It's been a a while since I've actually had a big family get together. I don't mean my immediate family like my dad or my sister because they pop in and out every few months. I have little love for them (extended family) because they are deeply ad hominem and they loved to put the boot in. What I miss was a part of the 1990s. Back in the 1990s when everybody ran hot food take out places and everybody seemed to be making a ton of money. Life was so much funnier than now. What with the grande depression part 2 on us and all. The hot food places all seem rather empty. Manchester China town is deader than dead namely because the council thought it was clever to raise the parking charges to £8 an hour. How the hell can you justify £8 an hour parking? Hence everybody decided to go to out of town places in stead like Wing Yip which took advantage of this. Anyhow this is way off tangent, but what's new?
The reason why is that you don't see this any more.
As the video explains in China and Chinese society it's custom to fight over bills. The video is NOT exaggeration. Back in the 1990s when biz was good families would meet every Sunday or Tuesday eat bitch about how society was falling apart. Bitch about their children, bitch about how business was crap. Note a Chinese business man will ALWAYS say business is crap this is partly due to self preservation though. But at the end you would quite literally see parents fighting over bills. Rather than sit back and enjoy the free lunches. They would go hand to hand against each other. Since my dad's generation is of the 1970s Bruce lee picked on group in the UK, although it is a cliche almost all of them have some Wushu ability.
You would quite literally see people fight like this one handed
If you were not the one handed the bill, one hand would fend off the defender's hand and the other attempt to grab the bill. If you were the defender it was doubly hard as one hand was used to fight off the others and attempt to reach for your wallet and put the money down.
In a manner not dissimilar to how Jackie Chan defends his Chicken
Dreaded mail for face conscious piss poor Chinese people
It seems a lot of my contemporaries are getting married all of a sudden. TCG being the only male Representative of his family in the UK gets wedding invites. Some how they got a hold of my address. TCG hates Chinese wedding invites because they are greedy beyond belief!
In a western wedding you normally invite your mates and have a wedding list 99% of people will buy a cheapo toaster because it is cheap, quid pro quo as the married couple you throw them a massive party with food and booze to compensate for the cheapo toaster. But really this is to celebrate with the happy couple and to watch them take steps into a new life. Well thats what it is supposed to be anyway. Though marriage is going out of date anyway (here). But modern Chinese weddings are something else entirely.
Chinese weddings are different. Chinese weddings are an advanced form of avarice which utilises face and shame to extort people out of money. TCG apparently has no face in his immediate family. The devil may cry since I don't particularly care at all.
Chinese weddings the bride wears red purposely for the intents of extortion. In that a Chinese wedding is different, you invite ALL your friends AND enemies. On the invite it used to be implied to bring some money to 'give the happy family a good start in life' today the feckers specifically ask for money and put minimum amounts. Inflation is pretty rampant (anybody seen the price of gas in the UK these days? Petrol and natural gas that is I felt violated as I put in petrol into the car @ £1.23 a litre today to you Americans that's $2 a litre! or $8.50 a gallon!).
My cousin has made this extortion into an art form quite simply he gets married and divorced every 18 months and guessing by the rubbish receptions and the number of people who turn up he makes £15,000-£20,000 in profit each time.
Anyway I digress. Today wedding invites specifically state the amount of money to bring. Hence the way to maximise your profits is to hold a shitty wedding reception and to invite everybody even tenuously related to you. Common tricks to maximise profits are to hold them in shitty locations, this was lampooned in City Japes...back in 1987. Where cookie and So get married they hold it in a terrible location so people can't come. For instance in the UK most Chinese people live in Manchester/Liverpool/Birmingham/London areas. These areas contain China towns which people gravitate around. However invitations I have seen recently have been in Scotland, or even Cornwall which are by no means remote but take ages to get to.
The other way to maximise profits is to have a terrible reception. I'm actually against uber weddings the kind that cost £10000+ since it is only a one day event but then again if you expect me to give you £500. I don't expect a bowl of rice and a single big bottle of beer to share between fifty people.
The nasty thing is EVEN if you do not attend you are supposed to by custom pay the money, even if it is your mortal enemy. TCG's dad will always pay no matter what wedding because he cares about face.
TCG has struck a blow for austerity and modern attitudes though quite recently! TCG received an invite from a mortal enemy of the family and I sealed it up and put it into a post box again with rejected on the front.
