Back in Business!

I am pleased to announce that Ask the Chinese Guy is back in business! Though it won't be a Chinese Guy. A new colleague of mine has volunteered to take your questions. She is a Chinese American who has been to China and lived there for months at a time. She has generously offered to take the place of TCG.

She will be attributed by the pseudonym: Yang

Though she will be answering the majority of the questions, I will still do 100% of the posting, as a convenience to her.

So lets get things going again! Send your questions here!

Take note that this is a new email address, if you sent a question to the old TCG email and never received a response, please do not hesitate to resend it to this new address.

Comment Spam

Yeah, Im still here. I do like to check in periodically to do some housekeeping. Maybe I'll add a post again if I can think of one.

Comment spam has been a big problem Im noticing. There was so much of it that I just deleted all recent comments posted anonymously. If you posted a real comment as anon and it got deleted, I apologize.

Most spam comments start out looking legitimate saying something like "great post" or "wonderful blog" etc, then at the end it says something like "visit my webpage -> 'webpage'" and links to a site for penis enlargement pills or something. It's annoying, and filtering out spam by hand or doing moderation is much too time consuming. So an ID is now required to comment (Google, Open ID etc). In addition, CAPTCHA is now enabled. This should prevent flooding.

And FYI, I have no plan to delete this blog, but no real plan to revive it either (unless someone wants to take over).

Where to go from here?

My name is KaiWen and I am the current curator of this blog.

For some time I have been writing articles about China on this blog as a guest writer to supplement the Q and A content produced by the Chinese Guy.

As you may have read or not read some time ago, the actual Chinese Guy who created this blog is on an indefinite hiatus. More or less, he got tired of this blog and decided to move on in life. Therefore, he has given me admin control over this blog.

I didn't feel like I was qualified to answer questions so I thought I could continue this blog by posting some of my own China related content. However, recent comments on some of my posts have pointed out factual inconsistencies that I have overlooked or did not know. And they're right. I am by no means an expert on China, and I no longer believe I am qualified to write anything about China on this blog without doing extensive, time consuming research first, which isn't really fun or worth it for a blog that pays nothing.

So where do we go from here?

Well, hopefully I can find another "Chinese Guy" with good knowledge of China and Chinese culture who can answer questions like this blog was originally intended.

If you would like to volunteer for the position, shoot me an e-mail here.

As for me? I am not sure what role I am suited to play here. Maybe I'll just repost interesting content that I find elsewhere or write editorials on current events.

If you have any ideas I would welcome them.

And if you would be so kind, you could also visit my blog.

Some Intermission Comedy

In light of this blogs semi-abandonment I thought Id throw out a post, since TCG retained my posting privileges. Don't expect me to take over, I am most certainly NOT qualified to run this place. But to keep the spider webs from growing I'll try to throw something China related up once in a while. Heres some comedy.

I found this hilarious for more reasons than I should. Some chapping young lads from Beijing City College have opened an Obama branded KFC near campus. Dubbed, "OFC" or "Obama Fried Chicken". In America at least, there is a racial stereotype that black people crave fried chicken (it was a popular dish among slaves in the American South) Chinese appear oblivious to this. It also seems that all foreigners seem to have an obsession for Obama.

   

Also, in a moment of simultaneous triumph and fail, China launched its Tiangong-1 module into space to lay the ground work for a future Chinese space station. However, when the Chinese government created a CGI animation of the module leaving the atmosphere and settling into the orbit, they played the wrong patriotic music. Instead of something like "March of the Volunteers" they actually play the instrumental to "America the Beautiful". A joke? An embarrassing mistake? Or some kind of olive branch?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Do Chinese people eat fish alive?

Dear Chinese Guy

I saw this on a news website, is it true that Chinese people eat their fish and animals alive like this? in that it looks pretty gross to me, surely they don't right?

Ken M





Dear Ken M

The answer to this question is NO; the video that is posted on the link you sent to me is actually Taiwanese. Presumably the visitors to this restaurant are Hong Kong or at the outside Guangzhou the laughing isn't a laugh of joy either as in Taiwan they speak a heavily accented version of Mandarin. If you understand Cantonese you can hear that they are rather shocked that the fish is still alive and moving. They are actually quite horrified at this.

If you run through the video:

If you have a look at the above photo, you will notice the fish of all kinds is dead, from the scallops to the winkles, even the crab in the background. Crab and lobster are often kept alive to keep them fresh. The crab in this picture has been boiled so that the fishmongers can prevent it from going rotten too soon. This is so they can perhaps sell it as a economy product as the price between live and dead crab is like night and day.

Think about it the fish above can be dead for a VERY long time and those who are unfamiliar with buying fish may well buy something from unscrupulous fishmongers and buy something that is less than fresh. I'm not saying all fishmongers are bad as it varies but un-fresh fish can make you very very sick.

In addition to this people in Hong Kong like to buy fresh, the older generation will go out and buy fresh groceries everyday of the week even Sundays, fridges exist but the eating habits of Chinese and mostly Asians is completely different to that of Westerners. Although we might think this is wasteful in time the fact is that Hong Kong is so packed and crowded that people will invariably pass their local butcher and or fruit and vegetable supplier on a daily basis.


The Chinese Guy.