By WATT EVA
Hipster Correspondent

‘I remember when this place was just me, and a few Red Guards.’

GULOU (China Daily Show) – A nine-year veteran of Beijing’s famous hutong district, Gulou, has vowed never to leave the area again, after a shocking experience outside the Second Ring Road last weekend.

Jake Trenton (pictured, right)  – who prefers to be known as Gao Fuhao – agreed to meet some former university friends touring China last Saturday evening, after Trenton had finished his regular kite-making workshop.

The 29-year-old has spent much of the last decade living in a converted Qing courtyard house while practicing tai chi, an experience funded partly by Trenton’s calligraphy sales and mostly by his wealthy Manhattanite parents.

“My buddies called and said they were in Sanlitun and had just bought a round of drinks,” Trenton told China Daily Show. “It was too late to warn them – I had to simply go.”

Sanlitun, an embassy district in north Beijing, is renowned for its excellent shopping, restaurants and bar scene. But it is also, according to Trenton and others, “the gateway to Hell itself” and “full of asshole foreigners.”

Nevertheless, Trenton obligingly rode his refurbished fixed-gear bicycle across town, arguing that the worst than could realistically go wrong was being jostled by a gaggle of 14-year-old drinkers, or possibly pestered by a beggar.

“Leaving my authentic, historically intact neighbourhood, with its colourful array of genuine Beijing folk and extremely real smell of shit is so hard to do. Almost impossible – I mean, why would you?” Trenton angrily mused. “But, if it was for a pair of really great university friends who’d traveled 3,000 miles just to see me, I was prepared to go and have a brew – a local microbrew, I mean.”

Trenton refused to be drawn on the details of what happened – other than divulging that the area was “absolutely full” of Americans and Europeans – but the experience has left him shaken and disillusioned.

Now the much-loved foreigner is telling friends he is also dismayed by what has become of his beloved Gulou neighbourhood in recent years.

‘If they could just get rid of the electricity, this place would be really authentic’

Witnesses report that on several drunken occasions, Trenton has threatened to throw in the towel and move to Tongzhou, a bleak suburb that he claimed was one of the last remaining resources of ‘Real China’ in Beijing.

As for what he believes qualifies as decent Chinese nightlife, Trenton was giving little away yesterday.

“I go to authentic little niche joints, many of which don’t have ‘names’ or specific ‘addresses.’ But I refuse to tell you which ones, in case someone reads this article and decides to come down and ruin it,” Trenton said, his voice shaking with emotion.

“The last place I fell in love with got profiled by some foreign journalist and within a week, they’d fired the bossa nova DJ – a guy I happen to know and enormously respect – and replaced him with an Akon CD. I can’t let that happen again.”

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Profile of a hipster: Tate Wallace, 27

City: Beijing

‘The Amnesiacs won a Grammy? What the fuck? They’re ruined’

Favorite band: A tiny drum ’n’ bass prog-rock collective called The Amnesiacs. You’ve definitely never heard them.

Hates: Tourists who don’t speak Chinese.

Loves: Wealthy Chinese in need of consultancy; The Amnesiacs. I also love myself.

TV: Huh. I stopped watching TV after Cop Rock got cancelled.

Books: Mostly Chinese classics: The Tao. The Kama Sutra. And I should mention my own memoir, wryly titled Hutonghua: The Life and Language of Real China (available exclusively via my website).

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By SAJIU FENG
Society Correspondent

Evans: ready to build a whole new life in China, then screw it all up again

BEIJING (China Daily Mail) – A terminal alcoholic has startled fellow wastrels by announcing his decision to settle in China.

 “I moved here unintentionally a couple of months ago,” recalls Harold Evans, 48. “I had to find somewhere to go fast, after being made to leave Thailand in completely outrageous circumstances.”

Evans – a traveller, writer, bon vivant and self-confessed “dreamer” – has spent much of his life on Streatham High Street, London.

He arrived in China following complications arising from a lack of visa.

“I never intended to stay more than a few days but this place got a hold of me,” Evans frankly admits, standing on the terrace of a popular uptown bar and addressing his remarks to a throng of non-English speaking students below.

“I’ve only been in China for two weeks and I’ve have already had my phone stolen twice!” he later marvels. “I’ve mistaken my hotel room for someone else’s apartment and admitted things I’ve never told anyone to a Yunnanese barman whose face I can’t quite recall.”

Evans confesses it was difficult to make the transition at first, as he’d considered himself to be at the peak of his drinking trajectory.

