What up ya'll. I'm having a blast down here in China. But I'm missing all my the homies back in ATL (especially Leif Patterson). I figured I'd drop you a line and let you know what my kife was like.
Last night I played a show in gui yang. It was my first paid show in China. The flew us there. I got a hundred bucks US for the night. And I performed my songs to house music while two scantily clad women dance around me. Could be worse.
And now I'll give you a little rundown of the strangeness surrounding the most populated country on the planet. From the people that brought you ice cream, footbinding (if there is anything better than some nice foot binding on a hot day then I haven't heard of it), gunpowder and fireworks (you see me getting ready for a Chinese "keg party" in my profile pic) and various other oddities both large and small (i.e. Yao Ming and Shih Tzus)
Sign in the resturant bathroom. Warns that there is a 200 kuai ($25)
fine for shitting in the toilet. An amusing sign unless you have to
crap.
Our protagonists favorite snack: Lightly-salted, medium-sized, puffed rice cracker speckled with icing
on one side. Thats a tasty cracker.
The desperate comb-over. Still popular in China. Totally slick-bald
head with a few carefully spaced strands glued across the top. You're
not fooling anyone with that gel-job buddy, why project your denial so
loudly? I can respect a man who has accepted his baldness.
Kids shitting on the street. Just something you just don't see in the
US- someone holding a plastic grocery bag under a kid's ass in the
middle of a busy sidewalk. No biggie, right?
The guy on TV who eats glass. Thank god for quality investigative
journalism that brings guys like these to light and to the public eye.
Aparently he started eating pieces of glass when he was little and he
worked his way up to his 2 glass-a-day habit. His adult daughter
confides "I wish he would stop, but I think he enjoys the attention."
The camera cuts to the glass-eater's wife shamefully openning a cabnet
stockpiled with drinking glasses and then to a doctor in a white coat
declaring, "this habit is absolutely not healthy, there is no medical
explanation for this." Then to the glass eater bedside in his pajamas,
doing his thing. "Everybody has special talents." He smirks awkwardly
as he maws a large piece of glass with determined casualness.
Chinese dogbreath. I don't know what to say. I wish the Chinese were
as fanatacal about oral higene as they are about the backstreet boys
music.
No soap in the bathroom. Listen, China- if you want to give off the
impression of an advanced, thoroughly modern country, the bathroom is
a good place to start. I am in an office building and I just took a
shit and there is no soap by the sink, whats the big idea? Does this
means that the professional hands that I have been shaking were also
potentially water-washed after an ass wipe?
Expensive items on the menu. If you don't recognize the dishes on a
Chinese menu, you may have an impulse to order one of the more
expensive one, with the expectation that you are going to get
something delicious. This is a mistake, as the most expensive items on
a Chinese menu are disgusting oddities that resturants keep in stock
to make themselves look sophisticated. Most of these culinary
abomonations are supposed to provide some medicinal benifit,
auspicious symbolism, and probably some sexual envigoration to boot. I
guess that justifies something that tastes like crap costing a lot of
money. There is a Chinese saying "that which you eat is that which you improve." Thats why the hot pot resturant around the corner serves cow cock and chicken balls. At the prices they charge though, you would think you were getting yak cock and goose balls.
Chinese's people associate Thailand with transvestites. At first I
thought that it was just my coworker. I told her that I was going to
Thailand, and her face got all excited and she told me, "you know they
have the most beautiful transvestites in Thailand. You should go see
them when you are there." I explained that I had seen transvestites in
the US and didn't think they were worth going out of my way for. "No, you don't understand, they have REALLY beautiful transvestites. You cant even tell that they are men."
Without claiming to be an expert on transvestites I insisted that
could definately pick out a transvestite from a crowd of born-vaginas.
"How do you know about their transvestites anyway?" I asked, "you have
never been to Thailand." She laughed liked I must be very naive and
said, "EVERYBODY knows about Thai transvestites!" A coworker passing
by heard and jumped into the conversation "Thai transvestites!
Beautiful! My uncle got his picture taken with one while he was there.
Beautiful. You cant even tell that they are men." I started to think
these people are crazy and then the kicker...my coworker says, and I
quote: "going to Thailand and not seeing the transvestites is like
coming to China and not seeing the great wall." This is coming from a
Chinese person! When I got back from Thailand I was talking to another
Chinese person about my trip. She asked me, "did you see the
transvestites while you were there." "Yep, " I said. "They're really
sonething."