I was in Taiwan recently, visiting Wilson. I didn’t take any pictures; I left that to him. He has a great camera and better photography skills than me. Plus I’ve been on this extended “I’m too lazy to take pictures” kick.
I put together the Junk Food Review 2 from the pictures we took of Taiwan snacks, but it was up to Wilson to construct online abodes for the rest of his Taiwan photography. While most of us struggle just …
I’ve recently started using my Chinese blog for a new purpose: exploration of my Chinese readers’ understanding of their language. This can be attempted in many ways, but my first experimentation was with translation.
It all started when a friend asked me how to say “big fish in a small pond” in Chinese. He figured there must be a chengyu for it. It seemed to me like there should be too, so I got out my chengyu dictionaries. When I …
I just took some suggestions from a post on Scribbling.net to “help the Googlebot understand my website.” That’s why the title of each blog entry is now linked to, rather than having the “Link” link at the end of each entry.
Why? Well, Google associates the text you use to link to entries with the content of the links’ destinations. For example, if everyone with a website linked the word crap to microsoft.com, microsoft.com would become the number one search …
Xitek.com is a Chinese site which takes photography very seriously and showcases some of its members’ work. I’ve selected a sample of the more notable galleries currently online.
《矿工写真》: A collection of pictures of Chinese miners as a memorial to those lost in the Henan mining distaster.
粤西禁地 – 汉森病康复村: Photos from a leprosy recovery village in Guongdong province.
《大山之子》: 岜沙 is a village near Guizhou populated with people of the 苗 minority group.
香格里拉: This
“Document Contains No Data.” That’s the message I keep getting lately when I try to access my website directly. Those who live in the PRC know that this is Chinese for “this website is being blocked/filtered.”
I have been unable to access my e-mail for about 24 hours now.
I hate to do it, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to remove a recent post or at least some of its comments. Being blocked is just too inconvenient.
I’m …
This morning I went to East China Normal University and sat in on the class of Professor 刘大为 from 8:30 to 11:00. It was a first year graduate course on cognitive linguistics. It was some pretty abstract stuff, touching on the nature of time and perception and what it means to cognitive linguistics, for example. The professor was surprisingly engaging, and I was able to follow most of it without much problem. Obviously, not having read (or even owning) the …
I was unhappy to receive this e-mail from Hank of The Laowai Monologues today. He didn’t mind me sharing it so that his anonymous readers might know what happened. All of his blog entries will soon be offline for good.
Today, ends my blogging here in China. Without going into dramatics, or at least attempting not to, my blogging began to jeopardize my job, my marriage and my life. Let me give the final spill: it’s not eloquent, but I …
Happy International Women’s Day! Ummm, I guess I have some explaining to do about the title of this post. (It may be inflammatory, but it’s in the name of education.)
In China, International Women’s Day (March 8th) is called Èý°Ë¸¾Å®½Ú or, commonly, just Èý°Ë½Ú. That’s “3-8 Day” because of the date. (Quite a few Chinese holidays are referred to this way.)
The thing is, some misogynists took the name of the holiday and turned it into a derrogatory …
Among students of Chinese, it’s relatively well known that Taiwan and mainland China have a few differences in terminology. Things like “peanut” and “potato” and various household appliances. Nothing to get excited about, or even very interesting. There were only two such word usage differences that I found interesting when in Taipei, Taiwan.
First is the word for “internet cafe,” which is 网吧 in mainland China. The 网 means “net” and the 吧 means “bar.” It works quite neatly. In …
I just got back from a business trip to Wuhan (武汉). I took my fickle camera, which may or may not work at any given time, but I never bothered using it. That’s me being lazy.
I had been to Wuhan once before, just passing through on the way from Shiyan to the airport. It’s really a massive city (or “metropolitan area consist[ing] of… the ‘Three Towns of Wuhan,’” you might say). At dinner on Wednesday, one of …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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