Memoirs of a Jizhe

The following tips were collected from a Facebook group named "You Know You've Lived in China Too Long When...". Perfectly funny. Enjoy it~!

1. You’re at an expensive western restaurant and don’t even notice the guy at the next table yelling into his cell phone
2. You enjoy karaoke
3. You walk backwards in the park listening to a transistor radio
4. The China Daily is your source for hard hitting, fast breaking, investigative journalism
5. You smoke in crowded elevators.
6. All white people look the same to you
7. You like the smell of the bus.
8. You find state-employed retail staff helpful, knowledgeable and friendly
9. You no longer need tissues to blow your nose
10. You find western toilets uncomfortable
11. You throw your used toilet paper in the basket (as a courtesy to the next person)
12. You think that the heavy air actually contains valuable nutrients that you need to stay healthy
13. You think a 30 year old woman who carries a Hello Kitty lunch box is cute
14. A sexual pervert is a man who prefers women to money.
15. It’s OK to throw rubbish, including old fridges, from your 18th-floor window
16. You believe that pressing the lift button 63 times will make it move faster
17. You aren’t aware that one is supposed to pay for software
18. You are not surprised to see your tap water run dark brown
19. You tell your parents their house back in your home country has bad feng shui
20. You think that a $7 shirt is a rip-off
21. You always leave tray and trash on the table when you are in Starbucks because you insisted it is the way to keep everyone employed
22. You buy an XXXL T-shirt in store when you returned home
23. You take large sum of cash whenever you go hospital in home country
24. You have no reservations about spitting sun flower seeds on the restaurant floor
25. You think it’s silly to buy a new bike when it’ll get stolen soon and stolen bikes are half the price.
26. You’d rather pay the 10 yuan for an all night stay at the internet cafe than the 30 for a taxi home.
27. You feel cheated if you don’t receive a full head and shoulder massage when getting a haircut
28. You blow your nose or spit on the restaurant floor (of course after making a loud hocking noise)
29. You no longer wait in line, but go immediately to the head of the queue
30. It becomes exciting to see if you can get on the lift before anyone can get off
31. It is no longer surprising that the only decision made at a meeting is the time and venue for the next meeting
32. You no longer wonder how someone who earns US$ 400.00 per month can drive a Mercedes
33. You accept the fact that you have to queue to get a number for the next queue
34. You believe everything you read in the local newspaper
35. You have developed an uncontrollable urge to follow people carrying small flags
36. You regard it as part of the adventure when the waiter correctly repeats your order and the cook makes something completely different.
37. You are not surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb
38. You look over people’s shoulder to see what they are reading
39. You honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you drive down the sidewalk
40. When car accidents become a source of heartwarming humour
41. When shopping at Carrefour some laowai stares you down for catching you looking into his basket while you wonder to yourself what laowai’s eat
42. You have figured out that it is actually the Taiwanese who are running this country
43. You have a pinky fingernail an inch long
44. You burp in any situation and don’t care
45. You start to watch CCTV9 and feel warm and comforted by the governments great work
46. You think Pizza Hut is high-class and worth queueing for
47. You have learnt how to detect someone is in a hurry behind you, and now have the ability to not only walk very slowly but also grow eyes in the back of your head, so when they start to overtake on the right hand side, you automatically cut in and walk very slowly directly in front of them
48. When you are able to jump the queue because the idiot laowai left 2 centimeters between themself and the person in front of them
49. You have absolutely no sense of traffic rules
50. You start calling other foreigners Lao Wai
51. You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle
52. The last time you visited your mother, you gave her your business card
53. You think no car is complete without a tissue box on the rear shelf and a feather duster in the trunk
54. You go to the local shop in pajamas
55. When looking out the window, you think “Wow, so many trees!” instead of “Wow, so much concrete!”
56. Pollution, what pollution?
57. You think “white pills, blue pills, and pink powder” is an adequate answer to the question “What are you giving me, doctor?”
58. Someone doesn’t stare at you and you wonder why
59. Firecrackers don’t wake you up
60. Your family stops asking when you’ll be coming back
61. You wear out your vehicle’s horn before its brakes
62. You buy a top-of-the-line karaoke machine
63. Forks feel funny
64. Chinese remakes of Western songs sound better than the originals
65. You get homesick for Chinese food when away from China
66. You realize that smiling and nodding is Chinese body language for, “Go away; leave me alone.”
67. All the top-level government officials you befriended for guanxi purposes when you first arrived are retired and living in your country
68. After being in an accident, you tell the ambulance driver which hospital to take you to
69. Your company offers you a job in your native land, and includes regular “Home Leave” to China as an incentive
70. You think of “salad” as diced apples in mayonnaise
71. You don’t bother to take the sticker off the lenses of your fake Ray-Bans
72. You only wear a suit when you dig ditches or do home repairs
73. Your handshake is weakening by the day
74. You compiled a 3-page list of weird English first names that Chinese people of your acquaintance have chosen for themselves.
75. Your collection of business cards has outgrown your flat
76. You and a friend get on a bus, sit at opposite ends of the bus, and continue your conversation by yelling from one end to the other
77. You cannot say a number without making the appropriate hand sign
78. You like the taste of Green Tea and Chivas
79. You start recognising the chinese songs on the radio and sing along to them with the taxi driver
80. You feel insulted when you enter a restaurant and only three waiters welcome you 

