May 2010 Archives

After finding out last month that I hail from the great commonwealth of Kentucky, the Hot Pot column editor at the China Daily asked if I could write a piece about "what I think" about the popularity of KFC in China. Anyone who knows me knows this is a ridiculous request; I have no opinions on anything. But I agreed and eventually cranked out a story (perhaps a misleading term; the only story here is that Kentucky is a funny place to be from in China), a story which they just published today.

Also note that their cartoonist has drawn me with a large-caliber bullet hole through my heart. Should I be concerned about that?

By the way, one of my favorite jokes from The Simpsons is from the episode "Lisa the Tree Hugger", which culminates in a giant log rolling down a hill and plowing into several environmentally objectionable buildings, including a Kentucky Fried Panda franchise. Homer is devastated and exclaims:

Noooo! It was finger Ling-Ling good!

For a while I was trying to work that joke in to the China Daily piece, before I remembered it's not my joke.

Last Wednesday at English corner a student was telling me about an online flash game he's been playing:

Student: It's about a detective looking for a lost crate of seafood.

Me: Hmm, I've never heard of it. What's it called?

Student: "A Case of the Crabs".

Me: 囧

Luckily, I got away with not having to comment on that one, unlike two weeks ago where someone spelled out P-U-S-S-Y and everyone looked at me for an explanation. One confused girl said "pussy?" and pronounced it like the adjective meaning "full of pus". "Okay, moving on..."

In other "My kids say the darnedest things" news, I was grading juggling essays (yes, juggling essays, don't laugh), when I came across a girl who has apparently been spelling it "guggling" this whole time. As in, "My sister tried to guggle three balls, but she can't. I think it's because I'm not a good guggler myself". Gah! Cute-asaurus rex.

Last week I posted a hint to a puzzle from two weeks ago.... which I am now proud to say has been solved by Melbourne University puzzle enthusiasts Michael L. and Jemma X.! Congratulations guys, your prizes are in the mail.

Here's the solution; click for a bigger view:

I was inspired to create this puzzle after I tried to look up the Chinese word for "gong", as in the big round metal thing one beats dramatically with a mallet. This is very misleading request for a smart online dictionary because the pinyin "gong" has way more entries than 锣. So in this puzzle, each character on the bottom row has a pinyin pronunciation which could also be read as an English word, represented semantically by a character somewhere on the top row, for example: 躬 -> gōng -> 锣.

Note: 派 is perhaps not a standard translation for "pie" but if Ronald Maidanglao uses it, it's good enough for me. Let me know if you still have questions; I swear there's a decent explanation for each pair.

Anyone who's been to a college frat party knows the rules: fall asleep without your shoes on and you are officially fair game when it comes to penises drawn on your face, being photographed in compromising positions, and eels slithering up your butthole. And if one of those eels happens to gnaw its way through your rectum and die in there and infect your abdominal cavity, well, you just gotta learn to hold your liquor next time, bro! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO COLLEGE!

No, but seriously.

The following is a story I first saw on the Shanghaiist blog. According to the post, a Sichuan man died from organ failure last month after a swamp eel chewed through his lower intestine. How did the eel find itself inside a man, you ask? After he (the man) passed out drunk one night, the man's friends forcibly inserted the eel into his anal sphincter, as a joke. Haha! Get it?

Here's the problem, though. According to what seems to be the original source, the man didn't die, though he does have to basically poop out of his belly button from now on. The misunderstanding appears to originate with this Japanese culture-watch blog post (warning, ads NSFpeoplewhoforsomereasondon'tlikeanimeporn), which is supposed to be translated from a Japanese edition of the story (which btw has a really funny Google Translate headline).

Anyway, because of this error I took it upon myself to translate the original story from Chinese just to sort of clear the air about this man and his butt trauma for all interested parties. You're welcome:

Eel burrows into man’s body, chews life-threatening hole in rectum

Source reports: Intoxicated man was a victim of prank; Eel taken into police custody for investigation.

