Learn Chinese, Travel or Work in China
One of the principal features of the Chinese school is competition: no matters which grade you can get, the important thing is how is your grade compared to the others in your class; never mind how fast you can run, the important is to be the fastest in the school; never mind whether your class is clean or dirty, the important is that it’s considered cleaner than the others. Following this flow, the last idea of my school has been a cooking competition. [Read more...]
“Instead of wonder WHEN your next vacation is, maybe you need to setup a life you don’t need to escape from,” Seth Godin
February is the best month to visit Bangkok. Forget the forty Celsius degree and the tropical storms. In winter the sky is clear and there are thirty degree at most.
I go out, sit in in a bar just in front of a pedestrian street, order a breakfast with eggs, mango juice and coffee. I plug in my Vaio 11.3 inches, switch it on and start to work.
I get lost among the web of Gothic tattoos of the Norwegian tourists and the screams of the waitresses wrapped up on succinct dresses that unveil small breasts and a backside that will never know the taste of cellulite.
I reckon I arrived ten days ago and I almost know nothing about this town. I spend most of my time on this terrace, writing and programming a website that will soon be [Read more...]
Sally is a twenty four year old international broker who used to work for one of the small textile factories of Wenzhou when the financial crisis hit the Zhejiang Province of China.
The night she lost her job, the police arrived at the factory and knocked on the dorm’s doors, where the brokers and the other workers lived. They started at the first floor, where the immigrant weavers from Sichuan Province stayed, and then went to the second, where the “well-off” brokers lived.
“Where is Li?” shouted out a police officer that was looking for the boss of the factory “You have to go, we’re seizing everything here!”
Confusion. Nobody understood what the hell was going on. Sally, who wasn’t [Read more...]
Yes, this awesome tongue is mine.
“Furio” is a literary pseudonym. Even if my real name, Ivan, has never been a secret, I avoided to talk about it on this blog.
At the beginning of 2012, when I founded Sapore di Cina, I was still working as a researcher for a Chinese University and I thought it was better to avoid using my real name while writing about prostitutes, playboys, drunkards or diarrhea (or all these things together).
I guess that the fact I was working in China didn’t help. But maybe I would have done the same choice also if I was working in the West.
Riding a yak in Tibet.
Anyway, three months ago I left the University to pursue a career as a writer. I even signed up for the creative writing course at Matador U (a bit expensive but worth all the money I paid).
Probably when you become thirty your biological timer calls you for action, or at least this is what happened to me. I couldn’t procrastinate anymore. I was on fire, I had to devote myself to my passion.
When I read a blog I like to know a bit more about the guy (or girl) that runs the website. This is why I decided to share twenty four things that I know about me:
When I was a kid I broke my fore-teeth by flying from the couch to the ground in an attempt to imitate my favorite wrestler, Tiger Man. Since that day my mother forbidden me to watch violent cartoons. The good news is that I stopped to eat my fingernails forever (when you haven’t fore-teeth it’s a difficult task). [Read more...]
The eggs and tomatoes we ate in Kashgar, Xinjiang.
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,” Galileo Galilei.
I wake up, jump from the bed and try to open the door of the hotel room. But it’s blocked. I panic and destroy the lock of the door with an elegant kick. I run to the small bathroom at the end of the courtyard, open the door and…
…diarrhea.
I watch the sky. The sunrise cannot be too far.
But let’s start from the beginning. [Read more...]
It’s more than two years that I live in China – the country of dog-eaters by default – but I’d never seen a slaughtered dog.
It may be because I only spent a few weeks in Guangxi and Guangdong Provinces, the Southern provinces where the habit of eating dog meat is most common.
Or maybe because eating dog meat is not as common as people think and you have to make a conscious effort to find it.
The point is that it took me less than two hour of sightseeing in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, to find a dog butchery.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a butchery as there were two girls selling raw and roasted dog meat (thịt chó in Vietnamese language) on a table in the street.
This is a controversial topic in the West.
We do not eat dogs. We consider dogs as part of our family. I personally grew up with a German Shepard called Apo and I love dogs. Almost as much as I love cats. And I distrust people that dislike animals.
But before you get mad at the Vietnamese for eating dogs – or at me for showing these pictures, – think about that.
In India you go to prison if you kill a cow. In California people can legally butcher AND eat cows but slaughtering a horse is forbidden. In Italy we eat both cows AND horses. However we are horrified by people that eat dogs.
In Northern Vietnam eating dog meat is a widely accepted tradition. This is their culture and we should accept it, even if we disagree.
This photo gallery show slaughtered dogs. If you think it may hurt your feelings, you should leave this page now. [Read more...]
Bui Vien, the most touristic street of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).
“Do you know how to eat it?” I hear from the table behind.
“No idea,” answers one the two girls that are sitting at the table beside mine.
“I was sure you didn’t,” keeps going the guy. Now that he has established a contact his voice has gained confidence.
“See, you have to put the shrimps and the salad inside. Then roll the bread around it.”
“Ohhhhh,” react the girls.
I switch my attention from the typhoon Haikui [Read more...]
My Twitter Avatar @saporedicina
I know, if you are a regular reader of this blog you may think:
“Furio, eighty percent of your posts are rants! So WTF?”
Ok, let’s start again.
If you have a blog you want people to read it, right?
If your answer is: [Read more...]
Dinner at the Japanese/Korean restaurant.
Disclaimer: If you landed on this page because you need to apply for a Vietnam VISA in Shanghai, no worries. Just go to the third floor of the Hua Chen Financial Plaza in 900 Pudong Avenue (浦东大道900号华辰金融大厦) or call the Vietnam Consulate for further information at the number 021-68555871.
Shanghai.
June the 25, Monday, four p.m.
I’m writing this post while I’m waiting for my passport at the Vietnam Consulate.
I arrived in Shanghai yesterday and spent the evening drinking Korean soju and Japanese beer in Pudong with some English, Swedish and Chinese friends.
The idea was to [Read more...]
My Internet cable.
I arrive at office, switch on the computer and… no Internet signal.
“Well, maybe the government decided that today is unsafe to check our emails and wants to protect us…” I think while I identify myself with Aureliano Buendia, who never fought with c.e.n.s.o.r.s.h.i.p but, I’m sure, would have lose again…
Then I see the yellow stain behind the monitor and a suspect arises on my mind:
“Maybe I shouldn’t blame the government for c.e.n.s.u.r.i.n.g our Internet connection this time, maybe…”
And then I notice my almonds have disappeared. Yes, now I’m almost sure of what’s going on.
But I need a proof! [Read more...]
