What you can expect in this blog is
pictures and discussion of the following

-General living in China topics

-Badminton-although primarily a sport for old ladies and family reunions in Western countries, it’s taken super seriously in China. I quite like the sport and as a side benefit it’s one way to assimilate.

-Chinese movies/tv/pop culture

-any traveling I do, in China and beyond

-My journey in learning Chinese

-Some discussion of Chinese history/literature (mostly as it relates to my learning Chinese)

-Lots of pictures of Chinese food (if all you’ve eaten is Americanized Chinese food you’ve got no idea what you’re missing)

-My struggles to improve at darts (I play primarily on vsPhoenix dart machines, which offers a convenient way to track progress).

-Social observations/commentary/comparisons

-My brainstorming of other ways to earn money.

-Anything you all care to ask me about

I’m assuming that most readers are (only) slightly more knowledgeable about China than the average English speaker ( because I hold 2+2ers in high esteem). Some old China hands may find some of the things I write about rather shallow, but I’ll try to maintain a mix of general China stuff that the former group may find interesting and somewhat deeper stuff that most hopefully will enjoy.

I’m a Western man living in Guangdong, China. I’m lived here longer than some but not long enough to be considered an old hand by anyone. Unlike most expats in China, I’m interested in Chinese language, history and culture. I’ve finished the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks 2-4. My current way of studying is reading graded readers like this

, reading articles on The Chairman's Bao, watching tv/movies, and talking to Chinese people. Of the foreigners I know in China only a couple speak Chinese fluently and a couple more are trying. Most hover somewhere between “can order food in a restaurant” and “can awkwardly hit on girls” levels of Chinese.

When I came to China, my plan was to look at it as my self-made graduate course in Chinese studies. I don’t just want to learn the language, but understand the culture and be knowledgeable about the history and politics. Of course I need to pay bills while I’m here, so I came as an English teacher. If you look around reddit or other corners of the internet you’ll find the level of scorn directed at English teachers to be only slightly less than aging pot-bellied sexpats buying teenage (boy)girls in South East Asia.

For me, it was a really a process of evaluating the pros and cons. I wanted to live abroad, to live in a new country and learn a new language. Originally I wanted to join the Peace Corps, but the peculiarity of such ‘volunteer’ efforts is that they don’t pay you. When I learned about English teaching opportunities it seemed like a much better fit-here I could go to another country and learn the language and get paid-no brainer. It quickly became clear that the best choices were China, Taiwan, South Korea or Japan. Due to the population and political and economic influence of China, I felt Chinese would be more useful to learn than Japanese or Korean.

My current situation: I live with my girlfriend in her apartment in a tier three city in Guangdong (you can google city tiers or I’ll explain it in a later post). I’m starting work in a couple days at an adult training center. Basically this is a “school” located in a shopping mall that adults can come to on evenings and weekends to learn English. I do go out pretty often, but due to the aforementioned living situation, if you’re looking for a blog with lots of Asian hookers and hookups you may be disappointed. I will from time to time post thread savers when it’s germane to a discussion. For endless pictures of suspiciously young beautiful Asian women LB has a blog too.

As a preview of what I plan to talk about in the future here are some pics:

The most popular dating show in China



Some of my favorite places in China




Some food


Where I'm starting with darts


if you know anything about darts you'll get the joke in my darts name



my current and completed reading/study


how I spent yesterday afternoon (that asylum 13 cigar took forever to finish)


funny things I see

funny rules at a park


a store with a typically clueless name. Weirdly, dudu doesn't even mean anything that would be relevant in Chinese. The owner probably thinks thats a good "English name".

some random Russian working girls that decided to dance on the bar one night.

Good to see you blogging.

How is your spoken Mandarin/Cantonese?

Fei cheng wu rao is pretty fake and scripted so I stopped watching it a few years ago. Most Chinese reality tv is scripted to the max so I have lost a lot of interest.

In terms of Chinese tv series, the new Legend of the Condor Heroes is somewhat amusing.

Recently I have started reading Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem (San Ti). If you like sci fi, give this series a try.

I have never been to Guangdong/Canton though I enjoy Cantonese food.

Looking forward to more.

Just read your post in the travel forum.

In addition to dou di zhu, you should pick up "sheng ji" aka raise the level aka 80 points as well as mahjong.

