Chinese Whispers: Letters from the Orient

[gct]

Wikipedia says they're called "pissing shrimp" in Mandarin. Classy.

Hah, OK I have heard that in Cantonese too. Thanks for the confirmation! Thanks ZacharyB for the reference too.

[Ed Oscuro]

They're very interesting, so here's an ametuer video on their zoology.

"Look at this very interesting animal! What should we do with it?"
"eh throw the bug on a plate"

[nZero]

They're very interesting, so here's an ametuer video on their zoology.

"Look at this very interesting animal! What should we do with it?"
"eh throw the bug on a plate"

"If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." -Prince Philip

[Skykid]

"If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." -Prince Philip

Wisest non-racist statement he's ever made. Just change Cantonese to Chinese and it's absolutely accurate.

[neorichieb1971]

Spent a night in Guongzhou China. Was supposed to have a 12 hour layover at the airport but they wouldn't allow it. So off they send us to a 4 star hotel (New century hotel) which was actually extravagent.

Things I noticed on the jouney which took 35 minutes (to hotel from airport)

Outdoor markets at night
Air that was noticably contaminated
A truck transporting whole tree's . They just unplugged the tree out of the ground and stuck it on the truck.
A car transporter truck that had been struck by another truck outside of the BMW dealership, with cars hanging over the edge of the top tier (Was kind of freaky to see, how they just stuck on even though they were half off)
Some weird flashing lights above the highways, was probably taking pictures of cars going underneath. Weird using flashes though.
Chinese people were robots. I get the professionalism part, but come on, a smile... Let some emotion out. It just seemed everyone was so plugged into their job/routine they just don't have any expressive emotion at all.
The landscape kept going from street market/people in make do accomadation to casino type hotels. Strange that it seemed every 5 or so miles you got another set of Las Vegas hotels with nothing but concrete roads and street markets in between.

The toll booths on the roads were decorated with nice flowers arrangements.
We had to climb for 20 minutes on the plane to see sunlight. Those Chinese certainly have a thick cover of cloud, it rivals England on a bad day to say the least

I'm now in the Philippines, going Bataan soon, then HK. Unfortunately all this was at night, so I didn't take any pics. I did take a video of the hotel though.

[rancor]

Chinese people were robots. I get the professionalism part, but come on, a smile... Let some emotion out. It just seemed everyone was so plugged into their job/routine they just don't have any expressive emotion at all.

Welcome to east Asia.

[Skykid]

Chinese people were robots. I get the professionalism part, but come on, a smile... Let some emotion out. It just seemed everyone was so plugged into their job/routine they just don't have any expressive emotion at all.

Welcome to east Asia.

^Lol.

Folks tend to come across as contemplative when they're walking around or passing by, but Chinese people aren't robotic at all when you speak to them. All the people I know here are far less reserved than English folk: bunch of alcoholic party animals.

[Ganelon]

Back on the topic of gated windows, this video makes it seem like any average joe can climb 5 stories up: http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c3#/vi ... rescue.cnn

[CoolgyFurlough]

Amazing Pictures

Wow. Your photo style reminds me of Steve McCurray mixed with digital photographing technique. I just want to keep staring at these. McCurray is my favorite photographer of all time...

[Skykid]

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[Skykid]

China's purported video game ban still going swimmingly.

[AntiFritz]

Wasn't the ban lifted though?

[Skykid]

There was never technically a video game ban, it was spin on some government mandate regarding electronic games.

Most of the Internet remains seemingly dissilusioned about it though.

[GaijinPunch]

There was never technically a video game ban, it was spin on some government mandate regarding electronic games.

I'll bet those guys don't get re-elected in 2016.

[Skykid]

There was never technically a video game ban, it was spin on some government mandate regarding electronic games.

I'll bet those guys don't get re-elected in 2016.

Ha ha!

[Skykid]

Hugely neglected this thread because I've been having too much fun getting massages and handjobs to bother updating. I have found some time to snap some snaps. Apologies in advance, my Samsung SIII is starting to look a little rusty in the quality department.

Here's the blog smack:


I bought myself an Android tablet as an alternative to lugging my laptop around, the new Lenovo Yoga 10 HD. This is the champagne gold version (bit like the iphone 5) which is exclusive to Asia, but that's not what swung it for me. It's got a nippy quad core snapdragon processor, HD res, a really nice bluetooth keyboard accessory, and most handy the built-in adjustable stand. By far the most impressive feature is the battery life: the barrel you see at the base is loaded with juice. The claims of eighteeen hours aren't without foundation. I've had a 15% battery left warning and watched an entire 2 hour movie on it, with 5% remaining thereafter.
I've already loaded it with every emulator going and it accepts Saturn USB pad via micro USB adaptor, and in terms of performance it handles all my Word processing requirements, Utorrent, PPTV (China IP only), Manga reading and VPN porno browsing with ease. And it was 250 GBP, so dirt cheap, with the keyboard coming in at just under 30 quid. The only thing it doesn't have is Photoshop, which is really the only reason I have to turn my old Mac back on.



You may not (and probably don't) know about the recent terrorist attacks in Yunnan province. In the north is the Xinjiang province bordering Kazakhstan where the populace are ethnic Turks, and some extremists went on a bit of a rampage and machete murdered a bunch of innocent people. They're Muslim of course, don't act surprised.
Since then a bunch of amazing posters warning people to report anything or anyone looking suspicious have popped up - truly the most obvious racial sterotypes imaginable. Of all this is my fave: A cave-fresh Saddam on his way to the noose. The guy on the left looks like a badass.



What's on at the pictures: some animated movie, and the third one it seems. I like the designs.



