He's was outa there. So I mean I'm not paying for him, ya know? First of all, it's not me. I didn't get anything out of it. I don't -- Like I'd happily pay for your meal but I'm not gonna buy a whore. [Music -- "I Remember U" by Cartoon feat. Juri Pootsman] Soooo, C-Milk. For those of you asking me like -- or telling me that I have ugly sunglasses These cost two dollars and I was trying to be ironic, so if you didn't pick up on that I failed as a comedian. ... anyway. Yeah you did fail as a comedian and they are hideous. These are -- these are real Raybans I got in Hong Kong. Nice. That's very -- You don't need to stress that in most countries. But the fact that we're in Mainland China you absolutely have to stress that. Everyone I know that has like Aviators or any kind of Raybans here, they're fake. Absolutely. Why would you go spend thousand, five hun--- Coz you can spend 5 bucks on fake ones and they look almost the same. You have to buy new ones every couple months, but whatever. Yeah. And you can have a whole selection of different colors and Absolutely. ... styles. Number 2, before we begin the topic... Very glad that you put the camera so far away and it's kinda up here because I am wearing pink shorts. I ran out of clean clothes. Don't judge me, but you guys don't have to see it. Lucky you. No, no you don't. That camera is really far away because we're using my lens. Yeah. The uh, my 50-mil lens. It's literally like on the other side of the restaurant. How can we do this? Because there's not another person in the whole restaurant. That's the funny thing is that we came here for a specific reason. And the specific reason was that It has amazing food on display and you watch 'em cook it, right? So you walk up to this place. We'll show you the empty part, This empty, er this, this place with ya know 20, 30 dishes and you select your little tag that you want and they cook it up. And this food is from Hunan province which we did on our, our trip a few times now, eh? We're talking about experiences today. Yes. How 'bout you bring out the intro? Well the [sigh] the whole, -- I was kinda thinking about this earlier and I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about, and I thought of what better way to kinda tell people what they can expect when they come to China or if they even don't wanna come to China if they just wanna kinda understand how things go down here, than to tell stories from 8 years for me, 11 years for you now. I want you to start with the worst EVER experience you've ever had in China. I'm saying the lowest you've ever been. Soooo, I was out having a, a drink with some friends. As you do. Yeah, and uh you know that's one thing about China that's awesome is you get like foot massages, and massages here are really cheap. Yeah. I think like 5 bucks, you think, you can get 'em sometimes? Back then I think it was like, I think 30 or 35 RNB Yeah, like 5 bucks. ... for like an hour-long foot massage. An hour?! Woah. So ...I used to always, it was kind of a ritual, we'd go out and we'd get drunk and we'd have like a big meal and we'd go and you know, have a foot massage, but you know unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on you [laughs] most of these massage places also have like other services... Ohhhh. ... upstairs. Right. They can do your hair, or make-up, nails. No. But they'll make you very, very happy. Just depends, you know, Shenzhen is one of those cities [chuckle] where ,you know, a lot of people used to, and still do, come over the border from Hong Kong to play around. [quietly] That's pretty much everywhere in China. Yeah, it's true. That's pretty much true. We're in a, we're in a love hotel right now. Yeah, it's -- Right above us is like a "quick" hotel they call it. -- Yeah, a quick love hotel. It's for making, making a little love. [chuckles] Yeah, whatever you wanna call it. Anyway Fact of the matter is a lot of these places are dodgy. Not all of them... (in Chinese:) Thanks. Thanks. I'll get a little b-roll of this, dude. Okay. Um, I'd say a massive [chuckles], a massive majority of them in ShenZhen do have these like extra services. Fact of the matter is, the guy I was with -- I was with a friend. He was looking for some extra service. Okay. Whatever that may be, leave it up to them. Leave it up to them. We don't even know what kinda dodgy shit he's up to. Actually I do, I know him. Anyway, thing is, during this particular time they were having this big thing in like, this big universie, like an Olympic thing. yeah yeah yeah. It was really strict, right? yeah. So they clamped down on all vice, you know. And they also clamped down on things like street sellers and Right, right. ...tried to clean the whole city. Right. So we went to this place. I went to get my foot massage and my friend kinda disappeared upstairs to go get his um, dodgy massage. So your friend went uh... upstairs while you stayed downstairs like a good boy. Absolutely. Coz we're not into that kinda stuff. Nope. I don't think we need to say that, but at the same time, we kinda need to say it. Mm-hm. Coz it's so common here. Know what I mean? Yeah. Go ahead. So anyway. He disappeared up there. I stayed down getting my foot massage. 'Bout 5, 5 or 10 minutes later he storms downstairs. He's like, "I'm outa here. You know, you know... "They don't wanna do what I want them to do. Cheers. I'll see ya next time," type thing. I'm halfway through my foot massage, so I'm like, "Okay." No big deal. You know. I'm just gonna stay here and finish up and then go home, you know? So the lady workers there weren't into like scat fetish or something like that? Mm. I have no idea what he was trying to get at, but the thing is, whatever it was, they weren't doing it. He'd been there before and he'd gotten this service before. Ooooh, okay, I got ya. Okay. Anyway. So my foot massage finishes and I'm going up to pay the bill. And the foot massage is like 35. Okay. All right? And they present me with a bill for like 235. Woooah! I'm like, wait a second here. Back then that was quite a bit of dosh.
Yeah. I'm like, "What's this 200?" They're like, "You have to pay for your friend's full body massage." And I'm like, "But... -- (with spooky voice effect:) body massage. ... wait a second. He left after like 5 or 10 minutes." Okay. He was outa there. So I'm like, "I'm not paying for him," you know? Yeah. First of all, it's not me. I didn't get anything out of it. I don't -- Like I'd happily pay for your meal but I'm not gonna buy a whore. No. I mean, whatever... whatever the case. This 200 RNB they try to force me to pay even though I.. it had nothing to do with me, right? Right. Now, I'd gotten there on my e-bike, I had an e-bike. So my e-bike was parked outside. Was that the one that caught on fire?
No, no. Different one. So, I go outside. And I'm trying to leave. I, I put down my 35 and I said, "That's all I'm paying." And they're like, "No, you have to pay." And I'm like, "Nope. I'm not paying." I didn't get the body massage. Yeah. So anyway I go outside. Suddenly like all of the staff from inside, like all these guys kinda rush out. They grab my e-bike, as I'm trying to get on it, right? They grab my e-bike and they go and put it in an alleyway. What?! Yep. ok? And they surround me and start like swearing at me and saying that I have to.. you know, in Chinese, that I have to pay the 200. Right, right, right. So they start causing a scene, right? And I was admittedly quite drunk at the time. Of course. And I'm not like off my head. No, no. I was at that point where I'm just not in the mood You weren't throwing punches. No. And I don't wanna put up with shit at that point. Right. Of course. So I say to the guy, "Listen. I'm not gonna pay for my friend's massage. "He didn't even get a massage. He left after 5 minutes." Right. Just walked out. Yeah. I paid for what I got. I'm paying for that. Right. I mean you know like -- ah [in Chinese] thanks. Oh, I got some tofu. Let me just uh You'll have to excuse the interruptions here. Well, while you're doing that, I'll just say this beef is exquisite, but we told them -- and it's cooked with uh, uh those kinda like sour peppers, and then the red chili peppers and then cilantro and celery, but we told them, let's not make it too spicy. Like we said like really little spice, right? And it turns out that it's very spicy. That's the China way. They always do that. Mm-hm. Anyway, you can continue. So I was getting into a heated argument with the guy. And he was like calling me some bad names. He was literally calling me ... a crass mud horse and stuff? He was saying like... [Chinese expression] Ooh shit. Which is pretty bad. That's like basically saying you piece of crap foreigner or some nonsense. ok. Smelly foreigner So I, basically I said to him, "You are a piece of trash." right? Like (Chinese expression). Mm. Mm. That, that literally means, You are rubbish person. It's kinda like saying to someone, You're trash, right? Right. So you piece of shit, kinda like that. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, the guy turned around immediately to this whole crowd. There's this massive massive... -- We don't need to say this in Chinese, by the way -- yeah ok. Yeah, this massive massive crowd all around me and just watching us fight. Coz that's what they do, they spectate. Right. And the guy said, "This foreigner said that all Chinese people are trash." Right. And literally, like a second after that, I just started getting punched from all, like literally all sides. I got, I ... Like from the staff? ... Just, no just random, random ... Just everywhere ... Random people, random strangers, and the staff too, but it was mainly, mainly just random like evil uncles and stuff. I literally remember a guy who was like sitting there on his bicycle, start cycling past me and kicked me in the ribs as he went past. And people were just punching me. It was ridiculous, and they knocked me down 3 times. I got straight back up. Coz I mean ... Right. ... I've been in fights before in South Africa. ... Of course. ...I can take, I can take a licking. But there were literally I'd say about 30, thirty-odd people there, all just like piling into me. And I could see it was getting out of hand. Right. And you know this was, like we're talking about the worst experience. I could see myself being beaten to death. Woah. It was that bad. You think they wouldn't've stopped? No I don't think so. I mean I was... Ah, shit, man. Dude it was bad, so I was just being pummeled by all sides. Right. And was trying to fend off people from the back, the side, the front you know, it's just one guy against 30. It's nonsense. Wow. So I just started shouting out, "Police police!" and I saw there was like a police golf cart type thing nearby. And uh, luckily they came over and then like suddenly it all dispersed. Long story short, I got dragged down to the police station along with... Gettin' teary. [chuckle] ... along with um some of the staff members. Oh ok. Right. So of that place, we all went down there. My head had swollen like a watermelon. Like no joke. As it would. Yeah, coz I was being beaten so much around the head. And you know, the usual thing, they brought the guy in and they got a translator. Some guy. Wow. Yeah, they called in some guy and he appeared. He was like obviously, he was like, Man, what the hell? [laughs] He was like an overseas Chinese guy, so he could speak English very well. Right. Brought in a translator. They went through this long negotiation. And eventually they said to the, the staff, "He doesn't owe you any money. He's already paid his 35. Give him his bike back." And that was it. So you won! Yeah But you lost. No, I mean I had ripped clothing. You know, my face was all swollen. Oh shit. And you know. So I got on my e-bike and sort of like limped home and had to recover over the next couple of weeks. That's, I'm gonna say pretty frickin' terrible. I wanna ask you a question though. Did you reconsider living in China after that experience? Like, did the thought cross your mind that that was pretty f-ed up? Of course. No, not really. I'll tell you why. Because I come from a country which is bad. Right. I understand. A lot of people, South Africans will always try to um defend South Africa, and say Oh it's got nice weather, you know, or something like that. Or boo the rugby or something. It's all nonsense. The country's awful. It's so crime-ridden. I've had so many bad experiences there. So I try to um ... disassociate bad experiences from a place. Okay. If you know what I mean? Yeah. And I, I know I learned a big lesson. And the big lesson is: Don't, don't EVER like rile up this, -- Cause a scene -- this nationalism. It's just, it's like a mob mentality, and you know these people, they get riled up. There's nothing you can do. -- They get riled up like you won't believe. So, I learned my lesson. And I take responsibility, 'cause if I'd just stood there and not said anything to these guys. -- Right. -- And basically just called the cops, then it would've been sorted out without any problems. -- Really? -- Because I swore back at the guy. Right right. That's what caused the ruckus. Yeah yeah. So -- Of course I wasn't happy with China at that point. Okay how 'bout your worst experience? Caught me full mouth. (laughs) Um. Is this any good? Yeah, it's really good. It's like a dried ham. Smoked ham. Mm mm. It's quite good, right? Yeah. Hunan food's very different. Uh my worst experience is going to be not about a fight, but about betrayal. Mm. And I think this could happen anywhere, however, what makes this specific to China is the way it transpired. ok? --Yeah. Now, most people probably know that I lived around China in different areas for a long time before I moved back to Hui Zhou to get married, right? And when I was up in inner Mongolia for 2 years, there was a very stark contrast to the friendships I had had in Taiwan and GuangDong in that people were like pretty, pretty chill. Everyone loved to share a beer, ya know. -- Mm hm. All my friends were into bikes. It was kinda like a breath of fresh air, right? Cuz you know how it is down here sometimes. It's like, it's really difficult sometimes to find Chinese male friends that are into the same thing as you? Yeah. Even the Chinese guys we meet down here that are into bikes wanna ride in a group of 60 with like orange vests on. Yeah. You know, and then go to the lake 10 kilometers away. This is different. I got into off-roading and all this cool stuff, right. ---Mm-hm. Now, one time when I was on my, my dirt bike, my Yamaha, I'd run out of gas because I was stupid. I actually didn't know how the fuel reserve system worked on a dirt bike, right? So I was always used to having a gas gauge and like, you know like, this is how much gas I have left. And I had run out of gas probably a good 10 kilometers outside the city, right? So, I mean I'm not super .. I'm not super good at China at this point, right? I don't really know what to do. But immediately this guy shows up. This a really cool looking guy, by the way. He's got tattoos and stuff and he shows up on one of those CF Moto 250 scooter things. --- Oh yeah yeah. And uh, he shows up and he's like, "Hey let me, let me take ya to a gas station." So we go to the gas station, and he pays for a bucket of gas, fills up my bike, and then we go have dinner together, and turns out to be h-- , he's super funny. He's got a real sense of humor. I'm like getting to speak Chinese but have good jokes and conversation... -- That's important and nice.. -- Really, right? -- Yeah. So I, I'm like this guy's really cool. We hung out probably every other day for almost a year, right?. We road together. He introduced me to other riders, right? And so, you know we, we spend pretty much every other day together, right, and we go to his home town. And I see how poor his family is. Mud hut. No windows. It's frickin awful. Kinda starts to justify like what kinda weird shit he does. Turns out he's a, a, a runner. Delivering contraband between different places. It's pretty lawless, right? So he drives this shitty little Cherry. The Cherry car, you know that brand? -- Mm hm. And he fills it up, A-series. He fills it up with like drugs or knives or whatever he's, I never saw what he's doing, but that's what's he's doing to make money. And it wasn't good money, right. But he'd go home to his shitty little home town, drop it off, and I remember the time we were there he was installing a, a light in their house, and it was like a really big deal. -- Ok. Right. It was a big gift for his family. Anyway, we have a great time in his home town, people are super chill, friendly, drinking local beer. Can see the stars up there. It's an experience I've never had, and felt like a real friend. So his idea is he's gonna move back. And he's gonna get clean. Right? So he's gonna up this ma la tang place. And the ma la tang.. How would you describe ma la tang? It's basically just boiled stuff. -- but spicy. -- Yeah, I mean it's like got chilis and oil and stuff in it. It's like a [unintelligible]. -- Kinda like a, almost like a hot pot, but it's nice... -- yeah yeah... --- more stable. Yeah, you don't drink the juice. -- You call it na-be in uh Japan, [unintelligible] -- Oh ok, ok. Anyway he opens up one of these in this little impoverished old town, and he gets this idea that me and my foreign friends are gonna ride around on our big 1200cc bikes around the city and have these big flags promoting their restaurant, and there's never been a foreigner in this place, right. So of course these people just flock to this ma la tang restaurant. We're helping him serve and dish out the stuff you know, and we run out of ingredients. It was really fun actually. It was a good time. Anyway, he uh needs to borrow my bike to go to buy some ingredients from the market, right? -- Yeah So he does that. And this is where I pieced it together. I think in that moment, he went and copied my key. -- Ok. Now how, I'm gonna ask you this: How many key copying shops have you seen? Tons. -- There's one literally downstairs. -- Any hardware store basically can copy keys here. And they won't ask. -- No. -- They won't ask any questions. No, you just say I wanna make a copy, and they make a copy. And it costs like 2 RNB. -- Right. So of course he knows where I park my bike at home, right. Anyway I go back to America for 3 weeks to visit my family. And, my friend at the time, I said, "Every day can you go and check on my bike?" right? Of course you wanna keep an eye on it. But I was paying people in my apartment to watch it. Security guards. -- So it was in like a secure parking lot... -- It was in a, under, under uh a pavilion, right? Locked up. Had about one security guard, right? -- yeah yeah yeah So, my friend calls me. And he's like, in American on Skype, he's like, "Your bike's gone." And I'm like, "Stop messing with