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Ceciltron posted:Actually, on an interesting note, at the law offices we went to a while back, one of the lawyers (the one with an oddly perfect grasp of English idiomatic speech), had only one hand, the other was some kind of pointing fork. Sweet, you've hired the gangster lawyer.
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Feb 14, 2014 02:42
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MeramJert posted:people suck This
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Feb 14, 2014 03:14
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Ceciltron posted:
Was this your lawyer? 
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Feb 14, 2014 04:00
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tacoman165 posted:Was this your lawyer? That's evil Jeff Winger and he is probably a good lawyer.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:15
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GuestBob posted:You could always try taking down the car's number plate - assuming it has one of course - I bet dollars to donuts that it'll drive off if they work out what you're doing. Sorry to hear about your problems FearCotton. Definitely whip out your PHONE CAMERA and make them know that you are recording their license plates. Or just whip out your camera and start recording them and put it on the internet for a human flesh search. In the mean time, call them out on it and flip them the bird. Those kind of assholes are cowards anyways. Now I won't be going all NUKULAR on them. But If I do know their license plate number I would definitely slash their tires and key their car if I'm at the mall.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:35
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GuestBob posted:There's no good solution to this problem: stick to populated areas at normal times of day and use your phone alot when walking. Dressing smartly may also help to deter people and can give your confidence a little bump as well. I'd say in general it happens biweekly, though normally it's very tame with the most extreme being guys saying one thing. It's been cold lately so I've just been another one of the puffy-coated masses, but I'm always dressed very professionally and conservatively--dresses or skirts to the knee, long-sleeve blouses and cardigans, tights--because the  is strong and because I have tattoos I need to cover. I don't know what got in everyone's wheaties to make them be extra rape-y this week. Important notes are that this rarely happens if Blinky is with me (and never to this degree), and each time this has happened this week it's relatively early (2pm, 4pm, and 9pm) and in well-lit, heavily populated areas. I'm honestly surprised the 1st car didn't cause an accident because it slowed down to a crawl on a major roadway during their vocal wooing. I was afraid if I turned off the sidewalk and down a side street they'd just follow me, so I ducked into a shop eventually and they left. The 2nd car followed me all the way to our housing gate, where they got yelled at by our guards (and yelled back at them). The 3rd time, which was the scariest, was a group of 4 on foot. That was the first one that actually scared me--I highly doubt guys are going to bail out of their BMW because a white chick won't engage with them, but a bunch of guys walking may actually try something beyond talking. I think I will take down license plates when possible and/or tell people I'm going to take pictures of them with my phone, because it's the escalation that's really bothering me--it goes from "you're pretty" to "suck my dick" to "give me your number" to "who the hell do you think you are?!" to "hey, where do you live? you live over there?" very quickly. Saying "I understand you" and "you're being rude" only seems to make it worse, because then they talk even more. I'm hoping it's people passing through after the holidays; if it continues for another week I will tell the school and our US partners. We're hiring for 4 to 6 positions next year, and I don't want any girls coming down into this situation blind.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:37
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ARRRRGGGHH  I use to think "sometimes this country blows". Now it's "Most of the times, this country blows". The hooligans are probably amused at your Chinese, just say gently caress off or whatever and flip them the bird. The walkers are getting too creepy. Definitely snap pictures of their faces and share it with your co workers and the police. And let the internet do a human flesh search on their worthless asses. DISCLAIMER: I used the BMW trick  It was New Year's Eve and I was in the suburbs, traffic basically got paralyzed and I dropped this lady back into downtown. I got her number and had lunch with her the next day. The rest was history....
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Feb 14, 2014 04:45
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caberham posted:
Yeah, but I highly doubt you asked for sexual favors during that first meeting. Cecil, your fork-lawyer anecdote made me incredibly happy for some reason.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:54
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Sogol posted:That's evil Jeff Winger and he is probably a good lawyer. 
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Feb 14, 2014 05:24
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Am I missing something? You aren't allow to flip people the bird in China? Is it actually a finable offense? How do they even enforce that. I do it all the time. I've even kicked the side panels of cars as a pedestrian if they are driving like assholes/dangerously close to me. You have to fight fire with fire! I think some day, when I'm on my way out of the Middle Kingdom, I'm going to lose it on some TuHao and throw my U-Lock through their windshield or something.
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Feb 14, 2014 05:24
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B-Rad posted:Am I missing something? You aren't allow to flip people the bird in China? Is it actually a finable offense? How do they even enforce that. I do it all the time. I've even kicked the side panels of cars as a pedestrian if they are driving like assholes/dangerously close to me. You are a pretty tall guy so people won't mess with you as much Definitely flip the bird. Keep flappy bird alive!
