Hilarious response to a Global Times [propaganda piece]

Best metaphor using a chair for comparison I’ve ever heard

Read the full article here (with pictures):

http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzIxNDQ1ODIzNg==&mid=2247486302&idx=1&sn=7f07e37ecb944e9499c10590e8ca8e69&chksm=97a6014da0d1885b2b3e3c981c41db3620d29299c39e54f0eaa8368095d2f5d65022d36efb12&mpshare=1&scene=1&srcid=112720hhm63QzMXSoTZHgQoP#rd

But just in case its been taken down, here it is anyway:

EXPATS WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND CHINA ???

2016-11-26 ▶️▶️ GlobalNews玩球资讯

There is no way an expat will ever know this country Source:Global Times Published: 2016/11/24 19:28:39

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
Expats living in China at one point or another come across Chinese friends telling them in frustration, “You don’t understand China.” In some cases, it could be the Chinese friend’s lack of language skill in expressing themselves. Or it could be that they have little experience with foreign culture, which is necessary for cross-cultural exchanges.

But sometimes, it’s simply that you don’t understand China, which has a long history of 5,000 years, multiple dynasties, various dialects, rich cuisine and different philosophies. Frankly speaking, if you don’t read classical Chinese, you’re hardly qualified to say, “I know China,” even when you are Chinese.

I was in a synagogue in Washington DC about 10 years ago with a Jewish friend for a lecture about how to lobby the Chinese. The idea was that China is rising to become a superpower, so Jewish people might want to work to win the support of China and its people in addition to lobbying in the US. But how? How do you deal with sensitive topics like human rights records?

The speaker was an old China hand. He told the audience, if you think there’s an issue, you don’t talk to the Chinese in an upfront way. It’s better to show them that “under such circumstance, we’d do it this way.” In short, subtlety is the key. Directness could have opposite the intended effect, as Chinese are sensitive to being criticized openly.

Obviously, few people understand the “correct way” to raise the issue of human rights when dealing with China. Otherwise Western leaders would have held their tongue and achieved much better communication with the Chinese on such topics. Or Washington would not publish an annual report to embarrass the Chinese leadership.

It’s true that we all go to school, find a job, raise a family and take care of our parents and kids. It’s also true we have more in common than differences. But it’s the differences that often count in understanding each other.

Chinese culture is as rich as its history is long. Unless you dive really deep into a Chinese way of life (as if that were one thing), there’s no way to read the “hidden code” of authentic Chinese life.

Norbert Haguma, who hails from Rwanda, is the China representative of the African Leadership Network. He once advised his African friends who plan to do business in China that “you have to learn to stomach the Chinese liquor,” which is so strong that few foreigners fall in love with it.

Why? Nowhere can you find advice encouraging you to consume baijiu in do-business-in-China manuals! But Norbert has a point, which is valid and probably beyond the understanding of most of the expats living China. He notes, when you finish a few cups of liquor in a determined and honest manner in front of your Chinese business partners, the stiff air in the room and the strangeness of each other will melt immediately. Friendship will be forged quickly and business deals are getting much easier to be sealed.

That observation might not be accurate in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but it’s stunningly spot on in places like Inner Mongolia, Shandong and most of northern China.
That’s probably why Chinese restaurants are often noisy: once the men have a few drinks, they open their hearts to each other and become talkative.

It requires painstaking effort to thoroughly understand another culture. A civilization like China presents even more challenges given how large the country is both in terms of its population and its size.

But it doesn’t matter if you know China or not, or how much you know China. The ultimate goal is to get along well with each other.

Usually, it’s not the differences but the way we treat each other that separate us. Arrogance is a taboo. Seeing a country through your own value prism should be avoided, because countries as well as cultures are equal, and there’re always something we don’t know about one another. As long as we treat each other with respect and stay humble in trying to learn about differences, we’ll be fine.

The author is a commentator on current affairs with China Radio International. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn


replies from GlobalTimes.cn

Lived there for over a decade. It’s a narcissistic mess of a country full of petty horrible tribal people looking to stab everyone in the back at all times. There is no actual culture left apart from bribery and pulling various scams. The pullers of the scams are admired by all for being “clever”. Virtually every city is the same drab communist block meme with very little defining it in any way as special, as all culture has been drained from it. The countryside is now grey and polluted and anything decent about it has been raped bloody by those “clever” folk.
No, there is no real mystery to China at all. It’s the children of the lord of the flies set loose in a library, but they already murdered everyone who could read. Expecting the world to marvel at how they finally figured out how to build a chair after burning down a house, and it’s a rubbish chair, that probably gives you cancer, it’s basically the worst chair ever made and smells like poop.

