09
Mar 2012
Types of Tone Mistakes
As a learner of Chinese, you’re going to make mistakes with your tones. A lot of them. It’s unavoidable. It can be helpful to reflect on the kinds of mistakes you’re making, though, because it can help you realize that despite all the mangled tones, you’re actually making progress.
No, I’m not just talking about the stages of learning tones which I’ve written about before, I’m talking about mistakes which are fundamentally different in nature. As your Chinese gets better and better, you’ll keep making some mistakes, but the types of mistakes you make will change.
So without further ado, here are the 4 main types of tone mistakes:
Mistakes of Control
When you first start studying Chinese, you have no idea at all how to properly make the tones. Even if you can hear a difference, you can’t do it yourself. Or maybe you can hear and repeat it immediately after, but then quickly forget how to do it. This is all part of the process of learning tones.
Don’t think this type of mistake is only for beginners, though. Even after you can accurately produce individual tones in isolation, you’re going to have problems with tone pairs and tones across whole sentences for a while. (For me, the most insidious of these was the 3-2 tone swap error.)
Relax! Persistent effort will totally pay off. No one masters tones in 2 weeks. It takes time.
Mistakes of Ignorance
Sometimes you don’t know the tones of the words you want to use. Don’t worry; it happens to all of us. If you only use words for which you’re 100% sure of the tones, then you’re doing it wrong. Not knowing the correct tones but blundering on through anyway is just part of the learning experience.
The key here is that you eventually make the effort to learn the proper tones for the words you’re unsure of. This takes time, patience, and lots of dictionary lookups. Eventually your accumulated tonal knowledge (and proper execution) make you start sounding less like a “stereotypical foreigner” when you speak Chinese.
Mistakes of Memory
For me, this is always the most frustrating tonal mistake of all. Have you ever been sure that you know the right tones for a word, and always took care to properly pronounce that word, but then found out much later that the tones you thought you had down cold were actually wrong?
I remember when I first came to China I was sure that the word for “north,” 北, was pronounced “*bēi” (first tone rather than third). I was horrified to finally learn the truth. I’d been confidently saying it incorrectly for half a year. Nothing to do but make the mental correction and move on. Memory is never perfect, and you can’t really avoid these mistakes.
Mistakes of Influence
This one can also be frustrating, but I’d say it’s more confusing than anything. So what happens when the dictionary says a word is pronounced one way, and your friend tells you it’s pronounced a different way? Or two friends give you contradictory information, but it’s all different from what the dictionary says? Sadly, these issues invariably plague the intermediate learner of Chinese.
There are several reasons that these discrepancies arise. First is regional variation. Different parts of China pronounce some words in different ways, and although at times you’ll hear unquestionably “non-standard Mandarin,” at other times it’s unfair to call a certain regional variation “wrong” or “right” (although some Beijing have no problems at all doing this).
Second is the widespread use of dated reference materials. Printed dictionaries simply aren’t keeping pace with the rapidly evolving language of the Chinese people. New words are created, and pronunciations change (sometimes just the tones) relatively quickly.
Third is a cultural tendency to submit to the recognized authority (i.e. the outdated reference materials). So you often get exchanges like this:
A: How do you pronounce the character 血?
B: “Xuě.”
A: But the dictionary says it’s either “xuè” or “xiě.”
B: Oh yes, that’s right.
A: But you just said…
You get the idea. But what can you do? Know that dictionaries are not perfect, and no single person can be an authority on a whole language. You’re going to have to assemble your mental map of the words of the language over time, from the mouths of many speakers, not one “omniscient” teacher.
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. They’re inevitable, and they help you learn. But as long as you’re going to be making these mistakes, you might as well look a little closer and gauge how your language ability is growing and your unruly tones are slowly but surely being tamed.
06
Mar 2012No Drama, Real China
A friend of a friend has started a new video series in Beijing called No Drama Real China. The host is a Chinese girl named Rachel Guo. The concept is simple: ask a cross-section of Beijing’s population some interesting questions related to Chinese culture, and present the hodge-podge of answers in all its heterogeneous glory for the benefit of cross-cultural understanding (so, with subtitles, obviously). The result is interesting, funny, and perhaps even educational (especially for all you students of Chinese).
Here are some of my favorites:
What Are Chinese People Afraid Of?
For the linguistically sensitive, this next one has Rachel dropping what appears to be a few strangely out of place gratuitous F-bombs, but apparently she’s quoting a rather rude online user:
Do Chinese People Eat Everything???
(The video above also has a particularly amusing scene where the old lady can’t seem to understand the clear Chinese of the interviewer.)
No Drama Real China shows a lot of promise! Please have a look at these videos. If you can’t access YouTube, there are also a few on Youku.
Keep up the good work, Rachel!
02
Mar 2012Dict.cn does Shanghainese
I was recently informed (thanks, Mark!) that Dict.cn, one of the popular, free online Chinese-English dictionaries, now offers Shanghainese content. I was pleasantly surprised to see a big list of mini-dialogs in Shanghainese! The bad news is that the dialog text is in characters (切 for 吃, etc.), and there’s no IPA or other phonetic transcription. They only have one speaker doing the audio, but there’s audio for every sentence (tip: mouse over the little speaker rather than clicking on it), so that’s not bad.
