Link

脑洞很大

Dangerous Foreign Love article

ABC china warns women of foreign spies in dangerous love comic

China’s first annual National Security Education Day, see both links

Hahahah , there’s been some recent commenting about this online from a lot of foreigners, and from some Chinese too, but I feel they’re not really addressing some of the key issues here.

First read the article, and then …what do you find strange about the way the Chinese depict themselves?

1st scene, there are apparently 2 Chinese girls speaking. (This is how the government thinks Chinese girls look like)   Basically exactly like foreigners.

I mean yes, they’re speaking Chinese, but 1 has red hair and the other has brown hair…. I’m pretty sure everyone in China has Black hair, so either these are the most rare of Chinese girls, have dyed their hair (maybe because they’re not proud of their Chinese heritage) or…are actually foreigners. typical chinese girls
Also both these girls have large eyes. … mmm even Chinese people know that’s not a common trait.
To be fair its also how Japanese people portray people in their cartoons… maybe the Chinese gov. are just big fans of Japanese culture and so of gone with the same depiction?

The first thing uttered is “今天有个外国朋友组织的聚会,你不是要提高外语水平吗?跟我一起去参加吧。

And the translation from the article is pretty much correct, but it leaves out the fact that if a person says ‘foreign friend’ it would mean that it’s a Chinese person saying it, because foreigners here would just say friend.
So the implication is that these are indeed 2 Chinese girls speaking.

Scene 2, David (the foreigner)… speaking perfect Chinese, welcomes them to the party.

As we now know hair colour and waviness is nothing to go by…because apparently these are perfectly normal Chinese traits, the only way you can tell that David is a foreigner is that he has a big nose. david the obvious foreigner
Obviously all foreigners have big noses.

Oh and he is wearing glasses.

Traditionally though, isn’t it generally Asian people that wear glasses?
So either the glasses signify that he is meant to be intelligent, or the Chinese gov. thinks that foreigners are blind, because one of the guys at the table could actually pass off for being Chinese, but he is not wearing glasses, so what does this infer?

Oh and ‘naturally brown haired’ Chinese girl, weren’t you there to practice your ‘Foreigner language’ skills.
You seem to be speaking an awful lot of Chinese… what are you doing?

 

In the translation, it doesn’t even specify what foreign language it is… its’ just generalised…’foreign language’.
Brilliant.
Because the rest of the depictions are completely generalised right? Like Chinese girls with red hair and brown wavy hair….yeah sure.

This kind of cartoon or ‘educational awareness propaganda’, it’s one of these things that you look at and a thousand thoughts pop into your head at once, there’s too much to deconstruct, you’re just left staring at the poster shaking your head as you quietly have a brain aneurysm and a small trickle of blood dribbles from your nose.

Apparently Xiao Li is the typical gov employee, and there’s enough of a problem that people need to be told this information en masse… which means that the training to keep secrets actually secret is not good enough…… en masse.

Just how naïve is this girl?
Plus as a side note… isn’t she getting fatter in the pictures?
When she’s sitting on the bench …she’s clearly slightly fatter right?

Or… is this a ploy by gov officials to coax foreign potential spies into thinking that Chinese state employees are all that naïve, and then the Ch. Gov. can catch foreign spies more easily?

Oooh hoooo…clever…    haha I think perhaps we’re jumping ahead of ourselves.

OFFICER: “You show a very shallow understanding of secrecy for a State employee.”

Hahahah and who’s fault do you think that is?

Link

slow doesn’t = safe

Why On Earth Would You Ban Electric Bikes Before Cars?

Yeah… better read the article before you read this.  But it relates to an article I posted before with regard to a Chinese article attacking motorbikes for Electric motorbikes problems called ‘禁摩限电’ – literally ‘Ban motorbikes, limit electric scooters’

I originally thought this article was written by a foreigner, as it was posted on a foreign wechat subscription account.

The writer states, quoting some Chinese article written about the issue previously.
According to a news report, they (e-scooters) are banned for the following reasons: 

(1) They can cause traffic jams. 

(2) Some people use electric bikes as a “taxi” to make money, which is illegal.

