05
Dec 2005
CBL: Non-English Blogs
It’s something I’ve wanted to implement for a while, and the new China Blog List made it possible. Although its main function is still to list China blogs written in English, The China Blog List now features a separate listing of non-English (non-Chinese) blogs about China.
If you’re interested in blogs of only one language in the non-English list, you can easily bookmark that one language (and RSS feeds are on the way). So far, the languages covered are:
– French (27)
– Spanish (7)
– German (7)
– Swedish (1)
Of interest:
- Pincheschinos (Spanish): “the online library of Chinese piracy.” You don’t need to be able to read Spanish to appreciate a lot of this stuff. Check out the Religion Free DVD Player, Shanghai Cola, PolyStation, and Star Warrio action figures.
- Manologgon (Spanish): Chinese souvenir market. (This is a lot of the stuff we debate whether or not to buy for you people back home.)
- C H I N A B L Ä T T E R (German): the format looks like a German ESWN (except fancier, hehe), but I think it’s more like a German China Digital Times. (No serious China blog can compare with ESWN content-wise, right?) A lot of the links are for English articles.
-
Max (French): An entry on English Corner caught my eye. I was curious what a French speaker would think about this oft-reviled Chinese tradition. Translated by Babelfish:
One meets full with world, especially people culturés thus trés interesting.
Assailed by questions, people are intrigued by our presence… or you come, what you do make here, how you are called, is what it is beautiful Paris, you préferes Chinese girls or the European ones?… One do not know any more or to give head…
Good experiment, dice which I have a little time the week end I go back there to do to me a little pocket money…
Trés interesting indeed. I don’t read French, so I’m not sure if that was supposed to be dirty or what…
Anyway… The Non-English China Blog List is out. Spread the word. Stay tuned for more good stuff to come from the CBL. Eventually.
03
Dec 2005Signs of Winter in Shanghai
Winter has arrived in Shanghai, but it’s not yet in full swing.
My checklist would go something like this:
- ☑ Leaving the water heating function on the water cooler on yet?
- ☑ Using your warm fuzzy blanket in addition to your comforter yet?
- ☑ Wearing a heavy coat yet?
- ☐ Wearing your warm fuzzy slippers instead of the open-toed rubber slippers yet?
- ☐ Wearing long underwear yet?
- ☐ Using the heat at night yet?
- ☐ Using the heat during the day yet?
Hmmm, I might just have to check a few more of these off after today.
2005/12/04 Update: Yeah, this was the weekend that winter finally arrived in Shanghai. It’s way colder now.
This has been a Micah-esque entry. For more HTML symbols (like ☐ and ☑), check out Character Entity Reference HTML 4.
02
Dec 2005Promoting Plastic Surgery
The Chinese media is way too excited about plastic surgery. It’s pathetic. Time is writing about the Asian trend too, although this “news” is far from new. But it’s not dying down.
I don’t watch much TV or read a lot of Chinese news, but even I have seen quite a few “丑女变美女” (“ugly woman turns into a beautiful woman”) stories. Here are two sample shots from an online story that came out last week:
In the “before” shot she’s not even that ugly! She’s clearly not wearing any makeup, not wearing nice clothes, and she’s purposely looking dejected. She probably hasn’t washed her hair for a few days just for this picture. According to the story, “because of her appearance, she was driven away when she applied for jobs, scared people when she went out, and didn’t have any friends.” What bullshit. It makes me angry.
Then in the “after” shot… well, all I can say is, congratulations, you’re now a clone of the super generic Chinese “pretty girl.” (The surgery was actually intended to reproduce the look of a certain Chinese star. See the story for pics of that.)
OK, so I’ll admit that she looks prettier on the right, but the actual difference is not very extreme. What would drive this girl to seek out plastic surgery? Well, the Chinese media hyping it for all it’s worth sure didn’t help.
I also saw a short portion of a TV special which featured another “ugly woman.” The woman in that special was a different story. She looked extremely odd — unhealthy. I strongly suspect she didn’t get the proper nourishment as a child. She was way too thin, and her voice sounded like a child’s. The way she talked seemed to indicate that she was of lower than normal intelligence, too. But she had definitely decided that the only way her life could be worth anything is if she got plastic surgery. The show was about her quest to get the surgery paid for somehow despite the fact that she didn’t have much money. It was basically a “look how ugly I am — pity me!” campaign. Really sad.
