Blog


03

May 2018

Born Fried (shengjian)

Check out the English name of this little shop:

Born Fried

Born Fried” is almost certainly an overly literal character-by-character translation of 生煎, a kind of bready, fried stuffed bun. Wikipedia describes it like this:

…a type of small, pan-fried baozi (steamed buns) which is a specialty of Shanghai. It is usually filled with pork and gelatin that melts into soup/liquid when cooked. Shengjian mantou has been one of the most common breakfast items in Shanghai since the early 1900s. As a ubiquitous breakfast item, it has a significant place in Shanghainese culture.

That same page gives the literal translation “raw-fried” for 生煎. Still, there’s something about “Born Fried”… it has a cool ring to it.

In case you’re not familiar with this little joyful celebration of grease, here are a few photos from Flickr (not my own; click through for the photographer’s photos):

小楊生煎

Shanghai Meat Donut

shengjian 生煎

shengjian 生煎 Suzhou 2


25

Apr 2018

Popular (blocky and backwards)

This ad (spotted in the Shanghai Metro) is interesting for a number of reasons:

Popular (blocky and backwards)

What caught my attention was the font. “Blocky” (sometimes pixely) fonts are quite common, but I’ve never seen one so “spaced out” like this before. Yet the word 流行 (“popular”) is clearly visible.

And I didn’t even realize it at first, but the word 流行 is also written backwards! This is not something I have seen before, and I’m not sure what the intended effect is. (Maybe if I were a fan I’d get it?)

Nice of the poster to include the pinyin for 流行 (liúxíng), though!

Chris Lee is the English name for Li Yuchun (李宇春), which some of the older “China watcher” crowd might remember for her rise to prominence on the popular “Super Girl” singing competition in 2005.


100 Chinese History Keywords

19

Apr 2018

100 Chinese History Keywords

I’m not a history buff. I recognize it’s important to study history, and that no educated person should be ignorant of history. So while I do read about Chinese history, I don’t do it a lot. But every time I do pick up a Chinese history book, one of the things that drives me crazy about books on this topic is that so often there are no Chinese characters given for important names. (Or characters are given, but no pinyin.) Is this so hard?

China Simplified has a new book out called History Flashback. It’s a fun read, beautifully illustrated, and it’s actually pretty short! How does one condense “5000 years” of Chinese history into only 200 pages? Well, it’s possible. And although the book does a pretty good job of providing characters and pinyin for the Chinese names and other words mentioned, it seemed like a good starting point for a list of “essential Chinese history terms.”

So using this book as a starting point, my company AllSet Learning teamed up with China Simplified to create this handy list of 100 Chinese History Keywords. It’s a free PDF; no signup needed. Just download.

Download Free PDF

It was hard narrowing the original candidate list of 500 or so to only 100, but I think we did OK. What do you think? Are there any glaring omissions that an intermediate learner would really want?


Apr. 26 Update: We had a repeat word in the original list. It’s been removed, and we’re still at 100!


17

Apr 2018

Dining Characterplay and “My Type”

After you’re done admiring the map, check out the character at the bottom:

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(Sidenote! I have to wonder: why didn’t they choose to use chopsticks instead of a fork?)

can mean “a dish (at a meal),” or “vegetables,” or even just “food,” depending on context. Here, the text reads:

全世界
都是你的菜

The ad uses a common idiom. 是我的菜 means “is to my liking” or, oddly enough, “is my cup of tea.”

Interesting enough, it’s super common to use this expression with relation to romantic attraction:

  • 你是我的菜 (You’re my type)
  • 你不是我的菜 (You’re not my type)

(In fact, both of the phrases above are the names of songs in Chinese!)

This is a great expression to learn early on because it’s fun, instantly comprehensible, easy to use, and uses only basic words and characters.


11

Apr 2018

Tomb Sweeping: A Fading Tradition?

