Shanghai's Cycling Thug

Saturday Show

Saturday Show Hosts

My ChinesePod co-worker Colleen, new co-host of The Saturday Show and outstanding Canadian, is a very sweet girl. I was shocked to hear that she recently fell victim to violence on the streets of Shanghai.

She was walking along the side of a downtown street in broad daylight. Bicycles were going by, as usual. Suddenly an oncoming cyclist stuck out his arm and intentionally clotheslined her, knocking her to the ground. As she lay on the street, …

Micah on Chinese Movie Titles

Micah has an interesting post on some of the factors that come into play when translating a foreign movie title into Chinese for mainland viewers. In the entry he talks about the titles of the following movies:

  • The Host (Korean)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Night at the Museum
  • The Devil Wears Prada
  • Casino Royale
  • Tsotsi
  • Transformers

Micah tells us that the Chinese name of the creature in The Host is . Hoping to see what a 魊 supposedly looks …

Toys "Я" Us in Chinese

I remember not long ago I was wondering how Toys “Я” Us would write their name in Chinese. I recently got my answer in an ad at People’s Square subway station:

Toys

So the obvious parallel is instead of the “R” being represented as the cutesy “Я”, the character is written upside down. This makes sense because 反 means “to turn over.”

What was not so clear to me was the meaning of 反斗. The Chinese name for Toys …

The One-kuai Roll

The starting fare for taxis in Shanghai is 11 RMB, or, as the locals say, 11 kuai. This amount increases as a function of both distance traveled and time. This is all well and good.

What is not well and good, however, is a trick the taxi drivers frequently pull which I will dub “the one-kuai roll.” The typical one-kuai roll scenario is something like this:

Scene: in a taxi on the streets of Shanghai, in light

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