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.

1950s USA is China?

You know this reminds me a lot about my own youth not so long ago. The person speaking talks about China feeling like the 1950s USA. In that my visits sporadically to China make me feel this way sometimes. Though of course I wasn't even born in 1950s USA. Nor do I know if the USA is how the podcaster describes either as it could be completely different. I do know though that the UK economy is absolutely on the ropes. Pay cuts all round announced today.... bugger...

Although I know memories play tricks on us, I recall the 1980s.

Back in the 1980s it felt a lot freer, I'd walk home alone from school, I'd arrive home alone. We would vanish off for the whole day on bicycles and nobody would really care our parents would say be careful and we would go out graze our knees and generally get hurt but have fun.

Maybe it's all the responsibilities I have these days which mean I'm jaded, or the way I'm constantly encouraged to move over to China, a job or two every week pops up in Longgang or Zhuhai now and again which I think I could do that....

Maybe it's the feeling of greener grass maybe it's just nothing, as I read the Korean's post and felt my experience differed greatly from his experiences...

Maybe I'm just probably rambling.

Monday Comedy: Feel the Freshness!

Can anyone identify the language they were speaking? or is it just gibberish?

No wonder car drivers all hate us

There is often animosity between two wheeled folk and car drivers.....

Sure we can filter through traffic, and generally use less fuel as well as look cool (sometimes). But when you see this it makes you think blimey



India



We should get some of these guys into MotoGP

No sheeet

http://www.sz2011.org/UniversiadeENG/index.html



Heh..... at least the university in China is being honest. In that very few people in the UK actually want the olympics nobody asked us. They imposed it on us......

Three drunks and the wine story

Somebody asked me what this story was a few days ago. Unfortunately I sort of lost the email and the name of the person who did the asking.... I do sort of remember the gist of the question though and it asked what is the Chinese parable of three men and the wine story?


There are many variations of this story and like all stories it changes with the times..... 200 or so years ago it was Chinese men who were drunk who found a jar of wine. In the 1980s it was the Nintendo power glove. In the 00s I'm not sure what it would be. But there will be quite a lot lost in translation. But as per usual it is a tale about saving face...

But the tale is this:

Once upon a time (when was the last time you read that?) There are three good friends who are really really happy, they had been celebrating a good harvest. To celebrate they had been drinking heavily at the local bar and had been drinking all night. The bar was closing and they were asked to leave.

"The night still young!" Shouted one of the men..."lets find another place to drink!"

The searched in vain and did not find another open bar, and had travelled full circle back to the bar they had been kicked out of...... one of the men spotted a wine storage shed was unlocked and found a large jar of wine like this.


The men can't believe their luck and one of the men grab the jar and drinks a mouthful..... he instantly realises that it's not wine. It's urine..... he isn't happy about it. He instantly says, GREAT WINE.

The second man not wanting to miss out grabs the jar and also tips a large amount into his mouth and again instantly realises that he is drinking urine... he too isn't happy about it... but again he said GREAT WINE.

The third man noticing the 'wine' is quickly being drunk grabs the jar and chugs the rest of it, but quickly realises that he is drinking urine. Again he says GREAT WINE..

All of them embarrassed shuffle off into the night.

The parable is supposed to teach us a few things. Firstly that saving face is not always as great as it is made out to be, in that although you saved your own face (if you were one of the first two to drink) you also dragged others down with you.

Secondly try not to laugh at the misfortune of others as they may well too attempt to save face and bring this misfortune onto you.

Or something like that, I was 14 and trapped on a boat on the Yangtze River last time I heard it. Though because of the crudeness of this story, it isn't often told either.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Fuck you MGM

How an invading Army changes from Chinese to North Korean

Ever since last year I was pumped for the remake of Red Dawn when I heard that China was playing the enemy. But then, as I was about to log off facebook and go to bed, the news came up. Due to pressure from China, as well as the hype for the video game Homefront, the asshats at MGM decided to to edit the movie to make it a North Korean invasion instead. I am at a loss for words...

EDIT: Video related:

Chinese people and abalone

Chinese Guy.

What is so special about abalone? I always see chefs on Chinese TV rant and rave all about it, my dad also talks about how good it is all the time, whats so special about it?

Daniel W

Dear Daniel

It's probably because Abalone in Hong Kong is expensive.... Chinese people appear to associate something being expensive = good. Dainese leathers are very expensive. I nearly lost all my skin when the Dainese leathers I wore fell apart on a spill once. As many of you will probably be aware that expensive is not always good. Hilariously there were a bunch of French wine tasters who rated a cheap bottle of wine better than the finest vintage wines..

In Mainland China they are even bigger suckers for this sort of pricing. A US beer firm sold a beer in China for $60 a bottle, even when you can buy it from a 7-11 for $2 a bottle.

I've had some and it didn't do anything for me tbh. It is expensive because Abalone is Shakespeare..... wait what? What has a sea slug got to do with a playwright who lived in the 1650s to do with all this?.

It's human nature really, whereby one only says or acts in a certain way because other people talk and act in a certain way. The genetic desire to fit in is pretty strong in all humans, not all but many, it's why you get religions, cults, goths and all sorts of people in between.

So what has this got to do with Shakespeare? Well old'e Wil is revered by many as the ULTIMATE writer of all time and they say things like he is

"everything to all men"

And thus relevant through the ages.... which is absolute bullshit. I remember playing Caesar in school and really being stabbed by pencils and pens before whimpering the line.

"Et Tu Bruti?"

Shakespeare is not entertaining to read and I found all of his works impenetrable and could not relate to any of it. He is not everything to all men... he is good because other people say he is good. People will exploit this and will call me a thicko for not being able to appreciate how good Shakespeare is supposed to be. Thus putting peer pressure onto me to say Shakespeare is actually a remarkable piece of work.

The same applies to abalone, because it is so freakishly expensive in Hong Kong. Most probably because of the appalling pollution in Hong Kong. Whereby the water is so polluted Granny Ruth's pointless and easily avoidable death in Dante's peak happens all the time.



The cracked article is here which means it has to be imported in which makes it expensive. People buy it and eat it and are less than impressed with it. Yet to save face they say mmm that was absolutely delicious and worth every single penny, even though they are probably suffering immense buyers remorse. Which continues the circle of deception whereby other people think it is good because other people say it is good sounds. Oddly enough Chinese parables are littered with such examples of saving face in such a manner. I'd share with you but not right now

Monday Comedy/Rage (depending on how you look at it)

EDIT: Video was removed, but there are dozens of mirrors. It should work now.



Oh god, racist or not I would plow that thing like a highway!

Gah!

You can probably tell the UK weather is crap today.....

Anyway internet stream channel surfing I came upon a short segment of this....... seriously do people think the scary Anime face is a good look to have?

Yeesh

HK's version






More here

Meh Photoshop is EVIL I tells ya (even though I made a small living out of it a long time ago)

The real Wang looks like this.