China had its Tomb Sweeping Day (清明节) last week, and that meant a three-day national holiday from Thursday, April 5 to Saturday, April 7 this year. (And then we were all supposed to work on Sunday to “make up for” one of those days off.)

The Chinese name for “Tomb Sweeping Day,” 清明节, is a little opaque. Both the characters and are pretty easy, but what do they mean together? “Pure Bright Festival?” Huh? And what does that have to do with sweeping a tomb?

Well, 清明 is “the name of the 5th solar term of the traditional East Asian lunisolar calendar,” according to Wikipedia. (Sorry, that wasn’t super interesting.)

I’m more interested in the tomb sweeping tradition. A day when the whole family, young and old, goes to visits the grave sites of their ancestors. What a great time to tell stories about these people, and to ensure that this aspect of Chinese culture stays alive and well.

Tomb sweeping - 1080834

The thing is, in Shanghai at least, I don’t see or hear about much activity surrounding actually visiting the graves of family members to 扫墓 (sweep the tombs), or at least not on 清明节 itself. What gives? Do people simply not care anymore?

I’ve spoken with a number of friends and family members on this topic, and this is what I’m hearing:

  • I used to go with my family when I was young, but now that I’m grown up in working in Shanghai (far away from my hometown), I don’t go anymore.
  • My mother goes for the whole family and sweeps the tombs.
  • My mother goes for the whole family, but not on the holiday; there’s too much traffic on the roads. She goes a week in advance.
  • In Beijing the locals all go.

Here are a few Chinese posts online, showing that there is some uncertainty out there among the younger people:

Probably one of the most significant events that impacted how this holiday is observed was its being suppressed in the past as “superstition” or overly traditional and backward. It’s only been officially recognized by the government again since 2008, so the holiday has needed time to make a comeback. At the same time, when people live across the country from where their ancestors are buried, it’s not realistic to visit a far-off tomb over a 3-day holiday.

I think one thing that put this holiday in perspective for me was thinking about how Americans observe Memorial Day. Sure, some people make a point of honoring the fallen soldiers, but a lot of people just enjoy a day off and have a barbecue. I like to think that the Chinese take Tomb Sweeping Day a little more seriously, though. It’s about family, after all.

For those of you in China, did you notice many of your young-ish friends making a point to go tomb sweeping this year?


27

Mar 2018

City Nightlife Characterplay

While perhaps not the cleverest characterplay, I like this treatment of the character , which means “city” (as in 城市), or sometimes “wall” (as in 长城). The phrase 不夜城 (literally, “not night city”) is similar to “the city that never sleeps.”

Untitled

The text is:

龍之梦购物公园
新食代
不夜城
千人自助餐盛宴

Note: The way that “Cloud Nine Mall” (龍之梦) is written breaks the “golden rule” that I learned in Chinese 101: Either write entirely in simplified characters or write entirely in traditional characters. Never mix the two. The simplified dragon character is written using the traditional . “食代” is a pun on 时代.


13

Mar 2018

Not so clever use of “carry”

Saw this ad on the Shanghai Metro:

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The top line of the text is a definition of the English word “carry,” used in the ad copy below:

*注:CARRY = 带领、支撑

Here’s a tip: if you need to define the foreign word, there’s a good chance it doesn’t belong in your ad.


07

Mar 2018

Compassionately Featuring the Unseen in Advertising

Children with Down syndrome (唐氏综合征) are rarely seen in China, but it’s becoming more common. Still, I was surprised to see this ad in the Shanghai subway last year:

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关爱“喜憨儿”
传递温暖,发现自己

The ad is spreading the idea that those with Down syndrome can still do some kinds of work and deserve our consideration.

The word 喜憨儿 is not a common one. It apparently comes from Taiwan, and is used to affectionately refer to people affected with Down syndrome, while hinting at the condition.

This year I spotted this other billboard in the subway:

Untitled

关注流动人口健康
人人参与共建共享

The ad is advocating paying attention to migrant workers’ health.