Yesterday morning, in Zigong No. 1 People’s Hospital Intensive Care Unit, Chef Zhang Dajun, after spending the last ten days in deep shock and respiratory failure, has finally said goodbye to his oxygen tank. “If all goes well, he should be transferred out of the ICU within 2-3 days.”

Thinking back to the events of ten days prior, a member of the ICU medical staff sighed, “An eel, weighing about a quarter of a kilogram, entered the anus and abdominal cavity of a living person, biting its way through the rectum; I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A strange case: Marbly blotches appear on patient’s lower limbs

Around 4:00pm on April 17th, the emergency department received a call concerning a transfer patient from another hospital afflicted with a bizarre and urgent condition.

The patient in question was 59 year old Zhang Dajun, and his condition was both extremely strange and extremely complicated: In deep shock, his breathing was quick, and his entire waist was red and swollen with blood. The skin on his stomach was like that of a rubber ball, and the majority of his legs were covered in marbly blotches. He showed signs of acidosis and severe dehydration, as well as failure of the liver and kidneys.

But according to the medical records of the transferring hospital, the cause of the symptoms had not yet been diagnosed. According to the patient’s family, he was transferred after complaining of incessant stomach pains for more than ten hours.

Zhang’s life might have been in danger at any moment.

To diagnose the cause as quickly as possible, liver and gallbladder expert and deputy hospital chief Deng Jing immediately convened a consultation of specialists.

Knowing they were facing a rare and complex condition, experienced experts struggled to reach a diagnosis as they studied the patient’s external symptoms.

Finally it was decided that the only way to determine the cause of illness would be to open and examine the patient’s abdominal cavity.

Considering the complex nature of the illness, however, doctors worried that invasive surgery could prove dangerous.

Yet without immediate action, the patient’s life might be in worse danger. “As we entered the operating room, we knew we had to try our best, even if there was only a tiny shred of hope.”

At 8:30pm, after the consent of family members was obtained, Zhang Dajun entered the emergency operating room.

Inside the abdominal cavity: a 0.25 kilogram swamp eel

As lead surgeon Zhang Hongbin opened the abdominal cavity, he and the other surgical staff were shocked to discover a dead eel: over 50cm long, weighing about 0.25 kilograms and thick as a shot glass. The eel had entrenched itself in the abdominal cavity, apparently after gnawing a large hole in the patient’s rectum. The area had become infected and filled with fluid; several organs had also failed and there was severe damage to the kidneys and liver.

It was clear: the eel had entered the body through the anus.

So the cause of the patient’s 10 hours of stomach pain was the eel (in a manner not unlike how the Monkey King scratched at the inner lining of Princess Iron Fan’s stomach*) burrowing into his anus and chewing through his rectal wall. The victim’s external symptoms, including his swollen waist, blotchy legs and acidosis were all the result of this eel.

Due to infection incurred by the bite wounds, the doctors had no choice but to excise the affected area and divert the remaining rectal passage out through the patient’s belly.

Although the cause of the symptoms had been confirmed, one unresolved question still perplexed the group of doctors: Swamp eels live in a complicated natural habitat, cold, full of other aquatic life forms, often raised in captivity; so if a living eel finds its way into a human body, what sort of kind of bacteria might it introduce, and what kind of side effects can one expect to see?

For 59-year-old Zheng Dajun, this was a question of life or death.

For five days after the operation, Zheng was constantly in a state of shock, his life hanging by a thread.

On the sixth day, under the meticulous care of the 24-hour nursing staff, Zhang Dajun began to edge away from the brink of death, his vital signs showing gradual improvement.

Yesterday was the tenth day after his surgery. Although he hasn’t fully recovered, he has already overcome the infection and respiratory failure, and said goodbye to his companion for the last ten days: an oxygen tank.

The resilience of life is a miracle Zheng has now experienced with his own body.

First hospital: Patient stated he had eaten many eels

Around 7:00am on April 17th, a hospital in the city of Zigong admitted a patient whose symptoms included constant abdominal pain, especially in the upper left region.