(3) Because they are very fast, they often cause traffic accidents. 

(4) Most of them are not licensed and hard to govern.

These, the writer infers are not good enough to ban the bikes.

True, these are not good enough reasons to ban e-bikes, because they should not be banned.

But the simple fact is, (which the article the author quotes conveniently left out) is that in #3 ‘they are very fast, they often cause traffic accidents’ is not the reason why they cause traffic accidents.

电动车祸

This leads me to believe the writer of the article quoted was a Chinese person, and the fact that this writer didn’t correct them, then they must also be Chinese.

Why?

Well because of a general mentality here that:
driving fast = unsafe,
not that    driving unsafely = unsafe.

It infers that driving slowly automatically = driving safely.

No. That’s complete bullshit.

If that was true, it would mean that old people are the best drivers.
And I think we can agree that that’s plainly not true.

If you drive slowly but run red lights… it doesn’t mean that you’ll be safe from the car that has right of way going 80km/h going through the green light as they crash into you.

That right there should be logic.

A lot of electric scooters consistently run red lights, and consistently break traffic laws.

We could assume 2 things from this.
1.) Because they don’t have to get a license for the e-scooter, they actually don’t know what the traffic laws are… although you could argue of course that its common sense, or
2.) Because laws are hardly ever enforced here… they learnt, ‘hey if I can get away with it…let’s go for it’

So, solution?   Enforce the damn laws.
Make an example of all those retards that can’t figure out simple common sense.

Sure if you want to commit suicide then go for it.. but please don’t endanger everyone else.

Next time someone runs a red light. Electric scooter gone. Impounded, destroyed.
And you may be thinking…‘Why don’t they just make it a fine, maybe impounding bikes is too harsh?’
Trust me on this, if they can’t figure out that their life is worth more than the 10 minutes they save from running a red light, then they might need a fairly harsh lesson.
Also, if its just a fine some people will inevitably dress up as police and just collect ‘fines’ from all the e-scooters.  (and there’s a lot)
Or 100 kuai on the spot fine enforced by a team of police with the impound truck nearby.
They could literally enforce that in many places each week and keep it a regular thing.

Sure, police would be told that their mid-morning nap in their squad cars would be cancelled, but their mid-afternoon nap would probably still go ahead as planned.

Maybe the police can get a bit of respect back from actually doing their jobs for once?

Oh also in the article is.. ‘the effect on the delivery business’

Yeah deliveries are going to be slower.
Is this a bad thing though?
We’ve got used to quick deliveries by way of 电动 idiots braking traffic laws… but this was always going to be too good to be true.
On the plus side, maybe we won’t be stuck in traffic for 40 minutes each day coming home from work because hundreds of douchebags think delivering parcels 10 minutes quicker is an acceptable pay-off.

Lock the damn doors

Ever walked into the bathroom and tried to use one of the cubicles because you saw that it was unlocked, only to find a middle aged Chinese man squatted over a hole, puffing on a cigarette, and pumping out a bog staring at you as you open the door?

Believe it or not, this is a reasonably frequent event…. in China.

Dude, just lock the damn door.

Why is it always the same type of guy as well?

It’s not a younger person, it’s not a guy that doesn’t smoke, it never seems to happen on the ‘western toilets’, it’s literally always a middle-aged, chain-smoking, poo-pumping Chinese man.

And what’s more he doesn’t really seem surprised.

He never seems to say anything when you open the door and involuntarily groan. ‘errr…wtf?’

It’s almost as if he was expecting to have someone open the door.

And dude, come on, the door has locks. It’s just that either you’re into voyeur or you just didn’t think it was worth your time.

Again no care for other people’s well being of thinking ‘perhaps other people don’t want to see a grown man squatting down taking a shit.’

Or …on the other hand, maybe he has thought about that… and he just wants to make you suffer.

“you were going too fast”

…Well that puts my total crashes in Beijing at 5 maybe.
(all not my fault… but obviously they still happened)

Some idiot just ran a red light and pulled out in front of me and obviously I emergency braked but still hit him and went over the handle bars onto the bonnet of his car and the first thing he says to me is:
“you were going too fast”
No man. I was going the speed limit which was 70, and you ran a red light.
I’m pretty sure the running the red light is more the cause of the fucking accident.
Plus its not like you shouldn’t have seen me… the bike had its headlight on, orange wheels and a large foreigner on it.
So wtf were you doing?
….Can …I take a guess?
Were you playing with your phone?

