Food: Chinese Chinese v American Chinese

	In China	In the USA
The Table	Always round	Sometimes round
How to Eat	All of the food goes in the center of the table and everyone grabs one chopstickful at a time. Rice is in a small bowl.	Food also in the center. People pile rice onto a plate and then heap a little bit 'o everything on or around the rice.
What to Drink	Always warm water or hot green tea. Fizzy drinks are common, though not always cold. Alcohol (beer, baijiu, red wine) also common, not always cold.	Hot tea is common and usually accompanied with ice water. Ice water is a major no-no in China. Cold fizzy drinks are too common. Only beer is common and served cold.
Flavors	Some dishes are sweet; some spicy; some salty; and some sour. Some hot and some cold. Texture is important. Steamed rice serves as the neutral flavor. Fried rice is only consumed as a stand alone meal.	Almost everything seems to err on the sweet and saucy side. Everything seems soggy. Even with plain rice it always seems too sticky.
Cooking Style	Some dishes are sauteed; some braised; some fried; some boiled; some steamed; some pickled.	Almost every dish is sauteed. The rest are fried.
Food Composition	One out of every 3 or 4 dishes is a "meat dish" (contains meat but not usually more than half meat).Vegetables and fungi predominate and nuts are common.	Dishes are very meat-centric and more than half of all dishes are primarily meat. Veggies and fungi are common but don't play as large a role.
Meats	Pork is the standard meat. Chicken follows. Freshwater fish, mutton, beef, duck, goose, quail and other assorted water animals are common protein sources. Meats commonly include both fatty and lean portions as well as bones.	Beef is king followed closely by chicken and pork. Saltwater fish, turkey and duck round out the meats. All normally served fatless and deboned.
Settling the Bill	Many people loudly fight for the right to pay. The person least publicly anxious to pay will usually sneak by and pay, at which point he's offered a cigarette.	Split the bill.

Just some things I've noticed. Am I missing anything? Am I mistaken? SL

How To Tell If Your Girlfriend is Chinese

Do you have a girlfriend? Are you blind? Have you ever wondered: Is my girlfriend Chinese? Let me help.

Just answer a few easy questions.

Step 1. Don't We Look Cute?

Are you wearing the same shirt, sweater, jacket or hat? Have you ever?

Step 2. God Gave Me Three Arms For A Reason

When in public do you carry her purse, even the very girlie ones? (Any answer other than "Yeah, occasionally." or "No." is considered an affirmative response.)

Step 3. Like Being Chocked By A Weak Midget.

Does your girlfriend make you carry her on your back in public more than once a year?

=======================

After months of careful mathematical, psychological and sociological studies my team of mathematicians and I have come up with the following results:

Answer in the affirmative to any one (1) question:
There's a 46% chance your girlfriend is Chinese.

Answer in the affirmative to any two (2) questions:
There's a 100% chance your girlfriend is Chinese.

Answer in the affirmative to all three (3) questions:
Your Chinese girlfriend is taking advantage of you.

Brand Whores

For A Friend

Last night I went to a hardcore punk concert at a place called The Black Iron. I know, what a hardcore name, right?! The band playing was a Norwegian-Swedish-English amalgam known as Riots and they were pretty cool. 

Typical of rock shows in Nanchang nobody in the audience was doing much other than taking photos and shooting videos. I was at the show with the UN Security Council (representatives from the US, France, Russia, China, and England via Pakistan) and some of us tried to start a mosh pit. We failed. Miserably. It had worked before but last night was not our night.
Anyway: the point. Mid-show, mid-song a well-dressed, middle-aged hyphenated Chinese man grabbed the head of the guitarist's Gibson, gave it a two second look-look, and then gave the guitarist a thumbs up. The well-dressed, middle-aged overly hyphenated Chinese man approved of the guitar choice. Carry on.

I mentioned the incident to the band after the show and we had a laugh. Har har har. At some point shortly thereafter someone came to our mostly-foreigner table and asked where we were from. We laughed and answered (in order): Norway, US, England, Norway, France, Russia, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Pakistan, China, and Pakistan again. What a fun night.  SL

Hey Heinz: You Owe Me Some Money!

Last week I was at Wal-Mart (yep, as ugly as the American ones but terribly overpriced) and while filling my cart with some Western supplies such as Skippy peanut butter, non-sweet mayonnaise and non-sweet sandwich bread I spotted some bottles of Heinz Ketchup which had recently arrived.