Last night was a disappointment. I had arranged to meet a friend at the local bar most popular with foreigners-a dinghy place with a stage stuffed into one corner, an evilly uneven pool table in another, unisex bathrooms and clouds of smoke like San Francisco fog. Thursday is buy one get one nights for cheap beer, however something one learns when trying to take advantage of discounts at Chinese places is that there's always extra stipulations. The excuses as to why the advertised discount doesn't apply are as endless as students' excuses for not doing homework. "it's a holiday, it's a Friday, it's only every other third Tuesday that's also a full moon." You get the idea. My friend for unknown reasons went to the bar at 8:30, and left in a bad mood after learning that "buy one get one free all night" actually starts at 9 (and ends at 12).

That gave me an opportunity. I'd been wanting to go to another bar-a faux Irish chain bar with a bar three stools long and Pogues and U2 posters on the walls-to check out their "jazz band" on Thursdays. The band was a 5 piece with drums, bass, guitar/vocals, keyboard and sax. Not exactly a traditional jazz lineup, but let's keep an open mind. They started off with a cover of Miles Davis' "So What" that would have thrown the jazz professor in 'Whiplash' into a homophobic fury, but was tolerable in my mind. After that...well they just played pop songs with a saxophone. I'm sorry, but throwing a sax breakdown at the end of Can't Take My Eyes off of You (strangely more popular in China than the US) doesn't make you a god damn jazz band.

I wondered if this apparent ignorance of the meaning of "jazz" was related to the number of women who've told me they like "jazz dancing", but when I asked if they liked jazz music said no-like I was the idiot for asking. Eventually I looked up jazz dance on youku (China's youtube) and found this. If someone can explain how this relates to jazz (and why you'd call it jazz dance instead of hip hop of pop dancing) I'm all ears.

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My Cantonese is nonexistent. Every time someone (usually a Cantonese woman with ulterior motives) asks if I want to learn Cantonese I say "how does that help me when I go to Beijing or Chengdu?"

Spoken (Mandarin) I'd say lags behind my reading (as you can see i my picture, I'm reading a children's version of 三国演义桃园结义(Romance of the Three Kingdoms). I speak to people every day, and when we meet my gf's family/friends we all speak Chinese, but watching TV/movies is quite difficult.

I didn't know feichengwurao was fake, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I'm just not sure what they fake about it-like the girls questions or who they like?

I've never heard of shengji， just looked it up. I haven't found a mahjong tutor yet.

In reference to that pile of small books on top of my textbooks-my ambitious goal is to finish one a week. I say ambitious because there's about 100 new vocabulary for me in each one. If you're learning a language, I recommend looking up extensive reading. basically, when reading something in your target language, you should be at about 98% comprehendability. If you can't understand that much, you should probably move down a level. Also, the focus shouldn't be on memorizing every new word, but as you see those new words in more and more places (because you're reading stuff every day) it will create more mental connections and you'll remember it.

Feichenwurao isnt completely fake but there have been multiple reports of male contestants being told by producers that they should pick a specific female contestants ( they get the promised aegean vacation, which they can sell or go on).

Chinese tv shows can be difficult to understand if they are set in ancient China and use a lot of chengyu. Its equivalent to an English learner watching a Shakesperean Play.

You probably know about this already, but one web show I enjoy very much is baozokanshapian, a Chinese movie review web program reminicent of Screen Junkies.

【暴走看啥片儿】第三季| 欢迎订阅新频道！: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...B07KilAtAhpV8H

warning: pictures of beautiful women ahead.

Amoeba kind of ruined the surprise, but I want to talk about feichengwurao非诚无扰. See Wikipedia for an overview of how the show works, as I’m not just gonna regurgitate what they say there, but try to give you something more about what we can glean concerning Chinese culture from this show. As you can see, it’s wildly popular (although perhaps somewhat less than when it debuted). Everyone has seen it and has an opinion on it. The reason I think it can be used to analyze contemporary Chinese culture is due to a) its popularity-obviously the Chinese see something in it, b) the contestants are regular people allowed (encouraged) to express themselves in ways more free than most Chinese tv (so many reality shows are “Celebrities doing X”), and c) the reactions of the authorities. I’m going to look at a few different aspects, including introducing some aspects of the format that Wikipedia doesn’t, the cultural differences from the West, materialism, and what the government’s reaction shows about current government.