In just nine years, the retired brewery consultant has guided at least two marriages onto the rocks, lost an eight-year custody battle to a Valium-addicted former wife and embarrassingly forgotten the names of “more people than I can possibly remember.” 

Yet Evans longed for something more. 

“I had to look at myself and say: ‘Alright. Enough’s enough, Barry,’” the former hod-carrier told China Daily Show. “‘You had a good innings in Blighty – some might say one of the best – but it’s time to move on, while you’re still on your uppers.’”

Indeed, just four days before setting off on a short break to Thailand, Evans successfully lost a darts match at his local tavern, before falling over in the pub’s car park and soiling himself.

Still, he admits that China is not quite the gilded playground of cheap backrubs and bottomless ergotou it first appeared.

“There have been setbacks to the rule of lawless,” Evans warns. “The relatively recent introduction of a drink-driving rule is one notable fly in the ointment. But I get round that by simply not driving, and instead puking in the back of a rickshaw.”

But despite such restrictions, the successful British booze-artist says the scope for serious alcoholism in China is even bigger than it is in the West– and growing every day.

“It’s going to be the next big thing, China,” Evans muses, dabbing an unexplained bloodstain on his jersey. “A surging economy, loose borders, cheap ale. Count me in.”

And he has good advice for anyone wishing to follow in his footsteps.

“Never give up: life is full of surprises. Every day is a new beginning. Seriously – I can’t remember a bloody thing about yesterday.”

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By TIANTIAN XIANGSHENG
Education Correspondent

Xiao is very sorry for her behaviour and hopes Ethan can somehow forgive her

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – An English student has spoken of her regret, after drunkenly sabotaging a burgeoning language partnership with an American filmmaker by sleeping with him.

Xiao Lingling, who likes to be called  “Josephine” or “Happy,” placed an advert with an English-language website seeking a native speaker for “language partners, so we can learn each other.”

The ad explained she was “funny, liked family, am easygoing and pretty.”

Within minutes, former Michigan resident Ethan Morgan replied offering assistance. The two met at a downtown coffee shop and quickly hit it off.

“Ethan hadn’t brought any of the study guides we talked about on the email and his Chinese was very poor at the time, but we still managed to learn things from each other,” Xiao recalled. “I taught him to count to five in Chinese, and he showed me how to make the coffee ‘Irish.’”

Unfortunately, Xiao – who also goes by the name of “Sally” or “Dreamcatcher” –  felt dizzy soon afterwards and had to be taken home. It was here, she admitted, that the meeting went awry and the pair ended up in bed together.

“I woke up much later, and Ethan had left a very kind note, saying how much he enjoyed our talk, but that he felt uncomfortable continuing our exchange under the circumstances,” said a tearful Xiao.

“I totally ruined our language partners!”

Morgan didn’t respond to emails but China Daily Show managed to catch up with him by replying to another advert he’d recently placed, seeking “a Chinese friend to swap culture, stories and language. Women only.”

Morgan agreed to discuss the aborted relationship after a few drinks.

“I met Jennifer at Starbucks, where she immediately asked me to call her ‘Fluffy.’ We had a couple of drinks, flirted and went back to hers. That was it, really,” shrugged Morgan, a former student who recently began working on an independent documentary project, which is as yet untitled.

Meanwhile, Xiao says she is determined not to let the matter affect her further education.

“I’m putting this mistake behind me,” she said. “I have already met a very nice English man on the subway, called Bernard. He is eager to meet us at a place called the Vic’s Club, next Friday at midnight.”

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Leaving China is not a new phenomenon. Nor is writing about it – as this moving letter, newly discovered in the Shanghai archives of the North China Daily News, proves. 

July 27, 1937 

Dear Sirs,

Fothergill: ‘Rumours a bloody disgrace’

I regret I must write again to inform you of our plans to return home to England for a short period of time, in order to attend urgent family matters.

Our steamship, the Hangchow, embarks tomorrow, and docks briefly in Canton, before making its way to Southampton, stopping at Port Said, Suez, Djibouti, Colombo and Singapore (I am particularly looking forward to spending a few days ashore in Djibouti, exploring the historic hammams of the Old Quarter).

We expect to be in the bosom of Albion by October. Our adorable houseboy, Fu Lee, who will be accompanying us on the trip, is already excitedly talking about walking on the “promenade” in Margate and having “ice cweams” [sic] on Brighton Beach!

However, although this is a long-awaited and much-deserved journey for us, I feel compelled to put pen to paper to explain our reasons for our holiday.

Firstly, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Japanese ‘invasion’ of North China.

