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Taxi card photo taken by my student Jaimie Pham this past week. The lowest I've ever seen was 8000-something. This is like the holy grail of low taxi numbers, not sure it can be beaten. Asked Jaimie about the driver and she replied, "He was kind of old and a little grumpy." Given how long he's been at it, I wouldn't be surprised. (I've intentionally blurred out the driver's name and photo) I’ve been told that my only talent is as a repository of useless trivia (hence: the history degree) and have also on more than one occasion been accused of being something of an obnoxious know-it-all (Thanks, Mom!), and…I like pubs. So this was an idea whose time had come, right? Wrong? From a reader in Sichuan: Just an aside (and yes, this will be a threadjack), I was wondering if anyone here could help me out with ‘the great laowai’ debate I am having here. I have been living in China for 2 years, I HATE to be called laowai (because of the informal connotation of lao3, because hey, if you don’t know me, you gotta keep some formality… for example, once I accidentally called my then future-father-in-law laoshu, and he got SUPER pissed, etc). One of my friends who has been here a hella long time agrees, another does not. Waiguoren is a ok. Hell, somebody could call me wairen. Am I being overly sensitive, or should I be resigned to my fate to be people’s dear foreigner here? Also, where the hell did the term come from? This is one of those topics that is perennial fodder for China bloggers. (See these posts in 2005, 2008, and 2010 as well as my own take on the subject back in 2006. ) Is Laowai a term of respect or of contempt? I asked Yajun and this was her response: After all this time, it’s become a label, a way to So it’s October 2nd and Beijing is waking up with a bit of hangover. I went to a parade-viewing party yesterday morning and when I arrived, at 9:00 a.m., the assembled gathering of translators, bloggers, and professional snarkers was already searching for their second collective bottle of vodka. It went downhill steadily from there. But more than just a day off and excuse to start drinking at breakfast, the day was also a moment to celebrate the triumph of the CCP’s will in taking an impoverished nation and building a 21st century powerhouse. The message yesterday: “Hu’s the man?” And it was delivered with the sledgehammer subtlety of Kanye West attending an awards show following three hours of blowing bong hits in the back of Jay-Z’s Maybach. Now that the biggest event in the PRC this year is out of the way, I thought I’d try to work my way back through the celebration with this summer’s funniest movie, The Hangover, the kind of movie that is monumentally stupid-funny in a “DVD you would put on if you had spent three hours blowing bong hits in the back of your buddy’s hatchback” kind of way. And since that really kind |
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