Uh-oh, I’m worried I’m running out of good Chinglish pics from my archives.
I am always discovering new random words, but the flow might have to slow down soon.
How about if it was one pic per post, but more than once a week?
Here’s what we got now:
Nutural Vegtable Cssence, in your milk
Would you drink that?
Note what you’re not allowed to bring on the bus
wonderful of the Universe
Lastly, Biessings to the massage!
Not that this was the same time period, but here’s me in Tokyo!
I sincerely try not to judge people.
I really do. I try, and I don’t always succeed, but I try. Intellectually I know I shouldn’t be judgmental.
When it comes to sexually promiscuous women, I can be torn. On the one hand, we are all adults and we should be free to do whatever we want. Me included. Some people express themselves sexually and they are healthy about it, they want to give themselves pleasure and society shouldn’t force arbitrary rules causing unnecessary shame. It’s simple, really.
Yet, there is on the other hand: how some people seem to warrant further psychoanalyzing to see why they are having all that wild anonymous group sex. Certain peoples with issues and acting out. Can’t help but wonder what’s wrong. Or at least, can’t we be morbidly curious about why people are the way they are?
I still have some enlightening to do myself…
Honestly, I don’t even care that all that much. It’s not my business. Let me start over. This is all from a totally amoral standpoint.
I simply don’t want her to text me those pictures of her fucking multiple men, and often pictures of her fucking those multiple men at once. I’m just not into seeing that. And she kept sending them unsolicited again and again. Emails, text apps. Skanky invitations (for lack of a better term), I’d tell her to leave me alone, and she continuously pushed at me and pushed at me the most graphic sexual imagery possible.
That’s weird, right?
Yuki
I don’t think it was a moment of desperation or anything like that. A mere moment of playfulness. Not particularly special or anything.
Well, after online dating for so long, the odds were in my favor that eventually I’d meet someone off and the drama would begin.
So. I was single now and feeling frisky one day, as single men tend to do, and I messaged some lady on POF and said I was doing a survey on hand jobs. Rate your skill 1 to 10. Funny much?
She was apparently intrigued and messaged me back.
Yuki was my age. She’d done some kind of trading business. I know she’d been to Vegas before and was internationally-minded enough. Her ‘name’ was a Japanese (Chinese people rarely use their real names when speaking English to foreigners, they usually choose a Western name but some people do like to be called something more exotic). She wasn’t all that hot. She was curvy for a Chinese woman. She was quite willing. How was I to know it would turn out bad?
After a latenight dinner we took a taxi to my house and so on. Whatever. We met a few times after that I guess. It wasn’t like that memorable. She wasn’t supposed to have turned out to be this big a deal still bothering me today.
Some time passed, there was no indication that we should become a serious couple, and one day she asked if she could stay at my place for several days. Um, what?
She had been telling me she was looking for a new place, looking to move. She was just in-between. It happens. Or, does it?
It was terrible. I can be such a sucker. I laid out some ground rules, and I let her bring over luggages and crash. She went out to work or something in the days, and then came over at nights and left many dirty dishes and crap lying around.
Worst of all, she was always around. My whole personal routine was interrupted. I like to be alone most of the time, to be honest.
I do invite people over from time to time. I’ve written about Couchsurfing, for example. Thing about those situations though, is that there is a plan beforehand. A specific date of when the guest leaves, an endpoint.
Yuki soon overstayed her welcome and I told her she needed to get out. This wasn’t cool. She needed to get the hell out of my house.
It was hard to read this person. I mean, she’d been abroad. A moderately middle-class Chinese woman, I’d suppose. Didn’t seem like she was broke. It’s not hard to find an apartment in Shenzhen, so why did she need to be in-between like this?
Was she actually homeless, drifting from man to man’s houses? Or, just desperate for human contact?
I don’t know. I don’t want to know too much. Just stop taking advantage of me.
Then, another day a month or so later, it came eerily close to stalking.
That time she came over without warning was unacceptable. I hate when women do that. I have a routine, I need to be alone to be productive. I don’t like surprises. Sure I let her stay over, but I told her in no uncertain terms that she could never ever come over unannounced again.
When I later moved, I made it a point to not forward her my new address.
And lest you think I’m some pig rejecting an innocent Chinese girl who only wanted to be my girlfriend… Then the explicitness began.
