#43. Simon Astbury: In Living Color
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com. And if you've been enjoying the show, go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe. Now, our guest is one of the most accomplished and sought-after film colorists in the industry. So think of the color, the tone, and the look and feel of a movie or a commercial. That's what this guy does. And probably the most simple way I can describe it is how we would apply filters on our pictures.

Now, what this guy does is a thousand times more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea. He's worked on a lot of really iconic movies like "Notting Hill," "Sense and Sensibility," "Event Horizon," and even "The Human Centipede," which of course, out of all the movies he's done, we were the most curious about. Born and bred in London, he is currently the only British colorist in Shanghai. He decided two years ago to move his family with his wife and two kids to China

which obviously was a huge decision at that time. He's a really fascinating guy. We had a lot of fun on this episode, nearly finished two bottles of whiskey. So without further ado, please give it up for Simon Astbury. ♪

You said you worked on the human sentiment. Yeah, because I just thought there was one thing I couldn't kind of

weave in to the narrative. One second. Before you get into it, for the people who do not know what the human centipede is... Well, what's the Chinese name for the movie? It's a cultural phenomenon. Like I know, but it doesn't matter. The human centipede, look it up.

read about it while you listen to what we're going to talk about because I'm sure he's going to share some interesting things because if you don't know The Human Centipede, please look it up. And if you do know The Human Centipede, we don't need to say it anymore because you know what it's about. Yes. If you don't know it, please, please look it up. The Human Centipede movie. It's becoming one of those defining...

cultural things. It's a cultural thing too. Where were you when you saw the Human Centipede? I saw it. Have you seen it? Yes. Well, they made like Human Centipede 2 and 3, right? I don't care. 3. I worked on all 3, yeah. You worked on all 3 of them? Yeah. You worked on all 3 Human Centipede movies? That's correct, yeah. So what, like, how, okay. First of all, how do you even say that? You can type in the, is there, like, okay. There's the, oh, I got it, I got it. Wugong.

Wugong? Wugong. But that doesn't sound like it would be the name, right? No, I don't know. I don't know, but let me read the one. It is a story about a deranged surgeon with the ambition of creating a human centipede by stitching and binding the spinal column of 12 individuals creating a human centipede in the process. So that is what it's about. Two is 12. One is three. Mouth to ass. One is three people.

two is 12 and then three was like 400 or something or 300 oh it was like in a prison or something yeah in a prison yeah it's like honestly like before you even get into it that

Don't answer this. This is my first thought. How the fuck do you do it? How do you watch the imagery that was shot over and over and over and over again? Yeah, because you have to go into detail. 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功 人体无功

Yeah, it's not going to be on IT. I don't know if it's going to pass the census. 有可能你自己要好好地搜索一下。 Yeah,可能这边不会,可能没有。 All right, so let's get to the heart of it. Okay, so, all right. So, if you can imagine the scene, I guess. I was a colorist working in London in... When did it come out? Did it come out...

I feel like it came out like the mid-2000s. Yeah, so it was probably like 2005, 2006, something like that. And...

Back in the day, sometimes you'd get people off the street. It was a weird thing. People would come in off the street with a post-production thing. Now it's all like through the internet and emails and whatnot. But sometimes you would just get somebody would come in off the street with like a reel of film or a tape or something and say, hey, I've got this thing. Can you do me a grade or can you do me something with this? And it was kind of like that. So we had this phone call from this Dutch lady and she said, we've got a movie.

that we need a grade and some VFX done. And we said, "Okay, how much money do you have?" And she said, "Well, we have this much." And the budget seemed fine for that. And she said it's already conformed. Sorry, that's a technical term, but it meant that our side of the thing was a little bit easier. It was all on tape already. It was shot on the Sony Genesis, if you remember that camera. - Oh, really? - Yeah, very early digital. Very good actually. - Very high quality digital camera. - Yeah, exactly.

So we got this thing. I just knew nothing. We knew nothing about the thing, about the story. And then the day came to do the grade. I think we were going to do it across like five days. And the director came in. He's this very unassuming Dutch guy called Tom, Tom Six.

And his sister, Ilona, who was the producer. So it was like a family thing. A hemisentipede. It was a family ordeal. Yeah. Family deal. No studio was involved. They self-financed. He went to all the richest people in Holland and asked them for cash. And they got three million euros, I think, was the budget for the first one. So anyway...

And I was sitting down with him and I said, so what's the film about, Tom? You had no idea what you were asking at that time. And I had no idea what I was asking. He said, well, it's kind of a horror film about... Think of like a Josef Mengele, like the Nazi doctor from...

um second world war and he did all these weird experiments with with jewish kids and stuff is really awful but if you imagine there was a guy and he was a specialist in separating siamese twins but what he wants to do is create a siamese triplet connected mouth to anus uh and um he'd already tried it on his dog if you watch the movie

There's backstory. It's like, it's the whole thing. So is this what he's telling you? Yeah, he was telling me about this. He was telling me about this. He said like, imagine this guy, he's like a Dr. Mengele kind of evil doctor guy and he's retired now, but he's kind of, he's not right in the head and he wants to create a Siamese triplet. That's, that was his thing. And then we started to watch it and I started to work on it and it was like, he said, and I said, so how, what do you want it to look like? And he said, I want it to look like, like a European,

like just a filmic movie. And when somebody says that to me, I go into a certain mode about how I'm going to approach it. There's no point in really talking about it that deeply. But we approached it in a certain way to make it feel glossy and relatively high budget, not feeling like it was some kind of arthouse thing or a lo-fi kind of feel. So it was all quite kind of glossy and,

And he'd really spent his money well, I have to say. It was very smart movie making because you could have taken 3 million euros and tried to do something that didn't fit a 3 million budget. But he shot it all in one location, upstairs and downstairs in this house and the garden. And he just was really smart with the way he used his money. Anyway, we started working on it. And then I started to work out what was actually happening. And I said, Tom, what...

what's he going to be doing with those people? And then there's the scene. But you didn't get to the part yet. I didn't watch the movie first. I just started working on it because we had a limited amount of time. And you're like, so when you're working on it, you have to go, you have to work on it scene by scene by scene. And sequentially as well. I watched it in the order that you would watch it.

So you would know, like, you would have a very intimate experience with the film. Absolutely. Yeah. And he's going like scene by scene where in the beginning it's like pretty innocent, like any film. Yeah, it's like two girls on a road trip. Yeah. Right? And then they get a puncture in the forest. Yeah. It's a massive cliche, but they get a puncture in the forest and they're looking, going through the forest trying to find, you know, help somewhere to, yeah, to take, you know, refuge. And this guy opens the door and he's a bit creepy. Yeah.

And so he lets them in and then he drugs them and takes them downstairs into the room. And then there's a lorry driver who is genetically incompatible. So he gets killed early on. And that was one of the genesis of the whole story. So Tom told me, I said, Tom, where on earth did you come up with this idea? It's just insane. And he went, well, I just...

He was like having a drink with somebody and this guy was really annoying him. And he said, if you don't stop saying all these annoying things, I'm going to sew your mouth to a Dutch truck driver's asshole. That was an inspiration? That was one of the main inspirations. Wow.

So, you know, the film goes through and I don't too many spoilers for those of you who haven't seen it. But a lot of the action is implicit. Again, I think if you rewatch, you'll realize how clever he was. There's nothing really explicit in the film. It's all done with suggestion. And then there are bandages covering all the more gross parts of it. And then doesn't end well, you know, and doesn't end well. And I finished the job.

And I thought, well, that was an interesting experience. And I'm never ever going to hear or see this thing ever again because it's going to sink without trace. We weren't even sure if they were going to pay us actually, but they did, which was great. What was your thought at the time about like how the movie would do? Like you thought like there's no way this movie can be successful. I thought I'd never see it again. Yeah. I thought... Little did you know. But I'd worked on other things before.

I mean, maybe they weren't as well executed, but it worked on other things which sunk without trace. In fact, like tons of things. So I thought, well, it might do something or it might not. And then it's kind of almost forgot about it. And then six months later, I think around that, I started to see things on Facebook from people that I knew. And it won an award at Fright Fest, which is like a horror film. De facto, like one of the big ones. Yeah, one of the big ones.

And so many people started saying, have you seen the human centipede? You need to watch this movie. And I was like, Oh Jesus, this is incredible. So, um, I contacted, uh, Ilona and Tom. I said, look, this is great, isn't it? It's doing really well. And, um,

And then it just built and it built. And then there was a South Park episode. It became a cultural phenomenon. And it became a cultural reference point. And it would become, you know how like everyone says something on acid implicitly means something a bit more surreal and insane. And then people would start calling something the human centipede of subterfuge.

something which would mean depraved insane and terrible like the Michael Jordan of this yes exactly it became a badge it became a cultural badge what film beats that it was pop culture it became into pop culture and then Tom Tom just became this a character himself you know he knows what he's doing he's and then the second one came out

First of all, how do you continue that? The relationship. Yeah. Well, the movie did really well. I was like, Jesus, might as well see if I can work with these guys again. And he had this team, and the team managed to create this thing. Whatever small part we played in it, this thing took off to such an incredible degree. So the second one came around, and that got banned.

That was difficult. You know, you were talking about looking at images over and over again. There are a few scenes. That was the one with the shitting, right? Shitting. It was a bunch of people. That's the one I saw. I didn't see them all. He covers his dick in barbed wire. Yeah, that was the one that took it to the next level. Or the sandpaper. He was like jerking off with sandpaper. Jerking off with sandpaper, wrapping his dick in barbed wire, and then raping someone. Well, it was very dark. And then a baby gets killed.

