Sichuan cuisine. Delicious, salty, pungent gingery fried chicken with lots of red peppers and peppercorns. You owe it to yourself to have Sichuan chicken at least once in your life.
The June Fourth Incident in which nothing happened.
My existence on this planet.
Cheap, easily obtainable GDemu boards.
What are some of your favorite things that China is responsible for? Spoiler
If you are reading this Xsync-1 we all love you very much and I hope you have a nice day!
To be honest I'm just trolling a little bit in the aftermath of the recent Xsync-1 fallout, but on a serious note I'll just say that every nation has their skeletons in the closet.
With China, like every nation, we need to separate the people from their shithead government. But I wouldn't make a broad equivalence between all nations either. The amount of suffering inflicted by a Belgium or Costa Rica is not the same as that inflicted by a US or China, even proportionally.
Anyway, appreciation. Kung-fu and wuxia. Fireworks. Many delicious sauces like soy and oyster.
RegalSin wrote:You can't even drive across the country Naked anymore
I agree, by no means am I endorsing the actions of the Chinese government (they are responsible for a lot of vile shit), I'm just poking a little fun at the recent trend of extreme sinophobia.
Confucius. Sun Tzu. Qin Shi Huang and his terracotta army. Journey to the West. The badass Dragon/Tiger imagery. Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan. Westerners getting ridiculous tattoos they can't read. Hilarious bootleg toys and clothing. Crazy Asian Mother.
And of course, Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West, the prequel meme that gave birth to prequel memes.
RBelmont wrote:A little math shows that if you overclock a Pi3 to about 3.4 GHz you'll start to be competitive with PCs from 2002. And you'll also set your house on fire
Dim Sum, peak Jackie Chan, 75% of the kids I teach, and scooters.
Thank you China.
You're sure to be in a fine haze about now, but don't think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good. You know, it's just what hunters do! You'll get used to it.
In no particular order (three years in Guangzhou and 8 months in Wuhan):
- A vast selection of local varieties of fruit that taste differently from their non-Chinese counterparts (sweet lemons and pomelos), and a lot of weird-looking tropical fruit (Pitaya/Dragon fruit being my favourite);
- An obsession with the streamlining of bureaucracy that has brought many practices from being exhstanuatingly complex to way too simple (say, 2016 tax declaration form was five pages; 2021 tax declaration form...first name slot is missing and tax hall asked me to send it over);
- Wuhanese dialect (people speak very fast and use "-ma" questions all the time. An English equivalent might be "My name is Chun-yes?");
- An obsession with living as close as possible to work (a general trend: people renting or even buying apartments in decrepit buildings and completely renovating them because they can then walk to work);
- The firm, unshakeable belief that all Europeans like (association) football and religiously follow The Champions League and the main national championships;
- The firm, unshakeable belief that bread is a French invention, and thus thou shalt not have anything but French-style bread (...or something called in that way. Good croissants can be easy to find, though);
- Pu'er tea;
- Academic contracts being so merit-driven that you can get red-listed if you perform particularly well;
- Starbucks and their delicious products a bit everywhere, still being beaten by small cozy cafes, anime-style, springing everywhere and brewing even better coffee (I am being sarcastic, yes?);
- Absolutely hilarious and endearing fusion food (Durian & pineapple pizza with ham, Wuhanese Katsudon...the list would be endless);
- Synthwave and "discovery" of the '80s being a thing. For many youngsters, Outrun is not their parents' game, but a veritable new experience;
- Ubiquitous payments with Alipay and/or Wechat. I don't even remember how cash looks like;
- Uni Campuses often being green islands of oxigen, but shame that I am *#"¤ allergic to Edo Sakura petals and we have a small group of them in front of my apartment;
- Public Ballroom dancing in any gathering spaces, after dinner time (your geriatric alternative to bocce);
- One zillion variants of Mahjong, ultra-tech set tables, hot chubby babes in QiPao serving you drinks and fruit snacks if you book the VIP room at the Mahjong parlour (fruit snacks and 55%/110 proof liquors=win combo to enjoy the evening);
- Fresh food being really fresh. As in: grab the shrimps from the water tank, drop them into boiling water, eat! Fresh! Yummy! Shall we whack the octopi against the rocks like they do, in Bari?
