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

2047?

Dear TCG,

This concerns me..

What happens to Hong Kong after the year 2047? The Sino-British joint declaration says it will attain a high degree of autonomy for 50 years. What happens after that? I know it is not known what the PRC plans, but what do experts speculate? Is HK doomed to fall into the hands of totalitarianism?

Kevin B




Dear Kevin

Nobody knows, there are still 37 years left and I'll be an old man by then. But 37 years in world politics is a very very long time.

The 50 year S.A.R system has been set up in such a manner that allows the rest of the PRC to catch up in terms of living standards, and thus come 2047 when true reunification occurs ( and Mainland China is still a foreign country), in that some predict that the breakneck speed that the Chinese economy is growing and the increase in living standards means that HK the living standards will be comparable in both the PRC and Hong Kong. Considering living standards in HK are pretty crap anyway unless you are uber rich I am not rich.

Curiously Deng Xiao Ping before his death in 1997 wanted the S.A.R arrangement to last 100 years. Therefore there is always the possibility that they could extend this by another 50 years if they find that the two countries are incompatible in 2047. Of course this may be regarded as failure and thus may not happen face issues. However they won't be stupid enough to destroy their golden goose though.

As China can learn lots from Hong Kong's capitalistic nature, still, in that back in 2007 the PRC government lost billions in buying oil futures thinking the price would go to the sky, it didn't the oil price came back down, and they paid well over the odds for lots of oil.

There has been growing Chinatisation of Hong Kong on TVB for example they never used to show the PRC national anthem first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Nor did they used to show so much propaganda, i.e. the Chinese spaceman or the Olympics, or so much television on TVB which praises the PRC government either (there have been on TVB rather a lot of Chinese cultural programmes about non Han Chinese and also massive public works projects), which is blatant and obvious. Hong Kong Chinese have been exposed to vast amounts of advertising and therefore can filter out such propaganda, if you don't watch TV for a week and watch it again you see just how obvious the propaganda is even in the UK.

There are also some more insidious things occurring in HK since 1997

Economically by 2047 there maybe not much difference, therefore the unique way of life is no longer as unique as the tricky issue is that of the legal system which is actually developed along British law with some PRC elements added into it, you can't simply change this overnight.

The ideal situation is that by 2047 China advances and starts to change their legal system to match that of Hong Kong, as going back is kind of retrograde.

The likelier situation is that they will attempt to make frog soup where they slowly turn the heat up over time so that it is almost unobservable, cases of this have existed where ICAC have started to use China law to root out corruption. Much like the UK has slowly turned into a totalitarian state!


However this all depends on a big IF, that is IF China still exists in it's current form in 2047, the USSR only lasted 72 years before finally falling apart. Peoples' Republic of China has lasted 61 years. Though they may make claims of 10,000 years (a common method in Chinese for saying forever) there are already some big cracks appearing in China, a REALLY big one occured in 1989 as we all know. Which shocked the PRC leadership as the people were willing to pay in blood to get their objectives, you cannot oppress against that forever.

Currently growth and economic freedom are acting as an activism sponge but there are constraints to this, water, electricity resources etc. More importantly there are millions of unemployed Chinese people who have nothing.

In ALL Asian economies there is a distinct lack of welfare, Seoul, Japan (unknown about Taiwan) there are shanty towns that the tourist brochures don't tell you about, on my wanderings in Seoul 2009 I found 2 massive ones I write about them in my first book. You can see some pictures here . Millions of unemployed pissed off angry young men are dangerous, the Korean touches on this here. I was actually sucked into a huge riot in Sincheon in my time in Seoul last year. But mostly the Korean states that they bitch about life on Internet forums etc which is an activism sponge.

In China there are no such activism sponges and with land seizures, and employees being cheated (companies pay employees once every 6 months but liquidate at 5.5 months) that are chipping away steadily at the things that kept social harmony and massive numbers of young people with absolutely nothing to lose, which you can't simply execute or keep in prison. That there is a high probability of civil war and fragmentation in China before 2047.

Some of the huge problems are outlined here

This is my opinion anyway.

