23
Oct 2004
Group Chinese Blog
Roddy of Chinese Forums recently had a great idea. All the non-Chinese bloggers who have had trouble keeping a regularly updated Chinese blog (yes, I’m guilty!) could band together and write one together. The result is called ³öÓï²»Ë×, a chengyu which Wenlin defines as “speak in an uncommon way.” (Credit for the name goes to Brendan.)
Currently the only active members are Roddy, Brendan, and me. I must say, Brendan’s contributions are the most impressive — he’s quite the writer, in any language, it seems — but we just started and there are only 4 total entries up so far.
My first entry is kind of boring, but it’s a message I’ve been wanting to get out to Chinese people: why I have grown to hate the word “hello.”
Anyway, if you read Chinese please check out ³öÓï²»Ë×. If you don’t read Chinese, you’re missing out on all the fun!
Related: I think my essay entitled СÐÜ is a much better read than the one I linked to above.
UPDATE: Prince Roy has posted his first piece to ³öÓï²»Ë×!
22
Oct 2004China made me do it!
A few months ago I was chatting with Aaron on AIM and he mentioned that he has two monitors hooked up to his computer, running at the same time, independently. I had thought a dual monitor setup like that was pretty complicated, but he explained that with Windows XP it’s actually really simple; all you need is a second (PCI) video card and a second monitor. It’s a snap to tell windows where the monitors are relative to each other so that you can stretch your desktop over both monitors’ screens, the cursor gliding effortlessly from one screen to the other with a twitch of the mouse.
As something of a technophile I was intrigued by the idea, but I quickly concluded that I’d never have a dual monitor setup because it’s pretty expensive for being nothing more than a frill.
Then last week my monitor suddenly went bad. Some diagonal static coursed across the screen, and then it went black. The light next to the power button indicated that the monitor was on, but nothing appeared on the screen. What’s more, it couldn’t be turned off. Unplugging from both the wall and the computer and replugging didn’t fix it. Looked like my monitor was dead, and the warranty had expired a few months prior.
The next night I found myself lugging a 19″ Samsung monitor home. It barely fit in the taxi. As I stumbled through the front door, I saw light coming from my room. Strange, I thought, I was pretty sure I didn’t leave any lights on. I walked into the room, and there was my old 17″, glowing angelically as if it had never malfunctioned.
So then I had two monitors. In China when you buy something, you can’t return it just because you don’t want it. Any time you hand over money, you’re going to be very hard pressed to get it back. If the merchandise is actually defective, they’ll usually swap it for you (if you can find them again), but you won’t see that money again. So when you buy something, you need to be sure you want it.
So what was I to do? I had just spent about $200 on a new monitor that I didn’t need after all. My old monitor seemed to work fine, but who knows when it would crap out on me again.
The solution? Sell one? No…. I spent another $40 on a PCI video card so I could use both monitors at once.
I’m really enjoying having two monitors, but I honestly didn’t intend to do this. China made me do it.
20
Oct 2004Have you voted?
I mailed my absentee ballot today, and then I took the sticker that came with the ballot and placed it prominently on my shirt. It says, “I voted early. Now it’s up to YOU.” I’m not sure how many Chinese people can read it, and if they could whether or not they’d appreciate the irony.
I won’t say who I voted for, but anyone who knows me personally knows who I voted for. I will say this, though: living abroad definitely has a liberalizing effect. I have access to American media, but I’m not stewing in it like most of America is, and I also get to see the effects of American policies outside of the USA. I see all that as a good thing.
If you’re an American overseas, better get that ballot in. I wasn’t exactly early. And to my beloved Florida: don’t screw it up this time!
20
Oct 2004我的散文
我决定了明年考研究生。我想攻读的是华东师范大学中文系的应用语言学硕士学位。需要通过两门考试才可以入学。一门是汉语基础，还有一门是写作。我有信心我能通过汉语基础考试，但我担心写作考试会很难。为了得到提高，我要多联系散文的写作。有的文章我将会放在这个blog上跟大家分享，还有一部分放在我加入的群体blog，出语不俗。我第一篇文章叫最“难听”的词。
18
Oct 2004Disturbing Commercial
Last month I was in Yinchuan on business. I normally hate watching TV in China, but when I’m on a business trip, bored in a hotel at night, I’ll often turn the TV on. It was on one such instance that I happened to see a commercial which really disturbed me.
