China: Enforcing the Laws of Physics

Chinese Government Bans Time Travel

Have you ever wished you could go back in time? Well if your in China its not going to happen. The Chinese government has recently put a ban on time travel. At least on screen. State censors have released new guidelines discouraging shows and movies who's plot revolves around time travel. The law was made to protect the integrity of China's history. I guess Dr Who won't be coming to China anytime soon.

Things Japan Stole from China: Bonsai

It’s widely known that Japanese culture was greatly influenced by the Chinese; however there are many things that people accredit to the Japanese with but were actually created in China. In this series, I look into these misattributed creations and why they got that way.

A Bonsai tree

Bonsai is the art of miniaturizing trees, growing them and caring for them for aesthetic purposes. Bonsai trees are a common sight in any Japanese garden. They are also popular in homes and among horticulturists. Bonsai emerged in Japan in the 1300's and slowly grew more popular over time. Eventually they had become ubiquitous throughout Japan. But the story goes much deeper than that. Bonsai comes directly from the Chinese art of Penjing (盆景) literally "tray scenery". While bonsai focused mostly on the tree, Penjing was centered around creating entire miniature landscapes in a tray. They could be as complex as a mountain range or as simple as a single tree. Penjing is over 7000 years old. Its origins emerged in primitive form in prehistoric China in Yangshao culture. Primitive trays called "pen" were frequently constructed in early China. They were used for things such as incense burners, water dishes and vessels used for rituals. These would eventually be used in Penjing. Over time they were made of other materials such as wood or stones with moss. By the first century CE, Taoism and Buddhism had taken a strong root in China. In Taoist mythology, those in line with the Tao had the power shrink whole landscapes to a small size. Many Taoists tried to emulate this power, and thus the art of Penjing was created. From the Tang Dynasty onward, Penjing became a widely praised and respected art form. Trees with knots and unusual shapes were the most sought after, because it was believed that they were bestowed with unique energy. Bonsai was brought to Japan as souvenirs by Japanese diplomats to China in the 6th century. The art slowly took root from there.

A Penjing, encompassing a larger landscape

Pot kettle black?

There is often a charge of the CCP being wholly and completely corrupt, you want something done? You gotta grease the wheels.

Since I'm simply not writing half as much even 10% as much as I used to here are a couple of blogs about iffy goings on in the UK

Cromwell

Bexley Councik

No wonder we're so much in debt,

Banana!

Stuff is keeping me busy here and there thus I'm severely neglecting this site.

But here is something interesting for you to read, about how some people are simply not Chinese enough.....

I have a different take though, as I speak English many people automatically assume I am completely illiterate and cannot speak various flavors of Chinese. Which is good in a way as people will reveal all sorts of stuff and talk behind your back in front of you, which is funny because they think you don't understand.

The thing is though about the article is that she wants to fit in and be one of them.... I forget the film maybe army of darkness or the evil dead or something. (Anybody know the name?) Where there is a chanting bit where it goes:

One of us one of us in a creepy sort of way.

Why fit in why be normal? Be yourself and forget what people say to belittle you!

Crap in China 2

As a runner to the previous post China has launched its first aircraft carrier, the refitted Varag, which some how a Macau firm bought it from the Ukraine, and told the Ukrainians they were going to turn it into a casino. Its supposed to be a training carrier, and they're going to cut their teeth on it. But then again this is one of 4 Carriers China is currently building, the fact that it has no battle group and because it has no catapult (thus lighter launches) the Nimitz would eat it for breakfast.

TBH I think its a dick waving contest as its a pretty exclusive club. What with the Americans (11) The Russians (1) Brazilians (1) India (2) and the French (1). Meh the UK no longer has any of the mini carriers anymore.

But what boggles the mind is that it goes again an old Chinese parable. In that China was humiliated in 1999 over Taiwan when they rattled sabres at Taiwan. The USN 7th fleet had a little cruise around Taiwan. In that China has been spending years on designing weapons specifically to take out carriers. While at the same time stockpiling Russian ship killers like the Moskit which apparently can defeat the Phalanx CIWS of the USN.