While many Shanghailanders have been quite rightly appalled at some of the more ‘unfortunate’ tactics the Nipponese Army has employed during its quarrel with the Chinaman, this did not dictate our choice of destination, which was agreed upon some months ago (although I do concede that the sound of shelling outside the Concession in the evenings has been really quite beastly, and most unconducive to quiet study-time alone with one’s houseboy).

Mrs Fothergill, who, alas, suffers numerous maladies of the ‘female persuasion,’ in addition finds the city in summer to be intolerably stuffy and the air disagrees with her frail constitution.  Her mother is also keen for our young daughter – Esmie, I think her name is – to enjoy the bracing benefits of some proper British seaside air.

Thirdly, this has nothing to do with the unfortunate so-called ‘incident’ that took place in Moganshan last week. As I explained at great – and, in my view, quite unnecessary – detail at the time, the belt on my britches had unfortunately perished completely in the noonday sun. I merely happened to be passing the public swimming baths at the time. This explanation was given to the satisfaction of all present at the Moganshan Summer Resort Association emergency committee meeting.

Scandalous insinuations that have since arisen recently regarding myself and our houseboy, Fu Lee, are quite despicable and should be ignored forthwith. Lee has been an upstanding domestic employee of the Fothergill family for six years and proved, moreover, an exceptionally keen student at the knee of Jesus Christ, our Lord Redeemer.

Finally, I wish to add that we have every intention of returning to China as soon as possible. We shall continue our Godly mission to civilize the yellow man in a matter of years,

Yours faithfully,

Reverend Peter Fothergill

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So you’ve finally decided to break up with China. You’ll probably want to write a blog post or newspaper article about it, then.

Too busy packing? Here’s our handy delete-as-necessary CDS guide to posing that crucial ‘Dear Zhang’ piece!

Relax – I’ll be back soon! Not even sure why I’m writing this, in fact

“Hey. How you doing? Great, great.

Look… we need to talk. About us.

When we first met, it was great. You were a developing nation, on the cusp of greatness, full of opportunity, innocence and frankly batshit behavior. I was a 24-year-old college graduate who couldn’t get a job/ recently redundant 36-year-old staring bleakly into the future/ newly divorced sex-tourist only 52 years young.

And now? Now, you’re a bellicose superpower with a victimhood complex and a whole bunch of incipient, growing social problems. And me? I’m a 29-year-old college graduate who still can’t get a job/ China expert/ old guy with arthritis and no pension plan.

Hey, hey – don’t cry… come on. Let’s not make a scene.

Look, we’ve had some good times you and me, haven’t we? Remember when we spent six weeks in Hunan together, pretending to be the foreign CEO of an investment capital firm? Holy shit, I’ve only just realized that was criminal fraud!

Or what about that time you gave me a job as an actor in a prestigious TV series, playing Whitey – despite the fact I couldn’t emote my way out of a fortune cookie? Oh my God! What about when we spent a year teaching in Dongbei – what was it you said? “We have to leave town, now. Your friend has slept with a local gangster’s mistress and now he wants to cut off both your legs”?

Man, that shit was fucked-up. Hm, I wonder what did ever happen to Mike? I should really write to that crazy bastard sometime. I guess it was kind of douchey of me not to give him a heads-up before I fled Harbin.

Anyway, it’s not all been one-sided.

I’ve given a lot to you. I’ve tried, I really have. I’ve read all four of your Novels. I learned how to use chopsticks. I spent two months editing your mom’s crappy kindergarten website. I even wrote that personal statement that got you into Harvard Business School (and you sort of “screwed” me on that deal – or not, if you know what I mean).

And there are still so many things I love about you: the bountiful range of cuisines; the hospitality of your people; the southern landscape; the complete lack of qualifications needed to get a teaching job; those courtroom pictures of Gu Kailai in a fat suit. Good times.

But now it’s really time to move to Taiwan/ ask my parents if my bedroom is still available/ go back to Europe and set up a China consultancy firm/ call a probate lawyer.

Why?

I can’t really say for sure what the final straw was. Probably it was a combination of things. Maybe the pollution; the constant food scandals; the oppression of the Tibetan and Uighur minorities; the inexcusable decision to delay Dark Knight Rises in cinemas until August 27. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? I need to see that movie, now.

And look, this has nothing to do with the fact that the PSB tried to frame me as a drug dealer/ your father is a high-ranking PLA general who hate Americans/ my visa just ran out.

No. It’s just that now happens to be a very fashionable time to be leaving China. This isn’t personal. It’s not you. It’s me.

Well, mostly it’s you.”

