like adrian mole, only with more sex

If you’ve ever wondered what it is they do all day in the Chinese government, try this out for size: The Diary of Tobacco Bureau Chief Han Feng.

Short version: drinking, screwing, eating, buying consumer electronics, having meetings, rinse, repeat.

Han was busted after the husband of one of his girlfriends hacked into his computer and posted his diary online, since which time he has become famous. Official corruption’s obviously a big issue in China, but a lot of the online response, as detailed at Chinasmack, seems to be rather favourable.

What got me about it wasn’t the sex so much as the obsessive fiddling around with bits of technology which seemed to substitute for an interest in life once his immediate physical needs had been met. Mr Han seems to be stumbling arround in a sort of postmodern daze with Chinese characteristics. But I bet he's woken up now.

Comments

[Richard J]

'Turtle egg' really is a live insult? I'd always vaguely assumed it was an Orientalist stereotype.

[jamie]

It is, and about the worst you can come up with. It actually means, roughly, "son of a whore", so it's one of the tu madre school of insults. But it's the actual characters that get translated ratrher than the inferred meaning, hence the orientalist feel.

[ajay]

Turtles are regarded in China as being of low moral character, can't remember why. I think it's to do with the difficulty of telling male turtles from female ones, which naturally suggests that they must be up to something.
(It's not really much sillier than saying "son of a female dog", as we inscrutable Occidentals do.)

cf. Nash, O.
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

[jamie]

"Turtles are regarded in China as being of low moral character, can't remember why. "

Something to do with the suggestive way its head emerges from its shell, I believe.

[ejh]

No need for "tu madre": "hijoputa", as used recently by the delightful Esperanza Aguirre, is a direct translation.