Showing posts tagged Humor
 

Six Strange Months in Beijing

Yak butter tea.
Heineken Christmas trees. 
Tigers eating chickens. 
Me and Chairman Mao. Stories from six strange months in Beijing.

Lately, it seems like China is all we hear about. How China will crush the rest of the world economically, demographically, and possibly even militarily, if their pollution doesn’t kill off the entire West coast first. That’s all well and good, but what’s everyday life in China really like? When Jason Barbacovi moved to Beijing, he had no idea. However, after stumbling into a $60-an-hour job that involved nothing more than reading words into a microphone, discovering that waiting in line can be a contact sport, and paying to have a live chicken fed to a pack of ravenous tigers, he discovered that the answer is nothing like you think. 

“If David Sedaris lived in China, this is the book he would write.”

Buy the Book
Now that you want to buy the book—how can you not, after the description above?—here are all the places where you can do just that. Links go right to the site in question for your convenience:

Sample Chapters
Not quite sure? Here are a few full sample chapters for you to check out before buying:

Posted at 10:01am
 
Via Peter Hessler. The image is a bit small, but the silver signs say Urine (#1) and Dump (#2, obviously.) Awesome. 

Via Peter Hessler. The image is a bit small, but the silver signs say Urine (#1) and Dump (#2, obviously.) Awesome. 

Posted at 11:11am

Tagged: photos, humor,
 

Excerpt From "A Christmas Story"

  • ME: Do you know who Jesus Christ is?
  • The question made me feel a little strange, since I have never been too comfortable with religion. As I always say, Jesus is dead and God is forgiving, so screw everything else and sin away. As a result—in my mind, at least—five minutes after asking a question about someone’s knowledge of Jesus, you’re inviting the person you’re with to drop down onto his or her knees and praise the Lord with you, and ten minutes after that you’re going over to their house to burn their collection of Harry Potter books, which we all know promote witchcraft. And wizardry.
  • HIM: No.
  • ME: You’ve never heard of Jesus?
  • HIM: No.
  • This was going to be harder than I thought.
  • ME: Have you ever seen a picture of a guy on a cross, like this?
  • I drew a quick stick-figure person on a cross, which itself consisted of two overlapping sticks, so that the entire thing looked like a hangman game gone terribly wrong.
Posted at 1:14pm

Tagged: excerpts, humor,

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