[ For long, I cannot access Vox.com at all without proxy. Firefox showed the "connection reset" page every time. What I can do is to wait for the day Great Firewall removed Vox.com from its black list. Dammit. ]

I'm listening to Linkin Park's latest album Minutes to Midnight... and thinking about how I find new singles, albums, and artists nowadays.

Why this Linkin Park album? Because it includes the theme song from Transformers the movie, What I've Done. Blockbusters are the most obvious way how we find some good music. However, it's not the best way because of the huge delay on the process of communication.

TV shows are much faster and more helpful than its silver screen competitor. The first Facebook page I opened is Brett Dennen's profile, which was being maintained by his fan. Lots of passers-by left same messages on the page as me: "I heard your song Ain't No Reason from House M.D. yesterday."

Millions of TV shows, which could be downloaded via BitTorrent from the feed-sharing sites like IsoHunt or PirateBay, are transmitting the latest highlights of American cultures to the outside world day by day. For people in the countries where it's forbidden to have satellite dishes at home, say China, BitTorrent and eMule are the most important online tools they cannot live without.

Lots of my friends set Verycd.com as their default homepage. On Verycd, which was founded by some Shanghai natives, Chinese eMule users can find zillions of gigabytes of resources like the latest movies, television shows, albums, digital books and magazines.

The top DJs and music critics in mainland China consider Verycd as their bridge to the outside world. Thanks to the efforts of 0day organizations, the newest music from all over the world could be found on the frontpage of Verycd, even days ahead of the official releasing date.

As Fortunes magazine said, we're running from the age of searching, to the brave new world of discovering. Definitely, the music discovering engines like Pandora.com are pretty cool and useful for the American internet users. But the answer from their Chinese counterpart? Doubtless, Meiju - It's how they called American TV shows.

Blogger T-shirt

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Received a package from Google just now. They told me it came from Google US Headquarter and there are only three such t-shirts for Chinese bloggers. Wow, I'm a bloody lucky dog! And I really really like it because I've blogged for three years, and I love this orange "B" logo on the front.

But unfortunately, Google's Blogger service is blocked in mainland China. Sigh. Nobody will know what the "Blogger(TM)" stands for here!

Show us a picture that's worth a thousand words.
Submitted by sami711.

Scofields on Chinese YouTubes

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What makes YouTube so popular? Probably, the copyrighted materials - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The South Park, and other latest TV shows from all around the world. Though the content makers have asked YouTube to remove them over and over, users keep uploading the unauthorized videos day after day.

But in China, the we-will-be-the-next-YouTube websites can do much more than their American precedent. As a Chinese Web 2.0 entrepreneur tole me, "the foreign executives must be very 'jealous' of the copyright situation in mainland China." Copyrighted videos online? Who cares.

It's such a good news for the websites, and doubtless, better for the mainland Internet users.

Nowadays, open a Chinese video sharing website, type the title of your favorite show, click on the search button, and in less than one second, a result page with every single episode of the show will come up on your screen. Take ouou.com as an example, you can watch the the episodes which was premiered in America yesterday - 24, Prison Break, and teenagers' favorite sci-fi show in this season, Heroes.

What's more, there is no downloading process which belongs to the BitTorrent/KaZaA age, no Ads bothering you from the beginning to the end, and the most important, there is no language gap and cultural crash any more. In mainland, fans with extraordinary translating skills started making Chinese subtitles once they got the videos from the Internet. After the Episode 1, Season 2 of Prison Break came out in August 2006, the first video with Chinese subtitle was finished and uploaded in less than 7 hours.

And for some shows which require in-depth knowledges of American culture, there are footnotes among the subtitle. Especially in the show Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, footnotes help Chinese audience understand the jokes about Hollywood history and American politicians. How can Chinese fans spell the weird names correctly? The embed English subtitles for HDTV programs were recorded and sent to the translating group in mainland.

