jamesinchina.com

Many people think that they eat weird stuff in China.  Well, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that this works both ways.  Here are some of the things that I've taken for granted since little that Chinese people dare not eat, and some of the things they've said about them...

 Just got back from Suzhou, where you can fish for money!

The guy in the picture is (I hope!) employed by the temple and is literally fishing for money with a large magnet!

One of Italy's most visited tourist attractions is a lot more appetizing in Mandarin - 'The leaning tower of Pizza' (比萨斜塔). Odd how bits and bobs of western culture make their way into China and end up a little distorted.

My friends find it weird that you can get drunk on Guinness - to them it's a book of records.

To most Chinese a 'Café' isn't the quiet little Parisian nook where you can read a book and chat to friends, but a towering monstrosity somewhat similar to a 5* hotel with six people to open the door for you (it's a two storey steel and glass door).

We've recently been redesigning the home page of our software. It seems that, in general, people don't read anything that's on the screen, so we're redesigning all the buttons to have relevant icons. Google recently must have had a similar issue - the search side bar they added to the search results have recently sprouted little icons. "What side bar?", I hear you ask. Exactly my point - people don't have time to read anything.

Today I got a call from the Taiwanese government urging me to rebel against the Chinese Communist party. Much though I would have been flattered to know that Taiwanese thought so highly of my political potential, it turned out to be an automated propaganda recording. Here is my rough attempt at a translation of part of it:

"Dear friend, hello! We are the Taiwanese three oppositions movement. We must oppose the communist party, oppose the communist children's society, oppose the communist youth organization, create a better future for the Chinese people!..."

Here I am on Chinese Web TV. Here's the direct link to Youku

The BBC recently found that the Siberia Tiger Park, based in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast of China, is selling a "tiger bone wine" that contains three small tiger bones.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8563673.stm

The photos are from that exact tiger park, which I visited a few weeks ago. Not only do they sell the tiger wine, but there were a number of preserved tiger organs on display (heart, liver, kidney etc). Whilst they weren't officially for sale, there was a money counting machine that someone had left right next to them....

I have very long legs. Though they have some advantages, such as projecting my head into a position where I can survey a sea of heads in every direction at Beijing south railway station and being able to stand stably on Hainan's bucking bronco buses (piloted by chain-smoking daredevils on crack), they have their downside.

Tones tones tones.

It's taken me a long time to really get how relationships work in China. I'm not an expert, but here is my street-level view, roughly hewn from countless embarrassing fauxes pas, baijiu drenched business dinners and the careful explanations of my ever patient Chinese friends.

The hardest thing for us to understand is that Chinese relationships are unequal - one person is senior and the other junior.