The Alan Partridge Incident

So here i am at Beijing train station to catch the overnight train, and i dash in to the shop there to get some supplies for the evening, as the only beer on the train is warm and overpriced.

as i have previously mentioned, because labour is so cheap, all the stores have tons of staff.

so anyway, being the gorgeous charming westerner that i am, i always attract their attention and i was looking for some cold beer.

once again having made no effort to learn the language, i was taken to the canned beer section.

"cold?"
"you have cold?"

she just stared at me, so got another colleague.

"cold? you have cold"

so this went on a few times and within no time i have every member of staff, approximately 10, in a circle around me as the shop was dead anyway.

so i cunningly decided that in order to explain cold, i would point to the can, and then do a penguin impression................

well ok, if you are all so clever, what would you have done then??

well the penguin was not working, much to my suprise. obviously they have not seen happy feet over here.

What now i thought? so i tried shivering.

Nope.

Now they thought i was just mental.

So next i started touching the can and saying "ooh" (obviously as in cold to the touch.......ooh.)

Nope. Quite a crowd had gathered by now.

Next i tried taking them all over to the freezer section and putting the can in the freezer.........Once again going "ooh" as i put it on my skin.

it was more of gay ooh than a cheetah ooh by the way in case you are wondering.

well lets just say i would not have got a bafta, but i had them all amused anyway and in the end one of them worked it out.

So now fully laden with cold beer and a round of applause i go and catch my train to Xi'an
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