Wow!

Nobel Peace Prize Given to Jailed Chinese Dissident

Now, the next question: does the Chinese government give a what about things like this? Pretty strong statement by the international community but I don't know if China cares enough yet about these types of pressures.

Vice Guide to North Korea

watch it!

oooo I want to go so bad!

Hungover Owls

Apparently if you are a young foreigner living in China these days, you are doomed. You will be forever relegated to one of the following classes, condemned to be identified by your varying degrees of stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance until the day you (finally) decide to do what you've been meant to do all along: get on a plane and get the hell out of here.

Thanks to GoChengdoo, here are the eight profiles, and I promise, if you live in China, they'll make you feel like shit.

See if you can guess which one I am (hint: there is only one "woman" option).

THE ROAMING ARTIST

Moved here to experience another culture or get away from culture i.g.. Dabbles (some more seriously than others) in some sort of arts, usually photography, painting, or, most often, music, with which he/she tries to make a living but when that fails turns to part-time English teaching. Loves—loves—freebies. Identify them by their dreadlocks and odd mash-up of cheap Communist slippers and folk apparel combined with tattered jeans and dress shirts.

Might become: wannabe businessperson, the China Expert, the Lifetime TEFLer
Might hear them say: 给我便宜点儿吧！
Common complaints: I am broke. Pay is too low. Nobody appreciates my talents.
Keywords: DJ, musician, singer, writer, painter, model, actor, photographer, designer

THE WANNABE BUSINESSPERSON
Also sometimes referred to as "halfpat." The guy (or gal) who came to China to take a look and ended up settling down for a while. After sucking up the maximum number of visa extensions as a student of Mandarin or sucking out all his/her willpower as a foreign teacher, becomes convinced he or she is "capable of better." Years of struggling might make them bitter and unable to fully integrate into society. Gives the locals reason to doubt foreigners' ability to do business.
Might have been or still be: the Roaming Artist, the China Expert, Lifetime TEFLer
Might hear them say: 你有没有名片？这儿是我的。
Common complaints: I got ripped off by my Chinese partner. "They" don't know how to do business.
Keywords: profit margin, strategic partnership, 1.4 billion customers

THE CHINA EXPERT
Knows everything about China; might have a degree in Mandarin or Chinese studies. Probably studied abroad in Beijing for a year before settling in China. Enthusiastically offers translation services to anybody who'll take them. Refuses to speak to locals in any language but Chinese but gets extremely upset when he/she realizes that "being fully accepted" is a pipe dream. The most hardcore enroll in a master's program at Sichuan University and attend classes with the local students. Delights in eating intestines, rabbit head, duck bill, brains, and anything else Westerners find weird or repulsive, especially when in the company of said Westerners—whose company he/she usually shuns anyway on the quest for total immersion. Lives with his wife-to-be in a one-bedroom apartment somewhere nobody else lives and even local taxi drivers haven't heard of.
Aspires to be: the Wannabe Businessperson
Might hear them say: 当然听的懂！学中文学得很久！
Common complaints: Chinese people won't speak to me in Chinese. I'll never be fully accepted!
Keywords: young white male, Asian studies

THE LONELY WESTERN WOMAN
Has written off locals as potential romantic partners for any of a number of reasons. In early phases, tends to throw herself rather unscrupulously at any foreign male who shows the slightest interest. Eventually becomes bitter and jaded, resenting Chinese women for "taking all the men," Western men for "how easy" they have it, and while they're at it, everybody else on this goddamn planet too. Complaints might be compounded by chronic yeast infections as well as the lack of clothes and shoes in her size. Often derided by insecure male counterparts as being "unfeminine" and "fat" compared to Chinese women. Lives with her best friend in a two-bedroom apartment next to their favorite bar. Is possibly middle-aged, with an adopted Chinese daughter in tow.
Common complaints: Foreign men in China suck. Men here only want to have one-night stands.
Keywords: perpetually single, underwhelmed by options, bar, club, bitter, jaded

THE EXPAT FAMILY
The expat family is in a class all its own, with very little crossover from the other foreign riffraff. This category comes as a package that almost always comprises a man with his wife and kids in tow, although there have been a few cases of expat women with "trailing husbands." Usually middle-class in their home country, arrives in China on a nice "compensation" package and can suddenly live like kings, sending the hired help to buy kitchen staples at Sabrina's and Metro. Penchant for taking group field trips to places deemed too "local," i.e., any place that's not IKEA. Uses the adjective "Chinese" as a catch-all code for something completely alien and probably displeasing to them, as in, "Such-and-such place is so Chinese." Generally only spotted at Peterpan or Bookworm, or, for a wild night out on the town, Shamrock. The young ones tend to stay in a bubble as well but, with Mandarin courses at their $20,000-per-year schools, do usually pick up Chinese faster than their parents.
Might hear them say: 听不懂。
Common complaints: I can't find [insert name of Western product] here. That's China! I'm having a 'bad China day.'
Keywords: multinational corporation, manager, stay-at-home mom, imported goods section

