You have to have a set of stones to don a wingsuit and jump off a mountain in China. Fortunately for all our entertainment pleasure, these guys have just such a set:
Archive for February, 2012
The first time I used a squat toilet
Is successfully using a squat toilet a sign you’ve “adjusted” to life in China?
I never grew comfortable with squat toilets, and the more public they were, the worse shape they were in. The absolute worst was in a public restroom in a smalltown bus station, where you had rectangle-shaped stone holes, side-by-side. No privacy.
I did everything I could to avoid using squat toilets, including running all the way from a restaurant back to my apartment when my stomach had an argument with one of Wuhan’s streetside offerings, and lost. Always thankful for the western toilet in my apartment; I never went as far as to worship it, but I did kneel before it a few times after some unfortunate nights with baijiu.
Others might come to China with prior squat toilet experience. If you stick to the highly developed areas, you may not have to worry about it. In France, there apparently are squat toilets. I never encountered any. Instead, in my dorm, we had Western toilets lacking seats. Weird, but I guess since you could buy portable toilet seats at the local Carrefour, there was no need to include any.
So China was my first experience with squat toilets, and I want to tell you about that. I don’t often write about my life — there’s a reason — but I feel like getting this off my chest.
Review: Parfitt’s ‘Why China Will Never Rule the World’
I’m going to assume that most of the readers of Lost Laowai are the kind of people who bother to run VPNs and the kind of people who follow the China blogosphere. If so, they may have seen Troy Parfitt’s “Why China Will Never Rule the World” coming up again and again. Peking Duck, Seeing Red in China, China Law Blog, they’ve all written reviews on it and they’ve all covered different but equally valid aspects of why this is or is not the book for you to read.
The job of a book reviewer is to tell you, gentle reader, why you should or should not spend your time or money on a book. I won’t lay down a pronouncement yay or nay so much as give my thoughts and let you make your own decision based on those opinions.
Fun with the 100 RMB bill
Being bright pink, the 100元 note comes across as a bit of a 2D party. That with it you can buy a boatload of stuff in cheap-as-chips China also gives it a certain fun-factor. But I’m here to tell you, there’s more!
Shit Laowai Say
Alright, I’m a bit slow picking this up, as it made the rounds a few days ago, but felt it was worth the late share all the same. It really should be called Shit Shanghai Laowai Say as there’s a lot of very localized references in it (I miss Sherpa’s), but still quite funny.
What do you mean you don’t have a VPN? 
Tribal Warfare: Urban Angst in China’s Supermarkets
While most laowai are probably familiar with the phenomenon of the “ant tribe,” a recent article in The Economist introduced a number of other “tribes” of stressed-out young Chinese struggling to survive in the urban jungle. Perhaps the most unusual is the “crush-crush tribe” (捏捏族), who release their frustrations by hiding in supermarket aisles and [...]
