What I'm NOT reading

. . but i am thinking of writing something along these lines.

I just finished listening to a podcast interview with Charles Lee, the author of a new Chinese misery memoir*, Bitter sea. Now Chas might be a decent fellow, he really could be, but what I heard was another scummy opportunist moaning on endlessly about how their miserable life, which fortunately, or unfortunately, I guess, happened to intersect with a number of fantastic historical dramas. I reached this point rather swiftly in his account, probably as he described his utter heartbreak at the departure of his wetnurse when he was just four years old.

From Amazon:

I’m feeling that the shelves of Chinese misery memoirs aren’t quite replete and that at some point, the world really needs to hear how miserable the lot of Huang Guang Cheng has really been. We could sketch out the details here. What’s needed are some miserable misery points, such as, at the age of 42, Huang suddenly realises his deep despair at the wetnurse he’s never had.

Feel free to add your own. Meanwhile I’m off looking for a publisher. Key pitching point will be, I assure you after a zillion edits it will still sound like a crappy high school reader read aloud by whoever it was that wrote all the scripts for Hollywood’s Chinese characters in the fifties. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, it’s a guaranteed winner!

HG

  • I’d hasten to add these aren’t all bad. Wu Ningkun’s is good, and Life & death in Shanghai is a ripper of a read.

I want to hear about the fetishes you’ve never managed to live out.l

Scarcely fill a paragraph, but then, there’s always the soggy biscuit I never ate . . . but only because, whimper, I never went to a public school, let alone Oxbridge . . . Bawl!!!

Of course, that was back in those miserable days when daddy’s money, skillfully garnered as it was by spinning off and floating the collective’s assets, couldn’t buy you a place a few spots ahead of the truly deserving.

HG

Sorry, I’m afraid there is no, "scar’ literature for expats.

MFULAAC* literature is more than a genre now; it’s a nasty, boring little habit that rich kids in Hong Kong and the north shore of Sydney have the gall to think is an accurate portrayal of their “suffering.” Go figure.

*my fucked-up life as a Chinese

Hey! I’m in HK!

Okay I’m not rich or a kid, but I have suffered, why just the other day, Flopsy, my Filipino use person brought me my evening G&T without even a hint of fresk lemon or lime!!! Of course, I promptly called the police and had her stitched up on a claim she stole my used toilet paper. They gave her the standard beating and life in prison. Ha! You’ll not be doing that again, eh Flopsy!

HG

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Hey! I’m in HK!

Okay I’m not rich or a kid, but I have suffered, why just the other day, Flopsy, my Filipino use person brought me my evening G&T without even a hint of fresk lemon or lime!!! Of course, I promptly called the police and had her stitched up on a claim she stole my used toilet paper. They gave her the standard beating and life in prison. Ha! You’ll not be doing that again, eh Flopsy!

HG[/quote]

Oh I say, it’s so hard getting good help these days HG. I had a little fellow - Bungo I think his name was - and he was always complaining about sleeping in the shoe closet. We had to sell him on in the end.

What I’ve always found to be invaluable with the little buggers is to bring on entire families, or at least multiple siblings.
That way, when you find a double crease on the inside of your shirtsleeve, or are suddenly faced with the same bloody dessert more than once a month, why, you simply unload the errant wogger to some factory farm in Bumfuck Urumqi.
And just like that, not only are things trotting along swimmingly once again, the remaining esquatroles have only to hear a subtly rendered “Remember what happened to your brother Bong?” to be brought inline sharp like.
Works a damn, by God.

I see much upside for the standards of creases on Taiwan’s closer links with China. AND, dear Bong can write a worthy collection of his miserable lot out there in Bumfuck, Urumuqi, if he manages to keep his head.

It’s all good!
HG

Try to work this into your HK autobiography:

It is always a sad day when your 2nd mistress keeps nagging you for that new apt. in Happy Valley, or her very own chauffeured vehicle. Don’t those women know how hard you work for your money? Time to go back to Guangdong and find someone who really appreciates and loves you.

And when you’re the nouveau riche son of a HK magnate, how despicable it would look in the latest fad club if you couldn’t reserve a table and shower your friends with champagne. And most certainly embarassing if you lost your cocaine hookup to get your Russian blonde bimbo (yes, I fuck a white girl, I’m all that) all fucked up and ready to go. I mean, any less, you’d have no self-respect.

It’s starting to sound like brat pack fiction. Could be a new genre.

or six-pack fiction
slag-bag fiction
middle class non guilt/angst fiction

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Hey! I’m in HK!

Okay I’m not rich or a kid, but I have suffered, why just the other day, Flopsy, my Filipino use person brought me my evening G&T without even a hint of fresk lemon or lime!!! Of course, I promptly called the police and had her stitched up on a claim she stole my used toilet paper. They gave her the standard beating and life in prison. Ha! You’ll not be doing that again, eh Flopsy!

HG[/quote]

Hah…give her what she deserves…send her back to PI on the next Cebu Pacific!

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Hey! I’m in HK!

Okay I’m not rich or a kid, but I have suffered, why just the other day, Flopsy, my Filipino use person brought me my evening G&T without even a hint of fresk lemon or lime!!! Of course, I promptly called the police and had her stitched up on a claim she stole my used toilet paper. They gave her the standard beating and life in prison. Ha! You’ll not be doing that again, eh Flopsy!

HG[/quote]

Hah…give her what she deserves…send her back to PI on the next Cebu Pacific!

Has anyone seen this? I’m thinking about getting it for a colleague who is really into squid.

Apparently it’s based on a true story. Here’s the protagonist, IRL, with his girlfriend.

And here’s a brief synopsis of the plot.

http://www.amazon.com/Calamari-Wrestler-Osamu-Nishimura/dp/B0009YA3SQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1220583722&sr=1-1

How can you go wrong with a compelling story like that? :bouncy: