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BCR posted:In winter, turn the heating up and open windows to be comfortable. Every public school in China during the winter. Electric heating/AC unit in the ceiling blasting hot air at 80mph. (CHECK) Hot water radiators are running so hot that kids are able to boil tea on them. (CHECK) All 12 windows along the one wall of the classroom are wide open and it's -20 C outside. (CHECK) Me: Why are all of these windows open? This room is freezing! Teacher: Got to keep the students warm, but you also need the air to be fresh. The students next to the windows were miserable because they were frozen, and the ones away from the windows were almost cooking alive because they were right next to the radiators. After a week the Chinese co-teacher stopped showing up to my classes and just let me do my thing, so we turned the electric fan right off, and only left each window open a pencil's width or so. The students actually stopped their teacher from fooling around with the thermostat by stealing the batteries from the remote, and all banded together to keep him from opening the windows. I don't want to sound like, "Chinese are so dumb, westerners are so smart", but how the gently caress are you this dense?
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Jan 12, 2015 15:33
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ded posted:China during the SWINE FLU EPIDEMIC I was flying from Changchun (China) to Incheon (S. Korea) during the tail end of one of those flus and they had the questionnaires, temp sensors, and thermal imagers to try and make sure there were no sick people on the airplanes. They also had people who would walk up and down the aisles and look to see if anyone looked visibly sick (sweaty, pale, clammy, etc.). Every single Russian male was asked to go for additional screening because they look flue-ridden naturally.
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Jan 12, 2015 20:34
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a pipe smoking dog posted:titties are the opiate of the masses Curse of the Golden Flower was hated by the extras because (paraphrasing) "it's painful to get the necessary cleavage out of small busts for hours/days/months on end".  Although some have a natural talent. 
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Jan 14, 2015 14:52
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Medieval Medic posted:I enjoyed this movie and it's cleavage. I love how hilariously "Mexican Soap Opera" it gets near the end when they reveal the "family secret". <camera #1: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #2: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #3: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #1: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #2: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #3: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #1: 0.5 second reaction shot > <camera #2: 0.5 second reaction shot > Gong Li was the only person in that film that appeared to actually try and act. Everyone else was just going through the motions. Also, I will never forgive Michael Mann for not writing a bikini scene into Miami Vice. 
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Jan 14, 2015 17:16
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Fragrag posted:Jesus christ, the crumple zone shouldn't be the whole car The video description says there was 375 Kg /827 lb of sand loaded (in the trunk). I'm guessing they were testing the wall, and not the car in this instance.
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Jan 15, 2015 20:49
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When I was living in Zhong Jie (older downtown neighborhood) in Shenyang they were doing a shitload of demolitions and construction before the Olympics came to town. There were buildings like this all over the place where they were just working down a row of apartments and shops and every other day they would take the next one in line down. I guess they forgot to do their check when starting on an apartment and brought the place down on top of some homeless guy who was passed out drunk and didn't wake up in time. The next day they had the place taped off and police were crawling all over the ruins. Apparently one of the poured exterior concrete walls fell in and landed flat on the guy. The description I heard was it was like knocking over a very heavy book on top of an uncooked egg. Another demolition I saw (same city) on the way to one of the high schools I taught at had the last wall of a 4 floor building teetering on the brink of falling down. I guess the crane that had the wrecking ball was out of commission, so this one guy would go to the base of the wall, (in what was the inside of the building) hit the wall a few times, remove a foot of brick, then run out when he thought it was going to come down. This went on for ten minutes, with him running out and stumbling over rubble every time he thought it was going to come down. Luckily for him they got the wrecking machine up and running again, but it was legit the most suspenseful thing I have ever witnessed in my life.
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Jan 16, 2015 15:07
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DetroitVectorSmooth posted:How did you like living in Shenyang? I have the impression that it is analogous to Pittsburgh (i.e. a post-industrial city trying to reinvent itself). Any reason why you chose to live there rather than a more livable city like Dalian? I've never been to Pittsburgh, but I think the comparison is somewhat close. . . assuming Pittsburgh had another 6 million people living in it. I was living and teaching there because my wife (at the time girlfriend) was finishing up her masters degree at Shenyang Normal University (Normal is what they call Teacher's Colleges). I didn't mind it, but would have preferred to live in Dalien (seafood and navy yard), Jilin (not full of coal dust), or even Changchun (better road layout) but that's just how things happened. If it wasn't for the massive amounts of coal dust everywhere and the abysmal city planning when it came to roads, I would not have had a complaint. Best part about being in Shenyang were the fireworks during Spring Festival. Apparently due to the density in the one area, it's even more impressive than Beijing (random people setting off fireworks, not city sponsored ones). The constant light and explosions made the Shock and Awe campaign in Baghdad look tame. Another great thing about Shenyang is that it has a really diverse selection of restaurants that are representative of the whole country, and even rivals Beijing. This also includes foreign food, as there were lots of Japanese, Korean, and western style restaurants, due to the large number of people working from all over China and the world due to the factories there.
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Jan 16, 2015 16:25
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etalian posted:Yeah similar to South Korea it wasn't always a democracy, it was military junta dictatorship for most of the post-WWII period. This is a pretty spot on comparison since both governments were crazy-paranoid of some of their "loyal followers" who fled with them being communist sympathisers, other people from the mainland missing home and eating up the mainland propaganda that "everything is super cool here now, come on over, you won't be in trouble" and the fact that until later, it was still very easy for spies to cross over into Taiwan and gather intel/start communist cells. It would be cool to hear goons with relatives (grandparents/parents) who lived through that to share their experiences. I've heard stories from my inlaws about the mainland (North East) all the way from Nationalist China to the present day. Mainland China anecdotes: There really wasn't much sign of the Nationalist government (20's-30's) until the Civil war started to get hot, and the Japanese invaded. Before the Japanese progressed to Shenyang, Changchun, Harbin (the cities my grandparents-in-law grew up in) they would occasionally have the Nationalists roll through and distribute Rice, Beans, and other staple crops while perusing the Commies. The day after food was distributed a communist partisan party would usually show up, take all the food and leave literature about how great they were. This would happen a few times as the ROC/CCP front was somewhat close, and they figured this one guy (useless rear end in a top hat who pretty much begged for a living) was the spy because he would disappear as soon as the Nationalists left, and wouldn't come back until after the communists had stolen the food. They ratted him out to the Nationalists and they figured he was taken somewhere to be tortured, questioned and then shot. (this all occurred in Hong Qi Lin, an hour from Panshi, which is just outside of Changchun). When the Japanese rolled in, there were some mixed recollections. My father in law grew up in Harbin (home of Unit 731) so his father remembers a large part of the city being bulldozed and rebuild by the Japanese for barracks and administrative buildings. There were always rumours about the Japanese quarter being a torture area, where they would torture Nationalists and Communists that they captured. He says that when they rebuild sections of the city now days they almost always leave the Japanese infrastructure alone since even then, it was a higher quality than what they would replace it with (mainly electrical lines and water). The communists would distribute literature in the city talking about how the Nationalists were working with the Japanese and sending brave Communist fighters to the torture chambers, but nobody believed that since 9 out of 10 soldiers being marched at gunpoint were ROC troops. People didn't find out about what 731 was really doing in there until after the war, and lucky for the Japanese, they retreated in force, so lynch mobs didn't really have a chance to get revenge. My grandmother in-law on my mother-in-law's side was living in a small village just outside Changchun, and nobody likes to hear her memories of Japanese occupation. I guess there was a barracks nearby and a Japanese family