You've Been In China Too Long When...

[devicenull]

[GomiGirl]

What is it about the cigarette packet present thing? How did that start and why?

First time I went to China about 11 years ago, I was asked to pack as many cartons as I could get through to give away packets as gifts..

[Taro Toporific]

You've been in China too long when...

....Japan seems a wonderful place.

(Whenever I'm in China I feel like sending Japan a formal apology for ever saying anything bad about Land of Concrete.)

[devicenull]

[cstaylor]

Many many other ideas as well, all of which are golden money makers. It should all start up within a year and if it goes according to plan, me and my girlfriend (future wife?) should be retired in 10-12 years at the ripe old age of 35.

Man, if I was her father, I'd be putting the breaks on here...

[devicenull]

The guy at the laundry knows your name, nobody else's, and you have never really told him your name.
You know where the hell to get nutmeg, oregano, basil, and any other spice you desire.
The "western food" here tastes better than the western food back home.
You find yourself coining words and phrases that native Chinese understand.
The words and phrases you coin are swears.

[devicenull]

Sichuan Dialect makes sense

[Buraku]

Funny thread !

Whenever I'm in China I feel like sending Japan a formal apology for ever saying anything

Nah...Nippon is still a shithole

After 6 decades of Aussies, Yanks, Canadians, Swedish, Brits...pouring money into Japan and re-building the place after WW2 the place is still a fucking dump
Nippon got all the loans and support from around the globe for its social development and re-construction but the Japanese just built a giant slum/ghetto,
mass suicides, constant stock exchange scandals, dumps like daSaitama, bankrupt pension systems, shitholes like Aichi the ass of Japan

China
Well Chinese have an excuse for being so fucked up, the china embargo, occupation and power struggles, civil war, sanctions on Chinese, they were ruled by military law, Mao's dictatorship...
yet after 8-10 years of free-trade and development the Chinese are starting to look like a much better future than Nippon

[Tsuru]

In general maybe, but I doubt the Chinese countryside with hundreds of millions of people living below the poverty line will improve anytime soon as the Chinese economy has a clear interest in an endless supply of cheap labour from nurturing their wealth gap. Japan did a much better job in that respect.

[Taro Toporific]

What is it about the cigarette packet present thing? ..

You've Been In China Too Long When...this looks normal.

[devicenull]

You go to rural fucking China and people don't stare at you at all.

[SF'd Gaijin]

You come back to the States, move to Chinatown and call it the "hood."

You are on your third Chinese wife and are still enjoying life.

You are obsessed with Chinese women and write your first biography called "Yellow Shadows."

Your favorite novel is "The Insideous Fu Manchu."

Your favorite movie actress of all time is Anna May Wong.

You look through the F'd Gaijin threads looking for China topics.

You are following DeviceNull's love life via F'd Gaijin.

Etc., Etc.

[mr. sparkle]

I've never been to China. But I do live in Chinatown. So I can only give you my observations from the "You know you've been in ChinaTOWN too long when..." POV.

Is that cool? Here's my first ones:

Do a nature blow on the sidewalk and don't give it a second thought.

Think nothing of grabbing people's asses to make them move out of the way on the sidewalk.

Never enter a bus through the IN door.

[SF'd Gaijin]

I've never been to China. But I do live in Chinatown. So I can only give you my observations from the "You know you've been in ChinaTOWN too long when..." POV.

Is that cool? Here's my first ones:

Do a nature blow on the sidewalk and don't give it a second thought.

Think nothing of grabbing people's asses to make them move out of the way on the sidewalk.

Never enter a bus through the IN door.

Mr. Sparkle,

You've been hanging out on Stockton Street too long.....you've seen it all.

At least you've got some good places to eat.

SF'd

[devicenull]

You don't care about the money anymore, and you cannot force yourself to ever teach english again. God, fuck NOS.

[devicenull]

^^^You've never lived in China, have you? ^^^

You find the demands of foreign friends when shopping to be insane and overboard. Receipts? Warranty cards filled out? English manuals?