Up to this point my ketchup selection was limited to Del Monte and various native brands, all of which are terrible since I'm accustomed to Heinz's magic formula. With a child-like smile I reached down and grabbed a bottle of the magic Heinz sauce. Here's where it got real.

There was a Chinese guy pondering the four other varieties of ketchup but as soon as he saw me instinctively go for the Heinz he dropped the ones he was considering and picked up the Heinz bottle! Since the Heinz ketchup is priced in the middle of the other bottles (about 7RMB) I doubt he considered it because in China price is the first-- and often only-- consideration; the more expensive something is  the better it is.

As I walked away and towards the peanut butter aisle I saw him put the Heinz bottle into his cart. For a few seconds I felt really special, like an American product ambassador of sorts but his reaction was totally natural. In one of my first shopping trips in China I remember standing in front of about 30 vinegar bottles, unable to pick one. Then a guy came up beside me and went straight for his brand. "If it's good enough for him it's good enough for me" I thought and picked the same bottle.  Similarly, I am certain the Chinese guy thought something like: "This foreigner was breastfed hamburgers and fries so he must know his ketchup." Well, Sir, I do know my ketchup. Now spread the word among your wealthy Chinese circle that Heinz is the best.

So in conclusion...
Heinz: you owe me some f#*@$%n money.

On a related note: All foreigners in China should get a monthly check from American and European companies for advertising their products. Even now my Western uniform consists of Puma, Levi's, Lacoste, North Face, and Esprit. I am a walking western product billboard and this free advertising must end at once.  But I'll settle for some new shoes, Puma. SL

"I obviously didn't rape her."

Second-hand story from a Chinese friend.

A mid-level government worker accused of rape claimed that since he had time to put on a condom it was not rape. The judge agreed with him. The woman has probably killed herself. SL

Sancho, how do you stay so thin?

Ah weight, it's on every Chinese girl's mind. Yesterday I was asked how I stay so thin. [For the record, I consider myself neither thin nor fat; I don't really care about my weight. But these girls assume all Americans are either morbidly obese or look like Brad Pitt, and I confuse them by falling into neither category.]

 Since embarking on my round-the-world journeys I have inadvertently managed to lose a little weight so I am now Internet-certified to provide advice on weight-loss. I've compared diets, portions and lifestyles in Latin America, Europe and Asia and have come up with the following.

The following information I provide free of charge so you may benefit from my wisdom.

1. Don't eat so much. Look at your meal and remove 25%. You're eating too much. Don't be fat.

2. Drink only tea, water, and alcoholic beverages, never cold. 'Ever seen what happens to fat when it's cold? That's what happens in your insides when you drink cold things. Don't be gross.

3. Don't get in a car. Walk, run, take public transit. Whatever, just move. Don't be stagnant.


That's it. Keep enjoying your favorite fatty foods. Don't go out of your way to exercise. No need for gimmicky creams promising miracles even the FDA can't certify (and they'll certify anything).

Try it for one month and you'll thank me. SL

***I'm still deliberating on a fourth point, which would necessitate dietary change (something I discourage):

4. Eat what you're meant to eat. If you're European, wheat. Native American, corn. Asian, rice. Your body has evolved for tens of thousands of years to process specific foods-- don't trip it up!

It's okay, I'm just cheating.

Ah, Chinese universities.  A place where children sit in overcrowded classes and eat, sleep and play on their phone.  And eat. Constantly.

Come any sort of exam or real test of learning and the cheating begins. Shameless cheating. In classes with Chinese staff I hear open-book exams are the norm, with quick-finishers helping the slow-learners under the teacher's watchful eye. Huh.

God forbid these kids get a low mark!

Those wealthy enough to attend a foreign university will be in for a HUGE shock (and possible expulsion.)

Ah, kids. Gotta love 'em. SL

That Chinese man has a small penis...let me explain

Just a few hours ago it finally happened. Yep, I finally saw it. It. The myth. The joke. The dreaded stereotype.

I was riding in a taxi on my way to work when we stopped at a red light. (There was a bus ahead of us so we couldn't run the red light, in case you're wondering.) As usual I scanned my surroundings and saw some usual things: a mother walking her child home; a young couple strolling in matching shirts; a man waiting for a cab; friends leaving a restaurant. My gaze continued its pre-programmed journey but returned to the lonely man waiting for a cab; something did not seem quite right about him. I stared for too long and saw it, the dingaling!

