Monday, September 08, 2008

A Telling Anecdote

Last night I went out to grab some food with a friend of mine and his Chinese girlfriend.  She’s very westernized, and has lived outside China before.  During dinner she told me a fascinating story.  In her politics class in high school she was told that Winston Churchill himself had declared that “Democracy is the worst kind of government there is.” As anyone familiar with history will know the full quote is “Democracy is the worst kind of government there is, except for all the others.” (Or something to that effect.)

It’s amazing the effect an ellipsis can have on the context of a quote, isn’t it?

A Cut Above

Been meaning to post this one for a while.  This was taken at the Olympic Baseball gold medal game.  Here’s one little boy whose mother was really into the spirit of the games.  He also had the Olympic “runner” logo shaved into the sides of his head as well.

Commie Shopping

A friend of mine took this at one of Beijing’s swanker malls.  Surrounded by Louis Vuitton, Tommy Hilfiger, Dunhill, and other top designers, we find this store.

That’s right, folks, it’s PINKO!  Where all China’s bourgeois pinko commies go to buy their haute couture. 

Click Here for Less...

Anne Frank’s DVD Shop

Since I’m going insane around here with nothing to watch but DVDs I decided to make a quick trip out yesterday to buy some.  The DVD shops are sloooooowly starting to return to normal.  This one I went to I have nicknamed the Anne Frank DVD Shop.  Why?  Recall this famous photograph which obscured the doorway leading to where the family was hiding.

I walked in and asked if they had any foreign DVDs.  The woman looks around, then does a secret knock on the bookcase behind her.  It opens like a door and I am hurried into a small back room full of pirate DVDs.  After I had chosen a few I went to pay.  I was told to wait.  The woman on the inside did a knock, and upon receiving the “all clear” knock the bookcase door was opened and I paid for my items.

Pneumoniawatch, Day 8

On Saturday I went in to the doctor, and I was still hacking and coughing up a storm.  I tell you, this has provided me one hell of an incentive to quit smoking.  I just told my ayi not to buy cigarettes for me any more.  (You can get a carton of Zhongnanhai, the Marlboro Lights of China, for about $10.) I do feel better and I am coughing less but my lungs are still full of crap.  I’ve got another follow-up tomorrow at 2:00, so we’ll see what he says then.  He’s given me the whole week off work nonetheless.  I think I feel good enough that tomorrow he’ll give me a final round of antibiotics, then send me home for some final rest, and check back in with him on Friday.

The doctor also said that he has one other patient who has exactly the same thing I have, and that it’s been as difficult to overcome in him as it has been in me.  This is a bastard of a strain going around.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Down With the Sickness

So yesterday I went in to the doctor for a follow-up.  We redid the bloodwork and x-ray.  The bloodwork showed that I did indeed have an infection of some kind, and the chest x-ray was virtually identical to the one from Tuesday, meaning that the antibiotics he had given me weren’t working.  He gave me a different kind of antibiotic and some more steroids, but I don’t feel any better today than I did yesterday.  I’m going in on Saturday to see him for another follow-up, but this is starting to annoy the shit out of me.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Regretting Buying Sarah Marshall

I bought a pirate version of the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  The soundtrack is switching between dubbed Russian and English with people talking in the background.  The weird thing is that it isn’t a camcorder job.  This has clearly ben ripped from a DVD or telecined from a theatrical release print.  The English audio, however, has laughter and other crowd noise on it, then 20 seconds later it will switch into Russian, then back into English.  Back and forth, back and forth, recorded English and dubbed Russkie.

I don’t know who the hell these DVD pirates are but they’re fucking retarded.  Tomorrow I’ll rip this DVD and show you what I’m talking about. 

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Greasy Cheering

I’ve been meaning to write about this for about a week now, and with my new housebound status I figured I’d take a minute.  During the Olympics you would hear people chanting Jia You Zhongguo! over and over.  This means Go China! Soon everyone of every country was doing the same chant, Jia You USA! or Jia You Khazakstan or Jia You Ukraine!

What’s interesting is the literal translation of jia you:  “add oil.” How did add oil come to mean go?

You might be thinking of an automobile but you’d be mistaken, this phrase is centuries old.  It comes from when carts were first invented.  Someone figured out that if you put oil on the axle the wheels would turn easier and the cart would go faster.  Thus jiā yóu (pronounced jeeah-yo) evolved into a general term for cheering someone on, to make them go faster or better.

I thought that was interesting as hell.

How Exotic

One of the great things about living in a place like China are the opportunities to try exotic new things.  Exotic food, exotic locations, and exotic new strains of viral pneumonia.  Yes, that’s right, I just got back from the doctor and I have viral pneumonia.

On the plus side he’s told me not to go back to work for the rest of the week, which means I have no more excuses about why I haven’t posted the Olympic video yet.

