delicious

edit: THINGS THAT SUCK

the bad thing about living in china is that it's currently 5:30 PM on a Friday and not only is everyone still here, they are still DOING SHIT.

this didn't even happen when i worked at that nuclear fusion lab.

-end of things that suck-

if anyone's in shanghai now or going sometime or even thinking of going, i highly recommend taikang lu, lane 210. it's a winding alleyway full of small boutiques, cafes, bars, and art galleries. it's pretty clean and more expat (i think) than moganshan lu- more commercial and less arty. if moganshan lu is a williamsburg hipster, taikang lu is a manhattan hipster.

there's a vintage shop , delicious pizza places, a shop dedicated entirely to scarves (enough to make john riley emit that chicken squawk he likes to do), and a little boutique in which everything is branded either with an angry panda named "hello panda" or with 1950's era communist icons (peasant, worker, and soldier) in quite ironic situations (i.e. being more than comrades -- having a threesome makeout session).

in short, it is a wonderful place and i love it.

unfortunately, having calculated my expenses, i am fucked.

and closing with some thoughts on john riley:

pinkpink123: hahahahahaha
john cannot interfere
if he were a woman
hed do the same
and hed have higher heels
and redder lips
me: hahahahahahha
and be swathed not only in black cloth
but a black disposition

pinkpink123: hahahahahahahaha
hes also not a williamsburg hipster
me: no he is like....
he's def a manhattan hipster

things i want

before i go to england, i am picking a week to wear nothing but black clothes and red lipstick and really tall heels. i told this to gang, who said,

gang: why would you do this?

me: why do i ever do anything?

gang: i suppose you hate yourself that way.

"we have drink upstairs. wanna play?"

i was mistaken for a prostitute. not once, but twice.

i have never been so grateful for lucite stripper heels in my life. at least in america, that's what separates hos from girls who are just recreationally skanky. but in the land of problems (china), prostitutes dress pretty conservatively, so apparently my dress from target was enough to signal to an entire club, "HELLO. if you are old, rich, and white i love you long time, at least until the onset of herpes."

the offending dress in question

because, apparently you are not even allowed to lean on the backs of couches in a club. adrienne did so because oh maybe we were tired. and then some asian lady with an old white man taps us on the shoulder and asks if we want to have a drink. to which we reply "you are sitting with a man with an asian fetish and probably pedophilia. no thank you ma'am."

five minutes later, an asian woman with entirely too much glitter on her face puts her arm around me. when such situations occur, i think it best to pretend not to understand, so i told her i didn't speak chinese, to which she replies,

"oh no problem. we have party table upstairs yeah? we give free drink, you come, you sit. wanna play?"

to which i replied,

"i am going to feed some orphans right now so in my next karmic reincarnation i never have to come across anyone like you ever again."

speaking of glitter, several bitch ass hos (and i say that without feeling bad, because that's what they were--- bitches because they were blocking the napkin dispensers, hos because, well, that's what they do for a living) were changing into bikini tops in the bathroom and had slathered on the glitter onto their cleavage, which was entirely unnecessary because HELLO WE ARE IN CHINA. the shinyness will not make them look bigger. after a certain point, one just has to accept the fact that HELLO I AM ASIAN I HAVE THE BODY OF A PREPUBESCENT LAD.

that night, i knew it was about time to go home when i walked down the stairs and there were two midgets standing on the bar, dressed like teachers, but teachers you only ever see in saturday morning cartoons from japan, or perhaps morally questionable lolita schoolgirl porn (these two can be the same thing). there were actually girls dressed in school uniforms instead of gogo dancers. and then i decided that my life had become a cariacature, and i needed to leave before i tried to strangle myself with my purse.

but then sunday night hung out with the whiffs after sneaking into their concert because it's my goal in life to be lucas o'connor, so life was good again. except i realized that i work for a company that makes bondage ads. but them i remembered that OH WAIT I HAVE A BALLERINA DRESS.