was living in her village. The mother and father had a daughter her age (she was around 8-10 during this time) and they used to play a lot and she would get lots of good stuff to eat at their place (fruit and meat) as she was invited over fairly often. Both the Japanese parents spoke a little Chinese, and told her to never speak Japanese (she assumed at the time she was not allowed to because she was Chinese, but later on figured they didn't want her getting in trouble if the locals heard her) . She was only a kid at the time, but this almost got her in trouble during the height of the Cultural Revolution when Red Guards were trying to weed out "Landlords" (rich people), anyone with an education, or anyone they saw not being devoted to the party. Mostly this was an excuse of the local Red Guard leader (previously the village idiot) to even the score against people he didn't like. Accusations of being a Japanese collaborator was one of the worst offences, and someone tried to accuse her of this since she played with a Japanese kid. Since my grandmother in-law was well liked in the community, they figured someone else was in trouble and attempted to deflect Red Guard attention from them. Luckily for my grandmother-in-law her father had died during the war and some of the older people in town said he had fought with the Communists against the Japanese. In reality he had gotten a broken rib in a lumber accident, went to the city to get treated and died from an infection. There were no records during this time, so the Red Guards just took the elder's words for it. My grandfather in-law on my mother-in-law's side (passed away in the late 70's so this comes from the aforementioned grandma in-law) used to talk about how the nationalists were pretty much doomed from the start. He used to drive a truck for the Nationalist army, but was never enlisted, something he figures probably saved his life as they kept pretty good records and the communists had armies of people sifting through them to look for scapegoats to publicly blame and send off to farm-gulags. He said that the Nationalists would always be marching after the Communists, but almost never catch them to have a real fight. This was later in the civil war, right before the Japanese invaded. At this point the Nationalists had already routed Mao in a few fights, and the Communists realized that they had to do hit and run attacks and guerilla warfare. Since the Nationalists were a real army, they moved lots of troops and had supply lines, so were slower than the lightly armed Communists. After the "truce" when they decided to fight the Japanese together, the Nationalists would roll into to fight the Japanese in conventional battles, with the Communists "supporting them". He said that there were times when his truck would be loaded with food, medical supplies, or ammo for the troops fighting, and a band of "Communist Bandits" would rob him. After this happened a few times his truck was taken by the army and he was relieved of his job because it was assumed he was selling the goods himself. At this point he returned home before someone thought to draft him. When the war came to his home town of Shenyang he would see Nationalist troops rolling though to fight the Japanese, with the Communists distributing literature behind them. A week later there would be a retreat with the Communist pulling up the front, and the remaining Nationalists pulling up the rear, looking worse for wear. Apparently the Nationlists would approach the Japanese lines, dig in defensive positions, then do a light attack on the Japanese and fall back. The Japanese would assume they had an easy rout in hand, and when they perused they'd meet the Nationalist's defensive positions and take very heavy casualties (although the Nationalists would as well). After the battles the communists would be boasting about "their" Victory over the Japanese. The saying, "show up late, forget to fight, first to dinner" (direct translation) was used during that time to describe Communist soldiers. Pretty much none of my in-laws were communist supporters, and there is only one party member in the family today. When talking about the rise of the party, they usually recall that they only knew a few people each that even cared about politics, and almost nobody was a party supporter before the Japanese occupation. After the occupation there were a lot more CCP supporters (they figure the propaganda swayed the rural people), but still not a majority of people even cared about politics. They figure the Nationalists all killed themselves fighting the Japanese and there were not enough of them left to stand against the idiots who sided with the CCP. None of them ended up in a gulag, but my father in-law did have to do his mandatory "go to the countryside and pretend to farm" for a year. Overall they're pretty apathetic about politics and are not sure if the Nationalists would have made China a better place than it is now. My wife on the other hand is a firm believer that a Nationalist victory would have allowed China to be much more developed since they would have had a much better relationship for nearby trading partners and the west.
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Jan 18, 2015 16:51
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simplefish posted:An interesting read, thanks WarpedNaba posted:Good stuff, mate. Thanks. I'll try and put together some of the more interesting Cultural Revolution stuff when I have time.  Only other wartime stuff I can remember being told was when there was a point where the Nationalists couldn't hold back the Japanese and they had to retreat or get overrun. This apparently was a real possibility because the Japanese were much more mobile given they had trucks and bikes. So the Japanese would clash with the Nationalists and either they would be beaten back, or they would cause the Chinese to retreat. When the Chinese had to retreat they had to do so as fast as they could, or the Japanese would re-engage and wipe them out (Japanese would be more rested because they would have transportation, and the Chinese would be walking). Unfortunately for the Chinese, the roads in that area were pretty good as there was a mine nearby and this was a really good corn producing area, so the Japanese had an easy time moving fast on their bikes and trucks. So the Nationalists were retreating and they arrived at my Grandmother-in-law's town and said, "we can't hold them back, you guys have to get out of here, we don't know what the Japanese will do, and we can't protect you". So they continued their retreat so they could regroup and set up another line of defence on a ridge a few days away. Everyone is packing up and getting their stuff together to get away from the approaching Japanese, and the Communists show up. They are even less mobile than the nationalists, and know the Japanese are going to get them before they get behind the defensive positions the Nationalists are going to set up. So they decide to put the "outrunning a bear" joke into play (I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you). They tell the villagers that they have to stay, because the Japanese have already encircled them, so just act normal and nothing will happen. They take every bike and cart that is available, take all the food they can carry, and take off. The people in the village assume there is no point in running, and decide to all just go to their homes and prepare supper. One of the wives goes to her pantry to see if there is any corn left after the Communists raided it and finds a Nationalist uniform in it. She takes the uniform outsides and looks down the street to see another lady down the road holding a uniform as well. People get word of what has happened and start searching the village, to find several hidden uniforms and some guns hidden in various locations, but easily found. They figure the communists planted them there so that the Japanese would assume they were hiding soldiers and waste time tearing the place apart, allowing them to escape. A guy grabs the bundle of uniforms and guns and runs out to the field and buried them as deep as he could*. The next day the Japanese showed up at lunch and everyone just pretended that it was a normal day, and offered the soldiers food and water. The soldiers did a very quick search of the place, and then moved on, saying that an occupation force would be there the next day. A week later the occupation force arrived, which was about 50 Japanese soldiers, and 200 Korean soldiers. Given that this village was in the North-east of Jilin province, there were a few ethnic Koreans living there, so the Korean soldiers were nice, and the Japanese soldiers seemed to follow their lead. With the exception of a barracks that was build, and the occasional work project that would require the locals to stop what they were doing and help out, things were pretty much unchanged. The only real difference was that a percentage of food grown there was exported for the war effort, and the townspeople had to provide some for the garrison troops as well. Since this had been a corn producing town, these requirements were not much of a hardship as everyone usually had enough to eat. Oh, and sometimes additional livestock was bought, but usually at a loss. So if your pig had 8 piglets, after they grew up, you could expect two to go the the war effort, another one to go to the garrison, and the rest were yours. If a soldier wanted to buy one, you'd have to sell it at a non-profit price, which which usually ended up being a loss. As you can imagine from reading the history books, this was not your typical occupation, and apparently in other nearby towns and villages, the garrison troops there were quite brutal. *There was a joke that they told for years after the occupation about the burying of the uniforms and guns. Apparently the guy that took them was pretty short, and when he returned a few hours later they asked him how deep he dug the hole. The guy replied that the hole was up to his shoulders. One of the old guys pipes up, "we're dead as soon as the next wind blows through here!" The joke at the short guys expense after the war was, "If Yang was any shorter, none of us would have survived the war!"