Here is the nice bit. The last party I did not attend but by sheer coincidence managed to happen to be in the same building for everybody tried to do the you have no face you are an outcast! This kind of BS against me.
TCG curtly replied back..... why should I pay for a party I'm not going to, in fact why should I slave away at a job I'm not exactly in love with only to give you a big chunk of my pay cheque for nothing in return? The elders tried the BS it's only £500. As if it is a tiny amount of money. (My extended family in HK think I am loaded to the gills but they only look at my income not the expenditure. I was so tempted to say if its such a small amount of money then why don't you give me £500?). Rather than rant and rave about how £500 is not a small amount of money. I simply decided to go elsewhere to eat. But I think I felt that I generally struck a chord with the younger folks. Since the younger folks don't make much money themselves.
Meh, they had to use me as the hatchet man to plant such seeds of doubt into ridiculous traditions. But I suppose I've always had a minor talent to be able to capture the feeling of a crowd. This is bad because it is a charactoristic shared by nut jobs you know like Hitler! Or Stalin
But seriously.... the excuse, because it has always been this way no longer cuts it any more.
People in China (if they can read this) or HK will probably gasp OMG what a punk! Somebody should show him some manners and respect......but seriously guys do you really like paying shit wads of money for this kind of thing?
Are 50 cent'ers real? Do they really exist? Or is it just a load of bollocks?
Berdn.
Dear Berdn.
Tbh I am not entirely sure. Btw for those who don't know what 50 centers are they are not fans of the famous rapper above no no they are something entirely different. The story goes that there is an army of 200,000-500,000 of them. They go around and make pro china posts and make posts which are an antithesis of ANY criticism of the CCP. For this they are paid 50cents US per post. Incidentally the TCG wishes he was paid 50 cents per post, by now I would probably have enough for a case of beer. It is alleged that scour the online universe and will attack, flame and go all ad hominem mostly on websites found in China hoping to drown out views which the CCP does not like. But are also spreading to the wider Internet to propagate their propaganda wars.
However I suspect that such an operation does exist in China to make the CCP look good. I mean think about it, in western economies and societies we have something called astroturfing. The British Labour party in power from 1997-2010 had no need to do this when they first got into power. But then they reneged on their promises and their popularity dropped like a stone. Thus there were carefully controlled media events. Such as this
Or the terrorist heckler incident Walter Wolfgang who was arrested by heavies as a terrorist.
Or when the labour party was caught editing Wikipedia to put themselves under a better light. Even the New Zealand government is involved with these sorts of astroturfing activities. They were even caught astroturfing support being totally pro ID cards here.
Hell the UK government even cheats in elections! With fraudulent postal voting or surprise snow ball in hell type events happen here. Heh no surprise that Labour wanted Diebold machines 'to encourage higher voter turn out."
So I ask you if an apparent free 'Representative democracy'* (It's not but I put this rather than explaining what it really is as it would take reams of time and space). Does such things to artificially generate support or will artificially do this to give the impression of support. Then why would China and the CCP be above this level of deception themselves?
However it is most probably not how the media portrays it.
Taken from CH4's Britain's trillion pound debt horror..... and Britain has the gall to call China communist!
The full hour version is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOsqBf5hDjI
Non UK people may not be able to see this due to blocking type arrangements of youtube. I would note however that the video is a tad polemic. Since the miracle of Hong Kong is over egged massively. It ignores the uber poverty which is hidden away in HK and how low wages can get in HK.
I've said it once, I've said it loads of times actually.
China has laws, but lots of them are disregarded as optional. For instance China has 'tough' anti discriminatory laws. This is important because our old bud Deng Xiaoping and his famous speech which he plagiarised from a Sichian poem.
No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.
Which is essentially bull shit. Much like the posters in the Beijing military museum. They all say Chen Kai Shek was evil and that only the Chinese communist party stood for human rights and democracy. It's pretty laughable really. Note Chen kai Shek WAS evil btw that doesn't mean that Mao and the CCP are not evil either as both parties can be evil. As demonstrated by the events of the KMT going to Taiwan called the white terror and the imposition of Martial law in Taiwan which lasted 39 years.
