30
May 2005
To the Consulate
Dear American Consulate in Shanghai:
This Thursday a Chinese girl will have an interview for a visa to visit the United States. She will explain to you that she’s my girlfriend, and she would just like to visit my family with me in Florida this summer. It’s the truth. She’ll have a mountain of evidence as to why both she and I plan to stay in Shanghai. It’s all legit. My entrance exam for grad school at East China Normal University here in Shanghai is this Friday.
Just on the off chance that you or your friends read this blog, I’d just like to let you know that I have years of entries full of reasons as to why I’ll be staying in Shanghai. “To Stay” strikes me as particularly relevant. However, my girlfriend can’t take my website in with her.
So, State Department person… just on the off chance that you see this before her interview, please don’t be cruel.
Update: She got it!
29
May 2005Noodle School
拉面 is a kind of Chinese noodle. (Its cousin better known in the West is the Japanese adaptation, ramen.) It’s fun watching 拉面 being made. The process (via About.com):
> To make the noodles, roll the dough into a long cylinder. Rub sesame oil over. Grab both ends of the dough. Twist the dough, and then pull it out, stretching your arms apart. Fold the dough in half. Continue stretching and folding the dough until it forms fine noodles.
You really have to see it to understand. It looks like it takes a lot of skill. I guess it’s not surprising, then, that there could be a school (拉面学校) for it:
Still, that’s pretty funny.
Via Micah.
Related:
– Hand-pulled noodles in 6 steps (*photos!*)
– The Official Ramen Homepage (actually a ramen blog)
28
May 2005Star Wars Set
The full two-trilogy Star Wars DVD set is already available for purchase in Shanghai in two attractive versions: the simple 6-disc set (60rmb) and the deluxe 10-disc set featuring the “making of” segments (200rmb). Both look extremely professional and come in a special case, shrink-wrapped and all.
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is actually a very clear copy, but it has unattractive “burned in time code across the top” for the entire movie. The other five movies in the set are perfect copies.
Here’s a picture of some silly lawbreaker posing with his illegal 6-disc Star Wars set:
Whoever this shameless malefactor is, he’s got an awesome t-shirt. Screeching Weasel! Preach it to China!
More on Star Wars in China:
– My earlier entry on it
– Dave’s take on the dubbed version
27
May 2005No Comments
I have removed the comment function from this blog. Hopefully it will only be temporary. The reason is comment spam.
Although I actually see very little comment spam thanks to MT Blacklist, my comment script still gets hit hard by the spammers, who are then denied by MT Blacklist. Unfortunately, all those hits to the comment script put quite a strain on the server. That’s why my host disabled my comment script several times in the past.
A few days ago when my host disabled it again, I asked them to re-enable it, as usual. When they did, it was hit again so quickly and so hard that it crashed the server repeatedly. My host banned the comment script.
I changed the filename and put the script back online for a short time, but the problem would definitely be back as soon as the spammers caught on to the new filename. So I have removed the comment function in order to avoid getting booted by my host (which is, for the most part, a very good host).
The source of the problem is twofold. The main source, of course, is the spammers. But they’re not going away, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The other source is Movable Type’s poor design. The comment script is written in such a way that it takes up way too many server resources. I can do something about that.
If I want to keep the comment function, the only solution I see is to switch from Movable Type to some other blogware. I’ve been toying with the idea for a while, because I’d like to get away from the hassle of static pages and go dynamic. Serendipity and Textpattern are most appealing to me. Both are powerful PHP-based blogging platforms. (Yes, I know about WordPress; I’m not very interested.) Although both can import my Movable Type entries, I’m not sure if either can import all my comments. That’s a big deal to me; I want to keep all these comments. So I’m not sure what to do yet. I would really appreciate suggestions (by e-mail) from anyone who has experience with this.
I don’t like having to disable comments. I really enjoy getting feedback on what I write here. But this is the way it’s going to have to be for a few weeks, probably.
26
May 2005Diagramming Fun
Did you ever have to diagram in gradeschool? Remember how that worked? Here’s an example:
They mixed the dough quickly, put it into the oven, and waited.
It’s intended to help the mind better grasp parts of speech and how they relate to each other in a sentence. I don’t think it really helps much, though. It seems more like demented grammarians forcing their “fun” on innocent children.
