Cheap DVDs are one of the well-known perks of living in China. For roughly $1 per disc, you can buy almost any movie or recent TV series. There’s a huge market for this form of entertainment, and it creates two significant forms of waste material.
Packaging
Pirated DVDs
Some of the Chinese DVD vendors are using enough packaging these days to make even the Japanese blush. A recent DVD purchase of mine revealed the following layers of packaging:
I have mentioned before that my ayi Xiao Wang is from Dongbei (东北, China’s northeast). I like her a lot, and perhaps one of the reasons is her impressive capacity for bluntness.
A while ago I was setting up an electric fan for her so she wouldn’t be so hot when she’s cooking in the kitchen. At first I thought it was broken, because when I pressed any of the buttons from speed 1 to 3, nothing happened. …
The other day as Xiao Wang (my ayi, a 32-year-old woman from the Harbin area) arrived, I was watching the news. Wen Jiabao (温家宝) was making some statement or other. Xiao Wang didn’t pay any attention. She started fixing dinner.
It suddenly occurred to me to get Xiao Wang’s take on Chinese politics, so I asked her what she thought of Hu Jintao (胡锦涛). I think it confused her a little, because Wen Jiabao …
With Chinese New Year comes many annoyances. Nonstop fireworks for a week ranks up there pretty high. But another thing that annoys me is that during the Chinese New Year season, Chinese people lose the ability to refer to dates using the normal calendar. I use the word “normal” not in an ethnocentric way, but in the sense that it is the calendar that all of China uses for the other 50 weeks out of the year. When Chinese New …
About a month after saying goodbye to Zhou Ayi (the housekeeper that went bad), I found a better job that once again enabled me to be home evenings for a cooking ayi. I was not at all discouraged by my previous bad experience; I was ready for a new ayi (and so was the apartment).
I used the “agency method.” When I walked into the little office, there was a woman at a desk, several middle-aged woman …
Shortly after I moved to Shanghai in early 2004 I decided to hire an ayi (housekeeper/maid) to do some cooking and cleaning. (Her last name was Zhou, so I’ll call her “Zhou Ayi.”) I really enjoyed having a cook, and I wasn’t shy about expressing my great satisfaction with Zhou Ayi. Things were great for a while.
Over time, our relationship worsened. I find it difficult to explain exactly how or why, but I’ll try.…
Recently I set up the little artificial Christmas tree my girlfriend bought for my last year. When I went to put the Christmas lights on it, I found that one of the wires had come disconnected from the switchbox. I probably wouldn’t be able to fix it without a soldering iron. Since I didn’t have time to get new Christmas lights, I just left the tree plain.
The next day my ayi came over and I pointed out the Christmas …
Assuming that you’ve given it some thought and decided to hire an ayi (housekeeper), you might still be unsure how this whole thing works. I’ll try to answer a few questions based on my own experiences.
How do you find an ayi?
The first way is the referral system. People that have found a good ayi usually love to recommend her. Most ayis need multiple jobs to make a decent living, so they welcome the introductions. People also …
A little while ago I posted Micah’s “Wholesale Vegetable Prices” and there was some discussion as to what, exactly, 毛菜 (AKA 鸡毛菜) is. Well, just last night, as I started digging into what I thought was a tasty but otherwise ordinary dish of 香菇青菜 (Chinese greens with mushrooms), my ayi mentioned to me, “that’s 鸡毛菜, you know.” (I had asked her about it around the time of the veggie prices post, and she remembered me asking, so …
Ayi (阿姨), among other things, means housekeeper/maid in Chinese. The word’s pronunciation is similar to saying the letters “I-E” in English, which results in occasional confusion with a certain outdated web browser by Microsoft (or very niche jokes).
“Ayi” is a word that many foreigners learn soon after coming to China even if they pick up very little Chinese, simply because ayis are very affordable in China. The going rate for a non-pro ayi in …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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