube video are hard to verify.”
Sounds like you are one of those sheeple that doesn’t like forming their own opinions but just feels safe going along with the party line.
0112337 said
What a load of nonsense.
You want to believe MoH came from the Gokturks? Fine. Ignorance is bliss, it’s every man’s (and presumably woman’s) natural born right. I am not going to take it away from you.
“You are treading philosophically unsound ground there mate because that’s the straw-man fallacy, that is.”
I was looking at this from American sources over here. My point was, as soon as I state something that was given through Chinese sources, you automatically reject them. This is simply nonsense.
‘ “Chinese: Who are you? Turks: A tribe, some tribe. Chinese: Well, what tribe? Haven’t you got a name? Turks: Dunno. Can you think of a name for us? Chinese: How about Turks? Turks: Cool.” ‘
This is funny. Tell you something else. I recently learned that the word in Russian for money is ‘деньги’, which is pronounced something like ‘zinget’. Money used to be called ‘金子’ (jin-zuh) in Chinese. I wonder if this word was transferred into the Russian vocabulary, maybe through ancient trade, or through the Mongol rule. Interesting stuff.
“I see you’re playing my favorite card there.”
I thought the video was racist because it kept on talking about how the mummies were not Chinese because they were Caucasian looking. This is coming from well respected university professors who must have known that there were many foreign traders in ancient China, who, in those days married the Han people, and thought of themselves in every way as “Chinese”.
Let me see if I can describe this using an European parallel so that you can understand how Chinese people would perceive that same video.
The analogy would be a bunch of ignorant but very bold asians went to some European country, dug up some ancient tombs, found that there were dried up corpses with big noses. These, they proudly claim, must be the remains of JEWS, and thus, NOT Europeans. These yokels then propagate their amazement and their genius (even though the Europeans knew that there were Jews living there for centuries, both through folklore and historical accounts), and claim that they are leaders of European historical discovery and force their nonsense on everyone in the world, even European scholars, who they completely reject because they claim the historical evidence used by those scholars are tainted by Christianity, and thus, must be unreliable, brainwashing propaganda.
In addition, these asian ‘historians’ boldly proclaim that the Jews must have had a vibrant community there, with their own culture, art, weaponry…etc. Insinuating that the Europeans must have colonized them, conquered their communities, and forced them to become Europeans, further insinuating, or perhaps more directly, passing this idea to the army of ignorant, state welfare employed drones (asian village high school/college drop out/losers turned political activists) that assert the new Jews living in the vicinity should organize, revolt, and declare a Jewish state in that area of Europe, free from E.U. and local jurisdiction, so they can then do the “advanced asian thing” of smoking weed, fucking like animals. That way, these Jews can make it nice so that these asian village losers could then join the party. Fun, fun, fun!!
When an European scholar, who was stupid enough to collaborate with these yokels on this project, claimed that one of the corpses was exquisitely beautiful and that he would marry her if she were alive, the asian scholars immediately remark, “how is it possible for this European man to meet this big nosed Jew thousands of years ago? After all, Jews came from the Middle East.” Insinuating…well, I won’t get into that kind of pettiness.
Do you see my point?
“How are you getting on with your platonic marriage?”
That is none of your business. Lets try to move from village conversation to urban conversation.
‘And in parting, I just have one last question about traditional Chinese culture that I thought you could perhaps help me with. What’s it for?’
Why don’t you do the trendy thing by adopting Islam, being circumcised, and becoming a muslim fundamentalist?
“Sounds like you are one of those sheeple that doesn’t like forming their own opinions but just feels safe going along with the party line.”
Now you are sounding like a Korean, who, let me declare here, I truly hate as a people. Yes, I declare I am racist against only one group of people on this earth, and that’s the Koreans, because they are the most violent, petty, racist, and rude people in Asia.
You are thinking like them. If something is good, it must be Korean, if it is not, it absolutely cannot be Korean. Don’t do that, that’s retarded.