Anyway, it gets... It's like so nonchalant. And the baby gets killed. Anyway. But I did the color version. So he wanted to have a color. Because the original version was in black and white, which I didn't do that one. I did the color version because he wanted to have a trilogy all in color because he thought the black and white... The idea for the second one, it was supposed to feel like an arthouse movie, which is why he initially did it in black and white. But I was like, I went home to my wife...

whilst I was doing the second one and I said you would not believe what I had to track this morning it was like his his dick like to make the more you know I was like I was like the amount of brown and red laughing

It was like... So is it just like when you're working, because I don't know how the process works. So do you have like one scene just like frozen on like a big screen in front of you and you're like just adjusting the colors? So you had like this screen of like a dick wrapped in like sandpaper for like hours, just like right in front of you. Not hours, but minutes. But they were long minutes. It felt like hours. They were long minutes. Yeah.

So I just want to come in. I mean, I don't want to get too technical, but we work in the same field. If you're editing it, I feel like it's not as bad. You're picking the best take and you're putting the images together and it is what it is. But when he comes in, he's got to punch in to the image. And when I say punch in, I mean hone in to the details of that scene

And literally take a frame. Yeah. And like break it down. Into like, it's like detail. Yeah. Break it down. Like he's staring. He's staring at it and he's breaking it down. He's like, there's a little too much brown here. Like, I feel like, I feel like it's a little too much here. Like, yeah.

The tone is a little too cold. Meanwhile, the director's coming in like, more brown. More brown. More red. You're freeze-framing on these blown-up images of people face-to-ass. I'm just trying to imagine, how do you deal with that? You stop seeing images and you start seeing colors. Yeah.

And composition. And you try to dissociate yourself from the actual subject matter. Yeah. Basically. And the other thing, blood. Blood is really difficult to get right on screen because it can look wrong. And you always want it to look realistic, right? Well, I mean, the general consensus about blood is like people think it's red, but it's actually not red. No. It's not. What is it? When it dries, it's almost black. Yeah. Right.

It's like a dark cherry. It's very dark. It's like a chrome, like dark brown. It's kind of somewhere between eggplant and, you know, like a dark scarlet kind of... Yeah. Yeah. But blood is difficult. Blood is difficult. Chocolate's difficult. Chocolate's really hard to get right, especially melted chocolate, actually. Really? Yeah. Because...

It's like any of these in-between colours. Sorry, we're straying into colourist talk now. But the greys, neutral colours are always difficult. Rhodes are difficult. Chocolate's difficult because everyone knows what nice chocolate looks like. But then you just tell it one notch wrong and it suddenly goes pink. Or one notch wrong and it kind of goes grey. But blood is the same. And...

And then the third one, so the second one was an art house. The first one was like European. Second one was like British style art house. The third one was Hollywood. And so that was a different proposition. I never saw the third one. The third one is so self-referencing. Tom, the director, appears in the third one as himself. What? Can you imagine that mental gymnastics that went around that? Yeah. Yeah.

It's kind of like breaking the fourth wall. If there was a fifth wall, that would have been broken as well. But the third one is outrageous. It's almost like a...

Spoof parody of the other two. So it's like it's set in a prison, right? Uh-huh. Well, you're very informed of the human centipede. No, no, I've only seen the posters. I've seen the posters. So in the posters, it's clearly communicating, okay, they're doing a huge human centipede of hundreds of prisoners, right? And I'm guessing from what you're telling me now, how it's self-referencing, is that maybe the prison guards or the prison warden got the idea from watching the human centipede? Exactly right, exactly right.

So he gets the idea from watching the human centipede. That's crazy. And he gets the director, Tom, in as a consultant. That's brilliant. To do it to the prisoners. To kind of help say whether or not it's viable or not. That's actually kind of brilliant. And it's like a punishment system. Wow. So the governor is played by the same guy who played the doctor in the first movie. He recently died, which is sad. He was a really good actor. But it was devised as a punishment system.

you know, for the prisoners. I mean, it's a pretty bad punishment, right? So that's why they had like 400 people. Especially for the people at the end of the centipede. I mean, you know. Like, I mean, you want to be the first one, right? I mean, that's the best position to be in. I mean, my one thing was like, say for example, even if you're just like six people down, there's nothing. There's nothing happening. There's not a big difference between that and like the 400th. Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But still, you want to be as far off as you can. Even the second. I mean, come on. Even the second. Yeah, but still, you want to be. No, still. I mean, you get to that level. You get to that point where. Yeah, but if the human centipede, in terms of its digestive tract, is really working like the crazy guy thinks it would, then if you're at the end, you're getting like everyone's shit. You know what I mean? But then you'd have to be putting enough food for 400 people in the front end. Oh, yeah. That's true. That's true.

So that was one of my thoughts as I was like, is this really viable? And then it was like, of course it's not fucking viable. You're like, stop it. Stop it. Color it. Color it. Less brown. Less brown. Less brown. More orange. Oh my God. That is fucking hilarious. Do you feel like it changed you coming out the other end? Are you a little traumatized by it? Second one. Really? Second one was a little... I can imagine the second one being a bit traumatizing. Honestly, if you're... And he asked my opinion.

And he said, what do you think? And I said, I think you went too far with this one. I really do. I think that's... Maybe to him, it's like it's a compliment. His name is Tom... Tom Six. Tom Six. Do you feel after talking to him, do you still have a relationship with him today? We talk on Twitter occasionally. Okay, cool. Do you feel like his motive was just shock and awe? Sensationalism? He's playing a role of that shocking guy.

Just to be like something so shocking. Exactly. He was anti-Hollywood. He was telling me how many offers he would get.

from big studios so they could put his name on their next horror movie to give it some legitimacy. Well, I mean, you have to go back to that time because at that time you had someone like Eli Roth that was creating films that were, I mean, from an American Hollywood perspective, that were pretty graphic, right? Which films were those? Eli Roth? Yeah. Like Hostel? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For example. And like...

I'm sure from this director's perspective, he's like, well, if you're going to do that, I'm just going to up the game. What about Saw? Who did Saw? Canadian guy. I can't remember his name, but he ended up directing Aquaman. Yeah. So he completely sold out. Aquaman was so shitty, so cheesy. Yeah, it wasn't good. It wasn't good. But...

But yeah, Tom didn't do that to his credit. But he relishes his independence and he relishes his role as this... He gets death threats on Twitter all the time and he loves that shit. You kind of have to. Because he shows he's doing it. Tom Six, you're so sick. But you're going to go to hell, man. If you're going to make those kind of films, you kind of have to live it. You know what I mean? Well, it's...

Again, to oversimplify the situation, it's almost like he's making this film to troll people. It's like you're trolling people. He's the ultimate. I mean, yeah, I wonder if he really thinks of himself as a troll. I think he wouldn't necessarily disagree with that, I think. Like he's trying to get a reaction out of people, right? He's definitely getting a reaction from people and it's definitely part of his thing. He's like going somewhere where nobody thought anyone would ever go.

But I respect that. Like, I respect that big time, honestly. And especially in today's culture where everything's so PC and everyone's like walking on eggshells, right? It's like a very conformist kind of environment right now, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. So like, I respect people who kind of want to just break out of that and just like kind of just shock people. I don't want to change a subject, but like just suddenly I feel like the urge, I just want to ask you. Sure. Um,

Because you're just saying right now about the whole PC culture, cancel culture, right? And we've talked about this a lot. Do you feel that it's getting a little bit...

too extreme, too overboard? Or do you feel like, no, it's not enough, if anything? Where do you stand? What do you mean? Okay, so I don't know about the UK, but at least in America, cancel culture is a big thing, right? So it's like you say something that may not be politically correct, and because you said it, you're going to get silenced, right? Oh, I see. Or you've said something in the past that's

where you may or may not still believe that type of mentality. Like the guy who got fired from the Oscars. What was his name? The black comedian. Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart. Yeah, yeah. Who lost the Oscars gig because of a homophobic tweet that he'd made like 10 years previously. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, do you feel like the ultra-progressive agenda, is it like, do you feel like it's, yeah, it's right. You should be that way. Or do you feel like it's a little bit too much? I think the intention is right. Yeah.

But I think the application might be a little bit overzealous. Because I think, you know, it removes the opportunity for redemption, right? And especially in America, people love redemption. They love the idea of the guy who was... Well, the comeback story. Talk about filming. I mean, that's a story element, right? Exactly. The comeback story, right? The comeback story. It's a film thing, yeah. So I think that...

Yeah, I think the application is a little bit overzealous sometimes. I think you should allow people to say, look, shit, I had different views then. I've educated myself. I've changed. I've got better views.

And I'm sorry. You know, I think, and I think that kind of, if somebody's genuine about that, that should be accepted at face value. Yeah. So the reason why I'm asking that is because I was actually wishing that you were not like that because we're all on the same level in that way. I was wishing you'd be like, hell no, man, like cancel that shit because then we can debate about it. Oh, I see. But no, we're all the same. Sorry, I'm too fucking metrosexual about it. We're all the same. We all have sense. You know, we all have a brain, you know.

I know. Well, I mean, I know that I used to have views and attitudes to things that I don't have anymore. We all change. People change. Yeah. I mean, if I'm going to be judged by my worst moments, right? If you're going to judge someone based on their worst moments...

then like who, like none of us would be good people. Oh, we'd all be screwed, right? We'd all be screwed. Especially things we did when we were like kids and didn't know any better. Yeah, of course. Because life is about that. Life is about experiencing and how do you grow from your experiences. Yeah. That's what life is. And most of us who are well-meaning and somewhat intelligent, we can reflect on our past mistakes more

without any external pressure to do so. But just for our own self-growth, like we reflect on like a lot of things we did in the past. We're like, oh man, you know, I shouldn't have done that. Like that was a stupid. And you grow from that, you know? Yeah, definitely. What's interesting is like, if I'm going to analyze myself, it's like, I've actually went the opposite way. So when I was younger, I was like, I was the ultra progressive when I was younger. I was all about like, yo, like fucking free speech. Like, you know,

They're oppressed. I'm there for the oppressed. You were a little snowflake, weren't you? Not a snowflake, but I was there. But now, being older... Yeah, I would probably be Antifa at that time. But being older and going through life, you start realizing that it's actually not so black and white. And you actually realize that if you think about...