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Jan 19, 2015 03:30
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Fojar38 posted:that seems uh....really really gentle for a japanese occupation I figure the Japanese troops that initially moved through didn't have the time or the energy to get all "rapey" as they had just finished fighting the nationalists and had to press on the attack, so the short time they had was just used to look for a quick bite to eat before they had to move on. Also it seems that the Japanese treated different parts of occupied China differently. The Chinese in the North East are taller and have a lighter complexion, which might have something to do with it, also the south, especially Nanjing was the Nationalist stronghold, so they fought a lot harder there, and the Japanese would have been more frustrated. Also when they took Nanjing, it was a symbolic victory over China, so why not let your troops cut loose? Also a lot of it probably comes down to the Garrison commander. If he's a total rear end in a top hat, then you're likely to have a really bad time under his rule. The division of food and livestock I think was a really smart way to do things (from the Japanese commander's position). If you just waltz in and take all their livestock and crops, then what incentive do the locals have to grow more? They're not going to get any of it, and if you just treat them like slaves, they'll do the least amount of work possible, that won't result in them being killed. On the other hand, if you still allow them to feed themselves and still make a profit, then they'll have that incentive to keep growing crops and raising livestock. ***I have absolutely no idea if this is what he was actually thinking, or if it was army policy, but apparently people in other nearby towns were literally worked and starved to death during the winters, and they would have to eat bark and dig up grass under the snow for food as all of their winter stores were taken in the late fall. It just seems that their village got a lucky roll of the dice. Later on in the occupation, things did get much harder, but she didn't remember anyone in her village actually starving to death. The grandmother remembers going to the Japanese family's house with the girl her age that she played with and getting a slice of an apple, which was like the biggest deal ever!
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Jan 19, 2015 15:00
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Thump! posted:Just change the thread name to Storytime with Blistex: The Joys of the Cultural Revolution! I'm going to try an put some stories together tonight after I talk with my wife and she has her nightly Skype with her mom. I want to make sure everything is right and I'm not making a mess of the stories. Here's one off the top of my head about money and CCP economic ineptitude. Post-War Chinese Yuan/Gold/Food Prices: During the earlier days of the cultural revolution the value of the Yuan was all over the place due to the CCP's heavy-handedness when it came economic policies. As a result, transactions in the rural areas usually took the form or bartering. So people who grew corn, wheat, and rice would trade with people who raised chickens or with people who offered services like tailors or contractors. When my grandmother-in-law was raising my mother in law and her sisters (2) and brother (1) she had to sweep streets to make ends meet. Before the CCP victory and before the war, back when her father was alive they made a pretty good living as he had a truck (pretty rare) and would move goods for the government, and later for the Nationalist forces. Her grandfather used to have a small gold mine even earlier than that (during the Republican era, before Chiang Kai-shek took over). As such they had a lot of gold jewelery that was given to them during their wedding and paper money that amounted to a small fortune. After the Republic changed hands to Chiang Kai-shek, the money was changed, but the conversion resulted in a loss, as 1000 RMB in the old cash would end up being 750 RMB in the new money. After the CCP took over there was another change over that resulted in that 750 RMB turning into about half of that. By the time the Cultural revolution started taking hold and getting into full swing in the 60's the paper money was pretty much exhausted, and they had to start trading for food. Since she was a widow without any real skills she had to sweep streets. Obviously that was not going to feed a family of 5, so she started trading gold for food. At the height of the food scarcity during the early 60's you could expect to pay 100 RMB for week's worth of rice (today 100 RMB will get you enough rice for a month). By the early 70's the famine was over, but food scarcity was still a big deal. At this point the paper money had run out, and my grandmother-in-law resorted to trading gold for food. In 1975 her oldest daughter (my aunt-in-law) had a boy and she had to do the "one month sitting" (when you stay in the home for 100 days eating bland food) and traditionally in the North East you eat a lot of eggs. Since she was breastfeeding, and this was the first boy grandson in the family no expense was spared, and she had to get some eggs for her. The height of food inflation (in her mind) was when one gold ring (24k) fetched one egg. She spent a small fortune in gold (which might have amounted to $100,000 in today's market) on a few cartons of eggs and noodles. One of these for an Egg.  She described the amount of gold jewellery as being two handfulls together, so probably more than this and all heavy 24k stuff.  I'm pretty sure that 100 RMB will get you one of these big bags of rice today.  I'm going to put together some stories about the red guard, tearing down the "Old China", and making doctors farmers, and farmers doctors.
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Jan 19, 2015 19:04
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A Jupiter posted:I'm from North Eastern China too but since my parents and I came to Canada I haven't really talked to my grandparents that much. I do remember this one story from when I went back to Harbin a few years ago and visited my dad's side. My father in law grew up in Harbin. What are the odds? Love the feedback, but if anyone else has stories or pictures please contribute. I love sharing these, but I don't want to take over the thread. After I get the Cultural revolution memories out of the way I'll have pretty much exhausted my story supply. Here is a story that causes my wife to bury he head in the nearest pillow at the slightest mention of it. The grandmother in the gold story was also the same grandmother who tried to send me back to Canada with a bunch of poppy seeds so I could grow my own. . . I obviously refused as politely as possible. She grows poppies and then takes the seeds and boils them in tea to help with her arthritis (she is a typical Chinese granny who walks with her back almost 90 degrees forwards). She also smokes raw tobacco leaves rolled in newspaper and sleeps on a stone and clay bed that has a wood stove underneath it. Since her back issues have gotten worse in recent years (30 years of street sweeping will do that) she is mostly confined to the house and watches a lot of TV, but hates the noisy ads (a sentiment all cultures have). My wife and I bought her a portable media player (like a simple tablet, but mostly for watching movies) and we had the vendor selling it load it up with this historical drama series she liked (fairly common service around their area). Our thought process was that she could skip all the ads, and whenever she wanted a new series, they could take it back to the vendor to get it loaded. Along with the tv series, my wife asked the vendor to also put some Indian musicals on there are well, as they are somewhat popular and grandma likes them. I guess the vendor got sloppy when transferring films, as he accidentally loaded up a western porno into the mix, and after she watched the season finale of "50 year golden marriage? (I forget the exact name)" she was treated to your typical run of the mill Guy+Gal porno. About a minute into the film she calls my mother in-law into the room because, "these two people are talking, but there are no subtitles". My mother in-law fools around with the settings and manages to load them and goes back to preparing lunch. Another minute later she hears the grandmother saying, "this movie is very yellow" (they use "yellow" to refer to something with sexual content). My mother in law says, "it will be over soon", assuming it was just a romantic part that showed a little more kissing and skin that the usual mainland fare. A minute later she hears, "this movie is too yellow!". She goes into the room and takes a look and the guy is pushing all his 9" into this chick. They're both shocked, and watch for a few minutes until the girl starts, "kissing his jib" (penis) then shut it off. This resulted in two very awkward situations. 1. We gave my wife's 85 year old grandmother a media player with porn on it. 2. Everyone now assumes I'm as endowed as a "gifted" porn star. The first was easy to explain as we asked the vendor to put the tv series and some movies on the device, and we had nothing to do with it having that movie on it. The second resulted in all her aunts asking my wife how "talented" I was (she is very easily embarrassed so wouldn't say anything), which prompted my father in-law to say, "Blistex makes that guy look like a little boy, all the guys in the mine shower will tell you. Explanation: This is a small mining town and up until the new apartment blocks were built in the 90's, the only shower facilities were at the mine. There was a building that used hot water from the mine's coal boilers for community showers (giant mens shower room with ~50 showers and the same for the women). These are jam packed every night as it's not only really hot water with awesome pressure and a nice tile facility, but it's also a social thing. The week before my father in law took me there (their apartment has a shower, but he wanted to go socialize, and I tagged along). When we arrived he realized that this would be a incredibly awkward as everyone would want a chance to take a look at my "equipment" so at the last minute he sprung for a private room that I could go to alone. I was about to decline, but remembered that the private rooms have a big hot tub (10x10') so I agreed to use it. A month later I went again and declined the private room and it was not as bad as my father in-law thought. Only a few guys were obviously looking, and most people wanted to see if anyone had an rear end as white as mine (nope), resulting in contestants coming up to compare. Luckily I (like everyone else there was pretty drunk) so it was pretty funny at the time and didn't seem awkward as hell. What is awkward is trying to smoke in 99% humidity while you're already crazy drunk, and getting even drunker on warm Baijiu. Here is a ghetto-panorama of the mining town. Behind me is the mine proper, (big open pit nickel mine) and in the first picture you can see the coal boiler plant, and in front of it you can see the shower facility Double-wing building with the elevated middle. In the next photo you can see the apartment complex where my parents in-law had their place. And in the next photo you can see the typical rowed houses, then corn fields, then a man-made pond where they raise fish (white patch in the far background).      