First, the cultural differences we see in this show. Wikipedia calls it “If You Are the One”, but that’s not the actual translation. The actual translation is “Serious Inquiries Only”. This is a hint right there about how the Chinese view dating. Casual or recreational dating is literally a foreign concept in China. Dating is a precursor to marriage. If a relationship doesn't end in marriage it’s a failure (unless it’s an affair). Of course, it’s not black and white-some young people receive Western influences and are more open to casual relationships, but your typical respectable Chinese person (particularly woman) isn’t. Another difference relates to the format. In the show, each man has three videos introducing himself, with interaction with the woman in between. The first video is a general introduction-his education, job, hobbies, etc. The last is his friends/family (usually) saying what a great guy he is and why you should pick him. The second one however, is a dramatization of his past relationships. Of course, you all know that talking in depth about your exes on a first date is a huge faux pax, but this is considered normal. They wanna know why your past relationships failed. Another coincidence I noticed is that seemingly 90% of the men have had exactly three girlfriends. Either this is a remarkable coincidence, or this is just the perfect number to Chinese to show that you’re not an unlovable loser, but you’re not a player as well. Another major difference: meeting the parents is important in dating in any culture, but even more so in Chinese culture. It’s changing now, but traditionally meeting your partner’s parents was a de facto engagement. Some of the men on feichengwurao bring their parents on the show. Obviously, this would be a huge red flag in the West (what, is he still a mama’s boy?) but in China being able to get along with your spouse (or potential spouse’s) parents is vital. So a few bring mom on the show to ask a few questions.

A few points about the format. When the guy enters (from the elevator you see behind him) they play this song (starting at :30), and when a guy loses they play this overly emotional song. I don’t really get it. The song makes it sound like we should deeply sympathize with him, but we only met him five minutes ago (besides he’s an unlovable loser that not one girl in twenty-four would deign to date). Somewhere between the first and last videos occasionally the man gets a chance to show off some special skill, like playing an instrument of singing karaoke. By far my favorite was a guy who I believe was a professional dancer, who performed a very graceful and athletic….pole dance(I believe he left dateless).

This brings me to materialism. Yes, many Chinese are materialistic. Are they more materialistic than Westerners? That I can’t say for sure. A guy driving a Ferrari is going to get more girls than a guy on a bike the world over. Some guy in Beijing made videos of him picking up women that consisted solely of asking them to get in the car (a Ferrari). But 50 cent employed the same strategy years ago when he said “I got no pickup lines/I stay on the grind/I tell the hoes all the time/***** get in my car.” Chinese are more open about their materialism though. Most of you are familiar with the nouvu riche phenomenon-people who are first generation rich often love to show off their wealth (50 cent again “they say I’m new rich/say I’ve got no class/say I’m up bottom/I came up too fast”). But China is ALL new money. Virtually everyone was poor prior to 1979, and many people rich today didn’t start making their fortunes until well after 1980. When you and everyone you know is mired in grinding poverty (my gf’s uncle said when her father married her mother, he paid a bride price of $100….6 months wages) material possessions take on a paramount importance. Sure, the Beatles could sing “I don’t care too much for money/cuz money can’t buy me love” because they’d never lived through the privations of the Great Depression or WWII (or in China’s case, the Cultural Revolution). The way this relates to 非诚无扰 is that originally, male contestants explicitly talked about their salary and wealth. “What’s your salary?” is not an unusual first or second date question. Besides simple materialism, this can be due to the concept of 门当户对-the idea that potential couples should match in social and economic status as closely as possible for family harmony.


When the show came out, the authorities were not pleased, as it seemed to be promoting this crass materialism-something that especially under Xi Jinping the party has tried to combat (one example-party members are forbidden to play golf). Yet, rather than the heavy-handed approach of shutting down the entire show, the authorities introduced the loyal psychologist (the lady in the middle) as a “guest” on the show, to offer banter and advice. They also advised the show to stop the explicit references to contestants’ salary and wealth. In modern China, unless one crosses certain red lines, the authorities aren’t usually going to immediately throw you in the gulag or deport you. Shutting down such a popular show would have pissed a lot of people off, and thus been bad for social harmony (one of the watch words of the party today). For me, I watch what I say on social media and the like, but I don’t worry that saying the wrong thing to a friend is going to get me deported or something..