Every single business deal in China is the same thing over and over again, to the point where anyone with half a brain just avoids China entirely. Because it has nothing of value to anyone other than China. And Chinese love their new poopy cancer-giving chair, and if you say otherwise you are a racist who hurt the poor chinese feelings.
Quit using “5000 years of culture” as an excuse for the horrible behaviour and rubbish manners of mainlanders cockroaches. People from Taiwan have the same 5000 years of culture and don’t act like a bunch of retarded monkeys the way at least a plurality of mainlanders do.
such.. complete.. BULLSHIT… and then the author has the balls to end the article with ‘ As long as we treat each other with respect and stay humble, we’ll be fine.’

China pride & dumbass questions or trolling?

OMG STFU ALREADY!!!!
I’m tired of these people talking shit about China!
Pollution this, economy that!
Fuck you.
If China was so bad why are these huge investment firms investing so much money hiring you foreign assholes( yes I’m foreign too, however my blood is red and my skin is yellow and I have my moms little red book!)
you really think you know the world works?
Be a descendent of someone who was in politics maybe then you might have something worth saying as well as being relevant! It’s simple, if you’re so fed up with China just get the fuck out and move back to your just as corrupt country and post your shit there!

中国万岁!

This was posted on Chinese social media…by a chinese / french dude
Anyway, let me take some time to reply to some regard and share my thoughts…
Why are they hiring foreign assholes?
Probably because the foreign assholes know how to think outside the box, and these firms are selling to the average chinese dumbass, and they can’t have the average chinese dumbass running their operations now can they?
You have to be the descendant of someone who was in politics? If that’s the case then it seems like the only people that could justifiably have proper political opinions are the CCP, but then again the first communist party members, they weren’t sons and daughters of politicians, so does that mean that those original people like Mao that ran the country for so many years were full of crap and didn’t know what they were talking about?? …  Oh wait, yep, that’s a bad example.
But just because you work in government it doesn’t necessarily mean that your political opinion is worth more than someone that doesn’t.
Don’t give me this shit of… ‘i’m not into ‘politics’ if you have any care for fairness, and how things should be for your life then you by very follow in logic will have an opinion in politics and governance.
You don’t just state ‘ this isn’t fair’ and then walk away.
You say ‘ I think it should be like this’ OR ‘I wish it was like this’
Just because you want to improve a situation doesn’t mean that you don’t appreciate what you already have.
You can desire improvement even if something is fairly decent, after all that’s essentially the concept of innovation….constant improvement., to make our lives easier or at least better.
If its that case for so many things, why can’t it be the same for governance of a country?….you know for something that affects your everyday life?
That shouldn’t just be a novel idea, that should be obvious.
Plus, why do people keep saying this bullshit of, ‘do you really think you know how the world works?’
Not totally, sure. But we’re all entitled to have our own opinions , even if they’re ridiculous.
Plus a lot of the time, you don’t have to know how the world works to know that 1 country could change how THEY work, to make things better for their people.
That’s not a difficult concept to understand. Why is it so difficult for people to get?
His last little comment in chinese by the way, 中国万岁 zhong guo wan sui, basically translates to- Long live China!
Sometimes, I wonder if these people are trolling, just to get a reaction….because I can’t believe that 1 person can ask so many dumb questions sincerely and spout meaningless filler crap for the post…. I wonder if they’re doing it just to get a reaction.
That being said, from living in a place like China…I can actually totally understand that many people post about complete crap, and ask as many dumbass questions such as above.

i don’t know why people don’t trust me…

So, at work recently we’ve been having a situation with the other company we’re sharing a warehouse with.  Technically the warehouse is ours, but because it is our sister company and there’s no formal agreement in place we can’t kick them out just because we need the space.  So instead they had 3 months’ notice to move to another place, which was apparently fine because they were already preparing to move to an even larger warehouse anyway.

That’s what I got told when the company first moved me to this country.  And since then, I’ve found the European manager to be purposefully putting off moving to this other warehouse, because she will save money but staying in our little informal agreement.

