Vegan Cake: "Converting" People in Casual Conversations.
23 August 2017 [link youtube]
Just a bunch of anecdotes from my personal life (most of them involving veganism) in Kunming, Yunnan, China.
(Note: this was recorded in late November of 2016, when it was cold enough to wear a scarf indoors.)
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so we all have the experience at some
point or another of people becoming vegan or trying veganism because of our personal influence if you've never had that experience and you've been vegan for a couple of years I guess I can say I pity you I don't keep track I don't keep a tally and if you're seriously keeping track you wouldn't just keep track of how many people try veganism because of your influence you wouldn't keep track of just how many people say they're interested in it or say they're becoming vegan you'd have to keep track of a few years down the line who is still really doing it so I mentioned here on you nail on a live broadcast a few days ago there's a woman here who I talked to you like four months ago about veganism and she just told me the other day I guess two days ago now she took me aside she was actually interrupting me I was out with another woman on a non date um it's not a date unless I say it's a day people and this woman came over to me and she said oh you know I want to let you know like I stopped eating meat and she used words in Chinese that don't clearly mean vegan but it meant she stopped eating meat and she went somewhere on the vegan - vegetarian spectrum so I was really happy for her and this is the other thing about this woman so this woman is a business woman in the neighborhood now obviously I don't know her whole story but she seems to be an independent self-reliant reasonably successful businesswoman that's my impression of her it could be totally wrong I mean obviously you know you meet anyone you don't know maybe maybe in reality she's a recovered gambling addict with thousands of dollars in debt you never know but anyway that is how she appears and her and I never had any connection but one of the memorable things about her for me was that when I first started to this school I remember there were a couple of guys maybe three of the other students at the school who were talking about what a crush they had on her and whatever not hitting the player not hitting the game but I remember to me that was another one of these weird examples where it seems like there were a lot of white guys in China who really idealize the the self-made businesswoman like I like you know it's not the cheese ugly or anything but I don't you know I don't think I don't think it's her looks that made her appealing to these guys there are a lot of white guys here who want I mean I think that's that's part of why they prefer Chinese women whether you think of that culturally or otherwise is that you know obviously there are all kinds you can be the Chinese one one who's a farmer or humanitarian one who runs a farm you can meet a Chinese woman who does who's a medical doctor or whatever but I think disproportionately the type of white men who come here and lean for a girlfriend they want a woman who who wear shoulder pads and takes care of business get the self-reliance business acumen mentally sharp these are kind of the characters of that's anyway disproportionate a lot of the what kinds here like that but anyway so this woman I really think four months ago she talked about veganism and just being completely honest I don't think there's any romantic component there's only there's any flirtatious component this when she talked to me about it she mostly just seemed freaked out by the idea and maybe one of the morals to this story maybe one of the lessons you guys can draw from this is that sometimes people being freaked out is actually a good sign because it means they're taking it seriously it means they're really thinking about it it means it really challenges their preconceptions it challenges their yeah it challenges their cultural values or whatever you know what I mean um so much talking about she didn't seem positive at all you know to be blunt she just seemed kind of freaked out and now I do not remember I mean we're talking in Chinese this is the other thing um she has behaved in front of me and in front of like all the other men from this school because we're just in the same neighborhood she just owns a business in this neighborhood but you know she knows about the school and other foreigners from the school you know passed by her business or walk into it or what have you um she's really a neighborhood connection uh I don't think she's ever spoken English in front of any of the other male students because I remember those guys who had the crush on her they also thought she couldn't speak in English what have you um so we spoke entirely in Chinese and what I mostly remember her asking about she was genuinely doubting whether or not it was possible in terms of health and I was really just trying to say to her was really trying to get across to her like it's not easy I don't tell people it's easy to be vegan I said it's not easy but I can do it so you can do it I'm doing it every day and I said look I lift more than a hundred kilograms at the gym which I did at the time and I weigh more than a hundred kilograms which I did at the time I'm now down to 94 kilograms as of a joking about lately but anyway if I can do it you can do it and you know again I don't know we did we talked about some of the other aspects of veganism I don't remember it for detail and she is a typically small Chinese woman she is small and slender by Chinese standards she isn't extremely tiny probably about Western sensuous but I mean really I I tower over her in my bulk in my mass I'm six foot three ninety four kilograms these days etc so that's I weigh more than 200 pounds I do workout at the gym so I do not know if that's part of