The beginning of the commercial had a man and a woman doing a soap opera-esque scene. I don’t remember it too clearly, because I wasn’t paying close attention at that point. Then in big letters some words popped on the screen: “Pregnant? Don’t know what to do?”
I braced myself.
“Then let us take care of it!” they excitedly urged. The camera was panning a clean, attractive medical clinic. Yes, I was watching a TV commercial for an abortion clinic.
That was bad enough, but what totally went beyond tasteless was the “procedure” scene. There was a sideshot of a woman on the operating table, a doctor at her feet. The doctor’s hands were doing something between the woman’s legs, which was blocked by the woman’s legs and hospital gown. Meanwhile the narration continued, promising a fast, painless procedure that would not harm chances of future pregnancy.
I was repulsed. Regardless of your views on the morality of abortion, I think everyone can agree that it’s not a procedure which should be taken lightly.
I told my girlfriend about the commercial and asked if she’d ever seen a commercial like that on TV. She said no. She said a commercial like that would not get on the air in Shanghai.
She then went on to tell me that a lot of girls she knows (most of them young) have had abortions. One girl she knew was 23, married, and wanted to have a child, but couldn’t because she had had three abortions and was no longer capable of having children.
It all just makes me so sad….
NOTE: I’m a tolerant guy, but this is an especially sensitive issue. If your comment is intentionally offensive or tasteless it’s going to be deleted without hesitation.
16
Oct 2004Guanxi Prevails Over Banks
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Nowhere does this ring truer than in China, where guanxi reigns supreme.
Guanxi has been translated in a lot of ways, such as “relationships” or “social networking.” Since it’s so often sort of a shady business (especially in government), I prefer the more colloqiual translation “connections.” That way having my own guanxi makes me feel like I’m in the mob or something.
A while back I wrote about how I applied for a credit card here in Shanghai and was cruelly rejected for reasons not entirely clear to me. I didn’t care too much; I even broadcasted my rejection on the internet, sharing with the whole world my humiliation at the hands of my Chinese financial overlords.
My girlfriend, however, was not pleased. She seemd to take it personally. She really felt that I should have no trouble getting a credit card through China Merchants Bank (ÕÐÉÌÒøÐÐ), and didn’t want to accept my rejection.
It’s exactly five months later today, and two China Merchants Bank gold credit cards just arrived in the mail. I activated them already. One has a visa logo (take a peek), and the other has a MasterCard logo. They have different credit card numbers. I have a combined 15,000 rmb limit (a bit under $2000 US), and I can use my credit cards to buy in dollars as well as in RMB.
How did my girlfriend do it? Guanxi, of course. She met a guy who worked at China Merchants Bank and charmed him into personally overseeing the approval of my credit card application. The only difference was they wanted a copy of my “Foreign Expert Certificate” this time. It expired a year ago, but fortunately the expiration date wasn’t on the same page as the official seal. The guy said it wouldn’t matter. Apparently it didn’t. I still don’t know if my being rejected the first time was a mistake or not, but using guanxi to get the job done was the surest way to get approved.
Very cool of my girlfriend to handle that for me, although I can’t help but wonder if she could possibly have some ulterior motive….
13
Oct 2004Hospital Acupuncture
Recently I mentioned that I had been in the hospital. I’ll share some of that experience now.
The reason I went to the hospital is that over the past year I have developed a case of varicose veins in my right leg, behind the knee. I’m not crazy about going to the doctor in China, but since it has definitely gotten worse over the past year, I decided it was time to have it looked at. There’s an “international” hospital near me I’ve gone to before that seems very clean and professional, so I decided to go there again.
When I showed up at reception they asked me in English what trouble I was having. I had done my homework, so I told them in Chinese that I thought I had varicose veins (静脉曲张). That sure surprised them. I guess they don’t get many Chinese-speaking foreigners, let alone ones that diagnose themselves in technical terms using Chinese.
The doctor took a look and did a few simple tests. She concluded I had varicose veins in my right leg. She sent me down to another floor for a more thorough ultrasound examination to make sure I didn’t have any major problems with other veins or arteries inside either of my legs.
