Post by Raoul Duke on Aug 21, 2006 23:02:58 GMT 7
As requested by Escaped Lunatic!
These wonderful little devices, along with Green Tea-flavored Crest toothpaste, are one of the great inventions of modern China. (Restaining myself from saying these are the ONLY two...)
They look like maybe 1/3 or 1/4 sized tennis rackets. Instead of strings, there's a grid of protective metal wires and inside that is another metal wire mesh. You put 2 AA batteries into the handle, hold down the little button on the side of the handle, swat the racket at a flying bug, bug touches inner metal mesh, bug dies instantly.
But it gets better! If you have a really good one (and in this instance "really good" seems to mean "cheap and shoddily made and extremely unsafe") the bug doesn't just die...it gives off a bright blue flash, a loud popping sound...and it VAPORIZES!!!
Once you get the hang of it, you'll kill every bug in your house within minutes. You'll be out in the stairwell looking for more mosquitoes, emitting an evil chuckle and looking a lot like Jack Nicholson in the axe scene in The Shining.
You can buy them in most of the open-air neighborhood stores and many small supermarkets during mosquito season (In Suzhou, January through December). Look around...you'll see them hanging on a wall or sticking up from a shelf. I don't know the name in Chinese but I'll try to find out. The price generally runs between 15 and 25 RMB not including batteries; if the proprietor likes you they'll often throw some cheap batteries in for free. And cheap batteries, devoid of any form of current restraint, is exactly what you want here. I can't really recommend a particular brand of electric mosquito tennis racket; experience and luck will show you which ones have a lot of fire and which ones are wussy.
I doubt you'll ever see these babies for sale in real countries fittin' for decent people to live in. Government regulators, lawyers, and insurance underwriters would take one look at these things and just shlt. And you do have to be a bit careful with them...as you've no doubt surmised, they pack quite a jolt! The outer grid of wires is supposed to serve as a guard to keep you away from the inner mesh, but 1) it being a cheap product and 2) this being China, in most instances the outer wires are shorted directly to the inner ones, so the "guard" is often as hot as the inner part. There also seems to be a considerable capacitance at work here, so the wires can hold quite a charge long after you've released the on button.
For safety reasons, I recommend you drink heavily any time you use one of these things. SAFETY FIRST!
These wonderful little devices, along with Green Tea-flavored Crest toothpaste, are one of the great inventions of modern China. (Restaining myself from saying these are the ONLY two...)
They look like maybe 1/3 or 1/4 sized tennis rackets. Instead of strings, there's a grid of protective metal wires and inside that is another metal wire mesh. You put 2 AA batteries into the handle, hold down the little button on the side of the handle, swat the racket at a flying bug, bug touches inner metal mesh, bug dies instantly.
But it gets better! If you have a really good one (and in this instance "really good" seems to mean "cheap and shoddily made and extremely unsafe") the bug doesn't just die...it gives off a bright blue flash, a loud popping sound...and it VAPORIZES!!!
Once you get the hang of it, you'll kill every bug in your house within minutes. You'll be out in the stairwell looking for more mosquitoes, emitting an evil chuckle and looking a lot like Jack Nicholson in the axe scene in The Shining.
You can buy them in most of the open-air neighborhood stores and many small supermarkets during mosquito season (In Suzhou, January through December). Look around...you'll see them hanging on a wall or sticking up from a shelf. I don't know the name in Chinese but I'll try to find out. The price generally runs between 15 and 25 RMB not including batteries; if the proprietor likes you they'll often throw some cheap batteries in for free. And cheap batteries, devoid of any form of current restraint, is exactly what you want here. I can't really recommend a particular brand of electric mosquito tennis racket; experience and luck will show you which ones have a lot of fire and which ones are wussy.
I doubt you'll ever see these babies for sale in real countries fittin' for decent people to live in. Government regulators, lawyers, and insurance underwriters would take one look at these things and just shlt. And you do have to be a bit careful with them...as you've no doubt surmised, they pack quite a jolt! The outer grid of wires is supposed to serve as a guard to keep you away from the inner mesh, but 1) it being a cheap product and 2) this being China, in most instances the outer wires are shorted directly to the inner ones, so the "guard" is often as hot as the inner part. There also seems to be a considerable capacitance at work here, so the wires can hold quite a charge long after you've released the on button.
For safety reasons, I recommend you drink heavily any time you use one of these things. SAFETY FIRST!
...ya baby 