Maybe your own personal agenda and you think about the opposite agenda, maybe both have their own reasons that are legitimate. And how do you find that middle ground? Because nothing is black and white. And only through experience and experiencing both sides and hearing and having that dialogue that you can have that type of conversation where maybe you can progress. Because if you're extreme, either way...

Where's the progression? Because you're not going to change the mind of somebody who's really dedicated on their... Entrenched in their thought, right? And the more extreme you are with them, the harder they're going to dig their heels in on their side, their position. There's so much outrage now. People are outraged on both sides. And everyone becomes entrenched. You see that especially in America. Yeah. 100%. And even like a previous episode we had, like a recent one that we put out,

I had a conversation recently with a friend in America. And so the things that I said on that show... Oh, he listened to that episode? Yeah, yeah. So the things I said on the show were... You could construe it as a little bit controversial...

Because I'm more in the middle. I'm not like, oh, 100% black lives matter and stuff like that. I'm not on the side where being like, there is no racism. All lives matter. No. I'm looking at both sides and thinking about what's the proper way to move forward and not having an answer. And that's the whole point of my conversation. I don't have an answer. But...

You have certain friends and society where depending on which side you're on, they're going to be like, no, you pick a side. Pick a side. You're not picking a side. Pick a fucking side. Yeah. Like if you're not with us, you're against us kind of mentality, right? Yeah, yeah. But is that progression though? God knows. I think that certainly recently things are becoming more

are divided and more everyone's becoming things are moving more you know in in the 90s everything was kind of converging but everything's diverging you you you're heading more towards nationalism yeah right like self-pride like and and we were talking about that like you were i think we're like globally we're heading towards more isolationism absolutely right yeah absolutely and like i feel like what the hell happened like how did that happen like like what was the catalyst for

to make the world go in that direction. Because like you said, back in the 90s, 80s, 90s, even early 2000s, I felt like we were converging to more globalism. Yeah. And you couldn't pick between Republicans, Democrats, right? And suddenly it's like Brexit. Well, do you think time and history just works in a circle?

Like history is bound to always repeat itself. And we're just kind of like, we go through cycles, right? Cycles of openness and then it repeats. And like, you know, something opening, closing, opening, closing, and opening, closing. Absolutely. We're just going back in circles. I strongly believe in that cyclical nature of almost everything. And I also, unfortunately, strongly believe that we're not very good at learning from our mistakes. Yeah. So, yeah. That's a slightly pessimistic view, but...

It is, but like humans, because we have relatively short lifespans in terms of the grand scheme of things, right? Mm-hmm.

So we tend, and we're all selfish in nature. So we tend to think of things that immediately apply to our frame of time, our reference of what time is. So things that happened before our time is not really part of our immediate kind of psychology. So even something that happened even a few decades before I was born, let's say,

is not something that's really ingrained in how I process things, how I think about things and how I go about things just from my own personal point of view and from my selfish gain, right? So like we don't really learn from things. - Yeah, well, how could you, right? Because you were not in the cut. - Well, I think like a really clear and timely example of that is like everyone's saying, like you turn on the news and everyone's saying like, they're talking about the COVID, right? They're talking about coronavirus. They're talking about this is unprecedented,

unprecedented, like we're going through unprecedented times with this virus. And I'm thinking, this is not unprecedented at all. Like humans have gone through

viral outbreaks pandemics many times throughout human history 1918 exactly the spanish flu the influenza 1918 which was much much much more worse than what is i mean 50 more than 50 million people estimated died my grandmother was a nurse in the uk really oh yeah at that time in 1918 and she told my dad that

People were dying so quickly that they would come in they'd be admitted to the hospital and they'd be in the corridor like in a holding like on a gurney or something and they would die before they could get them into a holy shit into a ward going to what you just said actually there's a There's a journalist in the UK called Esther Ransom. She's an older lady She's in her 70s and she's trying to get this movement going where grandkids interview their grandparents and

And that's how you start to get a perspective that's longer than your lifespan. So it goes back to their lifespan and maybe they talk about their grandparents and their grandparents. And then you might be able to break some kind of a cycle because you have a generation of kids who know everything.

their own personal histories back 100 years, maybe. You zoom out a little bit. Exactly. And you get a reference for it. How do you learn from history? Yeah, exactly. That's the thing, right? Because with the Spanish flu, they call it, or the influenza of 1918 or whatever, I mean, that's just 100 years ago. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, literally, just 100 years ago. Yeah. But yet, now, 100 years later, with the coronavirus, which is...

extremely mild compared to that. Comparison, yeah. By comparison, we're saying this is unprecedented. Like the nerve, you know? Well, and then, you know, you go back to the plague in 1666 in the UK. Yeah.

And the Great Fire of London. Yeah. Or the Black Plague that everyone, you know, in the Dark Ages. That killed like, what? Like a quarter of the world's population. Yeah. In Europe. And that... And that was before, like, accessibility. Yeah. Well, yes, indeed. Yeah. And that led to the end of the feudal system, which was the old social system that existed in the Middle Ages. The Black Death ended that. So, yeah. I wonder what we're going to see. I hope it's not a world war. Yeah.

Because what we're saying is like, you have two routes, right? You have one where you have a little bit more, I would say, sensibility towards a global culture where everybody's in the same boat. Or you can very easily go to the other side where you could just continue this isolationism and be like, I'm blaming. Yeah. I think the leadership has to change first.

What's blowing my mind is how did we go from the human centipede to this conversation? That's what's blowing my mind right now. Yeah, that's quite interesting. How did it happen? We successfully segued from the human centipede to talking about the world post-COVID. Yeah. And like...

I'm thinking like the greater context of alcohol because we've been drinking for a little bit already. So like time in a cyclical nature, like, like philosophy, but that's how it is, right? That's how it is. Like how it is on the show. Conversations, conversations, conversations. Yeah, definitely. Cheers. Cheers guys. Oh man. So this is so delicious by the way. So we had to get that in and we had to get kind of your take, your experience working on the human centipede. We couldn't let that go. Yeah.

I'm glad we did. Globally, the world is a human centipede right now. And it's like, are you going to swallow that shit or not? Oh, nice. Quote of the day right there.

The world is a human centipede. Well, Simon, you worked on a lot of Hollywood movies, right? When I was a lot younger, yeah. Yeah, I did some online stalking. Oh, you did? Yeah. Okay. I read some stuff about you online. And, I mean, you have a pretty history, like, fascinating, like, I think,

history and story of how you got to this position. But before we talk about that, I think one thing I want to point out, you worked on Event Horizon. I did. That is one of my all-time favorite movies. Do you know what? There are two movies, and you might bring up the second one later, but there are two movies that everybody mentions when I say I worked on them. They say, that's one of my favorites. Yeah.

And Event Horizon is the main one. It has like a cult following. Yeah, definitely. It really does, right? Like I was a lot younger when I first saw it. But when I first saw it, it immediately struck me. And I'm like, this is one of the best horror movies I've ever seen. And you never saw the director's cut, right?

There's a director's cut which never got released. I think it's too gruesome. There's probably only a handful of people who ever got to see it. It was a bit too gruesome. You've seen it? Yeah, I have, yeah. So what's added? I don't know how well you remember the plot line, but there's the bit where he kind of goes through

the black hole goes through to the other side and there's a whole section which wasn't in the released film of this kind of bizarre orgy kind of... But it was a very violent one. And a lot of it was done in silhouette. There were people like eating other people and there were limbs being ingested and it was very graphic and very kind of scary looking with distorted shapes and paint. It was a little bit like...

the Bruegel, the seventh circle of hell paintings, you know, those ones. It was that. There was lots of bizarre shit happening to people in this. And I think they felt that that was probably not necessary. I would love to see that. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I saw, I must've seen it. It must be a good 22 years ago, but yeah, I, I, I did a, I, I,

made a version or graded a version of it that was really only ever meant to be seen by the producers and the kind of top brass. And I don't think it ever went any further than that. Wow. To my knowledge. That's too bad. To my knowledge. All right, listeners, go watch Event Horizon. It is a good movie. It is a good movie. It's a great horror movie. Yeah. A great sci-fi horror movie. One of the best sci-fi horror movies in my opinion. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and it's different from something like Alien because there's this more...

esoteric kind of thing about what what does happen when you go through a black hole you know and like what is hell like what is like what is your depiction of hell like what is hell to you right because that's what it is they say like it went they went into hell right yeah but um so before in very early on you were trying to get into the music industry also read that yeah that's true what's that about uh well i have a degree in music and my entire not to cut you off but

in online, I don't know who wrote this about you, but it said a failed, a failed attempt at the music industry. I don't know. I think that was a, that was a, that was a paraphrase of something I'd written for a, for another like online publication. But yeah, no, I was, it was a failed attempt to get into the music industry. I, I,

I graduated with a degree in music and I thought that was the thing that I should do. I always loved hanging out in recording studios and I had this kind of vague idea of being in A&R or music production of some sort. And I started working in the music industry in the early 90s. So I graduated in 1901 and I started working in like 1992-1993.

And it was the kind of, it was like the last days of Rome in the music industry in those days. There were way too many drugs. There were way too many opportunists and people who were just there for the money because there was tons of money. You know, a CD used to be 50 pounds. Yeah, it's a different world back then. It's 140 kuai now. Who would pay 140 kuai for an album? Like nobody. So, yeah, so I kind of hated it. I really hated it. The, um...

I also used to have a dream of going into the music industry in my younger days. Right. And when I was much younger, and this was when I was back in New York, I interned for Bad Boy Records. Oh, right. Yeah, Puff Daddy. Yeah, record label. So I interned there thinking it was going to be like a super glamorous internship. I did see a lot of crazy things, but I thought it was going to be super glamorous, right? Right.

But what I ended up doing was, because I worked in, I was an intern in the A&R department. And I ended up just being a chauffeur.