So then they put some clear gooey stuff not unlike vaseline jelly on their ultrasound probe and ran it over various parts of my leg. The woman running the ultrasound machine was communicating the results with another woman in Shanghainese, so I couldn’t understand a lot of what they were saying. But I sure perked up when she started giving special attention to my left leg (the one that was fine) and saying “wa te le,” which is Shanghainese for 坏掉了 or “it’s gone bad.” She was saying that one of my blood vessels in my left leg had gone bad, which, it’s safe to say, pretty much freaked me out.
I went back to the first doctor, and she interpreted the ultrasound results. “You have varicose veins, but your deep vessels are fine,” she told me.
“But the lady downstairs running the ultrasound machine said that one of my blood vessels in my left leg had gone bad!”
“Really?” She looked at the test results again, frowned, and excused herself to make a phone call.
I grabbed the test results and took a look myself. They seemed to indicate that everything was normal.
The doctor returned, telling me, “no, your deep blood vessels are all fine.” That was a relief, but I felt like going back downstairs and smacking that other woman.
That resolved, the doctor finally got to the bottom line. “Your varicose veins are not serious enough for surgery. They won’t get better, but you can do some things to prevent them from getting worse. You’re not in pain, so there’s no reason for surgery, but if they do ever get really bad, surgery is an option.”
“Is that surgery expensive?”
“Well, what do you consider expensive?”
“I don’t know… about how much does it cost??”
“Around 20,000 rmb [$2,500 US].”
The things I could do were (1) avoid standing for long periods of time, (2) wear an elastic band around my leg, (3) take the medicine they gave me, (4) — optionally — acupuncture.
The doctor told me she didn’t know how I felt about acupuncture, but that it could possibly help my condition. They had their own acupuncture specialist there in the hospital, and I could have my first session right away if I wanted to try it.
I think I’m a pretty open-minded individual, but I’m definitely skeptical about a lot of Chinese medicine. Still, I don’t lump acupuncture together with tiger penis soup and that sort of “Chinese medicine.” After having been told that my condition wouldn’t get better, I was eager to try something that might help. So I agreed to it.
A nurse guided me into the acupuncture room. She had learned that I spoke Japanese, and for some reason liked to talk to me in Japanese. So, with a douzo (“please”) I was ushered into the acupuncture room.
The acupuncture doc was a thin, oldish Chinese man. He seemed very confident. He asked me to lie face down on the bed. It was one of those beds with a hole for your face so you don’t suffocate. Then he asked me not to move.
The doctor proceeded to insert five disposable acupuncture needles into each of my legs behind the knee. The first few in my left leg I hardly felt. Then he stuck one into the nerve. I felt like a powerful electric shock was surging through my lower leg, from the knee down. My leg jerked wildly, but I managed to restrain the rest of my body.
“Ah, you’re sensitive,” the doc observed. Cute.
The right leg went a little more smoothly, but there was still a bit of discomfort accompanied by an involuntary jerk when he inserted the needle into the nerve.
The needles inserted, I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure what was next, but I figured the worst was over.
Then, to my horror, the doc brought out some clunky electrical device and started hooking it up to the needles. “You may feel a little something,” he told me as I braced myself.
I was not at all prepared for the electric shock that came next. It was even more powerful than the insertion of the needle, and my leg went into involuntary spasms. I think I might have cried out a little. The doctor quickly turned down the voltage, but not before I decided that he was an evil, evil man and I hated him. He then repeated the process with the other leg, the second electric shock being just a bit less violent than the first.
He adjusted the voltage so that the current kept my legs involuntarily twitching, nonstop. It was very uncomfortable. It kind of felt like I had had too much caffeine and was all jittery, but I couldn’t move around and work off the energy. Plus I was very conscious of the feeling that there was an electrical current running through each of my legs. Twitch, twitch, twitch went my legs.
I was able to bear it, though. I asked the doc how long he needed to leave the power on. I figured I could handle five minutes of it. “Half an hour,” he said cheerfully as he left the room.
Needless to say, it was a very long half hour. I can tell you from experience, your body doesn’t get used to an electrical current flowing through it. My legs twitched nonstop for the whole 30 minutes. The doctor put on some classical music, but it just seemed to taunt me.
