Cleaver Ideas from China (NOT) by Ali Gordon

My, my what a busy time we’ve been having here on the other side of the planet. Well first off I need to thank everyone for their utterly unhelpful words of support which were of no consolation after our hairdressing/sheep shearing adventure.

Anyway we managed to get out of  lovely Pingyao  by the  a hairs on our chinney chin chin cos that was all we had left. Time to head south. Right then first quiz question of the day. Any of you (except Chris Horner) ever heard of a chap called Qin Shi Huang? That’s Emperor Qin Shi Huang to you of the Qin dynasty- no, didn’t think so. Well this fella is responsible for the start of The Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Warriors; possibly two of the three most hair-brained ideas known to humanity. I’ll come on to the third a little later. In any case, you’d think you’d remember a bloke responsible for the only man made structure visible from space. Not to mention the fact that he got it done over 2000 years ago.

Personally, I think Mr Qin had some self-image and confidence issues. Let’s start with the wall; I won’t lie to you the Great Wall of China is exactly that, Great. It’s a magnificent sight up hill and down dale, round will’s mother then all the way up hill and down dale again for several thousand miles.  Back before Christ zipped up his sandals and started spreading peace love and eternal damnation in the holy land, people round these parts tended to be a bit grumpy with each other. Consequently, if you didn’t want your head in your hands to play with, a good sturdy wall was often the best way to keep out unwanted visitors. The  aforementioned Pingyao is a wonderful case in point, however that lovely city is too closely associated with the trauma of my last trip to the barbers (see email Houston we have a problem), for me to spend time talking about it here. Let’s move on. Anyway after all that effort, stone me if the first marauding warlord who rocked up didn’t have a quick whip round and bribe a guard to get in, how rubbish is that?

Not content with building the world’s most useless defensive wall EQ, as I like to call him, decides that he wants some toy soldiers to play with after he’s pegged it. What is it with you boys eh? He don’t build just one or two. Oh no he’s got to have  8000 give or take a few, all set out like a big kid’s model army, complete with weapons, horses, chariots the lot. EQ wasn’t big on sharing so he had the whole ensemble buried with him. See what I mean? Issues. He didn’t have much luck with his toy soldiers either, first the tombs were flooded then burnt then robbed a bit rubbish all round really.

This brings me neatly to the third most hair-brained idea ever and the second quiz question of the day. In a country where the staple diet is either noodles or rice mixed in with finely chopped vegetables all swimming about in a very fine broth or black bean sauce WTF are chopsticks all about? Have you seen the size of the average grain of rice recently? And now I come to think of it how helpful is a chopstick going to be with a spare rib or a pork chop? Surely someone somewhere is having a giraffe.   Fuck knows how they feed 1.4 billion (yes you read it right 1.4billion) people everyday with chopsticks. If this lot were using a knife and fork they would be half the world’s population rather than a quarter. In answer to your question yes Chinese people really do eat anything dog, eyeballs, testicles,  intestines, maggots, toads, snakes  intestines anything. The last 3 items are available live in your local market- Nice. 

We’ve had to  keep an eye on John and make sure he doesn’t nod off unexpectedly and end up in a pot somewhere served up as steamed Scotsman in chilli sauce.

Loads more to tell you but have to save it for another email. I’ll let you get back to work now ha ha.

Come to think of it where is John??……..John??.......John??