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Pon de Bundy posted:can somebody translate that video because lmao Are you talking about the German guy? His Chinese actually seemed pretty good. Although this was probably just an illusion since we all know any Westerner trying to speak Chinese is always doomed to fail, and the locals only PRETEND to understand us.
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Nov 6, 2016 14:57
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nickmeister posted:Are you talking about the German guy? His Chinese actually seemed pretty good. Although this was probably just an illusion since we all know any Westerner trying to speak Chinese is always doomed to fail, and the locals only PRETEND to understand us. no the dude and his van one I quoted
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Nov 6, 2016 15:34
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simplefish posted:<building supply stories> That reminds me of my school-owned apartment in Shenyang. The previous tenants were slobs, and everything in it was also done half-assed and it looked like poo poo. All of the walls were white paint that has been stained from smoking, indoor cooking, and just general wear and tear. The light fixtures were just light bulb holders, and there was no trim around the doors, windows, or the floor or ceiling. I asked for some money from the school to repaint and they gave me (I think) 1000 RMB to hire a painter. I took that money and went to the building supply district (Tie Xie) and bought 4 gallons of paint (two of white ceiling paint, and two of cornsilk yellow paint+primer). I also measured the whole apartment and managed to get enough trim to do all of the windows, doors, and bottoms and tops of the walls. I spent another 200 RMB of my own and picked up two light fixtures and a couple new outlets and light switches. After repainting the walls and ceiling, and putting the trim around everything and changing the light switches, outlets and fixtures the place looked like it was brand new. Trying to get the materials from the vendors was pretty much the same experience that you had. They would try and shoo me away after hearing that I only wanted a few gallons of paint and a few hundred feet of trim, or try and tell me that one gallon of paint was $500 RMB or something insane. I finally had to send me wife (then girlfriend) ahead so that they wouldn't try and charge the "white guy price", although she had to barter for what seemed like hours so that they wouldn't charge her the "female price". The hardest thing was trying to find a saw that had fine enough teeth to cut the MDF trim without making a mess. Walmart actually had a hacksaw for sale, so I used that and made my own mitre box from a pallet I saw in an alley near my apartment. Anyway, the school rep came over to see how my painting job went and was shocked (and a little worried that I didn't paint everything white). After about 5 minutes of walking around and looking at all the little details she decided that she really, really liked the colour scheme and took a bunch of photos. I asked her if it would be possible to get another 1000 RMB so I could redo the laminate flooring in the kitchen/living room since it was deteriorating in the high traffic areas, and she said that it likely wouldn't be possible. If the other foreign teachers saw this place they would want to do the same and hiring a contractor would cost the school at least 5000 RMB per apartment. For the next few days I had different administrators from the school come to visit to see my apartment. A few months later I learned that two of them had redecorated their homes in a similar fashion. (coloured walls with white trim). Not my apartment, but what it sort of looked like at the end. For some reason I never took a photo of the finished product. 
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Nov 6, 2016 16:22
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The Great Autismo! posted:it wouldn't surprise me if people working jobs that are like minimum wage jobs just shut down when they see a foreigner show up and don't even really think about putting in any effort at all to understanding the conversation or problem because they just assume they aren't going to understand what the person is saying based on the fact that they are a different race than the language they already speak. Once a few years ago I walked into a KFC in Shanghai and as soon as the young guy at the counter saw me, he got a panicked look and quickly ducked down behind it...I guess hoping I'd think nobody was working and just leave without ordering. The other girl working at the chicken cubby thing started laughing at him and slapped his back until he stood up and nervously took my order
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Nov 6, 2016 16:29
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Pon de Bundy posted:And what the gently caress are they saying http://www.d777.com/geci/laosijidaidaiwo_3nt1/ They're trying to get a ride and giving the driver all sorts of excuses to entice him with each verse "old driver take me along, I'm young" "old driver take me along, I'll be your lover" "old driver take me along, I'm a high school student" "old driver take me along, I'll give you some money" and then they finally convince him that they want to go to win a prize at a singing competition.
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Nov 6, 2016 17:23
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A harpy singing competition? I'd be tempted to hire a witcher to take care of this poo poo.
