By Zhishi Qingnian
Rural Correspondent
BEIJING (China Daily Show) — The organizers of a Sina-wide poll to find the country’s most tedious place to live have admitted they massively underestimated the amount of entries they would receive.
The result is that joint first place will instead go to 156,749 separate towns and villages.
“Is your village the dullest in China?” asked pollsters in June, hoping for a lively debate on the lack of entertainment in many parts of rural China.
By noon the same day, a million votes had been cast for well over a quarter million shanty villages, hicksvilles and one-horse towns, and the site’s servers were strained to breaking point.
The central region of Qiongxiang Pirang, which translates roughly as “Buttfuck Nowhere,” quickly emerged as the country’s leading location of unwavering tedium, with over 40,000 locations pinpointed within it as being bereft of even small animals to torture.
The news comes despite a mid-1990s government campaign, urging business leaders to build thousands of Internet cafes to provide a mass distraction from the meaningless humdrum existence of everyday life in the countryside. But when Counterstrike servers crashed earlier this month, reality hit home.
“Snooker halls. KTV. Baijiu. Handjobs – that’s really all there is in Dalingshan,” said one disgruntled user, who was shocked to find his town actually rated as one of China’s top entertainment’s hubs.
“A pack of salty peanuts and a rerun of China’s Got Talent” was another netizen’s disgusted description of the highlight of his last six months, which he compared to living out the plot of Pearl Buck’s peasant classic The Good Earth. “If you can find a game of mahjong, it’s like winning the lottery.”
“My town is balls-to-the-wall boring,” complained Gansu-based user “tubbylovejx.” “And it doesn’t even have a mitigating smack problem.”
In fact, few areas in China have the kind of steady supply of heroin, methadone and methamphetamine that make life tolerable for millions of youngsters in parts of the greater United States.
Unlike the Middle East and swathes of the US, however, China also lacks religious killjoy leaders that could hinder what ranks as one of its countryside’s chief hobbies – masturbation.
But privacy issues and village busybodies mean the country’s young army of bored onanists must fiercely guard their hobby to avoid falling victim to a lack of quality gossip.
“I got busted watching a jazz tape when I was 12,” grumbled one voter. “18 years later, the local ‘wits’ are still cracking jokes about it.”
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Some of the poll’s comments:
They cut the power to my town two years ago and stopped delivering food. Please, someone help – “englishteacherinCentralChina,” Qinghai
In the old days, we had an old beer can that we used as a football. But then someone from a neighboring village stole it – “skinnypanda,” Ningxia
“I can literally remember the day they changed the menu slightly at our only restaurant. It was the sole topic of conversation for the next year. Good times” – “nanshooixie,” Jiangxu
“Every day, I pray for a zombie invasion. Not because I like zombies, but because it would give me something to do” – “lonelynoodles23,” Henan
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