that is all.

this morning i had to fight not to throw up on the metro

problems last night:

(talking to jiaona and james)
douchey looking white guy: why are they speaking english? that girl is speaking english!

i'm sorry. i guess i just like to partake in things generally considered white people territory, such as speaking english and acting like a tool.

things i should probably be worried about:

1. i am drunk at work and kind of feel like vomiting.
2. i have no plans for my future since i realized i can't get into law school and can't do anything else.
3. i am homeless in new haven from august 27-september 24.

so, friends and lovers, you can help out with struggle #3.
does anyone want to house me? preferably somewhere with a kitchen?

if madonna can do it, so can i

really sick today.

decided the best medicine was to go shopping.

dropped by uniqlo- basics for 20 RMB ($3).

feel better about myself (a little).

Fut18000: /let's be honest
black people with british accents are so much hotter than asians with british accents
haha
me: no
asians with british accents are better
Fut18000: lol, you're so wrong
me: because it's the juxtaposition of the exotic orient with proper old world charm
black people are best with french accents
Fut18000: lol, gay black american men with british accents are always hot
me: john riley
just because that will be you in a year
Fut18000: but there are too many africans from former french colonies that already have french accents
me: doesn't automatically make that hot

i think we have a score to settle.

thoughts?

getting sold, french concessions

so i am currently unable to view the blog.

this is a problem.

other problems include: the fact that i had to bust out the french skills for the first time in about three years- and it sucked. even sadder is that this situation also involved mega asian fetishes.

random european man: hi i'm sebastien. what's your name?
me: um. i'm rosie.
sebastien: are you from shanghai? i don't speak english or chinese. (in french)
me: no. i live in the us. (in awful french)
sebastien: oh. (is disappointed)
me: yeah.
sebastien: no probleme. (accent grave)

so apparently your stock is lower if you're not chinese chinese? more proof that asian fetishes are rooted primarily in some form of disturbing cultural imagination, as opposed to physical preference. although in the end, i suppose it doesn't matter that much. more or less every white male expat in shanghai has one.

swiss man: tell your friend she is beautiful woman.
me: adrienne, he thinks you are beautiful woman.
swiss man: here is my girlfriend.
(pulls out tiny asian girl with bangs and pigtails)

keep in mind that the swiss man had definitely left 30 behind a while ago. if you are dating someone over the age of 12, there is no reason in your life why you should be wearing pigtails in public. also, isn't it kind of creepy to date a chinese girl when you can't even speak her language? although i suppose it's the same situation with a lot of guys at yale, because i am only mildly proficient in the language of douchebag manslut. but oh wait, we are in china, where rules of sane behaviour no longer apply.

case in point: our saturday activities.

every saturday and sunday afternoon, hundred of chinese parents and grandparents gather in people's square for what i shall call the marriage market. in less polite terms, it could also be called the pan-china conference of asian parents to embarrass their nation and ruin their childrens' lives and reputations. people come with flyers, on which they write their son's or daughter's statistics, educational/professional information, etc etc in order to find their apparently relationship inept children a future mate.

reasons why this cannot work: if my parents picked a boyfriend for me, i would currently be dating a chinese (as in, from china, not abc or banana) electrical engineering ph.d student who is practical and expects to marry when we're 25 and have children when we're 27.

if my grandparents picked a boyfriend for me, i would be dating a chinese electrical engineering ph.d student who is practical and hideous and expects me to arrange flowers, make tea, and marry upon graduation and pop out 5 billion children, 90% percent of which are sons.

either way, bitches would get cut.

so kids decided that they should sell me, because they are malicious and awful people. it was decided: bing and i would sell jeff and jeff would sell me, to answer the ultimate question of who was more desirable: a normal white man who speaks chinese, or a bitter asian girl who hates everyone.

jeff's stats:
25 year old yale ph.d student in chemical engineering, has an american passport, is tall (182 cm), and drives a european car.