Blistex fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 21:54
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Fojar38 posted:i could think of worse reputations A week later when one of my wife's aunts was measuring my in-seam for a suit I think she was trying to confirm/deny.  (me)WarpedNaba posted:So wait, are you gifted? I'm no "nine incher" but I edge out the N. American average.  Prokhor Zakharov posted:it's cool that your father-in-law is willing to troll the gently caress outta your family like that He is an alcoholic trollmaster. As soon as he has the required amount of alcohol in his system, all the filters are off. It's too bad that I didn't know more mandarin so I could get the gist of all his jokes. My wife is usually unwilling to translate most of them due to their adult/tolling nature. There are quite a few stories that involve him, booze and hilarity, and he's known in town as a bit of a drinker (which is an accomplishment in China). Cultural Revolution Stuff: (backstory) A lot of this stuff is pretty well known due to the horrific/laffo nature of it. Basically the entire 20 year debacle started because Mao realized that he couldn't coast on his victory over the nationalists forever, and combined with his failed invasion of Taiwan and getting nearly 200,000 soldiers killed in the Korean war, he was losing influence to other younger and more competent leaders. Thus the Cultural Revolution was born. Basically the idea was to erase the old china, and establish a personality cult around Mao, while getting rid of anyone who might oppose him. It was basically a Stalinist purge, except culture and history was also included in the deathtoll. Mao focussed his attentions on the youth and uneducated because they were the most easily swayed. Overnight the villiage retard, who never had a job, worked a day in his life, or was able to find a woman became the most powerful person in town. Guys who resented the hell out of everyone would be given mobs with clubs and guns and go crazy "getting even" with anyone who had ever slighted them in the past. In some places it was almost literal anarchy, with mobs of red guards running around killing, looting, and basically letting all their frustrations out. Growing up in Harbin, my father in-law was lucky that his dad was a middle manager in a factory, so he was high enough up the ladder that he made a decent wage, but also not high enough that he would be classified as a "landlord" (a person who was rich or educated). When the cultural revolution started it moved in waves across the country, and reached Harbin later than other places due to it begin very far north. When it did take hold it was apparently less insane as in other places. School: In some parts of the country teachers were dragged out of their classes by students and killed outright, as the students had been emboldened and the roving mobs of red guards would make a lot of their wishes a reality. Chinese teachers are a little harsh, and this was the chance for students to get even. My father in-law was only 7 at the time, but his memories were pretty vivid. In his school nobody was ever killed, but he watched as teachers were taken out of classes, had placards placed around their necks, and made to march down the street while people booed, hit and spat at them. When the people had their fun they just let them go, and some returned to school, and others ran for fear of further retribution. In his older brother's school (high school) the students attempted the same thing, but the principal was a WWII/Korea vet and apparently a big guy and pretty tough (despite being in his 60's at this point). When the red guard attempted to embolden the high school students the principal walked right up the the red guard ringleader and told him to shut up. The red guard went to strike him with his club and promptly got punched in the chest and doubled over. The principal bellowed, "I've killed enough Japanese devils and Yankee aggressors to fill fill 100 graves. What have any of you done for the party? These men (high schools were predominantly male teachers) are trying to prepare you to do the same, get on your knees and apologize!" After the kids begged for forgiveness the red guards went away, and tried to come back in force, but a sign at the gates read, "This is a school of Chinese patriots, and "Principal Name" vouches for their devotion to the party". Apparently the principal was a legit war hero. (this is a second-hand story that was told by an uncle who witnessed it while he was a teen, then related to me by my father in-law who was half in the bag, I'm sure there is a little embellishment). Blistex fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 01:06
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hi liter posted:My parents are Chinese immigrants, and they really don't talk too much about their time during the Cultural Revolution. I've only been told a few awful stories, the worst being that my father was forced to watch a public execution by his foreman at a factory. My grandpa, his dad, got sent out to the country for reeducation, and my Dad's family was marked for being 'bad', or some poo poo. So the foreman apparently forced my dad to go watch people get murdered (it was alluded that this happened more than once) so he could learn to be a good citizen. Nobody in my family recounted stuff like this, but they were mostly what you would call lower-middle class, so they didn't get much attention, and most of them didn't care about politics. There were the teachers that were dragged out of the school, and "rich landlords" who were publicly shamed and sent off to gulag farms for reeducation, but no stories of executions (at least that they wanted to share). hi liter posted:My mom said the worst thing about the time was simply not being able to trust people. Not your neighbors, or even sometimes family members. You never knew who you might slight and they would level a j'accuse against you leaving you to harassment by the Red Guards and other such assholes. This was one of the things that they feared the most during the CR. Most of the brothers and sisters were pretty level-headed and respected their parents enough to keep their mouths shut about some of the traditions they held on to that the CCP would have disliked. Who they really didn't trust were their classmates, and sometimes these little rear end in a top hat kids would be emboldened enough to to just walk into people's houses and start searching for contraband while waving Mao's little red book in front of them. The family couldn't tell them to get out because, "what do you have to hide? You seem particularly guilty for some reason!", and then you could expect to have a dozen red guards tearing your place apart, stealing anything they wanted, and possibly beating you up. People who were caught with traditional books, old china or jewelery, or anything that didn't have Mao's face were outright robbed, and if they had enough contraband, they would be punished. My Grandmother's family's traditional graveyard (tiny little thing on the side of a hill a few hours walk away from their home) was pretty much bulldozed, and people would have 1000 year old family records destroyed. Museums and university archives were ransacked, and old signs and even old doors that might have had a tiny patch of gold paint were torn down and burnt. What is even crazier is that 1950's China, in a lot of ways was much more advanced (socially and economically) than 1960's and 1970's China. My Grandmother in-law said that it wasn't until the late 70's that China had gotten back to the 1950's. Before the cultural revolution, the CCP was focussing more on Taiwan and Korea, and were letting everything else go by the wayside, resulting in the natural Capitalist nature of citizens to drive the economy, technology, and society. In the 1950's it was not unheard of for people to dress up, listen to western music, and generally emulate the rest of world that was addicted to pop-culture. In some places you could see women wearing dresses that were a mix of traditional Chinese styles with a 1950's infusion (apparently you could even find Chinese greasers around Shanghai). Example of some of the more Westernized women's fashions:  The Mine: At this point my father in law and mother in law (early 1970's) were both working in a mining town, but had not started dating yet. This was my grandmother in-law's hometown (previous stories) and during the 60's it had changed from a Corn Growing town in the 30's-50's to a Nickel mining town in the 60's. The two sides of the family ended up meeting here because Mao had this brilliant idea of making city