A coupla reasons I love this country...

Here's a couple of reasons I love this country: (feel free to post a few of your own)

Men are men

To judge a man by the amount he can drink, smoke, or chew, will always be a fair judgement and accurate depiction of a man in my opinion.

Girls are girls

The girls know how to be girls. No matter how girly that is. Feminine qualities are a rare breed in this world and these girls know how to be girly.

I am sometimes asked why I like living in China and my simplistic answer has usually been that it is the one place I feel free. While that feeling still holds - a short visit back home every year reinforces any doubts I may have - it is a kind of reactive response.

Jeremiah Jenne at 'rectified name' has summed up the real real reason I like living in China: 

   

This year marks my tenth in Beijing. Why stay so long? Because every morning I wake up knowing that I’m going to see something I’ve never seen before.  Something which will make me stop and say, “You know in any other country…that might seem strange.”

JShep, I don't agree. The men act like children. The young men act, dress and look like girls. They use moisturizer and stuff. The women act like toddlers. That is, when they're not spitting phlegm wads like a man. To encounter a true "man" or "woman" in the sense that I learned the words is very rare.

The women act like toddlers.

there's a phrase for this 装嫩‘zhuang nen' - literally to 'fake tenderness (as in meat, not emotion)'

so true, so true... 

A majority of the hair cuts/styles i see the young guys sporting here would get them beaten ( rightfully so) in the west. 

A majority of the hair cuts/styles i see the young guys sporting here would get them beaten ( rightfully so) in the west. 

not if they live in London.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/14/hate-hipsters-blogs

A majority of the hair cuts/styles i see the young guys sporting here would get them beaten ( rightfully so) in the west. 

That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have heard all week 

I think you are all right,sorry! I mean yes you see some really ridiculous things here and yes the hairstyles are outrageous and the girls are really childish. But it's also true that because we are outsiders we can feel freer than we could at home.
And the weirdness here is definitely one of the things I like about it.But then strangely even after only 7 months here I feel very comfortable.
Does any of that make sense to anyone? 

yep, not much seems all that weird to me anymore.

A majority of the hair cuts/styles i see the young guys sporting here would get them beaten ( rightfully so) in the west. 

Nice mate. Hadn't realised that people deserve to get beaten up for their choice of haircut before. I'd hoped that we were getting past being that narrow-minded, but as it seems we're not I guess we've got no claim to this whole freedom thing people keep blaring on about.

The Chinese don't seem strange to me anymore but the foreigners can be right idiots.

If you make any kind of politically incorrect statement or joke around them, then some self-important twit is going to jump in and tell you how wrong you are. Of course they are free to criticize you but you are not free to say anything that they find offensive in their humourless view of the world.

Thank God we have this place where those kind of things don't happen.

You haven't got me pegged Stil, nice try tho mate. 

Play nice, fellows. play nice. I am sure PSD4fan did not there is any justice in beating people up due to silly hair-cuts. I do not agree with the OP though.

Yeah I'm sure you're right, I think you're ginger locks give you a unique angle on this one. I'm more inclined to agree with Zero especially when talking about the younger generation. Some of the older generation can definitely be pretty militant on the old men drink baijiu and smoke cigarettes front tho.

Having said that, my gf told me that a driver at her company went for a facial   at a hair salon the other day that cost him a few hundred. He smokes like a trooper, drinks regularly and has had a relationship with a prostitute that went tits up. It's just not clear cut.