March 6, 2013

Car theft ends with baby strangled

Source: Global Times

A man who stole a car with a 2-month-old boy inside in Changchun, Jilin Province, confessed to police late Tuesday afternoon he had murdered the infant.

Zhou Xijun, 48, stole the SUV on Monday morning, triggering a province-wide manhunt involving 3,500 police officers.

The case sparked public outcry as soon as it was reported by local media, with many Web users on microblogging service Sina Weibo urging each other to help find the baby.

Zhou turned himself in to police at 5 pm Tuesday. He told officers that he drove to Gongzhuling county, about 60 kilometers southwest of Changchun, where he strangled the baby and buried it in snow.

Read more: http://www.globaltimes.cn/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Print.aspx?tabid=99&tabmoduleid=94&articleId=766105&moduleId=405&PortalID=0

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This is where my liberal "no death penalty" attitude slips. This prick deserves to fucking die!

Changchun is freezing cold. The baby would have damn near froze waiting for the store (probably made of concrete with little heat, as are most stores up north in China) to get warm. I would have done the same thing.

MY wife wants to see this guy fry too. She's Chinese.

February 18, 2013

foreigner living in the prc #2: speaking the language/Chinese stereotypes about foreigners

please understand that my ability to speak, read or write the language is, at best, at a nine year old level. I can read about 4000 characters, write about 2000 and can speak well enough to be understood (more on that in a moment) most of the time, though i speak Chinese with an absolutely horrible New York accent. (你好, Youse Guys. 你的 dawghtah 在那里?).

Anyway, certain problems pop up when trying to speak. First problem: dialect. Yes, there is a massively different dialect between Northern and Southern China, as well as little pockets of "wtf is that you're saying?" Here's an example:

i lived in Shijiazhuang 石家庄, the provincial capital of Hebei 河北 for three years, which speaks the Beijing dialect (北京话）. The Chinese word for ten is 十, Shi, pronounced sure, as in "shirt" without the "t."

Let met give you the numbers in Chinese
零 - ling 0
一 - yi (e) 1 (flat tone)
二 - er (r) 2
三 - san 3
四 - si (suh) 4
五 - wu 5
六 - liu (Lucy Liu) 6
七 - qi (chee) 7
八 - ba (8)
九 - jiu (Geo Metro) - 9
十 - already said
百 - bai (bye) 100
千 - qian (chee-n) 1000
万 - wan (want without the "t&quot 10,000
亿 - yi 100,000,000 (down tone)
兆 - zhao (juh-ow) 1,000,000,000,000

Keep that in mind please. i went on vacation to haikou (China's Honolulu). it was hot. i wanted a hat. i saw a guy on the street selling hats and i found a flat cap i liked. i asked 多少钱 (how much?). He said 四四 (look at the number). 44 for a hat. . .he's on drugs. i say no and put it down. He said. 好吧。 四 (okay. four). i smiled, whipped out four and left. guy grabbed my arm and screamed "不是。 四" (no. four) and put up the hand signal for 10. Confused, i just gave him ten. i can tell a southern by the dialect. There is a pornographic mattress actress named evelyn lin (i found out about her on baidu. they ran a profile on "famous chinese actresses and i didn't know who she was). i watched one of her videos when she spoken Chinese. Her words:

我的名字是evelyn lin. 我现在四八岁. 我好奇我的工作 (my name is evelyn lin. i am 48 years old. i love my job). i knew instantly her family was from the south. she's eighteen 十八, but pronounced it 48 四八.

Anyway, back to the topic. . .apparently the act of just saying hello in Chinese warrants huge compliments.
“你好。” hi
“恩。 你好” yeah. hello.
“哇。 你的中文很好。" wow, your chinese is good.
“但是我只说话你好。” but i only said hello.

There is absolute amazement when someone who does not have slanted eyes or black hair can do the simplest things in their language. However, if you make a mistake, be prepared for them to laugh at you. Because “你是孩子话" (you baby speak). However, when they practice their english (which is normally someone shouting hello to you, then running away laughing at his, it's always a man, moron friends), you can't laugh at their mistakes. "my english is poor" will be the excuse. when you tell them "my chinese is poor," they just shake their head and say "我可以教你" (i can teach you), but never do.

However, normally, when you speak to a Chinese person here, the instant response is "听不懂" (hearing confused). then they turn their backs and ignore the dumb foreign monkey.

