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Welcome to the new Year of the Rat edition of the China thread. Previous thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3864332 This thread is for shitposting about Bad China (the PRC, Vancouver), Good China (Taiwan, Hong Kong, assorted diaspora communities), Real China (Korea), and Safe China (Japan). You've probably read the previous threads so you know what's up. Good things are also welcome! Chinese History Chinese historiography is a subject of deep debate. What dynasties are considered legitimate, what things are considered China. The PRC has a timeline for Chinese history that is fantasy, but they have successfully convinced people it isn't. This timeline is roughly the traditional narrative since no one wants to read a 50,000 word post, though we are going to dismiss the legendary periods where emperors ruled for centuries and brought fire to Earth from heaven. 8,333 BC - Koreans invent China. 5,000 years before whatever moment you read this: China springs, fully formed, into existence at its modern borders and nothing ever changes after this point. 1250 BC - Oracle bones of Wu Ding, the earliest point in Chinese history. Prehistoric Chinese ancestral culture existed prior to this, but there are no surviving records (that have been found yet, anyway). 1046 BC - 256 BC - Zhou Dynasty, which encompasses the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States. This is the age of Chinese philosophy: Confucius, Mozi, Laozi, Mengzi, Han Fei, Shang Yang, Xun Zi. The roots of what we recognize as Chinese culture trace to this period, much as western cultures trace themselves to the Greeks. 221 BC - 206 BC - Qin Dynasty. The metal armies of Qin Shi Huangdi march across the lands and unify them into a single state for the first time. Qin-a. China. The Qin barely outlasts the death of the first emperor, but the imperial idea that unites China begins here. 202 BC - 220 AD - Han Dynasty. This is considered one of China's great ages and is pretty neat. The Three Kingdoms occur at the end of the Han. 220 - 280 - Three Kingdoms. 266 - 420 - Jin Dynasty. Wait, how is a dynasty at the same time as the Three Kingdoms? The timeline isn't perfect?? 420 - 589 - Northern and Southern Dynasties. 581 - 618 - Sui Dynasty. These guys get owned so hard by the Koreans they collapse. RIP Sui. 618 - 907 - Tang Dynasty. This is generally considered China's greatest golden age, the period all successor dynasties will try to return to. 907 - 979 - Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. 916 - 1125 - Liao Dynasty. Ruled by the Khitans, this is the first of three "conquest dynasties" where China/part of China is conquered and ruled by non-Chinese people. The Liao only rule the north, they never take all of China. Today people in China generally are of the opinion none of these conquests ever happened and the non-Chinese people are actually Chinese. 960 - 1279 - Song Dynasty. 1271 - 1368 - Yuan Dynasty. Mongol rule of China and everything else. 1368 - 1644 - Ming Dynasty. This is generally the earliest period where anything you picture as Chinese exists, such as the Great Wall in its current form. 1636 - 1912 - Qing Dynasty. The final conquest dynasty, rule of China by the Manchu. This is where all the other things you think of as Chinese are from, and a lot of those are actually Manchu, like qipaos. 1912 - Present - Republic of China. First on the mainland, now on Taiwan. 1912 - 1949 - Generalized chaos and warlords in the mainland. 1949 - Present - People's Republic of China, the current imperial dynasty. We can conclude from this brief history that every coin has two sides, and China is a land of contrasts. Thread In-Jokes "Wealth beyond measure, outlander" - from an Elder Scrolls game in a town choked by pollution, but the inhabitants only think of how much money they can make "No Why" - a translation of 沒有爲什麽, better known as "for no particular reason", used as a response to seemingly inexplicable events "5000 years of history" - frequently used to explain why China does things while being superior to other short-lived nation states "You cannot understand" - the idea that only Chinese can understand China due to its inscrutable nature "But America did X" - referring to whataboutism that is often used to defend something negative about China, e.g. "They may be putting Uyghurs into concentration camps in Xinjiang, but did you know America did the same thing to its native people? Typical Westerners, excusing American behaviour." Peanut brittle - you probably don't want to know Wait are you idiots just complaining a bunch? Well, yeah, it's GBS. However this is the only China thread that isn't infested with tankies, thus it is the Taiwan to the PRC of the other threads. What are China tankies? Can you show me anything about life in China? Sure! Who is the dude with the beers? China's ambassador, Pangzai. You should go watch his videos. Go forth and post, friends! Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jan 28, 2020 |
# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 05:22 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 22:47 |
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Dandywalken posted:I loving love China If we're talking food, I agree. I don't care how much cancer I got eating in China, it was worth it.
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# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 05:40 |
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Nooner posted:The outdoor toilet facing mountain side loving owns That's where I post.
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# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 05:56 |
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lilbeefer posted:I cannot find any good Sichuan food in Perth That sucks. Gotta get cooking, it's not too hard.