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Nov 6, 2016 17:53
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big time bisexual posted:http://www.d777.com/geci/laosijidaidaiwo_3nt1/ what the gently caress . he could have plunged both of them for a ride
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Nov 6, 2016 18:03
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One time when I was in China I was riding a bus down a big highway with toll booths. Some of the booths were the stop and pay kind, and some authorized vehicles like the bus could just drive straight through. For some reason a woman was stopped in the booth the bus was going to drive through, so the driver proceeds to ram the vehicle at about 30km/h, applying the brakes only a couple meters back from the car. The driver then got out and got into a shouting match with the woman about why she was stopped there. Apparently he expected her to start moving before the impact. The bus now being damaged, needs to get pulled off the road and replaced. So the driver gets back on and does a slow, massive turn across 10 lanes of traffic, which causes the oncoming traffic to start slamming on their brakes and swerving to dodge this horizontal bus. I thought for sure we were going to get hit again, but the bus made it to the shoulder safely. Waiting on the shoulder for a new bus, a bunch of people from the bus had their minds blown that I was wearing shorts (it was like 20c and sunny), doing the shocked pointing thing at my legs and being like "you must be soooo cold?!?" rubbing their bodies like they were trying to warm up. Eventually the new bus came and we went on our way. I noticed that the steering wheel of the new bus was misaligned and the driver had to hold constant pressure on it to prevent it from pulling to the side.
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Nov 6, 2016 19:36
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How many people were sitting on small collapsible stools in the aisle so that the driver and attendant could make money on the side?
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Nov 6, 2016 19:39
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Blistex posted:How many people were sitting on small collapsible stools in the aisle so that the driver and attendant could make money on the side? So that's what those are!
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Nov 6, 2016 19:57
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Ceciltron posted:So that's what those are! There is always more money to be made and corners to cut. Overloaded School Van Killed 18 Children in China  "The van, which contained nine seats and had been converted into a school bus of sorts, was traveling in Yulinzi township in Qingyang city, Gansu province, at 9:40 am, when the crash occurred. Sixty-four people were aboard it - 62 children, a teacher and a bus driver - said a statement from the city's work safety bureau."
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Nov 6, 2016 20:06
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Blistex posted:remodeling I feel like I have read this at least 3 times across multiple china threads. Good story
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Nov 6, 2016 20:12
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The Butcher posted:One time when I was in China I was riding a bus down a big highway with toll booths. The school I worked at in Harbin had one bus for like the kindergarten aged kids. When the official foreigner ferrier Mr. Jiang had been diverted to more important business (he sometimes had to drive worthless Mr. Du around, the relative of the company owner whose responsibility was to do absolutely nothing and refuse to pay Chinese staff for this or that) we sometimes ended up on the kindergarten bus when we got shuttled from school to school. It had curtains and the seats were done in a nicer fabric I guess. Anyway when winter came around the Mainlanders got worried that the little Chinese kids done up like Ralphy in the Christmas Story were going to get cold and therefore get a cold, because that's how that works. Their solution was to punch a hole in the floor of the bus near the driver and run the exhaust pipe through the length of the cabin. This made walking down the aisle a little difficult but hey, free heat! Just a few problems with that idea though. Totally unforeseeable to the goblin engineers that came up with the plan, of course. First was that the exhaust pipe does indeed get very hot and now presented a burning hazard in the middle of a careening Chinese bus full of five year olds. No problem, just build a rickety wire cage around the whole length of it. There's still almost enough room on either side to put your feet if you want to walk down the aisle, I mean, unless you're five years old, in which case you're going to struggle to straddle this hoop of wire far enough to be able to still have your legs in a posture that allows for walking. Nevermind that this was a custom welding job by the guy that was dumb enough to begin the whole project outright and therefore had random bits that would snag your pants and hold you over this blaring exhaust pipe like a weenie on the rotator at 7-11. Second was that the poor welding prowess that lead to a steel briar bush being the obvious fix to an obvious fix was also responsible for the welds on the elbows of the pipe itself that turned the exhaust from a straight shot under carriage deal into a vertically displaced inverted u. The cabin would fill up with exhaust fumes at an amazingly fast pace. But to scrap the idea now would be a huge loss of face for someone, as would be redoing the welds, which of course would require cutting off several sections of orchishly made protective wire briar to make the original welds accessible again, which would be tantamount to admitting to another mistake. So the fix to fix to the fix was to open all the windows on the kiddie bus during December in Harbin. Good thing such a strong heater was installed! raton fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 20:26
