By “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” I mean now that I have had the opportunity to go, I will never again go in this lifetime. Once is definitely enough. Still, I’m surprised that very few foreigners have ever heard of ChinaJoy, because it’s so huge here in Shanghai. Not until I went myself did I realize how huge it really is.
I’m pretty sure the line to buy tickets to ChinaJoy was the longest line I’ve ever been in, spanning the length …
Last night I met up with Randy Alexander of Sinoglot, Yuwen, and Echoes of Manchu for dinner and imported beers. We had a great chat, with topics ranging from English and Chinese linguistics, to sci-fi and (evil genius) Joel Martinsen, to the Sinoglot crew and how they tricked Randy into learning Manchu.
We started talking about some of our favorite linguistics articles, on Language Log or elsewhere, and I brought up the one about the half-life of irregular …
I understand very little Cantonese, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done enough dubbing work to know it isn’t easy, and this woman is just amazing. Keep watching… it only gets better and better.
(Via Kaixin Wang.)…
I enjoyed Kaiser Kuo’s recent Sinica podcast on Popup Chinese featuring Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org and Will Moss of Imagethief. They started off with the provocative statement that “the English language China blog is dead,” and went into some analysis of how things are different now than they were. Their analysis seemed pretty spot-on to me.
This is an issue I’ve been thinking about for a long time: how the “China blogosphere” has changed, how I still fit in, …
While at the pharmacy the other day with my friend Chris, we came upon what seemed like a typical example of Engrish:
Funny, we thought… “the count” instead of “the counter.”
Only as we were leaving did we notice the guy behind the counter:
The Sesame Street character “the Count” is known for his rather clever name. Even a kid can get the pun. How does his Chinese name fare in terms of cleverness? Not too well, I’m …
OK, I admit it. This Chinese TV show called 非诚勿扰 (English name: If You Are the One) has ensnared me. It’s just silly dating game television, but I find it interesting for a bunch of reasons. Here is the basic premise of the show, explained by Hello Nanjing:
The basic concept of the show is that 24 girls will stand in a line, each atop a podium with a light hanging over their head. Facing them is one
…
Yesterday in the bookstore I noticed these two books, titled 丘吉尔 (Churchill) and 希特勒 (Hitler):
Now am I crazy, or do these two historical figures both look really evil, perhaps Churchill even more so than Hitler??
Apparently this was just a bad choice of photo (and color) in the cover design, though; if you click through to either Churchill’s or Hitler’s Amazon.cn pages, you see lots of other books in the series. Only Mussolini looks as evil as these two.…
I just got a tip from an AllSet Learning client that there will be some special screenings of the films of Joris Ivens at the Expo’s Dutch pavilion this weekend (July 9~10). So maybe after checking out the new Shanghai Apple Store we can go get a dose of real culture. (Wow, that sure sounded snobby. I own a Mac!)
Here is the description:
Joris Ivens
During the weekend of 9 and 10 July at the World Expo in Shanhai,
…
Mark over at Pinyin News had a great rant the other day reacting to a New York Times article which exoticized Chinese characters.
It’s funny, when you first learn anything about Chinese characters, you learn that they’re a “writing system.” Fair enough, seems simple, right? But you don’t have to study long before you’re bombarded with all kinds of ideas about how the characters are the language, or the characters are the essence of the culture, or the …
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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