Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

How to be a Great Chinese Mechanic

So you want to be a great Chinese mechanic? Your dream is easier than you can imagine. In just a few short paragraphs I will educate you in the way of motorcycle repair in China and set you on the way to a career of inflicting frustration and despair on anyone that is suckered into your shop, while ridiculously over-billing them for shoddy work. The good news is you’re almost halfway towards the goal already! Just answer these 3 simple questions:

1) Are you a Chinese man?
2) Do you like to get involved in activities that you don’t understand?
3) Do you own a hammer?

If you answered “yes” to those 3, you’re well on the way! Why, you’re practically already a mechanic, you just need a filthy, grease stained patch of dirt to work on and you can start ruining people’s machinery. But keep reading and let me show you the path to mechanical greatness.

“But wait”, you whine in your plaintive, weedy voice, “I really don’t know anything about fixing motorcycles, I’m hardly able to identify the gas tank 2 times out of 3…” Don’t fret little man, let me introduce the concept of “job shopping” to make your career problem free.

Job shopping is when a customer brings in a machine you’re not familiar with or asks for a repair you don’t understand, like replacing a lightbulb. Your first task is to assure the customer that you can handle this repair, it’s no trouble at all and you have every confidence it can be done in a few hours. Do your best to wrangle some money from the customer “to buy parts” and set a good fat price for completion; plead poverty, duress and how difficult the job will be, squeeze him like a grape. Then, once the customer is out of sight, find someone that can actually do the job; maybe a bigger shop down the road? Maybe your drunken uncle? Maybe a random member of the idle crowd loitering about your shop? Whoever, it really doesn’t matter. Get a firm price from them and negotiate mercilessly, every RMB they get is basically stealing from you, so fight hard. They don’t have to do a good job, assure them that the customer will never meet them, so they can just rush through it with used parts and it won’t matter. Get the repairs done and get the bike back to the customer. It’s best if you drop it off, so he won’t have time to check it over before you disappear. Get the money from him and beat feet. When the shoddy work falls apart in a day and if the customer comes back to you, plead ignorance, it isn’t your fault the other guy did a crap job. Job shopping is the express train to success!

The thing to remember to be truly great is that your time is worthless. Of course, as a Chinese man, any time not spent drunk or in the company of underage whores is just wasted, and if you’re at your “garage” you’re basically just hanging out and killing time. Since you can’t bill the customer for labor, the only way to make money in the mechanic game is to charge inflated prices for parts. So if a customer comes in with a blown head gasket, fuck that guy. It’s 2 hours of labor for a RMB$5 part. But a customer with a blown starter is money in the bank! Starters take all of 5 minutes to change and you can charge what you want, once his bike is in pieces. The best part is that you can rewind an old starter and slap that in, no need to buy a new one, but make sure you charge like it’s made of gold and blessed by GuanYin. Sure the replacement starter will fail in a week, but who cares? The customer will be long gone by then. And if he isn’t, it’s a chance to upsell him on a new starter!

A good mechanic repairs a motorcycle once, a great mechanic can make a career of repairing the same bike once, over a period of months. The secret is to screw up something that will make the bike come back later. The best way is to use the secret Shaolin mechanic technique known as “Chinklok”. When something needs to be tightened, a nut or bolt, stupid Western mechanics will just tighten it, maybe they’ll put some bizarre goop called Threadlok or a lockwasher on it to stop it from falling off. But that’s hardly the way of the great Chinese mechanic! Where’s the job security in that? No, the Chinese way is to tighten it until it just feels snug, then give it 3 quick turns. This strips the threads and guarantees it’ll fall off in a few days. Even if the bike doesn’t come back to you, it’ll have to go to another mechanic. When we all work together like this, we all profit. So don’t forget to Chinklok all the nuts and bolts!

Tools are an important part of being a great mechanic and you should treat them right. The instant you’re done with a particular tool, open your hand and let it fall to the filthy floor. There’s nothing more satisfying then hearing the “clang” of a precision instrument bouncing off a delicate part. That’s the sound of job security, as it’s hardly your fault the customers stupid carburator was under your hammer. More parts = more money!

It may be that a motorcycle comes to your shop that looks like it might be a challenge. Maybe a foreigner pushes his bike to your door, maybe it comes in on the bed of a tractor. This spells trouble! Foreigners are bad news, they expect repairs to last more than 20 minutes and their mechanic to not be a lying sack of shit. As a Chinese mechanic, that’s impossible. Better to brush him off and send him elsewhere. Try not looking at him while waving your fat little hand in his general direction. Don’t speak to him, just look away and grunt. If he insists on you working on the bike (maybe by bad luck you’re the only shop in 40km) tell him you’ve never seen one like it and can’t promise anything (even if it is identical to every other bike you have ever seen). Try to convince him that what he’s asking for is either a) totally trivial and not necessary or b) impossibly difficult and beyond the ken of man. Best is to claim both things at once, that should discourage him enough to go elsewhere.

So now you’re on the path to greatness! Remember: job shop, re-use parts, Chinklok and refuse anything difficult. Soon you’ll be known as a great Chinese mechanic!