According to the patient himself, the previous night he had eaten “a lot of eels, and drank a little, too.” The doctor on duty initially suspected pancreatitis and ordered a blood amylase test. “We tested numerous times, finally sending him to another hospital for re-examination.”

The doctor continued to be puzzled: the test results all showed normal amylase levels.

Subsequent tests of fluid samples from the abdominal cavity also showed no signs of intestinal problems.

As the hospital convened a consultation that afternoon, the patient’s condition took a turn for the worse: multiple organ failure.

At 4:00pm, at the request of family members, the patient was transferred to Zigong No. 1 People’s Hospital.

Investigating the culprit: Police take the eel into custody

Zhang Dajun is a chef at a restaurant in a township of Zigong city.

Yesterday, lying in his bed in the ICU, just after parting with his oxygen tank, Zhang and his family declined to speak with reporters, citing personal privacy. As they repeatedly told the hospital, this was not a matter they would like to see reported by the media.

So how exactly did this quarter-kilogram swamp eel find its way into his body? Why were Zhang and his family unwilling to explain the truth to the hospital staff?

According to a source who wished not to be identified, on the night of April 16th, Zhang Dajun fell victim to a prank while under the influence of alcohol. His friends intentionally forced the eel into Zhang’s anus, not anticipating the destructive consequences of their practical joke.

Zigong police arrived to collect the eel at No. 1 People’s Hospital shortly after receiving notification from family members in order to thoroughly investigate the truth about the eel entering Zhang’s body.

(Zhang Dajun is an alias)

Yang Yuanlu, Huaxi Metropolis News

So there you go. And yet, something still doesn't sit right with me after re-reading this. Even if you admit the possibility that there actually are people out there who think this would be a fun prank, how do you go about putting an eel in your drunk buddy's rectum, logistically speaking? God only knows how many eels I've tried and failed to cram up my own anus, so I can only imagine the elbow grease it must take to coax one into a limp, unconscious fifty-nine-year-old man; I don't care how many people are helping. Personally, I don't buy it.

*From a scene in the classic story “Journey to the West”, in which Sun Wukong shrinks himself into a tiny insect, flies into the princess’s body and scratches at her insides until she gives up her coveted Iron Fan.

There's something about this ad for Chimelong Water Park (which btw is actually pretty fun) that isn't quite family-friendly. Can you find it?

Hint: it's on the bassist in the background.

Second hint: it's something the bassist is wearing.

Third hint: it's his shirt:

It's a little hard to say for certain because of the angle and the obstructing instrument, but I'm fairly sure that shirt doesn't say "FUCN OED".

Okay the puzzle I posted last week still hasn't been solved, so I'm offering the following hint to get you started:

Once again, the prize for being the first to complete this puzzle is, in a word, fabulous. It will change your life. Remember that one song from Garden State that Natalie Portman said would change your life? This is like that, times an orgasm plus candy.

So I wrote another piece for the China Daily, this time about learning Cantonese. Once again, not my title, not quite the way it really happened, and now a new disclaimer: that's not what my dad looks like. Although, considering that the cartoonist has never seen a photo of him, in all fairness it's really not too shabby.

As for me, I guess this is how they're going to draw me from now on. With the one objection that I don't believe the back of my wrist has ever once in my life made contact with my hip (not counting Mick Jagger impressions), I'm starting to think this is quite an accurate representation. Wrinkled shirt, man bag, snuffleupagusean Jew nose... not bad, China Daily cartoonist Li Min, not bad.

Last week in class we played the old lateral thinking puzzle game: We tell a story like "Bob and Jane are found dead in a puddle of water surrounded by broken glass" and the students ask yes-or-no questions until they arrive at the explanation (Bob and Jane are goldfish and the cat (or something) knocked over their fishbowl). You know, midgets in the elevator and all that.

One of the last puzzles we gave them was this one:

A man leaves home and starts running. He turns left three times and starts to return home, only to find a masked man waiting for him. What's going on?