things they liked: the yale business got play, as did the engineering part. unfortunately, bing fucked up and told them he was an east asian studies major in his undergrad years, and of course asian parents railed on that for a while. a bunch of them asked if he was going to take his new girlfriend to the states. excitedly.

creepy.

also, this conversation:

lady 1: is he a man looking for a woman, or a man looking for another man?
lady 2: of course it's a man looking for a woman! gays don't come here! gays find their own boyfriends!

john, i guess this means you're on your own.

my stats: 29 years old, american passport, yale grad, employed, 165 cm, 48 kg, very cute! will love you! anime drawing!

all i got: "um. that character is written wrong."

sat night went to a chinese version of rudys, where the most unattractive people i have ever seen tried to work a stripper pole. also, this greasy european man who looked like kristen bell's creepy british boyfriend in forgetting sarah marshall, but plus 50 lbs, minus 5 inches and any sort of redeeming qualities whatsoever, was over the place, leaving a trail like hansel and gretel, except instead of bread crumbs it was herpes with an after whiff of tragedy.

struggles/pictures forthcoming.

"so, you like to arrange flowers and speak china-ese right?"

walking around, if i ever see a white person and an asian together (not in a group), it's invariable a white guy and an asian girl. usually, the asian girl speaks quite stilted english, while the white guy possesses impressive command of chinese.

sometimes, i wonder if my workplace is a nest of stereotypical white men with asian fetishes. of course, according to stuff white people like,

"White men love asian women so much that they will go to extremes such as stating that Sandra Oh is sexy, teaching English in Asia, playing in a coed volleyball league, or attending institutions such as UBC or UCLA."

(interestingly, i can't actually view stuffwhitepeoplelike.com- i think it's blocked. the only other website i've encountered this problem with here is amy lee's blog. since i know amy lee to be an inflammatory character, i can only assume that the chinese government deems things that white people enjoy dangerous and unnatural.)

anyway, back to the quote- if the forces compelling white men to teach english in china are the same as those prompting declarations of sandra oh's sexiness, i'm rather frightened. i love sandra oh as much as the next person. i think she is a great actress, but sandra oh is not sexy. sandra oh looks like my grandmother. as zoe said,

tico1619: my favorite part about asian fetish guys
is that they can't seem to tell the attractive asians from the unnattractive ones
NOT ALL ASIANS ARE CUTE

no asian american girl i’ve ever met has liked a guy simply because they’re white- rather, it’s generally because they either feel culturally closer to caucasians, or don’t want to deal with any more asian parents than biological truths have strictly necessitated.

white guys with asian fetishes, however, almost always expect you to speak chinese fluently, use chopsticks at home, perform some kind of exotic rituals involving a) ancestors, b) confucius, or c) your sat scores, and suffer from some sort of cultural struggle involving respect from one’s elders. also, why do they always expect you to know everything about china? i haven’t lived there since i was three, there’s really no reason why i should know why chinese people refuse to share pears. (although i do. but that’s a bonus.) i guess the problem arises from the fact that they expect you to fill some kind of mold created from their imagination, articles about the “new china” gleaned from newsweek magazine, and the film version of memoirs of a geisha. this basically requires you to be meek and subservient, have a really high voice, and be kind of retarded.

for example, asian guys see their ideal asian girl as a googly-eyed alien. who stands bow-legged and talked like a chipmunk with down syndrome.

while white guys with asian fetishes see asian girls as a combination of a geisha and that girl from the fast and the furious.

which is just unbearably tragic. both of them.

so, just a note to all guys with asian fetishes out there (white, or otherwise): stop. just stop. number one, not all asian girls look the same, so you should really understand that hooking up with ugly asian girls really does nothing for you. also, teaching english in china may seem like a good way to meet asian girls, but realize one thing: life here is a struggle. people will laugh at you and judge you with eyes of cold, cold judgment. asia is a cruel, cruel continent.

