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The Chicken

Ever seen this map?

china 9 dashed line map baidu

[China’s famous 9 dashed line, I realise only now that this particular one actually has 10.  Essentially as you can see its a rather crudely drawn line that once represented the extent of China’s historical fishing explorations and that it’s navy once or twice ventured into]

So what is with China’s need to have the 9 dashed line as part of their territory?        （Any casual glance would likely reveal to casual observer that this is ridiculous)

Its all about wanting china to look like the rooster/ chicken.

china chicken

How can they possibly have a complete chicken if they don’t have the legs?

Plus according to the Chinese, the legs are the most tasty part.

Therefore to complete the chicken China needs the legs.

“why won’t the world let us complete our chicken?”

We are a proud nation for which unity is crucial.

Bullshit. You just want your country to look like a chicken.

To be quite honest, the old map already has the legs, this one just looks like the chicken now has a sleeping bag.

….All we want is for our chicken to have a sleeping bag, why won’t you let us have the sleeping bag?

Soon they’re going to bust out some historical maps from the Yuan dynasty… and say.. hey look we used to own Korea as well, that was traditionally ours so we need it back.

(And technically Yuan dynasty was the remnants when Mongolia conquered China, and even re-wrote themselves into the Chinese history books, but more about that later)

All we want is for our chicken to have a beard, why won’t you let our chicken have a beard?

The chickens beard

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Rich people bets

A long time ago I saw an advert in my home country for:

L’Oreal rejuvenating rubies face cream

To be honest I always find women’s beauty products interesting and funny at the same time.
Some of the things that these companies claim are amazing, and the reasoning they use to come to their conclusion that their product is superior is hilarious.

L’Oreal rejuvenating face cream with the harnessed power of rubies

Rubies?  Like red rubies, the precious stone?

Yep, rubies.

The power of rubies.

Whilst I’m sitting on my couch laughing, I can kind of understand

And that’s because of my brother’s & my own theory of ‘Rich man bets’

Basically it goes along the lines that some people are so rich they get to a stage where they realise they can pretty much release anything, no matter how stupid or lame it is, no matter how much it doesn’t make sense and still make money from it.

Because they realise that there will always be enough stupid people out there to buy whatever it is that they’re selling.  This can even go for ideas as well.

Rich man A “I’ve just thought of a ridiculous name for some mascara-   fabu-lash”

Rich man B “that’s ridiculous, no body would ever buy that because it’s such an amazingly lame name”

Rich man A “correction, nobody should ever buy this, that doesn’t mean that they won’t.
I’ll bet you 2 million dollars that I can turn this into a product and make profit from it”

Rich man B “well, I’ve got nothing else that’s keeping me interested, so sure, you’re on. Make it 3 million dollars and you have to make a return on investment of 40% in the 1st year”

Rich man A “done.”

RevlonFabulashMascara021_hi_res_

After one year.

Rich man B “oh shit, he’s actually done it…. I should give people more credit for the levels of stupidity they can reach.
Ok next step… let’s see if people will still buy a product that ‘harnesses the power of rubies’ …this will be hilarious”

brilliance ruby collection

(This is not exactly the same… but i couldn’t find the exact one i saw on TV all those years ago, perhaps they were actually ashamed of it and deleted it)

China’s 5 year buildings

A few of us have realised that many of China’s buildings only last about 5 years.  A lot of it is because of the way they build houses without taking into account the conditions in where they’re building them.

Normally you don’t build a house with all concrete walls and an all concrete roof, and when you do, you do it in a temperature that is relatively constant.  Which is obviously not the case in Beijing where in Summer all the concrete and steel rods used to reinforce it expands, and in Winter it contracts.

Given Beijing’s quite hot Summers and extremely cold winters, there’s quite  a bit of contraction and expansion, therefore after 5 years of this a house/ building has to be rebuilt or some serious renovation has to go into it.

Normally houses use tiles that literally just sit on a wooden frame which is then attached to the sides of the house.  The weight of the tiles, and the fact that they’re all supporting each other is enough to keep everything in place whilst still standing up to heavy rain and the expansion and contraction in hot and cold climates.

So why do they do this in China?  And even in some fairly classy places?

One easy justification is that they’re just trying to save money, and just really don’t care about quality assurance, because…that’s surely someone else’s problem.

But a more interesting way to justify it, is that this is done one purpose.  The reasoning is that it creates more building work for the Chinese economy.
If buildings are only good for 5 years, then it either has to be knocked down and started again, or some serious money has to be spent on structural upkeep, and renovations, all fuelling the Chinese economy. All keeping people employed, all helping ..hopefully eventually, to perfect Chinese building standards through a trial and error kind of system.

Fantastic right!

Chinese Logic

I know a few of you know this already… but in the Chinese language, before English came along, or before outside thinking came along… there was no exact word for ‘Logic’

That’s why the word logic in Chinese is ‘逻辑’  pronounced luo ji.

It actually just a transliteration of the English word logic.

It’s interesting to note that the inference of this realisation is that the Chinese culture may not have had this concept before outside thinking…Western thinking came along.

That’s not to say that they didn’t use rational thinking to express ideas and present the equivalent to a logical argument. It’s just that ‘Logic’ as a concept most likely didn’t exist.

For example after hearing someone express a rational argument you can say ‘你有道理’ ni you dao li = You have reason / your argument has a good point.

Or you can ask the question after you’ve finished speaking ‘我有道理吗?’   wo you dao li ma? = Do you think my argument is rational?

But the individual component that is Logic, was traditionally never there.

And for those of you that are going to say…’hey well, logic and reason is pretty much the same thing’

Well I’ve already got you, pretty much is not exact is it?

Again, that’s the brilliance of the English language, we can convey so many exact concepts in just the right way, because all the words have exact meanings.  Many may indeed have similarities with other words, but their peculiarities stand them apart, and make them necessary to define the difference.

十月怀胎 shi2 yue4 huai2 tai1

Oh have you ever heard a Chinese person say, that Chinese babies are inside the womb for 10 months and not 9?

I was on the bus the other day and I asked a person that works in the same building (who looks very pregnant) ‘oh how long have you got to go?’

To which she replied, ‘I’ve still got 4 months to go’

‘really? But I thought you’ve been pregnant for a long time’

‘oh yes, it’s already been 6 months, so I’ve got 4 to go’

And then she saw the confusion on my face and said, ‘oh yeah in China, babies are in the womb for 10 months’

… .well i knew you were different… but not that different.

But anyway, I found out yesterday its because originally this was going by the lunar calendar which claims that each month is 28 days, and so 10x 28 = 280 days.  Whereas non-Chinese descendants go by the general 30 day calendar 30 x 9 = 270, add in a week for being late and you’ve got 277.
Which means the actual amount of days is more or less the same.
But…. in the magic of China, and the Chinese people… people have forgotten the original reason and so now just say… yep its 10 months