Shanghai Sack

How to survive Maotai

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Anyone who has been in China for business has probably had to endure Chinese Baijiu, or more specifically Maotai. This is the famous 53% alcohol content Chinese liquor, which according to Wikipedia "offers an exceptionally pure, mild, and mellow soy sauce-like fragrance that lingers after it is consumed, is distilled from fermented sorghum[...]". That makes sense because it does taste like its distilled from a fucking scrotum. And the taste that lingers is like ten thousand puppy corpses fashioned into a dragon that has had life breathed into it just so it can vomit in your mouth. That shit will paralyze your face.

So anyways, my first experience with this poison was a few years ago in some hole outside of Shanghai. I was there with my father for a factory opening and we therefore had to attend a Chinese banquet after the opening ceremony. Now my father, he has been doing business in China for over 20 years, so he knows all about Maotai. Dick that he is, he tells the Chinese boss to do a gambei with me. I had never had Maotai before and me being Scandinavian, I was pretty sure this would be no problem. So I burn one down and it felt like I had just guzzled down airplane fuel. My face must have expressed this feeling, because everyone started laughing. Because everyone found this so fucking hilarious, they all wanted to gambei with me. I ended up shotting 5 or 6 of those and seriously almost passed out at the table.

The next morning (severely hung over), my father shared with me a little trick he always uses. What he does is he initiates a Maotai gambei with the most important Chinese person at the table. After one shot he'll pretend to get an important phone call and disappear for a while. What he does is he brings his baijiu glass with him and hides it in a flower vase. Then, when the next person comes over to do a shot with him, he doesn't have a glass. But he will quickly take his beer glass and down it instead. Downing a lot of beer is much better than a lot of Maotai, to be sure. That's just a normal Friday or Saturday. Now if he just could have told me that the day before...

Final Summation: All is fair in war, you'll need to learn how to avoid those Maotai shots or you'll regret it in the three hour car ride back to Shanghai (like I did)!

Commenting problems

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:53:00 +0000

There has been some problems with commenting using OpenID, this should be fixed now. I have also opened for non-registered users to comment, so it should be easier now!

If anyone still has problems, please email me.

Chinese cigarettes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0000

A year ago I was at an Indonesian restaurant in Shanghai to celebrate a friends birthday. The guy sitting next to me was visiting some friends of mine, this was his first time in China. We decided we wanted to enjoy the sweet nectar of some cigarettes, but none of us had any. I, eager to show off my Chinese skills, shouted for the waiter.

(Conversation in Chinese)

Me: Do you have cigarettes?

Waiter: We do.

New friend in English: Oh, ask for Chinese cigarettes, I want to try them out.

Me to waiter again in Chinese: Oh, we want Chinese cigarettes!

The waiter looked quite confused by this, but shuffled off. Five minutes later he returned with a big bowl filled with salt and proudly exclaimed to me: Chinese salt!

Salt and cigarettes have the same syllable, but different tones. Salt is 盐 yán, while cigarette is 烟 yān. I had obviously mispronounced it. No wonder the waiter was confused when I specifically requested that we wanted Chinese salt. I looked like quite the douche with my big bowl of salt...

He burst out laughing when I clarified what I really wanted. I did manage to get my hands on a pack of cigarettes (he had to run out to a store to buy them, good service!) so it worked out well.

Final summation: Pay attention to those tones, or you'll end up with a big bowl of China's finest salt!

The cat-head hawk

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago I randomly asked my teacher how to say owl in Chinese. He told me it was 猫头鹰 māotóuyīng. Directly translated this means "cat-head hawk" which I find to be great descriptive word for owl.

He then told me a joke about owls, which I will out of pure kindness bestow upon you:

有一天，森林里举行动物知识回答比赛。
One day, in the forest a animal knowledge competition was being held.

主持人问：猫会爬树吗？
The host asks: Can cats climb trees?

老鹰特别快地回答：会。
The hawk quickly answers: yes.

主持人说：请给我一个例子。
The host says: please give me an example.

这时老鹰就非常伤感地说：有一天晚上，猫偷偷地爬上了树，把我给…………于是就有了猫头鹰!
At this time the hawk with great sadness responds: one evening, a cat snuk up the tree and slept with me....... so then we have cat-head hawks!