what made an impression on her but honestly so we had some conversations with that months and months ago and I think she was reminded of it just by meeting me again by seeing me again what she did from time to time but also I think the only other thing that influenced her was you know at one point I've told some funny engines about this this again relates to my romance life or my mine on sex life or whatever but you know um at one point I made this poster that explained in Chinese it had totally respectable pictures of me but explain to Chinese look I'm in my late 30s I'm learning Chinese I'm looking for other students to be my language partners to be conversation partners like ie I help them speak English they help me practice my Chinese but it's said explicitly one of the main emphasis would look I'm old it would really be best if I could meet someone over 25 was what it said and it actually had some words in there like I realized the majority of people learning languages are under 25 so maybe can work out but ideally I'd like to meet someone close to my own age for this kind of language practice and I have already joked about this on the live streams I don't I don't think I've mentioned this on YouTube but like every single response I got to that poster which was completely unsexy and unromantic it was just bull it was people trying to get laid and one of them with her first photo oh sorry sir her first email to me included a nude photo crap like it's not that kind of poster but in with this this poster because I wanted to show that it was my own handwriting so the poster its photocopied as a photo of me and it explains this stuff in Chinese in my Chinese handwriting obviously I could type it on a computer but the point is to show I'm a student I'm trying hard I'm trying to learn this language so it had handwritten Chinese and aside from that point that I'm old and trying to meet people studying language for a bit older um older than average older than the average university student for sure the main thing that said about me was that I'm vegan you know I'm vegan and I used to live in Cambodia and now I'm living in China um yeah thank you and the last year so it's not that kind of poster really it's not really it's not but you know I went around to local businesses in the neighborhood with it because it's again it's not that kind of poster it's not a deeply personal poster and I did go into her business and I chatted with her briefly and hand her the poster so that was more recently like let's say that was two months ago or something I think that probably was maybe the turning point or reminded her of this thing called veganism I just even though I didn't preach it just said I am vegan you know as part of my description of Who I am what I'm doing alive um so I mentioned this two days ago the other day when she interrupted me on my non-date I really didn't have time to talk to her but I was like oh that's wonderful and I only knew that she became some kind of vegetarian some kind of meat avoiding person but it wasn't really clear that she became vegan and I decided to write her a letter again in handwritten Chinese because one of them at that moment so again I'm with this other woman and I I'm busy I kind of got to go and I've been speaking English it's not that easy for me to switch from English in Chinese but I said to her basic like Oh like I'm so happy to hear that you know I'm a vegan activist so the word for activist in Chinese here is GG funds and that's actually has a very positive meaning in Chinese so in English if you say you're an activist there's a little bit of mmm little bit of AA blocky it's not necessarily a good thing it's not even a neutral thing to describe yourself as an activist in English I think people regard you with mmm it can be seemed too pretentious to say that you're an activist or people will assume you're attached to some kind of radical politics that are looked down upon to be blunt anyway um in Chinese that word really has a totally positive meaning to say that you're an activist about something which is so interesting and also I just mention you can use it in a more informal way it's not necessarily a political activist you could say for example the Chinese you can say oh I have a crush on this girl so I'm trying to be an activist like I'm trying to you know advance the relationship or some of that so they use it in a very broad sense but they do use it also specifically for political activism so when I said it to her I said oh you know I'm happy because I'm a vegan activist she just burst out laughing in a totally natural way I think she had absolutely never thought to put those two words together or those two concepts together you know like vegan activist she uh you know I don't blame her but whatever however she thought of veganism remember many people here in China become vegan because they're attached to Buddhism or Taoism they become vegan for other reasons right but the the thought of veganism being a form of political activism this was still new and strange to her even though she had met me and talked to me about health aspects of veganism she'd become to some extent vegan so I went back today just like one hour ago now or something and I wrote her a handwritten letter and the handwritten letter in Chinese case II think writing writing by hand in Chinese is easy it isn't it isn't it isn't even easy for native speakers it's time-consuming to write out a letter and hand by Chinese but I gave her a handwritten letter and it really explained look you know I'm happy he told me that she stopped eating meat and it didn't say I'm happy that you became vegan it said I'm happy you told me you stopped eating because I didn't really know I really know how vegan she was or how thinking she was and you know you don't want to be presumptive you don't want to insult people um and she um sorry and it said to her look I'm a vegan activist