So, even the networks import some famous shows, no one will watch them. Because the official versions always contain many translating mistakes, the terribly dubbed episodes always drive the viewers crazy, and the die-hard young fans have seen them online before. Last year, CCTV, the biggest governmental network imported Despaired Housewives, and the rates were incredibly low.

I don't think it's a Only-In-China affair. On the YouTube's Most Viewed page, you can find some Japanese cartoon with English subtitles episodes from time to time. They are also the fans' masterpieces. I read an article about it on Fortunes magazine. But it said that if the official versions are bought by American networks, the translating groups will stop by themselves immediately.

I have to admit that I haven't updated this blog for such a long time, not because I'm too lazy, but because of something called "Great Firewall" on the border between mainland China and the outside world.

Shortly after Vox.com launched publicly and I interviewed the head of Six Apart, this social network was blocked in mainland. Why? Maybe it was just the day when blogspot.com cannot be connected to, so lots of "sensitive" users moved to Vox, one of the best web services in 2006. So, unfortunately, the Chinese users can no longer use this service since then.

Of course, the world is flat. Netizens in mainland China can use tor, which is being developed with support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and was previously funded by the US Navy, to access some blocked websites located in the US or some other western countries. But, it's way too slow to completely finish loading the What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool used by Vox.com.

And the worst thing came on Dec. 27, 2006. The earthquake in the Taiwan straight cut down the international fibers buried in the depth of the ocean. Until today, the impotent China Netcom, who's the biggest government-run ISP and the only option for the internet users in Beijing, cannot fix the terrible problem. And doubtless, there's no announcement, no press conference, and absolutely, no apology.

Today, I found out a good way to log on Vox.com. Because of the Unix core of Mac OS X, I typed the ssh command in the console and create a secure channel to an external host. The speed is really good, and finally, I can update this blog, which has been linked by Danwei.org and the Time‘s China Blog.

Really cool!

Photo:  Show us what you look like when you wake up.
Submitted by J.T.

Just woke up at 11:40am and feel a little tired because of tooooooo much sleeeeeep.

The following clip is an interview made by danwei.tv with me, the boy in black, and my partner who's maintaining the podcast Antiwave.net with me. You will see what I look like, but not when I wake up. :)

No need to fight for the remote control panel now, but...

In Episode 6 of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, NBC's TV series premiered in fall 2006, sketch actor Tom invited his parents to the studio for his show. The lines between Tom and his father are still echoing through my mind even though I've watched the episode for more than two weeks.

Dad. You still have a turntable at home, right?

A record player? I don't have any use for a CD player, Tom. The music sounds just fine to me coming out of...

No,I... I wanted to give you this. It's a recording of Who's on First. You gotta set your turntable to 78. When you get home you're gonna laugh. And you're gonna listen to it over and over again and you're gonna laugh every time. I love you, Dad. And whether you like it or not, you taught me everything I know.

You all right? You need any money?

I'm fine.

Obviously, the writer of Studio 60 portrayed Tom's parents who live in Columbus as complete rubes, because almost every American from the generation has heard of Who's on First, however, the thing happening in Tom's family is not that far off. I got the impression that he had a very stern education and laughter was not a main part of his infancy. And it's the very reason he knew little about the comedy shows, and couldn't catch up with Tom from time to time.

My heart really ached for Tom, because I have an interest in something called show-biz that my parents could never comprehend and have spent many times having similar conversations with them in a similar frustrating way. When I lived in Fuzhou, a small city in the southeast China, during the National Day vacation, I bought the DVD of Peter Jackson's King Kong and played it on the big flat-screen TV with Dolby Digital 5.1 surrounding sound system for my parents. Five minutes past, my mom said, "Now we're too old to understand the story."

It seemed as Tom's father had not asked "You all right?" for such a long time that Tom could hardly hold his tears after the words. I don't see why they could get so out of touch, but I've got the answer to myself. Actually, I could not remember the last time I watched any TV programs with both of my parents.

"How endless choice is creating unlimited demand." Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, wrote on the cover of The Long Tail. With the content becoming tens of thousands more than ever before, each member of a family could find his or her favorite on the big screen or the Internet. There are three televisions and four computers (including two laptops) in my parents' house, so how can we go back to the "good old days" when my mom, my dad and I watched Mickey Mouse or Tom & Jerry at 18:30 on CCTV 1 every weekend?

The poor situation is going from bad to worse recently. Since the rise of Internet video, watching has transformed from a family activity undertaken in the living room to a solitary practice embarked upon while bored at work. Sure, YouTube videos are e-mailed from friend to friend, but we watch them alone. As Slate's associate editor Josh Levin said, if America's Funniest Home Video was a vacation slide show at grandma's house, YouTube is a viewing booth in a porno shop.