Dalian Forrest Zoo Pandas!

Here is only a snippet of the Dalian Forrest Zoo. I have to say if you are a panda you live in absolute luxury and your every whim is met and nobody is allowed to throw plastic bottles or cookies into your enclosure. However, if you are a black bear, a wolf, a tiger, a polar bear cub, a hynea then you live in shitty conditions and the public are allowed to throw rubbish into your enclosure,which apparently never gets cleaned, and you live in a concrete wasteland.

Also it is perfectly ok if members of the public hit you hard with large implements, I have photographic evidence of someone smacking a hyena in the face with a toy sword and causing the animal much distress. When I alerted the warden he smiled and just said the ever famous “bu hao yi si!”. Eurgh. Enough to make you go on a rampage hurling people over the fences to be mauled. I doubt he would have been so brave to taunt the animals had there been no barrier. ASS! Oh and if you are a little polar bear cub you can expect people to bang on the glass of your tiny cage and shout at you as you pathetically growl and howl for your mother. Yeah real fun good times.

The monkey enclosures were pretty but my god I didn’t know who were the real monkeys. The monkeys were so civilised compared to the zoo visitors. They hurled bottles of sugary tea to the primates, delighted in tossing them chocolate, and other fatty snacks they had brought for their little monster children.

That is my next rant, the children of China are super brats in the making. Sweet 16 and Honey Boo Boo have nothing on these pampered princelings. I have to be honest China has an abundance of spoiled brats, whose every nasty behaviour is praised by their ineffectual parents. Where is Chinese super nanny? I saw a sign saying don’t dangle the children over the fence but I kept thinking just chuck them over. I watched as a child badgered, poked, and screamed at a clearly distressed eagle owl. I kept thinking just put your fingers in you little shit and see what happens. The parents laughed thinking it was the height of hilarity to watch animals being tortured by their off spring. Don’t get me wrong I actually like kids but in China more often than not you meet these little demon children who are so indulged they could seriously do with a naughty step.

“Oh you anti-China hater” I hear you think but I am not I actually adore China but goddamn China can annoy me. I have more pictures, which when the wifi and VPN allow I will upload of the cruel side of the zoo. I know I shouldn’t have gone and upset myself but I was desperate to see the new breeding facility for the pandas. Also I am not just hating on the Chinese today but also the Japanese and Korean tourists who were just as bad, as were the Russians and the crass American tourist who went around swearing and being stupidly racist towards everyone but his Chinese girlfriend…..

I worry that this post is made in rage but if you had seen the way the other visitors taunted the already distressed animals you would have felt your blood boil too. I have been to amazing zoos where I think hell I want to be a monkey! Don’t tell me it is funding, Dalian is very rich and they have money to spend on animals they care about. The pandas had humidifying waterfalls and spotless enclosures but the bears were locked in concrete coffin cells. The leopards and wolfs had litter encrusted areas and the poor camels were just jammed in a sand box.

That said my faith in humanity was restored when i got home and saw even more people had joined the cause of the stray kitten. Before we had a chance to provide him with his supper someone else had brought him a fish!

Buckwheat Tea and Stray Cat update!

My new favourite tea! I am not sure if it is good for me or not but it tastes like a warm cup of wheetabix porridge goodness and this is my new morning routine! However, since it is Japanese tea I will drink it surreptitiously to avoid being stoned to death but actually hostility to the Japanese has been much more low key than in Beijing.

Here is another update on my two outdoor adoptees. Mummy cat appears to be pregnant again as she is getting rounder and thirstier than ever before. Baby cat is starting to get nice and plump! We take him meat for breakfast and dinner everyday, without fail! Raw chicken cuts seem to be his favourite but his mummy prefers a nice bit of Tuna. Everyone around our area also leaves out lots of dry nibbles for the pair. We also provide them with fresh drinking water three times a day.

 

 

 

 

WeChat! Chinese What’s App & Facebook, only better!!!!

If you live in China or just have Chinese friends then my friend it is time to get WeChat or 微信！

It allows you to send free voice messages instantly, it allows you to text, send files, messages, play dice, share photo moments of your day, play rock paper sissors. There is no frustration and waiting like on Facebook, no lag and load time it is pretty fast and all you need is a smart phone. Also it has different features the Western counter parts do not have  such as;

Shake! When you select shake and then vigorously shake your phone the WeChat sees who else is shaking at the same time as you and then shows you all the people over China, on WeChat, who are shaking too. This can lead to a greeting and possibly a new language buddy.

Another fabulous feature for the perpetually idle is Drift Bottle, this allows you pick up other people’s anonymous messages which can be either typed or spoken. You too can send out your own message in a bottle and somebody on the other side of the world might pick up and make contact.

Another cool feature is Look Around, you see who is near you and what they are up to!

So if you are lonely, lost, bored, or just in a silly mood WeChat has something for everyone. It has triple the amount of emoto-cons and effects of it’s western counter parts.