I don’t mean to judge these people. You can’t argue with quotes like this (from Time):
> “I always wanted to believe people were ultimately judged by what was inside,” she muses, her gaze hesitant and sad. “But I knew from my personal experience that this wasn’t true. It’s always the pretty girls who win the good things in life.”
I also don’t mean to suggest that this trend is China- or Asia-specific. I’ve just been seeing it here so much lately. The whole thing is just so sad. It’s the media that should be condemned. It really seems like the media has made some kind of promotion deal with plastic surgery providers. The hype is just everywhere.
01
Dec 2005Shanghai Vegetable Prices
The other day Micah posted a list of vegetable prices, which I find very useful. Normally I would just link to his entry, but Micah’s permanent archives are on “Blockspot,” which is just a pain. So with his permission I’m reproducing the table here (and adding pinyin tooltips so that I’ve at least contributed something).
From Shanghai Evening Post’s “Metro Life” section called 蔬菜批发价格, or Wholesale Vegetable Prices:
| 品种 Type |
价格 （元/公斤） Price (RMB/kg) |
品种 Type |
价格 （元/公斤） Price (RMB/kg) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 青菜 Chinese greens |
0.7 | 番茄 Tomato |
2.1 |
| 毛菜 ??? |
1.7 | 什椒 Peppers |
2 |
| 卷心菜 Cabbage |
0.6 | 冬瓜 Winter melon |
0.6 |
| 大白菜 Chinese cabbage |
0.45 | 黄瓜 Cucumber |
2.1 |
| 花菜 Cauliflower |
2.6 | 毛豆 Soy bean |
1.8 |
| 生菜 Lettuce |
1.8 | 豇豆 Cowpea |
2.7 |
| 美芹 Celery |
1.9 | 刀豆 String bean |
3.1 |
| 雍菜 Water spinach |
(blank) | 茭白 Wild rice stem |
3.8 |
| 茄子 Eggplant |
2.1 | 土豆 Potato |
1.45 |
It’s weird — not only can I not find a translation for 毛菜, but I can’t find any definite pictures of it either (can you make sense of this or this?). Yet I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten it before!
30
Nov 2005Analogy of the Week
Talk Talk China is a site devoted to whining about China. That sounds like a bad thing, but the guys that run it do a good job of keeping it entertaining. I also appreciate how they make no pretenses about what they’re trying to be. It says right in their sidebar: “Dan, DD, and Dawanr are 3 laowai that have been here for way too long (collectively over 45 years!!) and this is where we come to just let all out.” TTC is not an alternative news source. It’s not offering brilliant insight into the Chinese psyche. It’s generating rant after entertaining rant.
Lately, though, the guys have been posting a few less cynical entries, and I’ve been enjoying them a lot. DD wrote about key Chinese phrases for impressing the locals. Dan wrote about “language lurkers” (locals that make efforts to speak English around a foreigner, but not directly to the foreigner), and then followed it up with an appeal to his readers. Dan wants to know: how can Chinese people strike up conversation with a foreigner in such a way that they will not be viewed as annoying (or worse yet, language rapists)? If you have thoughts, join in on the conversation.
For me, the best comment so far was one by Laowai19790204, who wrote:
> If you want to have a conversation with someone and you are going to approach a total stranger, at least have the common courtesy to figure out something interesting to talk about.
> […]
> It’s kind of akin to a guy in a bar wandering over and trying to pick up a random, hot girl. He’s not interested in her personality, and he has nothing to say, but damn, she’s got what he wants and he’ll talk to her anyway, despite the fact that it’ll annoy the crap out of her. Chinese people looking to hold conversations with random foreigners should be aware of this weirdness in their behaviour. And make an effort to at least make the conversation interesting. Otherwise you’re just another sleazy guy in the bar of life, trying to pick up a nice piece of english speaking ass.
Well said.
