Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The BS-Wrestling Pit => Topic started by: Calach Pfeffer on September 05, 2014, 02:37:20 PM
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So, the Zombie Apocalypse, we know it's coming. When it gets here, how does China react?
Blame foreigners?
Make out like it's not happening?
Lead international coordination efforts?
Other?
Just curious because zombies are the test case for everything important, and on this one, I don't know.
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There are of course several questions to ask first. For instance, type. Do we get Rage Zombies or the Living Dead? The Rage Zombie is fast moving, aggressive, and angry. Whatever causes it generally needs next to no incubation period. The apocalypse arrives quickly. Zombies of the Living Dead variety are by contrast slow moving and for the most part unperturbed. They do get hungry and will gather. But since it takes time for victims to turn and needs quite a large number of zombies before the normal healthy person can be surrounded and brought down, it is something of a mystery how the critical mass needed for an apocalypse gets started.
The second question is origin. Does it start in a laboratory or in a never-before explored cave? That's to say, man-made virus or prehistoric mutation? (Or, for a variation on the natural source, we could even get some modern mutation. After all, zombie viruses that are apocalyptic will tend to select themselves out of existence fairly quickly by exhausting the hosts populations.)
And in the case of China, there'll be the question of where it starts. If it starts overseas, we might fairly well expect some gloating in Global Times and nannying in China Daily. But if it starts at here?
And so on.
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It can't start here, I think. Zombies are a kind of technology. They're largely irrelevant without sophisticated populations of tool users. They do however enjoy a large population. Truth be told, there aren't that many loner zombies. They rarely if ever want to head off and do their own thing. They seek out, ahem, like minds. Is there any sense that China can develop and sustain a technology of this kind? Imma say no. Just a feeling. They can do hunger and environmental degradation. They can do basely organizational technology, such as lots and lots of tallish buildings that need to be taken apart from time to time to add in actual functions like plumbing and lights. It's all coarse-grained and high-speed.
It doesn't start here. Nor does it start anywhere poor. Why would it? Entropy and mutation are not themes of poverty. So....
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Perhaps I am detecting a lack of preparedness thinking. BUT YOU KNOW IT'S COMING! YOU THINK YOU'RE GETTING ON A FLIGHT HOME?! BODY TEMPERATURE SCANNERS, MAN! WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU'RE ROOM TEMPERATURE?!
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A critical feature that would have a massive effect on China is whether the apocalypse starts with a single infection and only spreads to those bitten and/pr freshly killed vs a general rising from the graves of the last 10-100 years dead (Night of the Living Dead or Return of the Living Dead style).
If the former, China's in the same boat as the rest of the world. If the latter, the predominance of cremation over burial in China will give the country a considerable early advantage over countries with a large ratio of burials over cremations.
Further, the way many buildings here are well secured (heavy doors and bars in all windows) against criminals would give China another incredible advantage in dealing with virtually any style of zombie outbreak. An American subdivision is a zombie's idea of a lunch buffet. A Chinese village or a fully gated garden community could easily shelter most of its population against a wandering group of zombies. Only very active and agile style zombies who can work together (like World War Z) or intelligent, tool using living dead (such as the Nazi Zombies of Dead Snow) would have much of a chance in those environments.
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All they will do is add zombie to the menu of the supposedly good meat you see on the street bbq.
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Unless several families have been keeping their dead relatives on display for a very long time, there's a string of coffin makers along a road about 45 minutes bike ride from here. Chinese coffins look damn heavy. Rather than rectangular, they flare at the ends and have a lot of curved wood. They look like buggers to break out of:
(http://www.cswingfook.com/caskets/Chinese%20Lotus%20casket.jpg)
The ones around here have peaks on the top at either end, like traditional roofs.
I suppose that could all be pine, or even plastic. There's still earth to dig out of, and for the contagion to seep in to. The uprising could be supernatural in origin, I suppose, but all bets are off in that case. How do you prepare for the supernatural? (Damn. I bet Chinese folklore has an answer for that one. Maybe they will be the only ones to survive.)
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Hmmm, given this:
(http://static.squarespace.com/static/515ce6c8e4b0ba196f61d6d7/t/526afc03e4b06485ddc19568/1382743056943/Traditional%20Chinese%20Coffins.jpg)
It seems like they're not sooo heavy.
