It Talks!

A post on "Talking Dog Syndrome". That is, when a Chinese person sees a Westerner approaching they do not expect them to start speaking Chinese. Just like if a dog approaches, in fact. Thus they are pretty sure they are not going to understand what you say and when you do start speaking Mandarin, and even if all you ask is "what time is it?" they will be so astonished that they will not be listening and thus will not understand.

This was demonstrated at lunch today when Kash asked for more meat, a very simple sentence, and at first just could not make himself understood despite speaking correctly and with a pretty good accent.

Went to a 兰州, Lanzhou, restaurant. Lanzhou people look Chinese but are Muslim and thus their cuisine relies more on meat/potato stew type meals which I prefer. A family was running it and all were wearing those Muslim caps and there was Arabic writing on the walls. The son was running around industriously serving customers as I suspect they can't afford schooling. Free schooling is a Capitalist idea evidently...

I am sorely tempted to go the Bentley shop and ask how many cars they sell a week. Or a month. Or at all. Although I suspect they might actually make more sales than I realise. For there to be this many luxury goods shops, there are more Prada stores than McDonalds I swear, there has to be a large number of very wealthy people. And I reckon there is a sizeable amount- purely because of the huge wealth gap that is developing here in China. Sure there are a lot of uber-rich, but these are complemented by masses and masses of dirt-poor people surviving on very little. In the UK the gap is smaller so there are fewer uber rich and thus this must be why there are so few Prada shops around.

There was a very cold wind today. Uber-cold. It was actually warm in the sun and out of the wind but the wind itself was the coldest I've ever felt. I have a horrible feeling that Anthony was not exaggerating how cold it gets here over winter...