Anyway he goes “is there anything wrong with your bike?”
Err… no.. I guess not
(looking at the oil patch on the ground…probably coming from my bike)
(and him looking at his crumpled bumper and scratch on his bonnet)
“well you can go then”

What some of you may be thinking is ‘Yeah…thanks for the permission…’

But in reality Thought …Cool… as I know foreigners usually don’t get out of these things easily even if its 完全 (completely) not their fault.
So I pushed the bike off …and now it is sitting in a parking lot.
I tried to start it immediately afterwards and it didn’t start. But after pushing it to the parking lot and having a proper check…it now starts.

Handle bars are bent, but it starts, and other than a few scratches there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.

I can hear a friend in the back of my mind saying… ‘you maybe should have anticipated some dickwad to play with their phones and run a red light and cut across you’
And to be quite honest… yeah I think he is right.

But the intersection was a big intersection 2 lanes, hardly anyone on the road.
Which means it is worrying either way.
I essentially have 2 choices.
1.) I have to expect that level of complete incompetence and negligence and to know that I won’t be able to drive the fun but normally safe way in order to ‘take into consideration this level of incompetence’, or…
2.) I will ride around in a normal way, knowing that there could be at anytime some dickwad that does completely the wrong thing, and it doesn’t matter if you’re doing everything right… because he/ she will find a way to make sure that even though you’re doing everything right you will never be able to avoid his/ her level of idiocy.

I’m really annoyed I didn’t wear my camera on my helmet today.

I’m sure the bike is fine.. just a few scratches. And I’m fine….my neck hurts a little but, I’m sure I can sleep it off … if it still hurts after the weekend I go to the hospital for a checkup.

Comment from a friend upon hearing the story:

“What a dickbag”

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Chinese innovation

I just bought a new motorbike. A Chinese one, after I swore I’d never get another Chinese bike, but after riding it, and it put a smile on my face, and after I was assured by a friend that the brand participates in motocross so the quality level is higher than other Chinese motorbike brands…I thought, yep, lets give it a try.

shineray 2 fuel tank lights

As it turns out that it warns me if I’m getting a call or…if anyone around me is getting a call.

[The picture on the right has the icons, on mine it doesn’t]

To be honest I appreciate the creativity for this kind of feature, but hahaha not if the range is 4 meters or something and is telling me that other poeple’s phones around me are ringing.

Woohoo Chinese innovation!!

Link

The politics of motorbikes in China

北京要开始“禁摩限电”新政策了! [article]

Beijing to start ‘Prohibiting motorbikes & limiting electric scooters new policy!’

Why?

This entire article is about electric scooters breaking the rules, and generally being the dickbags that they are, and in fact the one scene in which they show a motorbike rider, he is sitting patiently at the lights waiting for it to turn green.

In this article basically they say that in Shenzhen they’ve just introduced a law that will fine people driving scooters when they break a traffic law.

From which you’re left thinking… This wasn’t being done before?

And then they have the audacity to put motorbike riders and electric scooter drivers into the same basket.  Oh yeah they’re all bad.

Why is the title ‘Prohibit motorcycles, and limit electric scooters’?

If they show the video of all the electric scooters breaking all the traffic rules, and motorbikes doing nothing of the kind, why crucify motorbike riders?

And more to the point, why make the penalty for driving a motorbike greater than the scooter if they’re not the ones doing anything wrong.

Surely that’s retarded right??

“Look at all these scooters… all these bastards… I know what we’ll do…I know what the solution is, we’ll ban motorbikes”   “and we’ll limit scooters”

看!那些电动车都不遵守交通规则,所以我们应该禁止摩托车!

看!空气污染这么严重, 所以我们应该禁止飞机!

“Look the air is full of pollution. I know what we’ll do, we’ll ban aeroplanes.”

The reasoning behind these 2 sentences honestly uses about the same logic.