As a westerner on there if I throw out a drift bottle with a greeting I get lots of responses and they all want me to speak mandarin so I have to write texts in chinese, translate their texts, and speak in mandarin. Before you know it you have been revising mandarin for three hours straight and having a good time.

Of course lots of people use WeChat for hunting for sex, ever since the internet was invented people have been trawling for booty online but they have a button for people like that, it’s called ignore!!!

The rude messages I have received have taught me lots of slang and I am tough cookie so I take the bad with the good lessons and I find it useful to know all the words naughty and nice

I think we westerners should try and embrace the Chinese online world. The internet and the power of the netizen in China is growing. When you walk around China and look around you on the bus, the street, in the spa, in the restaurant, actually anywhere you look really you will see many Chinese heads bent low over a smart phone, or tablet deeply involved in their online world. So if you want to understand Chinese people and how modern Chinese people think you need to get more involved in Weibo, Renren, WeChat, Q-Zone and all those other fun online spheres! Twitter and Facebook are so overrated

Hangovers in China!

Survival Guide

Did you recently have too much booze? Did you get forced to gan bei yourself to death in the name of business? Well then this is for you!!

Rules:

1) Don’t get on a bus (stop starts and getting crushed isn’t conducive to a happy hangover)

2)  Try to avoid cabs (jerky movements and Chinese radio are guaranteed to make you blow chucks)

3) Resist the urge to eat greasy street food (it could just tip the scales in the wrong direction and then suddenly your sitting/ squatting pooping and vomiting at the same time)

4) Try to avoid loud noises, wear your sunglasses to avoid the glaring Chinese sun

5) And for godssake go get yourself some proper western junk to soak up the alcohol in your system.

6) Remember Bai Jiu is not your friend! Not all alcohol here is real it might be kidney failure not a hangover!

7) Stay near a western toilet till you get your sea legs back. If you can get some of those rehydration salts and bring yourself back to life my friend!!!!

If I was to be honest with you I would just avoid a hangover in China cos basically your mummy (or that unquestioning sympathetic figure in your life isn’t there to save you)

Chinese businessmen have all sworn blind, apparently they go to work hungover everyday due to their business habits, and what you have to do is sip a beer slowly over the space of half and hour and then you will be good to go. Not so appealing to me.

A Tongue in Cheek Look at Crazy Business Deals in China

Remember when doing business always get a shake on the deal and use your iPhone to snap a shot of it for evidence!!!

 

When dealing with a wine or whiskey merchant make sure you do the PHD test, what is that I hear you ask. Well I found out yesterday the PHD test is an all black chicken head in a jar of alcohol. We were offered the aforementioned embalmed poultry to inspect. I guess you don’t get a better PHD guarantee than a severed chicken head preserved in a jar. Hmmm I wonder if Nivea or all those other skin creams that claim to have the perfect balance ever considered just showing how perfectly it can embalm a chicken head. I’m sold! 

 

 

If you feel you need to go a step further, the chicken head isn’t enough for you then you have to try the light bulb test! I am not sure what we were trying to prove but this Chinese whiskey was able to power a light bulb??? Hmmm yummy!

 

Oh yeah and of course don’t forget to get a handful of pearls before you close any deal! That is important. I am not sure why or how but me and my co-worker received a large handful of pearls………….So I feel now this should be a must for every meeting. Sign a deal get a handful of pearls!!!!! 

Dalian, Buses, and the Rise of Racism in China

So, this morning I thought I had cracked it, get up at 6 am be on the bus for 7.30 am and bam I will miss out on the traffic, get a seat, and not get sweated on by other people. Imagine my joy as I sat on my seat waiting for the bus to pull away, smugly I mused to myself at my own genius…I was riding for quite the fall. So as the bus became more and more jam packed, still, I felt safe in my little seat. It was then that tragedy stuck so to speak (ok so I am being melodramatic) several OAPS got onto the bus. The minute I spied them I started gathering my stuff to offer my seat, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t prepared to give way to an old timer, I was. I have my own sweet grandpa who I always think of and I feel strongly the elderly deserve way more respect and fair treatment than they get. However, before I could scramble to my feet (both hands were full and the bag was tangled in my iPhone) I was being huckled physically from my seat by an angry old Chinese man, who in rather pungent breath hissed at me “Give me your seat, give me your seat.”

I hopped up and moved as fast as my entangled limbs would move to join the others who were all crammed together on the bus. I noticed that younger Chinese and middle aged didn’t have the same concerns for the older passengers comfort. Although I was the object of death stares several other comfortably seated passengers stared resolutely at their phones ignoring the elderly people standing.

So firstly, I was shocked at their unwillingness to give up their comfort for an seriously elderly old grandma with her small grandson. Then secondly, I was miffed that even though I was willing and happy to move I was the figure of angst. I had stood up and moved aside smiling and genuinely happy to do so, so why on earth was I public enemy number one?

One can only assume it is because I am a foreigner in China. You can sit and say “no no no no it’s not true” all you want but I am the one living here and experience hatred for westerners more and more.