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amoeba: we tried watching the classic tv series romance of the three kingdoms, but without english OR Chinese subtitles it was impossible.

Romance of the 3 kingdoms even with Chinese subtitles will be almost impossible. Read the childrens version first so you know most of the plotlines.

You should really check out that channel i sent, especially the episodes on US movies. I am often pretty astounded by the level of insight in to US comic book movies. There is also a lot of skewering of bad films, both Chinese and Foreign.

This is a fun article about the very literal Chinese names for common animals. It nicely illustrates one of my favorite things about Chinese. Because the root words in most Chinese nouns are themselves Chinese (as opposed to Latin or Greek like English) it often makes learning new words straightforward and easy to remember. Besides the animals on the list, I'll give a couple examples that illustrate my point. gynecologist-for an English learner there's no clues as to what this means. If they're advanced, they know that -ologist usually means some kind of doctor, but what the hell does gyne mean? Now look at the Chinese word: 妇科医生. Woman/Women+branch (of study)+doctor. pretty simple right? Or optometrist. The Chinese is 验光师. examine+light+master(often used for professional job names).
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I have the children's books. If you can read that stack of books I posted first 6 of them are romance of the three kingdoms.

I'll check it out.

i got a new toy

actually, I told my gf I wanted to buy a camera, and she said "oh, I already have one". So nearly 1000usd saved there. I know nothing about cameras, so I have a new project.

I thought this map was really interesting. China is not uniformly crowded, the Western provinces are mostly empty

My apartment (pretty messy),

Living room/study

kitchen (no dishwasher or microwave, but some weird dish sanitizer)

bedroom (window screens are a foreign technology to China, so we have to resort to a mosquito net).

balcony-I've never seen anyone with a clothes dryer, everyone just hangs their clothes.

Have you gotten used to drinking hot/warm water on hot days yet?

haha, like most foreigners I've had a good laugh at the Chinese drinking scalding water even in July, but when I was back in the US I noticed people drinking iced sweet tea even when it was 40 degrees F. I've tried to compromise:when it's above 23C I drink cold drinks (except coffee), when below I drink hot. Although most restaurants give you hot tea/water, and I still drink it.

If you’ve seen Mulan, you know that the Chinese traditionally practice ancestor worship. The biggest part of that is Qingming Festival, which falls in the first week of April.

Our Qingming started with a phone call-we had somehow gotten the time wrong, and they’d arrive to pick us up in 10 minutes. No time to eat or even have a cup of coffee. We had stayed too late and drank too much at a friend’s bbq the night before, so this wasn’t an ideal start. Both sides of my girlfriend’s family come from the same town outside of our city, so it was about an hour drive to pay our respects to both.

After finding a parking place, we joined the ever-growing group of people joining the flow towards the hills outside town (Chinese tombs are usually on hills), like tributaries joining a river towards the sea. That’s an appropriate similie, because when we got to the tombs we encountered a sea of people on the hills. It took some time to find our spot, during which time I observed that there’s apparently no conventions about treating the graves with respect-people climbed over, around and through the graves to reach theirs. This is practical-there’s no layout or pathways between graves, so you’re forced to walk over other’s graves on the way to yours. The headstones themselves look like you’d expect, but some have black lettering and some have red. The red is for people still living. It was a strange feeling reading the quite feeble but still very alive grandmother’s headstone.

Once we got there, we could get started honoring them. For this, each person got three burning joss sticks,



and in turn, each person knelt before the headstone, bowed three times (the depth and length of which depended on your devotion I suppose), then poured out some rice alcohol from three small cups. Also, Chinese burn things that their ancestors may need in the afterlife, like (paper versions of) cars, houses, servants and money (pieces of paper with gold or silver pasted on).

Finally come the firecrackers. Oh the firecrackers. Imagine one of those islands honeycombed with Japs in WWII being pounded for 12 hours by naval bombardment to soften it up- that’s what came to mind from the people, the smoke and the noise.