The answer is (spoiler alert!) he's playing baseball. Anyway, we made this one of the last puzzles because it ought to take longer for a Chinese audience to solve, baseball not being China's national pastime and everything, so we whipped that one out when some classes blew through the easy ones too quickly ("... and the doctor says, 'Wait, I can't operate on this boy; he's my son!' How is that p..." "The doctor's a woman!" "Dammit!").

Anyway, on Friday I was letting a student read this puzzle and field questions from the rest of the class, and after a few minutes of little progress ("Is the masked man a thief?" "No." "Is there anyone else in his home?" "No." "Is the man a fish?" "No.") he turned to me and whispered that he thought this puzzle is too hard for Chinese students. So I let him give his classmates a hint, and this is what he said:

This is something that doesn't really happen in China that often. Well, not on the Mainland, anyway. Sometimes in Taiwan. Japanese people do it, too.

I chimed in, "Mostly in America, really". The class was intrigued but now even more perplexed. Suddenly a hand shot up, a hand attached to a girl in the first row. "I know!" she said:

Is it a gay thing?

I lolled. Luckily, most of the class did too, including the student reading the story and the student who asked the question. No, not a gay thing. I couldn't help but think of the President Ahmadinejad's remark that there are no homosexuals in Iran. I also couldn't help but think of a new lateral thinking puzzle:

A man and his son are in a car accident. The father dies instantly and his son is taken to the emergency room. The doctor on call looks at the boy and says "Wait, I can't operate on this boy; I'm sexually attracted to men!" How is this possible?

And this one:

A man leaves home and starts running. He turns left three times and starts to return home, only to find a masked man waiting for him. He is sexually attracted to the masked man. He wants desperately to confess his feelings to the man but can't help but worry what his fans would think. Is America really ready for a gay Jackie Robinson? Also, these men are playing baseball.

In related news, Jon and I just met a guy, one of Gristle's former roommates, who, upon graduating from university, dropped everything and devoted all his time and resources to promoting baseball in China. Doesn't follow MLB, doesn't know who A-Rod is, just loves baseball. He runs a club for kids in Chongqing. True story.

Match up each character in the top row to its mate in the bottom row (click here for a larger view):

As always, the first person to email me (gus tate zero eight at gmail dot com) with the correct matching wins a lovingly hand-mailed prize.

This week was speech week in Oral English. Each student had the choice of three provided excerpts from famous speeches, or an excerpt of similar length from any other famous American speech. Most students chose one of the three examples we provided:

1. "Fight, and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they'll never take our freedom?" — William Wallace, Braveheart

2. "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility; I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would trade places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world." — John F. Kennedy's inauguration speech

3. "Let this conference be our, and the world's, call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you; that is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see, for our children and our grandchildren." — Hillary Clinton, Women's Rights are Human Rights

By the way, I didn't copy and paste those just now. I reproduced them from memory without even a millisecond of hesitation, which is what happens when you hear each one about a hundred times in five days.

Anyway, by and large I enjoyed seeing and hearing my students employ the various techniques we've presented to them over the past three weeks (rhythm, intonation, gestures, emphasis), listening to the alternate speeches (one student today recited a considerable portion of Ellen Degeneres's commencement speech at Tulane ("Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else's path.... unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path then by all means you should follow that..."), finding out for the hundredth time how talented and hard-working (most of) my students are blah blah blah.... but anyway, the reason I'm writing this post is I that heard some truly delicious slips of the tongue this week, which I'd like to share with you now:

From the Braveheart speech:

"... and tell our enemies that they may take our leaves..."

From the JFK speech (all from different students):

"... granted the role of defending the freedom of maximum danger."

"... granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of mixing danger."

"... I do not shrink it from this responsibility..."

"... the enemy, the faith, the devotion..."

"... the energy, the face, the devotion..."

"... which we bring to this invader..."

"... will light our country and all who survive it...."

"... and the girls from that fire can truly light the world."

From Hillary's speech:

"Let this conference be our, and the world's, call to Asian."

