User Comments - matt
matt
Posted on: Year of the Rat and Minimum Wage
January 24, 2008 at 4:56 AMConnie is absolutely adorable, you should have her on every "Dear Amber"!
Posted on: The Non-Chinese Speaking Tourist and Toilets
January 16, 2008 at 9:32 AMTwo years ago, I went to stay with my wife's grandmother out in western Guangdong. She lives in a tiny little village. Her house had no cesuo, and if grandma needed to go in the middle of the night, she used a bedpan. The contents would fertilize her garden vegetables the next day. I wasn't keen on the bedpan. There was a public toilet about 100 metres down the road. No plumbing, no electrics, just a couple of troughs that looked like they hadn't been cleaned for half a year, and after dusk, it was as close to a minefield as I ever wanted to see. It killed my habit of drinking beer with dinner until I got back to Guangzhou :)
Posted on: Superstitions and Business Trip Tales
April 15, 2008 at 7:44 AMI was surprised to find Haikou-brewed Tiger beer on a recent excursion to Hainan Dao. The stuff I usually drink is brewed just a few miles from here at Tuas. The Haikou-brewed stuff tasted a bit sweeter than the Singaporean version. I was even more surprised to find a 500ml plastic bottle of Erguotou in a Foshan supermarket for 3 RMB. Peel the label off and it looks like a bottle of water. The taste is not so different from a 500 RMB bottle of maotai so my wife was simultaneously happy and furious at the amount I bought and packed in my suitcase. I love baijiu, it is an extremely useful business tool.