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A cliche about any exotic country is that it is “a land of many paradoxs,” but I think it does apply to china quite well. There are countless times when I’m in china, I see some crazy shit, the what the fuck look comes on my face and I leave the scene totally baffled. So I’m figured I’d start a little series called, Paradoxs of China, here is a prelimary list of some of the ones that have caught me unexpectedly, (and yes I know that these aren’t all strictly paradoxs, but they provoke some short of cognitive dissonance in me (I also know that these are gross generalizations but if you have a blog and aren’t making gross generalizations you are missing the point*);
China is the only country i know of were a simple “Hello,” can lead to violent action in the most peaceful laowai around.
Chinese people are incredably friendly but aren’t considerate. This leads to things like people with fish allergy’s being invited to gigantic seafood feasts, or constant sitting the foriegner in bitch just so he gets the honor of sitting in the car first. (in my short stint in japan, it seemed like they were somewhat the opposite, at least when not drunk, very considerate but not that friendly)
I spend an hour at lesat every other day studying chinese, (ok maybe everythree days), but I can’t even get a proper haircut, let alone talk about the metaphysics of malthusian discontent like I want to, but every chinese person I know can speak the language! How they do it baffles me. It must be an instinct or something.
Chinese people can’t speak english for shit, even though many of them spend upwards of ten years studying it in school. If you’ve spent any time in America, you know that over there even the most dull witted Jeff Gordon fan’s can mumble for hours about the metaphysics of engine modifications required at Daytona, yet the chinese can’t even answer a simple “how are you doing?”.**
Chinese people are supposedly “Very shy” and don’t like to “show off in front of crowds,” yet even if helen keller was chinese, if she passed in front of a Karoke parlor, she wouldn’t be able to stop running up to the mike and grunting out the latest ” A mei” single that’s on the top of the charts.***
Chinese people go to bars pay 50 kuai for a shitty warm carona, when they could just buy a 5 kuai bottle of qingdao twice as big for 4 kuai at the corner store just down the street, and the wierdest thing is that the Laowai do it too!
What’s up with chinese characters? I thought hieroglyphics went out with the pharohs.
Chinese people don’t have sex, but there are fucking 1.4 billion of them!
Chinese people drink water and beer warm, (ok I’m stretching here…)
China is one of the safest countries I’ve ever lived in, but people are always scared about my safety. I’ve been told to always stay awake on trains for fear of having my stuff stolen. I have these crazy for prong triple deadbolt locks on my door that could keep sasquatch out of my house. Shit, I want to go where the bad part of town, if only someone would tell me where it is.
chinese people drive as slow as possible on their bikes but as fast as possible in cars or trucks.
Chinese people don’t know shit about china. Ask a chinese person where something is in there city 50% chance you will get a wrong direction. I was in an airport in japan and there was a sign for a departure to haikou, now hai kou is a very chinese sounding name, so I asked the well dressed chinese business man next to me where it was, he said there wasn’t any such city in china. But I’ve actually met someone who lived in haikou, I guess it’s on this magic island with monkeys next to the spratlys, (which everyone knowns are part of china, malaysia get your hands off!).
The bigger the fingernail, the better the sex.
Even though china stole all these jobs from america, there still are all these people doing all these shitty jobs like digging ditches and working in smelly factories and massaging sweatly old taxi drivers. I mean get with the picture losers, there are stil like a billion stock brokers in america, that’s a way better job, so why don’t you get with it and steal it!.
allright, I’m tired and not coherent, so tomorrow I’ll tell you the central paradox of china!
*the greeks are all incompetent and have goat cheese breath
**most common answer, “to my dorm.”
***Ok I know that sentence is really convuluted but I really wanted to get the Helen Keller reference in.