"Special" sucks

If there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that if you're a foreigner and you ever get told something is "special" in China (and probably any other country that's not English speaking), you can assume that you're getting ripped off, cheated, or lied to.

They love overusing that word because it can apply to everything and it's an easy one to remember. They know in our home countries "special" actually has a positive connotation, so it turns heads and piques interest in a good way. I'm sure it works to fool a lot of foreigners who don't care to argue either.

The olympics for diabled people is called the Paralympics and not the special olympics. That was probably a fortunate coincidence.