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By SHAN GANQING
Employment Correspondent

Chinese workers clamour to donate some money –but not too much – to a charity fund

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) — An American proofreader has upset his co-workers after donating too much money to one of his company’s regular disaster-relief funds.

The incident has unwittingly sparked a furious web campaign and comes at a difficult time for non-domestics in China, as the country engages in a ‘100 Flowers for Foreigners’ campaign, aimed at cracking down on reprobate English teachers.

John Warner, 26, of Littleton, Colorado, was feeling nauseous during his lunch hour Tuesday and decided to go home early, unaware that HR representatives had planned a surprise fundraising activity that day in the canteen.

Warner’s absence was immediately noticed by the company’s receptionist – and resident tattle-tattle – Carolyn Wei. “I knew he had gotten salary higher than ours did, so he should have been the first to donate it!” an indignant Wei told reporters.

After receiving a text message from sympathetic colleague Li Zhifang, Warner returned and promptly donated 1,000 yuan to the cause, stifling dissent – but creating a whole new problem.

The thoughtless largesse has “deeply hurt the feelings of the company’s Chinese people,” according to Li, prompting an intranet gossip thread entitled ‘Who did John thought he was? Bob Gates?’

“It was at that moment,” said a satisfied Li, “that everyone’s comment begin to change. Now they said he thought he was better than ours!”

By early Tuesday evening, as Warner recovered at home, the ‘Bob Gates Source’ meme had been reposted online over 4 million times and an energetic netizen campaign to oust him from the country was in full swing.

Web analysts predict that, by the end of the week, Warner will have managed to inadvertently offend virtually the entire country.

Meanwhile, the total sum of RMB 5,862, raised by 126 individual employees, was donated to the China Red Cross Wednesday and had disappeared by Thursday.

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By HUI JIA
Foreigners Correspondent

Police respond to reports of a red-headed devil spotted lurking near a Chinese female

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – The Chinese government has launched an exciting new visa campaign, aimed at promoting better ‘inclusiveness’ for foreigners.

In a bid to make foreign nationals feel just as caught up in a rule-crazy bureaucracy as their Chinese peers, cities across the nation announced the new campaign – dubbed ‘100 Flowers for Foreigners’ – amid public fanfare yesterday.

The campaign encourages foreigners to merely approach their nearest police station, carrying their three ‘haves’ – a valid passport, visa and/or residence permit, landlord’s agreement or/and rental agreement, alien’s work permit and/or/and ‘foreign expert certificate,’ marriage license, bank details, invitation letter, plus their current thoughts on free-market socialism.

“The officers will then scrutinize the completed documents for some time, before announcing that there is a big problem,” promised Beijing public security spokesman Wen Ping. “It’ll be just like you’re authentically Chinese.”

Local communities have been asked to help encourage shy foreigners to come forward and have their day in the sun.

Expats in China can sometimes feel left out of its Communist society, experts say.

While their Chinese co-workers rush off for impromptu Marxism lessons or suddenly vanish into closed-door ‘bonding sessions,’ white-skinned employees are often left to wonder what the fuck just happened to the rest of the office.

Officials hope that the new rules will help foreigners in China acclimatize – or get the hell out.

Not everyone has welcomed the move, however. Younger expats have been overheard worrying that it could interfere with well-laid plans to get totally messed-up this summer.

The nostalgic campaign evokes Mao Zedong’s glorious ‘100 Flowers’ campaign of 1957, during which the then-Chairman encouraged intellectual and scholars to critique the Communist Party, urging: “Let one hundred flowers blossom, let one hundred schools of thought contend.”

Due to a severe natural drought at the time, though, many of those flowers sadly perished.

Police are determined not to let that happen again, promising to visit local watering holes to ensure that any foreigners there are well refreshed, well documented and well on their way back to their native countries.

“Come on everybody, it’s summer,” urged Ping. “Let all the foreign flowers come out and taste the rule of law!”

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By SHI FU
Education Correspondent

This undated photo shows educator Kyle Majors charming the pants off an impressed student in School Bar

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – A fearlessly edgy English teacher has spoken out, after having had his visa denied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – effectively expelling him from the country.

Kyle Majors, 27, told media that his tough stance on education at the Beijing University of Technology & Agricultural Pesticides made him a thorn in the side of the administration  – and by extension, the Beijing government.

Majors’s class – ‘US sitcoms, 2004-present’ – was described by the teacher himself as “utterly uncompromising in dealing with the political reality in China.”

Majors recalls he first blew his students’ minds during an episode of season one of Game of Thrones, in which he casually compared Joffrey to Mao Zedong.