Here’s a quote from Gertrude Stein: “I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.” According to her biography on Wikipedia, she was a “conservative fascist.” Makes sense. Still, some people really do like diagramming, taking on such challenges as the Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
The point is this: the Chinese diagram sentences too! Perhaps it is a universal trend uniting the world’s grammarians. Here’s an example of Chinese diagramming (three different phrases):
Although these are only phrases, the same principles apply to entire sentences. It’s a less visually transparent system, based on hierarchical phrase categorization. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to diagram sentences using this method (called 层次分析法) on my big test next Friday. Fortunately I find it pretty easy.
P.S. I think The bottom Chinese diagram has a mistake in it. I don’t think the bottom two divisions should include ��.
P.P.S. I think maybe this is my most boring post EVAR! What do you think?
23
May 2005Laowai Will Like You Too!
I bought this book a while back solely because of its title: 老外也会喜欢你 (“Foreigners Will Like You Too”). The author was a twenty-something Chinese woman and, judging from the book’s cover (oops), the intended audience was Chinese women. It seemed likely that the laowai referred to in the title were male ones. Like me. This was going to be entertaining, I thought.
I was very wrong. Every time I tried to read the book, it failed completely to hold my interest. I demoted it to “bathroom book” status, figuring I’ll read anything on an extended visit to the commode. But even as a bathroom book, and even read in the “open to a random page” fashion, the book was utterly uninteresting. I was intensely disappointed. Of the few sections I did read, I remember virtually nothing. I vaguely recall a few ridiculous generalizations.
Please keep in mind that this is not a book review, because I didn’t read the book. I did, however, look at the pictures. Thoroughly. They were pretty.
In keeping with an incomplete treatment of the book, I will loosely translate the table of contents:
1. Where there’s a will, there’s a way
2. Where are the laowai?
3. No barriers to communication
4. Using charm in communication
5. Etiquette when getting to know each other
6. Communication’s visual etiquette
7. Dealing with a foreign boss
8. Foreigners’ taboos and customs
9. A beautiful mood
10. Foreigners have something to say
11. My view of foreigners
OK, now for the pictures. As I said, I found them the most interesting part of the book. I like the style. The question, however, is: what do these illustrations communicate to the reader?
(more…)
22
May 2005Episode 3 in China
Star Wars: Episode III
Last night I went to see Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (AKA 星球大战前转3) with some friends. We went to the 9:40pm showing at Hongqiao Century Universal Theatre (虹桥世纪电影城) and paid 60rmb (about US$7.50) per ticket.
For the day after the much-anticipated movie just opened and a Saturday night, the turnout wasn’t spectacular. The theater was only about half full. There were a handful of foreigners in attendance.
I have no way of judging whether or not the other viewers had been following the Star Wars movies at all, except for the woman behind me. She was making obnoxious comments the entire time. Whenever Yoda came out she kept remarking how cute he was. When Anakin was talking to Palpatine early in the movie and Palpatine mentions the Sith, the woman had an earth-shattering epiphany: “He’s the Sith!”
I enjoyed the movie. The way I saw it, the movie had to do three things:
- Wow us with special effects
- Connect the new trilogy with the old one
- Tell a good self-contained story
I’d say it did quite well on #1 and #2, but was definitely lacking in #3. For one thing, there were some lame lines. For me, what took the cake was how Darth Vader taking his first steps in his new costume looked like it came right out of an old Frankenstein movie, and then, just a little later, his cry of “NOOOOOOOO!” at what the emperor told him was so clich�� it was embarrassing. Still, overall the movie was quite entertaining.
I didn’t let the Chinese subtitles distract me too much. I wasn’t worried about them being wrong this time, I was just interested in seeing how certain lines or words were translated. I did happen to notice that “Sith” in Chinese is 西斯 (which I could have gotten just from the full name of the movie in Chinese), and “Jedi” is 绝地. They’re pretty much just systematic transliterations. The one for “Jedi” doesn’t bother me so much as the one for “Sith.” “Sith” somehow sounds evil in English… like “seethe” or “hiss” or “writhe” or “death.” “X��s��” doesn’t really sound like anything–except maybe the legendary Chinese beauty 西施–and it doesn’t sound evil.
If you’re interested on how the new Star Wars movie is received in China, don’t miss Joel Martinsen’s report on Danwei.org: First Reactions to “Sith.” If you’re interested in Star Wars in general or Lucas’s inspirations in particular, don’t miss this revealing in-depth analysis: How did George Lucas create Star Wars?
21
May 2005Calling Hours
A while back I met with a professor of East China Normal University to discuss my upcoming entrance exams for grad school (exams: modern Chinese, composition). He told me the exam would be administered at the end of May or beginning of June.