An in joke from a Navy buddy from Plymouth, he said if you ever hear the Phalanx open fire you should jump overboard in direct contradiction to this video:




Anyway the parable is of a travelling salesman (a euphemism about a bloke who sells guns in the UK) during the three waring states period. Think snake oil salesman in the Midwest of the USA claiming to sell a tonic or to make rain. Anyway this sales man was pretty bad. Who quite frankly was dumb. First he woo'd the villagers with a shield which was indestructible and could not be penetrated by anything. He then advertised a spear which could penetrate absolutely anything and no armour and no shield would offer any protection. While he was proudly advertising his products, a man in the crowd asked him "what if I stab your shield with your spear? Bewildered by his own words, the craftsman was at a loss for a suitable reply. The crowd broke up laughing and booing.

The moral is that you should not hold a contradictory position.

Kind of like this



Simply if you've spent billions on developing a missile to take out carriers, why exactly are you building carriers yourself?

Crap in China

There is an old saying all over the world, in fact there are quite a few sayings:

You get what you pay for.

If it's too good to be true then often it is.

Buyer beware!

I find this story therefore quite funny

"From TFA: 'A Russian friend .... works at a hard-drive repair center in a Russian town, located near the Chinese border. A couple of days ago a customer brought a broken 500GB USB-drive that he had bought in a Chinese store across the river, for an insanely low price. But the drive was not working: if you, say, save a movie onto the drive, playing the saved movie back resulted in replaying just the last 5 minutes of the film.' Apparently, the contents of the external HDD box included: two nuts, glued to the inner surface of the box with a 128MB flash drive wedged between them (image). And it was a clever hack, too — if ever an attempt was made to write a file that's too large, it got cycled — rewriting itself over and over from the beginning, while leaving the existing files intact. And it reported everything correctly — file sizes and all!"

Yes yes there is a lot of counterfeit shit from China, soy sauce, tofu, eggs etc the list goes on and on. But what do you expect when you pay an insanely low price for something. Buyer beware and check things carefully! The cheapish parachutes I buy I check before I jump the damned things!

censorship

Source

Dear Chinese Guy,

I have a friend in Shanghai, China and I have been writing a couple of letters to him. My first question is, why does it take so long to send a letter to China? He received the first one I sent to him months after I sent it.

I know it's wrong to question the government if you live in China, but even if I send mail with questions, will they confiscate that as well? And will they block communications with my friend?

He told me he was very eager to respond to the incoming mail, and for some reason he's stopped speaking to me... I backtracked what the cause to that might be, and I know it's nothing personal, so I was wondering if the government is involved with the contact he has with me. Is this possible?

Thanks,
Sara


Dear Sara.

AFAIK postage always seem to take ages from China, back in the days when HK was British it took months. I recall back in 2007 sending a post card back to my work place and it took 3 months. Therefore postage is slow in China anyway, hell it's a state run monopoly they can take ages if they want. (DHL for instance took weeks to get a parcel from a depot down the road to me). Hell on my 2009 trek I posted post cards home to myself and family. They are still arriving in 2011 better late than never I suppose.

Regarding the does China censor letters and or is my friend in trouble issue. I doubt it, but if the CCP did do this then I wouldn't at all be surprised if they did. Namely as the CCP has some serious social issues which it is trying to mask. They are merely papering over the cracks and trying to hide the symptoms of a very unbalanced society. Not least the awful Gini Coefficient of 4.7 mass unemployment and environmental issues. The CCP censorship department is pretty freaking powerful such that the (public) leaders of the PRC are surprised when their speeches are edited heavily for broadcast even though they were generally in line with that of the ideals of the CCP.

My thoughts that they wouldn't is that there are millions if not millions of Chinese who live outside China who send post back and forth into and out of China daily. And it would be a pretty damned tough task in which to covertly open read and or censor such letters. Though letters have to pass through the state system due to a law FedEX and DHL complained about nigh on ten years ago. Thus its a technological barrier to doing this. Hell in the past a LOT of my DVDs without tax paid used to slip in from the USA, and if a modern 1st world country with high levels of automation can't catch my obvious DVDs then can China.

Also some points to consider.

The thing is though the CCP's version of censorship so far is less of a East German knock on your door in the middle of the night and be on the receiving end of a kicking/prison sentence. It is more of a passive aggressive system. Take for example the great firewall.

