Why I love Chinese women...

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #30 on: July 03, 2013, 07:56:12 PM »
You mean they have all these traditions, stories, ancient buildings, habits that they cannot really explain, most of them don't c are about and they don't really try to understand their own culture as they are too preoccupied with the next gadget, money, prestige...well...that just sounds familiar, does it not? Like...oh...I don't know...the rest of the world?

Guangzhouwriter, sometimes it is worthwhile understanding a system instead of getting all in a tiff about it. For instance, when someone one asks you to drink/smoke/go to pink houses/partake in a pibe of opium/ eat a raw ferret or any thing you might not want to do, there are ways around it, ways that can ensure you do not have to drink paint thinner and the chap asking you will not be mei lian zhan ren, which means, I think, No-Face Person. The phrase you need to learn is Sui Bian. Say that next time, it works as a charm. Also, on a side note, I recommend you invest in a book called "The Chinese Have A Word For It" by Boye Lafayette De Mente, which should be the name of a villain in some cheesy show but isn't.
"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." Oscar Wilde.

"It's all oojah cum spiffy". Bertie Wooster.
"The stars are God's daisy chain" Madeleine Bassett.

Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #31 on: July 03, 2013, 08:13:55 PM »
Mr. Benn:

I think many men of a certain age (& many younger!) have a lousy attitude towards women. Including Brits. Like these ones here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2013/jun/20/why-i-started-a-feminist-society

I am moderately surprised you haven't met football-obsessed fans in China, though. Many of my relatives, at the very least, seem to have English or Spanish & national club allegiances.

It does seem like part of the problem is your environment. & I'm clearly not saying that you should go out of your way to meet Chinese men. Just that there are plenty of awesome ones out there, & the problem might not be one-sided.


I don't really regard it as a problem. Unfortunate maybe. I'm atypical anyway. Firstly I'm a misanthrope, and hate the human race as a whole. Second, I'd guess that throughout my entire life, half if not most of my friends have been girls / women.

I didn't mean my post to be a piece of standard anti-Chinese men prejudice. I accept that they make good friends for each other. I appreciate that many Chinese women feel like their men treat them very well (though obviously the ones that don't tend to be the ones that I most often talk to). They don't want to be friends with me, and the ones that do, there's probably a reason. There's a huge cultural gap between Chinese culture and mine, and I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think Chinese culture is equal but different from mine. I think some cultures are superior; such as mine. So why do I stay in china; lots of reasons, but making friends with Chinese men is unlikely to ever be one of them. I'm not nasty to them, and I don't want to impugn their manhood. Clearly some of them are great blokes. I just haven't met them yet.

I understand that you think I've met some great blokes, and just not realised. That may be true. Some Chinese men have been quite kind to me when I needed help, but being vulnerable and in need of help is not when I want to make friends. I'm far more comfortable making friends under the shelter of my perceived superiority to everyone.

Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #32 on: July 03, 2013, 08:22:58 PM »
*cough*

Is this thing on?

Okay... cultural relativism. -Or- how we are all the same, really.


We are not all the same really. Being all the same really is a European conceit derived from marching together across other people's countries. Sometimes it is a North American conceit derived from marching together across other people's cultures.

After all, if we are all the same really, then there isn't anything Chinese culture, let alone Chinese men, can reasonably introduce us to that we wouldn't already discover in our own homes.

You have to let the aliens be alien, people.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #33 on: July 03, 2013, 10:28:02 PM »
Sounds like TLD's hubby's village is different than mine.  People here REALLY want to hijack you for dinner.  The last time I though one was kidding, I ended up on the back of a motorcycle and quickly found myself at a lovely little Gutter Oil Cafe somewhere a couple km from where I live (and more than enough turns that I was 100% lost).
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Guangzhou Writer

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #34 on: July 03, 2013, 11:08:26 PM »
Thanks for the suggestions, Eric. I'll try and get that book. I have tried every phrase in English and Chinese imaginable and it only intensifies their efforts.

Not kidding here, but I draw the line at being told to drink 30 times and refusing and explaining more than 30 times. After that, I either leave or I fight, and the second one hasn't happened yet, but it's been close a few times. Ok, to be serious I never lost my self-control, but getting steamed? yes.

I don't see any other way of interpreting a situation where you are trying to force someone to drink alcohol that you know is bad for them. I have had several male students and bosses who suffered serious health problems from the ritual-abuse gan-bei, in fact they had to take extended vacations at my school just to escape the abusive, forced drinking. There is no other accurate interpretation, but certainly there are plenty of cultural indoctrination methods to help one rationalize it into some kind of social obligation and/or business requirement.

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Guangzhou Writer

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #35 on: July 03, 2013, 11:18:50 PM »
gzwriter:
Sorry to hear alcohol makes you sick.
Thanks. It's not a big deal, I don't get sick exactly, not allergic or anything, but I gradually realized my body couldn't handle it very well.

While beer and wine have some positive and negative health effects in moderation, high alcohol content drinks like baijiu and distilled spirits are almost completely deleterious to physical health, especially in the long term. It just takes people different lengths of time to realize what happened. You can trade this off against the relaxation effects and sometimes it's better to be drunk than not, but alcohol is in*toxic*ating. There's really no two ways about it.

