It’s the National Day holiday in China, and my husband and I are currently heading to Sanya on Hainan island for a few days holiday. Don’t go getting all jealous now – this is the only time other than Spring Festival (when we make the trek north to Inner Mongolia – brrrr!) where we both get a few days off work that coincide with each other, so we feel we deserve to get away. And we might be fighting a typhoon anyway, so you might not have a lot to be jealous of. In the meantime, enjoy another installment of “Things I Can Apparently Get Away With Because I’m a Foreigner”. This time, it’s:
Not-so-subtly taking cell phone pictures of things or people that amuse me (aka hilarious Chinglish or people looking ridiculous or doing things that are absolutely stupid).
Although I try, I’m not very sneaky when I’m doing this. My phone even makes a loud, click-y noise when I take the photo and I’m not smart enough to figure out how to turn
that off. Sometimes I even need to take more than one picture, because the first one doesn’t show the stupidity clearly enough. I know people see me, and I should probably even feel bad about taking pictures of people I want to laugh at, but I would be doing the world a disservice if I didn’t take and share photos like these:
Sign in front of a water pool where about 50 children were 'paying' in the water.
Watermelon helmets in Walmart. Go Riders!!
A strategically-placed fanny pack.
Liquor-flavoured soy sauce? Or soy sauce-flavoured liquor? I won't be finding out.
This room is missing something...what is it? A life-size horse lamp? Eureka, that's it!!
KFC's new combo - Chicken pieces, fries, and a bottle of bai jiu for that midday pick-me-up.
It was "Bring Your Pet Gerbil to McDonalds" Day and no one told me.
Can you imagine the road rash?!
This is what passes for "fashion" out here in the sticks. How many patterns can you count?
Sexist candy.
Dude looks like a lady!
I wish MY toothpaste was saltier.
She brought a single leaf of cabbage to class and played with it until I made her put it under her desk.
Wrong. It takes only one to stupid, but it takes a second to notice the stupidity and take a cell phone picture.
In case you can't read it, the sign on the side of the escalator says "Stop Climbing". That's why people in China just stop and stand on them even though they are in the way - they are just following the rules!
The “stupid” t-shirt is pretty awesome, I’d actually wear that!
That horse, they have the exact same light shade in the British Airways lounge in terminal 5 at London Heathrow airport, very bizarre…
Talking of random photos, once when I was taking pictures in a market in Shanghai one of the store owners called me over and held up a dead rat he’d just killed for me to take a photo…
Want me to pick you up a “stupid” shirt?! The horse lamp definitely caught my eye, although it would take a certain decor look and size of room to pull off (if it can truly be pulled off). They also had a life-sized pig end table to match, in case you were looking for a whole farm animal theme, I guess.
Dead rat, you say?! Was it a food market??
Thanks but I’ve given up trying to buy clothes for my “muscular” physique in China, unless they have a size with at least 5 X’s in the number…
The pig table sounds interesting, when you say “pig end” do you mean the front end of the pig or the back end?
The dead rat, YES it was a food market: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dingadingdang/70494528/
Haha, yes, you might be right about the shirt. It was in the women’s section, after all.
It was the whole pig, just as it was the whole horse. It was an end table, such that you would put at the end of your couch. It had a little tray on it’s head for the table part.
And the rat? Ewwwwww! I wouldn’t buy from that guy, then!
These are awesome! I need to clear out my phone’s memory card and start taking more photos again (would you believe I actually filled it?). I like the hamster day at KFC best, for some reason. It just seemed so…likely here.
I love my camera phone and I also carry my camera in my bag everywhere I go, simply because this random crap happens all the time (and I mean ALL.THE.TIME!). And people would never believe it, so I get photographic evidence as much as I can!!
hahahaha! I think this stuff is great! I took a picture in the expat bar of a sign that says, “WARNING! DO NOT TOUCH THE LADIES” Frisky foreign boys!
Haha, that’s a great sign. I think I need to get a shirt made saying that and wear it on the street!
Hilarious!! Got my laugh for the day, thanks!! Hope you & Tom enjoy a few days off!
Thanks! We got away for a few days and were glad we did.
OMG. That unicorn lamp is just too awesome. I WANT ONE I WANT ONE!
Its every kid’s dream come true! You get to ride a life size unicorn every time you turn on that lamp!
I think I mentioned to someone else, there was also a life-sized pig end table, so you could have a whole barnyard theme going on if you wanted.
About the “Salty” toothpaste – Salt has widely known anti-inflammation properties and its work for people who have sensitive gums and that’s the reason why they put it in toothpaste. Its one of the “old wives’ tale” that’s actually proven true in clinical trials.
Wow, I didn’t know that! That being said, the idea of brushing my teeth with anything that tastes too salty is still unappealing to me.
About the “It takes 2 to be stupid”, it makes me wonder if its a reference to the age old “If a tree falls in a forest” question. So if you do something stupid and no one is around to see it, does it make it a stupid ?
Hmmmm, perhaps. But is the opposite then true, that if you do something stupid and someone IS around to see it AND they capture it on their camera/video phone and post it on the internet, is it doubly or triply stupid?!?!
Fascinating blog. Have you ever come across anything about N Korea? Bet not.
Thanks. Not sure what you mean about North Korea?
It’s called laowai’s privilege.
And I love it and take advantage of it!
Oh, I miss my camera phone. I used to take tons of not-so-sneaky camera phone photos while I lived in Japan (and I’m not sure if it’s the same way in China but in Japan you couldn’t turn off the clicky sound at all — all phones made it so as to prevent creepers from taking skeevy photos up ladies’ skirts on the train while they weren’t aware of it).
Now I just have a cheap phone that doesn’t have any fancy gadgets like a camera so I resort to having to use my actual camera to take photos of stuff that I just MUST take a photo of. Unfortunately, there is really no way to even pretend you’re not taking a photo of something when you are holding a camera taking a photo of something. Alas, my super spy camera days are over.
Haha! I also carry my actual camera in my bag everywhere I go, just in case. Sometimes I worry that people might be mad if they catch me taking a picture of them (like the bai jiu in KFC guy – I mean, he’s obviously been drinking, maybe he wouldn’t take too kindly to having a foreigner snapping his picture?!), but most of the time, I just don’t care. People wouldn’t believe this stuff if I just told them – I need to have proof!!
Kelly, about the “stupid” T-shirt, it’s probably not the type of Chinglish as you think it is. ”Two“ has quite a subtle connotation along the line of “stupidity, moron, pretentiousness” etc in the northern dialect. You might hear expressions like “that person is so 二” or “you’re so 二”. Sometimes it may even mean “simple-minded, naive” depending on the context. Ask a Chinese friend, or your husband. I’m sure you will get something more than just puzzling “Chinglish”.
Wow, thanks for reminding me, Siva. I actually have heard that word used and my husband had even explained it a bit to me, but I didn’t make the connection! You might just be right!!