User:Shabidoo/East South East

I was torn between two worlds. First to the East, my chink mother from some dumpster village in the chinese country side. And then to the South my beautifully white Australian father. On one side my eyes were slanty but on the other side they were blue. In one sense I had little body hair but on the plus side I had an enormous package. I could go on...except for the fact that I was kidnapped (Shanghaied if you will) and brought to the horror fest that is 21st century China. I cannot think of anything more horrible except perhaps opening up a box of raisins and finding them already eaten by a mini-leprechaun.

Don't think I was shanghaied to join a mercenary group...even though I am a buff bad ass motherfucker. No...I was kidnapped to run a child sweatshop because of my superior management skills (father's side) as well as my complete indifference to suffering (mother's side).

When I was told this I immediately started devising an escape plan. In the mean time I asked them where I would go. Please don't be QinJou. This is the province my mother is from and my memories of the toothless peasants and children shitting in the street were burnt into my mind. My mother always told me that that was the real china and that was why she risked everything to go the fuck away. She told no one and left and never came back. Naturally her entire family was first accused of murder...and then when she sent her first letter to them from America...the entire family was punished for my mother's crime of going to America without an exit visa. My mother sometimes imagines how many years they all lasted in the labour camps. She only heard about one of them, her youngest brother who managed to rise up in the ranks of the communist party only to be fired for flatulating quite loudly at dinner with the Govenor of our province.

Please please don't be QinJou. I could handle the animal serfs of Sichuan, the frozen rediculous temples of tibet, the savage muslim heathens of Xinxang...but not QinJou. As I traveled blindfolded in the back seat of a truck filled with other kidnapped victims I began to realise where I was. The other victims were crying and begging and pleading to the point where I had to elbow them all so they'd shut up. Based on the amount of shaking and hard bumps I knew there were no roads where I was and many rocks in these paths. Also the smell was like fermented excrement so I knew, of course, I was in QinJou. I ripped by blindfold off and one of the guards pulled out his gun. I put my mouth around the barrel as though it was some sugar coated golden penis of death...and told him in peasant chinese to do it. DO IT! I screamed. He didn't do it. I freaked him out so badly he was almost crying. Which is the kind of pussy chink you'd expect in the scummiest land of yellow animals.

I excelled at my job. I could get any peasant child to come into the workshop by offering them the chance to chew on old chicken bones or the promise of highly watered down soup. Also there was a black and white TV in there with one channel barely recieving broadcast. Once they heard this they were already mine. I'd suggest they do a few little tasks while I arranged the chicken bones on plates infested with SARS. It was just really a case of habit that they kept doing their tasks and they seemed to suddenly find it normal that they should work their fingers until they bled sewing up novelty hacky sacks. A few showed signs of resisting and so I simply tied them down to their work bench...which none of them were afraid of as the police would often chain them up in the back yard of their compound and poke them with sticks. The children would come and go, some worked harder than others (they got more chicken bones to suck the marrow out of) and some sort of never left. Those were usually the kids that contracted full out SARS and depended on my mothering skills which consisted of me giving them some pills (amphetamines to work harder) and a pat on the head at the end of a hard days work. If they were on their last days, I'd let them sleep ontop of a dirty matress with a scratchy wollen blanket for some comfort. This was the Chinese side of me. The Eastern sense of opportunism and first rate exploitation. The Southern part of me (the moral kind Australian side) had me pity the boys. At night when I was all alone in my dirty bedroom that the assholes who shanghaied me let me sleep in, I would cry myself to sleep feeling immense pity and grief for those poor children who had no one. I mean...they had absolutely no one and lived out their last miserable days sewing up hacky sacks with cheesy lines like "You've been sacked" or "Hackers be hacked". My god the humanity. But then I felt thankful that I hadn't contracted SARS, that I had enough privacy to beat off before sleeping and that I got to actually eat chicken meat before I gave the bones to the children. As for feeling outright sorry for myself, no, I didn't have time. When my shanghaiers finished their Kentucky Fried Chicken meal, I got to eat what meat was left on it. They didn't like the skin or the gravy (stupid fucking assholes) and so I got to eat it...only it was cold by the time I got it...so I'd sniff a pinch of chilly powder so that my throat and nasal passage and mouth and asophagus were burning hot...to simulate having a warm civilised meal.