流动人口 refers to the “migrant worker population” in big Chinese cities like Shanghai. Their jobs are hard, their pay is low, they have little job security and few benefits (if any), and on top of that, they’re discriminated against. The Chinese word more often used to refer to these people is 农民工. In Florida we have “migrant workers” (usually Mexican), but in the Chinese case, these workers are actual Chinese citizens.


22

Feb 2018

Artsy Characters in Xiamen

I was in Gulangyu (鼓浪屿), Xiamen (厦门) again over the CNY break, and I noticed some interesting designs using characters:

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This one is a cafe/bar called 东西, which, aside from meaning “thing” or “stuff,” also literally means “east-west.” The fusion is looking pretty intimate in this design.

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These three characters (not the two small ones at bottom right) are quite cryptic on this sign! Here’s how the same name is written in another place:

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The name is 那些年 (“Those Years”). Can you see those three characters in the previous sign?

Finally, a very simple characterplay on the character :

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14

Feb 2018

Chinese Character Blocks, Made in the USA

Over Christmas in Florida, my dad gave my son (then not quite three years old) a set of wooden blocks. What’s interesting is that these were Chinese character blocks, featuring both Chinese characters and their stroke orders. And these were made in the USA! (Must have been one of the few toys my kids got for Christmas that wasn’t made in China, and it was a set of Chinese character blocks.)

Untitled

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We couldn’t fit such a heavy toy in our luggage on the trip back, so my dad shipped them over for us: Chinese blocks, made in the USA, shipped from the USA to China. Irony level up!

These are apparently “Uncle Goose” brand wooden blocks, but the ones we have look different from what’s on Amazon. I like ours better… they look like these, and have a map of China on the back, as well as a cool dragon and stuff.

I see Uncle Goose also does blocks for Japanese, Korean, Thai, Hebrew, Hindi, Arabic, and others. Pretty cool!


07

Feb 2018

Chinese Doctors

I’m on day 3 of a pretty heinous fever flu thing, and day 2 brought me to a Chinese hospital, late at night. Not an international hospital, but a pretty decent public one. Chinese hospitals are hard because there are always so many people there, and the process is broken down into multiple steps, most of which require taking a number and waiting. So you spend a lot of time waiting with a lot of other sick people. Not fun.

Doctor's notes with Chinese ink & brush

This time, however, I was struck by how patient and professional my doctor was. So often, the doctors are pretty stressed out, seeing cranky patient after cranky patient in a never-ending stream of patients. So the doctors are testy and not terrible forthcoming with information. While this is understandable, it’s certainly not a good experience for a sick person and their concerned family members. And when you get a professional, patient doctor, you really take notice.

I don’t think it’s easy to become a doctor in any country, but in China, the reward for the dedication seems especially paltry. Or, if “helping people,” is all you ever wanted, and that feeling is like a refreshing sip of cool water, you’re suddenly getting a firehose in the face.

I’d be curious to hear the opinion of anyone familiar with both systems: is it way harder to be a Chinese doctor? Is it less rewarding financially? I know it’s not easy being a doctor in any society, but I have trouble imagining either of those answers being “no.”


01

Feb 2018

The Chinglish that Creeps in

My daughter is 6 years old now, and aside from yearly trips to Florida, she’s grown up entirely in Shanghai. Her school is a Chinese school, not an international or bilingual school, when means that I’ve had to make extra efforts if I want her to grow up bilingual. I’ve always practiced “One Parent One Language” (“OPOL”), meaning that I never speak to my daughter in Chinese, even though I’m observing her acquisition of both Chinese and English with keen interest.

I’ve written about my daughter’s acquisition of Chinese grammar in the past, but today I want to comment on how her mastery of English has been affected by her Chinese acquisition and mostly Chinese environment.