So they just kind of made me the bitch and like drive them around. But I was driving around like the top executives at Bad Boy Records. So I was driving them around to like big business meetings, like dinner meetings, like just whatever they needed to do. And if they needed the car washed, I had to drive the car to go get the car washed while they were sitting in a meeting.

things like that. Yeah. And it was, it was, it was looking back, it was an interesting experience, but yeah, like you, I, I hated, I hated every second of it when I was there. Yeah. I felt like completely useless. Yeah. And it feels kind of better now because I think, you know, Napster and Pirate Bay and all this stuff that kind of basically destroyed the old regime of, of the way that labels used to work. It's kind of got rid of all the toxic stuff.

People from the industry one would hope and I think the people who are doing it now are really doing it because they love music Yeah, because there's not all of that extra cash anymore. There's a story in the Must be in the mid 90s late 90s EMI records got taken over by I can't remember the company that took him over but the guy at the new boss had a look at the finance sheet and

And he was like ticking off, yeah, there's the wages, there's the rent, there's the fleet of cars and this and that. And then he came across a line that said chocolates and flowers. And for a year, they were spending in excess of £200,000 on flowers and chocolates. And he couldn't work out what it was.

And he was asking around like saying, flowers and chocolates, what the fucking hell is this? And then it turns out that was the drugs. That was the drug budget. 200,000 pounds. A year. On drugs. Wow. I would think even more. That's 20 years ago. I don't know. Maybe they'll buy you a lot of drugs these days. I don't know. But yeah. So I think that those days are kind of over. Oh, yeah.

It might be interesting to see what it's like these days. But, yeah. Yeah. When you were first offered the job, you had an offer from New York and you had an offer here in Shanghai. Yeah. Were they paying you about this? Was the offer for about the same amount of money? No, it was a different amount of money. And that kind of came into it as well. There was more money being offered in China because the job was a more prestigious level. Mm-hmm.

the job in New York was almost like being a partner in a much smaller shop. And that kind of came into it as well, a little bit, but the main thing was the adventure. The main thing was like...

Let's just see what happens, you know? Well, what's the most surprising thing? I haven't been here for two years. You feel... Wow. The most surprising thing was the lack of culture shock. The lack of culture shock. Interesting. I was expecting it to be like... I was expecting to feel really uncomfortable, like really grossed out or whatever. But I still haven't come to that point because...

I think, although there are certain things in China which are very different, it's not that different. Well, I've said this many times on this show. I've had more culture shock moving from New York to Los Angeles than I did from moving from the United States to China. Yeah. I really did. Yeah. Maybe it's because I was expecting it. It's an expectation thing. You're expecting it to be really different. So you're kind of...

Your bar is raised up really high and then you get here and you go, oh, there's McDonald's and there's Domino's and I can get a beer in a bar. And it's like, you know, so that's fine. What did you think you were getting yourself into before actually coming here? What did I think? I read a lot about, you know, Chinese culture, Chinese customs, like the green hat thing, not giving anyone a clock or...

Not giving anything in groups of fours. 带绿帽子. 带绿帽子. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's good. And like, yeah, not giving anyone a clock. Don't send shoes as gifts either. Shoes? What's the shoes one? It's like telling them to leave. Oh, I see. Don't give shoes as gifts. I was the green hat, clocks and things in fours. That was, there was a thing. Four is a, because four in Chinese is 四, which sounds like 四, which is the Chinese word for die. Yeah, right.

It's funny that out of all the things that you pick out about China, those are the things you brought up. Yeah, when he said, like, I did my research, I was thinking, like, he was thinking, like, more societal, like, deeper things. He's like, yeah, but the green hat thing. Yeah.

I was like, well, yeah, I mean, the Guangxi, I just still, I understand kind of what Guangxi means now. I kind of didn't really then because I think what I tended to do, and China is such, to somebody from the West who's never experienced China as a country, it seems like a very alien kind of place. And really, when you start hearing words like Guangxi,

And then reading about some of the customs, you start to think, wow, it's really different. It's like completely different from what my experience is. And what if I make a mistake? What if I do things wrong? But really, the longer I spend here, yes, there are still some things that are very alien and unusual to me. But...

you know relationships people being a good person you know that's kind of universal i mean that doesn't that doesn't change and um what uh the things that i found is that there's a lot of misunderstanding i think about uh chinese people in the rest of the world i think the common conception is that chinese people are rude right they shove and they do this and that's it's like but

If everyone's doing it, it's not rude, right? And everyone in China does it because that's just the way people are. They're not being rude. They're just like, I need to go there. You're in my way. So I'm going to go through you rather than around you. You know, it's not rude. It's just life, you know, but when you transpose that to somewhere like the UK where everyone's like very conscious of their personal space and,

very like, oh my goodness, they're being so aggressive. So, you know, you just, people, it's a misunderstanding. Yeah. It's a misunderstanding. So, I was trying to think what else I found out about, or I was expecting from China. Oh yeah, banquets with the big lazy Susan and like gambes and all the rest of it. And how important it was to be drunk in,

like in a particular kind of way. Well, like drinking by Joel. Yeah. What's the drunk courage thing? What's the like, uh, there's a word. I can't remember it now. There's a word for somebody that gets drunk, but doesn't lose their shit.

and and still is kind of that word i don't know that word i lose my shit so i don't know what you're talking about there's a word i might know there's some of these words like about you know is he a good drinker or is he about is he the kind of drinker who's just going to puke everywhere or you know fall over and be and make a mess of themselves or is he going to be the kind of person who still holds it together and can keep going you know all night but um

I still haven't been to a banquet two and a half years. You're like, I'm ready for it. Do my research. I did my research. You were like preparing for months, you know, training for months. Exactly. I was like, how low should I put my glass? It's like a Rocky montage. Exactly. You're like preparing. Exactly.

now two years later you're still waiting for the opportunity somebody please invite me to a banquet well do you find like in the work setting or for business relations like you have to like drink with people do you feel like that's a big part of your job here I not as big as I was expecting it to be yeah

So, you know, I have to go freestyle and just drink myself at home alone all the time. Cheers. We're here with you. Don't worry. And I have a bar in my room. How have you seen it? Oh, really? Oh, yeah. So you have a bar in your room? No, no, no. Let me get into this. So basically, I was doing a project and Simon was the colorist on the project. And this is the first time we worked together. I walk into his room where he does coloring. And, you know, it's...

good size there's a couch the seat you know there's tables and stuff like that and then on the side like there's a little mini bar I'm like whoa and I've been to many different you know studios to do color and this is the first one where alcohol is there and right away I'm like I like this guy right away there's another term for that it's called alcoholism that too have you been here the whole time since COVID broke out I was away in Malaysia where we did actually see fireworks like the long strings of firecrackers

Well, I came back on the 4th of February. Okay. So just before, well, I came back into the middle of the extended CMY holiday. And because we were a little worried about my family, about the kids and my wife, the policy then, and is still the policy, that if you get infected, you have to go to a fever hospital and you're not allowed any visitors. Yeah. I have an 11-year-old and a 7-year-old.

And the thought of either of them having to be isolated in the hospital for two weeks with potentially no one speaking their language was a bit too much of a thing. So we decided to send them back to the UK. And that's where they are now. This whole time? This whole time. Oh, they're still there? They're still there. Because they enrolled in a local school in the UK and they were loving it so much. And we thought that China might close the border potentially.

And then we had a discussion and said they're really enjoying the school. And we thought, okay, so let's just let it slide. And then the border closed. So we are where we are now. And we're hoping that that will change soon. So...

But yeah, it's tough. So it must be tough. So it's your wife and your kids. They're both in England right now. You're here by yourself. Yeah. And so is there, are you feeling like some anxiety about like, because you don't really know like when you'll really be able to see them again. Early on, there were memes going around saying, you know, the last time China closed their borders, it was 30 years. But I'm hoping it's not. I'm really hoping it's not going to be that. Yeah.

Yeah, there's massive anxiety. And it's the uncertainty, I think, which is not just for me and people in my position, relatively privileged position,

But over the whole world, people are just having to deal with this massive uncertainty. They don't know what's going to happen in the future. There's no, you know, you'd be able to look forward to, say, Christmas or the next big day in the diary and thinking, well, it's going to be pretty much like that, barring something terrible. But now nobody really knows what's going to happen. So, yeah, huge uncertainty and just trying to make the best decisions for forward planning that we can. Mm-hmm.

Assuming that they're going to come back here. My wife just got offered a job in Shanghai, which is fantastic. So she has even bigger reasons to come back. And she loves living here. They all do. So, you know, we really hope that that's going to change soon.

Now, you heard there's protests happening in London now, too, right? There are, yeah, for the George Floyd stuff. It's all over the world now. There's in Canada, London. Everywhere. Everywhere now, right? The whole world, yeah. Major cities all over. Yeah, it's good. I mean, it's a good thing. It's a good thing that people are kind of waking up to that. Yeah. But how intense is it in London with the protests? Is it pretty mildly peaceful? I heard that they were largely peaceful, but they were protesting outside Downing Street, which is where the Prime Minister of the UK lives. Yeah.

And that turned a little bit violent, but we're not kind of... The news report was unclear as to the reason for that. Well, there's a good amount of blacks in the UK. Yeah. And there's a huge problem with racism. Oh, I heard. Yeah. It's... You know, America, just like, you know, it does in everything else, it does everything bigger and better than everybody else, including racism. So UK...

uh, you know, was heavily participated in the slave and in the slave industry. Uh, we went around the world basically being massive vandals to countries, Hong Kong, China, Africa, America, South America, you know, we went all over the world kind of screwing things up for everyone. So, um, we did, we really did. We did India as well, obviously. So, uh,

There is endemic racism in the UK as well. We were in a slightly different way. There's less obvious segregation than there is in the US, but it's definitely a problem. Does it manifest like it does in the US with police brutality? I think there's a good amount of evidence to show that. I think it's less of a problem, slightly less, but it's still definitely a problem. Yeah.

