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 …
My friend Shelley was in Taiwan at the same time I was but had a very different experience. I’d like to share an excerpt from an e-mail he sent me:
One week was just not enough time in Taiwan and one email is just not enough to explain all I saw and did in that one week. But I’d like to leave off on an account of one experience at a Taipei night market that drove home a significant difference …
Bruno Bozzetto has managed to create several highly amusing Flash cartoons with only the simplest of drawings. Watching his “Yes and No” (traffic do’s and don’ts) and “Europe and Italy” (general observations of society), I couldn’t help but make a connection to China. Those two are both worth a look.
Via Screenhead.…
The name of the Christmas song “Jingle Bells” is 圣诞铃声 (something like “Christmas Bells”) in Chinese. But the famous English refrain “jingle bells, jingle bells” in Chinese is the onomatopoeic “叮叮当, 叮叮当,” which sounds like “ding ding dong, ding ding dong” to Western ears. It doesn’t sound at all like sleigh bells ringing to us, it just sounds really funny (or maybe like doorbells). In my experience, every Westerner who learns these Chinese lyrics busts out …
Conversation 1:
Chinese person: Why don’t you like fish?
Me: I like fish, it’s just hard to eat it with all these tiny bones in it.
Chinese person: Don’t fish in America have bones in them too?
Me: Yes, but the chef removes them. That’s his job.
Question: Do Westerners not eat a lot of (otherwise tasty) fish simply because they have too many bones?
Conversation 2:
Me: I come from Florida.
Chinese person: Oh, your home is by the
…
“Eat Poop You Cat” is a party game I recently discovered via Metafilter. The premise:
Each person writes a sentence, such as, say, “The hot soup burned my tongue.” The next person illustrates the sentence. Then the first portion is folded over, and the next person must try to reproduce the original sentence from the drawing. Then the drawing is folded over, and another illustration is produced.
The mutations can be hilarious. You don’t have to “know
…
My company has been doing some Thanksgiving activities lately. It’s my responsibility to help design the activities to make them educational both in basic vocabulary as well as in cultural content. It’s also my responsibility to execute some of the activities. This involves such excellent speaking opportunities as explaining in Chinese to a group of kids the basic history and traditions of American Thanksgiving.
So the other day I found myself explaining to some kindergarteners about the Indians (my company’s …
I had a full weekend, and I’m feeling a bit lazy. So rather than write about one of the new topics bouncing around in my head, I’ll make a sequel to my last entry, which generated an absolute fury of comments. I’m thinking that there may be so many at this point that some people don’t want to read any new ones.
So this entry consists mainly of a comment by Wayne (the original inspiration for the last entry):…
My friend Wayne (no, not that Wayne) is a great source of interesting conversation topics. The other day he and I were eating at a Turkish restaurant by Xiangyang Market with two friends. One friend was a Chinese girl, and the other was a Chinese American girl. Wayne suddenly asked us this question: “Have you ever noticed that the Chinese and Westerners seem to have different concepts of truth?“
Of course we wanted to know what he …
I have a small collection of famous quotes organized by theme, each with a Chinese translation. It’s very interesting to see how some of these famous quotes are translated.
In the case of the religion category, I think what’s most interesting is the quotes that were chosen. There weren’t many, so these few say a lot about the Chinese editors.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.-G. Bernard Shaw
It is only fear …
John has lived in China for
12.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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