Since 2008 till now I have noticed a shocking increase in the hostility towards foreigners. A co-worker of mine at my previous place of employment in Beijing, I am not naming names (a large NGO), would always refer to our other co-workers of mixed parentage as messy mixed blood. I was horrified at these comments and you could see the outrage of my co-workers who were of Caucasian Western descent. This particular co-worker was ethnically Chinese, wealthy and western educated at Columbia University.

Another incident occurred at a dinner party when one male Chinese noticed a inter-racial couple at the other table. He began vehemently denouncing the young lady in question as a prostitute and accusing the male counter-part of being a pathetic disgusting foreigner. When one girl spoke up explaining that she herself was the product of a marriage between a British woman and a Chinese man, the idiot (that shall we how we refer to him from now on) in question then went on to ask her if her mother wanted to see what it was like to be with a superior lover and then said her father had disgraced himself by taking a lower human as his wife. Another girl spoke up too also angered by his words, “Well my dad is American and my mom is Chinese, got any comments for me?” Oh and he did, apparently, that made her mother a whore and her father a loser and if that wasn’t bad enough he asked “Did you mother enjoy getting stretched by your dad’s big…” well at that point someone told him to shut up.  That well and truly ruined that dinner party and I am pleased to say I have never had to endure that guy’s company ever again.

These are not isolated incidents, when I refused to be overcharged by a cab driver, 200 yuan for a ten-minute ride seems a bit insane to me, I was called a “white bitch foreigner.” In shops and salons I am told specifically I am being overcharged because I am a foreigner. Cab drivers will by-pass me in favor of locals, even if it is a taxi rank and I am next in line the driver will say no to me and take a Chinese passenger instead.

When I was in a wheel chair it was the worst. Although they make a huge effort to ignore wheel chair bound people of their own ethnicity when I was wheel chair bound it was a source of great hilarity for them. I vividly recall being in my wheelchair trying to get groceries in a supermarket when I was surrounded by other Chinese shoppers who pointed at me and laughed while saying, “ look at the crippled white girl.”

When I went onto Chinasmack.com and read the hate filled messages about foreigners I felt so sad and despairing but I started to feel scared as I read on and saw the nastiness specifically directed at women.

Now before you get all touchy some foreigners do behave in such a way that I can fully understand this reaction. For example, the British man caught on camera trying to rape a Chinese girl in the middle of a Beijing street, yes he is a scumbag of the lowest order. The loud tourists who rather than learn basic mandarin shout at Chinese people and get frustrated it’s not the west, I get it they are awful.

I like to think I am different!

I loved China long before the economy shifted in China’s favor; I studied Chinese history and always knew I would end up out here. Since I was five years old I was fascinated by the beautiful writing and fascinating history. One of my early memories was watching a Zhang Yimou film (I had wandered in when I wasn’t supposed to and caught glimpses of a movie I was too young to see).  So to have such love for a country and then to have nothing but hate spewed back at you really hurts. Then to add onto the sexism I just feel like an abused spouse at times.

The worst for me is when I stand in an elevator and I can hear all the nasty things said about me and they laugh assuming I don’t understand. Yesterday I allowed my feelings of hurt to get the better of me. So as the work elevator ascended to the 26^th floor I turned to my Chinese co-workers and broke into mandarin “How funny it is that people assume all westerners cannot speak mandarin, people always assume that about me and actually I understand perfectly well.” I then turned to the two commenters and smiled as I did so their smiles faded quickly.

One small victory in a day of defeats and I often think if Britain treat Chinese workers or tourists in the same way when they came to Scotland or England they would be able to sue us, have us arrested, or have some means of protest. I am not advocating tit for tat but really I worry about this attitude that seems pervasive and hostile. What does it mean for the future?

Saturday / Sunday China Style

 

 

Here are snap shots of my Saturday inDalian!

Picture one is of our supper that night over in the gourmet cafeteria! Super yummy massive stir fry with loads of vegetables and chills! Kristian had total food envy so I had to share, which worked out well for me as my dish was massive.

Picture two is a poster which is up on the inside of our elevator. Now I know it is advertising housing but initially I thought chairman Mao was back and had his propaganda machine working. To me that poster has nothing to do with lovely houses.

Picture three is deep fried eggplant, believe me super amazing tasty! The egg plant is stuffed with pork then deep friend and then drizzled in sweet and sour sauce. We had lunch at a wee cafe with my Chinese friend Hazel and this is what we ordered!

Picture four is us saying a final farewell to the racist masseuse. I call her racist masseuse as she decided after our second visit, because we are white, to charge us a lot more than the locals. I understand this attitude to foreigners but I have loved China a long time before the economy went to hell, I speak, read, write, sing and adore mandarin and Chinese culture and then I have to face blatant racist treatment. So no more massages from this relic of the cultural revolution.

Picture four is the dancing sheep outside the mall! He was grooving down to some techno music and it was pretty hilarious so I popped a snap shot of it.

Picture five is outside my building and on Saturdays everyone uses the exercise equipment to dry their laundry, how green!

Anyway that is just a snapshot of my Saturday in Dalian!!!