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Feb 14, 2014 05:26
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B-Rad posted:Am I missing something? You aren't allow to flip people the bird in China? Is it actually a finable offense? How do they even enforce that. I do it all the time. I've even kicked the side panels of cars as a pedestrian if they are driving like assholes/dangerously close to me. It's not the same for girls. These guys are a lot more intimidating and dangerous to ladies. Like fearcotton said, this never happens when I'm with her. Usually not a peep from anyone beyond the incredulous "laowai!??" from old ladies walking by. loving cowards. I do think it's mostly just asswipe kids home for the holiday, though. This kind of thing is pretty rare in Yuyao otherwise.
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Feb 14, 2014 06:09
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blinkyzero posted:loving cowards. Get yourself into a pair of heels and underneath a blonde wig and go plant your knee in some crotch!
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Feb 14, 2014 06:36
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Is there a wise old saying like Little Man Has Big Voice? 大声貧根？
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Feb 14, 2014 09:39
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FearCotton posted:Goons, I need advice. It's about to get all E/N up in here. Are they speaking English or Chinese? If it's English, they might just be loving with you for shits and giggles. If it's Chinese, just walk on by and don't respond to people who say things to you on the street. If people say hello, pretend you don't understand. They speak English? You don't speak English, or Chinese, or understand a single word they say. They do not exist. You are on your New York poo poo. I've dealt with strangers on the street in many ways and both myself and my wife think the best thing to do is just keep walking like they don't exist. We have a baby now so our interactions with strangers are different, but I've never had anyone call me out on the street that wasn't trying to rip me off or be a dick to impress his friends (haha! There's a foreigner! I dare you to say hello!). There's nothing to be gained from these interactions. If someone is interesting they won't try to talk to you on the street, because people who are interesting don't just walk up to random strangers and start talking to them for no reason. Anyway, I have learned the best thing to do is just not interact with these people. Although more recently I have started loving with the people I do talk to (cab drivers, children, my dozen or so uncle-in-laws) because I've learned to be sarcastic in Chinese.
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Feb 14, 2014 19:17
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bad day posted:Anyway, I have learned the best thing to do is just not interact with these people. I walk everywhere in China so I get a lot of drive-by "HAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOO!!!" or things like that. I'm not a female so I don't get sexually harassed but it used to really get to me. Then I started using my headphones with my iPhone when I walked everywhere. I listen to music, podcasts, or sometimes just nothing and people almost always leave me alone. I also have been sarcastic to Chinese people for years once my Chinese got good enough. I'm never mean about it but if they say something like "Look, a foreigner!" I'll whirl around and look behind me and say "Where? Where?" or if a few people are talking about me next to me and call me a foreigner I'll ask them "How did you know I was a foreigner?" I guess it isn't sarcasm but the place I always get breakfast is super Chinese down an alleyway and there are always old Chinese guy that just stare at me and they always ask the lady that works there "Where's he from? He speaks Chinese well. Does he come here everyday?" and on more than one occasion I've told them "I can understand what you are saying, if you have any questions you can ask me. It is very rude to talk about me to her when I am right here." That always gets the place awkwardly quiet and no one really says anything after that. I'm actually pretty nice to cabbies, for whatever reason, unless they try to cheat me with a broken meter.
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Feb 15, 2014 02:09
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Cabbies are fun, but they seem to be wildly different depending on where they are. I've lived in too many placed so here's Magna Kaser's Cabbie Personality by Geography Breakdown: Shanghai: Shanghai cabbies are pretty boring. Most aren't too eager to talk, but they seem to be pretty above board and nice. No real complaints. Hangzhou: Hangzhou cabbies are the most willing to not use a meter that I've run across. However, they always tend to charge less or about the same as it'd cost anyway so I didn't mind much. A relatively delightful bunch. 100% of them will ask you if you've seen the West Lake, even if they had just asked how long you'd been in Hangzhou and the answer was 2 years. Qingdao: Qingdao cabbies are terrible. For a city with multiple multinational HQs that is on the beach, and has a ton of Japanese and Korean expats, the cab drivers are crazy xenophobic. Even bad towards 外地人, the only time I met a nice one was when I was with my friend who is a Qingdao native and speaks with the local flavor. They'll often not stop for foreigners or try to price gouge, especially if your destination is a beach or something touristy. Chengdu: Chengdu cabbies own. They are nice and super talkative to anyone. Just last week one was telling me how Russia, China and the US were basically a modern Three Kingdoms and he didn't think China had Lu Bu. When I said I thought Cao Cao would be American he agreed but said in his analogy the Wei kingdom was Russia. Another was a former exec at a tech company that went under. He said driving a cab was the most relaxing job he ever had, and the pay wasn't terrible, so he was actually pretty happy to be doing it now that he was a little older. One woman told me we were driving past her mom's house so she wanted to stop and pick up dinner if that was OK. I said fine and she came out with a ton of food and gave me a bunch of baozi which were amazing phantom baozi I've never been able to find anything like since. She then said I shouldn't pay her since I was inconvenienced by her stop, but those baozi were so good the 9 kuai cab ride seemed inconsequential. Nanjing: I was not in Nanjing as long as any of the above cities, so I might have hit a bad set, but every Nanjing cabbie was miserable. Cold, wanted to not use the meter, often drove around in weird roundablout ways to run UP the meter. F---- would not ride again. Lanzhou: Lanzhou cabbies were all laughing 100% of the time I was in their cabs, talking exuberantly in a form of Chinese I can't understand at all, driving down loving train tracks which I hope were not in use anymore. Pretty much the best. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 03:39
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A cab driver stopped while we were in the middle of an intersection yesterday, leaned over in his chair and grabbed my arm to feel my muscles and pectorals. This is because of reasons.
