Chinese Weddings pt2

Bargaining stage.

A few people have asked what traditional Chinese weddings are about from start to end and I thought I would make this into a bit of a series as the original document became way too big to write properly



The parents of each family then bargain with each other as tokens of intent with more tokens and therefore a price would be set generally considered dowry in other countries for the family of the girl. The Yenta would then ask the bride to be's family for various dates for the actual wedding and also when such gifts should be handed over.

Gifts from the males would be:

Tea ~ this is MANDATORY sort of..
cakes ~ This is also semi mandatory more = better they are dragon/phoenix cakes i.e. male/female cakes.
Poultry
Meat
Cigarettes
Wine
Gold etc
An Itemised list is presented so the Yenta doesn't dip his or her hands into the gifts.


The bride's family then sends wedding invites out along with cakes the older you are (and wealthier) the more chance you will get an invite and a cake, TCG is not particularly young or old and is piss poor therefore never receives cakes and cakes kind of died out decades ago.

Cakes are NOT free you attend the wedding you are expected to bring a red packet with hard cold cash in them, in the past it was left up to the discretion of people to put as much or as little as they could afford. In Modern day greed centric Hong Kong they ask for huge sums of money. You may recall a previous post about extortion on Chinese new year, I consider this equal as extortion, my cousins think so too as they receive invitations that state £500 as a gift to the bride and groom. It used to be £100, bloody greedy shits.

This is probably why TCG does not have an address to which to send such invites to, no invites no pay big wedges of money which is good considering I am piss poor anyway and have little love for my extended family.

These gifts are supposed to be 'acknowledgement' or rather compensation for the efforts of the parents in raising the girl and acceptance of the gifts indicates they are willing to give the bride to the family of the man. That's GIVE the bride to the FAMILY not the groom. You're one of us now as you might call it.

Has some overtones of

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields, and surrender your ship. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours. Resistance is futile."

But this is just the negotiation, once it is agreed as to how much she is 'worth' the agreement is made and unless both families agree to annul it there is no escape. This is a particular bastard when agreements are made when you are a child since you've taken the payment.

Anyway the bride's family shows off the gifts as a show of social status and love for daughter.


In modern day Hong Kong and most of China this does not happen very often maybe in some rural areas but modern cities nope doth not happen, wedding cakes are replaced by paper envelope demands for money which people like me attempt to avoid.

This however does not prevent the said parents showing off to their peers and boasting of their son or daughter marrying somebody of wealth or high social status though. Which is the modern form of this sort of arrangement, as gifts between families? Doesn't happen anymore well it might do but rarely.

Such boasts are often completely filled with lies and bullshit and thus must be taken with a handful of salt, I've personally caught many bullshitters out this way the problem is parents will use said bullshit against their own children

"look how fucking useless you are compared to so and so's son."

Ha I caught my uncle doing this more than once where he lied copiously about my cousin without telling him of the actual lies, I caught him out and he went all ad hominem against me.



Tomorrow maybe today the actual preparations and rituals and how or "Chinese people we have by and large abandoned them completely"

Material girl cover.

Dear TCG

I remember an old Song from TVB tapes I heard quite often as a child I can't remember who the writer or who did the vocals however it was a cover of Material girl or sounded like it. Ive checked wikipedia and asked on lots of forums but nobody seems to have heard of it

Vanessa Y


Dear Vanessa

Today is your lucky day. I know the song because erm I know the song. The song is by Sally Yeh/Yip. It is called 200 degrees, it is uncredited on wiki probably because they are so incredibly embarrassed just to watch the video, back in 1985 this was probably cool but today is rather embarrassing.

葉蒨文 200度

And you can watch the video here:



Try watch the video and not smirk at the two guys.

You may remember Sally from such films as the killer


Sally plays the poor girl who sings at the start and is involved in a massive shootout and is blinded by Chow Yun Fat





TCG reactivating repressed childhood memories since 2009!

You thought your job was shit?

Dear TCG

I saw this in Beijing recently what the fuck?



T2200


Dear T2200

There is a by law in Beijing and many cities in China whereby there is no shitting in the toilet you are supposed to shit by the side of the hole and not in the hole.

