Memorable Quotes, China
Here are some memorable lines from the China ’02 trip. Most things are inside jokes, sorry. Please email me to have more quotes added to this list (if you are Karen, Martrese, or John…)
- “Maybe that’s why you couldn’t see anything out of your camera,” my mom innocently suggested to my Dad, who had the revelation that his lens cap was still on. – As overheard by John and Felix in Tiananmen Square.
- “That’s really not his chair!” my dad proudly observed when we were shown a chair in front of Mao’s Villa in Wuhan, next to a picture of him sitting in a chair. He then pointed out all of the differences between the chair present and the chair in the picture, as if we weren’t already convinced. “That’s because the real chair is over there,” replied Sam, pointing to another chair behind us…
- “And the best thing about this,” claimed Dr. Fan, during his Chinese Medicine seminar through his translator [Summer] on the Victoria cruise ship, “is there are NO SIDE EFFECT.” He then lit some Chinese leaves in a Chinese medicine pipe, and proudly passed it around. Soon there was a murmur going around the room, then whispers, then laughter. Finally, someone said it: “Wow, this really smells like POT!” And then someone had to explain to Dr. Fan what “pot” was.
- “Do you know what fruit that is?” my dad asked Karen while she was having breakfast, during one of the more stressful (but funny) moments between the two. My dad repeated that question numerous times until–FINALLY–he revealed that she was eating Chinese pears.
- “Oh HELL no.” – John, in response to all sorts of suggestions, including that he should sing karaoke during the Victoria Cabaret or that he attend the Chinese opera in Xian.
- “Sukya sukya!” exclaimed Karen, often at random but especially when I was clobbering her at Rummy 500 (okay, so she ended up winning…)
- “Tastes like chicken.” This would be the mantra of everything we would try in which we were not sure of (such as duck intestines, etc.). I can’t quite remember who started it; it was either Martrese or Sam…
- “Ching,” exclaimed John, as overheard on several occasions during his Chinese foot massage, to indicate that he wanted the person doing his massage to do it with “less pain”.
- “I beat you,” my dad told Karen after she responded to the question about how many rolls of film she had already taken by the time we got to Xian. Wow, Karen and I mused, I didn’t know we were competing! Karen had some good comebacks, though, including how one of HER rolls of film was in black-and-white…
- “Restroom??” asked Karen, whipping out a roll of toilet paper in front of two non-English-understanding security people in what looked like a bank or hotel in Shanghai. They understood the moment she whipped out the TP…
- “Poooor Feelixx” – as Martrese and Karen would endearingly call me.
- “…so police officer asked the panda bear, ‘Why did you shoot him after eating the bamboo, and then go?’ And the panda bear replied, ‘Because that’s what a panda bear does, look it up in the dictionary! Panda bear: a black-and-white animal that eats bamboo shoots and leaves.'” – Sam, our tour guide and master joke-teller, with Chinese accent and all.