The Year of the Cow passed, but now…

Stampede Prompts Safety Calls
(http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-02/28/content_16262453.htm)
1/3/13 By WANG XIAODONG and JIN ZHU ( China Daily)

Redux: at 6am, the school kiddies (at an elementary school) needed to get their shit together for another long, arduous school day. They were locked in. Of course, because the gates are locked every night for their safety. We tell prisoners the same thing too. A handful died in the panic, another handful injured. Good start, shame there weren’t more eh? One-Child Policy enforcers would be happy to see this more often… Maybe then families could have more babies, so that they too could live short-assed lives…

Unfortunately, the d00d in charge forgot to open the door in the morning. Pissed? Whoring? Who knows, but certainly not discharging his duties. Pretty standard in the PRC actually…

Not only did the dumb shits who didn’t wake up cop any shit, but their boss didn’t either. Hey bosses, instead of drinking MaoTai with your peers, how about giving a fuck about your charges? NO. That will NEVER happen. Me first. Friends second. My work? Like, am I supposed to give a fuck? What the?

Now. The real problem. The gate was closed. Ok, a small problem. What was the real cause of the deaths? Chinese dumb-assed bitches want to climb to the top. Elbows. Knees. Push. Shove. Fight. Fuck you! etc. If they weren’t Chinese, they wouldn’t have died.

Forget targeting the politicians or leaders. How about you target your shit-assed culture. Stop shoving your way to the front, regardless of who is in the road. You only have your culture to blame, you buck-teethed, short-dicked morons. Yes yes – I watch you try to cross the road against the red light every day. No, I do not cry, when someone, just like you, RUNS YOU THE FUCK OVER.

“Similar accidents keep happening, exposing the deficiency in infrastructure and management in many schools,” a netizen wrote. No, you dickless wonders. It exposes a massive deficiency in your morals.

Go back and study Confucius a little more. Oh, you did. Ok, now stop repeating his lines and UNDERSTAND what he was saying. Ah, you can’t, you can only mouth the words, not actually do it. Welcome to China. And here is where it gets weird.

They blame the poor old teachers for their omnipresent cultural SHIT. “If teachers fail to maintain order, such accidents will be repeated”. No, you moronic cockroaches. If you Chinese keep failing to give a shit about the person next to you, this shit will happen every day, and does. It’s not the teachers, it’s the students’ dumb-assed mother-fucking parents and relatives who keep shoving themselves in front of anyone they can, that cause the problem.

Simple answer here: Learn some manners you uncivilised barbarian apes. oh shit me – that’s what you think of foreigners. Well, shit me sideways dickwads, is there a stampede in America killing students? No, just some poor-aiming shithead with an automatic weapon thinking it’s a perfectly good masturbatory replacement.

“School authorities should launch routine checks of security facilities, such as stair rails and lights, to eliminate potential hazards,”

HAHAHHAAHA. Yes, we have stairs, Yes, I could walk up and down them – but SO COULD A PEDAPHILIC RAPIST

It gets better – Let’s read on:

“Last year, the Ministry of Education urged all elementary and secondary schools across China to educate students on how to respond in an emergency to better protect themselves.
The schools were asked to map out their safe evacuation routes, taking into consideration the number of students, building layout and corridor width, the ministry said.”
That is all well and good, but did anyone ask them to map out where the fuck to go when their ‘uncle’ was too busy screwing a cheap whore to come and open the goddamn prison gate that keeps them locked in?

1.6 billion people and falling. Can’t fall quick enough for our liking.

– Da Bizzare

Disclaimer: The author of this article offered to write it in exchange for being allowed to include links to an outside organisation. MyLaowai has no connection of any kind with the organisation linked to in this article, and does not receive any financial incentives from anyone for publishing this article.

When it comes to parenting everyone seems to have their own opinion on how to raise happy, well-adjusted children; however, there has been a great deal of research regarding the effects that various types of parenting can have on children, especially as they enter their teenage years. While none of these approaches is going to guarantee a particular outcome, there are specific characteristics of authoritarian parenting that can be detrimental to the parent-child bond as well as the behavior of the child.

One type of parenting that is practiced frequently in Asian cultures is authoritative. For example, in China children are typically raised in an authoritarian home and are expected to work hard and follow the rules. Of course, this is in a culture that is completely different from what US children are accustomed to, so the effects on the child can be quite different. Chinese children often excel under this strict discipline and parenting style; however, in the US where more permissive parenting is the norm, overly strict parenting often brings about troubled teens that are rebellious and difficult to control.

Studies have shown that children raised by authoritarian parents are often more rebellious than children raised in more lenient homes. The authoritarian parents often believe that they are the ultimate authority in their home and that the children need to conform to their rules. Unfortunately, not allowing children the ability to make some decisions on their own generally results in poor self-esteem as well as poor performance both academically as well as behaviorally.

Children who are raised in a harsh environment where strict parenting is pervasive often rebel as a way of establishing their own identity. It is natural for children to want to establish themselves as unique individuals, especially as they approach their teenage years. Unfortunately, rigid parenting styles undermine the ability of a child to internalize self-discipline and responsibility. It can also lead to depression and aggressive behavior.

Fortunately, there is a reasonable solution for parents looking to find a parenting style that allows children to learn discipline and accept responsibility without having to break them down and create a negative environment for the entire family. A more permissive, yet functional parenting style is authoritative. This style is often considered the best method by child development experts. The authoritative parent sets boundaries, but listens to their children and creates a loving home environment that can help the child navigate the difficult teenage years.

Raising children is not easy, but understanding how various types of discipline and parenting styles can affect a troubled teen is an important part of parenting. Fortunately, there is always help available for troubled teens and learning how to recognize when need help is an important factor in helping them grow into a responsible adult.

References:
http://www.ahaparenting.com/parenting-tools/positive-discipline/strict-parenting
http://www.parentingscience.com/chinese-parenting.html