Dealing with stereotypes is a little hard too. imagine, if you are a guy, standing at the urinal with men on either side looking over the divider and staring at your junk while you pee saying "好大" (very big). i've turned a few times and said "你可以有照片" (you can have a photo) while still peeing. Apparently, men in this country have all come out of the closest. i have no problems with it, but not while i'm peeing please.

other stereotypes involve relationships. foreigners only want sex. foreigner all have diseases. where foreigners live, mixed breed babies (洋娃娃 follow. foreigners are all 花花公子 (playboys), well in my case, that's true, until i met the girl now that i am going to marry. i was know as “强壮帅哥外国鸭子在1904号" (strong handsome man whore in #1904). again, speaking the language opens doors, especially with married women whose husbands used them for marriage and a baby (because married fathers get promotions at work faster than single men) and do not touch them anymore because they have a 小三 (little third), or a 小太太 (little wife) or a 二奶 (second milk).

another stereotype is rather racist. black people are dirty. My GF tells me this all the time. it drives me crazy. and it isn't just China. This is normal all over east asia. Koreans will not hire black people for the most part. . .and if they do, they will treat them like subhumans. i know a japanese man that dated a black friend of mine and during sex, he would call her "Awarena saru" which translates to "pathetic monkey." My GF speaks Japanese. My black friend thought it meant "beautiful princess" because the japanese man lied. relationship ended on the spot. Chinese people do it too. i have alot of friends here from africa, mostly Kenya, Zimbabwe and Sudan. i have heard so much 黑鬼 (black devil, similar to the n-bomb) used it makes me sick. one girl turned to a friend of mine and screaming “我不喜欢你。 我害怕你，他妈的黑鬼。 滚开." (i don't like you. i'm afraid of you, fucking black devil. fuckoff). i lit into her so hard she started crying on the subway and ran off at the next stop.

i'm Jewish. according to Chinese people, i am wealthy, intelligent, successful and part of the most "amazing race" on Earth. i smile and blush, but it is a little off putting. btw, Chinese for Jew is 犹太人, which roughly translates to "still great people."

Anyway, my time in Nanjing has come to an end. Nanjing to Seoul will turn to Suzhou to Seoul.

i will talk about my new students at my international school next time.

拜拜

February 14, 2013

i think i will start something in here called: foreigner living in the prc #1

this is my first post here. my old name used to be suji to seoul, but i changed it and came up with this one because nanjing 【南京】 is where i live and seoul is where i will more than likely take my honeymoon.

first, i will mention that these postings will not be all about living in china. before i came here, i lived in suji, in yongin, rocking out on the ROK (that's South Korea [韩国] for thems who have never been there). i have also gone into the SAR of Hong Kong （香港 and enjoyed an amazing couple of vacations in Japan and PI (philippines).

Chinese New Year has come and gone again. . .and it was rather subdued in the rural farming community of Lizhuang【里庄】 outside the boring city of danyang 【丹阳】in the Zhenjiang【镇江】 prefecture. When lived up north in hebei 【河北】 in the city of shijiazhuang 【石家庄】, the first night of Spring Festival was like someone attacking the country. on average, the children played with their fireworks fo about 90 minutes, starting less than five seconds after midnight. here in lizhuang. . .it was over in less than 10 minutes. talk about a let down.

The fun about being a foreigner (lao wai老外） in a small little podunk, BFE Chinese town is you are instantly the center of attention. add to the fact that i walk around with a black ushenka with the republic star on it (which they call a Lei Feng hat 雷锋帽子 and a green PLA winter overcoat makes most of them crane their heads and stare. all I think is someone in a gomer pyle accent saying, in mandarin, "gawlee maw. . .then critters aren't jist on the tee-vee."

anyway, part of coming here is because this is my fiancee's home pimple, i mean town. . .and when i say pimple, i mean just that. it's 10 PM here. guess what's open? nothing. zilcho. 没有. just a completely dead town. there is no one on the one road, which is barely wide enough for a bicycle and paved in concrete shit.

one thing i can tell about the people here is they are really people of routine, more so than their city counterparts. here is the daily routine, day in and day out.

0600: wake up
0630: have breakfast, wash your face with hot water (not soap), brush your teeth and take the hooker's bath (armpits, asshole, crotch, teeth and feet). can't forget the feet.
0700: head out to work, which in this town means the factory.
1130: go home for lunch
1200: eat lunch, enjoy a 1.5 hour baijiu 【白酒】 lunch break, get half smashed, then go take your nap.
1330: back to work, a little tipsy and hungover
1730: clock out. . .time to go home
1800: dinner time.
1900: time for a walk outside. now you have to navigate through the dog shit, bicycle, cars that don't view pedestrians as part of traffic, horns that never stop being honked, spitting, snot rockets, the occasional Chinese man (and I mean man) that smells like he hasn't taken a bath since the Great Leap Forward and the cigarettes and smoking EVERYWHERE!!!!
2000: Time to go back into the cave (more on that in a second) and watch TV. . .which in China is 70 channels of the exact same shit:
- news, which really isn't news, but what the hell?
- American Idol style shows (just as awful, only with glass shattering beijing opera crap)
- Gong Fu shows or romances during the Qing Dynasty (I want someone to teach me how to fly, since they all (yes all!!!) believed that craptacular 2012 movie was real.
- Family soap operas where the women spend an hour screaming like banshees, the men act weak and helpless and it's nothing but TALKING. no action, no plot movie. . .just exposition and dialogue, with wooden direction and amateurish production qualities. Ed Wood would be offended.
- Hate the Japanese shows set during WW2
- Mindless cartoons that would drain the intelligence from a rock. I don't know what it's called the most popular involves black wolves and white sheep.
2100: Time to take our shower
2130: Time to crawl into bed
2200: Snoring!