Even North Korea is starting to show cracks in its regime (read askakorean.blogspot.com) in that there are some huge problems outlined


I would note that HK people seem to be caring a lot less over time as the numbers who protest about it are diminishing. Also an opinion I hear quite a lot is that what is the point of democracy anyway? (I actually was acosted in Beijing by somebody in a bar who gave me a long winded speech about this he was bigger than me and thus I could not escape). In that our shining examples of democracy like in the UK there is rampant corruption, nepotism and bad law made to ensure that MPs once they stand down are given lucrative positions in big companies.

Tony Blair for example sold out the UK. I mean do you really think he got all those massively well paid jobs by typing up his CV and sending it to the banks he works for? Or rather it was pay back for the betrayal of the UK people?

Self delusion

Hi, I saw your blog as I was searching for the answer to this question. I have a Chinese friend who once told me about something she called "aku spirit." I don't know how to spell it, and accordingly I haven't been able to find an in-depth description of what it is. She told me it was a Chinese way of thinking, in order to deal with loss of an opportunity. For example, say you lost $20 dollars; the "aku spirit" (sp) way of thinking might include telling yourself that you spent the $20 on a nice meal and you thoroughly enjoyed it, in order to cope with losing the $20 and not worrying excessively about it.

Are you familiar with this? And if so, can you describe the correct spelling/saying?

Thanks




Dear Tobias

You don't give me much to work here, but I'll try.

This has been troubling me all week, in that I know how to pronounce this in Hakka and it shares a commonness (sp) with Cantonese too. This is familiar as language as my dad castigated me throughout life using this phrase but I can't actually remember the Chinese for it. And my dad isn't much help as he speaks to me in 4 different ways switching from Mandarin, to Hakka, to Cantonese to English often in single sentences.

The first thing I thought about was the work Ak, as you said Aku ~ Ak~ Ngak? 握 which isn't correct as 握 means to shake, hold or grip. It sounds a bloodly lot like Ak anyway but it is wrong as its usage in verbal form sounds correct but in written form isn't. 握 手 ak - shau ~ to shake hands.

Which is wrong i.e. 你 (you) 握 (shake) 我 (me). You go to a Mahjong den and somebody cheats if you say 你 (Lee) 握 (Ak) 我 (Knor), they will understand, but if you wrote it down they would laugh at you and correct you. The word I was looking for was 阨 (ngak) which means to deceive, this is a pain in the arse word as it is a borrowed word which actually comes from 呃. which again is (ngak) which means the same thing.

Hence initially I wrote: 握 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ to trick oneself. But I know this is wrong, damned similar sounding words, the word I was looking for 阨 (ak)

阨 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ deceive oneself.


I have no idea what the spirit bit refers to I've never heard it before there is also:

對…作出解釋；為 自己- which means to justify it to yourself which is more closer to what you were looking. I.e. I justified the spending to myself which isn't quite right again.

I've got to be doing something right now so this post may well be altered and updated shortly. However I am fairly confidence that 阨 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ deceive oneself. Is what you are looking for my dad often said 不(bat)阨 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ don't lie to yourself.


Continued the spirit issue, is tricky in that again subject to interpretation but what you posted to me earlier I think attitude is the correct saying

心态 psychology (sort of) (sam lay)
or
态度 or attitude (tai dough)

So

阨 自己态度

HTH (for now anyway)

Autonomous Regions in China

Dear TCG

What are China's so called "Autonomous Regions"? (Im not talking about Hong Kong, I mean Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia) Why were they given this designation? and just how Autonomous are they?

Kevin B
凱文


Dear Kevin

That is a HUGE question, why do you guys never ask me easy questions like everybody asks the Korean?

Anyway.

The autonomous Regions in China are areas where the Han Chinese people are not the majority. Han make up 91.9% of Chinese population. It is a bit of a copy of the Buryat republic and the Jewish autonomous region as well as Yakutia in Siberia they are supposed to be indenpendent but in reality are not fully independent and cannot break away into a separate country the PRC government most definately would not allow them to do this.

PRC law is suprememe to all other law even in the S.A.R of Hong Kong and Macau. The very short answer is that they are allowed to make local laws that are specific to that specific region that PRC top level law does not cover, for example in the UK London has various laws that are only applicable to London and nowhere else. The Congestion charge and the right to put parking meters on bike parking bays are an example of this.

Again this is a yes no answer, in that they have some autonomy but they are still part of the the overall Chinese government, the autonomous regions can Ask to do things such as raise taxes, create security forces even trade with foreign nations independently. But they have to ask the main government of the PRC for permission first, and if they say no then they can't. They can't ask to leave or setup a completely independent state and if they do the PRC government doesn't like it

The mere fact that the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) has had to send troops to Xinjiang and Tibet says no.

Also even in Ningxia the highest ranking official who people have a limited say in voting for, is still beneath the Communist Party official.

So yes they can do certain things, such as make their own laws, but only if the top level government says yes.

So really they have some extra rights (for example they can have as many children as they want unlike Han families) but are not really very autonomous due to the manner in which anything they decide needs to be sought permission for from the top level of government.

HTH

Notes

Please note TCG is going to be busy for a couple of days so delays to your questions might be delayed slightly but I'll get to them as soon as I can.

HK phones

Dear TCG

I am travelling to Hong Kong and beyond into China in the next couple of weeks, what sim card would you recommend for me to use?


Alexio


Dear Alexio

What country are you from? Does your phone have a sim card? Korean and Japanese phones don't appear to use Sim cards. Your Hong Kong / China SIM Card will require a SIM-unlocked GSM 900/1800 compatible international cell phone. If you do not have your own international cell phone you can go somewhere like fortress or Broadway and buy a fairly utilitarian phone for about $100. Phones in Hong Kong are NOT locked, which is probably why the costs of the bigger better models is very high compared to the subsidised phones in the UK (I do not know about the US).


I had some funny conversations about that in Korea where everybody kept using my passport to buy phones. There are about 17 phones in South Korea that operate under my name. A funny story about this was I asked Park why S Korean phones don't use the GSM network that is universal around the world.

He said to me, well if North Korea attacks we can switch the phones off....


Oh... what so if North Korea attacks it means I can't say good bye to my friends and family (I have no family in Korea) they can just switch it off, oh wow great... Though this feature actually exists for the GSM network in that mobile phones will simply be turned off as per government edict.

Anyway I digress.

In Hong Kong I do not recommend a particular brand as almost all of them cost the same come loaded with 200-300 minutes local calls and charge about the same too for both calls inside HK and roaming as well as IDD. So if you buy a $88 sim card it will often have $88 loaded onto it.

Note HK networks charge for receiving a call $0.13.

The competition is so fierce that there is little to choose between either of them, you get peoples, smartone vodaphone (which is one of the most expensive @ $188) 3 network, CSL etc and a million other disposable ones that are $22 but can never be recharged these typically have $100 on them of credit. My dad uses these and his number changes every month or so. It is highly annoying but then my number changes each time I go to HK.

However out of all of them I would recommend CSL purely because I know for a fact that the help line instructions etc are duplicated in English 3 and Vodaphone as well as Peoples don't. Although you can always ask the person in the 7-11 to put the credit on for you if they are not stunningly busy. CSL and Peoples will however roam in China though, it will of course cost more.

As a side though there are some dodgy practices going on where your sim card number is often sold onto marketting companies who will call you on withheld or numbers you are unfamiliar with. This could just be my imagination but 5 minutes after activating my CSL card at the airport I recieved a marketting call. When I had given that telephone number to nobody, although this happened on 3 and vodaphone too.

An oddity you may experience is that the telephone display will not always show CSL as your carrier, it sometimes flips over to vodaphone sometimes 3 sometimes Orange, sometimes a mess or morass of characters this doesn't matter as they all share and share alike the cell phone masts and end up reconciling it between themselves. Though Macau of course is considered to be a completely different country for phone purposes.

For China

China Unicom is popular everywhere sim cards they sell everywhere. and you can get IDD calls for $0.16 a minute to the US and UK. IIRC there is a vendor on the China side of the Lo Wu border.


Don't buy them before you go, they will generally rip you off, as the moment you land in Beijing, HK or Macau you can go to a vending machine or a 7-11 store (everywhere) and buy them much cheaper.



In Hong Kong coverage doesn't matter except in the small villages in the NT, my dad lives in dead zone curiously.

In China in cities it is everywhere in the countryside variable much like the state of play in the US today.

HTH

Goguryeo

Dear TCG,

I am a Korean, and I guess I'm a rather nationalistic one at that, although not too crazy (in my opinion).