Think outside the box.
Rappy Aduelli said
You said:
“This means modern historians don’t have many ancient sources to fall back on from ANYONE on this subject”
I suspect you haven’t really studied ancient history and how we can know what we know about prehistoric times, and prehistoric doesn’t mean like Jurassic Park, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Let’s face it, the Chinese are peddling millenia of prehistory as actual history. Si Ma Qian was writing millenia after some of the events he recorded and some of the earliest stuff he wrote is myth and legend, and what we know about the Shang is from archeology, not history.
Anyway, I can’t be bothered myself, so C U.
0112337 said
“Let’s face it, the Chinese are peddling millenia of prehistory as actual history. Si Ma Qian was writing millenia after some of the events he recorded and some of the earliest stuff he wrote is myth and legend, and what we know about the Shang is from archeology, not history.”
Doubtful comment, but perhaps true. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about the Shang. No, most people don’t know about the Shang dynasty simply because good written records of that period don’t exist. What we know comes mostly from oracle bones.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that I don’t know, simply because there is insufficient evidence that proved to me, from what you brought up, that there was once a Tocharian civilization. But then again, I am not a scholar of ancient archaeology and certainly don’t have the time to be one now.
Since very little exist for the Tocharians, I choose to say that I don’t believe it exists until I am contradicted otherwise. I may say the same thing for the Xia dynasty if I cared or knew more about it, and researched more about what kind of sources there are on that topic.
But that aside, let me ask you something. Do you think another’s wrong makes something right? If A is in question, does it make sense to state B is wrong? If Si Ma Qian wrote history based on folklore, lets say, is it right to use that as a justification of potentially false claims from equal ignorance in modern day? A lot of Chinese people do that, because they don’t care about truth, and I think that is wrong and childish. You shouldn’t do the same thing.
On a side note, I do know that Europeans used to think that Qin or Chin dynasty was the first dynasty in China, so, in accordance to Latin (?), they added an ‘a’ to it, when naming the country. But that, as we all know, is completely false since the first dynasty, which we know for sure, was the Shang, because there are written documents on that dynasty found on turtle shells and oracle bones. So, China should have been called ‘Shanga’ and Chinese, ‘Shanganese’.
I think that’s got a cool funk to it, kind of like Yahoo and Google.
MyLaowai said
I think you will find the answers you seek here:
https://mylaowai.com/2009/10/01/happy-birthday-falling-cow/
Hans Dampf said
Humans are stupid indeed. Well, according to your argument, Asians are more stupid ;-)
0112337 said
You are absolutely right. The average (young) asian today is quick and sharp but not very deep or wise. You know why?
Because math and science trains a person to become an efficient tool without wisdom, but a philosophical education trains a brain that cannot accomplish anything practical.
In this day and age, with the high degree of global economic interconnectedness, the result will be the West directing the East as a factory owner directs an engineer. However, the engineer will soon realize that he is actually making the goods with the real power, and what we might have is a riot or a controlled riot.
This leads to two scenarios. 1. Complete integration of west with east, with western workers moving to work in the east (granted that the East is not discriminatory, which is a BIG IF in this growth trajectory. This will probably take time, and only after some serious conflicts, perhaps even bloodshed). 2. Internal combustion, which means the East goes belly up, by which time the inefficient and incompetent factory owner goes back to working part time as the engineer.
But theories aside, do you know how the United States is handling its current budget problem? By releasing inmates from prisons.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/01/nation/la-na-crack-prisoners-20110701
Yes, beyond all the legal and political BS, the state of California has devised an ingenious way of balancing the budget.
Maybe we should ship our guys to Europe huh? I bet Bubba and Sanchez would LOVE to RAPE and KILL a few just to live in the European prisons, like the ones in Norway, which looked better than the dorms I overpaid to live in when I was in college. Heck, I might too, when I get to 90. I will first do drugs and then rape and murder somebody in Europe so I can get free room and board in a nice Scandinavian prison, away from all these stupid greedy fuckers out in the real world, and then spend the rest of my days studying books, learning, and observing nature. If they kick me out, I will go and kill a few more.
