I'm in a snarly fucking mood

Wanna know why? Of course you do, you LJ drama queens. I just got asked, for the gazillionth fucking time, how I got so good at Chinese.

Oh shut up. Books. I read. I have books. I read them. The books tell me things, and they just happen to tell me things that I'd never hear on the street, talking to the unwashed proles most foreigners strain to pat themselves on the back for being so able to hold a conversation with.

Look, no offense to the Chinese, who are some of my favoritest bestest friends ever, but man, most of them are just stupid. Not objectively, not mother dropped me at birth, not even compared to other cultures or anything. They're stupid compared to the smartest 20% of them.

You know what it's about. You've lived in or heard about the redneck masses in the US who use "gay" as awesome's antonym, who argue about whether Chevy or Ford makes a better truck, who haven't even heard of Pi, let alone could tell you whether they like it or not. The people who wear promise rings and Nike sweatshirts and Wrangler's and have a singing bass (the fish, idiot) in their living room. The people who talk about their fucking cats and only see the Eiffel Tower and Mona Lisa when they visit Paris. The people whose kids fuck off to Tijuana and laugh at Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook and get MBA's if they're lucky and drive uninsured Priuses because they want to get smarmy about it but who wouldn't touch a Metro if you paid them. They watch Fox, MSNBC if they're enlightened. They listen to everything but rap and OMG isn't "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" like so ironically funny? Those people fucking suck. And most of the people you meet in China? They suck just as hard. They're nice enough people, but they're douchebags who can't hold an interesting conversation on more than a few topics for more than a few seconds. They're obnoxious breeders who, aside from the fact that they sell you dinner or fix your bike, you wouldn't even think about talking to, and you sure as shit wouldn't sit there kvetching at them about the weather for an hour unless your Sinotard glasses didn't make them look so rosy and profound, with all their deep authentic realchina knowledge of the language you're studying.

They're decent people. And this car I'm trying to sell you has not only brakes, but headlights! And a trunk! And radial tires that keep more contact surface on the road, even when the road is coated with the greasy slime of your standards!

Nobody but fucking nobody learning Chinese tries to pick up a book and read it. THERE ARE SO MANY OF CHARACTERS I HAVE NOT MEMORIES TO HOLD THEMS. Then fuck off and learn a language with a latin alphabet and cognates so you don't have to look at the funny pictures. I MUST READ THIS TEXTBOOK AND I WILL LEARN TO READ TEH MENU!! Just like my 10-year old neighbor! And she doesn't need a dictionary, fuckstick! I CAN CHATTING ON THE QQ TO LEARNING SO MANY KNOWLEDGES AND CURRENT SLANGSES TO IMPRESS LADIES. Y'ever read youtube comments? That's your ambition? To reach the same level in Chinese as a youtube commenter? And I'm sure you had a great conversation with the taxi driver about how you're used to China and how white women actually aren't easier. Congratulations. You are now a puerile twat who can objectify women.

And then people complain when their wives are Hello Kitty freaks/Chinese guys have no serious interest in them, and Chinese people don't take them seriously. Well what the fuck did you expect with those sources? You have, in the immortal words of Jim Lahey, taken a ride on the shitcoaster. You are one of the plebian masses who, in the US, you would avoid like the plague. And the interesting Chinese people? The ones who'll discuss ancient ship hull designs and how they clash with Jared Diamond's (yes, he's been translated, and people have been reading, were you aware) theories on cultural dominance, the ones who will laugh at your jokes about Chinese parents throwing chairs down the stairs to name their children, the ones who think Bob Marley needs to shut the fuck up because Elephant Man and Burning Spear are so much better, they will ignore you. They hate you and your hick ass.

You know why? Because unlike the 80% who at least speak the language at birth, you have started from zero. You don't even get the most basic of cultural references, or if you do, they're more played out than the grass mud horse. They were interested in English teachers and had "foreign friends" 7 years ago. They're through with that shit, they've been to NLGX, Lonely (China, which you know was added by their USian managers DON'T YOU) Day was cool when they came out, but Le Fly Pan Am did it better. On to bigger and better fish.

Just like you, you bad bad man, right? Your indie-peen could topple the Sears Tower, what with how you memorized Them songs in high school and know how a Virus With Two Shoes got their name. You read The Game and were all, "Yeah, PUA shit was cool when I was 14, but I ain't readin' none bitches palms." You were like Slumdog Millionaire? Nah dawg, Ashoka. You read World War Z and it's still so cash because it's so cash (do you like to drink my Pabst). Yeah. You're the shit. You're way beyond all that fuckoff Fox News Republibullshit and you might have a dog but you talk about how its nuts are dirty rather than how cute it is. Because you rule. Oh yeah, and you have a Wii.

But dude, you do the opposite of that in Chinese, even if you can throw down in the hutongs. Even if you're an erhu hero. Even if you're Da my-wang-awaits-your-tender-dictionary-selling-lips Shan, unless you make like unless you make like a mill and get them pulps. I do NOT mean no fuckoff textbooks. I mean 无土时代, I mean 中国凭什么不高兴, I mean 诺名信, I mean Edward Said's last book, whatever the fuck that was, in Chinese.

Now, I'm not trying to brag. I struggled through them just like I hope you will with a dictionary and notebook and it took me 3 months to finish the first one. But fuck you in your I-can-drink-straight-koubei face, you are just a parlor trick monkey if you can't talk about what was in those or other volumes. You may have read the translation of Anna Baby, but that is not Xing good enough! You are still, by dint of your ride on the shitcoaster, a dirty breeder pleb to the Chinese people who share your voluminous indie-peens and could actually have a conversation that wouldn't bore the flying fuck out of you if you weren't having it in Chinese.

Did you get that? You bore the fuck out of Chinese people, you white/black/Mideastern/Hispanic/AZN dooch. You are 无聊到家. You are on the wrong side of the Pareto principle. Because there are 280,000 books published here every god damn planetary circumnavigation, and your shit be's out of that club. Suplise, every single Chinese person you know is in that club, and they get more out of one day in it than they do from 50 days of conversing with a, face it, illiterate retard like yourself. That's why you get the polite refutations and history lessons and patronizing smiles and why everyone is suddenly busy once you get too drunk.

Look, if you don't read some, um, books, you're functionally illiterate. That makes you as interesting as a non-reader. You got jack shit to add. Unless you meet someone overbearing with a didactic streak, your conversations are going to be stale of anything relevant to your audience. So man up and Levar Burton, or shut up and accept that in China, your furriner ass is, at best, still, about 8 years old mentally. That's what you are unless you can read. You will fuck people that will date an 8-year old, you will have engaging conversation with people who will have engaging conversations with a 8-year old, and you, well...yeah. Shut up, you, and open a fucking book.