A bloke comes and literally carts off the shit in a wagon sized bucket, heh this reminds me of the the bucket of shit fight in the hostel in 2009. Again something in my book, I already give far too much away about my book on this subject.

Anyway the reasoning behind this is toilets without running water to flush away the faeces has this by-law, as if people did shit into the toilet hole without water it would quickly clog up. That it effectively it, the toilets in western hotels and the ones nearby the big tourist attractions are all plumbed in and therefore you will usually see this in hutong more than anywhere else. These are cleaned up daily and when walking around Beijing late night or early morning I would see rather smell such men with carts cleaning out the hutong toilets. Which makes them 'relatively' clean. Compared to say the toilets of government house in Wanchai before 1997, the Manchester Hacienda or the horrible toilet in Azerbaijan and Mongolia whereby I opened the lid and it was filled to the brim and made me sick at the sight of them

TCG

Chinese Weddings pt1

A few people have asked what traditional Chinese weddings are about from start to end and I thought I would make this into a bit of a series as the original document became way too big to write properly


The normal coloured text bits are what traditionally occurred, the light blue bit of the text is the modern context.


The first part is:

A proposal, whereby a go between was made to make a proposal and then an acceptance back and forth sort of like an estate agent with negotiations between parents. The bride and groom had no input into this. Marriage was for alliances money and family lines.

Men's parents would seek girls and offer gifts. The gifts can be anything in rural areas this might have been animals, grain, gold opium etc, however the family are judged upon the gifts. And thus care needs to be taken much like a modern context. I.e. if you buy your girl friend perfume she may take offence and may think you think she smells.

What happens next is then an emissary not dissimilar to a yenta record the date and times of birth formally and take this to the family ancestral home. Then ask a fortune teller if there was anything wrong with this information i.e. if it was an unlucky name or there were some omens. Also to ask if there would be a good match between the sons and daughters.

The same thing would happen with the bride to be.

Only if both were favourable would the families meet face to face and discuss like a job interview education, appearance, income and social position.

In modern times this does not happen so much, Billy my cousin got married and there was no such ritual, it was more he met her in a bar they dated they married. Billy works as a labourer and his wife works a call centre job, this does not happen at all.

My acquaintances who got married in the UK, this didn't happen at all.

In a highly cynical modern context, the proposal of meeting of families is a job interview, TCG has far too often sat through dates where parents are present (what the fuck is with this?) and it is like a fucking job interview. It means is the man rich?

Take for example 李嘉欣 (Lee Kar Yan) Michelle Reis, Michelle Reis is usually regarded as a fake, a bitch, for her tendency to go after married wealthy men and is universally hated by women because she is hot. I would bang her endlessly even though she is 40 or so now, seriously she has the looks without photoshop. Chinese girls today still use her as a yard stick in terms of hotness and beauty. Though it is hard to get the looks of Lee Kar Yan as her looks are from being half Portugese which give her the height and paleness which is real. TCG has actually seen LKY in the flesh she REALLY does look like her photos.











Another excuse to post pictures of hot Chinese women (btw the pictures are from the film Fallen Angels 1995 the sequel sort of to Chungking Express).

Anyway Lee Kar Yan got married this guy, a guy who would normally not have a chance unless he was seriously wealthy, he is seriously wealthy, heh I have bumped into him and know people who have bumped into him and he is a proper nerd my big toe has more social skills than he does. Ergo my cynicism on the initial 'interview' meeting of families, heh when I worked as an accountant and made lots of money (or so they thought as I was a piss poor paid accountant, like most accountants actually as there is a hierarchy only the ones at the top get well paid the salaried staff get fuck all), I used to get shit loads of these interview dates. Now I am considerably poorer piss poor in fact with enough time to run this blog, such dates have diminished correlation?

Ok ok sure sure there could be some love in there but what are the odds ?



I'm not bitter towards women about this as this is merely their nature by and large as 1000000 years of evolution has made them seek partners who potentially can provide for them in the future and therefore give their hypothetical children the best start in life. As nature's joke men go after as many women as possible as it is in their nature.


Prt2 tomorrow about the Bequeathment of gifts, or the more cynical title: "These are just dowry gifts' I'm not pimping my daughter out how dare you!"

Bra unhooking competitions

Is China going to hell? Or is this just an excuse to post some leary garbage?