29
Nov 2005Old Wang
I recently stumbled across this Chinese webcomic called Old Wang through Baidu. It’s an odd mix. It’s by Chinese people, about China, but in English. Not natural English. The home page makes these claims:
> The 1st English/Chinese Theme Cartoon Portal
> A Career Life Forum for the Commuting Tribe
A lot of the comics seem like an attempt at a Chinese Dilbert. But they’re not really funny, they’re just sort of… odd. And yet I found myself reading a few more of them. A representative example:
I really should be working on my schoolwork.
28
Nov 2005Capitals and Entirety
At first I was going to call this another Chinese pun, but now I’m not sure if it qualifies. It’s orthographically dependent (it won’t work when read aloud), and it involves grammar as well. But it’s still pretty easy for students of Chinese to understand.
Central to the understanding of this pun is the notion of the 多音字: a character that has multiple readings. The one you need to know for this pun is the rather basic character 都. In its adverbial usage it carries the basic meaning of “all” and is read dōu. It can also mean “capital (city),” as in 首都, in which case the character is read dū.
A friend was telling me a story about how some young Chinese students. They were learning about different cities in China and their relative importance to the nation’s economy. One city was especially important for coal production, so it was called the 煤都 (“coal capital”). The students had to memorize this. Another city was key in supplying iron ore, so it was called the 铁都 (“iron capital”). The students had to memorize this too, along with many others.
When it came time for the test, the students saw questions like this:
> 中国的煤都是 [China’s coal capital is ] > 中国的铁都是 [China’s iron capital is ]
One clever student failed in his rote memorization duties, but he found a way to answer the questions anyway:
> 中国的煤都是黑的 [China’s coal is all black ] > 中国的铁都是硬的 [China’s iron is all hard ]
What could the teacher do? Even though these were clearly not the answers sought, they were completely correct in that written form — even to someone with no knowledge of Chinese geography.
27
Nov 2005Slight Site Reorganization
Some of you may have noticed that the URL of my weblog has changed. It’s now /life/ instead of /weblog/. This is not because I think “Life” is a great name for my weblog, or because I think this is not a blog or something. I actually liked using the name “weblog” because it’s the simplest, most accurate description.
The reason for the change is Google. I had the word “weblog” in both the title of the HTML document as well as in the URL, and as a result, almost all the Google ads going on my archived pages were for blogging services instead of something related to the actual content of the entries. This means I was losing out on potential ad revenue, and possibly that Google search results in which Sinosplice turns up were skewed as well. All because of my stupid title tag and weblog URL.
So I did the practical thing and changed them. Hence /life/. All I had to do was change the directory and make a few changes in WordPress. Then I was able to avoid dead links with a bit of code in my .htaccess file (which normally all fits on one line):
> Redirect permanent /weblog https://www.sinosplice.com/life
I think my ads are doing better already, but it’s hard to say this early.
I also updated my home page, reflecting the new look I began implementing a while ago. I incorporated javascript visibility toggle and RSS feed integration, as well as lots of feed links, eliminating the need for the /feeds/ page I created a while ago. I like the new page.
I also finally redid my /china/ page, so now the five sections of my site (as listed in the top nav bar) have a uniform look and feel. (Next up: the sorely outdated /network/ page. I’m glad to get this stuff done; it helps pave the way for new content.
I have a presentation on Noam Chomsky in one of my linguistics classes coming up in early December that I’ll be working hard on in the next two weeks, but more (non-blog) content is coming soon after.
26
Nov 2005Cold as Poison
I’ve been doing occasional translation work lately. It produced this IM conversation with Brad:
> John: ARRGHHH… look what I have to translate into English:
>> 学生：老师，有一个同学还没来呢。[Student: Teacher, one student isn’t here yet.]
>> 老师：他生病了。 [Teacher: He’s sick.]
>> 大家：啊？ [Students: What??]
>> 老师：他昨天到家喝了冰的汽水，晚上就发烧，拉肚子了。[Teacher: Yesterday he went home and drank cold soda. That evening he came down with a fever and got diarrhea.]
> Brad: hahahahahahahaha
> John: I hate that [nonsense]!!!