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Since she’s grown up in Shanghai and attends a school where Mandarin is spoken most of the time, it’s safe to assume that my daughter’s Chinese language skills are going to be a bit more dominant. For example, I get the feeling that she’s mastering irregular verbs a bit more slowly than American kids might. I’m not worried about it; her accent is fine, and she sounds like an American 6-year-old most of the time. I’ve certainly never felt she was making mistakes that Chinese learners of English might make. …until recently.

In the past few months I’ve noticed that my daughter confuses the words “make” and “let” in her English. This is a mistake frequently made by Chinese learners of English. In Chinese, has both meanings, and context makes the rest clear. In English, if you don’t get these words straight, your English sounds quite weird (and non-native). So I definitely took notice when my daughter said things like:

Google Ngram Viewer results for 让

  • *”She was really mean, and let me cry.”
  • *”He always lets me laugh.”
  • *”What you said let me angry.”

In every case, the word “make” should be used, and the word “let” is used instead. (I’ve never observed the confusion going in the other direction.) She’s generally receptive to corrections of her English (she catches on pretty quickly when I correct her on her usage of irregular verbs, for example), but this one has been a bit more stubborn.

I’m curious: do any monolingual (or at least not growing up in China) English-speaking kids make this mistake? Or is it something particular to this situation? I expect it will works its way out in time, and I’ll be interested to see if the same thing happens with my son (who is now 3).


25

Jan 2018

Skipping the Line at Burger King with WeChat

One of the interesting things about living in Shanghai is seeing new technology integrated into daily life across the city fairly quickly. Two significant recent examples include mobile payments (WeChat, AliPay) and bike sharing (Mobike, Ofo). But WeChat is enabling lots of other cool changes as well.

The other day I went to Burger King and there was a fairly long line.

Burger King WeChat Order 2

I noticed this banner telling me to scan the QR code and order on my phone to skip the line:

Burger King WeChat Order 3

扫码
手机自动点餐
不排队

I don’t always go for this kind of thing, as sometimes the “quick and convenient” way ends up being more hassle (the Shanghai Metro’s recent launch of QR codes for subway ticket payments is a great example of that). But this time I decided to give it a shot.

Burger King WeChat Order 1

It was, indeed, easy and fast, and I think I got my order sooner than I would have had I stayed in line.

It was pretty clear to me that Burger King is essentially using the same system used to prepare orders for delivery guys: the user orders on the app, and the delivery guy picks it up in the window. This implementation is simply combining the two for one user. And it utilizes WeChat, so it’s not even a totally separate iOS or Android app. The only flaw I saw was that it didn’t auto-detect which store I was in; I had to choose it. Had I accidentally chosen the wrong location, that would have been quite annoying for both sides.

Still, interesting to see this. McDonalds in Shanghai has had touchscreen order kiosks for a while, but shifting the ordering to WeChat (which virtually every consumer in Shanghai uses) adds a new level of convenience.


17

Jan 2018

Work-Chinese Balance

You hear a lot about the “work-life balance,” and what I want to discuss here is similar, but related to Chinese learning, of course. I’m drawing upon my own experience, as well as the experience of hundreds of clients at AllSet Learning, most of whom are learning Chinese for work-related reasons. Since most of my clients live and work in China, we’re talking about a natural second language learning situation (learning while immersed in the target language environment). Theoretically, at least, they could be using Chinese for their work, in some capacity.

Hence the term “work-Chinese balance.” If you live and work in China, how much do you use Chinese on the job? The answer could range from not using a word of Chinese ever (this is quite common for expat executives working for multinational corporations in Shanghai, for example) to using Chinese all day every day as part of the job.

It should come as no surprise that regularly using Chinese on the job results in much faster learning. Combine that with a practical, customized course of study focused on their work content, and progress can be extremely rapid. This is what I strive to help each of my clients achieve.

Can I have some Venn diagrams with that?

Time to Venn it up! Before getting into my own personal situation, let me just lay out some possible scenarios.

