Hangzhou Lovin’

So, It’s newyearas eve here in China, and I’m probably gonna spend it with some koreans… I don’t really feel bad about missing out on this chance to learn about chinese culture because I get the impression that Spring festival is a lot like thanksgiving; Very imporant for if you are part of the tradtion, but not so exciting if you are an outsider. So maybe tonight I will get a ittle taste of korean culture. I had heard that Koreans are rather xenophobic and don’t like outsiders, but the ones I have got to talking to have all been very nice.

Allright, here’s my rundown of the Iraqi situation as it stands. From Saddam hussien’s prespective he’s damned if he does and damned if he dosn’t. If he cooperates fully with the inspecotrs they will find a hidden weapons program and then Bush will immiediatly go to war, if he dosn’t we’ll still go to war. Now this war isn’t really about WMDs, Saddam is definitly containable as a military force and has no motivation to give his weapons to terrorists as that would probably result in his being removed from office. I think that the only chance we have for peace is if Saddam cooperates, but I think he is too stubborn and parnoid to do that, so I think this is his strategy.

1. Try to push back the date of war as long as possible, so that the americans have to finish the war quickly becasue we can’t fight in the summer in our Bio/Chem suits.
2. On the brink of war, try to cooperate to put further rifts in any coalition.
3. Once the war starts maximise casualties, civilian and military
4. Attack isreal, this will probably happen through terrorism less likely through scuds
5. This is the key, if isreal joins a war against Iraq, then arab support will likely diminish greatly, i wouldn’t be surprised if saddam agents are not already in place to try to agitate the population of key arab countries.
6. Try to drag the war out long enough to create a full blown regional Civil war, where in the Choas, Saddam will be able to find a littl echunk of hell to call his own.

I’m not really sure if this will happen, I think the most likely scenario for a war with Iraq is a quick american victory, followed by a surge in support for Bush. In this scenaria) We won’t see the real negative consequnces (beside the civilian casualties, or if we see another al queda stike) for a few years. The scenario outlined above is what I think Saddam is thinking. It may bot be the most likely but if he has had a long time to prepare and it well within the realm of possibilities.

Well it looks like the authorites decided to crack down on blogger agian, or the figured out how blooger was avoiding the block, whatever the case, you can’t see blogspot sites from china again. Hopefully the situation will be amended soon.

I’ve been kinda bored here in Beijing. Though last nite I found a nice place where you can get all the beer you want for 30 kuai, and I met a japanese dude and a korean girl. I think I stayed to long and was fucking up the japanese dudes game.

As for my game I thought I was in good shape, cause this girl told me and said she was gonna take me out all nite but she has been busy the whole time and I havn’t seen her once. I hope I didn’t do some cutural faux pas…

anyway, if you are in beijing email me, eh? today I only got spam, like this fucking letter from some poor fool trying to pretend he is the son of a welthy head of state.

I havn’t been posting lately cause I havn’t done much. Just studyinh chinese, which uis cool, but not all that exciting. I also figured out how to connect the cable to the TV in my room and I have been on a major TV binge lately. I hardly ever watch chinese YV except for the occaisonal soccer or baketball game, but in my room I have international cable, so there is usually something intersting on. Some things that I learned watching TV the last couple days are that I like the new Justin Timberlake song (does that make me gay?) and that the monkey king is my favorite chinese language show.

the show I watched today started with the monkey king leading a Monkey army against this army of people from the sky. The monkey king starts going at it with the leader of the other side. The monkey king changes himself into a temple for some reason, so that was pretty cool. Then the monkey grows like eight extra limbs to do some serious ass kicking, but the peopel from the sky captured all the monkeys in the army and put them in a pagoda.

Then the show cuts to this temple in the sky with all these monks looking at this boiling cauldren. Inside is the monkey king, but he can fly so he just flys above the lava in the cauldren. Then he gets out of the cauldren and he looks at the main monk, and he can tell he is evil because he can see his skelaton. So then the Monkeyking kicks all the priests asses and flies out the temple.

But then this swastika comes out of no where and blocks him from flying away. then this big ass budda appears. The monkey king is gonna kick his ass and splits five different monkey kings, but how can you fight someone who has excaped the endless torment of the cycle of reincarnation? So budda captures the monkey king and imprisons him in a mountain, where only his head can stick out. Then some shit happens in the city in the sky, and we flash bak to the monkey king, who is kinda pissed off cause a flower is growing out of his nose.

The monkey king starts to contemplate his earliest days, when he started as a rock, and then hen he was born he was this big ass gorialla who walked around killing everbody. So the guys in the sky, sent someone to stop the monkey king (I think it was the pig because it was played by the same actor and he had the same rake for a weapon that the pig does). The pig beats the giant gorialla by cutting off his tail, but then the gorilla shrinks into a little baby monkey. The pig is gonna kill the monkey king but then some magic tricks comes down and tells him to spare the monkeys.

This post is getting to long, so I’ll try to wrap it up wuick. The baby monkey is found by a band of travelling monkeys and quickly becomes their leader. He gets bored with this and decides to visit some humans where he gets in trouble but is saved by a magic flying donkey. The conclusions I drew from this are that the monkey king is either a ninja, or jesus.