So, of course, I have been following the debate about the ancient Asian kingdom of Goguryeo - whether it's Korean or Chinese. I feel like there is much more evidence supporting the Korean side than the Chinese side, but how do you feel about the issue?

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Eulji Mundeok



Dear Eulji Mundeok

I actually remember seeing an awful lot about this in the Seoul museum last year and there was a lot of mention of this in the Seoul museum. However I am most definitely not nationalistic, I'm a bit more mercenary in things. Are you a Kyopo? (an overseas born Korean) the answer to that was yes more than once.

I'll tell you a silly story, in that in S Korea the sign for hotel and Jinjilbang are the same or rather when I arrived in Sokcho I found a hotel with this sign, a bowl with 3 flames. When I arrived outside Busan fairly late on my bike trip, and couldn't be bothered to find a river or a beach to camp on I found a huge building with a similar sign to that below.


I thought hmm this is a weird hotel and found myself in the company of an incredibly large number naked Korean men. Kyopo? Asked one of the blokes next to me, erm yeah.

Anyway I digress, the controversy surrounding this is the North Eastern Project in that sometime between 1990 and 2004 the PRC government sponsored some research about the North East region north of modern day North Korea. It came to some conclusions that Goguryeo wasn't an independent autonomous state.

Rather it was part of greater China and that China is and was always a multi ethnic society, most people see China as full of Chinese, it is but you can subdivide them into minorities that are still counted as Chinese here there are probably more. In ancient times there wasn't even much disambiguation like we do today. This in addition to the fact that people did and could blend into different minorities quite easily. For example Qin Shi Huang the first emperor of unified China conquered the Han and 2250 years later in 2010 China is full of Han people.

The oddity was with the PRC's change on history was that in previous times pre 1990 it had maintained a similar view of yup Goguryeo did belong to the Koreans, but the view of Koreans is that post 1990 they began to re-write history. Japan did this too in 2005 (remember the key to re-writing history is to make sure nobody can contradict it!).

Koreans like yourself says it used to belong to you.

Which is the source of all this friction, and some people thought it was a threat, even though it was a hotly debated research paper which even some Chinese scholars did not agree with. Motivations for this are probably the noises that North and South Korea are going to be reunited

If North and South Korea unite they may lay claim to the greater Goguryeo area via might = right rule as currently the South Korean armed forces are opponents to the North Korean military, but a combined North and South Korea would make a phenomenally powerful army, so while right now if either of the Korea's demand China to give it back. China with its massive armies in a region filled with tanks and infantry anyway due to the Demansky Island / Zhenbao Island build up that nearly bought Russia and China into a massive war. The PRC government could have said MAKE ME.

I digress yet again.

The sticking point is this

Some people say that Goguryeo Kingdom belongs to Chinese heritage and others argue that it belongs to Korean heritage.

In my opinion, it is hard to say the kingdom belonged to one country modern China or modern Korea because when it existed. For starters modern China didn't even exist before 1949 with the foundation of the PRC, I'm not so sure about the modern governments of Korea but I am pretty sure the modern versions did not exist before the second world war.

Goguryeo had existed in a period where land borders were not absolute. With Islands such as Japan and even the UK this isn't clear cut either as Scotland vs England border and Hadrian's wall . Even Japan in the Sengoku Jidai period borders between kingdom states was in flux. So it is hard to say the absolute borders of ancient China and ancient Korea. And China isn't exactly a stable place between 220BC and 1949AD, as the changes of power from the Song, Jin, Ming Manchu Mongols etc etc is far too extensive to list.

But is goes a bit deeper than that too, in that there is an inter meshing of societies, much like the UK has a Scottish prime minister or James I who was a Scot and became king of England (I think). In that although 1421 by Gavin Davies is often considered a work of fiction the fictional elements mostly remark on the voyages of Zheng He 馬三寶 rather than Imperial Ming history. In that in Zheng He was sent to ask (ask is a loose term in that it may well have been under duress i.e. give or we will TAKE) was sent to the Kings of Korea to demand virgins to fill a wing of the Forbidden city. If you've been there the Forbidden city built by Zhu Di 永樂 is it massive and could have fit 100s if not 1000s of not 10,000+ concubines .Considering the life of the emperor in ancient china was to smoke opium and have sex multiple times a day with multiple partners as it was seen as something that would give longevity.