For many of my clients, they can use some Chinese on the job. The challenge is to use their Chinese more effectively, and to expand the scope of work which can be performed in Chinese. So it’s common to have this kind of situation, where some Chinese is used at work, but a lot of Chinese practice happens outside of the work place, and a lot of work is performed in English (or at least, not Chinese):

Work-Chinese Balance

Worst case scenario is where the client doesn’t use Chinese for work at all, and maybe doesn’t practice much outside of work either (sizes are not meant to be exactly proportional here):

Work-Chinese Balance

It’s also possible that a client could ONLY use Chinese at work, but only for part of the job:

Work-Chinese Balance

The opposite would be rarer: the client basically lives in Chinese, and that includes work. (Someone in a situation like this probably already has quite advanced Chinese. This situation would be more common for, say, an immigrant to the USA learning English than an expat in China learning Chinese.)

Work-Chinese Balance

My Own Work-Chinese Evolution

I thought it would be interesting to chart my own work-Chinese evolution, since I’ve succeeded in gradually integrating Chinese into my career more and more over the years, and it helped me get my Chinese up to a high level. Let’s take a look…

Work-Chinese Balance

When I first arrived in China I taught English in Hangzhou. I didn’t use any Chinese for my job, but I actually didn’t work a lot of hours every week, so I spent a ton of time studying and practicing Chinese in my free time.

Work-Chinese Balance

After moving to Shanghai in 2004 I worked for a company called Melody. I was building on my English teaching experience, but starting to work Chinese into my job. This was an exciting time, and I made full use of the opportunities. My Chinese improved a lot, and I even had to speak Chinese on stage, in front of hundreds of teachers, for pronunciation training. A little pressure can be good!

Work-Chinese Balance

I had to work hard to get into a Chinese grad school program in applied linguistics, and once I did it, I switched to a part-time job doing translation. This was good reading comprehension practice for me, but since I was producing written English and not speaking Chinese, I don’t consider it full “work immersion,” and for the purposes of this article I’m more concerned with speaking. You could also say that my grad school coursework was my full-time “job” at the time (I was on a student visa), and for that, I was fully immersed in Chinese. I got more listening and reading practice than anything, but it was still beneficial to my development, especially in sophisticating my vocabulary and upgrading my academic reading comprehension to adult-level.

Work-Chinese Balance

Next came my 7+ year stint at ChinesePod. This was a lot of fun, and although I used a fair amount of English to communicate with upper management and other non-Chinese staff, I was also immersed in Chinese for most of my work. I got to geek out discussing linguistic issues on a regular basis. I was able to really flesh out my knowledge of Chinese, making it much more detailed. As a non-native speaker in the industry of teaching Chinese, the constant and long-term incrementing of my metalinguistic knowledge of Mandarin was super useful. I also got to have fun directing the creation of tons of lessons, which had its own learning benefits (frequently cultural).

Work-Chinese Balance

Finally, I arrive at my current job at AllSet Learning. As a consultant, I’m in frequent contact with my clients, including face to face meetings, and most of that is in English. I also manage all the development of resources like the Chinese Grammar Wiki in English. But a ton of my work is spent working with Chinese teachers and other staff in Chinese. This also includes tasks like teacher training.

As the boss, I actually have control of what I do and what I use Chinese for. I made a choice early on for all office communications to be in Chinese, and I continue to benefit from this (you really never stop learning, as long as you keep paying attention). I even talk to our non-Chinese interns in Chinese! (OK, we do also have some English meetings outside the office.)

Final Thoughts

If you’re living and working in China, definitely give some thought to your own work-Chinese balance. It could make all the difference.

If you’re learning Chinese outside of China, all is not lost. This isn’t the only path, but it can be the most straightforward. (On the other hand, if you did something radical and got a job in China, then you could pursue something like this, and you wouldn’t be the first to be so “crazy.”)


For a related post on mixing “practice” (often work) and “study,” see also: How I Learned Chinese (part 4).