Fetishes

Hi, I saw your website and thought it was neat. I just had a general question about Chinese guys or Chinese American guys. Is there a particular fetish or attraction of Chinese guys for other ethnicity's of women? For example do a lot of Chinese guys fancy white girls? sometimes I get that feeling from my Chinese guy friends. I also know some of them that really into Japanese girls and culture.

thanks
Jack


Dear Jack.

Please be aware that this post is not particularly lucid. Some of this post is conjecture and some of it is my own opinion I cannot possibly account for all the op pinions of all Chinese people. Also remember Rule #34

I have never visited the US, so I cannot comment on Chinese men in the US. I would hazard a guess they are similar to FBC foreign born Chinese in their attitudes though.

However enough beating about the bush (though not quite)

Fetishes are rather personal things, and summing up such things would be rather difficult and it is summed with the old phrase. Different strokes for different folks. Somethings are like Marmite, you love it or hate it.

For example I most definitely do not like S&M, I learnt from painful experience :)

If there is only one thing to remember about Chinese men, it’s this they are MEN before they are Chinese. Tits and a vagina? Yup quite a few Chinese men would go for that. The Chinese guy can't stress this enough: Chinese MEN ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALL MEN. Gay men accepted of course.

However there are some exceptions, you might think I'm fucking with you here but I'm not serious.

Exception 1:

Chinese men born in China (inc HK, Taiwan, Macau etc) are superstitious to the extreme, but Chinese people are superstitious in general. I mean they won't walk under ladders, there are no 4th or 13th floors. Heh Mike a guy I know in Hong Kong lives in a high rise flat he told me he lives on the 52nd floor sounds high right? But there is no 4, 13,24,34,40-49 so there are a whole swath of floors missing (the 4th or 13th floor are cheap to rent though). TCG is not superstitious and laughs at people's superstitions I'm a rouge don'tcha know I leave my toilet lid and seat up 365 days a year and have a number plate with TWO fours in it.

Why have I gone off on this tangent?

Watch this video. (it is from a series called Smack the pony)



Mostly Chinese women in China (but curiously in Korea they do shave I am the perfect mocking bird) do not shave the older women definitely not, the younger women don't either.



The reason for this is that it is unlucky, something called white tiger or Pak Lo Fu. Sleeping with a woman shaved down there is unlucky.




Here is an extract from my book:

Though Chinese people are incredibly superstitious of even the most ridiculous things, although you may think I am portraying this in jest but it is completely true, such as always closing the toilet lid in case their wealth escapes down the toilet. Or an even stranger one where if a woman gets a Brazilian trim down there it is unlucky for any lucky men who manage to bed her. Such that a super model could be pulled but when it came to the actual act once the knickers were off it would be a case of:

“Erm, no thanks luv but I’ll just have to pass.” Or whatever they would say in Chinese. This sounds ridiculous but it is true, it is called white tiger if you are interested or wish to raise a smirk from asking a Chinese person. I wonder if dental floss sells well there.

Therefore men in China will often have qualms about shagging a Chinese girlie with no hair down there. I suppose FBC men will have no such qualms I certainly don't, if you can find it look up a photo of Cecilia Cheung scandal with Edisson Chen. And she gives the woman in the video as above a run for thier money. My 93 day beard on my Mongolian motorbike adventure wasn't as impressive as her bush.

(please Mr Gilletee let me go!)

Though of course this is changing and attitudes change of course more like the fucking Gillete corporation or Veet wanting to make more money off people I reckon)and the younger you are the less likely you are to believe in such superstitions. However Gillete might have a point though, as a girlie I was dating in 2007 eating at the furry cup was very furry indeed, I didn't need to floss my teeth that night.


Exception 2:

Tits, Chinese girls in China by and large are small sleight and skinny, wayy too skinny. The old joke applies

- How do you make 5 lbs. of fat attractive? Put a nipple on it. ...

Chinese girls totally do not have big tits (Hubei women are a bit of an exception to this and harbin too), Taiwanese girls are a bit of an exception (as that Bastard Chen Kai Sheik's KMT took all their mistresses with them to Taiwan). I have a story about that too Holly a girl I met in Beijing who was heading to Hong Kong (you know who you are Holly), she had massive tits and I spent a whole day with her, massive massive tits and in Beijing everybody kept staring at her chest. Therefore it is something you can't see in China very much therefore a woman with big tits = good. But this is irrelevant as any hetrosexual male will consider big tits = good.



