China is known to be a nation of heavy smokers. So I was taken by surprise when I overheard this exchange in a beef noodle restaurant in the Cloud Nine (龙之梦) mall by Shanghai’s Zhongshan Park:
Customer: 服务员，烟灰缸！ [Waitress, (bring an) ashtray!]
Waitress: 这里不可以吸烟。 [You can't smoke here.]
Customer: 有吸烟区吗？ [Is there a smoking section?]
Waitress: 没有。 [No.]
Customer: [grumble, grumble]
In case you’re not familiar with China, let me tell you what’s surprising.
The guy
Life in China for us non-Chinese is a never-ending process of adaptation. Some things come easier than others. For me, one of the most difficult to get used to has been going to the dentist. Let’s face it — Americans are pretty vain when it comes to teeth, and we don’t see a lot on a daily basis to inspire confidence in China’s dentistry skill. Does an American like me dare go to the dentist in China? How does …
On my recent trip home, I brought a few bottles of this stuff to give to some friends:
The name of this unremarkable-looking “rice wine” is 张裕特质三鞭酒. The part to pay atention to here is “三鞭“. That means “three penis.” We’re talking various types of animal penis here, brewed in the liquor to impart vitality to the drinker. If you read the back, you can find out which three it is: 海狗鞭 (seal penis), 鹿鞭 (deer penis), …
This Sinosplice silence has gone on for too long! Time for a personal post.
Leading up to Christmas, I was preparing to make a trip back to the USA. This time that involved not only the usual gift-buying, but also getting a good lead in the recordings at ChinesePod, and also making sure that all of my AllSet Learning clients are properly taken care of the whole time as well.
What was meant to be a “short and sweet” …
The past two weeks, I’ve had occasion to visit two different hospitals in Shanghai. Both were large, public hospitals that served a huge volume of patients every day. I came away from both feeling that Chinese train stations and Chinese hospitals are very similar.
Had lunch with a former co-worker yesterday. I hadn’t seen her since my wedding. She told me she had recently had surgery to have a 畸胎瘤 removed. What is that? Well, 畸 means “deformity,” 胎 means “fetus,” and 瘤 means “tumor” (or similar growth). As far as I can tell, this is called “fetus in fetu” in English.
What happened to my friend is that when she was originally in the womb, she had a twin, but her …
I was watching a BBC documentary on jungles with my wife yesterday, and we learned about a fascinating parasitic fungus called Cordyceps. Here’s the clip we saw:
Just in case you’re too lazy or unable to watch the amazing YouTube video, the fungus spreads through the insect and compels it to go somewhere high up to attach itself and die. Then the fungus sprouts from the corpse and spreads its spores upon the insect populations below. Badass! (Watch the …
Towards the end of September, on one particularly nice Friday afternoon, I suddenly came with a fever. I went home to get some more sleep.
Photo by DooogwoooD on Flickr
My wife got home and proceeded to freak out. To the Chinese, a fever is serious, much more so than a cold. Somewhere in the Chinese psyche there’s a line about “fevers kill people” and modern medicine has yet to edit that line. My wife wanted to …
Just in the past few months I’ve had blueberry juice (in Beijing) and bayberry juice (in Shanghai):
This got me thinking about some of the other interesting juices in China. Although not so exotic, I never saw watermelon juice and cucumber juice on the menus back home (no, I have never hung out in health spas). But they’re regular features on the menu in Shanghai.
Then of course there’s kiwi juice and strawberry juice.
What interesting fruit or vegetable juices …
On Thursday I noticed three kinds of Trojan condom ads in the subway car I was riding*, and I’d never seen Trojan ads on the subway before. Trojan is getting into the market a bit late; the dominant foreign company is Durex.
What interested me was the content of the ads. One of them was a long horizontal ad which read 不只是神话…… (“it’s not just a myth”). Another was a rectangular ad which briefly recounted in both Chinese and …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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