I don’t write here often enough. I know it, and I am reminded of it too often by some of you. But I make no apologies for the fact that beating my workers with a bamboo stick in order to get them to do anything productive takes up a lot of my time, and with what’s left of my day… well, let’s just say that gin and tonic doesn’t drink itself.

I had it in mind to give a lengthy definition of what a Retard is. And, given the vast numbers of them in China, that didn’t pose much of a problem. After all, virtually all Chinese are Retards; that’s just a Fact. But then it occurred to me that there are in fact Retards in other countries as well – the most common are the ones that confuse definitions even in the light of context. So, for the benefit of those nipple-biters, here is a clear definition of what I mean when I write about the Chinese:

Chinese (Adjective)
of or pertaining to China, the country
of or pertaining to Chinese people, by citizenship
of or pertaining to Chinese people, by ethnicity
of or pertaining to the Chinese language, which is actually only the language of Peking
of or pertaining to the hieroglyphs that make up the writing

Chinese (Noun)
the hieroglyphs that make up the writing
a person whose ancestors were Han, and are thus Chinese by ethnicity alone
a person who is Han and who was born in China, grew up in China, who is thus almost certainly Chinese by culture, who probably loves the Fat Chairman, who is superstitious and thinks that flying fucking Kung Fu wankers are real, who sees no harm in digging up a female corpse for a ‘Ghost Wedding’ and is is thus a fucking Retard.

Can you guess which definition I am referring to when I use the word “Chinese”? I hope that’s clear now.

And so yes, there are Retards everywhere in world, but in very few places do you find that they represent such a significant percentage of the population. Except perhaps Vatican City, where you sort of have to be a Retard by definition, even if you are just a tourist.

With all that in mind, I know there will still be some wanksocks who think I am too harsh on the Chinese. Well, if you are one of those people, then today is your lucky day. Fuck you anyway, but at least today you don’t go away empty-handed. Team MyLaowai are a loose coalition of right-minded folks who don’t discriminate when it comes to calling a spade a spade, and a cunt a cunt. And today we prove it, with our A to Z of Also Fucked Up Countries. And if you don’t like it, bite your own nipples for a change.

A. Argentina. Actually, a nice country that has been ruined by people who think they can steal islands belonging to other people, said islands that belonged to other people since before Argentina even existed. Yes, I know your women are damned attractive and your beef industry is the envy of the meat-eating world, but your National Dish is stew with potatoes and white Argentinian girls think they are better than brown Argentinian girls, which is just plainly bollocks. Fuck you, Argentina.

B. Belgium. Because it’s Belgium. Smoking your pipe is considered an exciting pastime, and sixty percent of the people speak Flemish, which isn’t even an official language. Hell, even most Belgians reckon their country is fucked. Who am I to argue?

C. You thought I’d say China, didn’t you? Too easy. Let’s shit on Croatia instead. No, on second thoughts, let’s not. Croats hold looong fucking grudges and I don’t want my nth generation of descendants ethnically cleansed. How about the Coral Sea Islands instead? They cover about a million square kilometers, or at least they did until 1969 when they were annexed by those evil Australians. Mind you, there were no complaints at the time, because the place was so fucking miserable that not one person lived there. I’m told that today there are four residents, who all work on wind gauges or whatever. Sounds cheery.

D. Djibouti. The place where three tectonic plates collide, where the landscape looks like Hell on a bad day, where the main and probably only resource is salt, and which was the first place in Africa to embrace Islam, way back when Mohammad himself was telling people not to do the things they enjoyed doing. Also the only place in sub-Saharan Africa to host a U.S. military base, which I find ironic. Fuck, what a shit hole.

E. Egypt. Lots of flies, lots of sand, lots of living in the distant past. Add a few stone buildings and that’s about it, really. Though it must be pointed out that some of the most beautiful women on the planet come from here. And it must further be pointed out that many of those women hide their faces behind a rag, so it seems a bit of a waste, really. The country boasts the world’s tenth largest military power, and they still got their hides whooped by a handful of Israelis who were attacked without warning. Twice.