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# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 06:22 |
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lilbeefer posted:I've tried! My least worst effort was Lasiji which is a favourite of mine. But it's just not the same... Maybe the lack of gutter oil Honestly one of the things I noticed when I started cooking real Chinese was using massive amounts of oil is important to the flavor. I tried to cut it down so I wasn't ending up with a bunch of wasted oil, but it just doesn't taste right. It's like cutting the sugar out of Japanese food. You gotta go for it. The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop is a great Sichuan cookbook to pick up. I wasn't a huge fan of the old version but the recipes in this one are way more like what I ate in Chengdu when I lived there. It's good.
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# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 16:39 |
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spacestronaut posted:So as an American trans woman, just how quickly would I vanish if I were to set foot on the mainland. (Aside from shenzhen, I've heard Americans can get away with a lot more there.) No one cares. You're fine. The government is explicitly anti LGBT but that's only for Chinese people, and even then they're not actively going after anyone. My experience with actual Chinese people (at least in the 30s and under range) is they're very tolerant, like just about everywhere I've been and explored the issue. My high school students were disappointed I was not gay because they wanted a gay friend like on their favorite show, Modern Family. Granted, I was living in Chengdu. Chengdu is the San Francisco of China, there's a whole neighborhood of out in the open gay bars and clubs and stuff. fish and chips and dip posted:I haven't been in China for two years, and its funny how the mind works. I kinda forgotten all the bad, annoying things, and I do sometimes miss living there. My life right now sucks so bad this is happening to me, too. I keep reminding myself I can live in a nice country like Korea and just visit China to get fat.
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# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 16:52 |
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Between waiting too long to quarantine and CNY travel it's probably best to just assume it's everywhere in China by now. The outbreak's going to have to run its course. Hopefully it doesn't kill too many people.
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# ¿ Jan 29, 2020 06:52 |
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I would hear both 小姐 and 美女 in Chengdu. The latter more frequently.
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# ¿ Jan 29, 2020 23:02 |
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lilbeefer posted:Agreed. That has got to be selective photography and a made up story to go with it. I'd love it to be true however. I'm sure they're real but equally sure they aren't a new thing to gently caress with China because of coronavirus. People wear face masks frequently in East Asia, there are lots of decorative styles.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 03:16 |
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"Golden rain" is a less pee tape-y translation.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 04:49 |
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Atlas Hugged posted:I'm under the impression that in China it's just a bog standard hotel, but who knows about specific provinces or cities. A couple of goons lived above one in Taipei for awhile and they (the brothel, not the goons) made meth in the basement so there were regularly fires and police raids. They have since moved out of the building. 酒店 just means hotel in the mainland. Though there are plenty of prostitutes associated with hotels of course, but there's nothing implied by the name other than hotel.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 04:55 |
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Atlas Hugged posted:Does China do the thing Korea does where the elevators in a hotel would just be covered in the business cards of prostitutes and the concierge would hand them out to discerning patrons? I never actually stayed in a proper hotel hotel in the mainland, but I was advised if I did the first thing I should do is unplug the phone, because otherwise there are just constant calls about prostitutes all night.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 05:07 |
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Power Khan posted:Btw, I was in Rome at the colloseum and the palatine a while ago, and without failure, all the toilet seats in a large radius were ripped off. That's just Italy. I don't think I ever saw an intact public toilet anywhere in the country.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 02:09 |
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post the most 8 pix u got
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 05:28 |
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 05:33 |
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 06:21 |
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hakimashou posted:I had a friend who died of a respiratory infection in China it wasn’t cool! Hey me too. But an acquaintance at work not friend.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 16:18 |
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Bip Roberts posted:So did eating anything predate the 60s or was this like how everyone who didn't push forward in line starved to death? It's a complex question. Usually the "lol they eat everything!" comes from people from countries that really have a very limited range of animal foods compared to what's normal around the world. The variety of normal animals to eat in the US is tiny. Pigs, cows, chickens, salmon, turkey... uh. Like even tame options such as lamb and duck are unusual. People in Asia have always had a much broader range of things. There's also differences inside China. Chinese themselves make fun of the Cantonese for eating everything, and the Cantonese are like "gently caress yeah bro if it moves put it in my mouth", so. People will eat anything in a famine, but that famine food isn't around anymore. There are restaurants for old people to feel nostalgia and eat grass clippings or whatever, but the stuff people actually eat is either post or pre famine. If you look in a Sichuan cookbook from 2020 and one from 1920, for example, a lot of it is the same.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 20:19 |
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No, those are a luxury food. They're the same "expensive and flavorless show off order" category as shark's fin.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 20:25 |
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Yeah that's what I'm saying. People in East Asia eat a whole lot of stuff that isn't as common in the west anymore. I miss it, a lot of that stuff is delicious. There was also a trend in the west for decades of rejecting things like stewed pig's feet as food for filthy peasants, and it's starting to come back since it's good. Of course there's also poo poo like sea cucumber or sea squirt which uh, nah.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 20:41 |