But isn't that insane that, you know, we come from the States, you come from the UK, and we're all here in China now, and, you know...

we're not living within that environment anymore. Yeah. And now, you know, yes, we are Asian, like Chinese background, but we are still, you know, Western educated and culturally and stuff like that. So, you know, being in China where you have like 99% Chinese people, 99.9, whatever. Yeah. It's a monoculture. Yeah. Monoculture. Yeah. Um,

you know, it's a little different, you know, like standing out here for us, maybe a little bit of fitting in yet standing out yet fitting in, you know, it's like, it's a different way of looking at things, you know, when you're living day to day. Because like for you, you know, coming from UK, maybe like the majority is more white, right? And now here you're a part of the minority. Like, how's that feel? Like that sort of switching of roles? Yeah, that is...

Well, it's an advantage sometimes, you know. Professionally, it's an advantage because people will always remember you, you know. Oh, yeah, it's the yin guo ren with a hu zi, you know. So people will remember you and that's an advantage. When you're out, up until actually, up until recently...

I'd never felt anything kind of negative, never felt any kind of negativity. It's more curiosity and friendliness from Chinese people in the great majority of them. But just after the lockdown, I started to see people looking at me slightly differently. Maybe it was paranoia, maybe it wasn't, but you would get slightly more kind of... Just a longer look, right? A longer look and a slightly more disapproving one, you know?

like what are you doing here kind of thing have you got the virus did you bring it here and I was like I'd had to like practice you know I had I've been here the whole time guys so um

Yeah, but now that's dissipated, I think. Like you were talking about, everything's almost back to normal. And that goes for the way that I am perceived. I mean, I can add to a story like that. I recently traveled to Chongqing for a shoot. And so I had to, before going there, it was about just under a month ago, a couple weeks ago, I had to do the test, right? So to make sure that my COVID test, right? And I had to have that paperwork to prove that I didn't have it. Yeah.

Now, that was just one step because I'm not a local, so I don't have my ID attached to my health and stuff like that. So when I went to Chongqing, I had to give my health report as well as my passport, obviously. That's my ID. The minute... So we had another... The DP was Australian, right? So the DP, they'll look at it and be like, okay.

started like writing it down and then they pick up my passport which is American they go and all of a sudden they freak out a little bit they're like sound the alarms literally they're like when did you come in when did you come in how long where have you been the whole time and just like

They're questioning me. I'm like, dude, I've been here since February. I'm good. I have the report. I just got tested two days ago. I'm good. And they didn't care. They're like, oh, we have to send this to the police department, blah, blah, blah. And they went all out. And a couple of the scenes that we were shooting at, we almost got blocked to not be able to go in. And I couldn't. We had to go through all this paperwork if we wanted to shoot the location. So we had to do a last minute change because I was American.

So I get... So in a funny way, it's like, you know, as a foreign-faced person in China, they'd be like, oh, that'll look a little bit longer. But then they don't look at me that way. But then the minute I put my ID, they're like, America. Because they don't need to see his ID to know that he's a foreigner. Yeah. I've heard stories from other foreigners because there was like a period of a couple weeks right when...

you know things were improving here in china and things were starting to get really bad uh especially in the states and in european countries there was like a period of a couple weeks here where yeah i think the locals uh were really on edge when they saw a foreigner right on a white person you hear you hear stories like in a subway people are like avoiding them even in my complex apartment complex here um i had some guests you know to come on the podcast and they were foreigners and it was around that time

And I had to go down and try to convince. Oh, your bow hand wouldn't let them in? Yeah, they wouldn't let them in. Right. And so I went down and I talked to them and convinced them. And after about like 20 minutes of me like being basically vouching for them and being like, it's on me. And they made me like sign something like if anything happens, like I'm taking responsibility for this, blah, blah, blah.

to get them in. And then that was it. So, but yeah, there was like a period of like two weeks, I think, that it was like that. But I think it is better. It is getting better now. It feels better. Because the Chinese news was broadcasting what was happening out in UK and America 24 hours, you know? And just like in Western news, it was like, it was hysteria, you know? So, of course, they're going to have a reaction to that. Well, I also think it was this feeling of like,

I mean, because obviously the virus hit here first. And China had been, at that point in time, had been locked down for the longest out of any other country at that point in time.

And it was just starting to get better. So I felt like the people had this like feeling of like, oh, like, you know, we've just been locked down. We've been going through all this shit for so long. And now it's just starting to get better. And things are starting to get worse outside that they were like ultra protective, like ultra defensive, ultra sensitive about any like.

any like vulnerabilities of this like happening again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And it's been hard one, you know, it's been really hard one by China, I think. And I think that's something that the rest of the world just still doesn't quite get. Yeah. If you really look at it, I mean, let's look at it. We live here right now. Look how,

chill everything is now. Look how good everything is now. It's like, honestly, if you were to go out, walk out right now, besides the fact that people are wearing masks, you would have no idea that there was ever a pandemic. Yeah. You would have no idea. Yeah, it's true. I was actually just having a conversation with my American friend about that yesterday and he was, and I said the exact same thing. He's like, that you know of? I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,

Hold on, hold on. He's like, you don't know. They might be holding back numbers. I'm like, stop. No, no. I've had friends that said that too because they're reporting, but do you really trust those numbers? I mean, but do you really trust numbers anywhere? Yeah, I've had this similar kind of, similar discussions online with other people. Well, we don't know what it's really like in China. I can tell you what it's really like in Shanghai. And what it's really like is normal. You know, so...

Like, do you know anyone that's been disappeared, you know, like, or anything like, you know, like. Here's a really good one. I don't know anyone in China in my extended social network, which is admittedly quite small in China because I've only been here for two weeks, two years rather. I don't know anyone who has had the virus. Nor I. Nor I. And this goes to the sixth degree of separations, like what they might network of friends of friends of friends of friends of friends. Yeah. I don't know. And you would think like if it was like,

you know, a big thing, eventually somewhere down the line, you would know someone's relative or someone's friend or someone's acquaintance or coworker that got it. I don't know a single person. I do. Okay. Okay. I take it back. So one of my coworkers was taught, we're talking over lunch and he, cause we were asking, I asked everybody in my office, I said, does anybody know anybody that COVID? Everyone said no, except for one. He said, I'm in a group chat of like 500 people. Yeah.

And one person said that they had it. Like they themselves had it? Yeah, and they just announced it. They're like, I got it. I'll let you know what happens and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then basically he didn't have symptoms. It was like he had some symptoms, but nothing like major. Right. And that was it.

And conversely to that, in the UK and the US, where I have friends, obviously most of my friends and family as well, I know about 10 people. Yeah, same here. I know people in the States as well. I was about to say the same thing. I don't want to sound like I'm just hopping on the gravy train here. But the only person that I know, because I don't, the only person that I know that actually got COVID is in Los Angeles. Right. Yeah, she lives in Los Angeles. Okay. Yeah.

Right. So I don't know anyone here in China, which is like crazy. And a couple of them got it really bad. You know, one guy was on like, he wasn't on a ventilator. It was something they put you on before they put you on a ventilator. But I mean, thankfully they're all better now or mostly better. But yeah, I think that's really telling. The fact that I can reel off 10 people in the UK that I know. And that makes me think, well, how widespread is it there? You know?

because i can you can only go back to how life was here and this is how i explained it to i got interviewed for a friend for documentary about in china being in china and whatever about with covid

And one of the things I mentioned was that, I mean, forget about what the news has been saying about China withholding information, blah, blah, blah. But basically, the minute that China realized that this is a major thing, and they locked down Wuhan, and in and out, they just locked it down, right? Shanghai did the exact same thing within two days or something like that. And Beijing. Yeah, and the major cities, right? But for Shanghai, I remember we were living there.

we're here and we're like okay but we see all this traffic that's trying to come into shanghai

And there's a lot of Wuhan license plates. Right. And basically, the check was so thorough that either be like, no, you can't come in. Or if you do come in, you're going to this one area. You know what I mean? Yeah. Until we figure out how to control this. Yeah. So it was like... And everyone just kind of played along. And if there are any negative stories that came out of it with police brutality or whatever, I don't know. But...

what I'm trying to get at is that shit got locked down. You know what I mean? And it was like, it was taken very seriously and everyone played their part. You know, whether it's the citizens of the city, you

you know, the municipality or like the cops, like everyone did their part in trying to make sure that this does not get out of hand. People were not debating or protesting whether they should or should not wear masks. Yeah. That was not like a divisive issue where you see in other countries, like they're actually debates and it's become a point of like political debate

just the mere fact of wearing a mask in the middle of a pandemic, which is mind-blowing to me that something as common sense as wearing a mask during a viral outbreak is something that you're debating. Like, that's weird. It's really pointed up. I mean, I know there is some very obvious political...

and societal differences between not just China and the West but Asia and everywhere that isn't Asia. But the level of debate about things that would seem to be self-evident in the West was crazy like masks, like lockdowns, like why did... I mean the UK in particular I've been following for obvious reasons

And the fact that they thought they could get away with herd immunity, which is one of the big scandals of it early on. And then this modeling guy said, oh, by the way, guys, if we do herd immunity, there's going to be 200,000 deaths. And they went, oh, oh, shit. That's what happened. Let's lock down. And then they locked down two weeks after they should have done. And now people are saying, well, the lockdown didn't do anything. I was like, no shit. Of course it didn't do anything because you did it too late. Yeah.

If you'd done it two weeks earlier, we would have been below 20,000 deaths, I think, probably. Yeah, exactly. That's the point, right? So it's like if you locked it down earlier, then that pool of virus that would be spreading would be a lot smaller. But you lock it down two weeks later, that pool is already huge. And then you're just locking it down within that pool, and that pool is already spread. Yeah, it's the delay and time needed for...

the majority of the population to warm up to a certain idea. Yeah. You know, like, because in the beginning, everyone's like, well, you know, I don't really buy into it. And there's a lot of debate. There's a lot of back and forth about it.

Meanwhile, during that time, this virus is spreading. Yeah. Meanwhile, Trump is shaking hands with people and Boris Johnson's going to the hospital and saying, oh, I shook hands with everybody, including the infected ones. So, yeah. And then he got it. Yeah. It's just a crazy time. But like, okay, so on this type of topic where we see the differences between Asia and the West, like, you know...