F. Fiji. Used to be a nice place, but a long series of coups and dictators have basically ruined the joint. Also known as the Cannibal Isles, which must cut down on the tourist trade, if the Colonels haven’t already. Also the fourth fattest nation in the world, with the average Fijian being even larger than an average American. Oh, and Fiji Water? Isn’t from Fiji.

G. There’s a few easy targets here. Gaza, which is a country governed by Palestine, must surely be one of the most fucked up places imaginable, but that’s partly the fault of their used-to-hate-Nazis-but-now-act-like-them neighbors. And Gibraltar, which is actually a great place where you can get a proper pint and pay for it with proper money, but again the neighbors ruin it for the people who live there. So I’m going with Guam which is a fucked up abortion of a country and manages that with no help from any neighbors whatsoever, and even though the Yanks claim it, it manages to be a hellhole even without their help. The main business is Japanese tourism, apparently.

H. Holy See, a.k.a. Vatican City, a.k.a. Godbotherer Land. Covered that already.

I. Only one serious contender for this one, and it’s obviously Ireland. Imagine living in a country where your beer has a shamrock drawn on the top because “it’s der craic”. A country populated by people so blindingly dense that they rely entirely on a food source that grows underground, and who then blame the English when they can’t find their food. If you can afford to emigrate, you can afford to eat in a restaurant. Fuck the Irish; no wonder most of them got deported to America and Australia.

J. Jan Mayen. Look it up. Not even a proper country, really, because if even the Norwegians manage to annex you, you must be fairly fucking hopeless. Just be glad you don’t live here, is all I’m saying.

K. Korea. The one to the North, obviously. If you don’t know why, then go and have a look – but be aware that all arriving foreigners are put in detention for three weeks to ‘prevent the spread of Ebola’, but also because, why not? Official name: Choson-minjujuui-inmin-konghwaguk.

L. This one is hard, because as far as I can tell, there are no countries beginning with L that are not completely fucked up. So, here’s one chosen at random: Luxembourg. Surrounded by Germany, France, and Belgium, which is never a good start, with French being the official written language, but German and something laughably referred to as ‘Luxembourgish’ being the languages that people actually use to speak with. In the news recently: A helicopter crash in a cemetery near the town of Diekirch has had rescue crews reporting over three hundred bodies recovered.

M. Montserrat. The name is just so funny. I like to imagine that the people there are all two-foot tall and wear leather trousers. This might not actually be true, and I will never know, because I will never go there, because it was colonized by Irish Catholics who today celebrate the failed slave uprising of 1768. Plus, yeah, the capital keeps being rebuilt due to the all-too-regular eruptions from the freaking volcano. Bugger that for a lark.

N. Actually, most of the N countries seem fairly nice, but New Zealand makes the cut because of all the sheep shagging that goes on there. I know a lot of it’s probably just jokes, but where there’s smoke there’s fire, and man oh man, there’s a lot of smoke here. Plus the women are more akin to rottweilers wearing lipstick, and frankly any people so naive as to believe that they are not being spied upon by the yanks must have Irish blood in there somewhere. I also read that their number one source for immigration is China, and none of them speak English properly. And, y’know, Hobbits.

O. Oman. No other choice, mainly because I couldn’t think of any other country starting with O, and actually I’m sort of ashamed to be ragging on a country that’s really pretty awesome. Yeah, my bad, sorry Oman, but really it’s your own fault for being the only country starting with O.

P. Philippines. Easy. Take a bunch of islands with about a million different languages, and with people who all live on ‘Island Time’ and who choose to build villages alongside – or sometimes even inside – active volcanoes. Take those islands and those people, and make life so easy – apart from the volcanoes, that is – that all you have to do is throw some rice on the ground and hey Presto! you have a crop, and you get supreme idleness; really these folks are so laid back they sometimes fall over. Now, introduce the Spanish, and if that isn’t bad enough, their horrible brand of guilt-and-ignorance Christianity too. Congratulations, you have just fucked up the minds of millions of dipshits, and encouraged them to have more babies than they can feed. But wait, because we ain’t done yet. Now bring in American values, which essentially consist of foolish flag-waving and worship of the almighty dollar. That, my friends, is a potent combination. It’s hard to say what’s most fucked up about the Philippines, and in fact we don’t need to. It’s just a mess.