Now, I’m not necessarily opposed to sexting. I may indulge in such from time to time. But when the unsolicited nude pictures started, and were then followed up by pictures of sex with other men’s dicks, I had to politely ask her to stop. She can be exhibitionist all she wants, but don’t I get to inform consent?
And they kept on coming. Dick pics. Other men’s dicks. More dicks. Then two dicks at once. Then a video. Then more.
Drown
I want to drown
Lungs to suck
I want to own
Someone to fuck
But I want a sale
don’t pay that much
For the price I’d pay
I wouldn’t get very much
But if I drowned
The ocean would rape my breath
What a sound!
Watery road to death
And all for free!
I’d pay for that
My kind of fee
They don’t charge too bad
2/3/2008
Between drugs, we’ve all been there. Don’t freak out and have a bad trip, chill! Set and setting…
Today’s singular post was brought to you by Martalivesinchina.wordpress.com, be sure to check out her awesome China (and Spain) blog 😀
Finally cutting the long hair, an era ended. She took the picture
In the midst of my general soul-searching of late, I realize that I put too much prudence on the idea of having a girlfriend. As opposed to the specific individuality of a person and how her personality and vibe would match with mine. I tend to rely too much on false hope, without any real foundation, and reap the consequences of such later. This kind of thing may go for this episode.
Mid-2012. I was meeting girls from time to time, whatever. I wanted more. I wanted a partner, stability, someone to hang out to always be there to hang out with me. Tired of the chase, I wanted the idea.
I met Jeanie on the ol’ website. She thought I was interesting, and funny! Believe it or not.
She was Chinese; she was educated and worked in some international company. I think she made more money than me.
She had the most perfect skin. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman I ever met, but she was the most beautiful woman I ever met online.
The problem with meeting a partner online, I always say, is it’s not a good story of how you met.
But who really cares about the stigma of dating online that in this day and age?
I suppose the simple truth of why it didn’t work out is we didn’t have all that much in common. We ran out of things to talk about. I’d repeat myself. There wasn’t that much to confide, not that much to be deep over.
For a while, we did have a pleasant routine. She was always busy with work, which was far away in Luohu. We went to all the cool dating places early on, such as when we went to the top of the KK Building – tallest building in Shenzhen. I tried taking her to parties but she wasn’t into it. The rave was a particularly bad idea, she was so bored. There was one cool episode when she babysat me tripping on smuggled psilocybin chocolate at Lianhua Mountain.
But sooner or later, every weekend would roll around and she would be too tired to go about town and she just wanted to chill in my Meilin apartment. I suppose nothing wrong with that. Just the two of us tended to be quite nice. We watched a lot of Mad Men.
I was very serious about writing back then, and spent most of my free time on my novel. I didn’t need to be a super fun-time-all-the-time social butterfly type, and she didn’t want that from me. My popularity in the Shenzhen scene was waning. “Didn’t you move to Guangzhou?” everyone said, unaware that I’d been back for a while and uncaring. Which suited me fine. I was in my own little world.
We did travel once. We only went to Zhuhai, but we did go there together and it was nice.
Zhuhai is beach town two hours away from Shenzhen. I’ve been there several times. It borders the former Portuguese colony – and current gambling pit – of Macau, and is one of the four original Special Economic Zones of reformed China. (Shenzhen, by the by, being the first of the SEZs.)
Zhuhai happens to be her hometown, and she was visiting her family one holiday three-day weekend and I decided to tag along. After her filial duties, I bused over and met her at a hotel. She showed me around some islands and we taxied around to eat and to shop and to see the sights. It’s a fun place to explore at night.
“Welcome to Zhuhai,” she said on the hotel bed.
Cute and pretty, full of love
Alone and wandering, here and wondering
I wish that sound was love
But the sky’s so far and I am dying
Its my pleasure
to stare, from near to there
where I am safe from blood and life and so I hear
In the shine of knife, a slice, appear thus here
The numbers match, equal time, every tune
and we can fly in the air, any time I swear
The summer’s catch, feed us true
Upon the dashed sunny curls of her hair
“Everybody loves me,”
they sing, and swing, and stab.
“Everyone a sorry sad affair, you see, one-two-three…”
and then I die, and that was all the time for me.