people go to the countryside to farm and work the mines. As you can imagine this was not the most productive idea when it came to growing crops and mining. The mine started out as a pretty basic open-pit mine on the top of a hill. The teams would drill, blast, and remove rubble, sending the ore to be refined. Paste this into Google Maps to see the mine: 42°52'14.35"N 126°29'46.24"E So like was mentioned in a previous post, educated and highly trained people were typically stripped of their positions and sent to toil on the farms. The mine was no different. When it started in the early 60's there were engineers who had drafted mining step progression, ideal locations for roads for the trucks to access the bottom, locations where removed rock should be stored to aid in local infrastructure and development, and they had even built a ski-lift like system that had these big bins that they would load up with ore and which would carry it to the refinery a few km's away. As you can imagine a lot of this stuff required a lot of technical know-how to keep running and to keep safe. The first year that they got rid of the mine managers, the accident rate went through the roof. The mine occasionally had a crushed foot or a typical accident, but as soon as the "leaders" were run out things went to poo poo. There were regular landslides because the unwanted rock that was removed from the mine was just dumped in piles instead of being used to create roadways like it was before. People were not following safety procedures and city people that were just dumped in the mine were not given any training. It was pretty much a weekly occurrence where someone would get crushed by falling rock, run over by a truck, or caught and shredded in a machine. The old rock crushing machine that had long since been abandoned for a larger, newer one still has it's "kill count" in faded paint on its side (12) victims. Edit: most of the people killed by this were hit by rock fragments and not crushed, as the safety guard that prevented shrapnel from crushing was missing. At one point the "ski-lift-ore-carts" motor broke down and pretty much halted all production. This carried the ore directly from the highest point of the mine, to the refinery down the hill and a few km's northeast. With this out of commission they would have to truck the ore to the refinery, but this wasn't an option as they needed all of the trucks to carry the ore out of the mine, and even in that situation they were short trucks as half of them were out of commission due to a lack of trained mechanics (guess they even considered mechanics to be elitists and sent them away). Found this in GIS, and it looks pretty close to what they have (it's still running to this day):  So the word was put out that they needed people to fix the ore-carrier and trucks. It got to the point where they were offering food and housing incentives for people who could get either of them running. Two guys (brothers) tried to fix the ore carrier, which used some manner of hilariously high voltage/amperage source with it's own custom transformer and nearly died when they dropped a tool in the motor and were treated to a giant electrical arc and shower of sparks. Nobody else would go near it as the dropped tool was eventually retrieved and looked like it had been hit with an arc welder a few times. Worse yet, there was nobody who knew how to fix the trucks, and one had to be totally written off and used as spare parts when a volunteer managed to destroy the engine by setting it on fire. Some guys were talking out in one of the corn fields about the situation with the ore carrier, and my father-in-law being a city boy was made to work with them. He overhead that there was a new incentive for fixing the ore carrier (alcohol and cigarettes). Back in the city he had actually taken an interest in being an electrician and learned about it in high school. Now that they were offering an incentive that interested him, he decided to take up the challenge. When he showed up to the mine manager who was trying to recruit a new electrician he told him that he used to have to work for a "mean old landlord" and the landlord made him fix the electricity in his apartments. If he couldn't get the lights back on, his family would be kicked out of the place to live on the street (all a lie, they actually were fairly well off and had electricity in their apartment, which they owned). The manager sent him to work, and as soon as my father in-law saw the setup (massive transmission lines, massive transformer, massive motor) he realized he was in over his head. An hour later the manager showed up to see his progress, and my ba-ba (faster to type) gave him a string of BS technobabble and said it could take days. By the end of the first day he managed to find an interrupter-switch on the motor that had been tripped for some reason. He followed the wires, and saw they led to an oil reservoir. Given that this was a massive motor that drove a ski-lift that moved hundreds of tons of ore at a time, it had a massive bearing, and required a massive amount of lubrication. It seemed that the oil reservoir had a switch that would trip and stop the motor so that the bearings didn't cease up and ruin the engine. This was what stopped the motor. When he found the appropriate oil he topped it up and reset the switch, but the motor wouldn't turn on again. Stumped, he called it a day and threw around some more technobabble to his boss, basically saying he had fixed the motor, and now the transformer needed to be fixed. This amazing work netted him a few packs of smokes and a nice bottle of Baijiu. The next morning ba-ba showed up late and very hung over. The boss questioned him about why he was late, and ba-ba told him a line about research and planning, which seemed to work and he went back up to the motor and transformer. About 5 minutes into the day ba-ba decides to take a cover off of the transformer and sees a row of giant cylindrical fuses and a cartoonishly large toggle switch. The writing on the inside of the panel is obviously warnings and instructions from the accompanying diagrams, but it's in some manner of foreign language (he later determined it was German as this was a Siemens Transformer and Motor). The diagram for the switch is pretty obviously labeled with a lightening bolt and a lightning bolt with an X through it. He turns the power off, and then starts removing the fuses and inspecting them. It becomes quite obvious after a few seconds that there are a few burned out fuses, and that the only problem with the whole setup initially was the low oil causing the motor to cut out. The two clowns that attempted to fix it earlier, managed to blow out the fuses when they dropped their tool and shorted something out, so everything was ready to go as soon as he replaced them (which he did as there was a box full of spares in the parts shed). Just as he was about to flip the switch back on and show everyone that the motor was fixed, he had a thought. "If one day's work got me a few packs of smokes and some alcohol, maybe another day will net me the same". When the boss came back he found diagrams for wires, fuses, and electrical symbols ba-ba wrote on various papers (he copied an electrical diagram in one of the manuals he found) and tons of stripped wires, and parts all over the place. Ba-Ba raided the parts shed and grabbed a bunch of spare parts and wires to make it look like he had been doing a lot of work and that it was very technical and involved. The boss was a little wary, and asked if he should send for an expert from the city. Worried that he would be discovered, ba-ba said that wasn't necessary, and everything would be up and running by lunch tomorrow. The boss was ecstatic, and gave him more smokes and two bottles of Baijiu that night. 