I mean living here now for the past two years, forget about like you know COVID. I mean do you, you said you've already felt like pretty comfortable having that transition you know. I mean do you think you can see yourself living here even longer? Yeah I would like, I would really like to live here longer. Yeah sure. Which one do you like? The Yamazaki? Let's try the Yamazaki. Okay. Be great. I'm in a group of guys, we're all in the same position. We're all European and our families are all stuck.

in various places. We call ourselves the Corona loners. And we all want to stay in China, you know, because we really, we all love it here. And I just need to get better at Chinese. That's the main thing. Have you had any good, like any funny stories of your times being in China that you want to share? Language related, I've got a couple of good ones. So,

I'm a colorist, right? So I need to learn about colors, lan ce, lu ce, hu lan, you know, all these kind of different color words and liang an, light and dark, right? Yeah, liang an. Oh, okay. I was like, what did he just say? My pronunciation is just really horrible. But so, and then, you know, you're learning. So you're thinking about how you can apply what you've learned already to

And so I was thinking about how you'd say something in English and then translating that to Chinese. And you'd say to somebody, you know, you'd point at a particular color that you'd done. You'd say, do you think that's a good color? And so I was talking to my assistant.

at the time and I said, how's it? And she said, you just asked me if I was horny. So that was a good one. How's it? And it's like, so now you point to the client. So yeah, that was a good one. And then the other one was, so pian is like a slice, right? So,

And I was going, I was thinking about what the other things you can slice. And I was going, 猪片, 鸭片, 鸭片. And they all went, no, no, no, no, no. Because 鸭片 is opium, right? Oh, opium. Yeah. I was like, 鸭片? Sliced duck? No, no, no, no. No, don't say that. Oh, okay.

Yeah, some things just don't translate well if you do like a direct translation. Yeah. That's where I fall down a lot of the time when I'm trying to kind of extrapolate. Because I know a few words, but it's just the sentence construction that escapes me sometimes. It happens to us too, you know? Right, right. Yeah, that's heartening to know that actually. But yeah, the language...

I got to the stage where I could do restaurants and DDs and bars. You know, 卧下鸟一杯啤酒 was the first phrase that I learned. Priorities. I can say that in five languages now, so that's all good. But yeah, and then you kind of get lazy and it's easy to be lazy in Shanghai because enough people speak English. And, you know, if you can make yourself vaguely understood...

And I strongly believe that communication isn't just words, it's attitude. So if you approach something, if you approach something thinking, well, they're not going to understand what I'm saying, then the odds of being understood are much lower. So if you approach it with a good attitude, I think it makes a big difference, even if you're terrible at language like me. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this on the end of the Jenny episode. We were talking about kind of getting out of our own bubbles and comfort zones in terms of hanging around people

our own people, quote unquote our own people. So like Howie and I were obviously we're ABCs, we're English speaking, raised in America. So it's like very comfortable to hang around other Westerners or other ABCs like us and just English speaking from the same type of culture. That's all you interact with. And like you said, it's very easy to get lazy about that.

Instead of kind of pushing yourself outside of that comfort zone to interact and immerse yourself in a crowd or a group that isn't from your own culture, that doesn't speak your language, and you have to force yourself to kind of

adapt to their culture, to their languages. And it's very rewarding, but it does take a lot of effort to kind of get yourself to do that. Yeah, of course. Definitely. Some of my best times were in those situations where I'm totally not around any type of English, any English speakers.

and my Chinese is really pushed to the limits, that kind of thing, especially in the earlier days. But it's a great experience. I feel like that's a very important part of life, that you have to be out of your comfort zone

Because the minute you get out of your comfort zone, that's where growth happens, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And learning. Yeah, definitely. Like just from a selfish standpoint, like you improve yourself, right? Yeah. Like even without having to really do that, just by the mere fact of having moved to China, to Shanghai. Huge. Like my Mandarin like rapidly improved. Yeah.

like by leaps and bounds the moment I moved here. Right, because you're forced to use it every day. You're forced to speak it. You're forced to try to understand it. You're forced to read it. And most of these times it's not convenient because you're like, oh fuck, I wish this was in English. I could just like read through this contract or this instruction, you know, like so much quicker. And it's annoying and it's frustrating.

But at the end of the day, after having gone through all that annoyance and frustration and inconvenience, now it's like you're so thankful you did because like my Mandarin, even though it's not that great still, but...

it's a thousand times better than what it was when I got here. Sure. Right. So, and now it's like, it's relatively very easy for me to live here and I can deal and handle things just fine. Sure. But it was like, oh, if you think back to all those cases that led up to this and that helped me, none of them were that pleasant of experiences at the time. Gotcha. Because you're just annoyed. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's also that assumption that,

Nobody assumes that I can speak any Chinese. But you guys, they would automatically assume that you're completely... So you're at a disadvantage. So that Kuai Di guy or the IE or whoever it is who talks to you, they're just going to go... And you're going...

But with me, they know I don't understand. They can tell. They're like, oh, Yngoran, whatever. So I just... So yeah, I get it. It must have been tough when you were first here. Yeah. Like we talked about this with Kimmery way back in one of our earlier episodes. And we said like, you know, like for a Westerner like you, any bit...

of Chinese that you can speak will be impressive to a local. Because like you said, they're expecting zero from you. - The bar is low. - The bar is so, the bar is inexistent, doesn't exist. There is no bar, right? They don't think you're gonna speak anything. So even the little bit that you can speak, right? And it can be terrible. - Yeah. - Don't be impressed. But for us, when they look at us, we look Chinese,

so the bar is already set as like okay there's a local he should be completely fluent like there's like a no-brainer right so even like our chinese can be like pretty good like 80 percent but that 20 percent difference yeah it's gonna it's gonna sound like it's gonna make us look like we're like the dumbest chinese people in the world you know i mean like you know like that 20 percent difference makes all the um like is a huge kind of um

I don't want to say disadvantage, but it makes it sound like, because all of a sudden you're saying something and they think you're local, they think you're going to be fluent, but you're saying something and it doesn't, you're not saying it completely the right way. So you just look like someone that's like speaking really weird. Yes. You know? Yes. And it doesn't click in their minds right away that, oh, this guy might've grew up out of the country. Yeah. Yeah. It just clicked. The first instinct is like, this guy is just really strange.

But what about, have you got a different accent? Do you know? Because in the UK or in English, you'd know, like if someone's speaking to you with an American accent, it's like, right, okay, they're a native speaker. But then you have a French accent, German accent, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, whatever. Everybody has their own little thing that they bring. And then you know that that person isn't a native speaker necessarily, although they may be completely fluent. So you start to make allowances for understanding and stuff. So when you speak Chinese...

What's your accent? There is a bit of that. So my accent is Taiwanese, basically. Okay. But not fully. It's not like... I mean, it's not like a full Taiwanese accent, but that is what most people think when I start speaking. Most people are like, oh, you're from Taiwan, right? Right. I can get...

I don't sound like a Hong Kong accent at all, but when I do say, you know, like I'm from Hong Kong because I was born there actually, they're like, oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, fine. What about you? Yeah.

I get like Japan. You get Japan? Oh, do you? Korea. Really? How bad is your fucking accent? No, I've gotten Japan, Korea. Like they thought I was like, you know, from one of those other Asian countries or Singapore. Singapore. And Hong Kong. Right. Yeah. You never get Taiwan? Rarely. Once in a while. But both are Mandarin. We learned Mandarin from Taiwanese, you know. Well, I didn't really... Don't forget, I didn't really speak Mandarin growing up. So I spoke Cantonese growing up. And I learned Mandarin when I moved to China. So...

And my teacher, my teacher was a Henanese. I don't think I sound Japanese. Do I sound Japanese, listeners? I don't know. I was never gotten that. But yeah, I get they listen to me. They think I'm a foreigner.

You know, they think that, you know, I'm not from here. Well, now I think because the city is so much more international, they do. But I think when I first got here and I was talking, their first guess was not, oh, he's a foreigner. The first guess was like, like the first, like for the split second. They tried to put their finger on it. Yeah, yeah. The first split second is like, is this guy retarded? Like, what was this guy like? You know, like that's like their first reaction. Like, yeah. Yeah.

You didn't go to school? What's going on here? Yeah, like, is this guy completely, like, illiterate? Like, you know, and the worst... Is he illiterate? No, no, because the worst is, like, I can't really, like, read. Right? Like, I can read, like, now it's a lot better. I can, like, read basic. Yeah.

But when I first got here, I couldn't read anything. But I could speak it, sort of. So I would speak it to them, and then they look at me and they're like, "Okay, is this guy retarded?" And then they point to something, let's say I was trying to handle something at some bureau or something, whatever. And then they point to something, like instructions, like, "Okay, instead of talking to me, because you're obviously a very strange person, why don't you just read this?"

And I look at it, it's all in Chinese. And I look back at them, I'm like, I can't read. And they go, he is retarded. I would literally have to tell people, I cannot read. How many people can say that in their lives? The humiliation of saying that to another grown person. Yeah. I can't.

I can't read. Meanwhile, I'm speaking the language that they want me to read. So it's not like I'm speaking a foreign language and I can't read that. That makes sense. I'm speaking the very same language that they want me to read the text in. And I'm like, I can't read that. Well, that's why it's the hardest thing when you're on a phone with somebody who speaks Chinese and you have to give an address or whatever and then they'll ask you which character that is. I'm like, dude, I don't know.

Right And they're like 三年水的什么什么 I'm like what? No no 我不知道 But like when you like Try to like say your address to them And they're like okay so Because there's a lot of different characters That have the same pronunciation So they're like okay Which character is it? And I'm like

There's like a pause. I'm like, I have no idea. How do you even do that? I give the phone to somebody. Because it sounds the same, right? Yeah. Sounds the same. So how do you explain which character is? It's the one that looks like a little dog. No, you have to break down the sub symbols in that make up the character. There's like a left and then there's like the right. And left, there's like the...