If you search for something the CCP censors then it locks you out for a minute or two even from legitimate websites allowed in China. Do it again and it doubles the blocking time, do it again and it doubles the blocking time. Thus much like a child with a hot pan the people learn NOT to look at websites which are verboten in China. People will learn not to go looking for such things thus they self censor in a sort of chilling effect method which is a pretty sneaky if not clever way to go about it tbh.

A similar system recently reported on and suspected with telephony AND SMS messages, anything the censors don't like (automated which is theorised as to why China is building super computers) it cuts you off. Or if you say something bad the CCP does not like on an SMS message your phone gets bricked which would be pretty crappy if you just spent a lot of money on it.

He may simply not be talking to you because he is busy or as Jocelyn covered it in a post a while ago here. That Chinese men will stop talking to you to save face and attempt to make you go away. It's a cultural thing I suppose. My wider family know to leave me alone if I don't talk to them for a bit and they have the sense to leave me alone.

Film

Dear Chinese guy.

One of my fave films is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but the ending is so ambiguous does Jen die? Earlier on in the film she can fly across the roof tops so surely she survives right?

Erme

Dear Erme.


Um I've not seen this film in ages, TCG talks a bit like Chow Yun Fat tbh, i.e. a mishmash of Mandarin mixed with borrowed words (mandarin speakers thought WTF when they saw the film). Anyway I do remember Jen jumping off the bridge and falling into the clouds as so:



The thing is though Jen can't actually fly, it's an exaggerated form of something called the light way where people are extremely nimble on their feet and can control their weight and balance almost perfectly. With the martial arts uber masters they can 'fly' even higher. I just watched the earlier bit in the film and the rooftop chase bit clearly shows Jen kicking off the walls and having to land and jump every now and again.

You know sort of like you can run up some stairs jump the last one and land without much of of an impact compared to your body weight. Ballet dancers can do this where they pirouette and land on pointe shoes. And over time for dramatic effect it is exaggerated. Much like in Braveheart whereby they feel William Wallace shoult be ten foot tall and don't believe Mel Gibson is Wallace.

In the video she does however glide, but that's wire works and CGI for you. I bloody wish I could fly at a ratio of more than 2:1 (I currently fly or rather drop at a ratio of 1:1 horizontal and vertical movement).

Anyway to spoil it for you yes Jen lives since Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is part 4 of 5 books which were adopted to this film. My dad told me about this when we first went to see it, also that Li Mubai was picked from an earlier novel. Thus there is not exact continuity... the Jen Charactor appears in book 5 and thus lives. Though then again there have been some absolutely ridiculous things appearing in Chinese media. For example in the 1988 film A Better Tomorrow, you clearly see (for once) Chow Yun Fat eating an entire MP5 clip in super slow motion. There are a ton of squibs firing all over him. Yet he returns in the sequel which is handwaved that it is his twin brother...... riiiight...

I've not personally read these books as I prefer gritty horrible books like American Psycho

Tbh I don't think about it too hard and thinks she just puts her life into the hands of fate, or that it was a Gainax ending

Chinese Teeth 2

Hi The Chinese Guy,
I read your post about Chinese Teeth and i wanted to ask why do Chinese people throw there teeth on to the roof of their house when they fall out?

Curious Collector


Dear Curious.

It varies from place to place as not all families in China do it, and even then it can vary. I remember seeing it in my youth here and there but with no real consistency. Heh I suppose in the future it won't happen at all what with the children wanting money from the tooth fairy. I never got any smegging money from the tooth fairy, though granted most of my first teeth ended up being punched out from rampant violence and bullying over the years.

IIRC you wrap a lost tooth carefully in white paper and then toss the bottom teeth onto the roof while you toss the top teeth under the bed or at the foot or the head of the bed. It changes depending on who you ask. You know sort of like Chinese whispers...... except in China we merely call them whispers heh. Or how each house hold has different rules and or traditions

This is purely superstition thing whereby if you do this your new teeth if you are a child I suppose. Your teeth will grow out to be straight and not crooked.....

TCG dislikes crooked teeth more unpleasantness are teeth which grow in rows, urgh... If a dream woman approached me and was perfect in each way other than this I would probably refuse to date her.... but yeah I'm shallow whats new? In the USA and the UK crooked teeth are sorted out using braces or IIRC called in the USA retainers. (Whenever I hear that I always think of a deposit on something you want to buy or something)

As with the last post obeying a superstition = free.
Dental braces are expensive as is all dental work that is required. Especially so in China.

