Oh China

From fake eggs to fake Apple stores - is there anything China can't simulate to save a few pennies?

Behold, fake walnuts.

Snakes are scary

Although Chinese New Year is officially over, Hong Kong is still celebrating the Year of the Snake.  In Sai Kung it's a tradition to build a bamboo opera house a few days after CNY for a week-long performance of traditional Chinese opera.  Here's the structure being built in front of the local temple:

And here is one of the snakes that will adorn it:

Terrifying.

Yellow fever

If you've somehow managed to miss it, here is a link to an English translation of a widely-read blog post from a Chinese message board regarding why Chinese women shouldn't be "duped" by laowai (white men).  

Choice quotes:

- "Laowai in China are all misers."  (Regarding how white men want to sleep with women without buying them things)

- "When it comes to laowai in China, after they marry you, there is a 95% probability that they will have extramarital affairs."  (Comparing them to Chinese men, who will take a mistress but not divorce you for her)

- "You must be able to satisfy their various sexual peculiarities." (Apparently this includes oral sex and woman on top)

- "In China, only homosexuals pay attention to things like women's clothing brands." (White men want you to dress in designer clothes, while [straight] Chinese men don't care)

This is part three of three, but my favorite thus far.  It's all worth a read.

Kung Hei Fat Choi

This year I finally broke down and bought a mandarin tree for Chinese New Year.  The word for "mandarin" sounds like the word for "luck"and orange is considered a propitious color because it symbolizes wealth.   But they taste like crap.

Village life: "this is why the neighbors love me" edition

Hoggie

As I've mentioned before, I like to the feed the stray cats in my village.   Hoggie, Blackie, BlackieWhitey, Intruder Cat, Other Intruder Cat - they all know they've got a meal waiting for them at my front door.

This morning I hear Hoggie's distinctive whine and run downstairs to give him his breakfast.  Just as he finishes up, BlackieWhitey appears.  I always make sure to give BlackieWhitey extra food because she recently had kittens, so I run back upstairs for my last can of cat food, run back downstairs, grab her bowl, and open the can.  

Then the smell hits me.  The smell of nightmares.  The smell of a thousand rotting durians in a cesspool of curdled milk and stinky tofu - the cat food had gone rancid.  I immediately projectile vomit the leftover pasta I had for breakfast and fling the cat food away from me, spraying the sidewalk and my door.

But the smell.  Oh god the smell - I have to get rid of it.  I dash back upstairs and grab a plastic bag, a spatula, and a jug of water.

All of this commotion has attracted Intruder Cat - Hoggie's mortal enemy.  I come back downstairs and they're locked in a mewling standoff.  But I have more pressing matters to attend to so I begin scraping up the mess, dumping it in the bag and trying to wash it off, when I hear my neighbor's door open.  She peeks her head out, sees me crouching in a putrid sea of screeching cats with a spatula full of vomit, and just slowly closes her door.