Surviving the Chinese
Dear Johnny,
“Survival Chinese” on page 2 of the Oct. 12 edition of Taipei Times read thus: “I’m planning to ride a motorbike across the Gobi Desert next year.”
Can you explain this to me? I’m sure there are a lot of cram school visa slaves out there who don’t have much time to study Chinese and who could use helpful survival sentences for the basic everyday grind.
Does the writer think we’re all crossing the Gobi this year?
I have a student who is in love with Avril Lavigne and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Can you suggest some Survival Chinese that I can use when she tells me how great the two of them are?
IAN IN KAOHSIUNG
Johnny replies: Ian, you underestimate the prescience of our good Survival Chinese service, methinks. When the Chicoms send their goons over here to subjugate the Taiwanese nation, there will be a stream of foreigners looking to get the hell out. Given the Chicoms will have first fired a salvo of SARS-laden missiles, who is going to be allowed on a plane home? Hence the Gobi route. Get your ass to the Russian border and all will be swell.
As for your student … she’s in love with Lavigne and Prez Ma, eh?
How about this: “A threesome between a wide-eyed Taiwanese cram school gal, Canadian tween bait and a foppish Chicom bunny would open the Gates of Hell.”
Kiss and Johnny’s makeup
Dear Johnny,
Re: Your identity and the Kiss album Unmasked (Johnny Neihu’s Mailbag, Oct. 11, page 8):
So are you really Peter Criss, the only guy left in the dressing room and crying — a metaphor for Taiwan after everyone else has left for Los Angeles, the way Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) predicted? Or perhaps Anton Fig, the uncredited drummer?
This game is beginning to sound like the script for a new Batman film. Some day the Joker, or perhaps Catwoman, will catch up with you.
Meanwhile, keep up the good work; your many fans, including myself, enjoy your witty insights into the politics of name-disputed-entity located between Japan and the PRC.
PROFESSOR JUNE TEUFEL DREYER
University of Miami
Johnny replies: In a way, am I not every one of these forlorn men? In my more strapping days I would have taken Gene Simmons as my role model, notching up the ladies between bouts of alcohol meditation and blood spitting. Now I’m more of a Paul Stanley man: eloquence, refinement and a huge black eye in the shape of a star after my gal Cathy has caught me with both sets of fingers in the cookie jar.
Can I also say how heartwarming it is to know that the Kiss Army has extended its tentacles into peninsular Floridian academe?
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