Exception 3:

Ass, Again this is to do with body fat and also genetics, in that Chinese women do not have decent bums, from hanging around on beaches in China and Hong Kong (I don't want you to make me think I am some fucking stalker weirdo who watches people on beaches the last time I was on a beach was with a girl called Michelle in Cheung Chau btw), In that Chinese girls do not have great butts, their back suddenly ends and merge instantly into their legs they are ass less. Ahem but again this does not count again as any hetrosexual male will fancy a great ass on a woman



...............................

Japanese girls? Who doesn't like Japanese girls? Though I think this is because of the prevalence of Japanese porno. Pornography in China is illegal, in Hong Kong is isn't but porn is so frigging mild it makes you laugh. I think off the top of me head an R film is the erm hardest thing you can see at the cinoplex right? In the UK this is 18. In Hong Kong this is Cat III. Its quite funny as a woman with a wet t-shirt can get a Cat III rating in Hong Kong. And much porn you may find sold in Mongkok and the various cyber centres selling copied DVDs (i.e.) everywhere has Japanese porn.

Though this will probably piss the Korean off Korean girls is where it is at these days, and hey China has had a long tradition of raiding Korea since the Ming Dynasty to fill the Forbidden City with Korean Concubines hell the Yongle Emperor was half Korean.

As a bit of a closing comment however about Chinese men attracted to white women, I would say probably too, with the best of both worlds being FBC girls. It is a case of attitude, people born in Europe and North America are raised to believe ANYTHING is possible and are therefore more liberated psychologically and physically. Far too often has TCG sat in bars in China hearing other Chinese men complain their gf's just lie there and take it. Though of course attitudes are changing! Not to mention the fact CG's seem to still eat with their mouths open, burp in my presence as if I am nothing and when they wrong




So in answer to your original question, no not really, men and Chinese men come in all shapes and sizes and have desires of all shapes and sizes,

Hot Chinese girls myth

Chinese girls are hot right?

No, the average spread is probably about the same, heh you don't count on the power of makeup here and also here

More insidious is photoshop check out some before and afters


Some Key points to spotting photoshops are:

Backgrounds ~ if the background is almost radioactive where the photoshop bloke has just used the adjust settings or dodged the photo to hell you know it is a photoshop job, the operators do not have the time to go over each photo carefully to lighten only the model, this is the biggest clue.

Eyes ~ irk the eyes are changed to look cartoon like.

Have a look at this wayy over done one


Reality


Urgh I think I just lost my appetite, her face is worse pock marked than mine.

However one thing is that Chinese people are smaller, therefore your average fat Chinese girl is a lot skinnier than a average Caucasian woman.

That is all I can be arsed to write on this topic for now.

Hóng Lǎowài 紅老外

Dear TCG

Various combined questions that asked "Does TCG find Hóng Lǎowài offensive?"

Various


Dear Various.

Finally some easy to answer questions.

No, I do not find him offensive and after mailing around some of his videos to people in know in HK they find him funny but not offensive. He is a lot of an attention seeker though but his self taught Mandarin is fairly excellent.

For those of you who don't know who Hong Laowai is (which means red old outsider or red foreigner). He appeared around 2007 as a New Yorker and is a casualty of the Lehmen Brothers collapse.



The song is Bloodstained Glory an easy song in which to sing and if you do it well there is never a dry eye in the house, written in 1987 it was supposed to commemorate the China Vietnam war, a war that was an absolute disaster for China for various reasons*

But however was hijacked bu Hong Kong pop star Anita Mui to commemorate the 1989 Beijing protests

More videos here

*Yup China was defeated almost comprehensively by the Vietnamese, the PLA used ancient infantry tactics, refused to use air power and artillery as they wanted a quick raid and at the time did not understand proper combined arms warfare. The Vietnamese wouldn't stand and fight as in the prior wars. The USSR provided direct satellite feeds to the Vietnamese military and they would hit and fade exactly the tactics used today in Afghanistan presently.

Religion in China

Dear TCG.

I am currently in Hong Kong (do you fancy a beer?) what is with the constant burning of things on the street?