11:30 the next morning Ba-Ba rolled out of bed with the worst headache of his life. Seeing the sun was nearly directly overhead he ran to the mine and narrowly avoided the boss who was running around the place screaming his name and looking like he was going to kill someone. Ba-ba managed to make it to the transformer unseen, removed the panel, flipped the switch, and got the ore-carrier up and running. The boss (hearing and seeing the carrier was working again) ran up and hugged ba-ba and thanked him a hundred times. I guess production being stopped for that long had gotten a lot of high-ranking people's attentions, so the boss was worried he would be sent to a gulag if things were not running. Ba-ba explained his absence as him having to go back home to get some tools and some more diagrams he had been working on. The boss was so happy that he gave Ba-ba the position of "head electrician" on the spot, which was a position he held up until 2011, when he retired. During his tenure at the mine electrician, he found he had a natural aptitude for electrical work, and the current boss of the mine (on ba-ba's retirement day) remarked that the ore-carrier will miss him, and will probably die from no longer getting Ba-Ba special care. Ba-Ba decided to give a speech and just told the above story, which all of his coworkers had known for years, but the boss didn't, causing him jump to his feet and loudly exclaim, "you just made me a liar you rear end in a top hat!" (joking or course). Broken Trucks: Because of the lack of skilled mechanics, the truck situation was getting pretty dire as well. The truck fleet that moved ore and waste rock up the hill to be dumped had been shrinking due to attrition and lack of proper maintenance, so half them were out of commission and the ore and rock that needed to be moved was starting to pile up. At this point in time my mother in-la (Ma-Ma) wasn't doing much of anything. Her schooling was pretty much cut short as all the teachers had fled and the only things they learned in class were Mao's quotes, the revisionist history of the civil way, and the future of the Chinese people (all filtered through the mind of a semi-literate red guard-come-teacher). Most of Ma-Ma's time was spend working in the fields and helping her mom take care of her younger brothers and sisters. A similar call for Mechanics was sent out like the call for an electrician, and someone nominated Ma-Ma as a mechanic. This was a result of a communication mixup, as the topic of "Truck Experience" was pretty talked about due to the dying fleet and someone mentioned that Ma-Ma's grandfather used to have a truck during the war. This went through the the Chinese version of "the telephone game" and word reached another mine boss that Ma-Ma could fix trucks. There was no interview, for the position. Ma-Ma was to report to the garage and begin fixing trucks. As luck would have it, a former classmate of hers that lived in the city and who had a crush on her (she was the prettiest girl in the village) heard a mechanic was needed and arrived the day before she did. He had actually been trained in the PLA to fix large diesel engines, so this was right up his alley. Since he was pining for Ma-Ma he let her take just as much credit for his work, while she prepared meals for him and the other people in the garage during work hours. Every time she tried to do some work that she knew how to do (change oil, change a tire, replace a filter) all the guys would fall over themselves trying to impress her and do it themselves. Their infatuation with Ma-Ma was so bad that when Ba-Ba and her started dating a few months later, they (4 of them) were all so pissed that they were going to ambush him one night while he was walking home from the mine and really put the boots to him (one of them told Ba-Ba all of this years later when they were friends). So Ba-Ba's shift was over later than most people's because he had to do a lot of his work during the lulls and downtime when equipment was given a rest at night. He arrived home even later because he would usually drink for an hour or two with friends before leaving work, which also made him look like an amazing worker to his boss, "Holy poo poo, Li is leaving two hours after he was supposed to go home, what a dedicated worker". Anyway, these 4 jealous guys from the garage were waiting in the tall grass beside a darker, lonelier stretch of road between the mine and the town (~.75 km). They were waiting in the ditch when Ba-Ba appeared in the distance, strolling down the road, occasionally throwing punches or kicks and making a stereotypical Kung Fu sound. The guys all of a sudden sink lower in the ditch and start talking about how they heard he knew Kung Fu and could break bricks with his hand. As Ba-Ba walked past their position on the road none of them made a move or a sound. It turns out the Kung-Fu and Breaking bricks story was a result of Ba-Ba getting really drunk with his friends, showing off his non-existent martial arts skills, and hitting his head on a brick wall and passing out (which later morphed into him being a Kung-Fu expert who could break bricks). When he's being exceptionally annoying Ma-Ma will jokingly (we hope) exclaim that she hoped those guys killed him that night. Edit: Fixed a few grammar issues. Blistex fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 18:19
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Thanks for all the feedback. I think I'll end the memories on a high note and go back to posting pics instead of recollecting mundane poo poo nobody cares about. :bigpeeler:
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Jan 21, 2015 01:34
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The rest of the Cultural revolution stuff is pretty mundane. One last Ba-Ba drunken exploit story. * Back in 1992 the mine had a picnic for the workers in the town. They loaded up a few buses and people drove their cars and trucks out to a clearing at the edge of a nearby river. During the festivities all the guys were drinking, and naturally my Ba-Ba indulged. . . a lot! Eventually he passed out (apparently him and his friends were all snoring in a circle in the grass, with lit cigarettes burning small patches of grass). When everyone else was packing up they decided it would be easier to put him in the back of one of the trucks rather than carry him into the bus. Other passed out guys got carried on to the buses, but my wife assumed her mom was annoyed by the prospect of having to take care of him that night and just told his friend the back of the truck would be ok. Well everyone was going home and one of the guys who was in the front of the truck lived a few km down a side road. I guess they forgot about Ba-Ba in the back, and didn't bother to slow down on the bumpy road. They dropped the guy off, headed back up the road, and the one guy exclaimed, "Oh poo poo, Li is in the back!" They slowed down, and drove the last stretch of the ride back to his house much more carefully. When they picked him out of the truck it looked like he had been in a boxing match, and didn't block a single punch. When Ba-Ba got up the next day he felt really sore and walked to the balcony to have a smoke. When he passed a mirror he yelled, as his hazy mind thought he had seen a stranger in the apartment. Ma-Ma told him he was super rude at the picnic and decided to pick a fight with the boss, who naturally beat the poo poo out of him. That afternoon he was less than a block from his boss's house with a huge fruit basket and an apology speech in his head before a co-worker passing by had a chat with him and set him straight. He was so pissed with her that he threw the basket in a nearby pig pen and spend the night at his brother's place. * He's actually a very well liked and respected person in the community, and almost everyone goes to him when they need something or something fixed, as he has a lot of connections and can get just about anything.
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Jan 21, 2015 03:22
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Bro Dad posted:i finally found china.jpg: "He may be a crazed despot pedophile who would rather millions starve or be executed than become irrelevant, but he's our crazed despot pedophile ." - Provincial leader who's 4 kids all have houses in the US with matching supercars and who is just another three years from defecting there as well.
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Jan 23, 2015 15:29
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JaucheCharly posted:You forgot the part where he's so incredibly senile and smelly that his aides have to wash him with a spong while he's sleeping. He was also known to not brush his teeth and defecate in the garden. "Perhaps the most eye-catching accounts in Li's book have to do with Mao's sex life. Despite his infertility, Mao indulged in young women--sometimes more than one at the same time--and engaged in Taoist sexual practice to prolong his life. Mao even had a special bed made for his sexual activity, with the edge of one side raised about four inches higher than the rest of the bed, which he took every place he traveled, even to Moscow. His hygiene was even more eccentric; according to Li, Mao's "genitals were never cleaned." Instead, Mao said, "I wash myself inside the bodies of my women." He never brushed his teeth, either; instead, he simply used tea to rinse out his mouth when he woke, eating the leaves after drinking the water, as many peasants in southern China did."
