Don’t Quote Me On This
This happened one night when I ran into a friend of a friend. We began a brief, passing conversation and I sufficed to ask how he was doing. But rather than answering with anything pertaining to his personal life, he slammed me with a movie quote.
“It’s niiice, very nice.” (In what I assume was an imitation of Borat’s voice.)
Ok then. Thinking that it was over, I ventured to ask about our mutual friend. But no sooner had I begun talking than I was interrupted with—
“60 percent of the time, it works every time.”
… I’d been hit again. I let the conversation end there, as it was unlikely that anything resembling an original thought was going to come out of this person. I wondered: just how often had this situation happened to me? And how many minutes of my life had I lost to overused and poorly-reenacted movie quotes, taken completely out of context and dropped into a dialogue in which they had no place and made no sense?
Midnight Train to Beijing
A common ritual for expatriates in China is the visa run. Because of the limited number of days a tourist can spend in one “visit” to China (in our case it was sixty days), those staying in China for longer durations must make the trek out of the country and back in to get a new stamp on their passport and reset the timer. Common destinations include Mongolia, South Korea, and Hong Kong, whose special status counts as leaving China. Often it’s used as an excuse to take a vacation every couple of months, and that’s what Michael and I did for our first run to Hong Kong—we made a weekend of it. This time, however, was supposed to a formality: take the train from Beijing to Hong Kong (a twenty-four hour trip), then immediately get on the return train and head back. Clean, simple, and efficient. However, there was one snafu to trip us up.
Expats to Street Food Vendors: “The Jig Is Up”
Foreigners outside metro stops citywide have been seen walking off in a huff, outraged by what seems to be an outbreak of race-related overcharging.
“This is ludicrous,” muttered Daniel McKay of Portland, Oregon, rummaging through his wallet for another one-yuan note. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Dwoh-shaow chee-yen?” McKay asked again, then leaned in and asked louder, forcing the baozi vendor to resort to hand gestures when he seemed unable to understand the amount specified in Chinese.
Recent Comments