Dear anti pyromaniac

People burn things as a method of ancestor worship in China, ok so you get Buddhism Taoism, Islam, Christianity, Jewish, Shinto and far too many religions to worship. TCG is a fraud in terms of religion, In Seoul he went into a Church and pretended to be the faithful namely because I was bored but I did not preach... It got dodgy when it came to a sermon about war is worship and the fact the pastor kept on trying to bless me. If he touched me I would burst into flames. The full story is of course in my book if you are interested.

But essentially you give offerings by burning things to your deceased ancestors who then receive such things in their afterlife. This is why is it so sucks in Chinese society to die without Children as there is nobody to give you any offerings, bit like real life to be frank in no children nobody to to take you out for free lunches. I think my accountancy career has caused this as it is the ultimate contraceptive, I don't need condoms! I have my personality. What a fucking mistake this career path was, anyway.

You burn your ancestors get it, in return they look after those who give you offerings and bless them in real life. This is bloody creepy to be honest, in that it assumes there is an afterlife but that isn't the worst part of it, no the worst part of it is a Wank seance ~The eerie feeling you get while masturbating that all your dead relatives are looking down on you in disgust.

And since your relatives will almost certainly be of an older generation a generation who did nothing other than probably the mission and the kind who have sex purely for procreational purposes not recreation (this is changing of course). Much of what you do may be considered to them abhorrent behaviour. Which is probably worse, so while you are doing your girlfriend in the shitter, your relative things fucking hell what the fuck is he doing? And sends punishment instead and bad luck.


Anyway enough of my ramblings: You burn your ancestors get it, traditionally it is money hell money in fact in enormous denominations hell has a serious hyperinflation problem

However manufacturers of such paper items (I mean you're not going to burn the real thing are you?) are adapting to modern times. Paper computers, gyms, cars, telephones even Viagra yes Viagra paper replicas are shooting up around cemeteries and places where you can buy such things. Serious here

The Gardy here has some modern takes on stuff you can burn to give your ancestors.


Some people burn this stuff all the time to hope to gain favor with their ancestors to look after them, this is why you see so much burning, it's supposed to pay to be a pyromaniac.

TCG does not practice this behaviour of burning things as they don't have such shops in the UK heh if I believed in it, my ancestors would receive tons of shredded bank statements and invoices! Also that I have witnessed some of the most adamant supporters of this activity end up in the gutter.

Racist tooth paste?

Dear TCG

I heard that in China there is a racist tooth paste brand, can you confirm. [heavily edited due to excessive ranting, run on sentences and a hundred other things too]

Regards

Ricardo

Dear Ricardo

You are semi right there is or was a tooth paste which might have triggered racist connotations, it was the darlie toothpaste brand. A Taiwanese companie made a toothpaste called Darkie. Notice the change over time eh?

They marketed it as such in that due to the contrast of the dark skin of black people when they smiled their teeth looked whiter than white this was in the days of old school advertising before photoshop a insidious tool allowing people to manipulate images to the way they wanted them to look (i.e. unreal). Hell even website designers use such colour contrast techniques.

Anyway the company was bought out by Colgate in 1985 and only bothered to change this in 1990 as per this video:



This looks bad right? Well it isn't in that Darkie in Chinese is

黑人牙膏

黑=Black

人=person/human

牙=Tooth/teeth

膏=paste/gel

Therefore there is no racism behind this, unlike say


The qualifier in this is the absence of 死 'si' literally death. Which you put in front of words such as Laowai, Gweilo etc and it becomes somewhat insulting.

Ahem this isn't to say China isn't racist far from it, but this is a post for another time.

TCG

1000 year old eggs

Dear TCG

I was invited to a party at a Chinese frien'd house he had the usual Chinese things as snacks deep fried pastry things buns and crispy fried shredded meats. But one strange thing he offered was something he called paydan these green egg looking things.

I didn't want to try them as they looked kind of gross and the host was busy so I couldn't ask him. What are paydans? They look like eggs to me.

