Category Archives: Rants
Laowai Gives Free Driver’s Ed.
I don't know how many times I've watched absolutely retarded things go down in China and said to myself, "I really should kick that guy in the teeth for cutting off that old women shuffling across the street" or "I should have just let that bitch on the bike hit me, instead of jumping out …
We’ve Got A Blogspot Down!
An in-China Internet user’s relationship with the Chinese powers that be is a precarious one at best. Really, using the Internet here is a bit like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet. You go one week and they’ve got that great seafood salad, but when you return the following week, the salad’s gone… oh! But they’ve …
Boycott Chinese Men Who Are Complete F’ing Idiots
I ran across, Boycott Chinese Girls Who Date White Guys, a little gem at the always enkindling The 88s blog. A Chinese guy, generously self-endowed with the moniker TwentyFourCM, is proving new lows in illustrating stupid racial insecurity. And as us guys so often do, he’s taking his insecurities out on women. In translation, originally …
Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits
Well, that’s bound to get your attention. First, perhaps I (and George Carlin) should apologize to my mom, as this post contains words of an expletive nature – but c’mon, they’re just words. As this blog is a testament to, I am a major advocate for free speech in every form. I think people should …
Wikipedia Unblocked In China, Kinda…
I’ve been caught sleeping. The Chinese blogsphere is abuzz with the news that the flagship to Web 2.0, Wikipedia, is now unblocked in China. (see references below) After almost precisely a year of having to access the site through proxy services (or the secure.wikimedia.org version of the site), all us in China are able to …
Islam: Fundamentally Flawed
Alright, give me a moment before you start the respective religious retaliation that my post’s headline might invoke. I dig Islam and I dig Christianity. By and by I agree that the two promote relatively peaceful and more fulfilling lives for several billion people. That said, I’ve never been overly kind or sensitive to any …
Who Wants The Display Model?
So it would appear that our little world of foreign blogging in China is having its ass raked across the coals lately. Thanks to one man and his sexual exploits displayed on the net for all to see. And I say, good on ‘im! Basically, some uppity Chinese "professor" stumbled across Sex in Shanghai, a …
AIDS: Safety First
“Chinese AIDS Vaccine Safe, Possibly Effective” I caught this headline on CCTV 9 yesterday at Maggie’s parents’ house (FINALLY, after a year and a half in this country, learned how to make dumplings). It’s also gracing the top of a Xinhua article announcing the same thing. I’m not sure what about it just made me …
The Slayer Of The Dog That Bit You
After two weeks of whizzin’ around Southern Ontario (and bits of the US) visiting friends and family, I’ve finally returned to the poolside of my mother’s house. Though I’ve little plans to do much but smother myself in UV rays and chlorinated water for the rest of my time in Canada – I’ve been doing …
Dalian Is A Beautiful City
I’ve lived here in Dalian for about a year and a half and in that time I’ve heard the following line more times than I care to count:
“Dalian is a clean and beautiful city.”
It must have been written in the “How to Properly Promote Dalian to Foreign Visitors and Residents” pamphlet that’s handed out by the local Public Security Bureau, as it is always repeated with the same grin and toneless inflection of blind belief.
By all accounts Dalian is a beautiful city – for China. And that’s the key. By the standards I was raised with though… it can be quite a shithole. Now I know I’ll get some flack for that … people shouting that it’s a developing country and all the crap I’ve heard 1.3 billion times by people using some of the tried and true CCP tactics of rinse and repeat … and my point here isn’t to argue that – it’s simply to show that not everything is quite as shiny as Labor Park or Fu Jia Zhuang.
Now, to be fair… Dalian has some parts that are absolutely stunning. Natural beauty that could go up against some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen and hold its own. These, of course, are the places that have had limited touching by the mass population that likes to leave their squid sausage wrappers and sunflower seed packages pretty much everywhere but a trash receptacle. I’ve featured these more scenic spots a few times here, but today I’m going to focus on the underbelly that’s not as often shown, because quite simply it doesn’t take as nice a photo.
For those visitors to Dalian that don’t stray from the well manicured downtown core… here are some photos of the neighbourhood I most recently worked in – well out of the eye of tourists, and therefore also off the radar of any officials that might lift a finger to help clean it up. I got bored, so they feature some synthetic lomo digital editing I’ve been playing with lately … please don’t start with photo integrity arguments, k?
