Posted on February 1, 2010 and filed under Culture Shock.
Not sure what it is but in China the two most safely guarded resources are : toilet paper (qi jin) and plastic bags (tai zah).
For instance none of the bathrooms are equipped with toilet paper, unless you’re at a fancy hotel or restaurant. They expect you to carry it around with you.
Now if you go to a store and buy a crapload of stuff, say 5 40 ouncers of Tsingtao, they’ll be like “Ni Tai zah ma?” (You want a bag?).
Bag prices range from a few Mao (very small amount of money not measurable in American money.. lets say its equal to letting a person smell a dollar you have or put a penny in their mouth and then you taking it back) to maybe 1 Yuan (.14 cents).
The amazing thing is if you say yes, what with your 5 forties of Tsingtao and all they sort of look at you like “Well hello mr big spender”.
The other day I almost crapped my pants at the mall and tracking down toilet paper was a race against the clock to save the United States from a terrorist attack (my pants being the United States, eh you get the idea…)
Finally I found a machine that sold little napkin packages, but it only took 1 yuan coins and I only had 1 yuan bills (no, that didn’t happen…) so I had to like explain to people who work cash registers in my broken chinese why I wanted the coins instead of the bills.
It’d be like if someone was trying to urgently trade you two nickels for a dime. You’d think they had mental problems.
Anyhow, I think China needs to realize that if you make something so readily available people won’t abuse it. Unless they’re chinese people. Well, I guess this is sort of a catch-22. For example, McDonalds doesn’t hand out unlimited ketchup in China, the reason is that while you might go to McDonalds and see that as ketchup you can use there (you’ve probably got a bottle at home) Chinese people are like “Hey, free ketchup!”
Welcome to take the Shenzhen Taxi. Please buckle up your seat belt and exit on the right.
This message plays after the driver dips the red vacant sign that starts the meter. One of the first things that you’ll notice is that there isn’t a female end for the seat belts. And you’ll wish there was.
so from what i understand i put key in and then try and crash pedestrian, correct?
I willingly ate a dog skewer this weekend. I jokingly said to the street vendor “gourou” and he grabbed a skewer and put it on the grill. it looked like lamb. i was sort of curious to try it when i knew what i was eating so i didn’t stop him. this sort of thing takes on a life of its own. There’s something almost sexually deviant in eating things youre not supposed to eat. Like putting something where it shouldn’t go. There’s an excitement to it in any case.
And i dont know how to say “just kidding” in chinese.
i dont know if there’s a word for joking.
the chinese do not have a rich tradition of joking.
“you say you want gourou, you eat gourou!”
It was pretty good.
i’m back in LA in two weeks. my friend felix says he must eat it once per week. imagine if i’m out at 3am, cruising the streets of monterrey park and alhambra, looking for dogmeat like a junkie might look for heroin.
Part of what i’m experiencing is what anthropologists call “going native”. The stress involved in being in another culture and country, the pressure to conform to the local standards– it may be all of this however I have not really tried to conform in any other ways. I guess to me eating dog is the crown jewel of cultural weirdness here, in my mind, and I did it to pay some sort of penance. The way Greeks visiting Rome may have allowed themselves to be apart of barbaric and painful blood rituals in order to show affinity.
Also, as mentioned, it tastes pretty good.
a serious HK journalist being culturally insensitive
I have always been one to spit, or to cough up phlegm and then spit it out. People think I do this because I’m learning from the Chinese but really I’ve always done this.
In Hong Kong, it’s illegal to spit on the ground. “You will get a penalty!” my friend warned me. A penalty I guess is like a ticket. 1500 Hong Kong Dollars ($150) to be exact.
Also, I’m a bit of a litterbug when it comes to small things: cigarettes, wrappers, etc. In China the ground is your trashcan, in Hong Kong they take a similar stance to spitting, although there are trashcans everywhere with messages like “Love Our City!”.
If you’re eating something with shells or bones, in China they go on the ground. I would imagine you’d get thrown out of a restaurant in the US for this but really it’s easier for them to hire someone low waged to sweep it all up than to have waiters clean all the tables.
Walk around late at night on a busy street in a city in China and it looks like hell: shells, bones, lettuce, broken Tsingtao bottles, noodles, rice, misc rubbish, etc. By morning it’s as clean as a whistle. A dirty, smelly, chinese made whistle. But it looks clean!
I like this sort of thing.
Of course the seafood areas reek like seafood because it has so permeated the streets and sidewalks, but shouldn’t seafood areas smell like seafood?
Posted on December 6, 2009 and filed under Culture Shock.
I had to use one. The Chinese toilet that is.
It’s a popular design in other countries in Asia also. My friend Wesley claims its actually “cleaner”.
Local Wai Laos call it the “high dive” or “long drop” and once you use it, you’ll see why.
I thought I would never use it, but like eating dog, you can’t always choose these things.
The night started off normal enough. I shared a Chicken hot pot with a friend from Hong Kong and had a few beers and a dozen cigs. As I was leaving the restaurant to go to Maya City (which deserves its own post) I suddenly became very sure that i would need a toilet soon.
Since Maya City is an opulent spa with waterfalls and every convenience and amenity I was sure I would find a western toilet. As Plato says, only the fools are certain.
So there I was.
I was wearing a towel having just showered and I took the towel off and hung it on the hook and did my business. It was weird. It took athleticism. It wasn’t so bad.
God works in mysterious ways. That I not only had on only a towel and had a shower 10 feet away was certainly a gift, and without those two, i’m not sure I could have done it without incident.
But Wesley is right, there is something more clean and um, efficient, about it.
Now let’s say you want to buy some produce at the supermarket. Naturally you’ll make your selections, bag em up, and bring them with the rest of your grocceries to the front of the store. In China it’s a little different.
Because I was taking warm for 1 minute then freezing showers for the last week or so (and assuming I was maliciously given a faulty shower) I am sharing this in case you are having trouble with your shower in China (and can access this page) and need help.
The thing about water heaters in China is that they are instant water heaters— they heat water on the fly— whereas in the US and other places we have big hot water heaters with tanks full of water being kept warm at all times.
These save space and might be more efficient.
Left to Right:
The first knob is water volume.
If you routinely take short showers turn the knob to the left (away from the character for “many people”). I’d leave it on the many people setting unless you like a machine making your shower decisions for you.
Ok, so i’ve been to few (dozen) bars and nightclubs here in Shenzhen. While bars aren’t as complex as say a rail station or something if you’re a new drinker in China, you’ll need some tips. Like information tips, not gratuity tips.