Mason




Dear Mason

Payday or Pidan 皮蛋 quite litterly means skin egg, or leather egg, they are as you guessed eggs I don't actually know how to make these things, the months required to make them would test my patience and the fact I am always moving around meaning they would probably be too well done. My dad used to make them though. Essentially a duck or a chicken egg is sealed up with clay ash and tea and left somewhere. This seals up the egg so it does not become rotten like normal eggs but the wihte of the egg breaks down into a jelly like substance that can be salty or once I was surprised was sweet. It is usually safe to eat, I say usually as some shysters will use dangerous chemicals to speed up the curing process, although the look of them isn't great.

It is popular in congee rice soup and actually fairly expensive compared to outer street snacks probably due to the long curing times of at least a couple of months.

If you think it is gross have a look at balut




Or this:

Bye bye Gordo!

Appledaily appears to like David Cameron



However here is a reminder of Gordon (in the style of bad kung fu movie redubb)



Enjoy

Transit Beijing

Dear TCG

I am taking a flight to Seoul but transiting through Beijing, do I need a transit visa?

Alexis


Dear Alexis

Nice choice Seoul I mean enjoy it especially Hongdae, the answer is no you do not need a transit visa is you do not leave Beijing airport, as with many international airports Beijing international airport is built in such a way you can move between the gates without actually getting stamped into China.

There is also a 2nd choice if you are not American, and this is a visa on arrival if you meet the following conditions, there is a huge desk just before immigration in Beijing that issues visas and charges quite a bit of money for them too:

(1) Being invited at short notice by the Chinese side to attend a trade fair in China;

(2) Being invited to China to enter a bid or to formally sign an economic or trade contract;

(3) Coming to China under contract for supervision over export shipment, import commodity inspection or checked on the completion of a contract;

(4) Being invited to install equipment or make rush repairs;

(5) Coming to China at the request of the Chinese side for settling claims;

(6) Being invited to China for scientific or technological consulting services;

(7) A last-minute replacement or addition, approved by the Chinese side, to a delegation or group that has been invited and has already obtained visas for traveling to China;

(8) For visiting a patient in a critical condition or making funeral arrangements;

(9) As persons in immediate transit who, because of force majeure, are unable to leave China by original aircraft within 24 hours or have to leave China by other means of transport;

(10) As other invitees who really do not have enough time to apply for visas to the above-mentioned Chinese agencies abroad but hold letters or telegrams from designated competent authorities approving the application for visas at port visa agencies.

Note this is not open to American citizens as of 2004 as China took tit for tat against the USA for taking the finger prints of Chinese citizens and jacked up the price for Americans too. This isn't just a Chinese thing either the Russians say British people can only get visas in London with one Anomaly being Hong Kong.

So the answer is no.

UK elections

With the up coming elections I thought people may think it interesting (or not) to know how Chinese people vote. This is only my opinion and therefore it may not be entirely correct.

As many of my British readers will know there is an election on May 6th 2010.

So how do Chinese people vote?

Myself due to the fact I may well spent the later half of 2010 and most of 2011 overseas I probably won't vote as it is unfair on those who are left behind to suffer the consequences of my vote. I remember having a massive argument with those who went overseas and voted for UK elections yet had nothing at stake. Essentially voting while overseas is unfair!

Anyway in my experience, Chinese people immigrants from Hong Kong and China of the older and 1st generation almost overwhelmingly vote Conservative. How do I know this? A great many people call me a frigging banana, that is yellow on the outside and white on the inside, although this is mildly insulting it has some excellent uses. In that the majority of people think I do not understand Chinese spoken or written the 3 main flavours* Hakka, Cantonese and Mandarin I'll do a piece on the changing language of China town shortly when I have a moment. Thus people will speak candidly in any of the 3 flavours of Chinese thinking I don't understand what they are saying so I can eavesdrop on them.

I generally am not really a paid up member of Chinese associations but when I go Chinese grocery shopping walk around in China town I hear them discussing and stating their intentions.

The original migrants and 1st generation vote conservative because most of them are entrepreneurial and own businesses therefore Tories are seen as more business friendly. They do this because Hong Kong and the SZ areas of China are overwhelmingly business centric and more heavily biased on making money. Labour type governments are not business friendly they tax more.

The deal as I have said in Asia is different, there is no socialism, the government generally leaves you to your own devices to make a big pile of money when you retire and to fund your own retirement. Those who fail fail hard, the conservatives offer a slightly altered version of this deal and thus many Chinese vote Tory.