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Blistex posted:There is always more money to be made and corners to cut. I wanted to know how the accident happened and surprise "The van was driving on the wrong side of the street. Both the truck and the van were going at high speeds at the time," he said. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/chinese-school-bus-crash-kills-20-1.1020288
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Nov 6, 2016 20:28
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Blistex posted:How many people were sitting on small collapsible stools in the aisle so that the driver and attendant could make money on the side? There were def a couple. So I was taking this bus because I wanted to do some hiking and check out some of the unmaintained, non touristy sections of the wall out in the country. The attendant on this bus was a scam artist of some talent. I'd been warned about him before so knew what was up. I'm still not sure if he was an actual employee of the bus company or not. He had one of their jackets on but it was pretty beat up and too big for him. He was chummy with the driver in any case. So this guy's shtick was to ride this bus line that went from Beijing out to the town, and chat up foreigners. He spoke pretty decent english and acted real buddy buddy. He would ask if the tourist was going to go see the wall, and then if so would tell them he'd help them out to let them know what stop to get off and help negotiate a taxi from there. He loves foreigners! Very friendly and helpful. Of course, if you get off with him it's not the real taxi pool, it's his buddy with a car. They then switch to high pressure, pushy sales guys to massively rip off the tourist to get the ride. A lot who don't speak Chinese of course take it because they realize they suddenly are somewhere they have no idea where they are in a very non-english place, and these guys are being pushy, so gently caress it. So the guy was trying his thing with me for awhile, and I was just pretty cold and kept brushing him off. There was another foreign guy on the bus, aussie iirc, who was also doing the hiking thing. Buddy starts chatting him up and guy is happy to have the help and convo. The bus gets to the scam guy's stop, and he comes up to me with the aussie in tow ready to leave being like comon you need to get off right here for the wall and I was just like no thanks I'm OK. He tries a bit more then gives up, leaves with the aussie guy. Aussie guy is confused but follows him off. I make eye contact with him as the bus starts pulling away, he's looking worried, scam guy puts him arm around him and starts leading him off to his buddies car. I sacrificed that man just so I didn't have to get pestered by the chatty scammer the whole trip. Aussie guy, if they didn't harvest your organs and you ever read this, I'm sorry. The Butcher fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 20:31
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Fauxtool posted:I feel like I have read this at least 3 times across multiple china threads. Good story Aww crap, I just remembered that I posted it two threads ago. Sheep-Goats posted:<retarded bus modification story> God forbid they spend 300RMB and get one of those space heaters you plug into a cigarette lighter. One thing I could not believe when riding busses in China is that you have a brand-new greyhound style bus, and air is coming in through the seams as if 1/4 of the windows were open. In the winter there was absolutely no difference in temperature between the outside, and a bus crammed full of people with the heaters blasting at max. big time bisexual posted:I wanted to know how the accident happened and surprise  It's even more crazy when you see it from this angle and realize it was actually smaller than one of those Chevy 1 ton vans. There was a diagram on a news site where they took the interior dimensions, the average size of the children and tried to figure out how they crammed that many in there. They figured out that the only way to do it was to have everyone standing cheek to cheek "Auschwitz-Bound Cattle Car Style", and made a computer image of what the fully laden van must have looked like. Blistex fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 21:24
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Blistex posted:Aww crap, I just remembered that I posted it two threads ago. I didn't ride in the bus enough prior to modification to know if it had that Chinese automotive cheesecloth effect but presume it did. My solution for that would be to give a nong a couple of tubes of silicone caulk, but then I'm not a welder.
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Nov 6, 2016 21:32
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Sheep-Goats posted:I didn't ride in the bus enough prior to modification to know if it had that Chinese automotive cheesecloth effect but presume it did. My solution for that would be to give a nong a couple of tubes of silicone caulk, but then I'm not a welder. I found the heaters in most Chinese made cars to be really, really under-powered. While not having decent vehicle insulation is forgiveable, you should at least be able to make it semi-air tight so that driving more than 30kph doesn't feel and sound like you're in a wind tunnel. Now building standards are a whole other thing. I was immensely surprised that Northern China and the northern part of Korea didn't build their buildings to take into account winter. Windows that whistle/howl with the wind going through them, no insulation at all, flat roofs, a million space heaters instead of a central unit, etc. One guy in Korea who travelled to the US for business a lot built a western style house and had a cargo container mailed over with the windows, doors, and a high efficiency gas furnace inside. He used high-density foam insulation and did a sloped roof with actual shingles, and even had vinyl siding. He was telling me that he used less than a 10th the natural gas to heat his new home than he needed to heat his old one, and since he followed US building codes, he had no issues with moisture/mold which is a big issue in a lot of Korean homes and apartments. House pictured here. 