Q. Qatar. Yeah, Qatar. The biggest debate seems to be how to pronounce the name of the country during the World Cup. So, really, not much to see here. Let’s move on.

R. Russia and Rwanda both rank high. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks yourself.

S. Here we have a lot of countries that only are notable for being pretty much unknown. So I’m going to go with the Spratly Islands, which are actually owned by the Philippines, but which are being gradually annexed by the Chinese, and if that isn’t a mightily fucked up combination, I don’t know what is. Lot’s of really interesting and rare wildlife, which is being rapidly wiped out by soldiers and illegal fishermen using explosives and potassium cyanide. The first people there were from Borneo, but the only people there now are those soldiers and illegal fishermen. Despite that, the Philippines built a mobile phone tower there in 2005. Then in 2011 the Chinese built a tower of their own and claimed that made them the owners of the entire West Philippine Sea. Or something. All-in-all, a shitty place to live, even if you are a soldier or an illegal fisherman.

T. Tibet is a country I wouldn’t want to live in. Religion and animal husbandry figures prominently in the lives of the citizens, while KTV’s and exploiting natural resources figure prominently in the lives of the Han Chinese who live there illegally, having been resettled there by the Red Army following the Chinese invasion in 1950. And that’s really a shame, because Tibet used to be a huge empire that spanned most of Central Asia, with even what is now the Bay of Bengal known as Tibetan Sea. Tibetan Emperors actually ruled most of what is now China. Anyone else spot the irony? Anyway, these days the country has been carved up and is ruled by the Red Army, and anyone who is dumb enough to complain gets dead. So again, really glad I don’t live there.

U. Ukraine. Because, mainly, their neighbors are cunts. But also because they actually believed that voluntarily giving up their nuclear weapons in exchange for a security guarantee from Russia and the U.S. wouldn’t work out badly in the long term, which was fairly idiotic thinking when you get right down to it. The women are gorgeous, the men are away in the army, and that’s great, but only until you remember that the women are descended from people who survived the Nazi and Communist regimes, which makes them as hard as nails and really scary. Really, really, scary.

V. Vietnam. Because, whilst Pho is nice and all, it’s not something you’d want to eat every day for the rest of your life, and your only other choice is sticky rice. The national airline is affectionately known as Plummet Airways, the entire country and all it’s maritime territory is claimed by China, there’s fuck-all infrastructure to speak of, everyone is corrupt, and the Government is Communist. Shoulda just nuked ’em when we had the chance.

W. You’re probably thinking I’ll say Wales, but I won’t, because I’ve heard of this desolate shithole called Wallis and Futuna. Don’t bother looking for it on a map, because it’s so fucking remote that it might as well be on Mars. Google Maps just shows a vast expanse of blue, which is the ocean. There’s nothing to do there, not many already-inbred people to do it with, and anyway why would you bother? If I lived there, I’d amuse myself by shooting dolphins for the hell of it. Mind you, I like their flag.

X. You probably think there are no countries starting with X. If so, you are wrong. The Philippines used to be called Xanadu, so not only is there a country that starts with X, it is a genuinely fucked up country as well. So there, disbelievers.

Y. Yemen. I’d like to say something about Yemen, but I can’t, because it seems that nobody actually knows very much about it. One imagines turbans and Godbotherers and oil, but in fact all I can really find out for sure is that they have nice coffee. I like a nice cup of mocha, but if that’s all you’ve got going for you as a country, then frankly you aren’t trying hard enough. Pull up your socks, Yemen!

Z. No contest, it has to be Zimbabwe. Which is wrong, because it’s actually called Rhodesia, but whatever. There are few places on the face of this ball of rock that are as fucked up as Zimbabwe, but if you’re interested you go and do your own legwork. All I’m going to say is that my mates who come from there refer to a visit to the toilet as “going for a Mugabe”. And also that the country has one of the lowest life expectancy rates and one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates on Earth. Pretty sad for what used to be one of the richest countries in Africa.