The man was urinating on the street, facing traffic with his pants half down. What a sight! A jolly, overweight middle-aged man just a-peeing away. I caught sight of his unusually small junk and laughed so hard that he heard me because then he started yelling something. The cab sped off so I will never know what. Actually, even if the cab had stayed put I don't think I would've understood. That's one of the advantages of not knowing what the hell is being said. (Well that and being able to openly curse at annoying people in public at full volume.)

I know you're all wondering: Seriously Sancho, how small was it?!? Small. Really small. Really ridiculously small. On a Smurf it'd be small. SL

Happy New Year!

Holy crap I forgot I had a blog thing going on! My last update was nearly four months ago and it would be pointless to summarize all of the awesome and not-so-awesome things that have happened to me in that time.  But since this blog is somewhat pointless it seems appropriate I try to summarize:

My second school job was crap. The Chinese management and ownership was lacking in any business sense and they totally ignored me every time I had a brilliant idea (e.g.: provide a good education and students will actually return!). My everyday life was rather quiet with very little drinking of alcohol and the food wasn't too good, either. On my last day in the province it finally snowed-- something I'd been waiting for since moving there. It was a big FU from Shandong Province to me. Eh, whatever: the girls were ugly; the food was sub-par; the beer was watered-down.

Luckily I had a lot of traveling to do this term so was able to leave about once a month on some kind of adventure. I'll have to write about some incredible unpleasant/eye-opening train trips and some of the nuances in culture and people's changing physical appearance from region to region; what I thought of as "Chinese" is not as homogeneous as even they themselves want me to believe. Looks change; values change; clothes change; food changes; architecture changes.

And finally to the present: I am now in Nanchang, Jianxi Province. Wiki it, there's nothing here except the former World's Biggest Ferris Wheel. Wow, that sounds terribly sad. I am now living in a depressingly sad place.  But I digress.

Anyway: I am here for the dumbest reason imaginable but here I am...an illegal immigrant as I type this [Pause for laughter]...[Pause for ironic reflection]. I'm living on floor 15A (14 is to the Chinese what 13 is to Westerners) of a hotel in the middle of the city. It's been a week and I already have two job offers. Things are okay.

People here are quite funny, though: on any given evening the streets are littered with women over 30 showing off their very huashionable* PJs (Ha! So they think!). It's not a bad idea for drunk teens but for (I assume) usually-respectable women? As OMC^ so eloquently put it years ago: How Bizarre, How Bizarre.

Well, that's it. Depending on how I play this hand in two months time I'll be basking under the California heat or sitting in a third-world Chinese jail. Wish me luck...SL


*People in Nanchang cannot make the "f" sound but they still try to pronounce the word "fashionable" in English because it's stylish to do so. The result is a little funny to me but the Chinese from other parts get a huge kick out of it.

^RIP Pauly

Is that a baby on the road!?

Yep, it was bound to happen: there are only so many times you can see a mother, father, child, dog and groceries on a 2-person scooter before one of them falls off.
-------
Setting:
Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, Middle Kingdom
Evening on the New Bridge across the Han River

Weather:
Muggy evening, the remnant of the day's oppressive heat; mosquitoes are in a breeding frenzy, trying to have sex all over my body.

Action:
I'm coming off the New Bridge, returning to town. I'm walking backwards on the southbound lane, not that there's really a backwards. Scooters and cars are everywhere and out of nowhere a motorcycle is approaching very, very fast. There are three young guys on it and without reason or necessity they cut-off a family (3 people) on a scooter, clipping its front wheel so that it wobbles uncontrollably for a few seconds
before the man is able to steer it straight again.

Well...

During those few seconds of wobbling-- during which I am certain it will fall over-- the woman seated on the back drops her baby! The child isn't older than six or eight months and is wrapped in a blanket so perhaps this helps protect him somewhat. But she drops it on the road!!

The mother instantly realizes what she did and begins yelling like a mad woman. The husband stops and she runs to pick her baby off the road. The three punks on the motorcycle look back at what they've caused but speed away like the young punks they are. Shaken but visibly relieved the mother cries on the sidewalk with baby in arms. The father chases after the motorcycle but I doubt he catches them.

In 20 seconds it's over.

Notably, there are many witnesses but none make any effort to pick up the child or comfort the mother. This is just what you do: bear witness and don't interfere. This is China.