By the end of that treatment, I was sure I would not be back for more acupuncture. It also turned out to cost way more than I had understood. 400 rmb ($50 US) for each session! Not continuing the acupuncture treatments was the easiest decision I’ve made in a while.
11
Oct 2004Blog Death
I’ve noticed a trend lately. A lot of the blogs I used to read are dead or dying. I think it’s at least partly attributable to problems accessing Blogger in the PRC. This seems to be the reason for lack of updates on Sinobling, Hangzhou Lovin’, and Chabuduo. Laowai Monologues is somehow managing to get new posts up, but not without a lot of frustration.
This trouble started about the time my last host started going bad, I think. It’s almost certainly a result of the Chinese government’s efforts at controlling online information, intended or not. Is this getting much attention? Is it not a big deal unless it’s a total block? Maybe I just missed it. How many other bloggers in the PRC are having this connectivity issue with Blogger?
In other bad news, Chinese blogger Leylop has recently suffered a total loss. Her camera (and all her pictures) were stolen in Europe. When she got back, her hard drive failed and her website host lost all her data at about the same time. This effectively wiped out all her blog entries and her digital photography as well (which, I might add, was amazing stuff). She certainly has my sympathy.
08
Oct 2004Flowers
In my last entry I wrote about Wednesday’s concert and I said that the band I liked the best was 花儿 (the Flowers). Since writing that post I have gone out and bought their latest CD and given it a good listen. What to say? Hmmm…
At the concert, Flowers was certainly the band with the most energy and enthusiasm. They have quite a few fast-paced songs. I haven’t heard their earlier stuff, but listening to this new CD, I think it would be a mistake to think of this band as “punk,” even if it’s only in the most poppy adolescent bubble gum way, like Sum-41 or MXPX. The music on the new CD, 我是你的罗密欧 (“I’m your Romeo”), could probably be best described as fast-paced pop, with some sappy ballads thrown in as well for that broader appeal (the Chinese are all about the ballad).
The article Brad linked to mentioned that the Flowers have toned their sound way down in order to make more money. I don’t suppose I can begrudge them that. This is a group of Chinese kids without much education who are making a living on their music (although it’s questionable how much of the music is really “theirs” now). That’s pretty impressive. In part, the music takes me back to high school, going to $4 punk shows put on by high school bands like Speed the Minnow. Speed the Minnow definitely rocked a little harder, though. (They also didn’t make any money or sell out, which is probably why the band no longer exists.)
Forgetting the whole ideal of “Chinese punk” for a second, I think that if the Flowers are simply a small part of a trend toward faster paced music, it’s progress of some kind. (No modern society’s music can stall in “ballad mode” forever, right? RIGHT?!?)
My favorite song on the CD is definitely “陪你去“. It’s probably the “hardest” of anything on the CD. The song is basically a fun little ghost story. The funny thing is, before looking at the lyrics I had thought the singer was saying “over and over again” but according to the lyric sheet he’s saying, “apparition apparition creep.” Nope, I can’t hear that at all.
So I think it’s safe to say I was a little disappointed by the CD, although in retrospect, this is probably exactly what I should have expected. What was most shocking was the photos decorating the CD. Allow me to give you a progression.
An older picture of the Flowers (during their “punker” days, I imagine):
The Flowers as we saw them at their latest show, more or less:
The Flowers as they appear on their latest CD (and these pictures aren’t the worst ones):
Do I even need to suggest where this frightening trend is going…??
(Note the pants on boy-o in the blue there. …shudder…)
07
Oct 2004Concert in FuXing Park
Yesterday I met up with some friends to go to a concert. Among them were Brad and Micah. We ate an early meal of sushi. The restaurant played Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do I Do for You” on repeat the entire time we were there. I was served an interesting California roll:
Is this normal for California rolls now?! I gotta say I feel there’s something wrong with mixing cantaloupe and wasabi….
Then we were on to the concert. It began at 7:15 pm. The headliner was Ladytron, and the Chinese bands Supermarket (超级市场) and the Flowers (花儿乐队) played as well. The weird thing was that the headliner, Ladytron, played second, and the Flowers played last. Brad observed that this was because the other two bands were pretty electronic-sounding; the Flowers didn’t really fit in. The Flowers played last so that fans of Ladytron could leave earlier.
Supermarket opened, and was plagued with some sound system trouble. First they had a guy on vocals singing in Chinese, then for the latter half they had a girl on vocals singing mostly English. They were OK, I guess, but pretty forgettable. I’m not a big fan of that electronic sound, but it was kinda cool to hear it coming from a Chinese band for the first time.
Ladytron came on next, and throughout their set seemed afraid to talk to the fans, even though the crowd was 30-40% foreign (read: white). One of the singers managed a shy ni hen gaoxing ma (“are you happy?”) and a few xie xies (thank yous), but not much more than that. The band relied on its music alone to work the crowd, and it worked to some degree. A few of their songs really imparted some energy.
Still, last night’s was not a crowd that any band would hope for. Before the show began I was playing a game trying to find what demographic was excluded. Pretty much only babies. There were old people, middle-aged people, whole families, little kids, young couples, older couples, loners, groups, and foreigners of all kinds. How can you possibly hope to get a good reaction out of a crowd like that? The Chinese were the majority, but a lot of them clearly had no idea what to expect from any of the bands. On top of that, although there was definitely a “crowd,” the turnout wasn’t especially high.
Micah and Brad liked Ladytron all right, I found them solidly so-so. As one of my good friends once noted, I’m a sucker for melodic music, and Ladytron was a little too much of a departure from that on a lot of their songs. “Noisy,” the old folks (not me!) would call it.
The Flowers were last. This was the band I had been looking forward to most, based on Brendan‘s recommendation. I hadn’t heard any of their music before, though. Looking at their logo on the big screen before they came out, I commented that it looked like a cross between the oldschool Atari logo and the Powerpuff Girls logo. After the band came out, I felt like they were a cross Between Green Day and the Powerpuff Girls.
Micah deemed the Flowers purely manufactured music, and I can certainly see his point, but I liked the band. The poppy punk style reminded me of my high school days. One descriptor that I can’t avoid when describing the band is cute. The way the lead singer engaged the crowd (no English, and no apologies) was just plan cute, from his jumping around and trying to get people waving their hands to his failed fart joke. One thing I have to give the Flowers is their effort at trying to get the crowd involved. The other bands (understandably) didn’t really even try, perhaps discouraged by the turnout.
So I definitely enjoyed the Flowers most. I’m going to go out and buy a CD later. Chinese musical attempts like these need to be encouraged if they’re ever going to blossom.
UPDATE: Brad has posted his account of the concert along with some good links.
UPDATE 2: Micah’s review is up.
05
Oct 2004The Moon Represents My Heart
The moon represents my heart. I wince when I type out this sentence. It’s terribly awkward English, but I really don’t know how else to translate it. I’m no accomplished translator or anything, but I’ve given this quite a bit of thought and come up with nothing better.
月亮代表我的心 (“The Moon Represents My Heart”) is an extremely famous song in China. Most foreigners here know it, and every Chinese person seems to know it. It’s a pretty simple song, but I just can’t seem to translate that line. I’m of the opinion that pretty much anything has a good translation if the translator is clever enough. I’m ready for someone cleverer than I to show me the way.
Even if I can’t translate its title well, after four years of living in China I’ve developed something of an affection for the song. I think it’s sort of a mandatory study for anyone living in this culture.
I feel a bit silly about it, but after searching a bit for a good translation of the song and downloading different versions of it via Baidu’s MP3 search, I thought I might as well put this stuff online for other people to benefit from as well. I even made it kinda pretty, I think.
Check it: Sinosplice’s 月亮代表我的心 page. (Get the MP3s now if you want them — if they drive my bandwidth up much I’ll have to take them down.)
04
Oct 2004Famous Chinese Handwriting
It’s one thing to be able to read Chinese characters. It’s another thing entirely to be able to read hand-written Chinese.
Here’s an interesting collection of autographs and little notes written by Chinese stars. Click on the thumbnails; there are actually decent quality scans on there.
Even if you can’t read Chinese, take a look. I think you’ll be surprised.
03
Oct 2004Coincidences
Coincidences are a mathematical certainty, I suppose, but they never cease to amaze.