Howevaire.... Chinese bury on hillsides. Your traditional zombie gas is thick, green, and heavier than air.
Also, while it's true bars on windows will defend against the traditional problem of the porch zombie arriving to feast on your mortal remains and brains, the China-wide security measure of locking both fire escapes and all alternative exits in most buildings, will, I think, tell.
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Furthermore, Chinese routinely participate in massive migrations. Spring Festival, for instance, seems like an ideal time to spread even a Living Dead scenario effectively. And if its a Rage zombie event, then it's all over, man. People packed close together, in the cold, their immune systems already under pressure, and worse, they expect to sit close packed possibly even for days. Worse still, mass demonstrations of anger and aggression are becoming de rigeur in airports. The outbreak could be well underway before anyone realises they're at risk of even more tarmac delay.
Private cars then. Private cars will save us.
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So, once it gets going, what do they call it? Who responds, and how? Does it trend on Weibo or does the internet stop altogether? Is there any quarantine? Is the Army mobilised, and are their good efforts televised? Vinegar, you know, is a folkloric remedy. One wonders why it got so popular at the start of SARS. What do people say? That's possibly the problem with the zombie apocalypse: it's over too soon. It doesn't become an item in the culture. Perhaps the original question is flawed.
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And if its a Rage zombie event, then it's all over, man. People packed close together, in the cold, their immune systems already under pressure, and worse, they expect to sit close packed possibly even for days. Worse still, mass demonstrations of anger and aggression are becoming de rigeur in airports. The outbreak could be well underway before anyone realises they're at risk of even more tarmac delay.
I think there were several outbreaks like this during Spring Festival. Once it was over, guess what happened to all the evidence?
All they will do is add zombie to the menu of the supposedly good meat you see on the street bbq.
Soylent Grey. The tasty solution to zombie pollution. ahahahahah
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Water, water, water.
If there's a zombie invasion where will all the holed up folks get clean water? I think the threat of leaving will in itself create a host of other health problems, eventually become as great a threat in and of itself.
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It does beg the question of survival strategies. American strategies involve automatic weapons, bouncing zombies off Dodge trucks, and holing up in malls. (British strategies call for holing up at the pub.) A perhaps shallow peek at history suggests the Chinese strategy with respect to marauding invaders is to die in large numbers and/or assimilate the invader.
But on a day to day basis, Chinese people have been willing to gather around the dead and stare at them. This approach to trauma is perhaps, pardon the pun, dying out. I don't know how it works in the deeper countrysides still, but these days creeping urbanisation seems to bring with it a sense of I'm too busy for gawking.
Come to think of it, it would seem the middle classes have been stocking up on SUVs. Perhaps that's the strategy: adapt a handful of fireworks and go about exploding the dead or running them down with large vehicles. Seems a bit aggressive and perhaps not quite in keeping with ancestor worship.
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Are you sure anybody would notice?
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That is indeed the question. A zombie incursion in any US city with suburbs traditionally involves much running and screaming. It seems like Chinese would be more phlegmatic. During the first assaults perhaps we'd see a lot of histrionic remonstration and discussion. There'd be issues of face and public reparation. And then....
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Perhaps they could find a peaceful solution. After all, in many parts of Florida, there are huge numbers of white haired zombies staggering about and no one seems to feel any need to run about screaming over the situation.
axaxaxaxax
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got mindless zombies wandering around with not much constructive to do? Put them in my Business English class, they will fit right in. Probably raise the class average a degree or two.
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...
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Fine. But a grand public holiday is coming. The business classes will mingle with the square dancing aunties. That jaunty tune you'll be hearing in minor cities across the country is a powder key of carnage and financial chaos waiting to blow. They'll take the squares, grind out their cigarettes in the KTVs, and amble after any young people not quick enough to remove themselves to a first tier city. And are they safe on the coast? No. No they aren't.
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Assuming that in the early days of the Zompocalypse, institutional authorities and police forces still exist, would China mobilise troops against zombies? Armed police?
Let's consider two presumably reasonable outbreak scenarios: something terrible happens in a given city and either there is a national holiday and much train, plane, and car travel or it's a normal working week but the city population has a large percentage of workers (and managers) who will flee to their real hometowns. The first scenario calls for no particular conscious choice. The second requires people to become worried enough. In either case, would armed services people become involved?
