Stop the cope, SOLDIER!
This is a long war; you have abandoned thread during your very first battle! The chuddie alongs are celebrating driving you away from the battlefield in their gayops DM chains and discords!
This is not an acceptable outcome!
Rhetorical question: what does a vile, bitter janitor, one miserable faggot, two (maybe three, if we count the miserable faggot) Holocaust deniers, four cowardly NEETS, some 5/10 twenty something living with her stepdad (? And not her real parents?) and an aging hebeophile forever-alone have in common?
mags mags mags, I like you more than most, hell compared to most of the people here I'm actually fond of you, but when you admitted that you ate ass, that was pretty funny. Banner day for da trolls.
Yea idk what to say, the stars aligned and I actually said something lulzy for once. But most of the dirt that gets dug here is tame and dull IMO, so maybe they needn’t bother (challenge level impossible)
In your travels, have you been able to sample one of China's fabled pig toilets?
In these toilets honorable Chinese gentlemen will squat over open holes dropping directly into the pig sty, where their generous donations are fed upon by the fat pink sows they own.
For some reason I thought that might appeal to you.
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No thanks.
Are the locals still angsty about the whole burning down century of humiliation thing or is it just one of those things they don't talk about? Always wanted to show up in pith helmet to see the reactions.
Also 50/50 ray of light or you're cosplaying slobbermut;
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Ray of light, the sunlight was very strong and I’m whiter than a porcelain plate. I got a bit of a burn around the neckline of my shirt and part of my arms to show for it. It was actually extremely hot and dry, no slobbering possible.
As for the Summer Palace: nobody’s confronted me about that, and I don’t see why they would. The Summer Palace was a seat of feudal-imperial power, and there was discussion about destroying the ruins of it during the Cultural Revolution. Thankfully that didn’t happen, as there were some who advocated for the destruction of the Summer Palace, and many other cultural heritage sites. Now it’s a fee-for-entry public park. It is open year round. In the summer you can rent paddle boats and go one the lake. I went in 2017 in the winter and there were many people wandering around on the frozen lake, pulling their kids around on little toboggans. The pollution-resistant spiritual cousins of Agendaposter go running there in the 3 degree cold with a face mask on (for the smog.) more power to them; The Summer Palace has some steep trails as well as long, flat paths around the lake. I was bemused that people were willing to pay 50 yuan just to go run in a public park, but I’ve since learned that some Beijingers purchase season passes.
It is said that the Palace had fallen into decline and disrepair towards the end of the Qing dynasty, but after it was burnt Ci Xi directed millions of taels of silver to be invested in rebuilding efforts, nominally on behalf of the Guangxu Emperor. Alas, Ci Xi would have been such a girl boss, if she had only learned to quit while she was ahead
. She seems to have bought into her own hype towards the end of her life and acted as if she could keep living as Empress Dowager and Regent forever, so she ended up murdering her own son just to appoint another child-emperor to control, who rapidly outlived her (Puyi.) Many such cases in Imperial history, file them under “lived too long for their own good.” And she also just bet on the wrong horse in the Boxer Rebellion.
Beijing, part 3: we went to Sam’s Club
Today we went to Sam’s club to obtain some items not commonly available in Chinese grocery stores. Namely, I wanted to buy plain, unflavored seltzer water and white wine, which are my drinks of choice and both are mysteriously obscure in China. The seltzers are all flavored with fake sugar and fruit flavors (fucken gross, except for orange, lemon, and lime without sweetener) and Chinese people seem to only know that red wine (and in the bulge bracket, French champagne) exist. Even Sam’s only had 9 different varietals of white wine to choose from, compared to ~35 kinds of red and an even broader selection of spirits (all the Western favs + the white liquor/aircraft coolant alcohol I mentioned before.) we also needed diapers and meats.