Alf’s war prediction: the war starts Feb 24

“Administration officials said their strategy was based on the belief that there might never be a “smoking gun” proving Iraq’s possession of illegal weapons. Accordingly, they acknowledged that the case must be made in a negative fashion: that Iraq has failed to disprove the contentions of the United States and others about its weapons of mass destruction. The administration asserts, without offering evidence, that Iraq has thwarted inspectors by hiding the weapons.” nytimes

Hey fan you are the lower, can you explain this logic to me, I don’t understand….

I decided I like chinese people better than westerners. Or maybe I should say chinese who don’t speak any english. With english speakers you have to think all the time abuot what you are going to say, try to be intersting, try to show interest in what the other person is saying. It’s just too much work. With chinese speakers all I have to do is wonder in to a restuarunt or a shop and somewill come up to help me. If I try to say something in Chinese I am instantly hilarious. It’s very easy to find intersting topics of conversation “wo shi meigouren” “Wo jiao yingyu.” and when we care done with are little exchange we both feel much better than if we went through some bullshit english conversation.

Soren Anderson survived the train wreck of the centuary.

Well since fan seemed to not understand the point of my last post, I feel I have to write another one to edify him on my habits. “welcome to the real world,” fan inanely tells me. What real world? I’m in fucking China. Thats about as far from the “real world” refered to in that american phrase, as you can get. Then he tells me to adapt. Adapt to what chinese culture? Am supposed to go home and do whatever my parents tell me to and start spitting on the sidewalk alot. Am I supposed to not feel uncomfortable when guys touch me?

Of course you can change, but that change isn’t neccessarily easy. Taht was the whole point of my post below, that changing my ways was putting me in a pissy mood. Plus their are certain things about you charecter which you can’t change. I’m always going to bew a contrary bastard. See this whole post is an example of me being a contray fuck. Fan tells me to live in the real world, and I say fuck him, I liek my fantasy world much better.

aiii, why am I always sick in china?

Coressponding from Beijing, started taking some Chinese classes they are pretty good. I definitly have a suprierority complex compared to the other students. they’ve maybe been in Beijing for cuple monthes, but I’ve been in fucking XinXiang, henan, the “real china”. I know that these are probably jsut rushes to judgement and I don’t actually know shit about these people but it made me think about how much I like my current situation, so I am just going to keep deluding myself into thinking that I have a privilidged acces to china.

I think that it inevitable that laowai in china will get a “fucking westerners, don’t fuck up my china!” attitude. It’s a stupid attitude but, attitudes don’t come about rationally, they jsut kind of pop up in your mind and you have to deal with them. Last week I was just pissed off at everybody and I think the reason is my american attitudes and lack of language ability clashing with chinese culture. I’m an ornery and contray motherfucker sometimes. I hate when people tell me to something. If someone tells me to be somewhere on time, I might show up late just cuase I don’t like being told what to do. These attitudes don’t really work well for a Laowai in China. First of all, most people treat you like an honoured guest which means that they need to do everything for you. For example one of my friends wanted to introduce me to one of her friends son, so he could practice english. I was a little sceptical at first but he was a pretty cool guy so I had a good time hanging out with him. The problem was that his mother tried to do help me every second of the day. Oh you need a train ticket I will get it for you. You need to go somewhere, I will send a car for you. Come out to eat with us tonight, come over to our house for sopring festival. I started to get pissed off about tyhis, but I thought it would be rude to refuse her offers, but then I would get all passive aggressive and start to show up late to dinners or just be all ornery when I was around them.

I think I just have to be more assertive with my independance. Not knowing the language dosn’t make that easy but it’s motivation for me to learn.

Speaking of learning chinse I feel that I’m one of the best in my class, espiecially in pronunciation. The teacher does not correct our use of tones enough, this is essential if we want to make ourselves understood, but otherwise the class is good. I mostly jsut want to get a grounding in grammer because that’s where I am weakest and it seems like we cover than often in class. (Why do chinese people say often like “ofen,” I know a brit and he dosn’t do this, maybe it’s those fucking londener’s…)|

I’m feeling a little down on China these last couple days. I think it’s just that time of the month, so I will try to ignore it and just right about how George W. Bush fucked up american foriegn policy. Thgat’ll make me feel better…

Most critiscims of bush’s foriegn policy are critiscms of the substance of his foriegn policy. While I think that these are proper critisicms and urgently needed in light of the impending war, I think the real damage he is doing to long term american foriegn policy interests is in the style of his foriegn policy.

Even though a war in Iraq is likely to be horrible for the civilians there, the long term effects may not be that important. Saddam regime weas going to implode within the next ten years anyway. We are just hurrying the process along now. The problem is that in ramping up to the war with Iraq we fucked ourselves over for years to come. We totally undermined the U.N. which we set up and does whatever we want it too, so that was like shooting ourselves in the foot.

We set out a stupid ass plan of “preemption” that only encourges states to produce more weapons and make the world a less safe place. We showed that we are not willing to go into any large confrotation by caving to pressure from north korea after we said we would never cave. This all makes it more likely for other states to blackmail us. Ay, I’m just geeting more pissed…

Regular blogging will now resume. The ministry of truth of the PRC has decided that the rants of one crazy american do not need to be blocked from the innocent Chinese public. How wrong they are…