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Here's what I think (presently; don't deport me, bro): it depends a lot on who wants to save "the country". For all the nationalism that exists, I'm not so sure there are many agencies available that'll act together to keep the nation in one piece. This is at least in part caused by how power is organised. Which is to say, there really is only one (barely) constituted authority and that's the Party. In a crisis like a Zompocalypse, if the Party were unable to compel the various agencies to follow a bunch of selfless institutional policies meant to protect the country and the citizens, then local power groups would take over and act like gangs and create fiefdoms. (Then a zombie would find them all drunk off their tits at karaoke and that would be that.) As it happens, I suspect the present paramount general leader secretary could pull it off. The party at present, at least as far as I understand it from the news, could possibly successfully coordinate a nationwide zombie counter-offensive. What form that counter-offensive would take.... I don't know.
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One country, two systems. One system for the living. One for the more active group of the deceased. ahahahahah
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No such sop to the UN shall be countenanced. Since historical times the dead have been a part of China. Terracotta Warriors? I bet you thought they were made of clay. Oh sure, the west may have the dead jump around and be all lethal and such, but zombies were invented in China along with paper, gunpowder and spaghetti. The connection is plain for all to see.
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China took care of stray zombies centuries ago. Corpse herders just round them up and take them back where they belong.
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I recall reading somewhere about that. There really was such a job, called corpse walker or something similar. They were people who transported the dead back to their hometowns. I may be forgetting some details. Supposedly this is the origin of the walking dead - some corpse carrier would be strolling through the dark night, because who wants to carry dead people during the day, and bam! people start making nonsense up.
here we go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangshi
A supposed source of the jiangshi stories came from the folk practice of "transporting a corpse over a thousand li" (simplified Chinese: 千里行尸; traditional Chinese: 千里行屍; pinyin: qiān lǐ xíng shī). The relatives of a person who died far away from home could not afford vehicles to have the deceased person's body transported home for burial, so they would hire a Taoist priest to conduct a ritual to reanimate the dead person and teach him/her to "hop" their way home. The priests would transport the corpses only at night and would ring bells to notify others in the vicinity of their presence because it was considered bad luck for a living person to set eyes upon a jiangshi. This practice, also called Xiangxi ganshi (simplified Chinese: 湘西赶尸; traditional Chinese: 湘西趕屍; pinyin: Xiāngxī gǎn shī; literally: "driving corpses in Xiangxi"), was popular in Xiangxi, where many people left their hometown to work elsewhere.[7][8] After they died, their bodies were transported back to their hometown because it was believed that their souls would feel homesick if they were buried somewhere unfamiliar to them. The corpses would be arranged upright in single file and be tied to long bamboo rods on the sides, while two men (one at the front and one at the back) would carry the ends of the rods on their shoulders and walk. When the bamboo flexed up and down, the corpses appeared to be "hopping" in unison when viewed from a distance away
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I did a field test on Saturday. I went to Carrefour done up as a zombie and spent some time staggering around the store.
What was amazing is how close I managed to walk by some people without them even noticing. Most of those that did notice took it pretty well, but a few did decided to widen the distance significantly.
So, had I actually been a properly contagious zombie, I'd have had plenty of chances to munch on some brains and recruit some new zombie friends. ahahahahah
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Lol. You're probably on the ebola watchlist now.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2729979/Bizarre-moment-Shanghai-commuters-suspect-Ebola-outbreak-run-lives-Western-looking-passenger-collapses-train.html
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Just for grins, I did have some "blood" leaking out of one corner of an eye. uuuuuuuuuu
I also won Best Costume at the Meten English Halloween party. ababababab
Surprisingly, it was easier to terrify people at a Halloween party than in Carrefour. ahahahahah
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I've never really gotten why people like/are interested in zombies and zombie movies. ("Night of the Living Dead" is painfully stupid, not profound social commentary; "The Walking Dead" flips back and forth between gratuitous violence and horrible dialogue.) Finally, I decided to read about The Walking Dead to see what its fans think it's about. Most said that the zombie genre is about human nature – what people would do if the world's societies collapsed. Is that really the draw?
I'd honestly love to know if there's any Chinese literature that reflects upon the topic of the end of civilization. Is there any Chinese literature that gets compared to The Road?