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Feb 15, 2014 04:08
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I was walking through Wudaokou in Beijing once at like 4am and I saw three cabs parked in the middle of the major intersection by the TUS Park. Their drivers were doing tai chi under the red lights (and, shortly thereafter, the green lights as well).
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Feb 15, 2014 04:20
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blinkyzero posted:I was walking through Wudaokou in Beijing once at like 4am and I saw three cabs parked in the middle of the major intersection by the TUS Park. Their drivers were doing tai chi under the red lights (and, shortly thereafter, the green lights as well). China spotted!
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Feb 15, 2014 04:28
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Ceciltron posted:A cab driver stopped while we were in the middle of an intersection yesterday, leaned over in his chair and grabbed my arm to feel my muscles and pectorals. This is because of reasons. Now we need pix of your muscles.
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Feb 15, 2014 04:35
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Magna Kaser posted:Lanzhou: Lanzhou cabbies were all laughing 100% of the time I was in their cabs, talking exuberantly in a form of Chinese I can't understand at all, driving down loving train tracks which I hope were not in use anymore. Pretty much the best. Lanzhou is pretty great in general.
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Feb 15, 2014 04:54
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goldboilermark posted:I guess it isn't sarcasm but the place I always get breakfast is super Chinese down an alleyway and there are always old Chinese guy that just stare at me and they always ask the lady that works there "Where's he from? He speaks Chinese well. Does he come here everyday?" and on more than one occasion I've told them "I can understand what you are saying, if you have any questions you can ask me. It is very rude to talk about me to her when I am right here." That always gets the place awkwardly quiet and no one really says anything after that. I used to get breakfast most days from an older lady on a side street near my apartment. I'm not that talkative with strangers in general, but we'd have little conversations now and then while I was waiting for her to finish making my food. One day I went there and she said 你好，你要什麽？ and immediately a woman in her 20s that was standing nearby said 他聼不懂. I forget exactly what the older lady said but it was surprisingly snarky and the younger woman just shut up and was completely quiet after that.
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Feb 15, 2014 15:06
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The best I ever had was when some guy was shocked that I understood numbers, the lady behind the counter responded with "Dumbass, his Chinese is better than yours!" Which, after he left, she made sure to point out my Chinese is bad just to make sure I understood the overall burn. Magna Kaser posted:TAXIS
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Feb 15, 2014 17:50
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I think my least favorite thing is when you get a couple of people talking and laughing at you because they assume you don't understand. Hell, usually you don't even need to speak a word of Chinese to know what's going on. Is there something particularly dickish about Guangzhou? 'Cause I swear I've dealt with more assholes here in the last few days than in 6 months of Shijiazhuang, a couple of weeks in Beijing, and a few days in Shanghai combined. New Coke fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 18:19
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I like the Nanjing cabbies. Nothing special in particular, but never was passed up and they were tolerant of my change and understood my awful Chinese. Actually my favorite cabbies in Asia so far. Taiwan is a close second and Vietnam is by far the worst.
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Feb 15, 2014 18:53
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I do talk to lots of Chinese people; just in the course of normal sorts of interactions. Most of them don't speak English (or much English) I just avoid talking to the weirdos or dickfaces, and it took me a good three or four years to be able to identify who those people were with any useful rapidity. In a sense it's like sarcasm - you're not really able to gauge the normality of people who don't speak your language. Not that being weird is bad but nowadays I can spot trouble In a bar right away and shut it down as opposed to interacting people I shouldn't have and launching a series of events which culminate in hostility.