- The mistrusting eyes when you say that you don't really snack every hour or so ("you skip on your fruit, yes?"), and you don't spend half of your food budget in fruit (but this is a Southern/central thing);
- The general "easy, we still have 2 minutes before the deadline" attitude to just about everything, which is a nice change of pace after having lived for decades in countries in which the attitude is "hurry up! There are only 6 months left to sign this piece of paper!";
-...
...The general feeling that tutto il mondo e' paese ('all the world is but a village', i.e. anywhere I go, things work like in small villages, and the differences among cities, regions, countries, etc. fade away once you get used to the "local" costumes and the general peskyness of human beings (I would mention the theme of "convergent evolution" here, but I am too lazy to make any sense, as always).
Then again, I've been around a bit.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
Randorama wrote:In no particular order (three years in Guangzhou and 8 months in Wuhan):
- A vast selection of local varieties of fruit that taste differently from their non-Chinese counterparts (sweet lemons and pomelos), and a lot of weird-looking tropical fruit (Pitaya/Dragon fruit being my favourite);
- An obsession with the streamlining of bureaucracy that has brought many practices from being exhstanuatingly complex to way too simple (say, 2016 tax declaration form was five pages; 2021 tax declaration form...first name slot is missing and tax hall asked me to send it over);
- Wuhanese dialect (people speak very fast and use "-ma" questions all the time. An English equivalent might be "My name is Chun-yes?");
- An obsession with living as close as possible to work (a general trend: people renting or even buying apartments in decrepit buildings and completely renovating them because they can then walk to work);
- The firm, unshakeable belief that all Europeans like (association) football and religiously follow The Champions League and the main national championships;
- The firm, unshakeable belief that bread is a French invention, and thus thou shalt not have anything but French-style bread (...or something called in that way. Good croissants can be easy to find, though);
- Pu'er tea;
- Academic contracts being so merit-driven that you can get red-listed if you perform particularly well;
- Starbucks and their delicious products a bit everywhere, still being beaten by small cozy cafes, anime-style, springing everywhere and brewing even better coffee (I am being sarcastic, yes?);
- Absolutely hilarious and endearing fusion food (Durian & pineapple pizza with ham, Wuhanese Katsudon...the list would be endless);
- Synthwave and "discovery" of the '80s being a thing. For many youngsters, Outrun is not their parents' game, but a veritable new experience;
- Ubiquitous payments with Alipay and/or Wechat. I don't even remember how cash looks like;
- Uni Campuses often being green islands of oxigen, but shame that I am *#"¤ allergic to Edo Sakura petals and we have a small group of them in front of my apartment;
- Public Ballroom dancing in any gathering spaces, after dinner time (your geriatric alternative to bocce);
- One zillion variants of Mahjong, ultra-tech set tables, hot chubby babes in QiPao serving you drinks and fruit snacks if you book the VIP room at the Mahjong parlour (fruit snacks and 55%/110 proof liquors=win combo to enjoy the evening);
- Fresh food being really fresh. As in: grab the shrimps from the water tank, drop them into boiling water, eat! Fresh! Yummy! Shall we whack the octopi against the rocks like they do, in Bari?
- The mistrusting eyes when you say that you don't really snack every hour or so ("you skip on your fruit, yes?"), and you don't spend half of your food budget in fruit (but this is a Southern/central thing);
- The general "easy, we still have 2 minutes before the deadline" attitude to just about everything, which is a nice change of pace after having lived for decades in countries in which the attitude is "hurry up! There are only 6 months left to sign this piece of paper!";
-...
...The general feeling that tutto il mondo e' paese ('all the world is but a village', i.e. anywhere I go, things work like in small villages, and the differences among cities, regions, countries, etc. fade away once you get used to the "local" costumes and the general peskyness of human beings (I would mention the theme of "convergent evolution" here, but I am too lazy to make any sense, as always).
Then again, I've been around a bit.
Always enjoy reading your thoughts.
I can relate to the ballroom dancing here. When the weather is nice the (mostly) older generations gather in public parks every morning and dance for a few hours.
That, morning stretching, and Tai Chi are also common sights in my hood.
And if I'm commuting in the morning and see a Chinese guy out in front if his house he is definitely smoking.
You're sure to be in a fine haze about now, but don't think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good. You know, it's just what hunters do! You'll get used to it.
Pierogi (as we call them 'round here). Eastern-European kind of filled dumplings. I don't really know if they came here from anywhere else, or it's just another food legend (that they were originally Chinese). These are some food I sometimes crave pretty badly.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
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