Enough of eyes so wide, every time
Worth the while
only I wish,
I didn’t die
Time to speak goodbyes, to rest, with a smile or a sigh
and be at peace, or deny
…it was the best of lies
…it was to be alive
11/4/07
Sorry, no more T-shirts. For now.
I’m out but I’ll work on secretly hunting unsuspecting pedestrians and taking their picture…
What’s interesting about these below is that they aren’t from the archives. All recent from the last few weeks!
I like playing with cartoon hair
At least it’s not a fleshlight of evil
Those flowers and trees always have a lot of feelings
Not directly related to post below, but when I went to Taipei later that year. The mood seems to apply somehow
Spring of 2012. Upon returning to Shenzhen, I was in a bit of a dry spell. Or rather, continuing a bit of a dry spell. Life was going well enough, I was productive and working out often and biking and writing and generally getting used to my newly familiar setting. Self-growth, nicely, for the most part. But I guess I was out of practice in one regard. It happens.
Various rejections. In person and online. Whatever. Finally, I decided to take some dreaded pickup advice. Ach, that whole thing. Off and on I must admit I’ve been into that. Not something I need consider these days, but at the time I figured why not…
I went on POF and made a new profile. I took a blurry picture of myself in goggles and a funny hat – a bit apprehensive that anyone might recognize me – and proceeded to create the most ridiculous profile possible. The kind of thing you can’t even mock, a total caricature of an entitled prick who thinks he’s some gift to women and is totally arrogant about it. All intentions put out there. It is total bullshit, and I’d have no need to do this thing nowadays, but it was the time to rack up experience. What can I say?
“Run away,” I wrote. “If you know what’s good for you.”
That’s called disqualification, or some such shit.
Wouldn’t you know it? The damn thing actually worked.
Thing was, I was funny. Nobodytook it seriously, they just enjoyed the crass humor because was something different than the usual horde of desperate lonely men on dating sites.
First, I met a nice girl named Emma. I peaked her interest; we chatted for a while.
I do like communicating by email. I am in control of my thoughts, no awkward pauses, and I can edit accordingly before hitting send. People usually get my sense of humor, although I sometimes can get myself in trouble. Naturally, the emails then upgraded to phone texting. Which is a medium I am also well experienced in though not my preference.
Everybody has their own preferred method of communication. Some people like long phone conversations. Some, a dying breed, write actual letters. I guess even my breed’s long emails is slowly becoming endangered. Most everybody is cool with just texting these days, for sure.
After texting upgraded to talks, we made plans. She bussed over to my neighborhood. Upon meeting in person, I immediately had to give up the facade and just act my usual dumb self.
She’s cute, I though. She was short. She wasn’t a knockout, but she had a certain style about her I could appreciate. I took her to a little whole-in-the-wall pub, escalated and so on, made out a bit.
She was a Chinese English teacher. That is, she’s a Chinese person who works as an English teacher. Hence, her English was rather good. We had good conversations. I liked talking to her.
My dateable standards definitely preclude fluent speakers of English only. Though I’m studying Mandarin as much as I can, to go on dates and make a human connection I need to have real conversation.
I don’t get that breed of expats who fuck girls they can’t even talk to, but those are a muddy breed indeed.
He Xiangning Art Museum is still among my favorite museums in Shenzhen. I’m still amazed by the quality of exhibitions they host. The latest is “Conforming to Vicinity — A cross-straits Four-region Artistic Exchange Project 2014”, which showcases thirteen artists from Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Get it?
Starting from Macau then on to Pingtun in Taiwan (next stop HK), the exhibition has migrated to different cities and adapts to the style of the locale. Even though the mainland is less free than those other sovereign/pseudosovereign versions of China, I do trust that all art was being true to itself with minimal political pressure. No heavy-handed propaganda about Taiwan joining a harmonious union, all was subtle. Indeed, I believe cultural exchanges are great things in promoting overall peace.
There is a lot of meaning to these pieces. For more information go to hxnart.com or even better come in person and pick up the bilingual literature.
I thoroughly enjoyed and I recommend to tall. The museum is at OCT subway station, follow the signs. Free entry. Closed Mondays.
Fortress Besieged Game: Disordered Region
Zhang Wenzhou
Note the chair near the ceiling…
Chang of Ink Spots video installation
Hung Keung
Banknote Figure Paintings:
When We Were Together
Mao Zedong Among the People
Zhao Lin
(Interesting sidenote, Continue reading
so i am working no i am quitting.