Also how about the police just do their damn jobs in the first place and enforce the laws that they already have?

You don’t have to make a new law, if you make a new law and that one is not enforced then what do you think that is going to achieve?

By the way you can restrict motorbikes quite easily but not so much electric scooters.

Motorbikes need petrol, if you make it necessary for all petrol stations to check for drivers licenses then for those that don’t have them… (that have not gone through the proper procedures to be able to drive a motorbike), then they won’t be able to get petrol, and then they can’t drive.

I realise it’s not going to stop everyone, but it’s a 70% kind of thing. Because its then up to the petrol stations to enforce this. But somehow in this crazy world that we call China I somehow believe petrol station attendants can enforce the regulations better than police can.

But for scooters…what are you going to do? Go into people’s houses and ask people for their license as they’re recharging their batteries?  No.. you can’t do that.

I have heard there’s such thing as a ‘Beijing traffic safety certificate’ (北京交通安全证)that electric scooter drivers are supposed to have, but how are you going to enforce this?
I heard it when I was studying for my motorbike transference license, when I was at the Department of Transport & Licensing in Beijing asking all the necessary questions of what was needed.

But the fact that no one else has heard of it kind of shows how much this decent enough policy was enacted.

So what are they planning in Beijing then?

10 major roads are going to be restricted, mainly Changan avenue though… look that one up people, you know its significant for a reason but you won’t know why until you look it up.  (the one that goes past Tiananmen Square)

And …and this is the big one, there will be a 20 rmb fine for those people that are caught not obeying the rules.

20 rmb you say?  Holy shit, well that changes everything.
[Oh, for my Chinese friends, that’s sarcastic…. 我讽刺说啊]

That’s utterly ridiculous.

Let me just tell you that this kind of logical thinking (or rather lack of logical thinking)… to see a situation like this and then just ‘apply a new law because that will fix everything’  is not how Chinese people in general think. This is a gov. mandated thing, and most likely as well it’s a reporter trying to make a name for herself. While she only caught proof of electric scooters breaking the law, as the video shows, unfortunately as the news is also the mouthpiece of the gov. she also has to reflect their broader policy. Ie. ‘We don’t like motorbikes. ’

Why?  I haven’t found a reason to that yet.    Maybe some member has a vendetta against motorcycles.

But anyway this is the Chinese conversation I had with a Chinese friend after reading this article. I apologise for my Chinese, sometimes its not always awesome.

我= Me  她= her

我:This is more against scooters right? Because in the one 镜头你能看到一个真的摩托车,他在红绿灯等变绿灯。我觉得只有电动车的问题不是摩托车
她:对呀,骑摩托车的人都有驾照,那些骑电动车的就不一定了 但是我不太明白,那个文章里面只说了电动车的问题,没有提摩托车,但是为什么标题说“禁摩限电”?
但是我觉得禁止电动车不对,有的人买不起车,骑自行车又太远,他们只能骑电动车。买得起汽车谁愿意骑电动车啊!
不能因为电动车不遵守交通规则就不让骑电动车,应该让骑电动车的人考电动车驾照,有了驾照才可以买电动车。
政府的工作是加强管理,不能一出问题就禁止
我:对,我完全同意,除了一个方面。不一定所有摩托车有驾照。除非你fangce 说 unless you said this sarcastically
她:不是啊,我说骑摩托车的人都有驾照,骑电动车的人不一定都有
我:还有对,我不知道为什么他们只想禁止人骑电动车,as you say, 不是电动车是这样的人
她:对,不是电动车的问题,是人的问题

(I might have said I know some people that don’t have their Chinese motorbike license, so not ALL motorbike drivers have their license)
她:好吧[Sweat] “骑摩托车的人应该都有驾照”,重点是应该
我:我听说电动车应该已经考了一个交通安全证,但是对这个没有人执法这个规则
对,应该 这是关键词
但是为了一个摩托车他们会…. (and then speaking about the ability to enforce a motorbike through filling up with petrol, but for a electric scooter you can’t do this)