“We will move, ….we ARE moving…. Oh the contracts aren’t ready yet…. We can’t move yet, there’s just no way….. if we do move then we’re going to stop business with you…. “

all whilst hearing rumours on the great vine that this European director had paused her own work contracts for the workers who were meant to be preparing their own warehouse.

So, the point you should be getting here is that she is lying, she wants to save money by putting off the moving as much as possible, and she can change her story very quickly.  Also she has no qualms in doing any of these, even if it’s to the detriment of many other people.

What’s worse, is that I want to like her, she’s got a nice personality, and seems very sincere.  But unfortunately that’s the big thing, seems is not what is actually the case.

So 2 days ago after hearing her bullshit plans and promises for the last 2 and a half months without anything actually happening, we decided to have a meeting, myself, her, and 2 other people from my team who know the warehousing situation very well, and what is and isn’t possible.

It’s a Chinese company, and 1 thing that has to be mentioned is that if you are in the company in the first place, you are trusted, therefore internal meetings are generally informal and oral.
That being said, I decided to take meeting minutes for the simple reason that 1. I would pass on this information to our new European director that couldn’t be in the meeting & 2. It’s a record of proof of what was said in the meeting.

This lady seemed surprised that I was taking it down, and I genuinely think its because she kind of realized it meant she wouldn’t be able to change her story later.

So anyway… she said something about a warehouse we could lease for a short term but…it had no loading platform (she made a big deal of saying we’d have to load the warehouse using a forklift)  OR security system, both of which are very important when you’re storing goods worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I wrote this down and this was questioned by a member of my team and we moved on.

After not really coming up with any better suggestions, and realizing we’d have to take matters into our own hands, despite the fact ….you know, this was her problem that she got everyone into through her own inaction, and on =-purpose non-action,  we eventually figured…. Maybe we should just check this place out, maybe we can ask for more functionality from the warehouse leasor.  So I went midday to check it out with the owner of the warehouse.

Guess what?  It HAS the loading bay, and it also HAS a full security system, and it would actually pretty much fit our needs.

I came back and in the afternoon heard from this woman ‘ oh I hear you went to the short term warehouse….; (you know, without really asking a question)

“yeah”, I said “it was pretty good, it DID have the security system, and the loading doors”

“I told you” she said.

What??? No you didn’t you specifically said that it didn’t have any of these things.

“it seems like no one trust me, I told you about the warehouse and you went to go and look at it anyway, so I guess that means you don’t trust me”

Haven’t you ever heard of ‘trust but verify’?

I mean, especially with this woman’s reputation.  Of course I’m going to verify that what she said was true or either untrue.

“but in the meeting, you said it didn’t have any of these, so we wanted to see to what extent it was”, I said.

“I never said that, I never said that”

Ah…. Yes, you did.  All that note taking I was doing… those minute meetings I sent to you and was verified by everyone in attendance… that might attest to that.

What do you think meeting minutes are for?  They’re not for….’oh yeah, I heard everything you said in the meeting….but you know what?  I’ll just make up some bullshit…write it down… and use it to hold it against you later…whilst it goes out for verification to company directors and what-not’

No, it doesn’t work like that.

Plus, considering that this entire time you’ve been lying, and even this morning when you sent us the email with the address of the warehouse, when I plugged it into my car’s navigation….it wasn’t even in the correct place.  You were even sending us to the wrong place.  I don’t know if this was on purpose or not, but I’m start to think this lying is more pathological rather than just forgetful or anything else.

So is it really any wonder why we react by perhaps not taking you at your word.

“I don’t understand why you don’t trust me”  (this was not said in a sad voice, no reason to feel bad for her… this was said in a strategic, manipulative, scheming kind of voice)

It was revealed in the global meeting/ conference call that both joint CEO’s thought she’d already moved out of the warehouse, so she’d even managed to lie to these 2 people as well.

And before today, after saying that there was no way she could possibly move out, because other companies don’t have space, or security systems, or the right things in place…or that it wasn’t even a question of money…it was simply impossible at this time, which we now know is completely not true..  she threatened that ‘if we were going to be like this she would just move straight away and not work with us anymore. ‘

She said this to one of my colleagues which is more easily rattled, but in the end I had to say, ‘this is an empty threat’ … logically speaking it can’t be true.

