In September I went to Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia. During that time, my host took me on a few trips, and I hung out with these two kids a bit. These two pictures were taken near the Western Xia Tombs (Î÷ÏÄÁê), which are basically out in the middle of nowhere.
I found it cute how the kids were so into catching the grasshoppers. Presumably they, like many Chinese children, don’t get many chances to play outside in a …
Hanzi (汉字 or 漢字) is the Chinese word for “Chinese character.” The Chinese language has been written in hanzi for a very long time. As the Chinese tell me, hanzi have been in use since approximately 3000 years before the Big Bang. It’s quite a tradition.
When an institution has been in place for that long, it can be incredibly hard to implement change. For example, when the new Communist emperors wanted to reform and “simplify” hanzi, …
很多中国朋友问我：“你的中文名字你自己取的吗？怎么取的？”他们好像都很好奇外国人关于取中文名字的想法。
我的英文名字叫John。John的中文翻译是约翰，所以我在大学刚开始学中文时老师给我取的中文名字是约翰。其实我一向都不喜欢“约翰”，觉得很难听，而且一点都不像我的英文名字。虽然我不喜欢但当时我根本不知道怎么选中文名字。因此我只能忍着。
两年以后我来到中国。我刚到中国的时候中文水平很差，选名字还是很不容易。但到了中国我就一直很想找一个合适一点的中文名字并希望早日使用它。
我先要选择中文名字的姓。怎么选姓呢？我是这么想的：大多数的中国人是单字姓，而且姓往往是固定的。如果我想长期住在中国，我也最好选这样的姓。我的英文姓是Pasden，如果直接音译，写出来后就不像中文固定的姓，而且也不会是单字姓。但是如果把“Pasden”压缩成一个中文字，我想“潘”这个姓比较合适，因为它不仅是百家姓中的一个，而且它的拼音正好由“Pasden”开头的“Pa”和后面的“n”组成。在选了“潘”这个姓之后很久我才取了中文的名。因此我最早的中国朋友都叫我“小潘”。
有了中文姓以后我很努力地去找中文名。中国人可能没法了解外国人取中文名字有多大的难度。花了不少功夫查字典后，我找到了一个，便去向中国朋友询问，希望能得些意见。他却回答：“不好。你不能用这个字做名字！”然后我只好重新开始再找。
最后我选中了“吉”这个字。有三个理由：（1）它的拼音和“John”一样是J开头的。（2）他表示吉祥的意思。这在中国是个很好的概念，而且我觉得非常适合我因为我的运气一直很好。（3）既好看又好写。
我用这个中文名字已经快四年了，对它有了很深的感情。不过好像也有它的缺点。我的一个中国朋友曾说它像猴子的名字！日本人看“潘吉”这两个字就读作“ハンキチ”。听起来很滑稽，也像“ハンカチ”，手帕的意思。美国人也会说“pan ji”像英文的“pansy”。是花的名字，也有“娘娘腔的男人”的意思。可是不管怎样，“潘吉”已经是我的名字，我不会改了，就像不会改我的英文名字一样。…
I’ve taught some lessons at quite a few kindergartens around Shanghai. Without a doubt, there are kindergartens with “good kids,” and then there are kindergartens where the kids are all spoiled brats who won’t listen to the teacher at all.
If it’s an expensive private kindergarten, there’s a very good chance that the kids are mostly spoiled, and the school’s “discipline” has little effect.
If it’s a “boarding kindergarten,” a kind of kindergarten popular in Shanghai where the kids only …
上个星期五我和一些朋友去Caesar’s Pub（新闸路1708号）因为有嘻哈表演。门票才30，包括一瓶啤酒。
我真的没想到表演会那么好！我以前不知道上海有那么多热爱嘻哈音乐的年轻人。
我最喜欢的是X-44的一首歌叫“偶遇”。你也可以听，但当然还是现场表演好。…
If you visited my blog yesterday you might have seen a “Bandwidth Exceeded” error. It wasn’t for a reason as glorious as a good mention on Metafilter or anything like that. It was partly due to my own stupidity, and partly due to our good friend Google.
A while back I made a Chinese fonts page, and I put some online for download. Seemed simple enough, and I sort of forgot about it for a while. In the meantime, …
I have a small collection of famous quotes organized by theme, each with a Chinese translation. It’s very interesting to see how some of these famous quotes are translated.
In the case of the religion category, I think what’s most interesting is the quotes that were chosen. There weren’t many, so these few say a lot about the Chinese editors.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.-G. Bernard Shaw
It is only fear …
After reading my first article on the new group Chinese blog ³öÓï²»Ë×, Tian liked it so much that he decided to translate it.
So the article that I have written in Chinese, a second language to me, has been translated into English by a Chinese person for whom English is a second language. Crazy.…
Roddy of Chinese Forums recently had a great idea. All the non-Chinese bloggers who have had trouble keeping a regularly updated Chinese blog (yes, I’m guilty!) could band together and write one together. The result is called ³öÓï²»Ë×, a chengyu which Wenlin defines as “speak in an uncommon way.” (Credit for the name goes to Brendan.)
Currently the only active members are Roddy, Brendan, and me. I must say, Brendan’s contributions are the most impressive — he’s …
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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