This cracked me up. They play movies above this unfortunately named jewellery store (apparently it's not meant to be 'lucky', but I'm not sure if I buy it) and in true Chinese style they just find something and hit play. This is snap of a bunch of passers by watching a woman getting whipped and screaming while chained to a meathook by a gimp in fetish gear, her legs covered in blood. I lol'd. And there's sound too! You can hear her roaring in agony all the way down the road. Some old tramp even rolled out his newspaper and was watching it under a tree.



Pilot in training. This little girl was really getting into some DFK. The woman on her left is actually her mother, and not older sister, even though she looked about sixteen (and probably was).



They just expanded the city's existing underground shopping mall/tunnel network by adding about four more miles to it (great for avoiding the sun) and have been doing promotions and celebrations all weekend. I didnt get all the girls in crop tops, tiny denim shorts and sky high high heels yesterday (although I made sure to burn the image into my brain), but today I was armed with camera just in-case and shot a video of these synchronised cuties. Sorry about the quality, it's a screencap of a video and it was in zoom mode to get past the crowd.



Tired now, I've got more I can do soon.

[BIL]

The machete/knife attacks have been covered pretty consistently by mainstream UK news sites, at least.

Or maybe I just paid attention cos "Uighur" is also the name of a badass Hokuto no Ken villain.

[Skykid]

^ Oh that's interesting. I didn't think it would go international.

Imagine if they had had guns. Holy shit.

[Mischief Maker]

This cracked me up. They play movies above this unfortunately named jewellery store (apparently it's not meant to be 'lucky', but I'm not sure if I buy it) and in true Chinese style they just find something and hit play. This is snap of a bunch of passers by watching a woman getting whipped and screaming while chained to a meathook by a gimp in fetish gear, her legs covered in blood. I lol'd. And there's sound too! You can hear her roaring in agony all the way down the road. Some old tramp even rolled out his newspaper and was watching it under a tree.

Long live the new flesh!

[Skykid]

And the rest. Being classy I'll start this set with some pictures of restaurant urinals. Can you guess what they're in honour of? World Cup fever certainly stormed the land, so we got little goals with dangling footballs to aim for during moments of relief.







No fishing allowed. This is the lake at Qingxiusan Mountain park.



Went for a day trip with a friends and had dinner in this really beautiful scenic area just outside the city at sunset. I had no idea it was there.





Asian people. They even managed to gang sign other people's photos.









Bit of Brazillian Passion? I don't advocate eating McDonald's, but their World Cup quad-beefburger was the best thing they've ever, ever done. Did you guys get the same thing?





China's first restaurant with modern toilets! Not really, I'm just taking the piss... This is a themed restaurant, probably from Japan I'd wager, where all the seating apparatus are in fact toilet seats. No word on whether or not you can use them during the meal.

[Rob]

World Cup fever certainly stormed the land, so we got little goals with dangling footballs to aim for

This is how I feel about soccer too.

If you guys are bored of me updating this (once every six months or whatever) just let me know.

A bored person will not comment, so I would like to offer positive reinforcement. It's like a fraction of a vacation.

[Skykid]

It's like a fraction of a vacation.

I'm doing my best!

Although I only get requests for pictures of girls, girls in clubs, and tits. I'm definitely letting the side down with all this cultural shit.

[Khan]

Nice new pics, its funny when people mention living in China how its supposed to be full of smog and pollution but I guess thats a mountain park so chances are the air is going to be quite clean there. Have you ever come home to blow your nose to find tons of dust come out of your snot?

[Skykid]

Nice new pics, its funny when people mention living in China how its supposed to be full of smog and pollution but I guess thats a mountain park so chances are the air is going to be quite clean there. Have you ever come home to blow your nose to find tons of dust come out of your snot?

Hey Khan.

No, because the city doesn't suffer from pollution. I think I've said more times than anything (at least a couple in this thread) that I'm in the south, far from Beijing. It's known as China's green city owing to its abundant foliage, and recognised for having clean air and blue skies.

The mountain park is only the fish picture, the rest are low altitude.

The major polluted cities make up about 5% of the country. Guilin, Hainan, Yunnan province, Xinjiang and Tibet to the north are a handful that offer vast, beautiful and unpolluted landscape to explore where you won't be blowing dust out your nose.

(Beijing might kill you though.)

[nZero]

The major polluted cities make up about 5% of the country. Guilin, Hainan, Yunnan province, Xinjiang and Tibet to the north are a handful that offer vast, beautiful and unpolluted landscape to explore where you won't be blowing dust out your nose.

Yunnan has a lot of beautiful (if somewhat focused on commercialized tourism) places, although you wouldn't know it from the view coming into the airport flying into Kunming.

My favorite spot was still the area around Jianyang in Fujian province though. The photos I took while I was there look like they came off of a postcard.

(Beijing might kill you though.)

In the city (and the train ride through Tianjin) it's just as bad as everyone says, and apparently worse all the time. Industrial pollution from neighboring areas and dust from the Gobi desert apparently get the blame. That said, while visiting a section of the great wall about 1.5 hours out of town, the skies were blue and visibility clear, so I suppose we either got above it or around it. Downtown there were days that it was impossible to see more than a few city blocks.

[Skykid]

Apparently the Gobi constitiutes a large amount of Beijing's smog, although toxins measured in the air still fall well below acceptable standards for quality. The government recently admitted their failure in curbing pollution in-line with rapid economic growth, and said they simply hadn't had the knowledge or infrastructure to figure out how to properly moderate business in regard to emissions. One of the most honest things I've ever heard them say, and in my experience an effect that applies to many of the country's current problems (not just pollution).

Yunnan is a jewel though, really stunning landscapes.