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The amount of trouble I have to go through and money I have to drop to get a loving duck in this country is criminal.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 20:50 |
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Jeoh posted:I had goose for the first time since 2018 this week, and I couldn't have been happier. Thank you, blessed Slav lands, for approaching China in the number of things you'll eat. I think the first time I ever had goose was as Cantonese BBQ in Hong Kong and it was one of the greatest moments of my life.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 20:53 |
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Literally all food in China has some sort of TCM nonsense attached to it, though some are eaten primarily/only for that (like the weird fungus that grows out of centipedes). I've only had snake in Arizona and rattlers at least taste pretty good.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 21:02 |
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monkeytek posted:SoCal one of the few places in US you can find "alternative" foods that aren't burgers, hotdogs and tacos. That's not even remotely true. Any town of even moderate size has something. I'm in a generic midwest hell and have legit (Lanzhou) Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Turkish, Greek, Ethiopian, assorted regional Mexican, assorted regional Indian, Polish, Hungarian, Lebanese, Jamaican, Egyptian, Colombian, Thai, and Guatemalan options readily available. And there are probably more I don't know about. It's true that if you go to a generic American restaurant you're going to be getting potatoes but there's no need to ever do that, even here. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jan 31, 2020 |
# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 21:54 |
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Ragtime All The Time posted:Hang on I’m going to need to know more here Not just centipedes, other insects too. I was mixing it up with something else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 22:49 |
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Nobody I know in China is planning to leave, anyway.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 23:57 |
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That would cause a revolution in Sichuan. Majiang is a trap. Your friends invite you to play and sure, it looks fun. It is fun for like an hour. Then you spend the next 13 hours praying for death and can we please do something else, anything.
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# ¿ Feb 2, 2020 15:53 |
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It doesn't take that much room. I wasn't equipped for months but since I lived in an earthquake prone area of China I had a couple weeks of water and MREs stashed in a closet.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 16:46 |
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EBB posted:I'll take rice and beans over the veggie omelette any day. I had those just as a normal thing anyway. And avoided the bad MREs.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 18:25 |
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After you've tried a PLA MRE, all the US ones seem much better.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 18:33 |
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Top Hats Monthly posted:Didn’t that MRE review guy get botulism from a PLA Ration? Food poisoning, not death. I did not get sick from the one I tried. I would not try one again, even if I hadn't seen Steve's.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 18:58 |
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Power Khan posted:You had cinese MREs? Lol Other than the one I tried out of curiosity, no.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 21:27 |
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The beef was also kind of a dried powder before it was canned.Shumagorath posted:I'd love to hear more on this front. Is it all protest control or what? Blistex has posted about it again and may cut and paste but basically, yes. Their training is all about domestic uprisings.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 23:57 |
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Korean food is good but sameish isn't wrong. It gets old real quick when you live there. In my experience it then sneaks back up on you and you become even more into it than you were at first. But there was a solid year where I barely ate it and the thought of another pile of boiled red stuff was out of the question.
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# ¿ Feb 5, 2020 03:59 |
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LifeSunDeath posted:serious question, what is the hand hygiene situation like in china? Nobody washes their hands (when I would on rare occasions see someone wash their hands it was shocking), there is almost never soap or hot water available in any public place. Newly built mall bathrooms are the big exception, they're usually about the same as the west. Still nobody washing, but you could. China's worse but this isn't actually that weird for East Asia, even in relatively clean Japan it's a coin toss if there's going to be soap in a bathroom. Same in Korea. I eventually just started keeping a small bottle in my backpack, and you always want to have some wipes with you in Asia.
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# ¿ Feb 5, 2020 17:38 |
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Convenience stores have the reliable good public bathrooms, yeah.
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# ¿ Feb 5, 2020 18:19 |
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I mean I had people encouraging their kids to piss and poo poo in the lobby and elevators of my apartment building. You know, the building that they themselves live in, and have a bathroom in. And this was not like a cheapo dump building, it was on the nicer end of the scale. There is, truly, no why.
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# ¿ Feb 6, 2020 03:16 |
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Yeah, all the staff and most of the customers at the Asian grocery I went to this weekend were wearing masks. In Ohio.
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# ¿ Feb 6, 2020 03:46 |
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Patrocclesiastes posted:Im thinking of touring the Japanese country side on a motorcycle, how much should i expect disdain as a foreigner No one cares.
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# ¿ Feb 6, 2020 16:58 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 22:47 |
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That doctor dying is the first thing I've seen break people since Xi declaring himself emperor for life. Even the most die hard nationalist brainworms person I know is loving livid at the party about it, first time I've ever seen her say anything negative about the PRC. Wechat is full of pissed off posts, I've never seen anything like it.
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# ¿ Feb 6, 2020 20:58 |