No, thing is I am working idling,
for the Rite, the plight, the plundered spite
Can’t see the point of this-that juncture
Other futures I’d prefer to junk her
When life beckons waste the day
Media Whore not of Babylon but funny happy consumer play
far more approachable
if I had monies with which to eat seratonin cereal
flakes grinding betwixt plaque-ridden ivoryscape
Lame ill motherfuckers, you all I hate
Yours and you, defined by it and tits.
I deserve a name on the streetcorner, to step on and piss
so where’s my half of the emptying glass decayed?
Sleep is for the wicked and wakefulness for the lazy spayed.
Its a dusted tainty dainty space
where I will have made my redundant marked pissed place.
To put more bluntly, what I want of you and what you want is of me
yet neither of our bargains a very good deal.
Someone in the equation is more quadratic than the next,
and it ain’t me hun, its best
Time would rather be spent in masturboratory excess.
Or else, come the impotence, much less
In one epoch’s time the hole in my mind,
in one eon’s space the gap in brains,
and its not a visual sense of whatnot
any more than a babe’s eyes are half-eaten fleshly muck
or mire in the span of a thousand goat-things made of Pentagram heads
or rather Pentagon beds
where they sleep with things not of the silica
but of the pinnacle —
of undream and profane and unlife and propane.
Cuz declerations of intent are not ready to implement,
marathon running under the radar, not too prickly or good or sub-par.
Its an overwhelming mess inside this matter, its a bit too lame get any sadder.
Nah, not a peach, eh, trust a leech.
See, its not my kind of scene — I’d rather be a beautiful fantasy, in clean, in real-life, in boring planet harvested spice.
Paid attention, an expensive price.
Stolen perception, what a life.
well-structured, well-thought out, yeah right.
Too dull, too boring, say goodnight.
FOR SALE
IN THE MAIL
MOAN AND WAIL
10/9/2007
My last Chinglish on T-shirts went over surprisingly well. Didn’t expect that. On Facebook nobody seemed to care and I retired that album. Glad to know WordPress bloggers have more taste.
Here are some further shirts from my archives. If the market demands so, I will awkwardly take more pictures of people I see outside with their weird nonsensical English shirts. There are the ones seen for sale as well, but to truly challenge myself as a photographer I should be bothering people on the street shouldn’t I?
Ado:
Punk as fuck right!
For Women Only. Do wish I knew what it said behind the hair, it’s a mystery
Shiny and lovely rerson’s girl, every girl wants to feel like that sometimes ❤
A symbolically-numbered birthday, lookin lame. Note long hair at the time
In February of 2012 I had been living in the megacity of Guangzhou (Canton) for one year. My search for companionship had yielded mixed results. I had a bit of fun, sure. But nothing ever seemed to turn substantial, and I was getting lonely.
That, and my favorite bar had closed down. In no hurry to leave China whatsoever – I’m still here for the long haul – I decided that the path of least resistance was to go back to Shenzhen. It was the city I knew best, the city I had people in, the city that’s next to Hong Kong (while simultaneously still a Mandarin-speaking insanely developing mainland locale). I just wanted to go back.
I went over and spent a day apartment-hunting. First I had some bad results from online recommendations, then I simply utilized those real estate office guys you see around, and I found the perfect flat in the middle of the city. I soon met the landlord, signed the lease, and went back to GZ that very night and moved in a week later.
It was the best apartment I’ve ever lived in. I stayed there are year-and-a-half, which is quite long for me. For whatever reasons, I tend to move a lot. About every year I get anxious and seek out a better place to live. Yet, so far, I haven’t found anything better that that amazing apartment. Sigh, I do miss that place.
It suited me. Unlike other places I’ve lived in China, it wasn’t too glamorous. The place had character. It was, of course, cheap. It was a one-bedroom and living room, roomier than those big one-rooms. The building had no elevator, but that’s okay I lived on the first floor. It was close enough to downtown, but just a bit outwards of Futian District in the quieter Meilin neighborhood. There was a subway station nearby with a line led directly to the Lok Ma Chau border to Hong Kong. And only a 30 yuan latenight taxi ride to the obvious weekend haunts of Coco Park. It had everything going for it.