The Beauty of the South Meeting East...in the East...could not have been more grotesque yet beautiful. I eventually bought my freedom once I recieved my 1% of the profit made by the children (the kids got chicken bones, the shanghaiers got 90% of it and the Japanese Yakuza that terrorised the poor chinese province got the rest as well as the right to murder a person or two in the streets when they were bored and drunk). As the kids I could exploit were mostly dead if not of SARS then malnutrition....and floating down a fetid river, it was time to go.

With my money, I caught a train South to Sichaun (the furtherst I could go with the money I had). The idea was, going East always got me into trouble and led to a morally bankrupt life in the dismal anus of the Earth. So no Shanghai or Beijing. Going South led me closer to the virtues of my Australian father, that incredible dashing kind perfect soul with creamy skin, colourful wide open eyes and a very strong immune system.

Sichuan was one small step up...which is a kind way of saying it almost sucked as much as my mother's home dumpster province. I worked in a mahjong gaming room as a floor spotter. My job was to look out for people who might be cheating. There were so many ways to do it that nearly any activity could be suspicious. Pickking up a tile (they could flip it one way or another to signal to a friend sneakily playing as an opponent that they have a green dragon). The intonation they use as they discard might also tip off someone. When shuffling the pieces, pushing them mostly away meant they might be putting certain pieces on the further wall and then roll loaded dice. It was absolute bliss trying to find troublemakers in a world where cheats and sneaks spread like mold.

In the end...my job wasn't to catch cheaters but to ignore certain cheaters if I knew what was best for me. I could have cared less as I came home to delightful surprises at my appartment. That ranged from a brand new scooter, a couple whores from Taiwan and a few coupons for free pancakes at IHop with the purchase of any italian coffee. The two whores claimed to be twins but there was just no way...their vaginas were so utterly different and they made very different sounds when I wrecked their anuses. I also got a platinum American Express card with a 20,000,000,000,000 Vietnamese Dong limit. This was a substantial sum for a Vietnamese peasant...I doubt I could even buy a one way plane ticket to Australia with it (which I had been dreaming about the moment I landed in Chinkland.

The trick was to act as though I was trying to catch people, looking suspiciously at the cheats, showing serious concern, giving them the evil eye, but then feigning disappointment when nothing was found. The best way to do this was accusing ordinary players of outright cheating. You never get used to the look for horror on their faces, the outrage, the pride, the consternation, the fear, the anger, the outrage, the pain, the loss of their fragile innocense when we knocked their heads against the wall before chucking them out on the street. I felt bad enough for them afterwards that I'd collect whatever teeth they lost off the floor and mail it to them with an appology card. That worked for most of them. The only danger I ever had in these parlours wasn't a drunk player flinging a broken bottle at the neck of an opponent who beat their exceptional hand with an ever rarer one (common in poker houses too) but those innocent people I threw out of the mahjong house...trying to get back at me. That's how I lost my first testicle. But I don't wanna talk about that.

One day I tried to throw out some guy who turned out to be a big shot politician from the province and my boss told me to scram unless I wanted to paint some brick wall red with my blood. He gave me a fake I.D., a plastic container with some deep fried wong tongs, the only smile I ever saw him smile and his congratulations for being the stupidest floor spotter he knew. After our pognant goodbye, I smilled while flipping him off and I hit the dirt...off to Vietnam...trying to get out of Sichuan while the wongtongs were still hot.

On the way I lost my second testicle and that has something to do with Australia. It's an interesting story. But you're a terrible audience and you don't deserve to know why. Not yet.

Sneaking into Vietnam was a lot harder than I thought. It seemed crazy to me since, who on Earth would want to break into putrid useless Vietnam? Turns out the far more desparat animals of China did...and they did so everywhere and anywhere. Their president promised to put up a wall every year, but he found it was much more lucrative to produce a reality TV show of chinks trying to cross the border without getting shot. I knew I'd have to be more intelleggent than most chinese (easy). I'd have to be sneakier than most chinks (not easy) and I'd have to be more opportunistic than most chinese (impossible). But South I went. South East to be precise. I worked out a path that went on for about 1,000km never passing within more than 25km of any village or sweat shop or opium farm or chopstick factory. I studied the local flora and fauna and injected myself with a massive dose of anti-biotics (every disease infested insect known thrived in the Vietnamese jungle).