My best friend here in Beijing, a rather sporty and roguishly charming young Irishman, managed to break both his wrists on the eve of his birthday last year. (Don't practise capoeira when drunk is the lesson we learn from this.)
Although this was a moderately amusing story, he was naturally rather shamefaced about telling it; and his friends all soon grew bored of hearing it. So, for a while, we developed a little competition of suggesting more exotic explanations for his incapacity. Our favourite (since this was just after the Olympics last year) was that he had been Ireland's surprise hope of a gold medal in the men's table tennis, but that the Chinese team - desperate to protect its domination of the competition - had sent the heavies round to sort him out. "Ma Lin says hello."
[Yes, I'm recycling again. I originally recounted this anecdote in a comment over on Tony's blog; but it still amuses me.]
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