A particularly hideous variation is teeth lost are thrown into a well.... which is supposed to make them whiter.... but I've only heard of this second hand. But if I didn't have pumped purified and drugged up water (UK tap water contains various 'additives') it would make uncomfortable. I.e. you go out for your water pop it in the kettle and boil it. You then make some tea or coffee out of the water and something hard yet brittle floats over your tongue. You reach in and find a smegging tooth. Yeesh.

Here is a video of Simroid for aspiring orthodontists

Chinese teeth

How come Chinese people have such awful teeth?

Xin

Dear Xin

Chinese people in China have awful teeth quite simply because dentistry in China is non existent in many areas of China still. Even people with fairly good jobs even in places like HK and Taipei can't afford to go to the dentist because it is very very expensive. (these places have semi socialised health care) TCG's ex GF needed some serious dental work when TCG first met her and she had to fly to HK to get it done as Taipei dentists were and are extortionate.

When you do go to a dentist they (or in my experience) do not perform any preventative care, they will merely check your teeth and only wait for something to go wrong. While my UK dentist will tell me to do this and that and even give me freebies like micro between the teeth brushes to clean my teeth.

While in mainland China with many poor people they simply don't go to dentists nor brush their teeth. EVEN city slickers only 10% clean their teeth regularly and properly as cited here.

There is also an issue of traditional, in China you get die hards who believe well its worked for the last 5000 years why change? In regards to Chinese medicine or chopsticks (chopsticks increase the chance of bone problems I forget which one). In China the traditional method in which to clean your teeth practiced by none other than Mao was this. You drink some green tea with lots of leaves in it. You then chew the leaves a bit spit out the green leaves and wipe with a towel.... Or use twigs (I'm not sure what the twig method happens to be btw). And hey twigs and green tea are virtually free so why do I need to buy a tooth brush? etc etc thinking

Thus in a nut shell it is about cost (dentists are expensive in the UK even with socialised health care), availability and thus people don't go to the dentist.

Yawn more pish poor journalism

Ruthlessly stolen from gamespot

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12885271

Precis China to overtake the USA on science.... i.e. the number of published papers.... but the thing is its quality NOT quantity... Ok ok Stalin did once say quantity has a quality all of its own but the days of mass infantry wars like Korea and Imjin river are over.... or are they?? This applies to EVERYBODY not just China though. Like that Korean bloke who cloned a human and was found out to be a fraud. Or the fraudulent actions of the Climate Change unit in the UK.

I digress, I mean research has to be worthwhile for starters I mean look at the things on this list here

Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.

What? So somebody somewhere carried out research in that sticking a finger up your bum can cure hicupps......

Ducks can be homosexual necrophiliacs too (winner, Biology, 2003)
"The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)", Deinsea: Annual of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, 2001.

One of the greatest sentences in modern science writing: “Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard… mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force.” Take that, March Of The Penguins.

Suicide rates are linked to the amount of country music played on the radio, winner, Medicine, 2004
"The Effect of Country Music on Suicide", Social Forces, 1992

If you knew there was something profoundly unacceptable about Billy Ray Cyrus, but you could never quite put your finger on what it was, here is your answer. The man makes people kill themselves.

Dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas, winner, Biology, 2008
"A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835)," Veterinary Parasitology, 2000

Presumably the research team set up some sort of tiny high-jump bar for the fleas to Fosbury-flop over. It’s not entirely pointless; knowing which that dog fleas jump higher tells you that buying a dog is more likely to lead to getting bitten yourself.

Lap dancers get higher tips when they are ovulating, winner, Economics, 2008
"Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?" Evolution and Human Behavior, 2007

This research might be hard to put into practical use – unless you’re a lap dancer – but you imagine the (all male) research team put in an awful lot of field work.

Rats can’t always tell the difference between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards, winner, Linguistics, 2007
"Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats," Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005

The Linguistics Ig Nobel winner in 2007. In fairness to the researchers, they were trying to find similarities between human infants and other mammals, in order to better determine the evolutionary origins of speech. But what they actually did was show the world that rats don’t speak backwards Japanese. A miss, really.