My most mind-boggling coincidence happened to me a few years ago when I was living in Hangzhou. I was on the 3rd or 4th floor of the computer market, browsing computer software and MP3 compilations. Just wondering around, I bumped into my old anthropology professor Dr. Smith, who had taught me 4 years previously in Osaka, Japan.
This morning I went to church, to an English service I hadn’t been to in a while. I ran into a group of friends from my old church in Hangzhou, whom I hadn’t seen since moving away from Hangzhou, 10 months ago. They were in Shanghai for the holiday.
Later that day I accompanied Wayne on some apartment hunting. He was talking about meeting up with a new friend of his. As we were leaving an apartment we had just checked out, we ran into that very friend. She just happened to live in the same complex.
After apartment hunting, we were on our way to meet Micah at a cafe when I heard someone calling my name from across the street. It was ZUCC’s friendliest Japanese teacher, Noriko, in Shanghai for a visit. She just happened to notice me as she wandered the streets.
Saturday I made a trip with some friends to a park on the outskirts of Shanghai. We met up at the “travel bus station” (they’re not tour buses; they’re buses that run specifically to tourist locations). The four of us got in line to buy tickets. Our tickets were going to be 23 rmb each.
When we were near the front of the line, a woman came over offering us a deal on 4 tickets. What a coincidence — the tickets were for our exact destination, and there were four of us. She was offering them for 20 each, a small discount. Although it was tempting, we decided we better not risk getting bad tickets for such a measly savings.
As were were declining the lady’s offer, the ticket seller saw what was going on and asked the woman what she was doing. The woman explained to the ticket seller that she had just bought the tickets but couldn’t use them. The ticket seller told the woman she could get a refund for them, and promptly refunded the tickets, laying the four unused tickets on her desk.
We were up. When we told the ticket seller four tickets for our destination, the seller replied, “here — take these four” and shoved toward us the four tickets we had just declined the discount on. Of course, we paid full price for them.
01
Oct 2004Hanzi Smatter
Hey Westerners! Did you ever wonder how Asians feel about sites like Engrish.com, a site which pokes fun of Asians’ botched attempts at using English? Well, now you don’t have to — you can experience this feeling firsthand!
Tian, a commenter on this site, has recently started up a new blog dedicated to this very topic. The title of the blog is Hanzi Smatter: 一知半解, with this short description under it: Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Han Zi; or 汉字) in Western culture.
一知半解 is a chengyu which Wenlin defines as “half-baked” and my New Age Chinese-English Dictionary defines as “having only a smattering of knowledge.” Literally it means something like “knowing but only half understanding.” (For more chengyu in a digestible dosage, check out Oneaday.org.)
If you have any examples that Tian could put in his blog, I’m sure he’d appreciate the submissions. I just sent him a photo taken in Australia of a guy’s tattoo. View Tian’s contact info for his e-mail.
28
Sep 2004Tang^4
What makes a person fat? The Chinese have a simple 4-part answer:
糖，躺，汤，烫
The charm of the answer lies in the fact that each of the four “causes” is pronounced in basically the same way, written “tang” in pinyin. Each one has a different tone, though, which makes it fun. When Chinese people hear the answer they have to think for a second, running through their mental dictionaries, matching up the proper tones to the four corresponding concepts.
Charming answers are all well and good, but to a Westerner, two of the four make no sense at all. Let me give you a run-down.
糖
糖 means “sugar.” This idea has been around for quite a while. Eating sweets will make you fat. Nothing strange here.
躺
躺 means “lie down.” Again, it comes as no surprise the assertion that inactivity leads to weight gain.
汤
汤 means “soup.” This one I don’t get. Eating soup will make you fat?? I always thought that the high proportion of water in soup would cause you to fill up on liquid if you ate a lot of it, and water isn’t going to make you fat. This answer goes contrary to that. I talked to some Chinese people who agreed that eating soup does, indeed, cause one to gain weight. I’m kinda baffled.
烫
烫 means “hot.” The idea is that eating hot food will cause you to put on weight. This just seems utterly ridiculous. Sure, heat can denature proteins in food, but come on! Again, I found some Chinese friends who agreed with this viewpoint. I’m mystified.
28
Sep 2004Telling Anecdotes
One
Overheard in the office:
> Girl A: 索性的索是…？
> Girl B: 索尼的索。
> Girl A: 哦，知道了。
> Girl A: Which 索 character is the 索 in 索性? [索性 is a not uncommon Chinese adverb meaning “simply.”]
> Girl B: The same 索 as in “Sony”.
[索尼 is the Chinese transliteration for “Sony.” Its characters are meaningless, chosen for phonetic value only.]
> Girl A: Oh, got it!
Two
I recently had the 抽油烟机 in my apartment fixed. I’m not sure what it is in English. Literally translated, it would be “oil smoke sucking machine.” It’s more than just a hood and exhaust fan for the cooking range. Because Chinese cooking uses so much oil and the oil goes into the air during the cooking process, this appliance helps suck in that oil and collect it. As I have discovered, if you don’t have a “oil smoke sucking machine” or it doesn’t work properly, the area around the cooking range gets covered with a thin layer of sticky oil residue every time you cook. Nasty.
So yesterday my landlord showed up to collect the rent, and he brought a repairman with him. Some valve in the exhaust duct had gotten stuck shut. Easily remedied.
What amused me was the way the repairman checked to see if the exhaust fan was drawing in the air. In the past I had used a piece of tissue. He just lit up right in my kitchen and used the cigarette smoke to test it. Of course, after testing the fan he also finished the cigarette.
Three
A Chinese friend of mine made this comparison recently:
America’s September 11th is like China’s 1989 incident. When the anniversary rolls around, security gets tightened big time.
I know it’s an innocent (and true) comment about security, but I felt emotional spasms of revulsion inside when I heard a comparison being made between the two incidents. I don’t think I have to go into why.
(Linguistically, there’s another similarity. As with several holidays and other historical anniversaries in China, the 1989 tragedy is referred to in Chinese by the numbers corresponding to its date. It’s called 6-4 — for June 4th — in Chinese. In the same way, the American tragedy is referred to as 9-1-1 in Chinese.)
P.S. Happy Moon Festival!
26
Sep 2004Pinyin Tooltips
A while ago Matt from Metanoiac asked me how I do my pinyin tooltips. I was too busy at the time to reply, but since maybe other people are interested in how I do it, I’ll give a public explanation here. (Warning: for those of you with no Chinese-related weblog, this is going to be a very long, boring post.)
“Tooltips” are the little text boxes that pop up when you hover your mouse on certain elements. The picture at left is an example. Internet Explorer (IE) users may be used to using the alt attribute to add tooltips to photos, but this is actually a web design no-no. Non-IE browsers do not display alt attributes as tooltips (this is not the intended purpose of alt), and anyway, alt attributes don’t work for non-photo elements like text. The correct attribute to use is the title attribute.
So you need to use the title attribute to get the tooltip, but what tag does it go inside, and how do you get the dotted underline and the question mark cursor? You need to use CSS for that.
The tag you’ll use is span. All you have to do is define a span class in your CSS. I call mine “info” because it doesn’t have to be used only for pinyin tooltips.
span.info {
border-bottom:1px dotted #00AAFF;
cursor: help;
}
This means the underline (which is actually defined as a border) is 1 pixel thick. “#00AAFF” is its color. The onmouseover cursor value is defined as “help“, which results in the question mark effect.
Then you can use it in your HTML like this:
<span class="info">text</span>
Result:
text
This will give the underline and cursor effect, but not the tooltip. You still need to add in the title attribute:
<span class="info" title="pinyin">text</span>
Result:
text
I’m guessing you want the pinyin tone marks too, though. For that, you’ll need to make sure that your page is encoded in Unicode (most people use UTF-8)*.
For the actual pinyin, I use the Pinyin to Unicode converter at The Fool’s Workshop. It’s very easy to use. Type in “zhong1wen2” and click Convert. You get “zhōngwén” back. Then you just copy and paste. Simple.
Here’s what that HTML would look like after you copy and paste:
<span class="info" title="zhōngwén">中文</span>
Result:
中文
This does mean, however, that you’ll have to convert the pinyin for each word you want to provide pinyin for, which is a bit of a pain. But the result is nice.
Also, it’s worth noting that the tooltip is not going to look good on some old computers or computers using weird fonts for their browsers. It’s a helpful effect for a lot of people, but you probably don’t want to make it central to your design.