Well, the end of May is quickly approaching. He left me his phone number to contact him if I had any questions, so I’ve given him quite a few calls lately, but there’s never any answer. The phone number is not a cell phone number, so I figured it was his office number. Why is he never in his office? I concluded that he either isn’t in his office much or isn’t even at the university much these days.
When I mentioned the matter to my tutor the other day, she made everything clear. The professor had most likely given me his home phone number. It’s very common for university professors in China to give their home phone numbers out to their students. Furthermore, there’s sort of an unspoken rule: if students need to call their professors at home, they should call between 8pm and 9pm.
That explained a lot. It explained why I could never get an answer. It explained why I frequently got requests for my home phone number from my students when I taught university classes in Hangzhou (I wouldn’t give out my number, though). It also possibly explains why so few students would show up to office hours. Maybe they’re just used to calling instead of visiting the teacher’s office.
I’m not going to call the professor on the weekend, so I’ll have to wait until Monday to finally talk to him about the date of my entrance exams.
20
May 2005Excellent Beijing Photos
I am just starting to get into Flickr. I’m a little slow to jump on that bandwagon, yes, I know. I’ve discovered that I’m too lazy to bother designing photo albums anymore, and somehow even something like Gallery doesn’t seem that appealing. I’m still exploring Flickr, but I may end up using it in the feature.
Right now, though, you can enjoy a great set of Beijing photos by Frank Yu. I’m not sure how to articulate the feelings his photos express, but I really don’t need to. Just go look.
Frank Yu is responsible, in part, for what this site has become. It was because of Frank Yu that I first discovered in 2002 that there were other people blogging about China too (gasp!). Shortly thereafter I started the China Blog List (which seems to be blocked now; working on it!).
Anyway, I’m glad to see that Frank is alive and well in Beijing and snapping away…
Related:
– China Blogs (Sept. 2002)
– John X (July 2004)
19
May 2005What Not to Say in China
Ah, Angry Chinese Blogger… another one of those blogs I would read more often had I the time. He’s come up with a really funny post this time called What Not to Say in China. Anyone who has any idea what an “English Corner” in China is like will like this one. He provides great examples of how not to answer the typical English Corner questions. A quick sample:
Do you know about Chinese history?
– No, but it shouldn’t take me long to pick it up.
– No, but I would like you to tell me EVERYTHING.
– No, can you summarize it for me?
– No, but it doesn’t sound very important.
– I know the bits that your government didn��t tell you.
– I know what happened in 1949 and 1989.
Go read the rest. (If you’ve got comments, they’re best left on ACB’s blog.)
Via Peking Duck.
19
May 2005Bundle of Sticks
Earlier this month my girlfriend and I decided to have a mini barbecue on my balcony. I had gotten her a small grill for Christmas, but we hadn’t used it yet because it had been a bit too chilly. When the day finally came, I was the one with the free time that afternoon to buy the food, so I found myself in the supermarket shopping for grillable victuals.
I was pleased to find that the supermarket had plenty of ready-to-grill items. There were various marinated meats, and some already on a stick or in full-on kabob form with onions and peppers and everything (yes, I’m lazy when it comes to preparing food).
Realizing that not all the food came pre-kabobbled, I started looking around for little skewers. There were none to be found anywhere. Then I noticed that the girls behind the meat counter had little wooden skewers. I asked them where I could buy them. They appeared kind of flustered, looked all around, then replied, “you can’t buy them.”
“You don’t sell those?” I asked, wanting to make sure.
“Here,” one of the girls said, reaching into a bag of the little wooden sticks behind the counter, “just take these.”
“You just want to give them to me?” I asked. “Shouldn’t I pay for them?”
“Nah, just take ’em,” she said, starting to look around for a rubber band for the skewers.
“OK…” I replied, not sure what else to do. The girls were scrambling for a rubber band or something to hold the little bundle together. Then the second girl had an epiphany. In one swoop, she took an elastic ponytail holder out of her hair and slipped it onto the bundle of sticks. Smiling, she proffered the newly bound bundle of sticks to me.
I took it, smiling back and thanking them.
When I got home I discovered that I had already bought a bag of skewers back when I first bought the grill.
The bundle of sticks held together with a ponytail holder remained in my pocket for a few days. I would forget about it until I put my jacket on and shoved my hands in its pockets. I wasn’t about to use them, but somehow just throwing them away didn’t seem right.
It’s little incidents like this that stick in my memory.
