They call America MeiGuo which means “Beautiful Kingdom” or “Beautiful Country”.  What about France you ask? Fag’guo. Not even joking.

2. Most people in China are pretty friendly to foreigners but say “HALLO” to you all the time which gets a little annoying after 8 months. I’ve noted that when i’m dressing sharp or snappy I get more HALLOs then when i’m not.

3. Sprite is called Xue Bi ( Schway Bee) and Coke is called K’o K’ou K’o Le which means, roughly “let your mouth be happy” and also sounds like, well Coca Cola. 7-Up is qi qi (chi chi) and means 77. Beer is piujiu (pee-gee-oh), but usually you can just order Tsingtao (Ching Dow) as it’s really the finest beer around.

4. Breakfast options in China are limited. You have stuff that they eat for other meals (noodle soup, rice, etc) and then you have like bing bread– some bing bread is good, some is awful– depends on what’s inside. I’d say its sort of like a flat, dry exteriored piroshki, but more chewy. Ask whats inside before committing. They will run you about 1 yuan each (15 cents). You can also get dumplings, buns, etc. Many people eat hardboiled eggs too.

5.  Add Oil. If you’re feeling beaten down or depressed people will you to Ka-Yow (cantonese) or Jyah Yo (mandarin).  This means to add oil or gasoline. As far as Facebook in Hong Kong goes its probably the most often used comment. 加油! Add oil la! Oh yeah, they say “la” and “ah” and “ar” a lot too. Basically its a word particle that means nothing on its own but when added to something it sounds nice. For example “how are you la?”, or “I miss you la”, or “what you doing ar?”. You get the idea.

6. Generally, Chinese people don’t like ice or cold drinks. I know some who drink Tsingtao warm. Water is usually hot, sometimes warm, almost never cold. If you’re in a restaurant and you request ice water (baizah bing kuai shui, is how I say it, prob a better way) chinese people will look at you. Look at him, he loves that cold drink in his mouth. As such, finding like a bag of ice isn’t easy. If you need some for cocktails or something go to a restaurant, be sure to have a Chinese person tell them you want ice for drinks, otherwise it may be contaminated.

7. Chinese People Cover Their Mouths When They Use A Toothpick. This is sort of an asia-wide thing and is widely reported but when you consider that Chinese are pretty ok with most other personal grooming (or lack thereof) it’s a bit discordant. There’s spitting out a bad taste from your mouth and then there’s an old chinese guy hawking up a loogie from deep inside his soul that probably has particulates from the Qing Dynasty.

8. Don’t Drink The Water. Well duh. Andy your tips are getting pretty lame here. Hey asshole, I wasn’t finished… even some bottled water is not ok to drink. The amazing thing about the human body, if you’re sensitive to your own body, is that you’ll know almost immediately that it’s not good. There’s one that comes in a fancy bottle called Watson’s that is regularly contaminated. I drink a sip of this and immediately my stomach turns over.

9. That’s fuckin’ teamwork. Chinese girls will often share the load by carrying a plastic shopping bag down the street with each one holding a handle. See the photo below for reference. It’s cute and I tried it once and it does make it easier but sometimes creates awkward confrontations with oncoming pedestrians.

10. Chinese girls also hold hands. They’re not lesbians. Chinese guys sometimes walk around with their arms around each others neck, and are also not gay. It’s possible that some of them are gay and are taking advantage of this being culturally okay but there’s really no way to even quantify or investigate that, but certainly it does happen.

11. Chinese “Great Wall” Brand Wine is foul. Really.  Probably some of the vilest stuff i’ve had since this one time I went camping, left the ice chest with a few beers outside for 3 afternoons, came home at night and saw the chest, removed the beers, refrigerated and drank it later that night. Great Wall wine tastes like how windex smells.

12. People in China love the number 8. The reason is that eight is pronounced Bah, which sounds like Fa, which means Wealth or Prosperity. Also they love 88 because it resembles this character: 囍, which means Double Joy or Double Happiness, which is a kind of happiness that is only possible at a wedding. To add to this, it’s also the name of a popular brand of cigarettes. A pack of Shuang Xi’s (囍) vary in price depending on which variety you want. My friend Felix smokes the 6 元 per pack (84 cents) ones, but if you’re feeling fancy you can spend up to 30元 per pack. I spoke about developing a Quadruple Happiness brand (囍囍!!!!!)  that will practically make your head pop off with happiness to Felix and he didn’t think the idea was funny at all.

13. Chinese People Like or Don’t Really Get This Blog. But they are never angered by it or offended, and I don’t aim to be offensive but sometimes I joke around. Most Chinese people I know who’ve read this blog are just like “Why write about China? What’s the big deal?” . They think, oddly, that I’d write about America since I know more about that.

14. Workers often wear sportscoats and slacks to dig holes. I don’t understand it really. Also, the bike taxi guys wear similar outfits. So do beggars– if not that outfit they wear the Mao jacket with matching pants. Mafia guys wear athletic warm-up clothing or sorta 1980’s gay clothing. Office girls dress like prostitutes. Prostitutes dress like office girls. Hong Kong business guys dress like American yuppie casual (The North Face, Eddie Bauer, etc). Girls in front of massage parlors wear furry jackets and traditional dresses. The girls at the bowling alley wear track suits. All girls wear what would be described in the coastal US as “Granny Panties”. Guys wear briefs or gross underwear-in-a-tube type things. The other day I saw this old white guy wearing a fancy, ornate Mao jacket with his Chinese wife/girlfriend inside of a KFC. I had a series of wtf moments like… gone native.. posterboy for old gross foreigner..poser… pervert… KFC??

