I received the following letter from my friend Josh. He asks a couple of questions here that I felt I should address in public…
our days find us at home depot or at our new place doing something with the things we bought at home depot. home depot is home to excons and romeroian zombies. i wish the home despot zombies were like the zombies in “28 days later,” so they would move with higher dexterity. but no, home depository only pays for oldschool zombies to keep their profits high.
What is romeroian? And that movie never explained why the zombies with “rage” only hated non-infected people. I guess I shouldn’t over-analyze that movie. I have to say though…I liked its Heart of Darkness / Civilization is Only Skin Deep theme set in a zombie survival horror movie.
anydo: i was wondering what percentage of your stories, like “taxi,” are non-fiction. or, if you prefer, what portion is fiction?
Good question. I would say about 80% is non fiction. Of the 20% that can be considered “fiction”, 10% is due to the fact that I write the blog post days after the events I write about. Since I do not carry a tape recorder, I have to fill in some “holes” in my recollection. About 5% of the fiction is because of translation issues. Most of my conversations take place in Chinese, so what I write here is translated. In the translation, I can take a little bit of artistic license. 5% of the fiction content is due to a desire to add a little more “style” to the events around me. I create this fiction naturally; I often don’t realize it is fiction anyway.
also, why don’t you use hotlinks in your postings? isn’t that a key feature of the world wide web? like in your taxi driver character’s rant about socialism, maybe link into something short and sweet about the cultural revolution. link to maps of places. link to sites on asian fetishes. or whatever. maybe it’s too much work, i dunno.
This would imply that I am really trying to educate my numerous readers, when really, what I’m trying to do is just keep them up-to-date about our situation so that people can feel like I’m not that far away. If I was writing for a more general audience, I most definitly would include more links. I do read other “China Blogs”, which contain lots of good links. There are some really perceptive “bloggers” out there. (I think they read Chinese better tham me, so they also pick up on some current events that I miss)T he issue is that I don’t really feel like being in the “blog community” (AKA “Blogsphere”) I don’t think my writing is good enough, and its more personal than most blogs. Plus, I would have a bunch of strangers coming and leaving comments. Then I would have go edit out the spam, the dumb@$$es comments by strangers, the aggravated Chinese or Foreigner who wants to rant, etc.
jesse, i know that being in china and not having a job is even more disorienting than being in the states and not having a job. at least i thought so. it’s a fine balance to enjoy and explore but not flip out. there is strong tendancies towards psychological implosion among foreigners in china. it attracts nut balls, creative people, big fish small pond people, etc. but one thing’s for sure, these people are fringe people, wherever they’re from. it’s all good fun but remember, you’ve got to look out for yourself (and haga).
Thank you for the advice Josh. So that I may understand better when it happens to me, what are the symptoms of psychological implosion?
but you’re riding a killer wave, ride it out and enjoy yourself. just don’t let the riptide take you out to deep-dark sea. -Josh
You are great. Although sometimes I think I swim out to the deep-dark sea alot. Way to often. But the tidal pull of my friends, family, loved ones always pulls me to shore.
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