Chinese New Year (CNY) is this week, and it’s bound to cause confusion. This is because we’ve basically got three systems for numbering days overlapping, and quite close together:
The days of the week are referred to by numbers, starting with Monday (AKA “One-day”), then Tuesday (AKA “Two-day”), etc. In Chinese they’re 星期一、星期二、星期三、星期四、星期五、星期六、星期天.
For most of the year, dates are also referred to using the Western system.
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 …
Liangfen (凉粉) is a kind of Chinese food which Wenlin translates as “bean jelly.” This is a pretty good translation; liangfen is made from beans and is about the consistency of jelly (although often a bit stiffer). In restaurants, liangfen can be served up like noodles and often looks something like this:
Doing a search for these liangfen images, I was reminded of a very different liangfen which became extremely popular last year:
(That would be 张靓颖 of …
And now for something completely vapid: Chinese girl pop stars!
I was bored, surfing around on Baidu, as I sometimes do, and I stumbled across this Baidu ranking of female pop stars. The ranking is assigned by searches, and each star is linked to photos, discussions, and “星闻” (a pun on 星 and 新闻, meaning “star news”). It even keeps track of changes in the rankings.
I immediately noted two things about the list. First, …
I have just returned from yet another visit home. I no longer have many reverse culture shock experiences (e.g. the cliché “Americans are so fat” one), but I notice lots of little things. This is how I measure the growing disconnect between modern American culture and me. Here are some of my observations from my last visit:
Having lived in China for so long, I no longer like sweets as much as I used to. I find myself
Well, I’m not really sure if “plagiarism” is the right word exactly. The other day I stumbled upon a Chinese article concerning the 校花 of various colleges and universities in China. I find the whole concept of 校花–a “campus babe” representing the best in feminine beauty that a school has to offer–pretty sexist, but China holds no monopoly on sexism, and that’s another matter altogether.
The point of the article is that pictures of these pretty girls–supposedly students at certain …
It’s pretty well-known that Chinese college boys love computer games. When I taught in Hangzhou, I saw firsthand how those guys would spend every free minute in internet cafes playing CounterStrike or whatever the latest network game was. The reason for the obsession was hard for me to grasp.
Then I saw two eye-catching entries on Bingfeng’s Teahouse which offered a possible explanation:
Bingfeng’s large collection of “Chinese Internet Girl” photos (click on both photos above for more) — evidence …
Last Friday night my friend DJ Carl was spinning so I went to check his set out at La Fabrique with my girlfriend. While there a kind soul gave us tickets to see Scott Bond at DKD so we did that too. I learned a few things:
A girl can look pretty hot with her hair up and chopsticks in her hair.
The chopsticks in her hair are not actually to be called “chopsticks.” That would be silly. They are
Shanghai’s Hooters restaurant is very old news by now. “A symbol of a new China,” blah blah blah. The Western media ate it up.
Shanghaiist recently did an interview of a Shanghai Hooters girl named “Quasar” and got to ask some of the more important questions:
How does the salary for a waitress at Hooters [Shanghai] compare to waitresses at other [Shanghai] restaurants?
Do you know what the word “hooters” means? [Note: the Chinese translation of the restaurant chain’s name
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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