What do you think?
Hans Dampf said
a) i don’t really believe either of your theories regarding west/east developments. I doubt these tensions, after all we all pray to the same goddess. Also, economies are too interdependent, so this wont be an issue…
There will be tension but no actions, i.e. trapped in status quo.
Most importantly, i dont give a fine fuck, coz even if shit ever hits the fan in China etc, i’ll be long out of here kickin it in the caribbean ;-)
b) usa-> i dont give a rats ass on us internal politics either, my two cents on this:
– drug use should not be punishable anyway – my body, my soul, my choice, so fuck anybody who tells me what i can pump into my brain or what not . especially with selective such as drug a is ok, but drug b is not. bullshit…
– prisons? i agree its total bullshit, i propose physical punishment., thieves, hack their damn hands off. no shit, u can exactly steal twice. got a fucking problem with it? dont fucking steal you twat. exceptions for stealing food etc to be granted. prisons like summer camp – i agree should not exists. prisoners should be punished! make them clean our streets and serve like slaves to society for the duration of their term. Make work in whatever possible, the worse the better.
as they say… Justice is in itself powerless: what rules by nature is force!
0112337 said
a) What I mean is this. In economic theory, a country’s growth path will naturally tend to move from agriculture, to manufacturing, and finally to services. Europe aside, the United States has advanced to the services stage already, and no matter what other people say, it will never regain those manufacturing jobs again. If China doesn’t take it, Vietnam will, and if not Vietnam, then Cambodia. In this day and age, nobody wants to pay top dollar just to buy from America.
But then the question is this, can a nation sustain itself on an open, service oriented, economy alone, in a Ricardian sense? For one, I don’t think a service based economy can create so many jobs. A factory can hire many people to produce many goods, but you certainly don’t need 100 Goldman Sachs, or 100 PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Moreover, does Morgan Stanley really know so much more about the market than say…CICC or CIC? The biggest problem lies in the fact that Goldman Sachs may not know as much about the local client market and the local people as say… a local bank such as ICBC or BOC and so, this prevents a nation built on services to truly utilize its comparative advantage. The problem is further exacerbated when in a foreign market, the foreign government or the foreign institutional clients simply REFUSE to use foreign service providers due to cultural, nationalistic, or whatever fucktarded reasons..
This is what I was trying to get at, the question of “what happens next”, if you know what I mean. Have Europe and America really reached the end of history? The end of economic development?
b) Now, you shouldn’t think like that right?
justrecently said
Here’s my biz model, the solution to (almost) all of your pains:
Chum up to the party cells closest to you, and they’ll help you to make them all top-performers. Or, you find that too disgusting (which I agree it is), make the party folks forget that it’s actually your business, and hire a failed businessman from Taiwan to act the owner – he may fail at everything, but as long as he adheres to the one-China policy, he’ll whip your staff into success. True compatriots are free (and actually expected) to beat the crap out of the lower ranks.
How you’ll make sure that your helmsman won’t cheat you will be your problem.
Long Long Time Been Here said
In China unfortunately there is no solution, only mass extermination but then we wouldn’t have the pleasure of taking their money and at the moment this is the place to make the fast buck.
S said
The employees asked the right questions to help you to get your little shit from A to B, yet you chose to be a smart arse and try to handle it yourself and managed to fuck it all up.
Serve you right, you bloody useless piece of crap.
This again proofs that without your highly qualified lowly paid frequently abused employees, you could be cleaning public toilets back home or teaching some poor peasants English.
Long Long Time Been Here said
@ S, Hi S, I think you need to chill a little more and take it easy, don’t want high blood pressure and increased risk of heart attack do you?
S said
what makes you think I’m not cool calm and collected ?
mr mylaowai is fool and always a good laught …