> John: fever AND diarrhea from a cold soft drink
> John: that stuff is poison in a can… just chill to activate the poison
> Brad: I’m sending you a long-ass Chinese email about “health” that was forwarded to me
> John: oooh, sounds fun
> John: hah… Thunderbird sent it straight to “junk”
> Brad: why do chinese people feel the need to make up bs explanations for their so-called health advice
> Brad: like if I say something about why chinese people tell me not to drink cold stuff, my manager or co-workers will say something like “most chinese people don’t eat or drink anything cold”
> Brad: so I ask why all the convenience and grocery stores have refrigerators full of drinks and ice cream
> Brad: apparently, young people are the *only* customers!
> Brad: and the reason they don’t get sick is because of their westernized diet…kfc and mcdonald’s
> John: what is that supposed to mean?
> John: that the traditional Chinese diet makes them weak?
> Brad: I guess
> John: later on in that translation comes this line:
>> 他已经打了针，吃了药，退烧了。 [He has already gotten a shot and taken medicine, and his fever has gone down.]
> John: wow, way to treat that damn cold soda
> Brad: did they warm up the saline?
> John: hehe… they poured it from a thermos
[Translation note: In order to avoid intercultural confusion in this particular translation, I translated the first part with “he ate something that upset his stomach,” and the later part with, “he has already taken some medicine for it,” as getting the fever, the diarrhea, and the IV were not at all important details in this case.]I’m a reasonable guy. I don’t reject all Chinese conventional wisdom. Some of it is very accurate, and some of it makes sense even to an unbeliever like me. For example, I’ve had the “cold drinks cause stomach pain” idea explained to me in this way: “The body expends energy maintaining a constant temperature. Cold liquids, upon entering the stomach, require the body’s energy in order to be heated to the same temperature as the body.” Yes, this makes good, thermodynamic sense. But when something goes too far and completely goes against (1) my personal experience, and (2) Western scientific/medical knowledge, I’m going to by mighty skeptical.
I have to admit, though, once or twice since coming to China I’ve eaten or drunk something cold and then gotten a stomach ache immediately thereafter. I can’t explain it. It’s as if living in China and eating Chinese food day in and day out warps my physiological reality. Yikes!
25
Nov 2005学习中文的五个阶段
几年前我用英文写了一篇《The Five Stages to Learning Chinese》，为对外汉语做了我自己小小的贡献。好像有不少学习中文的外国人觉得我写的有道理。其中有Alex—一个住在台湾的澳大利亚籍朋友。他把我的文章翻译成中文，也加了一点台湾的味道。如果你有兴趣，请看看中文版：《学习中文的五个阶段》。
25
Nov 2005A Look at Traffic
Traffic can be pretty crazy here. I think it’s not as bad in Shanghai as in other parts of China. Some countries’ streets seem even more frantic, however. And yet, amidst all the chaos, traffic still flows…
Traffic in Saigon:
23
Nov 2005Shanghai Book Swap #2
The first one was a success, so here we go again. The second Shanghai Book Swap happens this Saturday. Be there!
I have to admit, I haven’t had time to read the handful of books I got at the first book swap. I’ve got my hands full with work and school, so occasionally taking in pieces of Asimov’s Foundation series is about all the non-school-related reading I’ve been doing lately, aside from browsing God’s Debris. But it is the will of the People that the next swap be this month. So be it. I’ll be there, feverishly swapping books I haven’t even read yet…
22
Nov 2005Thanksgiving Dinner in Shanghai
It has always been my policy in China that if I can’t be with my family for Thanksgiving, I should at least try to get in some good Thanksgiving eating. Last year I had my Thanksgiving dinner with Brad at a Sofitel Hotel in Pudong. At around 200 rmb, it was pretty expensive, and not fantastic. This year I made some more phone calls to find out which American hotel chains in Shanghai were having Thanksgiving dinners. Most of the calls went something like this (in English):
> Staff: Hello, [hotel name].
> Me: Hi, is your hotel having a Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday?
> Staff: Let me transfer you to the restaurant.
> Me: OK.