and it basically just broke down the concept of veganism as a social movement so is explaining in Chinese you know veganism is not just a diet it is a social movement it is a form of activism and here's why and how I am a vegan activist you know here's what it means to mean here's what I do and including mentioning of course you guys on YouTube it said you know I make videos on YouTube and it described our society as being in a transition in the next 100 years because the majority of people still do not know that it is possible to be healthy and be vegan which is very honest and very true thing to say there's still just doubt but whether or not it's possible and there's still these misconceptions so said you know we're in a period of transition in the next 100 years of educating the public and engaging in a form of political struggle for animal rights for ecology and really just to let people know about the vegan diet how important it is but yes so obviously I could I mean I could read out the letter in Chinese but would it help you guys much but it did it did also emphasize so it just from memory but summarize what I said in this letter it also said you know right now the type of people who become vegan activists are very diverse you know there's a lot of a lot of diversity some people become vegan activist mostly because they care about the health of their own bodies some people become activists mostly because they want to help animals animal rights and some people become vegan activist due to ecological concerns do environmental concerns they're aware that the meat industry is destroying the world's environment and some people are vegan because they are traditional Buddhists or traditional Hindus and it's all I said about that I obviously I could talk a great length about the fact that the wave veganism fits into both both Buddhist and Hindu tradition is complex and problematic so I said this kind of stuff in this letter again so I was joking it's not that guy but it's now that it's not a deeply personal letter but it does also say look you know here's my email if you want to be in touch with me and you know I'm so happy you joined the team so I went there today to give her this letter and I just met it's actually it was freezing cold outside I may have so whatever kind of bundled up I go over to give her this letter and I just say to her Channel yeah hi hi because you told me you stopped eating me don't want to give you this this letter and so on and actually she was there with a friend and this is also a very Chinese thing again I have no reason to think I don't think this woman has a crush on me I have no reason to think that maybe she does but um in Chinese culture they very often have another person instigate for you like instigate the conversation or just instigate whatever it is like you know in Chinese culture just give you an example you often give a compliment indirectly so like if if three people are sitting at a dinner table I won't say to the person who made the food I won't say to the cook you made this really well I'll say to the third person I'll say she made this really well you'll give the compliment by telling someone else so you just socially they tend to ropey and other people in the situation so there was another person there who a friend of hers and this friend of hers jumped in and said I want you to know she started baking cakes vegan she started baking with no eggs and no milk and they gave me an example they were like yeah the vegan banana cake turned out well and it was one of those moments where like obviously a lot of the time in Chinese I don't understand what people are saying just because I don't speak Chinese that well I don't know the vocabulary but I kind of a moment where them think these fresh fruit face is like just shocked cuz I didn't even know if she was really vegan you know at all and to me that's a really high level of engagement with and commitment begins okay so it's not you're not just reduced to terian you're not just vegetarian but she's taking it to the next level of trying to develop you know vegan baking as a sideline and she didn't say it but again my impression was and for much reason is there that you know she's actually interested in getting this going as like a small business on the side you know like you know I don't know how serious with that but that you know this is okay the other thing is again like you know this is someone like she and I aren't friends we've never been friends and there's no real connection between us but all of a sudden it's like um do you want to get married like what are you doing the next 10 years it's like suddenly it's like I want to be your best friend you know if you're actually vegan and you actually are baking cakes vegan and maybe you're even gonna do this as part of you know as some kind of small business or something it's like wow you know before I was really just doing a mitzvah this was just someone I was reaching out to and someone I was delighted a bunch of casual conversations between her and I about veganism had ended up inspiring her to try being vegan that was all I knew at the start that's only did the [ __ ] she had been trying and then you have the shock of learning that they're they're really pretty serious about veganism so you think wow a couple of casual conversations led to that consequence and then you know you think oh wow is this somebody so you know I was just giving her this letter really is a kind of outreach or kind of support right I'm sure she doesn't know a lot of vacancy rate good saying look if you want to get in touch with me here's my email and if you want to know about my website you know and also trying to communicate Constantine isin then all of a sudden you think wow maybe this is somebody I'm still gonna know five years from now maybe this is still gonna be somebody I know ten years from now and as you guys know I'm happy to have just friends if I mean there's no there's no real romantic component to or anything but you just suddenly the way you look at this person who is only a casual acquaintance of yours you know it changes
point or another of people becoming vegan or trying veganism because of our personal influence if you've never had that experience and you've been vegan for a couple of years I guess I can say I pity you I don't keep track I don't keep a tally and if you're seriously keeping track you wouldn't just keep track of how many people try veganism because of your influence you wouldn't keep track of just how many people say they're interested in it or say they're becoming vegan you'd have to keep track of a few years down the line who is still really doing it so I mentioned here on you nail on a live broadcast a few days ago there's a woman here who I talked to you like four months ago about veganism and she just told me the other day I guess two days ago now she took me aside she was actually interrupting me I was out with another woman on a non date um it's not a date unless I say it's a day people and this woman came over to me and she said oh you know I want to let you know like I stopped eating meat and she used words in Chinese that don't clearly mean vegan but it meant she stopped eating meat and she went somewhere on the vegan - vegetarian spectrum so I was really happy for her and this is the other thing about this woman so this woman is a business woman in the neighborhood now obviously I don't know her whole story but she seems to be an independent self-reliant reasonably successful businesswoman that's my impression of her it could be totally wrong I mean obviously you know you meet anyone you don't know maybe maybe in reality she's a recovered gambling addict with thousands of dollars in debt you never know but anyway that is how she appears and her and I never had any connection but one of the memorable things about her for me was that when I first started to this school I remember there were a couple of guys maybe three of the other students at the school who were talking about what a crush they had on her and whatever not hitting the player not hitting the game but I remember to me that was another one of these weird examples where it seems like there were a lot of white guys in China who really idealize the the self-made businesswoman like I like you know it's not the cheese ugly or anything but I don't you know I don't think I don't think it's her looks that made her appealing to these guys there are a lot of white guys here who want I mean I think that's that's part of why they prefer Chinese women whether you think of that culturally or otherwise is that you know obviously there are all kinds you can be the Chinese one one who's a farmer or humanitarian one who runs a farm you can meet a Chinese woman who does who's a medical doctor or whatever but I think disproportionately the type of white men who come here and lean for a girlfriend they want a woman who who wear shoulder pads and takes care of business get the self-reliance business acumen mentally sharp these are kind of the characters of that's anyway disproportionate a lot of the what kinds here like that but anyway so this woman I really think four months ago she talked about veganism and just being completely honest I don't think there's any romantic component there's only there's any flirtatious component this when she talked to me about it she mostly just seemed freaked out by the idea and maybe one of the morals to this story maybe one of the lessons you guys can draw from this is that sometimes people being freaked out is actually a good sign because it means they're taking it seriously it means they're really thinking about it it means it really challenges their preconceptions it challenges their yeah it challenges their cultural values or whatever you know what I mean um so much talking about she didn't seem positive at all you know to be blunt she just seemed kind of freaked out and now I do not remember I mean we're talking in Chinese this is the other thing um she has behaved in front of me and in front of like all the other men from this school because we're just in the same neighborhood she just owns a business in this neighborhood but you know she knows about the school and other foreigners from the school you know passed by her business or walk into it or what have you um she's really a neighborhood connection uh I don't think she's ever spoken English in front of any of the other male students because I remember those guys who had the crush on her they also thought she couldn't speak in English what have you um so we spoke entirely in Chinese and what I mostly remember her asking about she was genuinely doubting whether or not it was possible in terms of health and I was really just trying to say to her was really trying to get across to her like it's not easy I don't tell people it's easy to be vegan I said it's not easy but I can do it so you can do it I'm doing it every day and I said look I lift more than a hundred kilograms at the gym which I did at the time and I weigh more than a hundred kilograms which I did at the time I'm now down to 94 kilograms as of a joking about lately but anyway if I can do it you can do it and you know again I don't know we did we talked about some of the other aspects of veganism I don't remember it for detail and she is a typically small Chinese woman she is small and slender by Chinese standards she isn't extremely tiny probably about Western sensuous but I mean really I I tower over her in my bulk in my mass I'm six foot three ninety four kilograms these days etc so that's I weigh more than 200 pounds I do workout at the gym so I do not know if that's part of what made an impression on her but honestly so we had some conversations with that months and months ago and I think she was reminded of it just by meeting me again by seeing me again what she did from time to time but also I think the only other thing that influenced her was you know at one point I've told some funny engines about this this again relates to my romance life or my mine on sex life or whatever but you know um at one point I made this poster that explained in Chinese it had totally respectable pictures of me but explain to Chinese look I'm in my late 30s I'm learning Chinese I'm looking for other students to be my language partners to be conversation partners like ie I help them speak English they help me practice my Chinese but it's said explicitly one of the main emphasis would look I'm old it would really be best if I could meet someone over 25 was what it said and it actually had some words in there like I realized the majority of people learning languages are under 25 so maybe can work out but ideally I'd like to meet someone close to my own age for this kind of language practice and I have already joked about this on the live streams I don't I don't think I've mentioned this on YouTube but like every single response I got to that poster which was completely unsexy and unromantic it was just bull it was people trying to get laid and one of them with her first photo oh sorry sir her first email to me included a nude photo crap like it's not that kind of poster but in with this this poster because I wanted to show that it was my own handwriting so the poster its photocopied as a photo of me and it explains this stuff in Chinese in my Chinese handwriting obviously I could type it on a computer but the point is to show I'm a student I'm trying hard I'm trying to learn this language so it had handwritten Chinese and aside from that point that I'm old and trying to meet people studying language for a bit older um older than average older than the average university student for sure the main thing that said about me was that I'm vegan you know I'm vegan and I used to live in Cambodia and now I'm living in China um yeah thank you and the last year so it's not that kind of poster really it's not really it's not but you know I went around to local businesses in the neighborhood with it because it's again it's not that kind of poster it's not a deeply personal poster and I did go into her business and I chatted with her briefly and hand her the poster so that was more recently like let's say that was two months ago or something I think that probably was maybe the turning point or reminded her of this thing called veganism I just even though I didn't preach it just said I am vegan you know as part of my description of Who I am what I'm doing alive um so I mentioned this two days ago the other day when she interrupted me on my non-date I really didn't have time to talk to her but I was like oh that's wonderful and I only knew that she became some kind of vegetarian some kind of meat avoiding person but it wasn't really clear that she became vegan and I decided to write her a letter again in handwritten Chinese because one of them at that moment so again I'm with this other woman and I I'm busy I kind of got to go and I've been speaking English it's not that easy for me to switch from English in Chinese but I said to her basic like Oh like I'm so happy to hear that you know I'm a vegan activist so the word for activist in Chinese here is GG funds and that's actually has a very positive meaning in Chinese so in English if you say you're an activist there's a little bit of mmm little bit of AA blocky it's not necessarily a good thing it's not even a neutral thing to describe yourself as an activist in English I think people regard you with mmm it can be seemed too pretentious to say that you're an activist or people will assume you're attached to some kind of radical politics that are looked down upon to be blunt anyway um in Chinese that word really has a totally positive meaning to say that you're an activist about something which is so interesting and also I just mention you can use it in a more informal way it's not necessarily a political activist you could say for example the Chinese you can say oh I have a crush on this girl so I'm trying to be an activist like I'm trying to you know advance the relationship or some of that so they use it in a very broad sense but they do use it also specifically for political activism so when I said it to her I said oh you know I'm happy because I'm a vegan activist she just burst out laughing in a totally natural way I think she had absolutely never thought to put those two words together or those two concepts together you know like vegan activist she uh you know I don't blame her but whatever however she thought of veganism remember many people here in China become vegan because they're attached to Buddhism or Taoism they become vegan for other reasons right but the the thought of veganism being a form of political activism this was still new and strange to her even though she had met me and talked to me about health aspects of veganism she'd become to some extent vegan so I went back today just like one hour ago now or something and I wrote her a handwritten letter and the handwritten letter in Chinese case II think writing writing by hand in Chinese is easy it isn't it isn't it isn't even easy for native speakers it's time-consuming to write out a letter and hand by Chinese but I gave her a handwritten letter and it really explained look you know I'm happy he told me that she stopped eating meat and it didn't say I'm happy that you became vegan it said I'm happy you told me you stopped eating because I didn't really know I really know how vegan she was or how thinking she was and you know you don't want to be presumptive you don't want to insult people um and she um sorry and it said to her look I'm a vegan activist and it basically just broke down the concept of veganism as a social movement so is explaining in Chinese you know veganism is not just a diet it is a social movement it is a form of activism and here's why and how I am a vegan activist you know here's what it means to mean here's what I do and including mentioning of course you guys on YouTube it said you know I make videos on YouTube and it described our society as being in a transition in the next 100 years because the majority of people still do not know that it is possible to be healthy and be vegan which is very honest and very true thing to say there's still just doubt but whether or not it's possible and there's still these misconceptions so said you know we're in a period of transition in the next 100 years of educating the public and engaging in a form of political struggle for animal rights for ecology and really just to let people know about the vegan diet how important it is but yes so obviously I could I mean I could read out the letter in Chinese but would it help you guys much but it did it did also emphasize so it just from memory but summarize what I said in this letter it also said you know right now the type of people who become vegan activists are very diverse you know there's a lot of a lot of diversity some people become vegan activist mostly because they care about the health of their own bodies some people become activists mostly because they want to help animals animal rights and some people become vegan activist due to ecological concerns do environmental concerns they're aware that the meat industry is destroying the world's environment and some people are vegan because they are traditional Buddhists or traditional Hindus and it's all I said about that I obviously I could talk a great length about the fact that the wave veganism fits into both both Buddhist and Hindu tradition is complex and problematic so I said this kind of stuff in this letter again so I was joking it's not that guy but it's now that it's not a deeply personal letter but it does also say look you know here's my email if you want to be in touch with me and you know I'm so happy you joined the team so I went there today to give her this letter and I just met it's actually it was freezing cold outside I may have so whatever kind of bundled up I go over to give her this letter and I just say to her Channel yeah hi hi because you told me you stopped eating me don't want to give you this this letter and so on and actually she was there with a friend and this is also a very Chinese thing again I have no reason to think I don't think this woman has a crush on me I have no reason to think that maybe she does but um in Chinese culture they very often have another person instigate for you like instigate the conversation or just instigate whatever it is like you know in Chinese culture just give you an example you often give a compliment indirectly so like if if three people are sitting at a dinner table I won't say to the person who made the food I won't say to the cook you made this really well I'll say to the third person I'll say she made this really well you'll give the compliment by telling someone else so you just socially they tend to ropey and other people in the situation so there was another person there who a friend of hers and this friend of hers jumped in and said I want you to know she started baking cakes vegan she started baking with no eggs and no milk and they gave me an example they were like yeah the vegan banana cake turned out well and it was one of those moments where like obviously a lot of the time in Chinese I don't understand what people are saying just because I don't speak Chinese that well I don't know the vocabulary but I kind of a moment where them think these fresh fruit face is like just shocked cuz I didn't even know if she was really vegan you know at all and to me that's a really high level of engagement with and commitment begins okay so it's not you're not just reduced to terian you're not just vegetarian but she's taking it to the next level of trying to develop you know vegan baking as a sideline and she didn't say it but again my impression was and for much reason is there that you know she's actually interested in getting this going as like a small business on the side you know like you know I don't know how serious with that but that you know this is okay the other thing is again like you know this is someone like she and I aren't friends we've never been friends and there's no real connection between us but all of a sudden it's like um do you want to get married like what are you doing the next 10 years it's like suddenly it's like I want to be your best friend you know if you're actually vegan and you actually are baking cakes vegan and maybe you're even gonna do this as part of you know as some kind of small business or something it's like wow you know before I was really just doing a mitzvah this was just someone I was reaching out to and someone I was delighted a bunch of casual conversations between her and I about veganism had ended up inspiring her to try being vegan that was all I knew at the start that's only did the [ __ ] she had been trying and then you have the shock of learning that they're they're really pretty serious about veganism so you think wow a couple of casual conversations led to that consequence and then you know you think oh wow is this somebody so you know I was just giving her this letter really is a kind of outreach or kind of support right I'm sure she doesn't know a lot of vacancy rate good saying look if you want to get in touch with me here's my email and if you want to know about my website you know and also trying to communicate Constantine isin then all of a sudden you think wow maybe this is somebody I'm still gonna know five years from now maybe this is still gonna be somebody I know ten years from now and as you guys know I'm happy to have just friends if I mean there's no there's no real romantic component to or anything but you just suddenly the way you look at this person who is only a casual acquaintance of yours you know it changes