So Chinese characters are made up of a lot of other smaller symbols, right? Lines, dashes, boxes. And they all have a name. They all have a name. Right. There's a certain... For example, on the left, there's a handful of different types that can be... It could be the hand symbol.

as the left or it could be like a mouth character as the left. And so they'll ask you like, which one is it? The mouth? Is it the hand? Yeah, like you say like 五, like the which 五, you're like, oh, 口天舞的舞, right? Or like 粥, like it was like, oh, 三年水的粥 or 没有三年水的粥. You basically use that word in different ways to explain to them which one it is. I see. But then when our vocabulary is limited and to add on that we're not even sure which character it is. So then you're like, 呃...

Just keep repeating the words. It gets complicated. But I feel like, I mean, let me ask you something because you said you were learning Chinese when he first moved here. Do you feel that Chinese language...

I mean, even to the level that you have it now, which you said is, I mean, it's not fluent, but you have some words that you can speak, right? Yeah. I mean, do you feel like it's really difficult? Like for somebody who doesn't speak Chinese at all, like a 100% foreigner coming in here. Wait, so you learned all your Chinese after having moved here? Yeah. Oh, okay. Like how hard is it? Really bloody hard. Yeah.

You almost spit out your drink, Howie. Really bloody hard. And I'll tell you why. On the face of it, Chinese is the most wonderfully logical language.

Right? Coming at it as a foreigner, you look at it, there's no tenses. Isn't that wonderful? Like one of the most confusing things I would imagine in Latin-based languages, English, French, there's no tenses. I'm going, I went. You know, that kind of thing. And then in French, it's just as bad. In Spanish, it's kind of maybe worse. The female, the male. The female, everything's got gender. Like we used to say words have sex in French. But...

Yeah, so there's no tenses. And there are groupings of words, which I really like. So colors, you have se, and then with meat, it's rou, ju, rou, ji, rou, whatever. So that's kind of easy. And then tai, there's lots of really great things about Chinese, which make it actually quite easy to get...

To a very rudimentary level, a very basic level quite. And then counting is good. I love the one hand counting thing. That was fascinating when I first kind of learned it like this. And then which way do you do qi? Do you do ba like that? Or do you do shi like that or like that? You know, there's all those different things, which is great. But what gets you once you get past, you hit these walls. And I've hit about three or four walls.

And I never got to the fifth one, to be honest. But you get to a point, you go, this is so hard. How do I get past this thing? And then you just keep repeating and repeating and trying and trying. And then you get through that thing. There's stuff like, what used to really get me? The use of positional things that then become things in time. So, hou, like hou fan, after dinner, right? But hou mian means...

Behind. So the fact that something can be a positional word, but also a temporal word, that screws... 后面 and 饭后. Yes. 后面 and 饭后. One is a time chronological thing, and one is a positional thing. 爸爸喜欢喝茶。

Fan Ho or Ho Fan, whatever it is. Yeah, dad likes to drink tea after dinner, right? I was like, well, hang on, but Ho Min is behind, so he likes to drink tea behind dinner? But it kind of makes sense though, right? Because it's like behind the time. It's like behind the time.

But it's in front of the time then, behind, because it's like... Do you know what I mean? So it's stuff like that that kind of gets me... You know why? It's because we grew up with the words before and after, like, you know, having that certain meaning. Because I run into this all the time. Like when, for example, we're looking at a film and I want the editor to go back, right? Like, go back, 往后. Yeah. Right? Go back like five seconds, 后五秒. Yeah. But they go forward. Like...

they'll go ho like after whatever the cursor is and that is where they were before because qian is yeah you know so they'll be like i'm like ho i'm like no no no not that ho the other ho the other ho yeah yeah yeah okay yeah yeah i never broke it down like that yeah so i'll get mixed up once in a while still all the time because qian is before yeah yeah but like but like okay same thing because in english it still it still translates because you feel like oh before that

right it still applies he would go it's still different i mean like i get mixed up all the time but it is strange right there is like kind of like almost like these loopholes where it's like yeah and sentence construction simple questions fine i can do that but trying to construct a kind of semi-complex sentence like can you come next week like uh so what would it be um

I can't remember next week. 你下周。 下周。 下周你回来? 你下周可以来吗? 可以来吗? Okay. So things like that, I just like, I don't even know how to say that. I kind of think I have the words to say it. I just don't know which order to put them in, you know? So

So that's like oral Chinese. But when you see Chinese characters, is that complete? Does that look just like alien hieroglyphs to you? I text in Chinese. Oh, so you're using pinyin? Pinyin. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Amazing. Thank God for pinyin. If it wasn't for pinyin... We'd be dead. But you know, there's people that don't use pinyin. And they're just like... Because the different numbers or whatever...

and letters the little thing where you had to draw it on the thing yeah well one is drawing two is like basically each number or character is based off of a stroke like a different like as if you're writing it so they're typing it out based off of as if they're writing it

So like the letter H, I don't know, for example, is this stroke, you know, or that stroke. So they're like stroking it out, like as if they're writing the characters. That's crazy. Oh my goodness. Yeah, because when I see that, I'm like, what the, like mind blown. And I'd be like, no, no, I can only write in Pinyin. Taiwanese people, a lot of Taiwanese people, they don't know Pinyin. So I'm like trying to write in Pinyin, they're like, I don't know Pinyin. Yeah, because they learned traditional Chinese, right? Yeah, and so that's all like strokes and stuff. Yeah. Or they like, Ubi, Ubi. Ubi, Ubi.

You know what blew my mind though is when I first started coming to China or even when I first moved here, I would say the percentage of, let's say, foreigners that were living or based in Shanghai at that time in the mid 2000s, mid to late 2000s,

I would say like 85% didn't really speak almost a lick of Chinese. Really? And like 15% can kind of speak it decently. But now I feel like almost every single foreigner, almost every single farmer can at least have rudimentary and above. You cannot talk shit about a white guy behind his back here in Shanghai anymore. You used to be able to do that all the time. Right. Like this fucking white blah, blah, blah.

And then they would have no idea what you're talking about. But now you can't do that because most of them, it's very likely they would know exactly what you're talking about. It's interesting though. I don't know when that happened or when that change happened. Duolingo came out. Probably after that. But yeah, I get like, sometimes I try to be cute with the kids when they point at me and go, why, Goran? And I say, well, who said why, Goran? Well, she said you, Goran. Yeah.

Actually, that's a great question I want to ask you is your kids. They've been here for two and a half years. Have they been learning Chinese? They haven't been here for two and a half years yet. I was here on my own for like eight months. So they came in January 2019. I didn't know that. I didn't know you had... I was under the impression you had kids after you moved here. Oh, no. No, but so, wow. So like your decision to move here...

like to me is like like it just like that just went up a notch yeah several notches because you were thinking about like because you had kids already and now you're like you're moving to china after like before like this whole new different place yeah whole new different culture yeah with kids uh-huh thinking about their future there yeah like how did you come to that decision to like what what like pushed you over

Like, what made you decide, like, okay, this is going to be, like, a good place for my kids. This is going to be, like, you know, they're going to have a good future here. Cool. Well, when we decided that I was going to come, it was always going to be me coming first and checking stuff out, making sure everything's cool, finding a place to live, finding a school, and all of that stuff. And deciding whether or not I thought it was a good place for us to be as a family.

And, you know, the eldest one, she didn't want to come. I'm sure, yeah. She was 10. Yeah, she was 10 at the time. No, she was 9 at the time. The 10th birthday was just after they arrived. So she was 9. She didn't want to come. She's in a really good group of school friends that she had in London. She was at a nice school that she really enjoyed that she'd been going to since she was 4.

And she is, I hope she won't mind me saying this, but she's naturally a person who likes to have her stuff around her, her routine and her familiar things. So this was a huge upheaval, really for almost for her more than any of us, actually, I would say. It was more of an upheaval for her. The youngest one was five. She doesn't really care either way. She just wants to be, you know,

have her toys and have her stuff around her and have friends to play with. So, which she has all of those things here. So my eldest now really likes it here. Really? She has a really good group of friends that she made almost immediately, which was really good. And that made a big difference. That's a huge thing. Yeah. So who are her group of friends? Like there are other like foreign kids or? No, they're all Chinese. Oh. She has three girl friends who she kind of,

They both, they kind of latched onto each other the first day she was at school. Wow. And they really made her feel welcome. They're all, I don't think they're ABCs, but two of them have definitely spent a long time in the US. So they all speak fluent English, which makes a big difference. But it's kind of annoying to us because we're thinking, well, it'd be great if you could speak more Chinese. Speak Chinese. And they go, no, no, we want to speak English. So I was like, oh, geez. So...

yeah so that made a big difference and she's really aching to get back to these girls now because they want to start a YouTube channel and you know all of that stuff what we were saying yesterday well the last episode didn't we talk about that how our guest we were talking about the future of China right and one of the things that I think Eric asked him was like well what would you say like is an important thing about you know the future of China if you're going to say it's like the rest of the world or something like that

And he was like, learn Mandarin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Seriously, man. Because I feel, I agree with that. Well, my dad always said this to me growing up. He's like, if you want to cover the world, there's only three languages you need to learn. Learn English, learn Spanish, and learn Chinese. Mandarin. Mandarin.

you have those three languages down, even at a basic level, you can go basically anywhere in the world and speak to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're covering, what, 60%, 70% of the world's population? Yeah, well, Spanish is a huge area that it covers, right? Different dialects, but they all understand each other. And then English, obviously, world language. And then now Mandarin, if you're Mandarin, you've got a huge, huge place covered, and even more so in the future. A lot of schools in the West also teach Mandarin.

They do, yeah, they do. But I think you're really fortunate with your older daughter in that it sounds like she kind of warmed up to living here really quick. Usually it takes a while, I would think. Especially for a girl of her age, it would take maybe a few years, if at all. Yeah, yeah, definitely. That first retrospect, they arrived in January.