Unless several families have been keeping their dead relatives on display for a very long time, there's a string of coffin makers along a road about 45 minutes bike ride from here. Chinese coffins look damn heavy. Rather than rectangular, they flare at the ends and have a lot of curved wood. They look like buggers to break out of:
(http://www.cswingfook.com/caskets/Chinese%20Lotus%20casket.jpg)
The ones around here have peaks on the top at either end, like traditional roofs.
I suppose that could all be pine, or even plastic. There's still earth to dig out of, and for the contagion to seep in to. The uprising could be supernatural in origin, I suppose, but all bets are off in that case. How do you prepare for the supernatural? (Damn. I bet Chinese folklore has an answer for that one. Maybe they will be the only ones to survive.)
That is very cool. Are there really that many burials where you are? I've never seen a coffin for sale in my time here, and assumed that unless you're in the countryside pretty much everyone is cremated. My wife's family had to pay a hefty bribe to be able to bury her grandfather (on ancestral land) rather than have him cremated, but I hadn't thought to ask about the coffin.
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I've never really gotten why people like/are interested in zombies and zombie movies. ("Night of the Living Dead" is painfully stupid, not profound social commentary; "The Walking Dead" flips back and forth between gratuitous violence and horrible dialogue.) Finally, I decided to read about The Walking Dead to see what its fans think it's about. Most said that the zombie genre is about human nature – what people would do if the world's societies collapsed. Is that really the draw?
I'd honestly love to know if there's any Chinese literature that reflects upon the topic of the end of civilization. Is there any Chinese literature that gets compared to The Road?
I would love to know too. I know there is scifi in China, and for instance, the three generals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_science_fiction#1991_-_Present
And I have a vague recollection of a recent novel that sounded like The Road, but I can't remember. And pretty much none of any of this is in English or even translation anyway. I keep hoping one day some of it will be. Still waiting.
The one Chinese scifi-ish novel I've read in English was The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung. It has road journeys, but civilization doesn't actually end. I'm not sure many Chinese stories will ever feature actual ends of civilization.
As for zombies... they let you break up society. Other kinds of stories, say fantasy or scifi proper, make over society with complex new rules representing either magic or technology, or both. Zombies tear it all down without offering up an enemy. Zombies invent complex and interesting relationships to flesh.
Which is to say... I don't know either. But a good dystopia is freeing.
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That is very cool. Are there really that many burials where you are? I've never seen a coffin for sale in my time here, and assumed that unless you're in the countryside pretty much everyone is cremated. My wife's family had to pay a hefty bribe to be able to bury her grandfather (on ancestral land) rather than have him cremated, but I hadn't thought to ask about the coffin.
I have no idea how many burials happen here. Riding around over the years I've often seen graves, or those pointy headstone things that mark a site. They appear in odd spots, like on small hills beside roads. Presumably they were there before the roads became roads. But I've never seen any big ole cemetery, nor even enough burial sites to justify a coffin industry. The dudes who seem to make the coffins have tiny shops beside this one road, maybe two or three coffins on display, maybe room at the back for a few more. Perhaps they have grandma in there and aren't coffin-makers at all. It's a small street in a large village/suburb-like area well outside the city center, but it gets a lot of traffic passing through and counts as the main street for the local area. In another five to ten years it'll have been overrun by all the suburban development that's going on out there, but, say, ten or fifteen years ago it would have been fairly isolated. I dunno. I just notice the coffins every time I ride past.
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Lao She's Cat Country got translated & published a year or so ago. It's supposed to be one of the first Chinese Sci-Fi novels, I think, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I wasn't able to get through it. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow on the plane.
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Speaking of Chinese scfi...
Writing China: Liu Cixin, ‘The Three-Body Problem’ (http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/31/writing-china-liu-cixin-the-three-body-problem/?mod=WSJBlog)
Chinese science-fiction writer Liu Cixin has won widespread acclaim for his imaginative work “The Three-Body Problem.” The trilogy tells the story of a civilization in another star system that is facing extinction and chooses to invade the Earth in order to save itself. The first book in the series will next week be published in English for the first time by Tor Books in the U.S.
This weekend Mr. Liu will be one of the star attractions at a major science-fiction conference in Beijing, where China’s Nebula Awards for science fiction will be handed out. Mr. Liu won that prize in 2010.
China Real Time recently caught up with the author, who is also a full-time power plant engineer, to discuss bringing his book to an English audience, his latest work and the current state of science-fiction writing in China...