After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town

This short story is just the type of stories I like, full with imagery and satire. Satire is easily my favorite type of reading. Not only is it enjoyable put keeps me glued to the pages and wanting more, which is a very important quality in all types of writings.

We see a business owner move to China and opens up what?, a fried chicken restaurant. Overall, this just starts off as a perfect satire. What average American or whichever ethnicity would think that Chinese people like fried chicken. Fired chicken in China seems somewhat riduclous but in today's society this is quite believable. But the basic story is told from a workers perspective, and lots of the story has hidden meanings between socialism China vs. capitalism America. A lot of what Mr. Shapiro, the store owner, does is very confusing for the Chinese workers to comprehend. To me this could be a little bit of satire, but it really shows how much the Chinese governement hides from its people, they are so tightly locked up in only China's way of living they have no idea what really goes on beyond China. In way its sad that people are forced to live and think in a certain way. However, China has also opened up many of its ways today, but still limits many of the things citizens can learn or see whether on tv or internet. A quick example of how a Chinese person thinks differently comes from a quote from the story, "I was about to move to another table, I saw a hole on the seat burned by a cigarette, the size of a soybean. It must have been the work of that son of a dog. Instead of refunding his money, we should've detained him until he paid for the damage. " In China this person would go to jail, most likely in America most places would be oh its ok it was an accident type of attitude.
Another example of satire in this story is the whole buffet scene. Basically the store owner wanted to try a buffet and after the first night he lost lots of money which the workers already knew was going to happen, and instead of realizing this and facing the facts he kept the buffet and kept losing money, but finally the Mr. Shapiro decided to pull out of the buffet. This reminds me of somewhat of how America is run, just doing things because they "think" it will help either themselves or somebody in a way, without really looking at other people's mistakes. But this story keeps going into detail of how Mr.Shapiro changes things about the restaurant, for example he throws a wedding shower, and another funny thing happens after this shower. A man comes in showing a fly he had found in his food apparently, and eventually the workers prove that the fly did not come from the restaurant. However the man wants to sue the restaurant, which is pretty stupid a fly is harmless it isn't going to kill you it is nothing you would ever sue anyone over. But just as Americans do they sue over their own stupidity things like suing Mcdonalds, over spilling hot coffee on their lap and burning themselves because it did not say hot on the side of the cup? This is another prime example of how the writer incorporates satire into this story.
" I hated Mr. Shapiro's hypocrisy. He always appeared good-hearted and considerate to customers, but was cruel to us, his employees." I could see this relating to the big time CEO's of America and how a lot of them come across as nice but are two faced, paying low wages low benefits, just as Wal-Mart has had a problem with this in the past.

Overall this is a very funny story with some serious meaning behind it, and that is the beauty of satire. A person can literally write about almost anything serious in today's society and tweak it a bit, just have to be creative, takes time but is fun to do, just as this author has done.

Here are two videos that are from Dave Chappelle that I think are funny and relate to the satire in this short story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqBu-JBm0Q0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU28Pv26nNQ&feature=related