That’s the A to Z. If I haven’t managed to upset you, and you feel left out, feel free to email Team MyLaowai with your complaint, shortly before walking east until your head floats. And should you need clarification on any point, remember: there are no stupid questions, only stupid people.

What the fuck is it with little towels, Chinese people? Why do you all seem to have this irresistible urge to carry small towels, often tied around your wrists? It’s a mystery to me, it really is. A friend suggested that little towels were a reflection of the dick sizes of the people who have them, but he can’t be right, because then we’d be talking about what is generally referred to as ‘lint’. Another friend suggested that you Chinese needed them to wipe the sweat from your brow, but that can’t be it either, as no one has ever observed any of you working hard enough to break into a sweat. And we know you don’t use them as handkerchiefs, because if you don’t clear your noses with a snort onto the street, then you excavate the contents of your skull with your fingers (is this what you mean by ‘brain drain’?) So what is it? I really, really would like to know.

And while we’re on the subject of things I’d like to know, why is it you are never without little plastic bags of food? Well, I use the word ‘food’, but this is really stretching the definition of the word to it’s fullest possible extent. At any rate, for the sake of moving the discussion forwards and all the rest of that corporate bullshit, let us assume on this occasion that the stuff you are forever putting into your gaping maws is food, and then you can address the larger issue of why? Why? WHY? It cannot be that you are hungry, can it? Do you really need to always be carrying this stuff around in little plastic bags in case you are faced with a natural disaster or emergency, like not having eaten for forty minutes, for example? Mrs MyLaowai will start eating snacks even as the pizza delivery guy is knocking on the door, and when questioned, will state that she is starving. Starving? When the pizza delivery guy is knocking at the door? Seriously? She can’t wait fifteen seconds longer (and bear in mind, it’s been a less than a quarter of an hour since she last ate)? I’ve seen Chinese people cry when forced to delay a lunch break for fifteen minutes, and quite frankly, that’s worse than pathetic. What is with you lot and food?

Timekeeping, that’s another little point I should like clarification on. More precisely, your complete and utter lack of any ability to keep time. Hey, I know the Spanish are very consistently late to the point of tomorrow, and the Italians to the point of never, but they are aware of this and consider it a great freedom (yet remain puzzled as to why their economies are in the toilet, but that’s another subject altogether). I am also (painfully) aware of the German obsession with being precisely on time to the nanosecond, even when all they will do when they arrive is scratch their balls and be unhelpful, but again this is something of which they are aware. You Chinese are just not aware of time at all. Watches are just expensive jewellery for you, aren’t they? Even your horrible, grating language seems to have no tenses – everything is always “now”, without any conception of what happened before or what will happen next. I have never – never – had a Chinese arrive on time for anything. Hell, most times you people don’t even arrive at the right place, let alone the right time. I have a theory about this, that you are unaware of a thing we Laowai refer to as ‘consequences’. Consequences means that if you do something, something else might happen. A good example would be balancing my expensive crockery and crystal in a precarious pile (after failing to wash it properly), and then being surprised at the expensive-sounding noise coming from the kitchen twenty minutes later, and being further surprised – staggered, even – at the mess you see the next time you walk past the kitchen, and even later expressing shock at the cuts that have magically appeared on the feet of the next person to walk into the kitchen. This is consequences, and you clearly have not the faintest concept of them. Could this be the source of your magical power to find time incomprehensible? COULD IT?

I won’t, for now, do more than touch on the subject of sleeping, and your need to sleep for every second of the day you are not putting food into your traps. Nor will I devote much time enquiring into the mystery of your aversion to soap or water or toothbrushes. And I really haven’t the heart to start a discussion on why you’ll spend ten times longer telling me all the reasons why something can’t be done than it takes to just do the fucking thing in the first place.