This is the daily routine. For men. Women's routine here, included everything except working. when they are not preparing the meals, which apparently takes eight years to do. . .they sit around gossiping and spreading rumors or just being judgmental about everyone that isn't them.

now, I mentioned something about a cave. apparently, winter means "keep all the windows and doors open, walk around in jackets and coats and don't turn on the heat because that costs money." Since there is no heat source and everything is concrete and brick, most everyone's home is ice cold. my feet have not been warm since i left nanjing. I have told my fiancee "when the house is as warm as it is in your bed, i will get up."

A few more observations:

a) apparently the phrases "thank you, but i don't smoke" and "thank you, but I don't drink" don't exist here. I have been offered cigarettes and baijiu everyday. when i say thank you, but no thank you. . .the men act as though i just murdered their mothers. i try to explain i do not like baijiu and i have asthma. . .but no one seems to understand that.
b) green tea goes great with. . .absolutely nothing. and if you want green tea the way they do it here, go outside and cut your lawn. then take a handful of grass clipping and throw them into piping hot water. there is your green. . .or as i call it, grass tea.
c) if you do not eat yourself into your stomach exploding, they will be offended and tell you to eat more. if your stomach does explode, they will tell you that you shouldn't eat so much. aiya 【哎呀】
d) how many farmers does it take to light one thing of fireworks? here in Lizhuang, the answer is seven. one to show me how to use the lighter, one to show me how to light the wick, one to tell me to be careful, one to tell me my chinese is good, one to tell me i should stand far away or else the heat will burn me, one to tell me i must really like living in china and the last to put the next thing of fireworks close to a parked car, almost ensuring the car will be lit on fire. Why does all of this happen? because they are all half smashed. Fireworks and alcohol. . .it's no wonder more people don't die.
e) if I hear Gangnam style one more time, I'm going to lose my mind. I lived in Korea. I used to go to Gangnam all the time to shop for overpriced crap. Gangnam is five roads. It has all the style of an oil slick. Now, Itaewon style is fun. So is Hongdae. Gangnam blows.
f) finally, i don't think i can stomach small town life in China. . .and this is coming from someone that lived in a small farming community of 125 people for 14 years of his childhood.

I am heading back to nanjing tomorrow. then preparing my move to suzhou to start my geography/history teaching position at an experimental school there.

My next piece will be on education here in China. I am told the students are great students and eager to learn. My assumption is they are just as lazy and shiftless as the rest I've taught, due to collectivized instruction, social promotion, family influence and teaching to that stupid Gaokao 【高考】 they have to take in Sr. 3. The only difference is my students are all 富二代 (fu er dai), meaning new money, second generation (or kids whose parents made it wealthy over the past 10 - 15 years).

On that, 新年快乐。 or 快乐情人节, since I wrote this on Valentine's Day.

PS: It's not all negativity. I just like writing about shit that makes me laugh. If you want more more example, here you go:

In the summer, if I set the AC to 25 degrees in my apartment, people complain they are cold and "chinese people don't like being cold" (good old groupthink). So I sweat to death so they can remain whatever they are to be comfortable.

Enter winter time. . .no heat, doors and windows open, walking around dressed like they are going to dog sled. It has been below 0 here for over a week. Not a word about being cold. . .I put on the heat and people instantly complain they are hot and "chinese people don't like being hot." I have even had students open the windows of my classroom because they are "too hot." But removing their coats and jackets. . .nah, doesn't enter into the mind. It's better to keep the windows open and wear winter coats indoors.

However, get into the car, and they put the heat on so high it feels like i'm on the sun. and in the summer, they keep the windows rolled up and refuse to put on the a/c. . .because "chinese people don't like being cold."

Please explain the logic. Oh, and I've been here since 2008.

December 16, 2012

Freeper former classmates and Fraternity Brothers weigh in on Newtown (remember, I'm the liberal)

And apparently, not only do I not support the constitution. . .I am using this to advance an agenda.

This is what we fight, people. And these people are only around 30 years old.

BTW, the fraternity brother of mine is Bluto: DEAN WIRMER: "Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son."

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THE CLASSMATE

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THE FRATERNITY BROTHER

I kept my face on the bottom. I forgot to edit it out. I redacted all names and photos.