Liu Xiaobo 28 December 1955 – 13 July 2017
Archive for the ‘History’ Category
R.I.P. Liu Xiaobo
Posted by MyLaowai on Friday, July 14, 2017
Posted in Censorship, China, Democracy, History, Human Rights, Newsflash | 158 Comments »
#Chexit
Posted by MyLaowai on Wednesday, July 13, 2016
#Chexit: China out of the South China Sea
I guess you can’t just pick and choose which international agreements you have to honour, eh?
Posted in China, History, Media, Newsflash | Leave a Comment »
Welcome Back
Posted by MyLaowai on Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Posted in China, History | Leave a Comment »
Palace Museum: Home to Many ‘Mosts’ and ‘Firsts’
Posted by MyLaowai on Thursday, May 22, 2014
For reference: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2014-05/14/content_17505075_5.htm
Of course, it is high time the MyLaowai team turned its unbiased, unprejudiced but somewhat bleary eyes on the centerpiece of Chinese tourism. Unlike the propaganda promulgated by our colleagues at China Daily, that shining example of harmful harmonious reporting and a beacon of light to all lovers of suppressed free speech globally- we here at the MyLaowai newsteam have done a more thorough report on one of the world’s largest tourist traps.
First, let’s look at the claims.
1. The Forbidden City is the largest and most intact ancient building complex in the world.
Err, someone hasn’t been to the Tower of London. Size-wise, as in most important things, laowai much bigger than Chinese… It’s also older… much older… Technically speaking, the chink king brothel is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. There, if we narrow it down a lot, seeing as most smart little pigs built their houses from stone to stop the big bad wolf from burning them the fuck down… we can finally find a biggest. It’s the biggest surviving fire hazard from ancient times. Not really that ancient either. When I think of Ancient, I think of 1,000+ years, our chinky king brothel is about half that.
2. Biggest collection of old chink things.
Well, that’s a gimme, especially considering they include collections held elsewhere… and nobody, even the Palace Museum, is interested in over half the shit they have anyway…
3. The Palace Museum has been visited by the most tourists in the world.
Another gimme, seeing as Chinese can’t afford to visit other countries, even when they are granted permission to leave. What is with that, permission to leave your own country? Sigh. I can just see it now: “Let’s go visit the Louvre my honey-steeped locust” – “Sorry duck-face, we can’t get passports, Beijing ok?” Talk about a captive audience.
4. The Palace Museum was among the first batch listed as a world cultural heritage by UNESCO in China.
One of the first group of… not the first, but if we STREEEETTTTCCCCHHHHHHH the facts we can squeeze a first out of this I guess. A bit like a Chinese girl with a size-C push-up padded bra claiming to have C-size tits. No hun, they are AA’s. As in the battery…
5. The Palace Museum located in the most beautiful city central axis in the world.
WTF??!!! OMG. Excuse me while I have a martini or 60 to get over the shock. Once we wipe the pavements clean of blood, and ignore the fact it’s a giant bloody concrete pavement, how about we settle with “Located in the middle of one of the most polluted cities on the planet” and call it quits.
6.
Hang on, there isn’t a number 6. You mean, even with including an outright lie or two, and stretching the facts until they can be plucked to accompany a mosquitoes hum, you can only find five?
There are plenty more, here’s just a few:
6: Museum with the most number of citizens slaughtered onsite in the modern era.
Argueably also true for the ancient era.
7: Most number of toilets in any museum without toilet paper!
Google ‘forbidden city toilet’ for a chuckle at reviews.
8: Least disabled-friendly museum.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/02/un-forbidden-braving-beijings-biggest-tourist-attraction-in-a-wheelchair/ as one example. Let’s not forget, this is after the HUGE (Chinese huge is anything bigger than tiny) effort put in for the Olympics…
9. Museum with the most number of military police on duty.
Well, they hafta do something to keep unemployment rates down I guess…
10. Museum with the most ignored signage in the world.
From “No Spitting” to “No Photos” and “No Smoking”, I have yet to see any Chinese taking ANY notice at all of any of these signs…
That’s enough for now, but at least we made it to 10, and did it with the raw truth. MyLaowai > ChinaDaily, yet again.
Have a harmonica day!
DaBizzare.
Posted in ChinaDaily, Guest Post, History, Media, Propaganda | 8 Comments »
Let Them Eat Shit
Posted by MyLaowai on Monday, May 5, 2014
I see it, but I don’t believe it. I thought my skin pretty thick by now, but the incessant claims that China invented everything is really starting to go too far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
Zhu Muzhi, president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, claims the famous phrase “Let them eat cake” is an alteration of a much older, and of course Chinese, anecdote: “An ancient Chinese emperor who, being told that his subjects didn’t have enough rice to eat, replied, ‘Why don’t they eat meat?'” The phrase was attributed to Emperor Hui of Jin in Zizhi Tongjian.
Right…
In the 1700’s, there was obviously so much trade with China, that a phrase 1700 years old, and one none of us have heard in Mandarin nearly as common as the usage of the English translation of the original French meme, spread so prolifically that french peasants were repeating it. ROFLMAO!
I guess the China Society for Human Rights Studies thought if they called themselves The Society for Enforcing a China-Centric World their published works might not be so willingly consumed. Ever see My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Great film… and contains a character (the Greek father) who claims every word in the world comes from a Greek root. Reminds me of Zhu Muzhi…
It’s an unfortunate trend that is starting to pop up all over Wikipedia, now that they have decided to harmoniously unblock it from the Great Firewall. With their new requirement for disclaimers I imagine the talk page for the Eat cake entry would say something like “Zhu Muzhi: I work for the mob that requires China to be God, the one true creator of all.” Or would it? Sneaky bastards these Chinese…
This post was invented in China, just after the MyLaowai blog, 5000 years ago.
– DaBizzare
Posted in Censorship, Guest Post, History, Lies & Damned Lies | 4 Comments »
What Really Happened…
Posted by MyLaowai on Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Posted in Ask MyLaowai, Censorship, China, Democracy, History, Human Rights, Motivational! | 1 Comment »
And another bloody thing…
Posted by MyLaowai on Saturday, September 15, 2012
I’m listening to the sound of air-raid sirens. China is conducting nationwide air-raid drills today. Why a country that purports to be peaceful and not interested in war should feel the need to conduct air-raid drills is a bit of a mystery, but I leave you to draw your own conclusions on that subject.
On a subject that may be related, I received the following email from a friend who works at a large company in China. He would prefer to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons. The email was sent to him by the Party Office in his company.
I can’t be bothered to translate it all, but Google translate is close enough to get the point across:
All employees:
The Japanese government, regardless of China’s repeated solemn representations, has announced the “purchase” of the Diaoyu Islands, the implementation of the so-called “nationalization”, and signed today with the so-called “land owners” a purchase contract for the Senkaku islands “(i.e. Chinese Diaoyu Islands). This is a serious infringement of China’s territorial sovereignty, and the serious injury of the 1.3 billion Chinese people’s feelings is a serious violation of the historical facts and international jurisprudence. The Chinese government and people expressed resolute opposition and strong protests.
The solemn statement of the Chinese government, is that the Japanese government’s so-called “purchase of islands” is completely illegal, invalid, does not change the historical fact of the Japanese occupation of Chinese territory, and does not change China’s territorial sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands. The Chinese government will not sit back and watch it’s territorial sovereignty to be violated. China strongly urges the Japanese side to immediately stop all acts to undermine China’s territorial sovereignty. If the Japanese side insists, all the serious consequences resulting therefrom can only be borne by the Japanese side and Japan’s “purchase of islands” behaviour, and China will implement a series of counter-measures.
[…]
All the company party members and cadres should effectively improve their sense of responsibility, to take up the responsibility of the maintenance of stability work, should take the lead to stick to their own posts, guide the masses of workers rational expression of patriotic fervour in accordance with the law, to unite and move forward together. To work together with all Chinese united, will move forward together, patriotic passion into power in action, take concrete actions to promote the cause […], to promote the harmonious development of the motherland prosperous and strong!
– Party Committee Office
And the air-raid sirens continue…
Posted in History, Lies & Damned Lies, Newsflash, Propaganda | 11 Comments »
Kung Fu Monkeys At It Again
Posted by MyLaowai on Tuesday, September 27, 2011
This is on the front page of the Communist Party mouthpiece ChinaDaily, today:
So that’s how one defends against terrorist threats and enemy air raids, is it? By hitting a piece of mud-brick? What, so Al Qaeda are in the business of lobbing a few lumps of adobe at their enemies now, are they? The much-feared Japan Air-Self Defence Forces are likely to drop a few pounds of gravel on you, is that it? You people are pathetic. That’s just weak.
The worrying part is that Chinese people actually believe that this Kung Fu malarky is some kind of magical, powerful, all-defeating force that truly does enable one to fly through the air and intercept bullets with bits of bamboo stick and all that other childish nonsense one sees in those puerile commie B-films. And yet they somehow still need odds of twenty to one in their favour before they will even consider a fight to be evenly matched.
