Ha Jin's Waiting

Ha Jin's (哈金) Waiting had this hilarious depiction of heavy rain.

The Chinese writer whose real name is Jin Xuefei (金雪飞) wrote: "God, what weather we have here! It hardly ever rains. But when it does, it shits and pisses without stopping like all the latrines in heaven have lost their bottoms."

When non-natives write in English, there are always descriptions which you would never find in those written by natives.

Some, in the case of Ha Jin, seemed to have been taken straight or derived from colloquial Chinese. These include:

"You strive to have a good heart. But what is a heart? Just a chunk of flesh that a dog can eat." (Derived from 心和肺都被狗吃了?)

"Even if a goose has an iron neck, it must have a spot where you can plunge a knife in." (Not sure if this was derived from Chinese)

"With money you can hire the devil to grind grain and cook dinner for you." (Derived from 有钱能使鬼推磨)