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Angry Chinese Blogger:
The news and views about China that the big media can't, or won't, tell you The is no single truth Menu: Home |
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The Rabbit Hole: 101 easy ways to tell that you’re in China
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| For your reading pleasure 14 quick and simply ways to discover if you live in China. Feel free to add your own. Spittoons are considered a foreign contrivance that has no place in Asian society. As are cheese and non-smoking sections in maternity hospitals. You get into the back of a Taxi cab and find that it has no safety belts, but that the seats are still in the plastic wrappers that they were delivered in. You can go to prison for trying to hold an election, but not for rigging one. Adverts for fortune telling services are considered ‘unhealthy’, but tobacco and liquor adverts are not. Everybody knows about Nanjing, but nobody has even heard of Auschwitz. You can buy flick-knives and machetes off of a rug along a city street, but you can’t find ‘hide nor hair’ of pair of plain black shoelaces when you really need them. A Big-Mac costs more than a DVD. Spiderman two comes out on DVD before it does in the theatre, and it’s a better quality pirate too. It’s harder to buy a genuine DVD than it is to buy a wife, and more expensive to boot. Using the rest room requires poise, balance, and a gas mask. When in a rest room, women have to ‘aim’ more carefully than men do. Your Kentucky fried chicken comes with a pair of disposable gloves. The toy in your Happy Meal travelled a shorter distance to get to the restaurant than you did. Soy beans come in every form imaginable, except for the ones that they sell in your home country, particularly if you grew up eating natto for breakfast every morning. The same is true with rice for westerners that grew up eating puffed rice cereals. |
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There were spittoons placed on every landing of the guest-house where I
lived from 1997-2000. It took me months to figure out what they were for.
They weren't spitoons, those were the rest room stalls.
My gongxian:
1) Your mom has to Fedex you Deodorant.
2) During every broadcast of Olympic sports, the Chinese competitor always
wins (unless it's live).
3) You can get a VIP card to Kenny Roger's Rosters (I have one from the
Chengdu branch).
4) People respect badminton.
5) No one's racist, but everyone hates the Japanese.
Your broadband access is oddly similar in speed to what a North American
dial-up connection. You pick up the China Daily and find yourself missing
the lively debate that took place in Singapore's Straits Times.
I'm am interested in seeing that cigarette vending machine, haven't seen
one yet here (in Shanghai or Beijing).
austerlitz? is it a typo or do people mind so much about napoleonic wars?
Marco, yes, it was a typo. I guess I've just proved my own point.
prices in supermarkets are negotiatable.
Oh, I missed the bit about adding your own: