Finally I get my reason to say no to KFC

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These too will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China is always changing. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is...

04/11/2010

Coupon was my last hope

As a long-time KFC Chinese customer, I have some confession to make: I passed over the warnings implied by Fast Food Nation, and accepted the way your suppliers treat those poor chicks; and ignored the fact that your employees liked to use dishwasher as bathtub after work...that's all because you always gave out coupons in a generious way.

Now that little shaky faith I held was totally gone as you ruthlessly refused to redeem the coupons of your most faithful customers, who had queued for over 3 hours in front of the counter expecting to have a taste of half-price Family Bucket.

But I want to say thank you to Colonel Sanders for "redeeming" my last excuse to continue my unhealthy junk food eating habit. I am planning to readjust myself to some Chinese-style fast food, anyway they offered to redeem my void coupons, maybe I will give it a try.

SinoBeat