18
May 2005“中文”对话
麦卡是我的同事，也是我的同胞。有时我发短消息给他会用中文因为我觉得中文打起来比英文方便。最近我在上班的时候跟他有了这个短小息对话：
潘吉：今天你回来吃饭吗？
麦卡：耶斯
潘吉：古瑞特！
17
May 2005Laowai Time Warp
The day after posting a link to the great laowai debate, I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker. It was the kind of thing I would probably not have paid much attention to were the matter not already on my mind.
My co-worker is in her late twenties and comes from Sichuan. She has been living in Shanghai for the past five years or so.
I was having a conversation with my co-worker about foreigner teachers. When she got to the word “foreigner” she got as far as “laow-” and then switched to “waiguoren.” I smiled at this and let her continue.
After the conversation was over, I couldn’t let it go. I had to ask her: “Why didn’t you just say ‘laowai?'”
Clearly, she was embarrassed. I anticipated this, but I had to ask anyway. She replied, “I was afraid you would be offended.”
“Why would I be offended?” I asked. “Isn’t it a neutral term?”
“Yes, it is definitely neutral. But I’m aware that some waiguoren don’t like to be called laowai.” [Note: zhwj reports similar exchanges.]
This got me thinking. And I wasn’t taking anything for granted. Call me cynical, but I never completely trust one native speaker’s view of her language, and I thought this case was particularly suspect. Why was it suspect? Well, Chinese can be especially sensitive to how they are viewed by outsiders. If “laowai” does, indeed, carry negative connotations, some Chinese people would be worried that foreigners would consider them racist for using it. In short: Chinese people might lie about the connotations of the word laowai in order to avoid being viewed as racist by foreigners.
It seems to me, however, that most evidence indicates that laowai is a neutral term. Todd has recently done an internet study on it, and came to this conclusion as well. This was also the original premise behind Tom Vamvanij’s post that started the debate. Why all the conflicting anecdotes then?
I posit that the word is in something of a state of transition. As zhwj has pointed out with a Chinese dictionary definition (via the Peking Duck post), the word used to have a more negative connotation than it does now:
> Breaking out the dictionary: 《应用汉语词典》(2000年), published by the venerable Commercial Press, says: “老外…(2)称外国人(现在外国人自己也称自己为“老外”,所以已经不含轻蔑意,而是一种诙谐的用法了)
> The parts I’ve emphasized imply (1) in the past the term had a
disdainful flavor to it, although it doesn’t now, and (2) it’s more
jocular or familiar now.
Why would this negative connotation change to neutral? Probably the biggest catalyst would be real-life contact with foreigners. Naturally, you would expect Shanghai and Beijing to lead the pack in such an evolution, as those cities’ foreign populations are quite large. By the same token, we would expect small Chinese towns with little or no exposure to foreigners to cling longer to the “negative version” of the term laowai.
If we are currently in such a stage of transition, it would explain a lot. It would explain why Hank, living in a small rural town, might find the word extremely offensive, while I, in Shanghai, find it totally innocuous. And it would explain the conflicting “real life reports” of different foreigners’ experience with the word.
Understanding of certain words often varies from individual to individual; I think it’s unsurprising for a lexical discrepancy to arise in a country as large and diverse as China, especially with the widening gap between the “rich east” and “poor west.” This might be just the perfect set of conditions to nurture a sort of verbal time warp effect to which the term laowai could fall victim.
Despite my suspicions regarding native speaker explanations, I still maintain that laowai is a neutral term. If it doesn’t feel neutral in your part of China, it may just be a matter of time. Encourage the locals to watch more TV.
Related blog entries:
– Todd writes about seven Chinese words for foreigner.
– Tom Vamvanij asserts that “laowai” has no positive connotation.
– Richard throws a link up and gets lots of comments.
– Todd asks his Chinese readers (in Chinese).
– Adam thinks “laowai” has lost its negative connotations.
Kinda Related: 老外的秘密 (in Chinese; scroll down)
16
May 2005Suspicious CBL Issues
John B first reported to me about two weeks ago that he was getting “Document Contains No Data” errors when he tried to view the China Blog List from Hangzhou. Now, since yesterday I’ve been getting the same errors consistently. Other sections of my website seem to load fine, but as soon as I try to go to https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/ (or http://cbl.www.sinosplice.com/) I get “Document Contains No Data.”
If you are in China, could you please try going to the CBL page and let me know the results? (Warning: if you get the DCND error, you may need to close your browser and reopen it to view any pages on Sinosplice again.) Thanks!