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Nov 6, 2016 21:50
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Old style Korean houses are fine for winter, I imagine the same is true for northern China and... pretty much everywhere with cold winters. People aren't idiots about climate when they have thousands of years to come up with solutions. I went to the Jeonju traditional village during winter and went in a house with the underfloor heating lit, can attest it works great. It just got messed up in the transition to modernity. also that bus story actually makes me mad. there comes a point not recklessly endangering a bunch of 5 year olds should be more important than how much face you save even for the most self absorbed old man Koramei fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 22:09
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Koramei posted:Old style Korean houses are fine for winter, I imagine the same is true for northern China and... pretty much everywhere with cold winters. People aren't idiots about climate when they have thousands of years to come up with solutions. I went to the Jeonju traditional village during winter and went in a house with the underfloor heating lit, can attest it works great. What's your point? Nobody lives in old-style Korean houses with clay vents and in-floor fire-fed heating. I'm talking about houses and apartments made in the last 30 years. Also, I can attest to the fact that houses in northern China suck when it comes to keeping the wind and cold on the outside. I've been in at least a dozen different apartment buildings in Harbin, and about as many homes, and they all required maxing out the heating source to create some sort of overpressure in the home to keep the cold out. The modern apartments in both countries suck when it comes to proper windows, and I'm talking about units that were put up as late a 2010. Most try and mitigate the crappy windows by having two sets of them an inch or two apart, but that hardy makes a difference when neither are anywhere near airtight. I'm guessing that all the windows are manufactured in the south, and companies never bothered making proper ones that are appropriate for the north. Edit: basically what I'm trying to say is that the current solution in China and Korea for the past 30+ years has been to crank up the thermostat rather than trying to make your dwelling somewhat efficient (airtight/insulated). Blistex fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 22:23
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probably misconstrued what you were thinking but I was responding to this bit:Blistex posted:I was immensely surprised that Northern China and the northern part of Korea didn't build their buildings to take into account winter. They did, at one point. It just got hosed up like so many other things when the places were modernizing. I gotta say I sorta get the impression hosed up building standards like that are universal in developing countries. In Kazakhstan I've been in a yurt and soviet era buildings and the same holds true, the yurt in a style people have been living in for thousands of years was comfy as hell and the soviet ones are miserable.
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Nov 6, 2016 22:35
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Koramei posted:People aren't idiots about climate when they have thousands of years to come up with solutions. ... It just got messed up in the transition to modernity. It's just rawdog cheapness I think Obviously they know about making a good seal and keeping warm air in and all that. It's just that the people building the places don't give a poo poo.
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Nov 6, 2016 22:45
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Blistex posted:I found the heaters in most Chinese made cars to be really, really under-powered. While not having decent vehicle insulation is forgiveable, you should at least be able to make it semi-air tight so that driving more than 30kph doesn't feel and sound like you're in a wind tunnel. There is at least one guy I know of whose business in Pattaya was "I was a contractor in the US and I will make your Thai construction workers actually do poo poo to US code" He told me that when he first got there a lot of the time the coconut trees that were cut down to clear space for a house would be remilled on site into shorter pieces of lumber and used in the building -- like you'd have a coconut wood piece running over the tops of your door frames, which obviously is basically like using a big piece of dehydrated kitchen sponge or something and lasts about as long.
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Nov 6, 2016 22:46
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I knew a guy who's job was basically doing exactly that. Rich middle-eastern folk would buy his crew and containers full of north-american sourced materials to build McMansions because even a mcmansion was a huge quality step up compared with the poo poo they had. He was from arizona so they were more south-west style houses rather than that Korean example, which made a lot more sense in the middle east.
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Nov 6, 2016 22:53
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Koramei posted:probably misconstrued what you were thinking but I was responding to this bit: Ok, I get it. The old korean houses they have in some of the museums are pretty cool. . . in the summer and warm in the winter. They would use clay and mix it with straw to create insulation, and had thick thatched roofs that were well sloped to keep the place dry and warm. The under-floor heating was a really awesome concept for the time and there is a bit of a holdover in units that use radiant floor heating, but for the most part all they do now is pour cement walls and slap in mickey-mouse windows which are useless.