You can extract vanilla flavouring from cow dung, winner, Chemistry, 2006
"Novel Production Method for Plant Polyphenol from Livestock Excrement Using Subcritical Water Reaction," International Journal of Chemical Engineering, 2008

Riiight

Why woodpeckers don’t get headaches – winner, Ornithology, 2006
"Woodpeckers and Head Injury,", Lancet, 1976; "Cure for a Headache," Ivan R Schwab, British Journal of Ophthalmology, 2002

It is pretty baffling, when you think about it. Woodpeckers headbutt trees for a living, experiencing impact deceleration of more than 1000 times the force of gravity. So how do they prevent catastrophic brain injury? The difference between ordinary people and good scientists is that where we just wonder, the scientist finds out.

(The answer, if you were wondering, is: brain more tightly packed into the skull; a smooth brain surface to maximise impact surface area; and minimal side-to-side movement. So there you go.)

Malaria mosquitoes are as attracted to limburger cheese as they are to human foot odour – winner, Biology, 2006
"On Human Odour, Malaria Mosquitoes, and Limburger Cheese," The Lancet, 1996 (paper requires log-in)

Next time you go to Africa, don’t bother with insect repellent or mosquito nets – just take a nice ripe limburger, leave it outside your tent, and presto! A bite-free night.

Uber Belated comedy spot

Heh...

Pocky

Dear TCG,

. I like to give it to my Asian friends on special occasions (especially the girls) because they get ecstatic over it. I tried it but it didn't taste all that special to me. What is all the hype about?

I'm not sure actually, I remember pocky from my youth too and my dad would often bring a pack back now and again from Chinese wholesale stores, it was very expensive for what it was... Though I quite like Cabee corn puff snacks, as well as Wasabi nuts which I am sure contains an addictive chemical since they are like pringles chips but even worse.... I've fallen out of favor with pringles chips. Maybe it's because I thought the eyes were the red things.



Maybe it is nostalgia of having something from their youth or sohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmething since such snacks are not uncommon in China in either the past or the present.

Having a word with my dad about this....

He said Chocolate in China (even HK) in the 70s and 80s were rare. Chinese sweets typically consist of various disgusting cup jellies which you don't want to think too hard about. Caramelised sugar, biscuits and or dissicated fruit of various kinds.

TCG remembers this


Chocolate was not at all common and it was stinkingly expensive.... add in the general lactose intolerance of Asian people and few companies made the stuff. And at first appearances appeared to be brown stuff that was sweet. My dad and his entire family chew chocolate bricks



Rather than let them melt in their mouths for some reason.

Thus I think it is probably to do with nostalgia of getting it when they were children and also that unlike all other western nations Chocolate wasn't common. I mean IIRC WWI rations had a bar of chocolate in it, so did WWII.

There is a god!

I was umming and arring about moving over to Asia, with the major problem being there is no skydiving in China rumors of airfields where people go out there and find nothing there and I needed something to feed my addiction.

Pretty much thought I'd have to go and become a BASE jumper like these folks:

Base jump à Hong Kong : vidéo sur aufeminin.com

But...



There is a club just over the border! Woo.



Makes me wonder what I shall do tbh....

Does any body have the video of?

Twenty years ago I remember seeing a video like this.



Except it was hillarious rather than the mostly unimpressive stuff seen in the video above. Sure sure the spears to the throat is impressive, so is the spear to the belly but everything else is a variation on the vagrants tricks.


No what I am after is a video I saw sometime in the 1980s it showed Shaolin monks who really proved their powers and ablities. Not like above but in more dangerous (yet sickenly hillarious ways). For example they proved they could resist ANYTHING. So what does the smegging presenter do? He heats up a hot vat of cooking oil, fries a piece of meat in it to prove it is seriously hot. He then scoops up some of it and while the monks are meditating as hard as they can he pours it over the heads of the monks. It was sort of like the end of a Jackie Chan film when they show outakes of Jackie Chan breaking his head open for the 10th time or something. Where it was Chinese propagada videos where they showed the out takes.

Granted it is uber schadenfreude but I spent 8 hours today at work filing stuff due to lack of business..... and I always remember how comical these films were

Maneki Neko

Dear TCG,


I notice that in all Chinese owned businesses I see these sculptures of beckoning cats everywhere. I know they're supposed to bring good luck, but why? and why a cat?


