Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

File this one under C’mon, Chinese people. A Chinese shop owner in Namibia, told one of his local employees to toss out a plastic bag of his wife’s poop. The employee refused and was fired. Story covered here by AllAfrica.com. Problem #1 – Why is your wife pooping in a plastic bag? The story says she didn’t want to use the toilets used by the employees. I understand how desperate one can be when poop is eminent, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever been inclined to poop in a bag. Maybe she didn’t poop *in* the bag, but pooped somewhere else and scooped it up doggie style. I could maybe do that… Problem #2 – If you poop somewhere no one else is pooping so that your poop then has to be disposed of, it’s pretty bad form to ask someone else to clean up after you. I’m cool with changing my daughter’s crappy diapers now, because someday, she’ll change mine (or pay a health care worker to do it). Maybe the wife who pooped handed the bag to her husband and asked him to throw it away, and he just passed it off to his employee. If he really loved his wife, he would have done it himself. Problem #3 – Don’t fire the employee you just asked to toss your wife’s poop in the garbage. Maybe just pretend you thought he was walking past the trash so maybe he could toss in there for you, but that you’ll do it instead. Maybe offer him a bonus if he does it. Maybe hand the bag back to your wife and tell her she should throw it away herself, and use the toilet next time. There are reported to be over 40,000 Chinese nationals living and working in Namibia. They’re there doing construction, manufacturing, retail and food service. China has been tapping into Africa’s mineral wealth for over a decade now, and nearly every where they go there have been culture clashes, rumors of corruption, shady labor policy, and mutual distrust. The pains of being new the new Evil Empire.
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You thought online dating in LA was hard? Try being a single guy in China. You thought being a single guy in China was hard? Try being a dead single guy! China’s One Child policy has taken its toll on the straight male population now old enough to be goaded into marriage by eager parents. Chinese men are looking for foreign brides in the most non-traditional places. Even when they do find a bride, they still have to worry about authentic natural beauty. Dark days indeed. Now, the plight of the single and deceased. ABC News reports the sentencing of four grave robbers in  Southwest China’s Sichuan province. They were digging up dead brides for dead bachelors. These matchmakers with dirt under their nails help broker “ghost marriages” for families who have lost unwed sons. In an effort to help their lost boys keep from wandering this earthly plane in search of “the one”, they marry them off to unwed girls who have met similar fates. The moral of the story: the toughest thing of all is being a woman in China. Alive or dead.      
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Fake Tiananmen Square looks real, but where are the hawkers? A “local enterprise” (private business) in Qishan County of China’s Shaanxi province has gone one step further than securing government approval to operate. It became the government by building its headquarters to replicate Tiananmen Square. Looks like they couldn’t decide where to put the replica tanks. Hey, maybe they took the Bad Religion song to heart, but what is truly amazing is that this complex is allowed to stand. Has the copyright on the set design of the Square expired? What’s next? Maybe the official organ of the People’s Republic will call the Tiananmen Massacre a myth and having a duplicate Square is one way of wiping away history.
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