她:交通安全证 可能是一个好方法,但是执行起来可能有点困难,就像你说的,他们不需要加油,没有人能监督他们。 但是如果卖电动车的人跟买车的人要驾照或者交通安全证,可能会好一点儿,就行药店卖的处方药一样
但是也可能有的人有驾照,然后他就帮别人买电动车
或者,谁买的电动车,就登记谁的名字,以后如果出了事故,就让这个人赔
我:但是应该跟摩托车一样,如果你 break the law, 犯规很大
她:对,加大对电动车违法交通规则的惩处力度
我:Or…. or…. 或者警察可以开始做他们的工作,就执法现在的交通规则。我们不需要一个新的 规则,如果执法现在的规则就行。
因为如果他们说,OK现在我们发了新的规则但是也没有执法,终于是这样的问题

她: “ 因为如果他们说,OK,现在我们发布了新的规则,但是还是没有执法,那问题还是一样的。 ” she is correcting me to make my Chinese more awesome

 

I hear this countless times by the way, “oh I don’t like politics, I’m not really that interested in it”

Do… you not understand what the word ‘politics’ means?

Its important because its about how the country that you live in is governed, what rules are made, and how these rules will affect your life.

I think that’s pretty important.

And pretty damn easy to take an interest in.

A stupid motorbike rule, policemen not doing their jobs, laws not being enforced because it creates confusion and somehow the people that run the country like it that way, retarded new laws being made….this is all politics!

Not interested in politics? Don’t understand it?  You can understand this right? You’re angry at this right?  You’re already well on your way to getting involved in politics.

Hooray!

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Profound questions

“If a tree falls in a forest, but no one is there to to hear it, does it still make a sound?”

Yes.     Next one.

“What does a one handed clap sound like”

Bart Simpson’s one handed clap
[from S02E06 Dead Putting Society]

“Can something exist without being perceived?”

Yes.

What other brain busters have you got for me?

What is so difficult or profound about any of these questions?

Just because you can’t perceive it, it doesn’t mean that something doesn’t exist.

Before Isaac Newton came up with the theory of gravity, it didn’t mean that the laws of gravity had no effect because no one had ‘perceived it before’

…well I guess that’s ‘conceived’ actually.

Or that the world wasn’t actually round because no one had seen it before or thought about it before.  The world was still round, its just that no one knew it.

The tree falling in the forest. It’s just such a stupid question… I can barely bring myself to give it any credence.
If there’s a deaf person and a person that is not deaf standing in the forest at the same time as the tree falls, and the deaf person says… “I can’t hear anything”
First of all the other person would be like… “of course not, you’re deaf, are you only just figuring this out now?”  and then would use his sign-language to convey that actually the tree just made a sound as it crashed to the ground, in a more polite manner.

If you don’t hear anything because you’re not in a position to do so… it’s not to say that it didn’t happen.
That is not how sound works as well, it doesn’t just exist in your mind…it’s the vibration of air particles….wait why am I explaining this to you… I’m sure whoever reading this is thinking….’yeah man you’re preaching to the choir here’

And for those philosophical hippies out there… me explaining the concept of physics is not going to change their minds… they’re hippies, they are sometimes immune to logic.

“oh but you’re not thinking about the philosophical nature of the question”

Its not philosophical its just stupid, and it has an easy answer, but you’re so caught up in trying to seem profound and spiritual that you won’t even given logic a chance.

……I really … really don’t like hippies.

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Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The egg.

Easy.

Dinosaurs had eggs, and dinosaurs were alive way before chickens ever existed.

So the answer is quite obviously –The egg.

“Oh but you see it’s a cycle, you can never say which one came before, because the other one came before it”

Ah….No.  If one of them came 65 million years before the other one, it’s not much of a cycle is it?

“oh but you’re ruining the intended purpose of the question”

Ah….again….No.
I think we know the intended purpose of the question…and that is whoever asks the question is retarded, and doesn’t have the ability to think about something longer than 1 second. They want to appear profound but they’re just promoting idiocy.

Philosophical question?

bender laugh harder

Hahahaha, Oh wait you’re serious?!?    Let me laugh harder….

Yeah, Only for the stupid, or… I guess also for those that believe in Creationism…. Oh wait no…my point still stands, only for the stupid.