The black lung, fashion masks, and Mcdonald's

Okay, so how many of you remember that scene from Zoolander where Ben Stiller tries to be a coal miner like his father and complains about the black lung? Well basically thats me here in Beijing, except its the yellow lung *cough *cough.

My father has been warning me about the yellow dust season since before my arrival, but I finally go to experience it this weekend. It's no joke. Now I realize why people wear those "sars" masks around town.

I finally realized I was getting the yellow lung as I was walking home from Mcdonald's and I coughed up a huge loogie in my throat. Yuck! I think I am becoming to understand why locals spit out loogies every minute, and why "sars" masks are a lung saver in addition to a wicked awesome fashion statement. Check out these fashion masks:


Let me rewind a bit and talk about my first Chinese Mcdonald's experience. There is a Mcdonald's near my apartment, and one day I was craving a burger, so I decided to check it out. I thought I would catch it at a good time since it was well after lunch, but as soon as I entered the place, it was crawling with fast-food feigns. I took one look at the menu and noticed that they don't have very many beef products. The only beef patty they had was on the Big Mac, but that looked a bit questionable from the picture (something between a beef and tofu burger with weird bits of something scattered throughout the patty). I decided on the chicken sandwich, which by the way is real chicken and not that fake, microwavable patty in the states, and a 6 piece chicken mcnugget. My favorite thing about the entire meal were the chicken mcnuggets. What's awesome about Mcdonald's in China is that these mcnuggest are spicy! Noich! I love spicy food, so this was a no brainer for me.

Many people say math is the universal language, but I'd like to add that body language is also somewhat universal. Although every culture has different methods of insulting one another (middle finger, fist pump in the air, thumb scraping behind your teeth, hand pushed out from under your chin) most cultures have similar body movements when describing something. For example, when I placed my order at Mcdonald's, the fu yuen was shouting some random gibberish to me, and I assumed she was asking me what I wanted to drink. I replied with "coke" and in return I got an awkward stare. Later I realized she was asking me if I wanted it "for here" or "to go" because she kept pointing down to the ground or outside the door. Gotta love the body language.