From Obama's acceptance speech:

"If there is anyone out there.... who still wonders if our founders are still alive in our time..." (should be "the dreams of our founders")

From the movie Kingdom of Heaven:

"Your holy palaces lie over the Jewish temple that the Romans pooed on." (should be "pulled down"; actually this pronunciation is pretty typical for Chinese students)

It came to my attention recently that English words, arranged in certain combinations, can be exchanged for money. True, up until this point I had been dimly aware that there are certain individuals called "writers" who support themselves and even entire families by similar means, but it was not yet clear to me that I, a lay-person, could participate in such mysterious linguistic alchemy.

Enlightenment came earlier this year from my PiA predecessor Thomas, who's written numerous articles for the China Daily and That's PRD and the like. According to Tom, the China Daily paid him 1 yuan per word for lighthearted additions to their "Hot Pot" column. With the article length limited to 600 words, I reasoned that I could make up to... (...) ...600 yuan per article, nothing to sneeze at here in the People's Republic of Guangzhou. Even on a good day, I'd probably have to turn at least, I don't know, a dozen back-alley handjobs to earn that much.

Long story short, it looks like I won't have to put on that red light for a while: The China Daily finally printed one of my stories! Why haven't I linked you to it yet? Because I have some disclaimers:

1) There are at least three typos in the online version, two of them my own (I'll let you guess which).

2) I've told this story on my blog once already. The version I gave the China Daily is a zany, Scooby Doo version of the real events so before anyone asks, no, it didn't happen exactly like that.

3) That's not my title. The editor who wrote that title may not have actually read the story.

4) Most importantly, I'm going to ask that you read all the words on the page without looking at the illustration, which was drawn by the China Daily cartoonist based on a photo of Jon and me in Hong Kong, and which depicts us like idiot man-children on the first day of corn-shucking school. The temptation to look will be tremendous, I know, but please kindly avert your eyes. I think if one day I become a serious journalist and we compare my professional career to a Hollywood actor's, this cartoon will be like the porno I did when I was still just trying to pay the bills. The gay porno I did with Jon.

And now, without further ado, here it is.

Fun fact: this is actually the second time I've appeared in the China Daily; the first time was in an article about PiB's language pledge.

I spent four days of last week in Beijing. Mainly I was there to see Fangfang's latest performance, but I also saw two friends from Princeton. And if I were anything resembling a decent person, seeing those three people would be the subject of this post. Alas, I'm here to recount three brief interactions with strangers that made me want to break out into "Zipidee Do Da, and you'll note they carry a common theme:

1. In the subway, a forty-something man in a baggy business suit turned to his right to ask the nearest person for help finding the Dawang Lu subway stop. That nearest person turned out to be me, and upon seeing my Caucasoid bone structure he immediately trailed off, apologized and instinctively leaned away. I smiled and offered to accompany him to Dawang Lu, seeing as that was also my destination. He accepted, startled. This man may have been taking his first ever subway journey, because as soon as he said goodbye (flashing a toothy smile and patting my shoulder) I overheard him asking another passenger where he might find the exit.

2. The taxi I found on my way out of Caochangdi, the village along the airport expressway where Fangfang performed, contained a lost driver. Not only did he not know how to exit the village, he didn't know his way from Caochangdi to my destination or back to the city center. I guided him through all three, something he was not prepared for me, somewhat of an out-of-towner, to handle.

3. In the art district 798, I handed off a taxi to a British backpacking couple. Before I left the scene, I overheard the woman ask the driver if he could please take them to "San-litt-ton" (she meant 三里屯 Sānlǐtúnr, the popular bar district). The driver, understandably, was at a loss. I leaned back in and translated, prompting the woman to exclaim to her partner, "Will you look at that; he's fluent in Chinese!"

All three of these encounters were refreshing if tiny reminders that the last five years of my life spent learning Chinese have not been a total waste of brainpower. Holy geez, I would love to secretly follow foreign tourists around Beijing, waiting for the moment when they finally mispronounce something so thoroughly as to kick-up a potentially frustrating delay of sight-seeing, then bursting out from behind the bushes to save the day (Did I hear you say Teeyannamun Square? Good sir, please take these gentlefolk to 天安门 forthwith!).

Oh, and the friends and art and stuff were cool too. But more on that later.