If you like to drink, stay with wine and beer and get the highest quality you can afford. There are all kinds of nasty things in mass produced beer in China and the USA and if you haven't heard about the stuff they put in fake wine in China, then...

http://web.archive.org/web/20120303141845/http://www.echinacities.com/china-media/more-than-just-sulphates-china-s-counterfeit-wine-pandemic.html

More Than Just Sulphates: China’s Counterfeit Wine Pandemic

Dec 04, 2011By eChinacities.com   

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Life Times, a Beijing newspaper on November 25th. It details the flourishing counterfeit wine market in China, the likely health problems that result from consuming these so-called "chemical wines", as well as a few tips on how to ensure that the wine you purchase is genuine and safe.

Whether a bottle is ordered for the dinner table, given as a gift or consumed at a nightclub, wine is no longer the "luxury item" that it was once considered a few decades ago. Many Chinese are now championing wine as "the healthy alternative" to baijiu, and data shows that in 2010, Chinese consumed 1.5 billion bottles of wine. What’s troubling is that these bottles of "liquid gold" have become trapped in a downward spiral of counterfeiting and fraud. On November 2nd, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Commerce and Industry reported that in the third quarter of 2011, spot checks in Guangdong’s inner-provincial alcohol market found that only 53.3% of the wine bought and sold passed inspection.

China’s "chemical wine" market

Earlier this year, CCTV's Focus Talk did an exposé on a counterfeit wine manufacturer located outside Changli County, Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province. This manufacturer mixed alcohol additives, fragrances and pigments together and sold it as "wine" – some of these counterfeit wines didn’t even contain grapes! Once various domestic and imported wine labels were pasted on these bottles, the fake wine looked no different from genuine wine. The Changli County facility specialised in printing counterfeit wine labels for Great Wall and Changyu wines, and the company's business manager said that the demand for their fake wine exceeded their production capabilities. This "chemical wine" exposé shocked many of China's new wine enthusiasts.

On November 16th, the Trade and Industry Bureau in Henan Province confiscated more than 670 cases of counterfeit Changyu wine, valued at more than 40,000 RMB. The counterfeit wines in question were: "Changyu Fine Red Wine" (张裕精品干红葡萄酒), Changyu Cabernet Sauvignon (张裕赤霞珠干红葡萄酒) and Changyu Cabernet (张裕解百纳干红葡萄酒), and were marked as being produced in Yantai (烟台).

High-end imported wines are being counterfeited as well. As one industry insider put it: "nine out of ten bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild are fake". This is not surprising when looking at the sales data for a five-star hotel in Dongguan, which sells 40,000 bottles of Lafite each year. The annual global production output of Lafite is less than 200,000 bottles, and of those, less than 50,000 enter the Chinese market.

Uncovering the secrets of wine counterfeiting

Mr Shi, another industry insider, explained that there are many different ways to counterfeit wine in China, and that regardless of imported and domestic, or high and low quality, all wines can be counterfeited.

There are two ways to counterfeit imported wine. First, high-end wine counterfeiting where new wine is poured into old bottles. The ’82 Lafite is particularly prone to this trick. In the Chinese market, an ‘82 "Lafite generally goes for 100,000 RMB per bottle. Counterfeiters will purchase an old ’82 bottle for 3-4 thousand RMB, and then fill it with a similar tasting, but much less expensive wine (costing at most 20,000 RMB), and then sell it for 400% profit. Because counterfeiters use real bottles, it’s very difficult to spot a fake. Another way to counterfeit Lafite is to sell brands that sound similar to the "Lafite" name, such as "Legende Lafite" and "Roche Lafite". Low-end imported wine (un-bottled) is also susceptible to counterfeiting. Mr Shi said that imported wines that only cost 10-20 RMB are inflated to 100+ RMB when they sell in China. Many traders will import cheap wine and bottle it here, or they will simply fabricate an "import" winery and sell their own "wine" at imported prices to the consumers.

There are two ways to counterfeit domestic wine, the first of which is to counterfeit blended wine. In July 2004, China required wines to be made from 100% grape juice. President of the Chinese Wine Marketing Society, Zhao Yi, said that blended wine is commonly made from saccharin, alcohol, flavouring, water, and may not contain grapes at all. Associate Professor He Jiguo of China Agricultural University said, "To keep it cheap, some counterfeiters use industrial grade alcohol (methanol) instead of beverage grade alcohol (ethanol) in blended wines. Methanol is half the price of ethanol, but it’s a toxic substance, and an excessive consumption of it may kill you." There are also some counterfeit wines that brew watermelon rinds and blend them together with grape juice to make wine – at a cost less than 3-4 RMB per bottle. The second way to counterfeit domestic wine is to use a name or label similar to Great Wall or Changyu.