These cats are called Maneki Neko.... in Cantonese we say Chew Choi Mao (fortune bringing cat sorta). The thing is they are not Chinese at all they are a Japanese invention and somehow crossed the straights of China and Japan to become popular in Chinese homes. It's a cat because in some folklore cats with their good vision are able to see in the dark. Thus they are able to see and scare away evil ghosts.

They are supposed to 'claw' good luck and protection towards you hence the beckoning paws, but really they are a product of Chinese polytheism.

Where they cherry pick bits and pieces of religions in an attempt to make sense of the crazy universe we live in. For example in the old Chinese woman's home down the road family members home they have a small altar which venerates their ancestors. A bowl of fruit and fake electric incense is placed to venerate your ancestors.

Move a little to the left and you see a massive fake plastic golden sycree which if was real gold I would need an extra large bank passbook to fit in all those 00s and I would retire walking into the sunset and never return...

Move nearer the TV and you have three statues Fuk Luk and Sau. They are displayed together, and their presence is said to ensure wealth, authority, respect, long life and good health. While if you go to the doorway you'll see Ba gau. A taoist symbol..... move a little back and you'll see a some shrunk mellons of some kind.

Thus people pick and choose, I know my dad did (my dad is an ancestor worshipping, Taoist, karma believer.

OD

Hello

Is it easy to over dose on eastern medicine and if u can please name the side effects.


This question I believe is impossible to answer, namely because eastern medicine covers an awful lot of things. And while something in huge quantities may not do you any harm. For example, herbal teas like Chrysanthemum tea or 24 herb tea. Or the numerous Chinese broths that are concocted up. At family dinners, spinach soup you can drink all day and all night nothing will happen to you. Ginger coca cola cold cure you can drink gallons of the stuff and nothing will happen to you. Something dangerous you can take and it will appear to do no harm but will have some long term effects Ipicac for example makes you vomit but damages your heart over time if used a lot.

On the other hand there are things which in small quantities can hurt you really bad. One of my semi relatives is currently a vegetable in an old persons home because she consumed too much of something.... I was in HK when it happened to her she had a really bad stroke and was not discovered for quite sometime and thus effectively lost all of her personality...I'm not exactly sure if it is a casual relationship between the medicine and her stroke though. Namely because her medical notes are sealed and I don't like to pry. It also makes me sad to see her abandoned like that.... I do not have power of attorney over her either. I don't know what it was but it was a medicine of some kind. Before this event she could take on tigers in hand to hand combat and win.

Therefore I can't really answer your question. As I am not a trained medical professional and it would be incredibly dangerous (and foolish) to follow any advice I give you or do not give you. I would say if you are going to a herbal doctor in China/HK, listen to him or her and tell them what you are taking in addition to the Chinese medicine. Exactly as you would tell your western doctor if you were feeling ill and needed some meds.

Right I'm tired of this

As with the Chinese quality is shit thread here

This is only my opinion, and since I am not an omnipotent type I may well be wrong.

Yet another Chinese bubble myth pops it's ugly head up. Sure Chinese GDP is faked but then again it is faked in our western economies too.

Chris Martenson tells a good story here

I mean FFS, GDP in western nations is counted really badly.... so there is a faster computer out there, even if you didn't buy it, it still increases your productivity therefore it gets added to the GDP figures. So you own your home, no I don't mean you have a mortgage but you own it outright. Ah but the government considers this how much rent would you have to pay if you did not own and had to rent. Even though you do not rent.... such silly things like that.

Or how when something gets bloody expensive people substitute it for cheaper things.... I'm not sure my car runs on anything other than petrol tbh and what I can substitute food for either. Watch some of the crash course if you have a couple of hours.

Anyway annoying me is this video doing the rounds:

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601007/n/China-s-Ghost-Cities

OMG China has a massive bubble, they have 64 million empty homes. Nobody lives in them electricity and water consumption confirm these are empty cities ghost cities if you will.

OMG those poor factory workers who have to work ten years to afford such apartments! Its all a massive bubble!