10

Jan 2018

Turbo Bandwagon

This ad made me wonder: cultural differences aside, is the bandwagon effect stronger in China because there’s a larger population? Similarly, is the bandwagon effect more powerful when used in advertising in China?

200,000,000 Chinese people use Daily Youxian

The ad reads:

两亿中国人用每日优鲜

200 million Chinese people use Miss Fresh

The brand name is 每日优鲜, which could be translated to something like “Daily Excellent Fresh.” But then they called themselves “Miss Fresh” in English, so that’s the name I used.


13

Dec 2017

Reading Pros and Panda Toes

I was pleased to be contacted recently by Katie, the author of a new blog related to learning Chinese called Panda Toes. She’s based in Beijing, and has already gotten through the hardest parts of learning Mandarin, so she’s interested in sharing tips to help build reading fluency.

Panda Toes

Your first thought might be, “to get better at reading Chinese, don’t I just need to read more Chinese?” Well, yes. No one’s going to argue with that logic. But even putting aside the crucial question of what a learner should read on her own, there are some techniques that can make the whole process less painful and more productive.

I really like how in her first article, The Art of Reading Chinese (as a non-native speaker), Katie gives a lot of emphasis to recognizing names (both Chinese and foreign). This point absolutely deserves a lot of attention, and it’s something I remember being tripped up by repeatedly, back in the day. (My time in the news translation trenches did me a lot of good in that regard, but it was most definitely not fun work.)

To add to Katie’s point, I’d like to emphasize it is most definitely worth your time to spend a bit more time learning Chinese names and their structure. While you shouldn’t make a big flashcard deck and memorize ALL THE NAMES, you should be gradually gaining familiarity with common names and common name structures. But how does one do this?

  1. Learn your Chinese friends’ names. Really learn them. Every character, every tone. Ask why they were named that, and ask if it’s an unusual name, or a “typical Chinese name.” If their name contains certain characters that almost exclusively appear in people’s names, identify those as such. This learning is reinforced by your personal relationship with the person; this same knowledge-gathering would not be as effective on a group of random Chinese people.
  2. Learn some famous Chinese names. Again, be selective. These should be names that have some meaning for you. If you like talking about politics, then learn politicians’ names. Same goes for Chinese movie stars, singers, directors, etc. You can gradually expand this list over time. As you do, make note of patterns. For example, the name 章子怡 (Zhang Ziyi). Did you know that there’s a “A子B” naming pattern? Almost all Chinese people will be familiar with it, and sooner or later you need to be too.
  3. You need to know the super common Chinese surnames (again, learn them over time), but you also need to know that some super common words or characters can also be surnames. It really through me for a loop the first time I ran into surnames like , , , , or even .
  4. Ask your Chinese friends what they think of other people’s names. This is especially easy to do when you’re trying to come up with your own Chinese name, or naming a baby, but it’s also something you can do anytime. Getting Chinese friends’ takes on other Chinese names will really enrich your understanding of names, and you’ll probably be surprised by how widely opinions will vary. Just remember that no matter how much you respect a person, no single person’s opinion is “correct.”

I’ve always believed that names are an important type of vocabulary, laden with cultural information, and they’re well worth some additional attention.

Good luck in building your reading fluency. I’m glad to see Panda Toes is live, and I’ll be contributing to this discussion more in the future. Most of my work these days in reading is with lower levels, editing Mandarin Companion graded readers, but my more advanced clients at AllSet Learning are always looking for interesting new reading content, so I’m always looking at new material for that too.


iBooks Just Got an Awesome New Chinese Grammar Book

07

Dec 2017

iBooks Just Got an Awesome New Chinese Grammar Book

I’ve been criticized recently for not being self-promotional enough, so here’s a quick note to announce that the Chinese Grammar Wiki ebook is now in the Apple iBook Store!