Sam’s club mostly sells beef. This is not an exaggeration; they had fresh beef from Australia, from New Zealand, and from America. They had frozen beef from all these places too. They had beef sliced thin, thick, ground, blade tenderized, hand cut, you name it. They had beef in every kind I know of and then some. (beef tendon, anyone?) Everyone in the store was buying beef, and it’s about as expensive as it is in America. This is a little odd as beef is not that popular overall, but I suppose given Sam’s Club is a western big box store the people who shop there expect to buy beef. They also had a pretty good seafood selection. I would say the Sam’s Club in Beijing has a wider selection of products than the Dedham, MA Costco, but the packages are a bit smaller, and prices are roughly comparable. (To the extend a comparison is possible… my home Costco does not carry 15 brands of high end tea for gift giving.)
We got a beef bake (more beef!) at the cafeteria. Other options for food included beef burgers, beef hotdog, and Korean pork belly bake (if you’re familiar with the Costco chicken bacon Caesar baked roll, it is very similar in concept.)
I can’t read Chinese very well so I tried to eat ice out of the courtesy ice machine despite a sign posted on it saying “ice is not for consumption purposes.” This is a semi-common problem that will only get better once I memorize more characters on sight. I am better at talking and listening, in the sense that if I don’t know a particular word or follow a sentence I can usually describe my problem in Chinese and get an answer. (e.g I wanted vanilla beans, so I ask “do you guys have the western black long thin bean from Madagascar which is sweet and fragrant?” A: “o you mean vanilla bean? no we dont sorry.”)
Driving to and from the Sam’s club I noticed many bootleg graves. These are technically illegal gravesites set up on public land like parks, highway
China culture: Gift giving
Chinese people have a culture of bribes and ritual gift giving. The first experience I had of this was the presentation gift: upon meeting important people for the first time it is customary to exchange gifts. The costliness or rarity of the gift reflect that persons seniority and importance to you. In the case of reciprocal gift giving to someone your senior, you do the best you can. Upon returning to China from abroad, and upon seeing relatives you haven’t seen in a while, it is customary to bring gifts. Popular gifts nowadays include: CoQ10 supplements (I bought ~750USD in just CoQ10 at the Costco for importation to China), B and C vitamin supplements (eg Emergen-C), collagen supplements (afaik these do nothing when eaten but it is thought that eating foods and supplements high in collagen will improve appearance of your skin.) Silk anything; but especially pyjamas and bedsheets because sizing is relatively easy to guess. Horn combs, wood combs, ruyis (scepter shaped knickknack designed to be useless), other decorative things made of fancy jade, wood, or stone, department-store cosmetics, fancy tea, and swallow-spittle birds nests (this is also thought to have some value as a cosmetic-dietary supplement, like the collagen stuff.)
Chinese people will tend to value a mass produced gift over a handmade one, and the approximate cost of what you give is important. When giving people snacks and consumables from the US, the value of the gift is somewhat, which results in my MIL giving people boxes of wheat crackers along with the CoQ10 as if these things are equivalent.
Another example of cultural gift exchanges are red envelopes
红包。These are given on a multitude of occasions; including Chinese New Year (a nominal amount, given by elders to younger generations, kind of like Easter Baskets/birthday money/halloween trick or treating) as well as more substantial hong bao at certain life events (ie marriages, first time extended family member meets a new baby, graduations, college acceptances, and probably some other occasions I don’t know about.
Red envelopes are very transactional. They’re like a social insurance policy in the days before social insurance. Your older relatives gave you hong bao on your birthday, and you in turn are obligated to give the generations that come after you hong bao on their birthdays. Your friend gives you hong bao on your wedding day, and one makes a note of the amount and gives something commensurate on his wedding day. When you accept these ritual envelopes there is an obligation; by taking this envelope from Uncle Dan, I will return the gift to him or his family, proportionate to my own means. This means it’s not always a good idea to accept hong bao from very distant relatives or other people who you are unlikely to be able to repay the favor to. (And with the exception of kids and dowries, one should not accept the hong bao right away. It’s polite to fight over not accepting it sometimes.)