The worst time to come to Shanghai, in my opinion, because the weather is terrible. The air is awful. And all of the bad stuff, the dampness, the coldness, they're coming into a new... The indoor heating that is like... Yeah, exactly. And coming into a new environment, into a new house, into a new school, going from... My wife was, you know, she had a high-powered job in the UK. She gave that up.

in order to come to China so it was a big adjustment for her as well and that for the first three months were really tough really tough because the eldest one she didn't really want to be there she had a 10th birthday

just after they arrived and that was a bit of a without her friends there exactly and it was just after cny so i remember we we ordered a pizza like from pizza marzano and because it was just after cny there were no drivers and this p and it was raining and this these pizzas arrived like two hours late soggy and cold cold and the boxes were so

because there was so much rain and the guy was in a bad mood coming up the stairs and my wife shouted at him and stuff. And yeah, it was a bad. Your heart must have just sunk. Oh, it was awful. It was awful. It was awful. And, but you know, after that, it's kind of by April, May, things were starting to, the weather got better and you know, she was bedding in at school and she was enjoying that. She had a really good form teacher and all that kind of stuff. So yeah,

Yeah, by that point, things started to get better. So they're an international school? They are, yeah. Is it hard to find a proper school? It's really hard, yeah. I've heard a lot of stories about the difficulties of...

private schooling, international schooling here. It's like, yeah, I heard number one is getting into it because the waiting list is ridiculous, right? Number two is the extreme high price because of supply and demand and also because of the packaging you said for mainly foreign-based students and families. Yeah.

And then I heard is choosing the right one in terms of the quality because they are not all the same. And even you have bad ones that have the waiting list as well. So it's like how do you break that down? The only thing you can do is get through advice, through people that have put their children through the schooling. And then you have the last one that I've heard, and this is through just through the years, just meeting people.

is a danger of putting your kids through these international private schooling in the sense where you have like a good chance where these in the high school level, right? In the older level where these kids are like wild because of the environment they're in because the families tend to be a little bit more well off and they're

you're in another country, but it's mainly English-speaking in the school, where they get a little bit more rebellious. Drugs come in real early. Right. Well, that's... What, even in China? Yeah. Wow. What, really? Yeah. In China? Yeah. Like, pretty much...

Yeah. They have access to that kind of stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, just like, just the rebellion, the partying. But you hear that narrative, you hear that, I believe it, but you hear that narrative like everywhere. Yeah. Private school. Private schools, right? Private schooling in general because the kids are a bit more well off. It's like spoiled. It's like the spoiled. Yeah. Well, the notorious stories are the ones in Hong Kong, like the Hong Kong international schools, right? Like the Hong Kong international schools. Yeah. Those kids get down. What's similar? Those kids get down.

down yeah it's a similar idea so it's like obviously it all depends on how you raise your kid at the end of the day you have to blame the parents at the end of the day yeah you know but yeah you just hear that and it's just it's just fascinating how crazy it is because like you said in Hong Kong it's the same thing in Hong Kong like the pressure of getting putting your kid in a good school is

These parents save all the money to put their kids in these private schools. These kids have money to spend, so they have more access. I mean, personally for me, I went through the same thing. Because I went to a private school in New Jersey for high school. And it's, for lack of a better term, it's a rich kid's private school. Everyone was really well-to-do for the most part. You had kids on scholarship there. But for the most part,

They all came from very wealthy families, very kind of preppy, very well-to-do. Waspy. Yeah, very waspy. Exactly. Extremely waspy.

Not that many minorities at all. So that is the high school I went to. And when these kids have a lot of money to spend, and especially in the suburbs, there's not much to do. So what do they do for entertainment? These kids with money, they have a lot of means. They have a lot of money to spend, a lot of time on their hands, and really nothing else to do.

So drugs are a big issue. And in my private school, we all had access to drugs. That was the thing. You're either going to be drinking or doing drugs or both. And that was... Well, especially in the States. Yeah, in the States. It's a different culture, of course. And a different time when we grew up back then too. But that was the entertainment. It was like, when are we going to go get high? When are we going to go drink? Very rebellious. But my point is,

whether it's like a foreign international school or like, you know, a rich private school, it's all about like the means these kids have. They have the means, you know, they're going to go do crazy shit and it might not be drugs, but they'll get, they'll find other forms of trouble. But like bringing it back to China, the general consensus of, of Chinese, let's say public schools is,

of any school you're going to have rebellious people. But in general, it's pretty in check. In China? Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty in check, you know, like the craziness factor. Like from my understanding, the public schools, like those rebellious people are, from what we grew up around, is not rebellious. It's not bad. That's like normal, you know? Right. Yeah. But it just tends to be like in the higher end international schools,

It's more like in the West, you know, where it can be a little bit more no-holds-barred. But that's not the point. The point that I'm trying to get at is that it must be really difficult to find that way to, you know, find the education system for your kids the proper way, especially coming in as a foreigner and, like, weaving through that, you know, where it's such a, like, it's a hard thing to deal with, right? Yeah, yeah. And just like you said, your daughter was 10 years old.

Luckily, I think if she was like 15, it might be even worse, right? Oh, yeah. Like a teenager. She was in teens. Right? Because you got the hormones kicking in. Yeah. Believe me, they're already there at 10. Oh, really? Honestly, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that's like you're already at the cusp, right? What happens? How old is she right now? She's 11 now.

When she gets to the age where dating becomes something she might be thinking about, like, how are you going to handle that? Oh, my God. You can tell from his reaction right now. He's like prepping himself already. Honestly, I've been thinking about this for the last 11 years.

I'm perfecting my Liam Neeson. Nice. My voice. Taken raw, right? I will find you and I will kill you. You know, I've been perfecting that. In Chinese. In Chinese, yeah. Yeah. I'm perfecting my kind of... Stare, intimidation look. I'm watching you, buddy. Yeah. Don't fucking touch her. You know, so I...

It's a peculiar thing to dads, I would imagine. There's a particular thing with the dad. And just thinking about all the things like what do you say, what don't you say, what kind of things do you try and instill in a young adult to make sure that they're going to be safe in every situation?

it's tough parenting is tough i didn't really realize you know just thought you had a kid and then you just like you grow them and then they get to 18 and then they fuck off whatever but you just no it's more i worry about it a lot yeah yeah so i just want to say one more thing like um

I think it's about time. We're wrapping up right now. So one thing I want to ask you. We've talked about a lot of things. And one thing I'm curious to ask you is, living here once again, a little over two years, coming from the UK, it's a different world here. If you were to give a message to people around the world that don't know anything about China and, you know,

would want to hear one thing from somebody that is living here. What would you say to them to let them understand what life is like here? What life is like in China? Really putting them on a spot. I'm not sure I could answer it so simply and quickly, but I suppose the main thing I would say, it's really not that different from anywhere else in the world. Despite what you might have heard or despite what you might think you know,

And everything is then filtered through these political lenses and everyone has their agenda and everyone has their suspicions and everything that they've heard and read about this country.

it's not that different. That would be my main thing. I mean, there are some crazy, there's some crazy shit that happens here. Like the people dancing outside the restaurants in order to get ready for work and all the old lady dance clubs. And there's all of this weird cultural shit that is just so far removed from what I'm, what I grew up with. But basically people are just people. Humans. Like we're all humans. We're all just humans. And that, and that's a very timely thing.

to be saying right now, I think. It really is. We are all just people and I think the sooner we realize that as a planet, the better off we'll be. Yeah. We find the similarities, right? Which when we point out the similarities, you actually point out the humanity between everybody, right? Absolutely. Because if you just focus on the differences, then...

then you're only going to go down this path of negativity. And you have to question the differences too. Like what Simon was just saying, like a lot of these differences are just beliefs that we've been fed or build up in our own minds that a lot of them aren't even true. I mean, when I first arrived, one of the big surprises for me

I was like, oh, China, it's a communist dictatorship, whatever. And it's this totalitarian state. It's a very common thing to think. It's what I had always think. It's what all of my friends outside of China think still, despite me living here and talking to them about it.

I came into a country thinking that everybody was going to be doing exactly the same thing, exactly the same time. Everyone was going to be cowed, downtrodden, downward facing. Oh, there's a policeman there. I better watch myself, whatever. And then one of the first things I saw was a lady jaywalking, an old lady, and the policeman like telling her off and her just like going...

Talk to the hand. I'm not talking to you. And there's this wonderful thing. Actually, one of the things I love about China is the amount of fucks that people don't give. Oh, yes. About lots of stuff. Yes. Zero fucks. Zero fucks given. This is one thing that really one of my dad friends loves is like he...

Loves the fact that an ambulance can be dirt going down the street with the siren and the lights and then a guy will do a u-turn Right in front of the the ambulance and there's probably some like really critical patient inside But the DD guys like I need to do a fucking u-turn like whatever I just let me do my u-turn and then there's that we love that and

we love that you love the amount of also the uh going back to the old lady story like the amount of talking back you can get away with to the police here yeah yeah the lack of respect is unbelievable it happens a lot it happens a lot but the thing is no one is scared of the police here's the thing the police actually is a lot of things i see it all the time especially with elderly like the police are trying to like you know curb jaywalking and stuff like that but at the end of the day they're like they're old i'm putting words in their mouth but

I'm going to give you leeway. I've told you that you can't do this, but go. Just do it. But even to non-elderly people, they're very conflict adverse.

the cops are. They're not like, they're not trying to incite conflict. So like, that's why like, even for minor things, you have people yelling and screaming in the face of the cops. And then you, you have like all the like lookers on, like around, like all of a sudden there's a crowd. So many rubberneckers in China. All of a sudden there's a crowd. Everyone's like, like, you know, like curious to see what's going on. And the cops like just calmed

Yeah. And then, you know, like it goes completely against the narrative of people thinking like you live in this authoritarian, like oppressive, like regime where everyone's scared of like the authority figures. Meanwhile, like the biggest mistake is people think people are like, the people are afraid of the government. The government is more afraid of the people. Of course. There's way more of them. Exactly. There's 1.4 billion, you know, but yeah.

Anyway, cheers, Simon. Cheers. Thanks for doing this, man. Thank you. Thank you for asking me. It was a great time, man. Very good. All right, guys. I'm Justin. And I'm Howie. Peace, guys. See you. Bye.