“There were a few nervous titters,” Majors recalled. “Since then, I have been taking it further and further.”

Majors’ academic-awareness campaign has included absenting himself from Saturday-morning classes, striding onto campus wearing a ‘Tiananmen Tank Man’ T-shirt and persistently mispronouncing the names of Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yaobang and Fang Lizhi.

But it was his outrageous observations on the recent Bo Xilai case that needled the faculty most says Majors, a former high-school student and McDonald’s junior operative .

Others partly agree with Majors’s assessment.

“I would certainly describe Kyle as an irritant,” agreed fellow pedagogue Jim Anderson, a PhD candidate in Ming Dynasty studies, currently doing archival research in Beijing.

At least one student backs up his claims.

“After reading about Neil Heywood, Kyle asked us if anyone would want to poison him,” recalled Li, a student in Majors’s sitcom class. “We all agreed it was highly probable.”

It was shortly after the Bo case broke that Majors had his visa application declined, forcing him to leave the country and travel to Thailand.

Local police claim the decision was made after discovering a drunken Majors curled between the feet of an unconscious prostitute, with an expired tourist visa. The former teacher dismisses this as “a convenient lie, although it’s partly true.”

Majors says he now joins the ranks of such enemies of the Chinese state as blind dissident Chen Guangcheng and recently exiled Al-Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan.

“They can remove me but they can’t silence me,” Majors insists. “I have a new gig now at a kindergarten near Bangkok, teaching Buddhism. I won’t be afraid to expose the truth about Nirvana – and who really killed Kurt.”

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[UPDATE: Majors has since informed us that his sudden expulsion may, in part, be due to a recent series of New York Times exposes,concerning the financial affairs of, among others, Premier Wen Jiabao.  “They don’t want to make the NYT reporter a martyr,” explained the bitter pedagogue. “So they take it out on me.”]

By PINFU CHAJU
Economy Correspondent

"Christ alive... Is that what I think it is?"

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – Its economy has grown a record-breaking 300 percent in 30 years, lifting 600 million of its citizens out of poverty.

But as far as one Shanghai resident is concerned, China’s unprecedented boom has had a serious and unintended consequence.

“It’s getting much, much harder to find a cab,” frets Harold Seers, a 49-year-old investment banker who’s been in China nearly a decade, glancing impatiently at his Patek Phillipe watch. “I’ve been here since lunchtime. This would never have happened in ’02. Never.”

Seers has been standing at the intersection of Xizang Donglu for nearly fifteen minutes – a wait he said is now not uncommon. He is now urging Beijing’s economists to reconsider the effect their policies are having on his previously unfettered existence.

“None of this was here when I first arrived,” said Seers, gesturing helplessly at the mêlée of office buildings, shopping malls and vehicles that  surround him. “Back in 2002, it was just wide, empty roads and bicycles. Perfect cab-catching conditions,” he sighs.

Former New Yorker Seers confesses to having endured Manhattan’s cab shortages for nearly 20 years, when his daily commute often included an excruciating battle against bad drivers, congested roads and rivals also trying to hail taxis.

“It was like China is now,” Seers notes. “They’ve ruined a perfectly good third world country.”

The pressure took its toll: Seers accepted a hardship posting to China after a curbside NYC cardiac arrest and road-rage incident in quick succession caused him to radically rethink his life.

“The penthouse apartment, the six-figure salary, the maid, the women, the fine dining: none of it meant a damn when I was ruining a new shirt twice a day trying to catch a ride,” Seers recalls. “My bill at Brooks Brothers was large than most people’s apartments. Eventually, I’d had enough.”

For Seers, arriving in Shanghai was “just like starting over. Clear boulevards, empty cabs… I was turning down drivers left, right and center – now I’m lucky if I can find a  rickshaw who won’t take less than a couple of bucks.”

Seers blames the country’s economic policies, annual double-digit growth and fierce obsession with Western consumer values for having ruined his commute.

The country’s sudden wealth creation has fueled an automobile boom, overtaking the US as the world’s largest auto market when 2009′s vehicle sales jumped 46 percent to 13.6 million, with nationwide vehicle ownership climbing to 51 million in 2008 from just a million in 1977.

In the last six months alone, Seers has been “cab-jacked” – in his words – by, among others, a mother with child, a group of high-school students and someone he swears was a migrant worker.

The country now has the world’s second-largest number of billionaires and upstreamers – statistics which  keep people like Seers awake at night.

“Slow down, China,” he urged. “Or at least, pull over and take me where I need to go. I’m late for an important meeting – again!”

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