> Staff: The Chinese restaurant or the Western restaurant?
> Me: Uhhh… Western.
> Restaurant Staff: Hello, [hotel restaurant name].
> Me: Hi, is your restuarant having a Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday?
> Restaurant Staff: Yes, we have a buffet dinner.
> Me: A Thanksgiving buffet dinner?
> Restaurant Staff: Thanksgiving?
> Me: Yes, Thanksgiving. 感恩节.
> Restaurant Staff: 感恩节? Oh, no. It’s Italian food.
> Me: OK, thank you.
I don’t think that the Chinese should all recognize and celebrate Thanksgiving or anything ridiculous like that. I just expected most of the nicer international hotels in Shanghai to offer some kind of Thanksgiving meal. I guess that’s just not always done.
After about 5 or 6 unsuccessful hotel calls, I did what I should have done in the first place. I Googled Shanghai Thanksgiving dinner. I found the following pages helpful:
1. SmartShanghai Dining Specials (this page is continually updated, so it features Thanksgiving specials only this week)
2. ShanghaiExpat: Thanksgiving Dinner (more expensive options)
I found two deals at reasonable prices: the Holiday Inn Vista Shanghai Thanksgiving Dinner for 149 rmb per person (I had called the Pudong Holiday Inn, and they were oblivious to Thanksgiving over there), and the Moon River Diner Thanksgiving for 150 rmb per person.
I chose the Moon River Diner dinner (the menu looks awesome!), but the Gubei restaurant’s Thursday night was already full, so I had to make a reservation at the Pudong location. I actually talked to the chef on the phone! He’s a guy named Micahel from New Mexico, and he assured me it would be authentic. As he pointed out, the few hotels putting on the super expensive Thanksgiving banquets hire European gourmet chefs, so they present distorted fancy-pants interpretations of Thanksgiving dinner. Totally not like mom used to.
So I’m looking forward to this dinner. If you’re in Shanghai and you want to seize your once-a-year chance for a Thanksgiving dinner, you better hurry up and make a reservation.
21
Nov 2005Chinese Breakup
This is another Chinese “love story,” but without a happy ending this time. It’s called “My girlfriend got pregnant, but she won’t marry me.”
> We had been together for eight full months, and our relationship was going great. But last month I wasn’t careful enough, and my girlfriend got pregnant. I felt truly sorry about that — we weren’t married, after all. When I found out she was pregant, I took a week off work to be with her. Then I saw her back to her hometown so she could spend some time there. But after a month she returned to work and refused to acknowledge me. Maybe it was her parents’ counseling, or perhaps something else? I kept asking her, so today she sent me a text message:
>> The three reasons she wants to break up with me:
>> 1. The problem is that I’m from out of town. Our families are 240 km apart, and her family doesn’t want her to marry someone so far away.
>> 2. It was a mistake that she accepted me. (Loving each other doesn’t count for anything?)
>> 3. It was a mistake that she viewed the issues too simplistically! (Actually, when we first started dating, we thought about the issues: (1) we would live where our careers take us, and (2) whether we could afford to buy a house.)
>> There’s nothing I can say — but I really love her!
Two things that struck me as very Chinese:
– That a distance of 240 km (150 miles) between the couple’s families could be considered an obstacle.
– That the breakup was done by SMS (text messaging)! I’ve noticed that Westerners generally try to do breakups in person. The new generation of Chinese, however, seems to think there’s nothing wrong with breaking up over the phone, by SMS, or even on IM!
Translator’s Note: I know my translation is a little weak in parts. I welcome suggestions for revision!
20
Nov 2005On writing about China
TalkTalkChina recently had a post about sinologists. I found bigdog’s comment especially amusing:
> A prof I had at B-school once described it like this (or something like this):
> In China for a week, you can write an essay on it.
> In China for a month, you can write a paragraph on it.
> In China for a year, you can write a sentence on it.
> In China for longer, nothing you can say.
This totally makes sense, and I’d like to agree… but then, what am I doing???
19
Nov 2005Ah, ah, ah! Hey, hey, hey!
