• It’s perfectly acceptable to be standing in the middle of a five-lane freeway sending an SMS.

• Flight attendant-led stretches in the middle of plane rides are bloody dangerous. I think I pulled a muscle trying to put my elbow behind my head.

• Two-pronged forks really creep me out.

• The poor policemen never get a break. My cousin, currently going through police school, regaled me with honest-to-god-true stories of little old ladies who call the cops when their toilets overflow, and of the cops who have to then go purchase a plunger from the two-dollar shop and drive over there and unblock the nasty buggers themselves.

• Ads here are even more random than back home – an athlete crouches at a set of starting blocks. Hurdles extend in front of him through meadows and flowers and into a city. He takes off from the starting blocks. Cut to a random in a business suit jumping over a hurdle in the crowded CBD area, surrounded by people. He then high-fives the athlete who has appeared out of nowhere, now also dressed in a business suit. Close up of the athlete pouting and pointing to himself, in slow motion, in a mirror. The purpose of the ad? To flog GoTone Mobiles.

• Do not attempt to take the Number 10 bus at peak hour unless you like to play human sardines.

• All the girls here seem to love wearing furry vests. They can get away with it because they’re petite and cute and Asian, but in my opinion, no one outside of Asia with the exception of Mr Burns should ever be seen in a furry vest.

• If you’re feeling thirsty, pretend to be browsing for glasses in an optometrists’.

• To cross the road in China, you a) need nerves of steel, and b) must always walk at a constant, unwavering pace, ignoring the all-too-human urge to flee as some idiot driving a Merc comes barrelling towards you, instead continuing to put one foot in front of the other in a determined manner. If you speed up or suddenly come to a stop, you’re guaranteed to be squished like a bug.

• Clean hair has the ability to give one a fresh lease of confidence like nothing else. And I should know, because I get my hair washed here once a week at the salon due to the fact that water heating costs a fortune, so it’s absolutely festy after the first four days.

• According to the dude in the guitar shop, I look South Korean.

• White Rabbit milk candies are nostalgia. They bring back the strongest evocations of my childhood.

• Pointy shoes are really ugly. Especially pointy flats that curl up at the toes, giving one the unfortunate appearance of a hobgoblin. Regrettably, they are also currently in fashion and unavoidable in every single shoe store of any calibre.

• China’s public toilets are the grossest things in the world. THE GROSSEST. You have no idea.

• Standing still on moving walkways is the zenith of laziness.

• Audis are the Beemers of China.

• Not all beer is bad. For example, Tsingtao tastes a hundred times better than VB.

• Northerners love their central heating – when it’s -20°C outside, they close all the windows and crank it up to about 50 degrees higher.

• Northerners also have ridiculously good balance on ice.

• Conversely, ugg boots have the shonkiest grip on ice EVER.

• Hairdressers have memories like elephants and gossip like a pack of hyenas on speed. The dude who blow-dried Mother Dearest’s hair a month ago told me today that my Mandarin’s improved by miles since the first time I came in. (He also thinks I’m cute – he told me so about six times in the space of four minutes. Either that or he just really really likes my hair. HIS hair is awesome. Half of it is gelled to his head and the other half is fluffed into random layered spikes with a blondish streak running through it. Not that I myself desire scary-looking hair like that, nor would I ever in a million years date someone with scary-looking hair like that, but in a strange and inexplicable way, it totally suited him. But I digress.)

• Chinese people love fluorescent lighting and sappy music.

• If it looks like vomit, DON’T STEP IN IT. (Don’t ask.)

• In Harbin, roadside stalls can sell ice cream straight from their cardboard boxes as if they were biscuits – it’s that cold, all the time.

• Practically everyone in the Northeast have the surname of Wang, including three of our five tour guides, our driver, my ski instructor and the dude who drove our horse sled in Snowtown. (The other dude who drove the sled had the surname of Ma, meaning horse. Ha! Ha! Get it?)

• Cats are the most amazing of contortionists. Who else can turn their heads 180 degrees around to lick their necks?

• The longer you stay in China, the more of a stingy Asian you become. Shopping: suddenly it becomes very worthwhile to argue for half an hour for a saving equivalent to $1.33 for a 39-Yuan denim miniskirt. Paying admission to museums: “What do you mean, I don’t look twelve years old? Is this a face that would lie to save 6 Yuan?”

• The aeroplane pilots with China Southern have very hot uniforms.

• There is nothing as wonderful as a pedestrian crossing where the cars come to a complete stop to let the people walk past.

Ah, fluoride water. It’s good to be home.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//7:09 am

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