What not to say in China

Tratto da un blog su www.thebeijinger.com

As any veteran foreigner in China knows, one of the latent talents possessed by many Chinese people, is to ask irritating questions that every previous Chinese person, that said foreigner has encountered for the past 6 months, has already asked before, however, it often takes a true veteran to answer these questions correctly without

A) Making yourself sound interested enough to get dragged into an endless conversation on how everything worthwhile in the world originated from China
B) Offending 1.3 billion people who might decide to throw rocks at you.
C) Getting yourself locked up by the PSB

For your reading pleasure (and personal safety) here are a couple of common questions and a couple of the answers that you should try to avoid giving, along with a sample answer that will neither encourage the questioner to elaborate further, or to stone you to death in the belief that you are a Japanese tourist.

Do you know what is happening in Beijing in 2008?

• No, but I know what happened there in 1989

Correct answer: Yes, now about that ‘other’ fascinating thing you were going to tell me …

Have you seen the Great Wall?

• We have one too, but it’s bigger
• Yes, I liked it so much that I hacked a chunk off to take home as a souvenir
• No, does it have lasers on it?
• Didn’t the Mongols build it to keep the Chinese in?
• I saw the one in Berlin, did you build that one too?
• Berlin used to have one just like it, but the Americans made them take it down
• I saw some of it on a building site in Zhongwei
• Didn’t Luke Skywalker blow it up in Episode IV?

Correct Answer: Yes, it was big

Do you like China?

• Yes, but I preferred Taiwan
• I like ‘Chinatown’
• Yes, but I preferred it when the Brits/Japanese/Nationalists were running the joint
• Do you mean the ROC or the PRC?
• No, the communists ruined it
• No, it’s a poverty stricken totalitarian hole
• I’d like it even more if it wasn’t occupying Tibet
• I like the bits that aren’t aiming missiles at my sisters house in Taipei
• You would have liked the answer better if you had asked me in February
• ANY honest answer that starts with ‘No’ or include the words ‘but .... '

Correct Answer: Yes, it’s very big and has a wall/Yes, me very like like China.

Are you interested in learning about Chinese Culture?

- You mean like blow my nose with no tissue?

- You mean like how to beat my tai tai?

- You mean like how to eat gross oily waste on a plate?

- Ew gross, are you joking?

- Only when I suffer from insomnia.

- I can't think of a bigger waste of time.

- Not really, I prefer to swallow my excess saliva.

- Yeah and I've been watching Chinese TV at night, so what's with all the crying?

- No I just want to screw your easy chicks and go home single again.

- Yeah, where are the pointy hats, don't you have point hats?

Correct answer: Yes indeed, I hope to absorb as much as possible whilst I'm here, but about that....

Have you tried Peiking Duck?

• Peeking Duck, that’s animal porn, right?
• I had a Peiking duck wrap in KFC once, does that count?
• No, I don’t hold with eating filthy foreign food
• No, my pet mallard would never forgive me for eating his relative
• Mr. Quack-Quack says that I must hurt you now
• Any answer involving the words 'food' and 'poisoning'

Correct Answer: Yes, it was good, but not as good as your local food

Can you use chopsticks?

• I can use them to scratch my AR*E
• I only ever eat in McDonalds and KFC
• Civilized people use forks
• Yes, can you use a knife and fork?
• Yes, the hookers in Chinatown taught me when I was a kid

Correct Answer: Yes, two elderly Buddhist nuns taught me to use them while I was helping Chinese migrant workers in foreign countries to return to the motherland

Do you like Chinese food?

-Would you like to see the white gunk under my foreskin?
-Chinese food looks and tastes like diarrhea, piss and vomit in a dish
-Show me that pick-your-nose-and-eat-it trick again
-I'd rather eat the dead chairman Mao's a-hole out
-Shut the f*** up, you little pug-faced scrunt
-I don't really eat Chinese food. It's bad quality and it's unhealthy.
-Yeah, that sushi and sashimi's pretty cool.

Correct answer-I can't use chopsticks, therefore can't eat Chinese food. Sorry. Let's order Annie's pizza instead. It's more civilised food.

(I wish I could puke on command. If I could, I would vomit every time a Chinese asked me that question.)

Can you speak Chinese?

