Mao Zedong

3. DEAD PEOPLE ENJOY A GRAVE WITH A VIEW
For the Chinese, the ideal gravesite is up high where the dead can walk out of their plots and enjoy a nice cuppa tea in peace. Many hillside graves include a cement table and chairs where their loved ones can rest their weary dead legs and maybe play a game of Mahjong. Hey, one billion people: When you die, so do your eyeballs. Giving them a grave with a view is a waste of time.

4. BURNT PAPER GOES TO THE AFTERWORLD
What started off as a bit of ghost money to be burnt and passed on to the afterlife has evolved into paper cell phones, paper shoes, paper appliances, and even paper cars burnt as “gifts” to the dead. Their heaven sounds like a huge pain in the ass to me. Why do you need shoes? Are you not walking on clouds? What’s with the car? Can you not fly? In my heaven you don’t need spare change. If you want a new iPhone you just grab one off the shelf and float out of the store.

5. YOU CAN PRAY FOR A CAR
In rural Taiwan I was taken to a shrine where two dog statues are said to represent two sailor’s dogs. The legend is that the dogs were so loyal, they waited by the shore until they starved to death because their masters were lost at sea, never to return. The statues are surrounded by people frantically praying in Mandarin. I asked my Chinese friend what they were saying and he began to eavesdrop. “That one is asking for a new BMW,” he told me, “and that one wants a new washer/dryer.” What is this, The Secret? You’re supposed to be praying for immaterial things such as good health and love and joy. If you want stuff from a Sears catalog, stop hanging out with dog statues and get back to work.

6. TREES ARE EVIL
In Vancouver, all the McMansions tucked away in the forest are owned by these wealthy Chinese immigrants, and the first thing they do when they set up shop is get rid of those pesky thousand-year-old redwoods full of bad luck. Tree-hugging multiculturalists are left with severe migraines as they try to process a multiculturalism that wreaks ecological havoc.

7. NOTHING TRUMPS SHAME
I didn’t have much money when I lived in Taiwan, but those who did bought scooters and roared through the streets like they owned the place. I was impressed they could get a Chinese license and when I asked one of them how he did it, he said, “I didn’t.” I asked him what happens when the cops stop him. “Oh,” he replied smugly, “I just start yelling at them and they become so embarrassed by their terrible English, they just drive away.”

8. THEIR FEET DON’T STINK
I’ve already mentioned that they burp in your face like it ain’t no thang, but that goes for everythang. Picking your nose and hocking a big loogie onto the sidewalk is like adjusting your glasses. Asians are not stinky as a race, so it’s not like their B.O. would reek up a room. I don’t even think they have B.O. I’ve known a few Asians to move here and be shocked by how much white people smell like hamburgers. However, their feet are something else. As in Japan, all Chinese women insist on wearing brown nylons. This is like wearing plastic bags on your feet all day. They also insist on taking their shoes off indoors. When they unsheathe their feet, it makes Western armpit odor smell like Estée Lauder. I had a friend who owned a body-piercing business in Shanghai. He’d buy miles of wire and have women come to his place and help him shape them into various nose rings and nipple bars. Within minutes of these women entering the apartment and removing their shoes, we’d both run out coughing. It would take a good hour of inhaling dirty Chinese smog to forget the smell.

9. DUST IS DEADLY
You’ll often see Chinese people wearing surgical masks and assume they are trying to avoid germs. Not so. They wear those masks due to a culturally ingrained dustophobia. They think city dust and dirt will infiltrate their lungs and kill them. (They also hide from the sun under newspapers and umbrellas like it’s raining radioactivity.) I worked in a girl’s private school and come lunchtime, every student grabbed a mop or a sponge and headed to their various stations to begin cleaning. One poor girl’s job was to clean off my—gasp—chalkboard erasers. She was dressed in HazMat gear and had gloves up to her elbows as well as a fucking gas mask. When she returned from banging them together outside, she handed them back to me as if they were made of uranium. One day after they all started freaking out because I had a chalky handprint on my leg, I started banging the erasers together yelling, “It’s harmless, ladies—calm the fuck down!” They began screaming hysterically so I got even more angry and began chewing a big piece of white chalk while shouting, “IT’S JUST CHALK!” I lost my job.

10. DISHONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
I knew I lost my job when the principal said, “You very good teacher. We call you for next time. Please wait for call. Thank you so much.” The Chinese believe that saving face is all that matters, and the worst thing you could possibly do is be honest with people when conflict arises. Who are you, a tween? I’m Scottish by nature and our entire existence is predicated on making sure nobody has a problem. Why sit next to someone and be uncomfortable all night when you can ask, “Why are you being so weird? Is something wrong?” And this is why I left that godforsaken place. I asked them why they were being so weird and when they pretended nothing was wrong, I realized our differences were irreconcilable and came back home. I also suspected some of them were going pee-pee in my Coke, but that’s a whole other joke.