Either it means that previously you COULD move out but didn’t because you wanted to save money…. Which confirms that you were lying to us about this situation the whole time, OR that you can’t move out because everything you said was true, and this whole threat of ‘ fine we’ll move out straight away…but you’ll be sorry’  doesn’t mean anything, because it can’t possibly happen…according to your statements before…it is simply impossible.

I’ve never met a pathological liar before…. But I think this is my first one.  Even writing an email, even to her superiors she’s lying, she’s lying that she’s not lying. To be honest it’s absolutely incredible.

I, for some reason, thought it’d be kind of funny to meet a pathological liar, because I just couldn’t imagine what shenanigans a person like that would get up to.  But now I see…and it is not fun, especially when you’re affect by it.

Sometimes I think it would make life so much easier, especially if you can’t help it, and don’t seem to care if it negatively affects people around you.  As a saleswoman this lady is incredible.  But of course she’s incredibly, of course she is, because for any client that comes through…’can you do that?’   Yes of course we can’  Even though it’s completely not true.

Absolutely incredible.

But to have the audacity to say “I don’t know why people don’t trust me”

Hahahah too golden.

American election -hooray for Trump

Destroy and Rebuild

Just a quick post, because this website is meant to be about trials in logic after all, not what was inevitable.

That Drumpf got elected was not illogical, it was the culmination of a shitty public education system that isn’t aimed at producing citizens that can’t think critically.

How did they arrive at a shitty situation in which their public education was this bad?
By a group of elites that realise that in order to get richer, other people need to get poorer.  And how can you guarantee that people en-masse get poorer?

By making them dumber of course.  America’s reputation, or at least stereotype or ignorant, fat people stems from somewhere, and ultimately its foundation is the American public school system.

By not giving people the tools to understand the system in which they live in, and how they can benefit from that system, or.. even what their place in that system before they can even think about changing it, means that people won’t know what needs to change, let alone how to change it.

There’s a reason why those very same elites that forge such a situation don’t send their children into public schools, and it’s because they ultimately want to make more money, and if they’re not taught the right things, raised in the right environment that show how the country actually works…then they won’t have the tools to ensure they can continue to make money.

You might be thinking that I’m saying that these ‘elites’ are Republicans.  Hahaha no.
Republicans, for the most part are stupid.  Most people are aware of that.  What the elites do however is create a neat bundle of sophistry and present their real agenda to the common republicans which end up pushing it themselves without really knowing how it will affect them.

We don’t need to teach evolution in schools; an image that you need to be religious to be president; the idea that the definition of the word ‘socialism’ actually means communism, and that communism = oppression.  The very worrying mathematical equation that it is somehow possible to lower taxes whilst providing more services that are not publicly funded whilst also making them more affordable, whilst also not increasing government debt; or that corporate competition will provide morality, and in relation to the previous point- that if such services were provided by the corporations it would be cheaper and provide better service than if it was done through public channels.

Republicans believe all of this, mostly because words and mathematics seem to confuse them, and so essentially can’t be bothered adding up all the details to understand for themselves that it is not possible.
However, the elites that are guiding the Republicans, of course know that’s not possible, but when your aim is to make yourself richer whilst making other people poorer, it doesn’t have to be a balanced equation.

In fact their real equation is that if government is smaller then the government can be less efficient at passing regulation that limits their profit making potential.

If government is smaller then they can’t provide necessary social services which lead to the betterment of lives for everyone in the country.
& if there is no betterment of lives, then people will struggle more to live a life that they want, and will likely not concentrate on working rather than further education or trying to understand things that don’t immediately affect them, but yet may affect their children.

& ultimately people received less education about the system in place around them and how they fit into it all, and because they don’t have the ability to think so much end up buying goods & services that they don’t really need, or end up enrolling in ‘get ahead’ schemes because they don’t have the capacity to realise that they won’t work nor that the people in charge of selling such things only care about profit.

Think about Drumpf’s own Drumpf University.

Drumpf may be stupid, but also whether unconsciously or consciously, he is doing things in the exact way that you CAN do things in America.  Avoiding paying taxes, creative accounting that means that because of 1 loss he doesn’t have to pay income tax for the next 18 years or so.

Drumpf “That makes me smart”

Well, yes, in a way that does.  He’s not wrong there.  He’s taking advantage of a system that was built by people like him (but not him), the elites, that have been guiding Republican agenda to make necessary changes within the legal system that ensures the rich stay rich and the poor stay not just poor but unaware that they will be poor in the future if they keep voting for people that will make the legal framework & general system work against them.

As much bullshit as Drumpf talks, he’s not wrong.
I’m not advocating him, I’m just saying that he HAS, whether you like it or not, got a point.  He is able to take advantage of a situation BECAUSE people like him have created that advantage to take.

Duping people in private universities.   Again a ridiculous gap that has been left in the education due to lack of regulation from the standard education.

By the way, it’s so nice to see so many chinese friends taking an interest in the election.  Almost as if they wanted to have some say themselves.

But like in everything, I’m sure the chinese gov. is monitoring their own people.  Even when there were the demonstrations against Japan, there were many Japanese cars that were damaged that were in fact ch. gov. cars with ch. gov. number plates.   Exasperation & disappointment towards another country or their government may also be veiled disappointment towards their own gov.

Why would the Chinese gov. be monitoring people that take an interest, especially if there’s too much interest in the American elections?   Because the system that allowed Drumpf to be voted in is the same system that the CCP has been promoting since 1978.  Yes, that whole ‘opening up policy’ was directly brought over from the USA with Deng Xiao Ping’s little trip over to America.

Of course they renamed it ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ which many people know that study Chinese politics and government strategy is code for ‘Capitalism’.

What is not noted however, is that the real point of it is to ensure that those that are in power stay in power by constantly changing certain policies to ensure that the wealth and power stay at the top by creating a certain level of chaos at the bottom.  Misaligned focus is a way to do that. Patriotism, single minded focus against certain other countries, mis-information, propaganda, reducing the teaching of critical thinking in schools, creating a capitalist society and environment in which people need products that they don’t actually need and …reducing social services to a point where people need to work in order to survive.
If they are only focused on working, then they can’t possibly focus on changing the system in place that has them held in that position.  And therefore they are more susceptible for being screwed in the future by the people at the top.

For a very obvious example- The Chinese education system is also terrible.  Chinese government and business elites, also send their children abroad to study, and…specifically to American elite schools.  Not to public schools, but to the elite schools.  Because if it’s the elite schools that do so well in providing the right guidance for the education of elites, and it is the top America leaders that has shown China the way.  As it was the top British elite that showed American leaders the way.

In fact, this is not new at all, it is simply a perfection of the system.

What Drumpf has shown, quite ironically, is that the American system IS broken.  If a person like him can get elected, with all the absolute bullshit that he says, and all the terrible things he has done, it’s not because despite the fact that it is terrible people who elected him, it’s that the system in place has allowed him to do all of these things and allowed him to get away with it.

I imagine that some people DID vote for Drumpf, not because they think he is the best person to lead the country, but possibly because he is the worst.

With Hillary you are getting more of the same shit, more stagnation of Congress, more not moving forward with changing the education system, more complete halt in gun control, more dodgy arms deals which lead to future wars which eventually fuel the elites to continue to make money.

But with Drumpf you get Chaos, provided that he really can’t be controlled.

Some people that voted for Drumpf are doing so on the basis that to make things better you have to destroy and rebuild.

And who is better at destroying things than Drumpf?

My ‘because China’ manifesto

I can’t comprehend why others don’t understand that even though you can live in a place where dodgy shit often happens, that some people may actually like that.

Its the same reason why the English go on holiday, just so that they have another reason to have a good moan.

Their simple minds just process it as, ‘don’t like it….oh, only 1 solution then, just leave’

No no no,
There are complex reasons why people stay in a place of discomfort… and one of them, is to continue to see how much shit can happen, and provided its not happening to you, to take enjoyment from the hilariousness of it.
When you can see a simple answer to the problem, yet others have the logical reasoning ability of a pencil, then….it’s just funny

Its what we all think from time to time i’m sure.

China is a great place to live.  when its good its good, when its dodgy, its funny…but still pretty good

Comment from a person in the ‘because China’ group after seeing a runaway tractor clip where it’s going round in circles but the guy can’t catch it:

‘We don’t have runaway tractors in ‘Murica. That’s mainly why I live here’

I like the potential thought process ‘i need to move…but which country? .. which country has the most run away tractors?….China.  Done.’

Him: ‘And there ya have it’