sometimes you get aces and sometimes you get faces
On my first butt-numbing 8 hour train ride I got talking to a woman who spent a few years singing in Singaporean bars, getting paid under the table. She's back in China now, married, and teaching at a private singing school she opened herself. They're trying for a kid now, and she's just begun fertility treatments. She said the men in Singapore liked little thin pale-skinned girls. Like those from Chongqing. "You wouldn't know it looking at me now, but I used to be real skinny! I had to be! Girls from dongbei wouldn't stand a chance otherwise" And what did they sing? Soft and gentle songs. Like Deng Lijun? Like Deng Lijun. So no Communist or Socialist songs? No, they didn't like those.
We got off together at the final stop and she told me to call her when I'm making my way down south again through Siping. We'll eat together or something. My tolerance for Chinese style banquets ever diminishing, I decided not to.
---
I met a white guy, an American, in Ha'erbin. And as much as I got along with him, he said a few things - he said America is falling apart. He said it was in ruins. He said he wants never to go ack. He said why go back? There is nothing there and he would be no one. And I said but in China, you are white, and thus you are special. And he kind of nodded and I kind of nodded.
I asked him if he got a lot of Chinese pussy (it's easier to be crude, sometimes). And he said, no, not Chinese. They all want to marry him. And he'd feel bad misleading them. He then said he didn't know any girls who didn't want money, as much as possile, and to live comfortably. I told him he obviously hasn't met enough girls. And he asked me where these other girls were and I could only shrug, I don't think you really understand girls.
---
Taishan fucked up my knees. I didn't notice on the way up because I spent it out of breath and arguing with a Friedman acolyte who just graduated high school without ever needing to take the Gaokao because he's been in an Olympiad Math/Chemistry/Physics stream since the end of elementary school and was already guaranteed a spot in Tsinghua. An econ grad who'd just finished his Masters (at Tsinghua as well, the odds!) mediated. Climbing a mountain in China at 2 am and debating the cruder points of Road to Serfdom is some bizarro world sit com scene I'm not sure I'd be able to dream up on my own.
---
A man with a shaved head shadowboxing in his seat and dispensing the wisdom of "China is best", every other punch. Rolling his wrists, he gestures to the group of students the aisle over and asks them how could money not be the most important thing in life. Say you're going out with your elderly relatives. Would you ask them to take the bus? The crowded train? NO! What about if you have kids? Should they ride the bus everywhere? Of course not!
---
The ticket collector in the hydroponics greenhouse at the Yantai agricultural expo urges me to sit with her and chat a bit. Later on she gives me some tiny cherry tomatoes to eat, but first she wants to know about the environment in Canada. Isn't it very nice there? So clean? I try my best to talk about carbon colonialism, not in so many words, of course. I don't remember if I brought up the London smog. Or cholera. Her daughter goes to school in South Korea. They all like it there. Very clean.
[
at Dreamwidth | comment with OpenID]
We got off together at the final stop and she told me to call her when I'm making my way down south again through Siping. We'll eat together or something. My tolerance for Chinese style banquets ever diminishing, I decided not to.
---
I met a white guy, an American, in Ha'erbin. And as much as I got along with him, he said a few things - he said America is falling apart. He said it was in ruins. He said he wants never to go ack. He said why go back? There is nothing there and he would be no one. And I said but in China, you are white, and thus you are special. And he kind of nodded and I kind of nodded.
I asked him if he got a lot of Chinese pussy (it's easier to be crude, sometimes). And he said, no, not Chinese. They all want to marry him. And he'd feel bad misleading them. He then said he didn't know any girls who didn't want money, as much as possile, and to live comfortably. I told him he obviously hasn't met enough girls. And he asked me where these other girls were and I could only shrug, I don't think you really understand girls.
---
Taishan fucked up my knees. I didn't notice on the way up because I spent it out of breath and arguing with a Friedman acolyte who just graduated high school without ever needing to take the Gaokao because he's been in an Olympiad Math/Chemistry/Physics stream since the end of elementary school and was already guaranteed a spot in Tsinghua. An econ grad who'd just finished his Masters (at Tsinghua as well, the odds!) mediated. Climbing a mountain in China at 2 am and debating the cruder points of Road to Serfdom is some bizarro world sit com scene I'm not sure I'd be able to dream up on my own.
---
A man with a shaved head shadowboxing in his seat and dispensing the wisdom of "China is best", every other punch. Rolling his wrists, he gestures to the group of students the aisle over and asks them how could money not be the most important thing in life. Say you're going out with your elderly relatives. Would you ask them to take the bus? The crowded train? NO! What about if you have kids? Should they ride the bus everywhere? Of course not!
---
The ticket collector in the hydroponics greenhouse at the Yantai agricultural expo urges me to sit with her and chat a bit. Later on she gives me some tiny cherry tomatoes to eat, but first she wants to know about the environment in Canada. Isn't it very nice there? So clean? I try my best to talk about carbon colonialism, not in so many words, of course. I don't remember if I brought up the London smog. Or cholera. Her daughter goes to school in South Korea. They all like it there. Very clean.
[
at Dreamwidth | comment with OpenID]