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Feb 15, 2014 22:32
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MeramJert posted:I used to get breakfast most days from an older lady on a side street near my apartment. I'm not that talkative with strangers in general, but we'd have little conversations now and then while I was waiting for her to finish making my food. One day I went there and she said 你好，你要什麽？ and immediately a woman in her 20s that was standing nearby said 他聼不懂. I forget exactly what the older lady said but it was surprisingly snarky and the younger woman just shut up and was completely quiet after that. I wish I had a dollar for every time this happened to me. At the bank? 他听不懂. At a real estate office? 他听不懂. At the back of a KTV where there are 20 prostitutes waiting for Johns? 他听不懂。 By the time I left I was just in full rear end in a top hat mode and every time I encountered a situation like that I would tell the person to speak English to me, and when they couldn't or spoke horribly I would laugh in their face and say “我听不懂." Cuatal fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Feb 16, 2014 |
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Feb 16, 2014 14:38
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Fearcotton and I walked uptown for dinner tonight and we passed a bunch of still-uniformed kids from a different high school spawning upstream on their way toward that Holiest of Holies, McDonald's. One of them "hallllllllooooooo'd" us, so I instantly responded "ni hao xuesheng." Cognitive dissonance must've been in full effect, because I heard him muttering "ni...hao...xuesheng...?" over and over to himself as though completely baffled. This happens to me all the time. My Chinese is bad, no question, but my tones are pretty decent and I know I don't butcher them, since my students understand me perfectly when we chat outside of class.
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Feb 16, 2014 15:28
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One time a little girl yelled "hello!" at me and when I replied "ni hao!" she became visibly angry and started to throw a tantrum. She was pretty young, maybe 5 years old? But still, not the reaction I expected.
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Feb 16, 2014 16:15
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There's a couple of cute little kids in my apartment complex who always run up and hug me and shout "hello, good morning!" when I see them on their way home from school. It's the afternoon for fucks sake.
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Feb 16, 2014 16:19
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Jimmy Little Balls posted:There's a couple of cute little kids in my apartment complex who always run up and hug me and shout "hello, good morning!" when I see them on their way home from school. It's the afternoon for fucks sake. They may just think it means "hello". Funny related story from my girlfriend: She was leaving her dorm once and she bumped into a guy, so she said "sorry", but it was in English. The guy looked confused for a second, then said "you're welcome".
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Feb 16, 2014 17:36
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A little different, but a ~12 year old girl dropped a coin in a convenience store. It rolled to my feet, so I picked it up and handed it back to her. She started to say 謝謝 but just after starting the 2nd 謝 she noticed I was white, trailed off and stared at me, and her jaw literally dropped.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:03
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Do you all live in rural Henan or something? The last time I had a kid slack-jawed at me was in rural Taiwan at a special Hakka village in the middle of the jungle on a mountaintop. Usually after my second sentence in Chinese people just start talking to me about normal stuff.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:15
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Magna Kaser posted:Do you all live in rural Henan or something? The last time I had a kid slack-jawed at me was in rural Taiwan at a special Hakka village in the middle of the jungle on a mountaintop. Usually after my second sentence in Chinese people just start talking to me about normal stuff. Nope, I live in urban Guangdong. I've never seen a kid do that before or since. My coworkers figured it was probably her first time to ever "meet" a foreigner.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:19
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one time a Chinese toddler whose family owned a convenience store stared at me for like two minutes while I was buying chips and chocolate and pepsi when I returned the stare he held out his hand and said 錢給我 (gimme money) I was offended
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Feb 16, 2014 20:54
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He'd probably heard that all Jews are wealthy.
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Feb 17, 2014 00:51
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MeramJert posted:He'd probably heard that all Jews are wealthy. He probably didn't hear that other thing about Jews.
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Feb 17, 2014 01:43
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Magna Kaser posted:Do you all live in rural Henan or something? Only three of us. I once had a girl scream her lungs out in fear as she got off a bus at a stop where I was waiting. I am fairly inoffensive, brown haired chap of middling height so I have no idea what caused such a profound reaction. One thing I do like about small town Henan, or small town China in general, is that the proportion of honest curiosity to dickishness shifts to favour the former.
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Feb 17, 2014 01:50
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Magna Kaser posted:Do you all live in rural Henan or something? The last time I had a kid slack-jawed at me was in rural Taiwan at a special Hakka village in the middle of the jungle on a mountaintop. Usually after my second sentence in Chinese people just start talking to me about normal stuff. On the campus I live at and don't teach at, a kid caught a basketball to the dome because he stopped to look at me during a pickup game
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Feb 17, 2014 05:23
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