• 我有普通话，可是我不要说。
• 你说什m… Oh B*GGER
• Yes, they taught me in the spy school that I attended in Taiwan
• All BBC/NHK/CNN China correspondents are taught top speak Chinese
• Of course, Chinese is so simple only an idiot couldn’t speak it after a few weeks
• なに？

Correct Answers: Yes, a little/说一点点No

Do you know about Chinese history?

• No, but it shouldn’t take me long to pick it up
• No, but I would like you to tell me EVERYTHING.
• No, can you summarize it for me?
• No, but it doesn’t sound very important.
• I know the bits that your government didn’t tell you
• I know what happened in 1949 and 1989
• I know what Fusosha Publishing says happened, and that’s good enough for me
• I saw Walt Disney’s Mulan, once, while drink
• I saw that film at Cannes last year

• That Dalai Lama and Falun Gong are great!"

Correct Answer: Yes, now about that ‘other’ fascinating thing you were going to tell me …

Have you been to (insert name of local tourist attraction)?

• No, can you tell me about it?
• Is it any different from the one that they have in (insert rival village name here)?
• When you’ve seen one seen one 5000 year old Pagoda, you’ve seen em all.
• We had one just like it in my country, but they knocked it down to build a Starbucks
• We have one in my country, but it's better
• I saw one like it in Fujian, but it didn’t have so many beggars outside
• Does it have fairy lights wrapped around it?

Correct Answer: I don’t remember.

What is your telephone number?

• ANY answer that involves the word ‘yes’ or your actual telephone number

Correct Answer: any number belonging to anybody who can’t give the caller your real telephone number

What's your favourite place in China?

- Hong Kong.
- The international departures lounge.
- On top of one of your local girls.
- At the top of the food chain in your company.
- Can I include SE Asia in my answer?
- Anywhere with no neon lighting.
- Tibet, but I guess that does really count.
- Front of the crowd during one of your famous wife-beating ceremonies.
- Beijing. Hahahahahaha! Only joking!

Correct answer: Xiamen because it is a beautiful city.

You can write with your left hand? (SDAsia)

• Yes, of course. Only intellectually backwards fools can’t
• Yes, did you know that it has been proven that left handed people are more intelligent and more creative than right handed people? … Most Chinese are right handed, aren’t they?
• My right hand was cut off when I lived in Saudi
• I save my right hand for my late night ‘private time’
• (Panicked) shush, he might hear you. …. (to own hand) No, Mr. Left, he wasn’t looking at you, he’s a nice man, please don’t make me hurt him … not with the shovel Mr. Left, no … I won’t do it, I won’t do it, not like all the others, Noooooooo.

Correct Answer: Yes, all foreigners can.

How can I improve my English?

• By asking me inane questions every time you see me in the street
• By coming to visit me in America, here’s my address
• By doing something other than memorizing vocabulary
• Listen to 大山, he speak good good English
• By shouting hello at foreigners and then asking if they have been to Beijing
• By hanging around on the dockside in Hong Kong and talking to the sailor when the Hornet task force comes in to re supply
• By drinking a lot and then coming to up to my apartment

Correct Answers: By talking to some OTHER foreigner/听不懂

Do you like Beijing Opera?

• Yes, but I also like enemas
• I like Beijing Duck and Phantom of the Opera
• If it doesn’t have fat Italian Chick with big boobs in it, then it’s not opera
• Men with squeaky voices jumping around the place in make-up, it sounds a bit gay if you ask me.
• Yes, I love to sit through 3 hours of incomprehensible dialogue about how much some dead poet guy loves the color orange.

Correct Answer: Likening Beijing Opera is compulsory for foreigners, but it is illegal to invite us to watch it with you.

How much money do you make?

• I could buy you’re A*&
• My monthly salary accounts for half of the Chinese national debt
• It takes 50 armed guards and two security vans to deliver my salary each month
• Everything that I am wearing was made in China, except for my Rolex
• I’m a civil servant; they pay me in crack and hookers
• I’m with the PSB; I earn a ‘bonus’ for each person that I shake down
• I’m with the PLA; the money isn’t great, but I can supplement it by selling arms to Pakistan on the black market

Correct Answer: If you were me, you'd be living in Vancouver by now/Capitalism Rocks