Back in the days when this cuntry was being run properly (i.e. by the British, Germans, French, Japanese and Americans), the local yokels insisted on staging a fight to prove the superiority of their magical dancing. No, not the Boxer Rebellion, although those idiots also believed that Kung Fu could best Enfield rifles by the power of the mind (Darwinian selection at work, if you ask me). No, it was in Shanghai, and the local hero was some grand master who spent his days on the tops of mountains or whatever it is they do to avoid having to go to work like the rest of us. The hated Laowai was some bloke who had paid attention to the Marquess of Queensbury and knew that dancing around and jumping about like a stick insect on a hot plate didn’t stand up next to a good, solid, thump in the nose. In all fairness, it should be pointed out that he wasn’t a nine-pound weakling who’d been raised on a diet of grass, rice and melamine, and that he could, therefore, allow himself to be hit a few times without collapsing into a soggy heap on the ground. Not that there was ever any likelihood of that happening, of course. The result was fairly predictable, as you would expect: he was stronger, faster, and knew how to actually fight, and it was a three-hit contest – He hit the kung fu wallah, the kung fu wallah hit the ground, and the ambulance hit the hospital. The mighty Laowai went back to work and put in a proper day’s effort afterwards, and when it became necessary a few years later to go to war and fight terrorists and aeroplanes, he used firearms, or ‘thunder sticks’ as the Chinese called them.
Well, Chinese ‘soldiers’, if you insist on your magical flying kung fu as a weapon of modern warfare, then all I can say is you’d best invest in swimming lessons. You’ll need them when you try to visit Taiwan.
Posted in ChinaDaily, History, Newsflash | 30 Comments »
Haibao? Is That You?
Posted by MyLaowai on Monday, September 5, 2011
I have a small confession to make. A small, but telling confession. It may shock some of you, and this is definitely not for small children. If you are easily shocked, or you is a small children, then look away now.
I’m that guy. You know, the guy who sings Eighties songs to himself on the plane. I even know the words. My computer is filled to overflowing with Eighties songs, I have Eighties music videos, I even have some Eighties music posters, including a few of Sam Fox. Lovely girl.
I think Joe Satriani was great. Belinda Carlisle too. And Bryan Adams before he started doing soft, weak songs – in fact I happen to believe that upon reaching the age of adulthood, every Canadian should be led into a special government office and shaken by the hand, just because of Bryan Adams and ‘Summer of 69‘. And then punched in the face, for Bryan Adams singing ‘All for Love‘. The Buggles were tops. Madonna didn’t have AIDS in the 80’s. Olivia Newton-John didn’t sag. Bruce Springsteen gave the appearance of having talent. Queen and Europe and Joan Jett and Pat Benatar were all bloody brilliant. As was Transvision Vamp.
So yes, I am that crazy old guy. Perhaps some of you suspected it already. That’s fine. But here’s the twist:
I was watching Tiffany on YouTube, singing ‘I think we’re alone now‘. Excellent song. And then out of the blue, whammo! I saw Haibao! Tiffany was dancing with Haibao! In the 80’s!
How did she know? How???
Posted in History | 8 Comments »
The Great Rabbit-Proof Fence of China
Posted by MyLaowai on Friday, August 26, 2011
The Great Wall of China, formally known as the No. 1 Rabbit-Proof Fence, is a pest-exclusion fence constructed between 220BC and 206BC to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests out of Chinese pastoral areas. And, of course, to keep Chinese people out of the more culturally advanced lands to the north.
The Great Wall of China is, however, not the only Great Wall in existence. No sireebob! There are literally dozens of famous walls in the world, and most of them were better built and more effective at being, er, walls. As it were. I mean, some of them actually kept people and rabbits out. At least a couple kept the roof up as well.
I know, I know: the Chinese have long argued that all walls – everywhere – are in fact mere extensions of their own One True Wall, and that this therefore proves that the entire planet has been an inalienable and indisputable part of China since ancient times. I’m not the first to make reference to this; I merely repeat what other scholars have noted. But I think that this view is not entirely correct: Take for instance the Great Rabbit-Proof Wall of Australia. That was clearly built by Aussies.
Now, before we get bogged down in details, let’s you and I be quite clear about something: Despite what Gavin ‘Oxygen-Starvation’ Menzies and his sponsors in the Chinese Communist Party would have you believe, Australia has never been a part of the Great Chinese Empire. Evidence for this can be found in the fact that Chinese people cannot spell ‘XXXX’. So there. Moving on. The Great Rabbit-Proof Wall of Australia, however, shares many features in common with the Great Rabbit-Proof Fence of China:
> Both are reasonably long
> Neither was effective at keeping rabbits or Chinese out
> Neither can be seen from space
> Neither are very fucking ‘great’; in fact the best you could say is that they are equally ‘average’. The Pyramid of Khufu is great. Angkor Wat is great. A really decent pint of Guinness is great (despite being Irish). The Spitfire MkIX was bloody great. Aston Martons and Lamborghinis are great. Fences that cost a lot of money and time to build which don’t keep rabbits and Chinese and other vermin out, are pretty bloody average.
In fact, the Average Rabbit-Proof Fence of China is a bloody disgrace. Expensive and time-consuming to build, and utterly useless. No wonder peasants were tearing it down and using the bricks to build houses almost as soon as it was constructed.
And how do I know the Great Wall of Australia wasn’t built by the Chinese? Because it didn’t cost a million lives to build, merely £337,841.
Posted in Fact Friday, History | 4 Comments »
Wo Shi Laowai - Wo Pa Shui 