15
May 2005Recording of my Chinese
It was Brendan‘s idea, and then Prince Roy actually did it. He recorded his Chinese and then put it online for everyone to hear. He got a lot of (well-deserved) praise and some possibly very helpful criticism. I said I wasn’t interested in doing that.
Until now!
Check out my recording. [Note: if you left click and play it directly through your browser, you may need to replay it at least once to get it to play right.] Comments and criticism are welcome. I’m working hard on improving my pronunciation. Sorry this MP3 is so short.
P.S. I should be studying right now.
14
May 2005Of Note
I have enjoyed these recent(ish) entries:
– Tom Vamvanij writes about the term 老外, driving home the point that it does not connote respect. Very interesting discussion ensues. I agree it’s inherently neutral. People that don’t like the term should leave China, because it’s not going away. Don’t miss Todd‘s great comments. He says what I would, but better.
– Speaking of leaving China… Mr. Morris (previously of Brainysmurf.org) says that he’s leaving China for Vietnam, and he is elated: “Why am I elated? Here comes the ironic part. Because I am leaving….”
– Alf is back! He’s in rare form, talking about bad Western music in China. I haven’t seen him writing like this in a loooong time.
– Greg got the last word about the anti-Japanese riots: Things the Chinese Really Wanted to Protest Before They Settled on Japan.
As long as I’m linking to those blogs above, I should mention something about Blogger. When Blogger upgrades, it upgrades its templates too. If you’re using a custom template on Blogger, you don’t get the benefit of the upgrades. You need to modify your custom template to take advantage of the upgrades, or do a redesign based on a new template.
Example: Alf’s blog still uses the old individual entry linking method, and has no RSS feed. Greg’s blog uses the new archive linking method (his blog is newer), but his feeds don’t work. These two blogs would especially benefit from having working feeds, as they are not frequently updated. Blogger can do it for them with a few simple configuration changes.
I don’t mean to just criticise. I’m willing to help with this, of course.
14
May 2005Pinyin Quicktag
I recently stumbled upon a Movable Type hack which creates WordPress-style “quicktags” in the MT blog edit screen. The hack can be modded as well, so I added a pinyin button to automatically wrap selected text with the appropriate span tag and all the necessary attributes (see my entry on Pinyin Tooltips). Then I added some extra CSS to make it look better (and act more like a button).
(more…)
12
May 2005Suspicious Skype Issues
For about half a year now, I’ve been using software called Skype to communicate by voice with friends back home. In the past month or two I’ve even gotten my family into it, and we’ve enjoyed an excellent connection (at least as good as long distance phone calls) many times. The really great part, of course, is that it’s completely free. The network connection uses similar technology to Kazaa, the popular file-sharing (P2P) software.
Jump back to several months ago. Major Chinese entertainment portal Tom.com partnered up with Skype. Advertisements for Skype appeared throughout the Shanghai subway system and around town. Tom.com was apparently putting a lot of money into promoting Skype, which, I should remind you, is free software.
My favorite pretty boy is even pushing Skype
Now here’s the interesting part. For about the past 2-3 weeks, I have noticed that I can no longer access Skype.com in Shanghai without a proxy. (Skype.com is accessible in Beijing and Hangzhou, however.) Due to some issues with my Skype installation (which I later discovered was a driver conflict), I wanted to reinstall with the newer version of Skype. Since I couldn’t access the Skype website, my only easy option was to get Skype from Tom.com.
Predictably, it had Tom.com advertising built in, but I was able to install English-mode Skype; I wasn’t forced to use Chinese. Fortunately there seems to be none of the spyware or malware that plagues Chinese software.
Screen capture of Tom.com’s version of Skype
I find it strange that Skype.com should become inaccessible in Shanghai after making a deal with Tom.com. I would think that Tom.com would have the guanxi to protect its partner fromthe chill shadow of the Great Firewall. On the other hand, since the Tom.com Skype page still works just fine, maybe Tom.com is using its guanxi to force Chinese surfers to use its version of the Skype software in order to drive more traffic to Tom.com?
This is all just crazy speculation, though. It’s likely just another case of Shanghai’s fickle internet connection, especially since Tom.com seems to be Beijing-based. I should note, however, that last week when the internet connection in Shanghai was faster than it had been in a long time and even sometimes-blocked sites were loading too, Skype still did not work.
Skype could be a great tool for global communication, and it’s great that many Chinese users are now getting into it. I hope that China doesn’t screw this good thing up.
Update: Isaac Mao was all over this when it first went down. The issue that neither Isaac nor Fons Tuinstra, in his comments, address is why Skype is accessible in other parts of China, but not Shanghai.