Satire: A Happy Day in the Life of an Ordinary Chinese Person (Sanlu edition)

Here is another popular online satire piece, translated by Prof Christopher R Hughes:

I wake up in the morning and throw off my ‘black heart’ quilt[1]. I turn on the renovated TV that was a prize given when I bought my suit (using a special prize voucher that came with the newspaper). 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[2], 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[3] 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 contaminated 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.

When I get to the office, I take a quick look at my pirated phone[4]. I am right on time. I have a cup of E. coli water from the water barrel and then work through the morning without incident. In a blink it is lunch time. Because I have to see some important customers in the afternoon and get instructions from my department leaders over lunch, I definitely cannot drink any alcohol, but just order a few dishes of grilled dog meat with Potassium Cyanide, pork Clenbuterol, a pan of fried greens and meat slices with beansprouts swollen by various chemicals, two plates of dumplings filled with chicken skin and duck neck skin pretending to be pork, and two cans of Coca Cola.

After getting the go ahead from the leaders I go to see the customers with full confidence. During the thirsty discussions with them in the afternoon we constantly drink high quality Kangshi mineral water[5]. Nevertheless, after our discussion there is a general expression of willingness to work together. 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.[7] 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.

In the evening some freinds phone to go out for dinner and I can’t get out of it. At the food stalls we order a Chongqing hotpot thickened with paraffin, accompanied by some emerald green tender kelp soaked in sodium hydrosulphite and light green alkaloid, tofu skin made with sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate[8] ducks blood with nitrate treated cow blood added, rice flour treated with carbolic acid and pork sausages with lymph nodes. Because I have really eaten too much supper, I take some chopsticks treated with sulfur hydrogen peroxide and polished with sodium to eat some ‘stinking beancurd’ steeped in human faeces, and eat some diseased pork, barbecued mutton made of cat meat, then have a few glasses of formaldehyde beer with them and leave.

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,[9] 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!

Notes:
1. Reference to the discovery of a consignment of contaminated down delivered to Sichuan for disaster relief in May. See here.
2. Reference to discovery of high levels of carcinogenic amines in children’s clothing in Guangzhou, July 2006
3. Reference to the carcinogenic toothpaste scare following the discovery of Triclosan in Chinese exported toothpaste in April 2005
4. Reference to the proliferation of cheap imitation phones with doubtful safety standards
5. Reference to the admission by the Kangshi company that it was selling tap water as high quality mineral water on 4 September
6. On water injected beef see here.
7. On the detection of hogwash oil in food see here.
8. A potentially lethal chemical used illegally to whiten foodstuffs, and detected recently in July during food tests in Changsha.
9. In June 2008 10 patients filed a suit against the Zhongshan No 3 Hospital in Guangzhou for injury due to the administering of Shangqi fake medication

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