The heiche drivers don't even try to rip you off anymore.

Whatever you want to buy, you have a "contact" who will get it for you for cheap.

[devicenull]

English teaching bullshit no longer appeals to you and the only thing you want is to find a real job.

[Korrito]

You get back home and pronounce road signs in Mandarin.

Pop a testicle with laughter now that you understand the names of the local Chinese restaurants.

[oyajikun]

"You laugh at the kids watching you eat half a fried American Eagle! "

LMAO!!!

[Catoneinutica]

One thing I've wondered about: China is known to have an extraordinarily skewed gender ratio - something like 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. Boy babies have outnumbered girl babies for as long as the one-child policy has been in place, around 25 years, if memory serves.

Anyway, while the absolute number of hot chix must be in the millions, they must've become quite scarce relative to the number of guys pursuing them. Has this relative scarity resulted in the Mainland chix acquiring higher maintenence requirements? Do local guys get sulky when they see gweilo with local gals?

-catone
-jes' wonderin'

[GomiGirl]

One thing I've wondered about: China is known to have an extraordinarily skewed gender ratio - something like 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. Boy babies have outnumbered girl babies for as long as the one-child policy has been in place, around 25 years, if memory serves.

I think the rate of conception between the sexes is the same as the global average - slightly more girls than boys, however, in China not all girls are taken to full term.......

[is2scooby]

I think the rate of conception between the sexes is the same as the global average - slightly more girls than boys, however, in China not all girls are taken to full term.......

But.... Why? That seems crazy! What part of the culture fosters that behavior?

[GomiGirl]

But.... Why? That seems crazy! What part of the culture fosters that behavior?

The part of the culture that believes that a boy child is better than a girl child... eg foetuses of the wrong gender are aborted prior to birth... happens in many countries.

[devicenull]

You sign onto a 3 year contract and think working here is a good idea.

You finally decide that being poor and living comfortably in semi-slum is not fun or noble.

You start to get more pissed off than irritated at the fucks in their bike-cabs who harass you to take you to tourist spots... when you are going to work.

You start to realize that not everyone is equal, some people are dirty horrible creatures, others are conmen, and your company needs expats because the locals have no creativity.

Stereotypes, long repressed and dismissed in your mind start to surface again.

You are desensitized to beggars with horrible deformities, and toss them a bar of hotel soap instead of money. Ditto for any beggars in general.

You start ranking the beggars in terms of who has it worse, make a mental catalogue and criticize the more-able ones when they get pushy. "yes, i see your left hand is horribly deformed, but your right hand seems just fine for grabbing people's money... get a job"

You are put up in a horrible "hotel" as part of a job, lied to every step of the way, not paid in the end for the work, and while all the other foreigners are complaining as if it is hell, you calmly smile and say "it could be worse"... and indeed it could be, because you have lived it.

You start making comparisons to "teaching english" and "whoring" and find the two differ in only one respect: whores get STDs, you get long lasting mental trauma. The whores rely on anti-biotics to stop the pain, you rely on cheap cheap booze.

You get a cat

You start longing for quality Japanese television... yes, there is something worse than Jap TV... China TV. At least in Japan you get pretty awesome commercials. In China.... well, I know that I can really shop around for cold medicine if I ever get a cold at least.

You stop talking about your favorite spots, because some fucker will undoubtedly put it in Lonely Planet, it will become swamped with shitty tourists, the shitty vendors will follow, and then the government will tear down everything you liked about the spot in the first place due to the increased foreign interest.

You start to wonder if drug dealing and thuggery is just a common trait among everyone from africa and if it is possibly genetic.

It is no longer the drivers breaking the rules that pis you off, it is the ones following the rules that piss you off.

You smile because you know in 2008, the rest of the world will see and experience your pain, and then, and only then, might there be some change.

[Buraku]

You try to get some news on breeding lama's but state tv has already censored it


Amnesty Slams Google, Yahoo, Microsoft for Censorship in China
http://oraclewatch.eweek.com/blogs/google_watch/archive/2006/07/20/11682.aspx
Google censorship in China Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are subverting freedom of expression by abetting censorship in China, Amnesty International says in a report.

[Blah Pete]

Good timing for this thread as I am sucking down Ashai Super Dry at the (airline name removed in case this thread is beeing monitored by internal security) lounge at Shanghai Airport waiting to get out of here.

I think you have been in China too long if you ever get to the point where the fucking car horns don't bother you.

You can say in the local dialect to the street whores trying to give you a massage & a little extra "bitch I wouldn't fuck you with Devicenulls' dick"

You get used to the sewer smell.

The thousands of country fucks outside the provincial train stations lounging around and staring at you don't bother you anymore.

You start to think that Nagoya is really a beautifull city.

The street urchins selling fake Rolex watches have seen you so often they know that you won't buy anything so they harassing you.

You start to think what would have happened during the Korean war if McArthur wasn't relieved of command and had access to the nukes.

[Buraku]

You start to think what would have happened during the Korean war if McArthur wasn't relieved of command and had access to the nukes.

Crazy Mao welcomed nuclear war, there are plenty of quotes out there showing it
Mao felt the US didn't have enough Nukes to kill all Chinese and that a few hundred million would survive, to reclaim the planet covered in nuclear ash.

The Soviets were in good shape in the 50s
McArthur was a good ruler when into came to bitch slapping Hirohito and turning the Japanese into his new sheep, but when it came to warfare he was a pipe smoking idiot who abandoned the Phillippines to their deaths and he was a no-brainer who was always lacking in intel and info.
Russians were already testing Nukes in '49 thanks to some spy secrets from Fuchs, with the thermonuclear fusion bombs they were getting ahead of the US and were also to beat the USA putting people into space some years later.
if the US and Soviets went to war Russia would be smashed into rubble
but Washington, NewYork, L.A and Houston would be uninhabitable radioactive craters.
With the two Superpowers dead, some Euro-nut like the fourth Reich or Asian dictator would have a pretty easy time rising to power with the USA and Russians out of the picture.

By the time the 60s came round the Chinese were building their own aircraft, Nukes, missiles and such so they not only had huge numbers of people and had a pretty good military...but their economy was a mess and the Russians and China had started to split over their versions of the communist ideology. The biggest threat to the Russians and Chinese during from the 60s on was the Sino-Soviet rift when Russia and China pointed Nukes at each other.

[Taro Toporific]

You start making comparisons to "teaching english" and "whoring" and find the two differ in only one respect: whores get STDs, you get long lasting mental trauma...

English Tutors Complain of Chinese Abuse
The Associated Press, Aug 5, 2006, BEIJING
.....It's a new twist on globalization: For decades, Chinese made their way to the West, often illegally, to end up doing dangerous, low-paying jobs in sweatshop conditions. Now some foreigners drawn by China's growth and hunger for English lessons are landing in the schoolhouse version of the sweatshop....
....As China opens up to the world, public and private English-language schools are proliferating. While most treat their foreign teachers decently, and wages can run to $1,000 plus board, lodging and even airfare home, complaints about bad experiences in fly-by-night operations are on the rise. The British Embassy in Beijing warns on its Web site about breaches of contracts, unpaid wages and broken promises. The U.S. Embassy says complaints have increased eightfold since 2004 to two a week on average.
Though foreign teachers in South Korea, Japan and other countries have run into similar problems, the number of allegations in China is much higher because "the rule of law is still not firmly in place," said a U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"A number of substandard English language teaching mills have sprung up, seeking to maximize profits while minimizing services," the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee said in a recent report on Russell's case. These institutes have become virtual "'sweatshops' where young, often naive Americans are held as virtual indentured servants.".....

[kurogane]

You know you've been in China too long when you have never been there and don't even want to go.

What was that National Lampoon said about France??

[devicenull]

You find yourself signing a lease for multiple years and are satisfied with an apartment that is so-so by US standards.