THE STUDY-ABROAD STUDENT
Spends weekends with classmates at Shuangnan or Taiping Nan Jie, skimming all the free alcohol they can get by cozying up to some drunk wealthy-looking locals and ganbei-ing umpteen times. Might wake up for those 8 a.m. classes ... and then again, might not. Dinner is McDonald's or Tex-Mex on delivery. Usually is either funded by his/her over-moneyed European nation or has managed to finagle out a scholarship from some government or from mom and dad's savings accounts. Initially lives in the dorms until he or she realizes what a rip-off on-campus accommodations are, but by then it's too late. At the end of the semester generally has very little language skill to show for six months other than a few choice samples generally not spoken in polite company, and then it's time to travel and then go back home anyway.
Might hear them say: 我很喜欢中国！每个东西都很便宜！
Common complaints: The classes are so boring. The teachers don't know how to teach.
Keywords: school, Chuanda, Xinan Minzu, sleeping in class, rage against the textbook

THE LIFETIME TEFL TRAVELER
Ostensibly came to China via Japan or Korea to experience another culture but got caught up in the cheap beer and pretty women. Might have ended up marrying a local, or might be plotting a next stop in another (Asian) country. May or may not have any teaching qualification whatsoever (and even then, a TEFL/CELTA certificate requires only four weeks.) With rare exceptions, the lifetime TEFL traveler is almost always male. There is gender discrimination here: Female lifetime TEFLers might be looked at as independent, courageous souls, while their male counterparts are generally just thought of as duds. Their salaries, often based on a handful of superficial "qualifications," tend to make locals green with envy.
Aspires to be: wannabe businessperson
Might already be: amateur Sinologist
Might hear them say: 再来一瓶啤酒！冰的！
Common complaints: My beer's warm. My students cheat. My school did not fulfill its contractual obligations. Life is too easy.
Keywords: head shot, CV, two letters of reference, diploma, but most importantly, head shot

THE XBC
These are the ABCs, BBCs, CBCs (American or Australian, British, and Canadian-born Chinese), etc. who cause confusion everywhere they go. When white foreigners get utmost praise from locals for uttering a clumsy "Ni hao," the XBC gets "Why's your Chinese so bad?" and, conversely, "How's your English so good?" from other foreigners. Is either the envy of the foreign community for growing up bilingual and being able to "blend in" or is pitied for taking all the flak and not reaping any of the benefits of the "star treatment" a foreigners in China have been known to be on the receiving end of. Makes Chinese ponder the deep philosophy behind the question, "What is Chinese?"
Might hear them say: 我是华侨,没有在这儿长大！
Common complaints: Why do the waitresses always look at me to order?
Keywords: confused, in between, what do you call them anyway?

Guys, I've found you the answer

Is your girlfriend too annoying, how she always, like, needs stuff, and wants to talk? Don't worry, now you can just have a virtual girlfriend (however, she's still capable of the silent treatment when you do something wrong) on whom you can spend big bucks and with whom you can carry on basic conversations (the more basic, the better, anyway, with women) and even go away on vacation--all for the reward of an easy, simplistic "romance" that will keep you satisfied.

The perfect solution---now you never have to actually ever deal with a real girl again, because they're annoying and dumb anyway. Something virtual is just as dumb (dumber?), perpetually pretty, doesn't talk back, and you only have to put in as much effort as you want, and she'll never break up with you. And if she does, who cares, just get a new one.

Great. Typical.

Did I mention this is actually a real thing that Japanese men pay a lot of money for and spend a lot of time on? Oh and the part about the vacations is 100% true too.

In Hong Kong.

Flew to Shenzhen this morning, and took the bus over to Hong Kong for a weekend visa run/see friends.

Beijing was smoggy (HUGE SURPRISE) and you could barely see anything as we flew out, so I closed the shade and promptly fell asleep for 2 hours despite the massive coffee I had guzzled not 15 minutes before stepping on board the plane.

30 minutes before landing in SZ, I woke up and opened the shade again to the bluest blue sky and the tallest, whitest cream-puff clouds ever seen. It was diamond-bright soaring along in that sea of sunshine with the patterned clouds spread below us.

But then, flying lower, a paper-thin layer of dark grey matter became visible at the level of the tops of the cumulus clouds. Pollution, marring this beautiful cloudscape! Worse still, once we came lower and flew through that awful gunk, it became clear that in and among the white of the clouds were pockets of yellow-brown smog lurking, brewing, smearing the clearness of the air with a gloomy, glum tinge of grime. Once we had flown even lower than that, below the clouds, we entered the TRUE pollution, an almost imperceptible mist of yellowish, whitish, grayish particles hovering just over the Earth that obscured the ground and, once on the ground, obscured the sky.

So beautiful up above, so oppressive down below!

Anyways, bus to HK--HK is lovely--air quality not so bad once away from industrial Shenzhen. What a refreshing change from awful, crowded, dirty, cement Beijing. Feels so civilized and cosmopolitan here in comparison.

Tomorrow, sailing around the New Territories. There may just be a God.

Workers use bare hands to clean up oil spill

Everyone's all over the US for the Gulf Oil spill (as well they should be) but when similar horrible environment catastrophes occur in China, nobody even hears about it or cares. Bet you haven't seen these pictures of the recent oil spill in Dalian (NE coastal China), have you?

Because it's not just environmentally horrifying but socially as well.

Gated migrant communities in major Chinese cities

Keeping dangerous elements away from the rest of the civilized population

Do you know that China spends as much on "public security" as it does on national defense?



What does that say? That it has to protect citizens from themselves (or the government from citizens?) just as much as it has to protect the nation as a whole from outside enemies? Who is the REAL enemy here?

Another good name: Mariel says that through work, she has recently been in touch with someone at the Ministry of Commerce, and the woman's name is Fancy Hou (yup, that's pronounced ho).