All of this takes some time, and the combination of smoke, noise, sun, hunger, thirst and hangover were not having the best effects on me. But finally, we could go. One of the ironies is that this is called “tomb sweeping day” in English, but most people left the tombs absolutely filthy. The fireworks contain red paper, so after they’re set the tombs are almost covered in it. I have no idea who cleans it.

After this, we made our way to lunch, which entailed renting a room with three tables of about 10 chairs (typical for Chinese family dinners).



You can see everything we had to eat, which included curry, chicken, dimsum, boiled vegetables, also a small pig. EVERY family eats a small roast pig on Qingming Festival that most carry around hanging from a pole like this.



I’ve met much of the family before, but when both sides of the family live in a 100km radius, there’s always more. Several I didn’t know invited us to visit and took pictures with me. It was an interesting experience, and I felt somewhat honored that they’d deign to include a foreigner in venerating their ancestors, I just wish I wasn't hungry thirty and tired for most of it.

Why aren't my imgur pics working?

http://imgur.com/a/NxE3p

well here's a link to the imgur pictures that was supposed to be embedded.

A very Chinese night out

Chinese hospitality. Classic double-edged sword. If Chinese people like you, they'll happily treat you to food, drinks, happy ending massages, etc. But they will strongly insist on you partaking to the fullest. The worst part of drinking with Chinese is their constant insistence that you finish your glass and have another. It's a part of being a good host to them. Showing how much they like you by pouring you drink after drink (if you buy the drinks they won't be so insistent). Which brings me to last night.

I was bored and asked several friends to go out. They all had their various excuses, family, work, sock shopping, etc. So I was flying solo. For that, I had to go to the smoky bar I've mentioned before. Back when I first arrived in China, I often went alone. I'd buy a bucket of beer, and before long someone would strike up a conversation (not speaking Chinese I didn't want to start conversations, in case they didn't speak English). I never failed to have an interesting time.

last night though, I wasn't interested in chasing any girls. I wanted to try the bartenders signature drink: a long island +1. Unfortunately he wasn't there, so I got a white Russian instead. I ambled over to the pool table to watch a couple play. Another couple sat down next to me, and the girl introduced herself. She was decidedly average. Average height, average weight, average hair and very average face. I chatted and played pool with them, and then they invited me outside, where the girl said her older sister was (this bar has a huge patio). I should have known that it wouldn't be just her sister-it was a table full of people, all very excited to meet me. They seated me between the guy and girl I'd just meant. Here I realized that they weren't a couple, the guy had a gf and the girl had ulterior motives. After pouring me several glasses of beer (Chinese people don't drink beer out of bottles or cans, they pour them into small glasses) they asked what I wanted to drink. I should have said nothing, but I mistakenly said anything’s fine.

So the guy in charge (there's always some guy in charge) ordered a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. So a few toasts, shots and scotches and cokes ensure. Surprisingly, the guy who bought the JW decided to leave about halfway through the bottle. This was a relief to me, since the only person I was ‘indebted’ to was gone. However, the night continued with the dice game. If you’ve seen Pirates of the Caribbean you have some idea how it’s played. Every bar in China has it and nearly every group of Chinese people at a bar plays it. If you lose, you drink (and often they insist that you finish the glass). By this point, some of the crew were getting a bit creaky. One older guy who’d been mostly quiet leaned forward and vomited on the ground. After throwing a few napkins down on the ground, he lit up three cigs at once and handed two out (why anyone would smoke them is beyond me).
The girl was obviously interested, but it was less than reciprocated. She even gave me 100 petaca (Macau currency) note as a ‘gift’. She invited me several times to visit her in Zhuhai. She was looking worse for wear too though-she started begging for some hot water before refunding some of her JW onto the ground next to her. I took that as my cue to leave. However extracting yourself from a Chinese party can be difficult at times, so I took what was admittedly the coward’s way out-I excused myself to the bathroom and went out the back door.
Cost of my night out-25rmb ($4~).

sub !!
the food in GZ and Shantou is amazing !

would love to hear more about ur experience in GD province,

I actually haven't spent much time in either place, but nearby a lot. I've been living in Guangdong, so most things I'll share are about that. Anything you are interested in particular?

hmmmmm
any strange encounters in GD ?

home poker games ? ( heard it used to play very huge)

Culture difference ?

Strange encounters? A lot. I'm not sure where to start.

I've played in a poker game at a bar, not huge but I'll talk about that.

