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×!
Is “³öÓï²»Ë×” chengyu? Just wonder.
John, that was a great idea of having a common blog. I have just read “why I have grown to hate ‘hell'”. I must say that is a great piece. As Chinese myself, I have also grown to hate phrases like “ni hao”, “ni hao ma”, or most ridiculous ones are “Kunichiwa” to me.
anyway, I am getting off my soap box now. Congrats!
ps. my last comment was referring to “why I have grown to hate the world ‘hello'”. I have made a typo and wrote “hell”.
my apologies.
-tian
John, this is not pertinent to this post, but to a post you made a couple of weeks ago. I figured that if I posted below you might not realize it. i have a few questions and I thought you might be able to help:
I am also interested in applying for a credit card here in China, but only if I’ll be able to use it to shop online (paying in dollars, I suppose). Do you know if this would be possible? Would you recommend getting it through the bank of China? I’ve been in China for a while, but never got around to opening a bank account here, so I’m not too familar with these things. Thanks for the help!!!
A very good idea. Now, if I were to just get off my ass and learn Chinese . . .
Sorry to hear about your hatred for “hello.” Being Chinese, I never got hello’d in China. Personally, the word I despise is “buxing.” What made it particularly disconcerting was most of the people uttering the word had the nicest, sweetest voices. 😉
СÐÜ is a good read indeed. Common folks are generally quite friendly, aren’t they?
You guys might want to come up with a better English name for the common blog. The Chinese title is good but I don’t think dreamsfowhitetiles is indicative enough. Perhaps you can issue a challenge for your authors and/or commenters there to invent one. If for nothing else, just to index it easier in a link.
Actually, dreamsofwhitetiles.com is my own site, and ³öÓï²»Ë× is currently hosted on it. When I set it up we didn’t have a name, so I just used chinese.dreamsofwhitetiles.com. Dreams of White Tiles is not meant to be ³öÓï²»Ë×’s English name (although you’re not the first person to think so.
I’m not sure if we need an English name – I just write is as Chuyubusu if I need to.
Roddy
³öÓï²»Ë× “Stilted,” maybe? I’ve just been using the Pinyinized form as well.
Brendan,
Does ³öÓï²»Ë× have a positive or a negative connotation? I admit I’m not familiar with it, but when I looked it up what I found seemed to indicate a positive connotation.
it definitely has a positive connotation. I’d suggest just sticking to the pinyinized form. If it was negative, I’d suggest “Speaking With Forked Tongues”. How about “Bohemian Rhapsodies”?
It’s a positive phrase that speaks very well to readers fluent in Chinese. An additional English title and/or mission statement would attract readership from foreign students of Chinese presently at a lower level who might otherwise conclude too quickly that this is too Chinese a Chinese blog. How about “Common Words Uncommon — a shared blog by a group of western xxxxx’s each trying to unseat Da Shan”? Or to borrow from Prince Roy, a group of western bohemians’ Chinese rhapsodies.
Thanks for the suggestions, Gin, although we’re certainly not trying to uneat Dashan. Chinese blogs are not his territory at all. 🙂
Not “unseat,” so much as “beat about the face and neck with a length of lead pipe.”
³öÓï²»Ë× has positive connotations, but I think it’d be best if the English name had slightly negative or self-mocking ones. “Stilted” is too harsh, I guess. “Highfalutin declamations,” maybe?
I see, I see (ÔÀ´Èç´Ë). I shouldn¡¯t have brought up that distractive name, though.
Brendan,
I actually like the name “Stilted” a lot, but it just seems strange that the name would be modest in English but not at all in Chinese… 🙂
Well, I kind of like the idea, since usually it’s the other way around. If you said (in Chinese) that my Chinese was pretty good, I’d launch into a whole string of ÄÄÀïÄÄÀïs and »¹²îµÃÔ¶ÄØs, but if you said the same thing in English, I’d just say “thanks.” Why not invert it for a change?
‘stilted’ sounds somewhat negative to me though, whereas the Chinese term is complimentary.
‘stilted’ would be ³öÑÔ²»Ñ· 🙂
Your writings there are all too gentlemanly for that.
Gin – not for long!
How about “Chuyubusu — Just like Bushisms” for the title?
“Stilted”? That words belongs to this kid in my class who asked our professor “Will we proceed as normal this Friday?”
Oh, No! Is a Chinese version of the adventures at stall #2 coming?
Well, nothing quite that bad…yet. But hey – as gross as that story was, it got more links and visits than anything else I’ve ever written, and spawned some pretty hilarious e-mails from people. So there’s something to be said for it, I guess, if it gets people talking.