I unpacked. I redecorated. Life went on. I got a gym membership in the area, I biked around and explored and discovered my new favorite restaurants. I celebrated my birthday with a few friends. I met new people and hung out with some Couchsurfers; with my conveniently-located new apartment I could host and invited more than a few travelers to stay with me.
My writing was kinda-maybe starting to take off, and I kept myself busy freelancing. I visited Guangzhou a few times, on assignment of sorts for a magazine. Mostly, I worked on my novel and slowly but surely I was to take that more seriously. It was a productive time in my life.
Oh, and I traveled to Taiwan. (I traveled to Japan the most recent trip, by the way. I apparently skipped that part in previous writings. Well there was no hooking up to be had there. That trip to Taiwan was the last time I both stayed in a hostel and stayed at a Couchsurfer’s, with the coming of a symbolically-yeared birthday I decided I was too old for this kind of backpacking travel…)
Behold, after careful editing comes a new edition of my historical novella — The Ghost of Lotus Mountain Brothel. Now live on the eBook website Smashwords.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/464248
Although the KDP version is already available for Amazon’s Kindle – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JJUXZFE – an advantage with Smashwords is that there are multiple formats: EPUB, MOBI, PDFs, and more. It can also be read online. Do check out the preview on the site.
If anyone would be interested in writing a review, I’d be happy to send a free copy. And I’d surely help out other writers in this regard, know what I mean. The usual deal.
Most of all, I simply hope a few people out there will enjoy read this story and get something out of it…
Synopsis:
1911, Canton. It is the eve of the historic Hsinsai Revolution, when China shifted from the Qing Dynasty to the short-lived Republic. Asia is overrun with foreign businessmen of questionable character. Political upheaval is on everyone’s mind. The country’s economic future is uncertain.
And there was a girl who witnessed it all.
She had many names, Ling Yoo, Ling Ling, Little Sister, and Alice. She was a girl from a simple background, toiling away in the world’s oldest profession, but ambitious, and she worked hard to educate herself. A little person stumbling through history, observing from the sidelines. Her story should have been lost forever.
Torn between love for her homeland and the love of a wealthy British merchant, how can she remain true to herself and find her destiny?
And there is a ghost. A shadow of a figure follows her and her decisions, questioning her every step. Is it a warning… or a vision?
Its not alright, but its oh-so write
Its young and fresh and free and better
Its melting skin upon heated glim
A dash of touch, briefly passed
Breath of cool, hotly cast
I don’t know, I do, I will
I want, I need, I can’t, I kill
Your heart is movement, my pen is weak
Press your eyes against my heat
Please do whats told, fleshy true, I implore you do
Because all that matters isn’t me but you
And for the deed is cast.
Imagine words, built from a past
A past not real, but solid still
A long-haired past of desired Will
Let me draw curvatures a-field
Let me felt it out, the chance I steal
Let me take charge of this, no don’t
O please don’t give me that choice, that hope
I can’t compete, with what’s in your head
And you won’t perform like what was said
Still worth a try, worthy effort
Effortlessly, not really, don’t be, don’t hurt
Just be words, an abstract bliss
Stop the truth, deny that kiss
No descript, no flighty hisssss
I’d much prefer that sad near-miss
Cause thats all the better, the right, the sight
Reality won’t do, close my eyes, goodnight
Due to moderate demand, this weekend’s edition will focus on the random T-shirts with nonsensical English which Chinese people tend to wear. In fact, this is a broader Asian phenomenon but I’m in China so it’s Chinglish.
I likened it to bad kanji tattoos Westerners get, but at least it isn’t permanent.
Some of the best I haven’t been able to photograph. I used to have a neighbor who had a shirt she’d often wear that spelled out DYKE in big bold letters; I could be wrong but she didn’t seem the type. There was the 6-year-old whose shirt said I LIKE SEX. And so on.
Some of these pictures are awkward because I had to ask the wearer randomly in the street if I could photograph them.
These may not be as good as the mistranslated signs, but without further ado I hope you get a few laughs here:
I think this is one of those ironic novelty shirts from Khao Sarn road in Thailand or somewhere like that. I don’t think the wearer knows what Ecstasy is meant here, but ya never know. Use responsibly.
More drugs, it’s a way of life for freedom right
Cheerio! Get it? I totally get it, guvnah’, if only this ping pong player got it
Monster, what a little monster
Ray-Comics 