Consumption of counterfeit wines can cause cancer
"Many people know that drinking an appropriate amount of wine is good for your health", He Jiguo said, but if you’re drinking counterfeits, wine is actually very hazardous. As low and mid range wines (a few hundred RMB or less) have become China’s best sellers, counterfeiters have redoubled their efforts on this price range. Many counterfeit wines use artificial colouring, which contains azobenzene, a substance known to be carcinogenic. Although consumers may not see any immediate adverse reaction to azobenzene, it gradually accumulates in the body, causing long-term toxicological effects. Also, because the production process is not standardised, hazardous microbial contamination can easily make its way into counterfeit wines. An excessive amount of biogenic amines or ochratoxin in wine can cause headaches, arrhythmia and even cancer.

Yao Shangyong (Masters in European Wine studies) suggests paying attention to the following items when purchasing wine:

1) Carefully read the wine label and the back contents label. "For imported wines, there will be a Chinese label pasted over the back label, which includes the wine's name, year, grape type, alcohol content, importer and other information." If the bottle doesn't have a Chinese label on the back, then it’s probably fake. Consumers can also identify the bottle's origin from the first digits of the barcode; 690-693 is China, 30-37 is France, 00-09 is the United States and Canada, 600-601 is South Africa.

2) Pay attention to where you buy the wine. The assortment of wines in upscale restaurants, large shopping malls, supermarkets and specialty wine shops are generally the safest. Small restaurants and wine shops will likely have a mix of real and fake wines. Counterfeit wines, especially the blended counterfeits are mostly sold at nightclubs: "In your average nightclub, more than 90% of the bottles are fake", Yao Shangyong said.

Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #36 on: July 04, 2013, 01:16:43 AM »
GZWriter, may I ask one question? Have you ever tried the turn-the-glass-upside-down trick? I was once told that that was, in Chinese culture, the sign for "No thanks, I'm not drinking". Granted, I have next to no social life, particularly not in bars with drunken locals, I found that particularly activity lost its allure pretty quickly. Anyway, when I did used to frequent bars or restaurants I would, when the gan bei'ing began, simply up-end my glass, drink my Coke and simply shake my head in bemused rejection when told to consume paint thinner.
"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." Oscar Wilde.

"It's all oojah cum spiffy". Bertie Wooster.
"The stars are God's daisy chain" Madeleine Bassett.

Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #37 on: July 04, 2013, 02:07:48 AM »
Some people are definitely obnoxiously pushy about drinking and smoking here, but there are ways to get out of it. You do have to be careful with the phrasing, and insistent.

The best way to refuse is to say 我不会喝酒 "wo bu hui he jiu," literally, "I can't drink," as in you are physically unable. You can say you have a “guomin” 过敏, even if you don't. Chinese people talk health stuff pretty seriously so if you insinuate that there is a medical reason why you can't drink, I have found that 9 times out of 10 they will back off.

This breaks down if they've seen you drink before, or if you've started drinking with them already and want to stop. Decide ahead of time if you're into getting trashed or not. If you don't want to get wasted, don't start drinking with them in the first place because it is much harder to stop once you've already started. Once you just refuse, turn your cup over like ETR says, be firm with your no, and they will get over it and stop bothering you. It is just the initial refusal you have to get past. I'm a woman so they go easy on me but I have lots of male friends who are drinkers and also non-drinkers and I've seen this in action plenty of times.

If you're drinking because you're taking part in some sort of business transaction BS involving face and guanxi, then I can't help you. The above works probably 90% of the time provided you're hanging out with normal people.

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #38 on: July 04, 2013, 04:35:34 AM »
Eric and TLD, thanks for the tips and thanks for posting the Hanzi and the pinyin.

I only rarely drank a beer or half a beer maybe once a month before coming to China, but soon after arriving I quit drinking entirely in hopes that I could escape the gan-bei insanity. I have tried all the things you mentioned, maybe not both phrases in the same sitting, but they never worked for me. I've seen that stuff work for other people.

The only thing that ever worked was asking a Chinese friend to explain before the dinner began that I don't drink under any circumstances. Maybe he told them I was a monk? That worked perfectly. If only I could shrink him and keep him in my backpack.

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AMonk

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #39 on: July 04, 2013, 06:24:49 AM »
... Maybe he told them I was a monk? That worked perfectly. ...


Well, of course it did ;)  bfbfbfbfbf
Moderation....in most things...

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #40 on: July 04, 2013, 02:29:56 PM »
LOL

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #41 on: July 04, 2013, 02:42:42 PM »
When people won't take NO on giving me a cigarette, I mimic taking a puff and puking. aaaaaaaaaa  That usually gets the point across. ahahahahah
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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #42 on: July 04, 2013, 02:54:09 PM »
I would think they'd love to see laowai do the big spit.
"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.

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Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #43 on: July 04, 2013, 02:55:32 PM »
When can we get back to the original title of the thread, "Why I love Chinese women..."?
For you to insult me, first I must value your opinion

Re: Why I love Chinese women...
« Reply #44 on: July 04, 2013, 03:47:15 PM »
Because they're skinny and mean and totter about on high heels?

That "straight line" aesthetic this culture has going is weird. Straight hair, straight arms, straight hips. That thin-fat thing, where everyone is skinny, but soft and essentially shapeless, but so skinny it looks like a straight line body... eat a sandwich or something, get some stamina.


/issues
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0