Anyway, the anti discrimination law is pretty much bollocks because certain colours of people are demanded for different jobs. ESL teachers for instance almost have to be Caucasian, Job adverts actively used to say, whites only. Today they get around this by saying attach a photo on your job application. Although this may seem like a good thing to certain colours of people this isn't as good as it sounds! Because you have no career progressions possible as they don't like Laowai as management or anything above the bottom rungs.
Anyway I digress.
New case law has come about in China which yet again proves China's laws are pretty much bollocks.
For older members anybody remember the Tom Hanks film Philadelphia?
A similar case has occur ed in China whereby a teacher who is/has HIV has been denied work. China has strong laughable laws on discrimination. Which says this sort of thing isn't kosher. But when put to the test what happens? The law fails completely.
TCG btw has no real stance on HIV though in that these people are still people, and it's even more shitty if you catch it through no fault of your own. In fact one of my dad's heroes who Art Ashe died as a result of this. He was my dad's hero because my dad in the 1980s won a huge wedge of money from betting on him.
I want to know if it is true that religion is illegal in China? I've seen television shows where it shows religious people being persecuted. Are these things true or not?
Casey
Dear Casey
Religion in China is a complicated matter. The CCP party in China since it's foundation discouraged religion and religious activities. Officially because it was atheist but in reality because it believed religion was a dangerous alternative credo to communism. Despite this, people in China continued to practise their religious beliefs traditional stuff like ancestry worship and Buddhism were generally ignored and little action was taken against religious types. Then Mao managed to mess up the Chinese economy big time. The great leap forward steel making experiment. The famines etc left the CCP in a weakened state as people lost the faith, people started questioning the CCP. Mao's solution to this was the cultural revolution where crack downs and persecution really did exist. Such that people pretended to be atheists or did their religious activities behind closed doors. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, large-scale religious persecutions were carried out and thousands of temples and churches destroyed. Which is why most temples in China are actually replicas as they were rebuilt after some smart so and so realised they could be used as tourist traps.
This changes in the 1980s though with Deng Xiaoping. Simply once he had wrestled power from the rest of the CCP, he introduced doubt..
"You know guys, what we've been doing hasn't really been working so maybe we should try something different?"
Thus in 1982, the constitution was amended to allow Chinese people some overt freedom of religion. Thus in China you can practice any of the mainstream and less mainstream religions in China. However it is like talking about the CCP, doing it behind doors in your home and in cafes etc is fine. Standing on a soapbox and proclaiming and preaching to others is most definitely NOT ok. TCG feels ambivalence towards this as TCG is target for militant converters in town centres. Muslims, Christians, Baptists etc will all approach me and attempt to save my soul. This is deeply irritating and has led to nigh on beatings as I joke about their religions this is no longer allowed in the UK as freedom of speech is severely curtailed in the UK. People who joke about things on twitter are now considered terrorists. On Wednesday a guy joked about a journalist who should be stoned to death. He was arrested for this comment. It's funny not in a comical way that in the UK we now have to watch what we say. While in the past we would make disparaging comments about politicians that they should be shot. This isn't allowed anymore.... how ironic eh?
There are three big religions in China, Daoism, Confucianism, ancestor worship and Buddhism. Islam and Christianity are also but present in smaller numbers in China despite the huge number of obvious missionary looking types all over the country. (They look like Micheal Douglas in falling down)
There is however one exception, cults. This is shared amongst many countries. For example :
USA - The Waco siege. Where the ATF went up against the Brach Dravidian's. UK - Al Macaroon(sp?) Which was a sub sect of Islam. Was banned and their leaders arrested as terrorists. There are many examples even set ups. But this is a debate for another time. China of course has Falun Gong.
The CCP is very anti cult, except for their own cult of Mao personality and their own cult of power. Look at how awesome we are in China type thing. This is like the above where governments simply don't like cults and also it stems from history. As cults tend to
The government is still anti-'cult'. This stems from the large numbers of cults which helped to bring down past Chinese governments - the divine fists (Boxers) for instance The communists are suspicious of any group that could claim people's loyalty. Thus Falun Gong remains banned.
So if you go to China as a religious type, its not as if they'll kick down your door and send you to the Laogai for practicing your religion. Preaching on the other hand will get you into trouble. Except maybe the cult of money which is WIDELY practiced in China.