Though of course this is just my opinion and from what I've heard in that hearing things on the grape vine doth not mean this is exactly what they vote for. But I think this voting intention is so entrenched that governments of all flavours tend not to need to pander to our votes, like say they do with Muslim or Black groups. But then again there are only 400,000 of us or there abouts according to this . Ha but people like myself and my Chinese friends fuck this up by putting down something else on census forms.


Finally on top of this there is universal dislike for Gordon Brown, Chinese people generally tend to be more economically literate than your average joe they see ZIRP, Zimbabwean money printing via quantitive easing and it pisses them off. Possibly because China invented fiat paper money that had disasterous consequences with the Ming dynasties.

Still 40% of 400K people aren't registered to vote anyway.

RMB

Dear TCG.

I am travelling to China soon via Hong Kong, I require some RMB is it better to change money before I travel out to Hong Kong or to change this in Hong Kong? Also what is meant by the fact RMB is not a freely convertible currency?

Max

Dear Max

You do not mention what country you come from but if it is Europe of the USA change the money in Hong Kong, somewhere like the good old Chungking Mansions, the commissions they charge is 0.3%-0.5% yes 1/2 of a percent. While in the UK and most airports I have found that companies and organisations either give you a shitty exchange rate and charge you a high commission upto 5% sometimes this is unacceptably high for me. In the Mansions or even at the airport the charges are less and they will give you closer to the spot rates, but only at the private booths. Western Union booths will give you a shitty rate and they are parked right next to the private booths.

The hotel exchanges will also give you a shitty rate too. Of course you could just draw money out at an ATM as most cards work unlike Korea that demands international ATMs (that lead to some well dodgy things when I was in Korea last year) . The ATM with drawls give you close to the spot rates but you get hit with commission form your bank back home. I typically draw out $1000HKD while in HK and 500RMB when in China and my bank Barclays tends to take £1.50-£2 commission off me about 2.3%.

The lack of freely convertible currency only really matters in China itself, effectively when you are in China you are only allowed to change 50K of USD (or equivalent) into RMB and of this only draw out 20% of this at any one time. This is when you change money at banks, that are supposed to record your ID and transaction, however in practice is not erm practiced.

This however does not apply to the black market, the black market is everywhere. On the border between Mongolia and China there are folks who sit there with bags of money to change money and they don't care.

While in Hong Kong you can change as much as you damned please, as they generally tend not to care same with Macau, even though these places are supposed to be China. I remember watching an Indian guy bring a briefcase filled with $100US bills changing them for RMB in Macau who then stuck it all on a roulette table and lost.

However if you are going to China try not to carry only 100RMBs around, as this is a huge amount of money in many places, even in Beijing tourist traps people became pissed off with me for handing them 100RMB notes for 5 RMB transactions. RMB coins are useful for the Beijing metro too. Outside tourist traps like the Beijing Hutongs 100RMB will often not have change for and some vendors will simply take the whole note and give you no change.

HTH

TCG

Solace in Hong Kong?

Dear TCG

I have recently moved to Hong Kong, it is nice with some unexpected things but where can I get some solace in Hong Kong? I understand that it is a big and busy city but where can you recommend?

Thanks

Mika



Dear Mika

There are places if you know where to look, HK of course being a busy over crowded place with incredible population density of 6,349 people per sqkm. However I know where to look since the crowds and busy people all around tend to grate me sometimes, here are some suggestions you probably won't find anywhere else.

Here are a few locations in which you may find some peace.

榕樹下 and Tung O Wan on Lamma Island - Lamma Island can be gotten to via a ferry and then you need to walk through a fairly rough dilapidated trail to the South Eastern corner of the Island where you will find a completely abandoned beach, that is next to a semi abandoned village. Because of the difficulty in getting there and the general laziness of HK people AND also the fact that there is no shopping nearby HK people are obsessed with shopping. On a weekday even a weekend you can have an entire beach to yourself, considering it is a fairly big beach however the beach is rather coarse sand like the one at Cheung Chau and with more than a few rocks. Note AFAIK last time I visited there are no showers, no life guard and no anti shark nets so be careful some pictures are here and also here. The shark nets are ...shall we say an issue if you are scared of that as in 1995 there were several fatal shark attacks thus the HK government put up 32 anti shark nets here and there. Sharks maybe angry due to shark fin soup.