there is no place for carefree laughter and joy here, and the everyone hates you.

to quote margaret,

um asian fetishes
basically, the really demented and the severely closeted gays suffer from that disease

alas. too bad you don’t live in 19^th century japan. i guess it’s time to return to your anime and chinese lessons.

where's waldo

where are all the other chinese-but-not-really kids? by which i mean, where are all the other americanized but not enough to prevent them from jumping on a 15 hour plane to live in the motherland chinese kids who will sometime in the next 5 years experience a debilitating identity crisis and write a ripoff of the joy luck club??

i've happened upon a few white people and a shit ton of asians, but so far my cohorts and i have been the only asian americans i've encountered walking around shanghai. there's no way they aren't here. so now, the question is: have i been looking in the wrong places, am i retarded, or does everyone else have the sense to camouflage themselves?

apparently, we stick out. (although "we" seems to exclude me- in the words of the venerable gang chen, i wear clothes that don't match and have a really asian haircut - more on the tragedy later - so i could feasibly be native.) i've never seen a real chinese person wear cargo shorts and flip flops, which seems to be the uniform of choice for many an uncreative american lad. of course, if i had my way, everyone would wear argyle socks and slim-cut slacks everyday, and hedi slimane would be the most employed man in the world. that's the same universe in which everyone speaks in idiosyncratic anachronisms and has cheekbones that cut diamond.

but back to my point- bananas/twinkies/other edible substance that is yellow on the outside and white on the inside (lemon buddies?) asians: where the hell are you?? is it just that when you come to china, you throw on ripped jeans (male) and frilly tops (female)? is that what i should do?

according to my coworkers, if they hadn't known i was chinese american, they would've assumed i was korean. either way, i don't belong. so right now, not only do i not know what i am doing with my life, i feel kind of culturally homeless.

cue holden caulfield moment.

a couple things to note

i'm on my second post, which means it's now socially acceptable to issue a disclaimer:

i don't offer introspective musings or insightful comments. you will unfortunately be unable to extract pithy sayings from this blog that you can later inject into conversation and pretend you are awesome and witty when in actuality you are an unoriginal and morally questionable liar. (this is not something i have done. ever.) if you're lucky, you'll be able to find complete sentences. maybe. on tuesdays and thursdays, from 2-4 pm.

this sad, sad excuse for a blog is the pure and unfiltered product of peer pressure. actually, not even that- peer pressure implies some sort of cajoling and persuasion on the part of my peers. so, i amend my topic sentence: this sad, sad excuse for a blog is the product of my lemming complex. EVERYONE IS ABROAD. EVERYONE IS WRITING A BLOG. OMG ME TOO. (i am glad that humans are not lemmings, because i would be splattered at the bottom of a cliff faster than the blink of an eye. i can only resist lemming syndrome if it leads to the the ungodly travesties, like human sacrifice and crocs.)

the difference is, they're probably not at work when they're writing. also, they write with things like grammar and eloquence and taste.

the point is, i make no promises in the hopes that i will also have to make no apologies.

at least in shanghai there is plenty to write (aka complain) about, like my impending existential crisis and my really asian haircut.

but back to work.

optimism is overrated, literacy is not

you know you have hit a low point in your life when you must rely on pictures selected by chinese advertisers for a chinese market, in order to purchase the basic necessities of living.

par example:

pictures of sparkling dishes --> dish soap, as opposed to toxic bleach.

these caveman scratches are the only thing saving me from accidental poisoning.

also, i work at ikea, but ikea translated into actual functioning society, not just some kind of neatly organized yet entirely chaotic swedish nirvana. imagine the home office section. drop in a lot of asians, with some random white people sprinkled in. asians who work. all the time.

the conference room floats in midair.

in a couple weeks, i get to take a lovely journey to meet with a bunch of asian parents who pay thousands of RMB to put their 14 month old children in English class.