Also that Zhu Di 永樂 himself may have been half Korean since in Ancient times emperors would have lots and lots of wives and would sleep with all of them.

The bottom line

In my own opinion Goguryeo probably did belong as an independent state amongst many other independent states and was annexed slowly over time, in that even in the Seoul Museum it showed maps that showed a shrinking Korea over time. In that the Chinese had nearly 800 years to move their fences ever so slightly, everybody does it. As my dad says the Russians have stolen 10,000 Hong Kongs in the annexing of land under the power of the gun for the past 100 years.

BUT! All empires fall, it is just a matter of time, the Romans, Alexander the Great, the Mongols, France, Spain, the British all made massive empires for their times. They all declined and fell.

Alternative transport to HK airport

Dear TCG

Either Hong Kong is experiencing some serious inflation problems or I've gone cheap....perhaps a combination of both. But I'm sure as hell the airport express was never $90 from Kowloon when I was here 12 months ago and the MTR fares seem to have gone up also.

I dont need to be at HK airport till 3pm so what bus or MTR combo do I use to get to the airport for less than $90? , I dunno $90 isn't exactly much considering a taxi costs $230 from Kowloon.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Patrick




Dear Patrick.

The airport express is fast but bloody expensive, but it is however fast, in that I've been in HK an hour before check in closes and still made it, my friends use it to cut it even closer, using online checkins and arriving 5-10 minutes before the gate closes (HK airport has its own internal MTR system so far gates are easier to get to).

The alternatives are this:

The A21 Bus is most common it goes right into Kowloon onto Nathan Road, opposite Chungking Mansions. Remember there is no such thing as change on HK buses so get thee an Octopus card or get the correct change $33 last time I recall.

Here are some videos of the route. Get on at TST and you always get a nice view in and out.

A21 Airport Bus, Hong Kong from mifan on Vimeo.

A21 Airport Bus, Hong Kong from mifan on Vimeo.

A21 CityFlyer - Hong Kong from mifan on Vimeo.

The A21 however is crowded and often stuffed full with luggage and people, if you sit at the front also be careful to do up your seat belt, no seriously. Although seatbelt law is barely enforced in Hong Kong ($5000 penalty) the issue is when the bus goes through Mong Kok. The road is so incredibly busy that the bus driver will brake harshly regularly. To stop people going through the glass as seen at about 1.41 in this video.

They have steel bars covering the front window at head height, I've seen tons of people lose their teeth on those bars when the bus stops to avoid a crash. It is not a pretty sight.

There are also these alternative buses listed here for Kowloon and also here. Due to the nature of buses being that they have to compensate for the road traffic until at least Stone Cutters Island and the expressway/motorway thing it takes 70-90 minutes and comes 4-5 times an hour the A21 that is.

The usual route that I get and most air hostesses get which is a bonus as you can oggle them if you want. Is the S1 bus from the aiport to Tung Chung MTR station. That will cost HK$3.5. As soon as you hit the MTR station you can go practically anywhere, Central on HK island is HK$18, or MK for HK$13.5. (correct as of January 2010) from the Tung Chung MTR you can get anywhere you want. I take this as even though the A33 bus all the way to Tai Po cost $14.8 it has a very long winded route and can take upwards of 2 hours.

You want it cheaper ?

There is also an overlooked option, in that the airport has shuttle buses to the major hotels nearby. That tourists generally don't know about. In that you'll usually see signs in HK airport for shuttle buses to the Novotel or the Regal based nearby the airport just to one side of Tung Chung. Jump on the bus from the airport it will take you within 3 minutes walk of the Tung Chung MTR station. So getting into say Nathan Road will cost you $15, even cheaper and faster than the A21 bus.

On the way back you can pull the same trick, but you go into the hotel reception then come out and take the shuttle bus, but hey its a $3.5 saving. So not exactly huge, but it is almost as fast as the airport express but costs 2.5/10ths of the amount.

Note this may well have changed in the past few months as I cannot keep a constant eye on developments, for example in Macau they have 'free' shuttle buses if you've gambled a certain amount as you get stamps on a card. They check as you leave via the basement special area. But asofar as Hong Kong is concerned they don't check.