Much like when I was in Siberia the way some Chinese people abuse bears by having a tap hammered into their gall bladders to extract bile. Such bears may have been out for venegence against TCG especially as he wild camped out of sight in Siberia.




Kowloon Mosque, and Kowloon park, no seriously one of the busiest places in HK right next to it people tend to not be Muslims and avoid the park, meaning that it is often deserted. The Imam may however attempt to convert you.

The Roof of Chungking Mansions no seriously nobody but people like me go there


Here is a picture of Johnathan on the roof top here

They don't lock them for fire safety reasons, to get to the top of the Chungking Mansions simply take the lift to the highest possible floor of any of the blocks (A&B are the biggest terraces) then walk up the stairs to the last 2 floors. Once you are there you will find a hatch like so:

Pull it open and climb up onto the roof terrace, if you are a crazy arse hole like me on Block A&B you can actually climb over the edge and sit on a balcony without any barrier overlooking Nathan Road. However a security guard comes and patrols this area now and again so DO NOT CLOSE THE HATCH while you are on the roof. As the internal locking mechanism will trap you on the roof! Myself and Johnathan had a barbie on the roof. However you maybe alone but you are overlooked by several buildings and thus probably not a good idea to get jiggy on the roof top.

Other roof tops are similar of other buildings too.

Olympic in Kowloon no again seriously this is an incredibly wealthy sterile district, aside from rush hour morning and night the streets are absolutely deserted. I managed to wander around looking for an acquaintance in HK in January 2010 and found the streets almost empty of everything.

Lantau Island Pui O beach this beach is slightly out of reach of HK people (a ferry a bus or an MTR trek then a bus) though there are life guards and a few snack stands this place is often deserted but not on weekends.

MongKok 望角 People will say WTF! But really MongKok ?! It means busy corner! How can this place get me some solitude? are you freaking nuts? HK opening hours mean that shops don't open till 1pm usually so Mongkok cyber centre (see the MTR map) is completely deserted, as free WIFI and air conditioning. Gets busy from noon though.

Hire a Sampan Yup you can still do this, ask for a siu ma tau (small harbour) at Piu O on the main road and you will be directed down a rough country track which leads to a small concrete pier. Every hour or so you get OAPs on small boats who act as a cheapo taxi service $100-$150 should do it, and they can take you on a fishing trip. Ok so you have to put up with the chug chug of the engine and the mad often suicidal Sampan pilot



You can also hire them at Cheung Chau for a short trip between islands. I know this because I was trapped on Lantau Island in 1999 in a typhoon, I needed to get back to Kowloon, the buses were out so I couldn't get to Tung Chung. Taxis were off extorting people elsewhere (they charge 5-1000% more during a typhoon). So WTF did I do? I went and hired a Sampan to take me over to Kowloon just as the typhoon was dying out. It was a rough ride, the boat caught fire necessitating us jumping over onto another sampan boat which crawled along at 0.000005mph but it got me to where I wanted. Note much like taxi drivers and minibus drivers, sampan pilots are suicidal, although at the slow speed they run at you'll be able to jump overboard or at least have ample time to write a farewell note.

HK airport, again a funny choice in that in the departure lounge due to the airport express people do not linger, the cafes at the edges are comparatively expensive and thus abandoned most of the time. The expensive $100 a pint Irish bar downstairs is the same.

Hong Kong Cemetery. The military cemeteries have been moved due to land needs but I believe there is a massive cemetery in Chai Wan (not been there in ages). The fact that Chinese people (myself excluded as cemeteries were useful places to shag) are scared of death and the dead means few people visit them other than during festivals and now and again when people go clean graves and give offerings which means days off and public holidays.


The bonus suggestion is :

Lam Kwai Fong This place is so full of arse holes who are so full of shit wealthy banker cunts and rich children spending daddy's money. People feel so high and mighty and will pay £1000 for a pint of beer cus it makes them look rich (they are average expat packages in HK are 150,000HKD a month and thats LOW) you will feel horribly ostracised and be lonely in a crowd of arseholes. And therefore will suffer psychological loneliness in such a crowd. Note TCG does not go to LKF as he has trouble resisting the urge to stab such people in the face.



HTH

TCG