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Jan 23, 2015 21:28
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Fartmaster posted:That sounds interesting, is this the book it's from? I believe so (have not had a chance to read it yet). I was looking for the quote where one of his entourage was talking about how he would keep asking for younger and younger girls, and his minders were starting to get a little worried/creeped out (I think this might be from a different source than the book you listed). I read somewhere that they finally had to tell the underaged girls to lie about their age as they were not comfortable rounding up volunteers from middle schools. Fojar38 posted:maoist china is what happens if you put a literal goon in charge of a country Mao was an accomplished poet, and in his early years he managed to inspire his followers. Like was mentioned earlier, he pretty much stumbled into victory and power due to some clever propaganda, some lucky wins and the Nationalists wearing themselves out against the Japanese and some corruption (some nationalist generals would sell weapons to the Commies). To add some more JPG to the mix...  You might have seen this image posted in a WWII thread or article about the "racial diversity" of the Nazis. This is Chiang Wei-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's adoptive son. He was sent over to Germany to get military training and was actually commander of a Panzer unit during the 1938 Austrian Anschluss. He was about to lead a unit in the invasion of Poland, but was recalled to China. He lead tank units against the japanese and the commies. Despite being successful, the overall situation was stacked against him, and he withdrew his unit to Taiwan.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:00
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Scald posted:holy poo poo, this is amazing. My girlfriend is from Hong Kong and literally all but one of those are 100% accurate. (it was the horror movie one) My wife is from the Jilin and the only one that wasn't accurate for her was the phone number. She watched this and said that southern girls are soap-opera stereotypes.
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Jan 24, 2015 02:56
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st1LL_51ngl3 posted:Haha, jesus christ i love how many completely irrelevant threads the circumcision topic seeps into. There were pet vendors all over this outdoor market in Uijeongbu South Korea and it was pretty loving depressing. This one vendor I saw every weekend would have a few cages of baby rabbits (not babies, but still small). In all I'd say he would cart about 5 cages out there on his pushcart with about 10 rabbits in each cage (standing room only, no water). By about 3:00pm when I'd be heading back to the subway there would usually be about 10-15 dead rabbits. Every weekend I'd walk by and throw some flyers over the top of the cage, point at the sun, point at them, then make the universal sign for dead", but the old fucker would just nod his head, say "yeah" and as soon as I was 15 feet away take the newspaper off again and let them loving roast to death. In case you don't know, rabbits are very bad at regulating their temperature when in the direct sunlight and overheat really easy.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:11
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fits my needs posted:he wants to sell baby rabbits vs larger rabbits which probably are harder to sell and he has to feed more. sound oriental strategy. It wasn't so much that they were younger rabbits, but that they were baking to death in direct sunlight and with no water. Wouldn't matter if they were adult rabbits, as bunnies generally don't do well in direct sunlight on a +31 Celsius day with no water.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:30
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Trochanter posted:I'm almost afraid to ask, what's the significance of this? For missionary and doggy style, working uphill might be nice, but knowing Mao, it was probably some retarded thing about getting the blood to flow where it needed as he was a fat goon who probably laid there while the girl did all the work and he blew smoke in her face and got ash everywhere. Mao was such a playa, he still has girls climbing on him. 
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Jan 25, 2015 16:32
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JaucheCharly posted:Good news young lady, the chairman has picked you today. The bad news: you're either blowing or kissing him. I'm wondering how many girls  on his junk during one of his longer hiatuses from swimming when he took off the trousers and asked them to get the motor running before they climbed on top?
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Jan 25, 2015 16:48
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icantfindaname posted:Too late, they already destroyed them all This is hilariously and unfortunately true. During the cultural revolution the amount of priceless artifacts and family heirlooms destroyed was incredible. Despite the retarded nation of your average Red Guard, they were able to destroy the vast, vast majority of what the Chinese government would now consider historically significant pieces. Ironically (and amazingly) enough, treasures looted by European nations and taken during the Nationalist's retreat to Taiwan constitute the majority of historically valuable pieces, and in some cases examples of certain art forms, documents, sculptures, etc. would not exists if they were not looted or taken to Taiwan.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:56
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ElGroucho posted:"Lets gather up everybody who has a professional trade and murder them or take their jobs! Fuckin doctors, lawyers and educators. Who needs 'em!" During the high-water mark of the Cultural Revolution the only qualifications for being a doctor, teacher, engineer, etc. was your devotion to the party and your knowledge of Mao's quotes. You had "engineers" trying to build roads, buildings, bridges, run factories, ect. who had no idea what they were doing. So you ended up with some of the lowest productivity during the Communist's rule. Bridges would fall apart mid-construction, roads would crumble after a few rains, and buildings would be unable to support their own weight, or would be hilariously over-engineered so as to use up the materials in one that would normally be sufficient for an entire block. Doctors were not immune to this either, and whenever party officials needed medical attention they would either have to try and find one in a gulag or rural farm, or go to Moscow. The higher-level officals would have their own private doctors, so this was more a problem for the lower tier guys. Another huge problem was that you took all these city dwelling professionals, forced them to toil the land, and even if they did have an idea of how one should farm, they had to follow the orders of retard-grade Red Guards who had no clue what they were doing. If you tried to give them some advice, good luck not getting a lashing for letting your "evil landlord" tendencies come to the surface. Another interesting things about Government Officials having special privileges is that there is a separate food production industry in China specifically for them, so that they never have to worry about food contamination, etc. Story about it here: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20110920000008&cid=1103
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Jan 28, 2015 21:47
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JaucheCharly posted:e: What do the people of Taiwan think of the culture revolution? "What the gently caress? Glad we're over here!"
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Jan 29, 2015 04:01
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etalian posted:glad to live in a place which has sparrows "To accomplish this task, Chinese citizens were mobilized in massive numbers to eradicate the birds by forcing them to fly until they fell from exhaustion. The Chinese people took to the streets clanging their pots and pans or beating drums to terrorize the birds and prevent them from landing. Nests were torn down, eggs were broken, chicks killed, and sparrows shot down from the sky. Experts estimate that hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed as part of the campaign."
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Jan 29, 2015 04:55
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JaucheCharly posted:Since it's inevitable that there's tentacles and females hysterically squeaking in the Japan thread, is there some kind of pornographic flavour that's typical chinese? The mainland Chinese are firmly in the "breast men" category, and with the exception of Hong Kong Cat III, there isn't a Chinese porn industry of any kind. Most Chinese guys I've talked to are fans of Japanese porn, but don't like the squealing by the female stars, or the "noodle-sucking" sounds during oral. They also have pretty mainstream tastes (Boy/Girl, one on one) and don't seem to be big on lesbian stuff. Chinese tastes in Soft Porn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi-LG6Mdw3o&t=5462s  (posted in the previous thread as well)
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Jan 29, 2015 21:18
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JaucheCharly posted:Cheap hookers? Hookers are actually pretty expensive in China for your average sexually frustrated lower-middle class guy, although rub and tug is now legal, since it's a type of therapeutic massage.
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Jan 29, 2015 21:32
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Jaramin posted:In other news: <looks at manufacturing tag on bottom, nods knowingly>
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Jan 30, 2015 01:21
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Uncle Wemus posted:Is Mao's grandson a general? Yes, but if I had to guess, in title only.
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Jan 30, 2015 05:55
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Monkey Fracas posted:
He's fat, He has a stupid haircut, His sleeves are too long, He literally looks like a retard who just got the news that he's going to Disney Land, His handler is barely able to contain his, "loving shoot me now" expression, And it looks like he's either worried fatty is going to fall over backwards, or he's trying to get him out of public before that really wet fart he just heard turns into a very obvious stain. If you're not laughing, you're broken!