This Ferrari Enzo would take me a couple of life times to earn enough money to own..... except this assumes I want a ferarri enzo... however I don't, perhaps because my piece of junk 1999 sports tourer bike



Has the ability destroy a Ferrari Enzo probably maybe or at least have 80-90% of the performance of it.

Except it isn't.

Let me step away from this for a second..... why did you study hard in school? Why do you toil and work hard? Do you do it for fun (OK my dad is a nutter and works for fun but he is a rare type of person) or do you do it for a reward of some kind. You know a pay cheque at the end of the money for some $$$$$.

In the USA and Europe we have migrant workers. In the USA (although as said I've not actually been there and the TSA are doing nothing to encourage me to visit there. A certain drop zone in the USA is HIGHLY tempting though...... Anyway you get poor people from poorer countries who go work in the USA. Some of them stay and settle, while others work for a few years and take the money home to invest in something build their homes or whatever. The ones that come and go after a few years are playing wage arbitrage. They can go home and the money they earned from a pretty poor wage is effectively tripled when they go home. Poles and Eastern Europeans can do this. So while they are paid £5.92 (not much) they go home and it suddenly becomes £17. Etc.

Well the thing is China is a big country, where 900-1.1bn people are still from rural areas and haven't got a pot to piss in. This is of course changing slowly with time. These people aren't in on the empty apartments bubbles, for a start they can't afford to buy a house. Many of these workers live in company provided accommodation. Hell Foxconn even has an entire city complex to house its employees. Thus they aren't in on the property speculation you don't get NINJAS in China. Which instantly discounts 70% +of the population.

Additionally the workers work at such places because they have a goal, to save some money and go home to use it on something like investing in businesses to build their own homes etc. I mean why else would you put up with really crap conditions at work? If your boss bullied you and gave you constant unhittable targets why wouldn't you just go nuts down tools and simply walk out? I mean labour laws aren't so bad in China that you are held at gunpoint you can leave.

If you couldn't people would flip out like this



Because they do not intend to do this forever. They put up with hardship now and reap the benefit later, i.e. I have money to invest I can have a home without a cripplingly large mortgage! Thus why would the couples living in the slums in the film linked above want to buy such over priced apartments ? Sure it would take them 10 years working in their unpleasant jobs to afford a not so nice apartment. But why would they do this when many of them can simply go back to their home villages and build there instead for a fraction of the price?

Granted not everybody can do this as if your home village is now a Beijing of Shanghai suburb then the price will be uber to do this. But with 900million of more country folks (expected to decrease to 500 million by 2040) a great many can do this. Thus why buy Ferrari when I can buy a similarly performing bike as above, horses for courses of erm course.

So who owns them then?

The wealthy and the elites do.... the ones who own the factories or have big successful companies or government types that take the bribes. The problem with these people is that they have money but they have nowhere to put it for a real rate of return. China has high inflation but interest rates lag the true rate of inflation. You can't take it out of the country easily (Hong Kong is an option) so people pile it into property on the hope that it will appreciate. As they buy in cash and have no loans on it, interest is not really an issue nor is renting it out an issue to cover the mortgage either. It goes pop? 900-1.1bn people shrug their shoulders and get on with life as normal. As they were not in the bubble in the first place. The middle classes and elites get haircuts.

Unlike say the UK where a huge % of the population was in on the property bubble as above NINJAS (no income no job no assets). When it goes pop or when it went pop, these peoples mass defaults mean they hold the government hostage and have imploded the economy.

North Korea

Ages and ages ago I posted about Monkeytime going to North Korea.

I only just noticed they've actually posted the entire series up on youtube.

Here is the first part:



Part 1 is mostly exposition though

Part 2 is where it begins



A different point of view curtesy of Comtourist

Oddly enough I considered going to NK a few months ago, I think this saved me the trip tbh since I would probably say no to everything asked of me and would have gotten my ass kicked. Also TCG as a quirk of his heritage never bows or kneels EVER.

How to make an extra $50 a week in China

In China? Want some extra cash? Single? Just unzip those trousers!

Financial incentive for donating sperm in Guangdong has been growing. Those who are qualified can receive 300元 (US$45) per donation and donate up to 10 times. Giving you an extra US$457 over 10 weeks.

The only place in China were porn is legal

My basement

I don't really understand why there would be a sperm shortage in China. The one child policy limits couples to one offspring plus there are more men than women in China.