Cultural differences I see every day. My story about the night out was meant to highlight all of those differences haha.

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The feud

The Villain: mid to late 30s, built like a lazy retired linebacker. Ie, a big guy, that perhaps was athletic in his day, but today…less so. Fond of dressing in Buffalo Bills hats (forward or backwards) and basketball shorts. Imagine what your average Buffalo Wild Wings customer looks like and you'd be able to pick him out of a lineup. Frequents the foreigner bars and restaurants with regularity. According to what one friend who’d like to remain anonymous said, he either loves you or hates you. A teacher, but also hired as a “social manager” by one local bar (that’s affiliated with another). Dates a French English/French teacher.

Hero: late 20s, built like a professional badminton player. Told at times that he dresses “like a teacher”. Frequents some of the same bars and restaurants, but somewhat less frequently.

I’m not entirely sure how this feud began. To be honest, it seems almost entirely one-sided. I’ve known this guy since my first summer in China, and at that time I was amazed by all the foreigners who knew something about China and could speak better Chinese than me (so nearly all). Without bragging, I can say that now my Chinese has surpassed all but a couple, and for the most part I trust my own knowledge and judgments concerning China more than most. So I hung out with him a few times and tried to absorb as much information as possible. We weren’t that close and I didn’t desire to be, but we were friendly when we meant.

Where things might have turned south was when he was hired by that bar. One of his responsibilities was managing the bar’s wechat group. Often these groups get overrun with people advertising their ****, looking for jobs/employees and posting random emoticons. I (as others had) made what I thought was a general comment that wechat group mods should be more assertive, but he took it at a personal slight and said “well you can leave the group then!” and deleted me. Weird, but I didn’t care too much. I didn’t mention it to anyone except my best friend in this town. After a few months I deleted him as I didn’t see us becoming friends again. A few months after that, I received a message from him saying “if you see mean, you better go the other ****ing way!” I asked what he was talking about but received no response. I thought maybe he was upset I deleted him from my friends, although it seemed like a weird way to address it.


Fast forward a year. I’ve been in the same place as him at the same time a few times, and we’ve just ignored one another. So much for me needing to go the other way I guess. I assumed he had gotten over it, or just didn’t care much. But a friend of mine (a very good darts player) said that at a darts night, he had yelled at her because she was friends with me. My best friend in town somehow hasn’t ever been yelled out (seems to be a pattern of this guy going after girls) and even told the guy that I wasn’t sure what the problem was, to which he responded “he (me) was talking **** and it got back to me.” I don’t recall talking about him at all, let alone ****.

My friend had encouraged me to try to take him aside the next time we were at the same bar and try to say that everything was just a misunderstanding. I thought this was unlikely to succeed based on my read of villain: the combination of alcohol, his natural braggadocio, and his desire not to lose face seemed more likely to produce a problem.
I think that belief is even more justified now.

The French girl used to date an English guy. We all used to play darts together, seemed like everyone was cool. One night a few months ago, villain confronted Brit and demanded he leave, apparently making quite a scene. Apparently, Tuesday night Brit’s now fiancée went to this bar (we suffer from a lack of good bars) and villain confronted her and yelled at her for her association with Brit. That’s twice he’s harassed girls just because they knew guys he didn’t like.


At this point, I think I’m just going to continue ignoring him. In light of events, trying to “talk him down” seems like a very low percentage play. Confronting him and instigating a fight seems like it’d end badly in multiple ways. Talking to the Canadian owner of the bar seems pointless, as he’s good friends with villain and presumably knows that he’s been harassing customers. Perhaps the Hong Kong boss, who has always liked me and comes in more often would be interested in knowing this. Other than that, I’m not sure what’s to be done, other than boycotting those places (which kinda punishes me more than them, as it’s not a major/party city, there’s only a few decent bars in town).

u should really clear any misunderstanding with him,
the thing in china is,
u never really know someday somehow tht person might help u out !
even if he cant help out, u should sort it out with him,

and as u said boycotting those places might not help u !

I'm not sure how to do that. Say "I don't know what you heard, but I wasn't talking **** about you." and he'll probably just call me a liar. Say "I may have said something about you" and he'll take it as justified.

I do try not to burn bridges, but this guy isn't someone that will be particularly useful in my future.

