non-fiction

A Christmas gone wrong in Shanghai – by Tom Pellman

I realised I wasn’t ready to handle Christmas alone around 5pm Christmas Eve. It was 2007, and I was sitting in the Shanghai office of the media company I worked for at the time. Ricky and Pang Pang from design were two of the few people still hanging around. Most of my foreign colleagues had left days ago, including my boss. I had a mountain of work to get done, but I wasn’t working on Christmas Eve because of my deadlines. I was still at the office because I didn’t have anywhere else to be.

Captain Ahab in China – by Decater Collins

With yet another story of expats behaving badly making the rounds, I’ve been thinking of my own angry encounters on the streets of Beijing. I have plenty of incidents from my thirteen years here, including a near fist fight with a taxi driver who wanted to extort me for only going to Dongzhimen from the airport, and the near-death experience of getting sideswiped on my bike by the Australian ambassador.

One time in 2005 nearly ended in tragedy.

Just because you know it, doesn't mean you can say it

You’ve likely read about this scooter mook, who earlier in the month cut across two lanes of traffic and slammed into a middle aged lady. He got into an argument with her and used some horrific Chinese – in both senses of the phrase – including “f* your mother” and shabi, which I translate below the break. She, in turn, ripped his coat and clung to his scooter somewhat hysterically, obviously angling after compensation. Neither came across particularly well, but it was the foreigner who lost all my sympathy when he opened his gob. (Although it’s a tough break to be deported for it.)

Here’s a personal vignette that illustrates what I think about this. It doesn’t reflect well on me. It’s about when I called a taxi driver a shabi.

Exploits at a Guiyang gay bar – by Sasha Draggeim

“If I were a boy …”

I strained to hear the echo of my voice in the dark, shoebox-shaped bar, as crowds of young men swayed to and fro in the audience.

“Even just for a day …”

I was singing “If I Were a Boy” by Beyoncé Knowles in DD, or Daily Dish, one of the two gay bars in Guiyang, Guizhou province – a city generally described by non-Guiyang Chinese people as luohou, “backwards.” I had chanced upon this bar a few months earlier with a friend, and before long it became my main source of social interaction.

A run in with the police at the subway party – by George Ding

Maybe it was because I was wearing a tie but the station attendant came and talked to me.

"Are you the organiser of this?" she asked.