Lampooned in the film Armor of God (A 1980s Jackie Chan film)
Why are these companies so suicidal? In that if you cut jobs in the UK and move them overseas, then they merely end up destroying their consumer base. TCG for one will not be buying anything related to the Olympics.... ok granted I NEVER buy anything related to the Olympics but still.
What do you think about bringing over a spouse from China. I'm getting serious about this girl in China?
Your input and suggestion is greatly appreciated!
Thanks Kinda of nervous about a long distance relationship guy from the USA
M
Dear M.
My thoughts on this are varied (whats new). As there are many potential outcomes in how this may well pan out. I've seen many of these outcomes and how they pan out too, it can be like people. People can be good bad or ordinary.
What I've seen however tends to urk me towards the bad side, perhaps why I am so cynical these days as many women from China saw me as a meal ticket.... TCG used to be hot stuff and girls would ask me for a date fully with the intention of getting a UK passport. Many of these women were quite transparent about it. Some of them would even offer me $25,000 US to marry me with a sham wedding to get a UK passport. I never took them up on these offers because I never really wanted to be married. Being married also opens you up to red packet extortion. It was so incredibly freaky as if dinner dates, which I'd tend to pay the bill and tell her there was no chance at all. They would talk to me as if it were some kind of interview. Phases such as. "As long as you provide me with a good home for me and our future children I don't care. You can go out and sleep with as many other women as you want as long as you keep a good home."
This put me off massively. Though with the UK going down the tubes this is happening rather less and less, which I don't mind as regular dinner dates in Asia rack up in cost quite quickly. TCG isn't as evil as he could have been i.e. jumped into the sack with them THEN said LJBF. But TCG isn't as evil as he imagines.
Alice for instance was a rural girl from China who didn't have a pot to piss in. She married and now lives in the UK off him. He works as a fairly well paid electrical contractor. He is however ugly, think car crash head jammed in an elevator and toxic crusader type ugly I jest not! Who is severely overweight, think 350lb type overweight. All my women friends find him absolutely repulsive to the extreme. However he knows he is being exploited by her, but he sits back and enjoys getting to jump in the sack with her on a regular basis as a form of 'payment'. Which is kind of like a prostitution kind of arrangement. She actually sleeps around behind his back and once asked me into the sack at a party... I kind of wonder if they'll be together in 3 years time as she will have naturalised and gotten a UK passport, ergo he is no longer of any use.
OTOH, Boscoe one of my dad's friends sons' he is an airline pilot who married a girl from Chongqing and their relationship seems to be pretty much what you would find in a average British house hold. There is attraction and loyalty, both of them work as well even though Boscoe makes enough for both of them to live.
Also at the other extreme is mostly from Russia actually, in that although news papers sensationalise back in the early 00s there were many ex USSR brides. This was because the Ex USSR countries like Ukraine, Moldova etc didn't have a pot to piss in. Such that women would try to get away. This was art imitating life in the film Birthday Girl.
Back in the day there were many stories of Russian Brides who would vanish the second they landed in Heathrow. I do not know the extent of the reality of this vs fiction.
Anyway lets step away from this a bit and go to one of my uber random tangents.
China is pretty shit if you are one of the natives. I wrote somewhere in my book that most countries are not great if you are a native of that country. Looking as an outsider it looks nice or working as an expat. For instance lets say Korea. To the ESL types who work there they think it is excellent. They have free accommodation they get paid a ton more than the locals and their working days are not as long as the locals. None of this is the case with the local Korean folks, they work insane hours. Kim for instance left the flat at 530am, and returned at 11pm EVERYDAY. He was paid a pittance (min wage in Korea is reputed to be around 2000-4000KRW which is £1.50 or $2.30). Life is expensive property is unaffordable and the constant need to keep face honor and respect restricts your life.
In China life for many men and women is pretty shit. Rock and a hard place seems to be an apr cliche expression to use here. I mean as a man you have limited options. You become an ant and work for the big corporates where you are systematically exploited and robbed for your pay. Or you go to university to fight for a government position and 9/10 times end up as an ant. If you are lucky you may work in an office. It's the way the system has been organised. this is by design.
The television dreams we had as children are as remote in China as they are back in our respective home countries.