Out of curiosity, why do you put a space between the last word and the punctuation?

Subbed

I never check this sub forum, I didn't know that you started a blog.

Ah, chit. Unsubbed!

Recently, I have binge watched all the videos of the Food Ranger on youtube. China looks fascinating, in my top 5 of my travel bucket list.

Top 5 of your favorite cities in China? Best/worst experience in China?

LOL !
just a habit i guess !

yea ! ur top 5 cities in china !
for me is all 2nd tier cities....

Well, I got screwed again. It's basically my fault at this point. I went to a place that has buy one get one 买一送一(mai3yi1song4yi1)-an important phrase to know-until 930. Two Carlsbergs for 33rmb (more than 5$). As I was finishing up, a musician I know came in to play that night, so I told them I wanted a whisky and coke. Big mistake. He brought me a whisky (with a cool single ball-shaped ice cube) and charged me 40rmb. But then I reminded him I wanted whisky and coke, and he said "sure! another 18rmb.". Sometimes, i don't even want to bother going out.

Should I ask them to move it to travel? It has a bunch of what are essentially blogs already.

I feel like the mongering stories are saturated. If you wanna read about how to **** hookers and get out of paying or make girls **** dogs I know where to point you. I could dust off a few degeneracy stories from the vault (because I'm pretty happily domesticated) if there's enough demand. Nothing comparing to those I'm afraid.

Honestly I don't feel like I can pick five fairly. I'll give you my feelings on a few.

Hong Kong. As soon as I enter this city I feel alive. Any kind of food, any pleasure your heart desires (except a fully legal casino), any taste you have, it's all there for you. Everything from hiking mountains with amazing views to seeing Monet exhibitions (GFs choice) to utter degeneracy with Pinay hookers in Wan Chai-Hong Kong's got it all. Bring your whole roll though-it's expensive as hell.

Shenzhen-just across the border from Hong Kong, this is a city without a soul. It's the tech capital of China, but its fantastic growth (look it up, it's unbelievable) has made it a hollow shell. There's countless skyscrapers, but very little that actually touches you. If you wanna party like there's no tomorrow, Coco park and Seaworld are your friends. Most of the staff speak English, there's a good supply of willing Chinese women (or men if that's your thing) and plenty of BOOM BOOM dance music to keep the party going. Just bring your wallet-partying in China isn't SEA. Unless you luck out like I did in a previous post, going hard in China is EXPENSIVE. Coco Park's strip (basically, you walk 250m of bars next to each other reminded me of nothing so much as a human meat market. Whether that's appealing or appalling is entirely up to you.

Shangri-la-by all rights, I should hate this place. Especially after it was mostly burned down a couple years ago, everything is new and nearly nothing is original. But there's still something magical in the air. Above the old city, you can still help push the largest prayer wheel in the world. Outside the city, you can see the breathtaking (literally at that altitude) 松赞林寺 Sōngzànlín temple. You will be impressed by this temple, I guarantee you. I'm not sure if they're still getting away with it, but on one of the higher levels, in a side room, is a picture of the Dali Lama (the fact that I met a bar owner with a phone background of him who, after some prompting, gushed about him at length, made it even better). Outside of the city is a snow mountain you can take a cable car to. Be warned-go early! We went in the afternoon, and the car from halfway to the top took a forty minute wait. I though the girl would die on the way down. Absolutely unparalleled views though. I remember it clearly. Just above the 'old city' (within walking distance) is a real temple that's not a tourist attractive. 百鸡寺 100 chicken Temple is what it's called, and it has great views of the old city for pictures.

Lijiang: this city south of Shangri la is famous for one night stands. It is not one of my favorite, particularly because the "old city" is neither. Everything is new (unless they had MacDonalds in old China) and since literally no one lives there, it isn't really a city, is it? Utterly commercial and with no redeeming qualities. Whatever UNESCO designated as a "world heritage site" has disappeared.

Dali: This. This is a good place. Much lower altitude than Shangri-la. Much less of a holy atmosphere if you're not religious. Very relaxing. Also has a mostly fake "old city", but a less pretentious feel. You can rent an e-bike and ride around the lake admiring the scenery and traditional architecture. just make sure you take detailed pictures before you rent, so they can't accuse you of damaging the bike.