Thanks for your patience, Apple fans. So now there’s:

At AllSet Learning we’re working hard on the follow-up volumes. If you’ve ever been an editor of the Chinese Grammar Wiki, use the U.S. Apple App/iBooks Store, and are interested in a promotional iBooks version, send me an email. If you’re looking forward to our forthcoming B1 and/or B2 volumes, and you’ve noticed any kinds of problems or shortcomings with the current B1/B2 content on the web version of the wiki, also send me an email. We need all the help we can get, and we’d be happy to thank wiki users for significant contributions with a promotional copy of those iBooks versions as well. (Apple allows publishers to share a limited number of free promo ebooks, but Kindle does not.)

Thanks for the support, everyone!


05

Dec 2017

Grape Balls and Last Resort TCM

I recently attended a parent-teacher meeting at my daughter’s Chinese kindergarten. There were a number of speakers, including the principal, the head English teacher, and a highly-regarded senior Shanghainese pediatrician named Dr. Xu. His topic was, “why is my child getting sick so often?

This seemed like a fairly simplistic topic to me, and the doctor droned on way too long, but I amused myself for part of the Powerpoint presentation by studying the bacteria names. Take for example, this guy:

staphylococcus = 葡萄球菌

It’s an image of staphylococcus bacteria. The Chinese name? 葡萄球菌 (literally: grape-ball-bacteria). Yep, I see it. Nice. But before you get all “Chinese is so cute,” it turns out that the word staphylococcus means the same thing in Greek. (This was like my hippopotamus / 河马 “river horse” revelation all over again!)

But the most interesting part of Dr. Xu’s talk for me was the Q&A part at the end, and one of the parents asked about traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). I’ll paraphrase the doctor’s reply below:

In my view, there are only two times when you should use TCM. The first is when you go to the [non-TCM] doctor and he can’t figure out what’s wrong with you. In this case, TCM is fine. It can’t hurt!

The second is when you go to the [non-TCM] doctor and he tells you that there’s nothing wrong with your body, that it’s all in your head. If you really have to take something, then take TCM, because again, it can’t hurt!

I wasn’t expecting this response to an all-Chinese audience, and it got a few chuckles from the audience. I wonder if western medicine is more popular than TCM when it comes to treating children partly because western medicine gets results faster.


28

Nov 2017

This Song Is Not About Mayo

I’ve teamed up with Chinese Buddy on a new song, and this time the grammar point is a very basic one related to saying “have” () and “don’t have” (没有). Besides Chinese language, it seems that our collaborations revolve around anti-materialism and food (last time was stinky tofu).

Anyway check it out, and show it to any kids you know learning Mandarin:

You can also view the video on Youtube.

Full disclosure: I have no business relationship with Chinese Buddy; we just appreciate each other’s work, and working together is a good complementary fit.


22

Nov 2017

Bookstore Yan Ji You’s Name is a Character Breakdown

In Shanghai’s Changning Raffles City (长宁来福士) mall, there’s a new bookstore called Yan Ji You (言几又). Does that name strike you as weird? It should. It’s a weird name. is used as a word by itself mostly just in classical Chinese, but then the use of (grammar points here) and (grammar points here) also don’t make sense. What’s going on?

Yan Ji You logo

It’s not obvious, but the name as a deconstruction of the character , as in 设计, the word for “design.” When you break down the character 设, you can break it into “left-right” structure (⿰) first, giving you 讠 and 殳. Then 殳 can be further broken down as a top-bottom structure (⿱), giving you 讠, 几, 又. But 讠 (the “speech radical”) is just a simplified stand-in for 言, and 言 looks way better as a stand-alone character anyway, so the end result is 言几又.

This kind of naming method is not entirely obvious, even to native speakers, and it’s not super common, either, from what I can tell. You can read more about 言几又 in Chinese on their Baidu Baike page.

There are reasons to visit other than “logo tourism”… It’s quite a nice bookstore! Here are a few more shots of the place:

Yan Ji You 01

Yan Ji You 02

Yan Ji You 04

Yan Ji You 05

Yan Ji You 03



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