If you don't get the subtle comedy, the cat climbed up the tree and went to town on the hawk. The owl is the abomination of that unholy union.

Final summation: The way words are created in the Chinese language is often very practical. If you know the meaning of the individual characters of a compound word, you can often guess the meaning of the word!

The fat picture

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:25:00 +0000

During the Beijing Olympics the Chinese government made it a lot harder to get a good visa. Before that I had a 6 month multiple entry visa, where I could stay as long as I wanted each visit. When it expired in October I was in Singapore doing a two month internship, so I had to apply for a new one from there. The new process was a lot harder and took over a month. I had to get invitation letters from the Shanghai Municipal Government, the company I do part-time work for in Shanghai, and a whole bunch of other shit. When I eventually got the new visa, it was a 6 month multiple entry one, but I could only stay 30 days per visit. Fuck.

A couple of days ago I was whining about the situation to my teacher. He later said that he had talked to one of his colleagues about it. This colleague said that the situation was better now and that she could arrange a 1 year multiple entry visa, unlimited stay. Score. So yesterday I brought my passport and two pictures to school (plus a fuck load of cash, this wasn't free).

I go over to the reception desk where my teacher and his colleague are standing and hand the goodness over.

(Conversation in Chinese)

Me: Here is my passport and two pictures.

Girl colleague: Ooh, let me see your picture!

She giggles and says: You look fat in the picture!

Teacher: Yeah, you look better on the picture! Don't you agree?

She, beaming: Yes, definitely better.

Me: eh, THANKS...

I took those pictures like two weeks ago, it's not like I have lost weight. I'm 1.86m and 70kg, I don't think I have ever looked fat. I'm like a God towering over them, I should have flicked those mortals away with my not-so-fat-anymore hand...

Actually I don't mind it at all, I've gotten so used to the directness of the Chinese that I barely notice it anymore. It still cracks me up though.

Final summation: Chinese are going to comment on your appearance, change or no change. But don't take it personally!

The glory begins...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:00:00 +0000

So I thought I'd try out this "blogging" fad that's been going on for a while (which I believe will blow over soon). Hopefully I will become famous and make lots of 元's before that happens...

What will I be blogging about? My escapades in Shanghai and the rest of China, learning Chinese and my quests to conquer Shanghainese gold diggers. Thats right, women. Yeah, I went there..

Anyways, I have been living in Shanghai (or "The Hai" if you will) for 1.5 years now. I have been occupying myself with studying Chinese, a healthy dosage of DVD's and the occasional internship stint.

So, I thought I'd start off this luscious lemon drop of a blog by retelling one of the many prickly situations I have gotten myself into because of my lacking Chinese abilities. I take this up now because my teacher just wrote an article about this particular incident for some tool website. This happened when I had just been a month or so in Shanghai.

In the building I live, there is a dry cleaning store in the lobby. The night before I spilled some shit on my high quality italian fabric suit (tailored to perfection at the fabric market), so I threw on some sweats and went down to see if I could get it dry cleaned. But first I wanted to look up how to say "pick up" as I wanted to be able to ask when my shit would be ready. I looked it up and decided that 捡 jiǎn was the word I was looking for.

So I go down with my suit (which looked like I had worn it while storming the beaches of Normandy):

Me: 你好！我有一件西服要干洗 (Yo! I have a suit I want to dry clean)

Wrinkly old man: 好的。(ok)

Me: 我什么时候可以来捡我的西服? (When can I "pick up" my suit?)

Wrinkly old man: 什么？(What?)

Me: (repeat sentence)

Wrinkly old man looking at me like I'm a fucking retard: 什么？我听不懂！(what? I don't understand!)

Turns out 捡 is used when picking something up from the ground, what I should have used was 取 qǔ, which means to claim or retrieve something.

I managed to get my point across by frantically pointing at different dates on his calendar (I was severely hung over so I resisted the urge to put my ball sack on the date I wanted to pick up my suit). It all worked out and I got my suit back five days later, clean and ready to be severely abused again.

Final summation: when learning Chinese you will get into embarrassing situations, but that's the best way to learn.