I went to a punk show at Live Bar on Thursday. I especially wanted to see the Japanese bands. (Japanese bands usually know their punk… moreso than me.) Some observations:
– There were five bands: three Chinese, two Japanese. One of the Chinese and one of the Japanese bands were all-girl bands. Another Chinese band was composed of three guys with a female vocalist. Girl punk invasion!
– The Chinese bands, when setting up, usually test the mic by saying “喂?” (“Hello?”) and “听得见吗?” (“can you hear me?”). Both Japanese bands said “ア, ア, ア! ヘ, ヘ, ヘ!” (“Ah, ah, ah! Hey, hey, hey!”) over and over. It sounds pretty funny.
– The music was all right.
– I wondered about the practicality of a Japanese band coming to China on tour, and a tiny little local bar like Live Bar at that. I asked one of the mohawked Japanese guys how it worked. He said they have to pay for their plane tickets, but the rest of the touring costs are covered.
– I confirmed that after five years in China I can still speak Japanese, but I am starting to suck at it. Yikes. I have to do something about that, or my major is going to become completely meaningless (and it wasn’t worth a whole lot to begin with!).
Two photos from the event, via Shanghai Streets (click photos for more):
17
Nov 2005Unsolved Mystery
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 of the proliferation of digital cameras, webcams, and internet usage in China — offers a compelling possible explanation for Chinese boys’ infatuation with the internet.
The thing is, I still think the vast majority of them just really like those damn games.
16
Nov 2005CBL: Bingfeng and RSS
Bingfeng of Bingfeng’s Teahouse did this week’s Top Ten List for the China Blog List. I think it’s kinda interesting to see which blogs about China–by foreigners–a Chinese guy reads. There you have it.
In other news, for the blogs that provided the URL, I have added RSS links to the lower right corner of the entries in the list… sort of. I can say for sure that it works in Firefox, but there’s an occasional 1-pixel lower gap. (Firefox, what part of bottom: 0; don’t you understand??)
The interesting (or maybe “interesting”) thing is that while the CSS doesn’t work in IE, it has absolutely no ill effects… the links are just totally not there. I have no idea why, or where they went. As is often the case with IE’s rendering, it’s a mystery. If anyone can take a look at the CSS and clear it up for me, I’d appreciate it.
15
Nov 2005Shanghainese Study Materials
I was recently asked to help someone find some study materials (books, tapes, CDs, etc.) for Shanghainese. Clearly, Shanghai is a good place to look, but I soon discovered that finding good materials was not as simple as going to a big bookstore in Shanghai. To assemble a rather complete collection of materials I had to visit seven bookstores in Shanghai. What is strange is that almost every bookstore had one or two books on Shanghainese, but almost every store’s books were different! For that reason I can’t be sure that there aren’t still some good ones out there, but I think I got most of them.
This will probably only be helpful to students of Shanghainese in Shanghai, but the following is a list of materials I found. I have not used these materials, nor am I fluent in Shanghainese (although I do understand quite a bit), but I think I understand a thing or two about what makes a good language textbook, so I have made a few key observations about each book. Note that the three books which I deemed the best got their own reviews elsewhere on Sinosplice. (Chinese Textbook Reviews now has a small section on Shanghainese.)
14
Nov 2005SPR Coffee
I spend an hour or two in a local coffee shop from time to time. The name of the place is “SPR Coffee.” I was a bit curious as to where the name came from, but I didn’t have to look far to find the answer. A sign told me “SPR comes from SPRING.” Yes, that’s right. They took the first three letters of the word Spring for their name. Bizarre.
Once again, Asians show us that they may be learning English, but they don’t have to totally play by our rules.
The store also has an interesting discount system for regulars. You can buy a 200 rmb pre-paid “coffee card.” It looks a lot like a credit card. I thought I knew this system. It would have a magnetic strip and a declining balance, and it would give me a discount. Nope. Wrong.
There is no magnetic strip. The numbers 1-10 are printed at the bottom of the card. Every time I use the card to buy a large coffee, the card is notched appropriately with scissors. Simple, but effective.
P.S. I’m always a little bit afraid to write about something like this, because for all I know this system is used all across the USA these days. I wouldn’t know.