Da Ge

I remember reading an article in the NYT a few months back about how China, ostensibly to provide security for the Olympics, was being permitted to purchase state of the art gadgets like facial recognition software from the world’s biggest defense contractors, mostly American and European.  The general thrust of the article is that while providing security for the games was a completely legitimate enterprise, what will the government do after the games are over?  They could implement damn near 24-hour surveillance of the entire city area.

A minute ago I remembered that the next Olympics are in London and it dawned on me, they already have this system in place.  They use it to spy on their own citizens in the name of crime control.  Here’s a chilling article from last year. 

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

Remember, folks.  Britain is one of the world’s premiere democracies, a bastion of freedom and individual rights the world over.  And they have more surveillance cameras than fucking China.  To put it another way, the Chinese have only just now gotten to the point of spying on their own citizens with CCTV cameras that Britain has had for quite some time.

I don’t know about any of you, but this scares the piss out of me.  I’m far more worried about this sort of thing than I am about terrorism. 

Monday, September 01, 2008

Freedom of Speech, Just Watch What You Say

One of the main criticisms of the Beijing Olympics was China’s intolerant attitude towards political dissent.  The government claimed that anyone who wished to stage a protest had to first file a request with the police.  The police subsequently denied all of them on bullshit legal grounds, thus claiming that they tolerated dissent while in reality not tolerating it.

Pretty good political stunt, isn’t it?  Nice verbal trickery, a country which doesn’t tolerate dissent claims to tolerate dissent but doesn’t.

The last few days have seen the Democratic National Convention in Denver.  Since the Clinton administration these events, in the name of “security,” have relegated protesters to free speech zones, which are basically barbed-wire cages surrounded by police, far away from politicians and TV cameras, where those pesky First Amendment rights are reduced to the point of uselessness.  Via The Agitator comes this astonishing photograph.

Land of the free, home of the brave.  Absolutely fucking pathetic, isn’t it?  China has no right to free speech and they don’t allow demonstrations They use tricks and semantic bullshit to pretend that they respect the right to free speech while subsequently suppressing it.  Americans have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government with grievances guaranteed by the Constitution.  It’s right there in black and white, guaranteed in writing.  And our government uses the goon squad to make sure that those rights are “respected” in such a way that they are essentially useless. 

Tell me, in practical terms, what’s the fucking difference?  Power for power’s sake.  The US is becoming more and more like China every day.  It’s the frog in the pot of boiling water.  What good is the right to free speech if you’re only allowed to exercise it in a place nobody can hear you?

I was at the Beijing Olympics.  The security there wasn’t even as brazen as this.  Can you imagine the international outrage if this picture had been Chinese riot police surrounding a group of Tibet protesters?  It would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the world.  But in America?  Meh.

Wake up.  Open your fucking eyes, folks.  If you want to appreciate just how much of a police state the US is becoming, try living in China.  The similarities become more and more disturbing every day.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Fun With Numbers

Recall, if you will, my post about the cursed Fuwa, the Olympic mascots.  I’ve mentioned many times how superstitious the Chinese are, particularly about numbers.  I’ve also said that, according to folklore, 2008 will be an unlucky year for China.

Got all that?  Good.

At the Olympics this year the Chinese won 51 gold medals, 21 silver, and 28 bronze.  If you write these numbers out in a row you get 51 21 28.  Remember China’s massive earthquake? 

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake … or “Great Sichuan Earthquake” … occurred at 14:28:01.42 CST … on May 12, 2008 in Sichuan province of China.

Look at the numbers:  5/12 2:28. China’s medal count was 51 21 28.  Even though the silver medals were only one off, a lot of Chinese believe this is significant.

But wait, there’s more!

On December 14 there was a huge snowstorm here which caused major damage.  Then on March 14 there was the uprising in Tibet.  The earthquake was on May 12.  Look at the dates:  12/14, 3/14, and 5/12.  If you add 1+2+1+4 you get 8.  3+1+4 is 8.  And 5+1+2 is 8.  8 8 8.  On May 12, the day of the earthquake, it was 88 days before the Olympics, which began on August 8, 2008—8/8/08.

I was told in 2007 that, despite the fact that eights are considered lucky in China, 2008 would be an incredibly unlucky year.  You be the judge.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Yuan Li Liang Shi Yi Nin

Okay, see if you can guess what these mean.  They’re the names of two famous movie characters transliterated into Chinese.

Dasi Weide
Annajing Tianxingzhe

Answer below.

Another Claim to Fame

I get about a hundred hits a day from people using Google Image Search for a picture of elevator buttons.  I just tried it myself and, sure enough, my picture of the elevator buttons in my apartment shows up on the main page.

That’s my picture in the middle.  Hey, everyone needs to be known for something.  This is my contribution to humanity.  (Original elevator button post here.)

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Agincourt Comes to China

Here’s a sign outside the games listing prohibited items.

They banned crossbows.  Good thing the only weapon I brought was my longbow.

*Title explanation here.