12. Most office buildings have hotels built into them. Oh cool, for visiting businessmen. Yeah but they rent them in 3 hour blocks.. oh cool, in case someone wants to stretch out a little, rest their eyes a little... Yeah, something like that. There’s one in my office building and I see nervous couples and unbothered hooker and customer duos all the time. Last Thursday this kind looking old Chinese guy was heading up with a 21 year old and a bag of snacks– like fish crackers and stuff.

13. Time Passes Strangely. 3 months in China for me felt like 6 or 9 months— in a very neutral way; not good or bad. The best way I can describe time passing slow here is just that your life is more dense. You learn a lot. You get mad a lot. You are happy a lot. You’re confused a lot. Now that i’ve been here for 7  months I feel like i’ve been here a year. I think living in such a foreign place just wakes you up. You pay closer attention to everything. Back home I was so familiar with everything that I just slept through life most of the time.

14. Chinese Culture is hard to define. “How’s China?”, people ask me.  It’s, uh, China I say. American culture is  also hard to define, until you’re not inside of it. Then it’s easy. Don’t mind what those snot nosed, scarf wearing, suburbanite tramps say after returning from Europe— Americans do have a culture.   If you don’t think America has a rich, positive culture you’re just not apart of it or don’t understand what the word culture means. You probably think it means old buildings,  exclusionary behavior or dressing like an asshole.

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

Shenzhen is full of thieves, prostitutes and hustlers.

That  said, it has a bad side too.

An example of a bad thing is that my area of Shenzhen, Luohu, is all city all the time.

Buses, trains, taxis, malls, stores, shops, shoppes, strip malls, bars, pubs, clubs etc etc. (Sorry, got tired of what I was doing there.)

There’s not much in the way of parks or recreation or the outdoors. I hear there’s a mountain directly to the west of me, though I’ve never been here on a clear enough day to see it. In SZ you can basically see 10 city blocks in any direction and then it sort of fades out into a movie like backdrop of blurriness that  says: “there’s more stuff over there but it’s not really that important to the plot here”.

On Thanksgiving I decided to venture out to the countryside, to the cold weather, to a place that has history, culture, stereotypically good food:

Hunan.

Just say it to yourself. It sounds good. (Hoo-Nawn)

You’ve probably heard of Hunan because like Sichuan, restaurants in the US will often name their restaurant after a Province.

Don’t be fooled, it’s pretty much all the same food in most of them, but if you come to China and try to order something you really like to eat at Hunan Palace or Sichuan Garden they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about:

Well certainly they have Egg Rolls. Nope.

General Tsaos Chicken? Nope.

Sweet and Sour– Nope.

Hey you interrupted me there man. Ok sorry, try one more time.

Egg Foo Young. Nope.

Let me try one more time. Orange Chicken! Nop– Ok, well actually they do have a chicken dish that uses the dried orange peel (chéunpí) but I guarantee you its only vaguely similar to the delicious orange chicken of those United States.

In other words if you ate it you’d be like who put this hard inedible dry shit in with these pieces of chicken and bone and carrots and peppers?!

Well where is that dish from Mr China?

Hunan.

With that I found a cheap ticket and flew to Changsha, Hunan Province. After landing at an airport located on the top of a mountain (for safety, certainly) I took a long cab ride down the valley to Changsha where a friend of a friend was waiting for me with a room key to a hotel he works at.

Keep in mind my chinese is that of a 4 year old boy at this point. It’s amazing I can get around like this.

The town was dead. It was  cold. I wanted to eat hot pot.

We headed out in a cab and I was like “this town sucks”, when it’s a smaller city and I had come there for that reason.

I remembered this and sort of cooled my jets and was like “Ok, I can eat hot pot in a tent”

Upon sticking my head into one of the above tents the locals looked at me here like a complete freak. Girls in China will often look, whisper to a friend, smile and then giggle. Men will look at you like “I hope you don’t plan to stay long”.

First few tents were dog and fish only.

Friends reading, I have to tell you I will probably eat dog again. I just don’t care anymore.

Anyhow, tent #5 had lamb.

My new friend quickly ordered some beers and then told me that he wanted me to try something, which was like chewing tobacco but makes you sorta stoned and tastes like “ancient chinese herbs”. You know the taste.

It looks like this:

I look like this eating it:

Anyhow, i’m still here in Hunan and I  went to the famous tower at Yueyang (a very nice city integrated with nature) and I planned to go to Chairman Mao’s House to take some photos and goof off but my pictures are all coming out horribly with this fog and I sort of miss Shenzhen.

This dude likes to get stoned on herbs and eat hot pot. Not a bad dude.

Overall, I think Hunan would be a great place to visit and check out the sights, but just not in Late November.

Yep. It’s all-you-can-eat dog night again.

Here ya go:

I often have to piece together what happened the night before using the physical evidence available to me. Generally i’ll find a bottle of whiskey and a race car driver’s suit or something like that.

Last night I went to Star Chinese Food on Santa Monica Blvd to get some food.

I went home and began watching TV. Gosh I need to stretch my legs out I thought.

When I woke up I saw this despicable scene:

Anyhow, if you have any kind of plans for your evening, stay away from this stuff.