But why, really why, are you just so fucking inept at everything you do?
Moving in straight lines, for instance…

Here’s a little experiment you can try at home. That is to say, you can try it at home if you live in the Sahara or the Gobi or the Kalahari. Or pretty much anywhere in Australia. Death Valley even. If you’re in South America and have a holiday home in the depths of the Patagonian Desert, then this is definitely for you:

Walk out into the middle of nowhere, look around to ensure that you are absolutely alone, and proceed to build a bus stop. Actually, just push a stick into the sand and tape a piece of cardboard to it that has the words “Bus Stop” written on it in crayon. It’s the general effect you’re looking for here, not a recreation of the Realism Art Movement. Then, imagining that you are at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere, all alone with not another living thing in sight, stand at the bus stop.

I give it all of two seconds before a Chinese pushes past and stands right in front of you.

Actually, there’s probably not a lot of point in moving your caravan or RV to the depths of the Great Western Desert and constructing a bus stop, because now you already know what is likely to occur. That, and your wife will probably have you declared insane or legally dead or something. So yeah, maybe we should call it a thought experiment. Philosophers do those all the time so it must be fine, right?

Anyway, the point is, Chinese simply must push past you and stand right in front, no matter what you are doing, why you are doing it, or where it might be being done. Some of the rungs in their twisted little double-helical ladders are missing I reckon, although of course that is the technical explanation that geneticists give. Most people just call it being fucktarded. And fucktarded they are – if you want an insta-crowd in China, all you need is two Chinese and an object for their myopic attention to focus on. Bingo! They’ll start pushing past each other to be at the front, others will notice and push past them, and in the blink of an eye you have a mob of pungent, feckless savages jostling and straining to be at the front of the herd.

I kid you not, I watched the other day as a Chinese was reading a newspaper in the street, while a random passer-by tried to push in front to see what he was looking at. Another saw the action and joined in. Within minutes there were no less than forty of the muppets, all of them trying to be in front. Lord knows what happened to the newspaper – someone probably ate it for all I know.

It’s this bloody obsession they have with being first. First, best, biggest, loudest, most, before anyone else, ahead of the rest, you get the point. It doesn’t matter how insignificant the deed is, they have to be Numero Uno. And if they can’t, they lie and say they are. And if they can’t do that, then it simply didn’t happen. And it doesn’t matter what corners they cut to get there, who they step on, who they cheat along the way, how pointless it is… They will be First, legends in their own minds. If Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh actually went back to the Challenger Deep today, they’d probably find a Chinese flag there that had been dropped by a surface ship, and weighted with a plaque stating that China had got there first. Neil Armstrong, were he to return to Tranquillity Base today, would no doubt find a gilded bust of Chairman Mao and a sign saying that the moon was discovered in China five thousand years ago. Walmart, despite revenues of nearly 422 billion U.S. dollars in FY2011, is still not as big or as important as the bloke in the wetmarket down the street from where I live.

China has the best Olympics, the biggest Expo, the most developed industries, the best roads, the longest penises, the fastest cars, the tallest buildings, and the most powerful neon signs. The people are the most diligent, hardest working, longest lived, happiest, most affluent, healthiest and politest ever to walk the face of this green Earth. They were here before the dinosaurs and invented civilisation and cities and agriculture. In fact, they invented everything, even things that haven’t been invented yet.

And I pity the fool who tries to claim otherwise. He’ll be torn limb from limb by an uber-nationalistic mob of shrieking imbeciles who will not ever accept that they are not First.

The thing is, you see, that the Chinese psyche is a brittle one. One and a half billion tantrum-throwing children who lob their toys out of the pram the very instant things look like they aren’t going their way. The only thing that holds them together emotionally is Being First. If you are First, then you don’t even need to acknowledge the existence of anyone else. If you are First, there are no problems worth mentioning. If you are First, nothing else matters. Delusion it may be, but when Chinese meet actual emotional adversity, or what we refer to as ‘reality’, they shatter. Their whole world comes crashing down. You and me, we dust ourselves off and think “must try harder next time”, or “well done, that other chap”, or “so what?”. A Chinese is more likely to to take the long jump off a tall building.

This is why China is and must always be Number One. Why the Chinese are always Number One. Why Chinese culture is always Number One.

Ironic, isn’t it, when one considers that this is a nation of Number Two’s.

… will resume in the near future. Stay tuned to this frequency.

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