China Stories

From a great link about the China Blog Awards.....Click here for all entries. It requires a some navigation to get to all of them, but they're worth it.

This one is typical. "Laowai" means "Round Eye", the casual term used for Westerners.

There are two basic ways of ordering food in China. Try and guess which one
I normally opt for.
Method One:
1. Enter restaurant. Listen to 16 waitresses shout “欢迎光临” down your ear.2. Despite the fact that you have entered the restaurant by yourself, and there is nobody else near the establishment for another 15 miles, the waitress asks if you want a table for one.3. Follow waitress to table. Wait five minutes while the waitress clears the mass of bones, spit, foetuses, lost scrolls, blood, and monkey claws from the table with an oily rag.4. Place tissue paper on chair and sit down. Of the 27 waitresses who gather round your table, tell 26 of them to go away.5. Within 0.00000000001 millisecond of sitting down, the waitress is hovering behind impatiently.6. In impeccable Mandarin, ask for a menu. Repeat angrily when waitress giggles, looks away, and shouts to her colleagues that she doesn’t understand English.7. Tell waitress you don’t want the most expensive items she is pointing to on the menu.8. Tell the waitress to bring you a beer while waiting. When it arrives, send it back and ask for a cold one.9. When the waitress asks if you would like to drink the beer opened or unopened, ask her to open it.10. Choose meal.11. Choose different meal when told they don’t have it.12. Repeat stages 10 and 11 about three times.13. Finally choose something they have and ask them not to put any egg in it.14. Relax. All the time, a million Chinese peasants are staring at you, spitting, and muttering: “laowailaowai”. 15. After 20 minutes ask what is happening with your meal.16. After another 20 minutes receive meal, then send it back because it has egg in it.17. Seven days after you entered the place, finally receive meal.18. Pick out the stones and pubic hair.19. Eat.20. Halfway through your food, have your meal disturbedby the manager insisting on sitting down next to you and asking where you are from and if foreigners eat pork as well. 21. Ask to pay the bill, then tell them to check again after they give you the wrong bill.22. Pay for meal. Waitress asks if you have the correct change which you do not. Wait another 15 minutes as she goes down the street to find change. 23. Leave when 16 waitresses shout “谢谢光临” at you. Waitress 17 will shout “Bye bye!” instead and everybody will find it hilarious.24. Burn the place down. Then shit through the eye of a needle for two days afterwards.25. Point 25? There is none.
OR
Method Two: 1. Walk into McDonalds/KFC.2. Point at what you want.3. Eat and get the hell out.

It's too late to get my infamous Chinese Dog and Chinese Washing Machines stories into this year's contest. Maybe next time.