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Jan 30, 2015 06:34
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icantfindaname posted:haha what the gently caress apparently China's Tencent Maps or whatever their protectionist clone of Google Maps is has the bullshit South China Sea claims highlighted in bright yellow as the default starting view Pretty much every Asian country in the area has their own version of this map, except the S. China Sea is their territory and renamed to their version of it. (see: Korea vs. Japan and the West Sea/Sea of Japan) Edit: Just remembered that there was a thread a few years back on the Spratley Island situation, and I did an effort post on China's hilarious efforts to claim it as their own, and some goon got really loving butthurt that I and the rest of the gbs hivemind didn't knowledge CHina's rightful claim to territory hundreds of miles from their coasts. Blistex fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 31, 2015 15:32
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China's Spratley Island building campaign to show their historical claim to the area. . . by outright building islands because they showed up to the game 50 years late and there are no more left. China's Claim: Think Big!  This "island" was created by sinking metal tubes to the bottom, then pumping them full of cement. China always refers to these outposts as islands so they can try and enforce territorial waters.  Another Island: (keep piling dredged sand until it pokes above the surface, then drive metal poles down as far as you can until it seems solid, then place a concrete pillbox on top.  Another example of what you can build on top of a submerged sandbar if you have the money. This one is a radar station.  Don't let the greenery fool you, this was made the same way the others were. Build a cement box, and fill it with dredged sand and top it off with crushed rock and cement. Those trees have been transplanted to make it look like there was always an island there.  No, a private kindergarten didn't drift out to sea.  I think this might be the one where there was a tiny rock sticking up and they put a base on top. As you can see that is all crushed rock that has been shipped in.  Here is an example of what they are up against when it comes to Vietnam and Thailand's current islands. While they do have some hilarious ones like the Chinese, they actually do have ones that could qualify as territorial waters.    Poor Philippines: They're holding out on an abandoned WWII US landing craft that the Vietnamese cut loose.
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Jan 31, 2015 16:05
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Cuatal posted:I think those fake islands are actually really cool, though the third picture has Vietnamese flags on the boats, so I'm not sure if you were using that just as an example or there was something weird going on where the Vietnamese got super close to the Chinese mini-island thing. Yah, that one is Vietnamese. I downloaded something like 50 photos from GIS and must have uploaded the wrong one. A lot of those "islands" that are just pillboxes look alike. But you get the picture. China does have one large parcel of land that they managed to hold on to called Yongxing Island, but trying to sort who owns who is a loving nightmare as GIS is full of pictures of every island, with 15 different names, all linking to articles claiming it's another country's sovereign territory. Looking back, I think the island with the big runway and radar dome might be Yongxing. This is just as confusing geographically as it is diplomatically.
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Feb 1, 2015 15:52
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Someone please give me a highly detailed history of the cultivation of plants for making tea with particular reference to china and its origins thanks  http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/tea-leaf-pickers-required-to-be-virgins-have-c-cup-breasts.html
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Feb 3, 2015 03:12
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icantfindaname posted:Also another thing with foreign students is that historically those countries were poor enough that only the absolute best of the best made it to the US, but now that China's getting richer anyone with money to burn can send their idiot fuckup son who failed out of the Chinese education system to the US instead. A big chunk of Chinese studnets in the US are people who got poo poo scores on the Gaokao / college entrance exams. Something that has literally never happened.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:52
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FirstPersonShitter posted:at my secondary school the head teacher went on a visit to a chinese school (to try and win expensive-fee-paying foreign students) and she went to a boarding school in a city that sits in a natural valley that is eternally filled with smog. the only time off the students got was sunday afternoon, and they just used that time to sleep more because class ran from 7am to 10pm. I was teaching at a Korean Public High School that was built and operated like a Private Dormitory High School. Student got up at 6:00am, ran up the side of a mountain for an hour, got back showered, had breakfast, then started classes at 8:00am. 45 minutes off for lunch, another 45 for supper, and they didn't leave the classes until 6:00pm. They then had to go to the library building which had very few books, but hundreds of cubical desks where they had to memorize textbooks until 12:00am. They then went to their dorms, showered changed, and went to bed. . . which meant they had to study for another 2 hours. If their lights went out before 2:00am they got a knock on the door. They only went home on korean holidays, and every other weekend. Summer was a month and a half off, March break was a week, and Christmas was two weeks. From what I head, if they were from a rich family they would go on a vacation for March, but the other holidays usually resulted in their parents enrolling them in private study schools. I referred to this place as a "Concentration Camp" because they had to constantly study, but also they couldn't leave. Asian education really emphasizes the memorization of things, as opposed to the learning how to solve/research/plan. The stuff they were retaining in their 20 hour days was probably less than your typical western schoolkids because they were constantly on the verge for passing out from exhaustion and brains don't learn so well in such a state.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:04
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saucerman posted:How the hell do you not get crazy when you sleep less than 4 hours a night? If you had some fun at least but no, it's only studying. Coffee! That was pretty much all the students drank in my high school. Korean coffee is pretty tame caffine wise, but it does the trick if you're a teen and you drink 6 cans a day. Students would fall asleep at their desks in the most hilarious and unnatural ways. I tried to make the classes interesting and useful, instead of just test preparation. We would watch the tamer episodes of South Park. They loved the Warcraft one. I'd have a question sheet that was based on the episode they were watching that would test them on slang, vocab, and generally following the plot. We'd have discussions about the ethical situations in the episodes, and have a pretty good time. I'd show them interesting music videos (They loved the White Stripes and other bands with unique videos with interesting imagery, and they loved the exposure to different musical styles. We would talk about Visiting other places, lots of powerpoints with photos of places all over the world, etc. I would basically take whatever interested them, and try and turn it into a fun and meaningful lesson where they got a better appreciation of things they never talked about in school. If a student fell asleep in class, I wouldn't wake him or her. I bought a bulk pack of earplugs would occasionally turn the lights off and blast an oral English test with a "do not disturb, test in progress" sign on the door and let them sleep for the full hour (about 2-3 times a month). We did a lot of conventional learning as well, but I had a surprising amount of freedom when if came to establishing the English curriculum. The most ballsy thing I did was telling the principal that I was taking the entire 1st grade (grade 9) on a field trip to a hiking trail behind the school, but instead we went on the roof of the school dormitory and had a 6 hour nap this one sunny day. Everyone grabbed a blanket and pillow from their dorm rooms and just zonked out for the afternoon. One girl told me she didn't remember the last time she slept that long. The day I left I was given a box with ~300 notes that student wrote me with the sweetest and most heartbreaking stuff. After the going-away ceremony both of my shoulders were pretty much soaked from students giving me tearful farewells. saucerman posted:That said, the suicide rate in South Korea among the highest in the world: There is a saying that the night of the Korean SAT's, half the students party like wild animals, the other half find a building to jump off of. saucerman posted:It is really stupid. The more they pressure the kids the less likely they are to learn. So they pressure them more. It's a vicious cycle. I had the most "Catch 22" discussion with the principal about the amount of sleep/learning and how it works. I almost had him convinced to let me have one class sleep 8 hours a night and see what happens to their grades at the next monthly testing session. He decided against it because there is no way they would not score poorly with all that study time wasted.
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Feb 5, 2015 02:10
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