“A Typical Day in the Life of a Happy Chinese”

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This is a spoof diary of a day in the life of an ordinary Chinese that has been circulating on the web recently (in Chinese here, for example). I have edited out large chunks as it gets pretty repetitive, though that of course is the point. The excellent translation is courtesy of Chris Hughes of the London School of Economics and Political Science to whom we extend our thanks for his permission to use it. (I have also dropped his footnotes that link the reference to specific chemicals mentioned to actual incidents in which they were found to have been used in China.) This sometimes stomach turning account is representative of a whole range of stuff that has been appearing on the web–spoof TV ads for the milk companies involved in the ongoing scandal over tainted milk powder (here for example, courtesy of danwei.com), doctored print adds featuring witty (and not so witty) jokes about milk powder and so on. Talk about black humor. (There’s also an interesting swipe at super-nationalist/’my-country-right-or-wrong types at the end, by the way):

I wake up in the morning and… I turn on the renovated TV … The TV weather forecast says the air condition will be good. I look at the sky for a while – Oh! A very yellow sun! I will not need to wear my acid rain proof raincoat today. After I get out of bed and put on my carcinogenic ‘amine scented’ Walmart clothes, and my suit that has been dry cleaned with carcinogenic acetylene tetrachloride, I feel that there is a slight odour on my body and burning in my eyes. Luckily I can freely use my scent for non-pregnant men and the sparkle immediately returns to my eyes. I pick up the toothpaste with its slight traces of the chemical Triclosan and let it react in my mouth with the chlorinated tap water to produce carcinogenic Trichloromethane. I always eat well in the morning and after using the carcinogenic toothpaste I wipe my face with the Benzidine contami nated towel, have a cup of Melamine polluted milk, eat some fried bread sticks (youtiao) cooked in diesel, dipped in some chile source died with Sudan Red, added to a bowl of duck egg gruel with poison rice and egg with large amounts of Lead Oxide, not forgetting of course do add some condiments made with chemical ingredients. After a belch, I put on the helmet I bought for 10 renminbi to keep away the traffic cops and go out. I get on the motorbike which has just had its cut price famous brand brake pads changed and carefully go off to work.

Our hero continues to ingest horrific amounts of chemicals, including when his boss treats him to a fancy dinner:

The boss is very happy when he hears the report and of course offers to entertain everyone for dinner. Before dinner we all drank a cup of Biluochun tea died with lead and chrome, and have some pine nuts roasted in caustic soda and Sodium metabisulfite along with some pumpkin seeds in talcum powder and paraffin wax. The dinner itself is of course more sumptuous, with DDVP soaked Jinhua ham and chicken feet soup, boiled beef with spicy source washed and filtered by thousands of people, beef injected with water [6]and contraceptive fattened eel slices with red pepper, soy-cooked squid rolls puffed with caustic soda and preserved in formaldehyde, dyed Carmine pork, steamed crab raised on several types of Western medicine and dead cats, dogs and ducks, garlic shrimps baptised in human urine. He also orders a plate of seasonal green vegetables with excess pesticides cooked in hogwash oil. There are some bottles of ‘15-Year-Old Maotai’ spirit ‘filtered’ through women’s stockings and a couple of boxes of artificial sweeteners and red wine with excess colouring. The filler is steamed bread buns bleached with Benzoyl peroxide . Finally there is a plate of fruit with strawberries, peaches, apples and water melons grown large and ripe with hormones.

Not surprisingly, our boy doesn’t feel so good when he gets home:

I feel very tired when I get home. My head is dizzy and I can’t sleep. I take some sleeping pills made with glutinous rice, but it is no use. Because I have caught a cold I ask the company for some time off when I get up in the morning. I take some carcinogenic diethylene glycol glycerine that has been passed off as cough medicine, but I do not take a turn for the better all day. After passing a few days like this, my headache gets even worse, I became nauseous, lack energy, sweat, vomit, and have diarrhea. So I have to go to hospital. The instant intravenous revival is no use, so the doctor can only give me false medicine produced by Shangqi,[ but it still isn’t any use! Finally the doctor consults and recommends that I go to the US for a complete examination and ask an expert from the FDA there to find the real cause.

As soon as I hear I have to leave the country, I suddenly become excited: I resolutely will not go! I was born a Chinese person, and will die a Chinese spirit. I want to be a pure Chinese person!