* By this I mean that in your webpage’s html the <head> section should include the following metatag:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
If your webpage is encoded in Unicode and you’re using Movable Type like me, it will make your life easier if the default encoding of your edit screen is also Unicode. To do that, just edit the mt.cfg file. You need to find “PublishCharset“. For me it was on line 313 (of 457 total lines). Yours should be similar. Uncomment that line (delete the ‘#’) and change it to:
PublishCharset UTF-8
Thanks goes to John B, who originally showed me how to do this.
25
Sep 2004My Ayi
A while back I told you about my ayi (阿姨). Now I’m going to tell you some more.
My ayi comes from Hubei province. She has a son there attending Wuhan University. I don’t know more about her particular family circumstances than this, but knowing just this much it sounds like a difficult situation.
My ayi is probably in her early 40’s.
My ayi always calls me xiansheng (先生), something like “sir.” I’ve asked her many times to just call me by my Chinese name, but she forgets five minutes later, once again calling me xiansheng.
My ayi never joins me for dinner. In the beginning I would try hard to get her to enjoy with me the meal she prepared, but she steadfastly refused every time. Chinese people typically eat dinner between 5 and 6pm. I imagine she’s eating at close to 8pm on a daily basis.
My ayi comes 6 days a week. At about 5:30pm she goes to the market to buy fresh ingredients. She then bikes to my apartment, arriving at 6pm. Dinner is ready around 6:30. She leaves around 7pm. She used to stay longer, but she still seems to be getting the job done. I don’t begrudge her a little haste.
My ayi acts as housekeeper/cook for a number of households. She has worked for foreigners before, so she has a bit of knowledge about “what foreigners like” (or don’t like). You might argue that it’s impossible to make such generalities, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us foreigners don’t like chicken feet and things like that. Her experience rings pretty true for me, anyway.
My ayi knows which foods and ingredients I don’t like, and she’s never once slipped up and made something I don’t like after I had already told her.
My ayi always carries a notebook in which she makes careful note of all her employers’ expenses. She periodically gives me these figures so that I know exactly how much I’m spending on the actual food. It comes out to about 100 rmb (US$12.50) per month.
My ayi carries her cell phone around and usually gets at least one call while she’s here. Her cell phone is nicer than mine.
My ayi understood fine when I requested that she not use the kitchen dish towel to clean dirty things. I explained that the dish towel is for wiping water off clean things, and I didn’t want it to get dirty. (When she first came, I lost one dish towel that way.) I guess she decided she didn’t have enough rags to clean with, though, because one day I found that she had ripped my dish towel in half, leaving only one half hanging clean and faithful at its post while the other half was dispatched to explore less pristine regions.
My ayi hates wasting food. I feel the same way, so it’s no problem. Still, every now and then she suspects that I don’t like something, or a dish has been reheated several times, and is afraid I’ll throw it out. She’s not too timid to ask me not to waste it, or to scold me mildly if she catches me throwing something out (which is rare). One time she made something that I didn’t like. She could tell, and rather than let me waste it, she took it home for herself to eat. I didn’t mind at all. She never made that dish again.
24
Sep 20042 weeks
What have I been doing for the past 2 weeks (besides trying to get my site back online)? It seems like a lot of nothing, but the list goes something like this:
- Plowing through my Chinese intro to linguistics text. (Surprisingly, I’m learning a lot of really useful non-linguistics-specific vocabulary.)
- Reading short stories by H. P. Lovecraft. (And, frequently being disappointed by the endings.)
- Killing time going through the archives of Nuklear Power. (OK, I know it’s lame; I can’t explain it! But FF1 was my favorite game of all time, so that must be part of it.)
- Expanding my music collection. (Huddle Formation by The Go! Team is awesome happy music.)
- Visiting the hospital again. (More on that adventure later.)
- Deciding not to go to India for my October vacation because the plane tickets are just not cheap. (Still not sure what I’ll do.)
- Thinking.
Yes, I’ve dicovered that when my internet usage goes down I end up reading more and getting more sleep. Good thing I solved my hosting problem. No telling what I might be capable of if I were well-rested, well-read, and well-thought out all the time!