me, Bro." You know what I mean? -- Mm. Like "What, what are you talking about?" Now it turned out to be true, and I had a bunch of my Chinese friends go check on it and it was gone. And the, the security guard says that somebody came in, somebody that I'd hung out with previously. Described him. -- Yeah, yeah. -- And said, "Oh I need to do some repairs on my friend's bike." Right? Walked in. He, he was little skeptical. -- ok. -- But he turned on the key and he drove out, right? So he's like, "Oh. Okay --" He's got the key." -- "He's got the key, who cares, right? It's not a big deal. I've seen them hanging out before." No big deal. China's a pretty trusting place, right? -- Mm hm. So that was the day that I never saw him again, actually. And he stopped answering my calls. Mm-hm. -- He deleted me off WeChat. I found him again and added him again, by the way. -- Yeah. And I saw in his "moments," after this long wild goose chase, my bike. Painted gold. I remember, I saw that. -- You saw that? I still have the picture. -- Mm-hm. So this douche bag played me for like 6 months and was like one of my best friends. And literally stabbed me in the back and disappeared with my motorcycle, . which cost 50 thousand RNB, which is a lot of money at that time, I was just a teacher. How much is that in dollars? -- It was like $8000. That's, that's, it's ridiculously expensive, especially since you, you know your salary is probably about 10 thousand a month? Yeah I think I was making 12 at the university. -- Yeah. It's like 5 month's salary. It was a lot of money! Right? -- It's huge; it's huge. -- But I love bikes, right, so it was important to me. Anyway, that was like, it's upsetting to talk about because I've been burned like worse in China, with other situations, but it was when somebody for that long burns you. Someone that you know so damn well. That you trust. -- That you trust! -- I have a similar story. We won't get into it now, but I've a very similar story. Right. So anyway, I thought this was, it's kinda depressing, but it's one of those things that it's fun to share this kinda stuff because the next episode we're gonna do are the best, uh best things that have ever happened to us in China, right? Yeah. Best experiences. -- And those are way better than the worst ones. [unintelligible] Even more entertaining. So, I hope you guys can take something away from this. As always, our videos are not here to uh be biased in any way. No, it's personal experience. . No, we're not here to bash China. We're not here to glorify China. We're here to just share our every day experiences, and help you. You know, 'cause there's always some, something useful you can grab out of these conversations. -- Of course. Out of these situations. No matter where you are. You know. And from my story, don't, don't escalate things. Don't swear or anything when you get into an altercation. And from your story is ... --- Is don't, don't -- Don't trust anyone. -- And don't, not anyone. Don't trust criminals, dude. Yeah. -- If you have an inkling that somebody's in shady stuff, then they're probably a shady person. Absolutely. --- You know. Don't justify it. -- That's something I've learned my, my whole life. -- Right. That's one of the thing, one of the reasons I've always had a big problems with drugs, I hate to bring this up again. People love to give me shit about this, but it's not that drugs are so bad, but the face that they're illegal means you're dealing with criminals, -- Right, right. --- and criminals always do bad things. The fact that it's illegal invites trouble. -- Yeah. So you know you can get into whatever argument you want. That's my biggest problem. And I lost my bike. -- Yep. Anyway, um, yeah, onto better things. Because, in our next episode, like you said, it's gonna be cheery, happy, feel good, so see you there. Uh, oh wait. Anything you wanna say to everyone before we finish? I wanna say don't befriend criminals, especially ones with massive dragon tattoos all over their body, no matter how nice they are. And if, even if you are friends with those type of people, -- Mm-hm. I hope that you like, comment, and subscribe. Absolutely. And whether or not you are a criminal scumbag, or you are an awesome upstanding person who loves to watch our videos, If there are any criminal scumbags watching our videos, you know we appreciate -- We like you, too. We appreciate your views. -- Yeah. But you know... -- Not your viewpoints. -- You should probably stop your nefarious deeds. -- Yeah. [laughs] Anyway, until next time guys. You know the drill. We love you all the same, and stay awesome. Oh yeah. Hang on, hang on. Stay awesome. [laughs] [Music -- "I Remember U" by Cartoon feat. Juri Pootsman]
