Yesterday I went to a kindergarten to teach a few classes with a co-worker. The kindergarten is inside a walled community. Not the kind of rich walled community you may be thinking of, but rather a big collection of fairly run-down Chinese apartment buildings which happen to be surrounded by a wall.
On the way out, we passed two men burning stuff near the garbage. My first thought was, “Just great. As if the pollution wasn’t bad enough, people also …
Presenting Sinosplice’s own Mandarin / Shanghainese Flash soundboard. Try it out to hear the difference between Shanghainese and Mandarin in some basic words and phrases.
I recently discovered a very interesting site: ShanghaiNing.com. It’s designed specifically for the native Shanghainese. The tagline at the top says 侬白相啥？ That’s how you would write 你玩什么？ (roughly, “what do you do for fun?”) in Chinese characters to represent the particular words the Shanghainese use.
Translated excerpt from the about page:
We represent the new Shanghai culture…..
…
We invite you to our website…
to discuss our concerns in our own language,
to sing our songs to our own
Jocelyn at Speaking of China recently painted a rather dismal picture of life in Shanghai:
I think of those 10 or so months I’d spent in Shanghai. Somehow staying in that “booming metropolis” had swiftly beaten much of the spontaneity out of my life. There’s something inextricably stifling about Shanghai. The people hardly smile at you. The shopkeepers at times seem reluctant to utter “Welcome” as you walk in the door. Most entertainment options offer little for those interested in
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John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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