A la Fight club philosophy (have a read of the book it is quite interesting)
The same choices exist for women, but for two more, they can become working girls to actually get out of the ant system. This is why Hong Kong and Macau especially are filled with working girls from China. You can't swing a dead cat in Mongkok without some douche approaching you and asking you if you want suckiee. You might think I'm joking but this really does happen. Macau is even worse! As mass prostitution is legal in Macau it is overt and in your face. The other final option they have is to marry off outside to somewhere else to not be an ant or to be a working girl.
How is this pertinent to you?
Well this girl could be any of the above, and tbh it usually takes an outsider to see what's going on, as men are suckers and can be blinded by women easily.
My suggestion is probably to merely take a vacation/ holiday and see her response. It is akin to merely buying a drink, if it turns out bad its just a drink. While marriage has HUUUUGE consequences.
Also to consider her motivations rationally, look at yourself in the mirror are you a fat ugly slob who would under other circumstances be unable to pull a girl of her attraction? TCG is no oil painting and therefore Chinese girls wanting to marry me it was pretty obvious (aside from them being totally blunt about it) they were not after my Adonis like body (yeah right)
Ask in depth what her plans for the future will be, ignore the I wanna be with you etc type ones that massage your ego and deflect attention away. Assess her current circumstances, if she is rich or has a rich family then the exploitation angle chance is lower. Consider WHAT she would do if she were not to go to the USA. Would she merely end up as an ant or happens to have a fairly decent job there? Call her bluff, maybe pretend to want to settle in CHINA and gauge her reactions. Age plays a factor in this too, in Asia once you hit 30 NOBODY wants you, and people tend to settle. As I've said in many previous posts there is a huge pressure to get married at a youngish age.
Have a serious think about it with your head rationally and see if it makes sense.
And for women readers, the same pretty much applies to any men you may meet out there too!
From Zero Wing which was on the megadrive, THE console to have in the 1980s before the Super Nintendo came along.
Quite curiously from my office window where I can see a useless wind turbine which has not moved for the 2 months I've worked there. I can also see some new houses being put up and it looks like this.
Which sums pretty much what I've been saying for a while now. If you are in the USA buy made in USA. UK buy made in UK! And stop buying the shit that comes out of China these days. Stop supporting the companies say Walmart which send American jobs overseas. Although in the short term it may well cost you a few more $$. In the long term those $$ you save are at the cost of some other poor sod's job. TCG is of course not exactly innocent in this, using his dell (made in Ireland though) and a Toshiba as well as riding a Japanese motorbike. However at least the people and factories in Japan are at a similar living standard and wage level.
On that note this may well correct itself over time, seeing as China's economy has only benefited the few (quelle surprise) look at the Gini coefficient and China looks like an M shaped society. Which TBH can only end in drowning in inflation as the large numbers of Chinese exploited demand more money and want part of the pie. Just like their Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese fellows had. Or you get civil strife.
Colors also carry much superstition in China. The meaning of certain colors is completely different from their western interpretations.
Red (紅 hóng)
Red is the cultural color of the Chinese people. It symbolises fire, vitality, happiness and celebration. It can be seen everywhere during Chinese New Year and other important holidays
Yellow (黃 huáng)
Yellow is the color of beauty and nobility. I suppose this another instance of Sino-ethnocentrism, calling themselves a “yellow people” is like calling themselves beautiful. Yellow is a color of power and wealth because it is the color of gold, the Emperors throne was often decorated with yellow.
Green (綠 lǜ)
Green is the color of health, well being, springtime and harmony. Not too different from the west.
Blue (藍 lán)
Blue is a symbol of immortality or long life.
Black (黑 hēi)
Black in Chinese culture is very odd. In the west, black is associated with evil, darkness, and depression. But in China it is actually associated with water and heaven. In the I Ching, water corresponds with the color black.
Pink (粉紅 Fěnhóng) or just (粉 Fěn)
The characters literally mean “powder red”. Pink is not a gendered color in China. Pink is seen as a shade of red, which as stated above, is a good color.
White (白 Bái)
White is the color of death and mourning. Referring the paleness of a dead body. In contrast to the west were it is seen as a color of purity and innocence. Never I repeat NEVER wear white in China. White is only to be exhibited during a funeral and when mourning the dead.
In general, brighter colors are usually good (except for white). Darker colors tend to be neutral to negative in meaning.
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