I say “big snow” because that’s the literally translation of the Chinese word for “heavy snow”: 大雪. And what we woke up to this morning in Shanghai is definitely a heavy snow for this part of China!
The Shanghainese aren’t used to the snow. This car, for example, drove out into traffic without even clearing its rear window:
Probably the weirdest thing to see, though, is the “snow sweeping”; the use of Chinese straw brooms to clear the snow. …
It snowed in Shanghai today, lightly as snow goes, but pretty heavily for Shanghai. A quick look at the Flickrverse reveals:
Note: Most of these are not my photos. Click through to see who took them.…
Tonight I went out to pick up a few items. I wanted to get some drinks and a bug zapper light. (Summer is slowly seeping into Shanghai in all its steamy unpleasantness, and with it comes the skeeters.)
The grocery store was already closed, so I turned to one of the little hardware/general shops that line the road.
Me: 有杀蚊子的灯吗？ (Do you have lights that kills mosquitoes?)
Shopkeeper: 么哇某某灯？没有。 (Something-something light? Nope.)
Me: 叫什么？ (What’s it called?)
…
I had off for the May holiday today, so I got to sleep in. After lunch I went for a stroll in Zhongshan Park.
Outside the park there were vendors selling pets. The main ones were rabbits, dwarf hamsters, chicks, and ducklings.
The park was crowded, but the weather was great. Some people (like me) were there just to walk around.
Others were boating.
Some were flying kites.
Some children were getting pictures taken in front of giant cartoon characters. …
Q: What do these Chinese women have in common?
A: They all have the Chinese name 黄雪, which in English means “Yellow Snow.” (Comedic gold, this is!) The surname Huang is fairly common, and it’s not unusual for girls’ names to include the character 雪.
If you want to see more Chinese yellow snow, you can do a Baidu search for 黄雪. Unfortunately, the term more often seems to refer to snow in northern China (and Korea) …
Winter has arrived in Shanghai, but it’s not yet in full swing.
My checklist would go something like this:
Yesterday as I rode in a taxi through Xujiahui I was glad that I was not one of the many people trying in vain to hail a cab. It can be extremely hard to find a taxi when it rains. Sometimes it’s completely impossible.
A thought struck me, so I asked the driver:
Me: Master*, do you like rainy days better or non-rainy days better? On rainy days you get more business, right?
Driver: With traffic like this, the rain
…
The typhoon passed through Shanghai over a week ago, leaving behind lots of water and more than a few toppled trees. Fortunately, it also left a few of us with some great photographs. Check out Shanghai Sky‘s typhoon set on Flickr: Train Station. (Hey, better late than never, right??)
Shanghai bloggers report on the typhoon:
head like an empty sterile room, somehow I made a mess
like watching newborn babies crack from work-related stress
-Alkaline Trio, “I lied my face off”
Well, it’s the beginning of the semester, a fresh start. New students, new teachers, new lesson plans… Somehow it all seems a little “messy” though. I wonder if it’s because of the constant rain. We actually had nice weather today, but that’s a rarity. The other day I accidentally said “rain forecast” instead …
Not long ago I had an IM conversation with Alf. He’s teaching in Xinxiang, and he clearly does not have a foreign teacher community over there like I now have here. He mentioned that his friends that read his blog say that his blog is mostly just a bunch of complaints. We talked a bunch about those complaints. I post occasional complaints, but I haven’t posted many lately. I think having complaints is a natural part of living in …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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