15
Nov
2006

Military Weaponry for Kids

Identify the theme that doesn’t belong in a series of books for Chinese children:

  1. Cartoon Characters
  2. Cute Animals
  3. Mysterious Dinosaurs
  4. Pretty Flowers
  5. Means of Transportation
  6. Military Weaponry

If you guessed #4, “Pretty Flowers,” you are right! The other five are themes of real coloring/drawing/character practice books in a series by Beijing Children and Juvenile Publishing House.

While we’re on the topic of Military Weaponry for Kids, let’s explore that book, shall we? Here’s what the book’s cover looks …

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38 Comments | Posted in personal
13
Nov
2006

Kung Fu, Season 1, on DVD

Today while grocery shopping at Carrefour I discovered a rather extensive collection of non-pirated DVDs. It was really kind of shocking. I’m not talking about just Roman Holiday or Charlie Chaplin or whatever; I’m talking about movies that were in theatres in the States in the past year. Most were priced at about 20 RMB. While that’s still close to triple the pirated price tag, it’s moving into the affordable range. With DVDs priced at 20 RMB, many Shanghai …

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13 Comments | Posted in personal
12
Nov
2006

Not Making You Think

WARNING: geeky tech/webdesign stuff ahead!

I haven’t been satisfied with the Sinosplice homepage for a while. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do to make it better until I read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, a manual of website usability. Yesterday I finally got some time to implement a few changes I’ve been wanting to make. Now there is a new homepage.

Old homepage design:

Old Sinosplice Homepage

  • Simple; almost all text
  • Extensive use of RSS feeds to display
    • …
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33 Comments | Posted in personal
10
Nov
2006

Medicine Ingredients = Pun Ingredients

Ever since I started doing my Chinese pun posts, I’ve been deluged with requests for more*. So today I am finally getting around to posting one that I’ve been seeing for something like a year in an ad on the subway:

药材好，药才好。

Only good ingredients can make good medicine.

The pun is with the words 药 (medicine), 才 (an adverb meaning something like “only if”), and 药材 (medicinal ingredients). You have two three-character phrases with exactly the same character pronunciation, …

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13 Comments | Posted in language
08
Nov
2006

A New Advertising Low?

There are so many ads for cosmetic surgery in Shanghai taxis these days. Ken reports this grim discovery:

Now, it can be annoying when you’re sitting in a taxi and you cannot turn off the TV screen 18 inches from your face, but I can live with it. However, what I saw in the taxi today today was perhaps a new low. There was a print ad, mounted on the back of the head rest in front of me, advertising

…
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12 Comments | Posted in personal
06
Nov
2006

Busty Models Get Men Thinking… about what now?

If you’ve ever seen a “men’s magazine” like FHM or Maxim, you know that one of the main staples is “interviews” with buxom young females. In these multi-page features photographs figure prominently, words are squeezed in at the sides, and key quotations are carefully selected and displayed in big type next to the photographs. These quotations are usually sex-related, designed to get the reader’s pulse racing. (If you really need examples of this, you might try taking a look at …

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18 Comments | Posted in personal
04
Nov
2006

Business and Buddies in Beijing

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I was in Beijing on ChinesePod business. I can’t really talk about that, but hopefully our reasons for being there will all be public by the end of the month. This trip was significant for other reasons, though — I got to (briefly) experience Beijing as a non-tourist for once, and to finally meet some guys I’ve been communicated with over the internet for years (that’s hard to believe) without ever meeting.

The last time I …

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15 Comments | Posted in personal
02
Nov
2006

The Hug Threat

News from Beijing: Police stop people from offering free hugs.

Man, I was just in Beijing Tuesday and Wednesday, so missed out on the free physical affection and its fallout. What I didn’t miss is the sociopolitical and cultural implications, thanks to Greg’s brilliant editorial on the incident: China Says “No” to Half-assed Attempt at Affection.

More on Beijing next post.…

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10 Comments | Posted in personal
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