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Nov 6, 2016 23:01
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Baronjutter posted:I knew a guy who's job was basically doing exactly that. Rich middle-eastern folk would buy his crew and containers full of north-american sourced materials to build McMansions because even a mcmansion was a huge quality step up compared with the poo poo they had. He was from arizona so they were more south-west style houses rather than that Korean example, which made a lot more sense in the middle east. Isn't this literally the Arrested Development plot?
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Nov 6, 2016 23:02
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Koramei posted:also that bus story actually makes me mad. there comes a point not recklessly endangering a bunch of 5 year olds should be more important than how much face you save even for the most self absorbed old man It's not their kids so why should they care?
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Nov 7, 2016 00:44
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http://i.imgur.com/Rw6JnJC.mp4
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Nov 7, 2016 01:16
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That guy looks pretty japanese
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Nov 7, 2016 01:18
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It's 08:26 in the morning, and at 8am the deafening drilling and hammering on the new elevator shaft began with gusto. It will continue until about 17:45. On weekdays it will begin at 08:00, at 09:00 on Saturdays, and 10:00 on Sundays, despite people all saying no work is to be done at all on Sundays to give the residents a rest on their day off. It's so loud I can't even think sometimes. Playing this station in my headphones helps sometimes http://www.radiotunes.com/sleeprelaxation I don't think you need a VPN for this site, either. You can always tell a guy has no input and has no idea what's going on at all when he stands with his hands behind his back like that. "Yep, just here because the other guy needed a second guy."
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Nov 7, 2016 01:27
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Haier posted:
yep, that's your problem right there...
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Nov 7, 2016 01:34
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Baronjutter posted:That guy looks pretty japanese I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if there are lots of Chinese out there who have never even seen someone from outside China and all they know about Japan is that it's foreign and foreign = white
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Nov 7, 2016 01:44
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big time bisexual posted:I wanted to know how the accident happened and surprise This is completely normal. I literally cannot recall the last time I was outside for more than 15 minutes and didn't see someone driving into oncoming traffic. Blistex posted:In the winter there was absolutely no difference in temperature between the outside, and a bus crammed full of people with the heaters blasting at max. God I wish this were true here. The heat gets cranked to 35 C everywhere in October or so and since (non-mountain) Sichuan never actually gets cold it's just like being in an oven all the time everywhere. My last apartment in Korea had nowhere to vent the AC, so the guy just smashed a hole in my window and ran the tube out through it. 
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Nov 7, 2016 02:10
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Grand Fromage posted:God I wish this were true here. The heat gets cranked to 35 C everywhere in October or so and since (non-mountain) Sichuan never actually gets cold it's just like being in an oven all the time everywhere. Haven't you seen the news, this winter will be the coldest one since 2012!!!! My old apartment in Qingdao was pretty well insulated and had a good heating system, the trade off is it had no AC which was sadly normal for Qingdao. While it is humid as all hell there and still gets kinda hot, it's north of that imaginary AC/Heat line that exists in China so AC is weirdly rare. I forget exactly where that line is but I know Shanghai/Zhejiang is right about at the border so it's a no-man's land of what you get in your apartment without splurging.
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Nov 7, 2016 02:20
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That's it for Hong Kong then, it's officially part of bad China from today on. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/...over-oath-saga/
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Nov 7, 2016 03:37
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So is CY going to be kicked out before the end of the day? He failed to take his oath properly too. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37893039
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Nov 7, 2016 03:58
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Those idiots in Beijing just can't stand not being in complete control. The Hong Kong court was extremely likely to rule that the oath ran counter to the Promissory Oaths Act and thus would be invalid. But because there was 0.05% that our independent judiciary might have ruled otherwise, the National People's Congress decided to wade in and further gently caress things up and increase Hong Kong's hatred of the CCP.
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Nov 7, 2016 04:34
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There was pepper spray and arrests going on last night. Funny enough I didn't know poo poo was happening last night until I was in the metro and heard an announcement "not stopping at sai ying poon because of an incident" Think that just made people wanted to go there
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Nov 7, 2016 04:43
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First, the chinasmack website, then Hong Kong! Those bastards!
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Nov 7, 2016 04:51
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So have any of these constant HK protests ever accomplished anything except getting places shut down or too crowded? I think the CCP see them the same way some guy in Zimbabwe sees them. "Heh, why are they standing around?"
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Nov 7, 2016 05:35
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