I asked my wife what she thought about the speaker’s accent. She said it was 新派上海话 (the form of the dialect spoken by modern young Shanghainese), and she felt that the female speaker was too 嗲 (cutesy-sounding). But, hey… it’s Shanghainese.
I also recently did a little research on Shanghainese lessons in Shanghai. Interestingly, some of the schools that I know used to offer Shanghainese classes no longer do. Is the demand dropping? Have any readers out there taken Shanghainese lessons at a local university?
28
Feb 2012Unmixing Chinese and Japanese fonts on the iPad and Mac OS
Recently an AllSet Learning client came to me with an interesting problem: he was seeing strange, slightly “off” variations of characters in his ChinesePod lesson, “Adjusting the Temperature.” Once upon a time I studied Japanese, so I could recognize the characters he was seeing as Japanese variants:
What he saw:
What he expected to see:
[If you really care about the tiny discrepancy, you may need to click through and enlarge the screenshot to see the difference. I’m not going to focus on including text here, because that’s exactly the nature of the problem: the text is subject to change based on your system’s font availability.]
The really strange thing was that he was experiencing the exact same issue on both his 2010 MacBook and on his iPad 2. In troubleshooting this problem, I discovered that my client was running both an older version of iOS (4.x) as well as an older version of Mac OS (Leopard). I was experiencing neither on my 2008 MacBook (running Snow Leopard) or on my iPad 2 (iOS 5.x). But his system had all the required fonts, and switching browsers from Safari to others did nothing to solve the problem. So I concluded it was simply a system configuration problem.
Fixing the issue on the iPad
Here’s the fix. On the iPad, go into Settings > General > International (you might need to scroll down for that last one). You might see something like this:
Note that in the order pictured above, Japanese (日本語) is above simplified Chinese (简体中文) in the list. This is crucial! That means that if English fonts are not found for the characters on a given page, the system is going to match characters to Japanese fonts next.
So to fix this issue, Chinese should be above Japanese. The thing is, there’s no obvious way to change the order. The only way I found to do it is to switch the system language to Chinese, then switch back to English. [Warning: your entire iOS system interface will switch to Chinese when you do this; make sure you can read the Chinese, or you know where the menu position for this settings page is before you switch!]
(Hint, hint!)
Switching to Chinese makes the Chinese jump to the top of the list, then switching back to English makes English jump back above that, leaving Japanese below Chinese.
You should see something like this when you’re done:
Fixing the issue on Mac OS X
The exact some issue applies to Mac OS X system preferences. Go to: System Preferences… > Language & Text > Language.
This time, though, there’s an easier way to rearrange the order. Simply click and drag:
Notice the little message on the right about when the changes will take effect.
Does this really matter?
In the grand scheme of things, not really. It’s actually good to have some tolerance for font variations. But the detail-oriented may find this particular issue quite maddening. It’s good to have a simple way to fix it.
So why didn’t I have the issue, and he did? Well, I had at some point tried switching the system language to Chinese, on both my MacBook and on my iPad, but I later switched them back to English. So without even trying to, I had taught my system to prefer Chinese over Japanese. The problem appears when English is the only language ever used, and the system doesn’t know what to give preference to. In my client’s case, you would think that adding a Chinese input method might clue in the system, but apparently Apple isn’t quite that on the ball yet.
24
Feb 2012Translations of Butterfly (Linguistic Differences)
Via John Biesnecker:
Sorry, I can’t credit the original author because I don’t know it. I added the Chinese translation into the mix (蝴蝶).
This is especially hilarious to me personally because I know very little German, but I actually learned the German word “schmetterling” long ago by chance, and found the word enormously amusing. Guess I’m not the only one!
21
Feb 2012Speaking a Foreign Language without Translating
Friends of mine have asked me many times: can you really speak Chinese without translating it first in your head? And when I answer yes, the follow-up question is: but how can you get to that point? I have to translate everything!
There’s both an implied lie and a rather direct lie in that follow-up question.
“But how can you get to that point?”
The problem is that it’s not a “point.” There’s no instant when you can suddenly stop translating completely. Rather, you stop translating longer and longer stretches of language. Over time, what was once long stretches of language which needed to be translated, interspersed with only occasional words you understood, eventually becomes long stretches of language which don’t need to be translated, interrupted only by the occasional need for translation.
“I have to translate everything!”
Do you? Do you have to translate 你好 (“hi”)? Do you have to translate 谢谢 (“thank you”)? To tell someone you don’t want something, do you have to consciously translate “I don’t want it” into 不要? Or do you just blurt them out?
Sure, when you first start out, you have to learn these expressions, and then you do have to translate them when you first start using them. But especially if you’re in the target language environment, their usage starts to become automatic quite quickly. I observed 你好 and 谢谢 becoming automatic for my parents during their recent two-week visit. They don’t speak a lot of Chinese, but even they were “speaking without translating” relatively quickly.
With enough practice, more and more words and phrases become automatic. You don’t feel your brain shirking its translation duties; it just happens so naturally. When you finally realize it’s happening, that you’re starting to understand and process not just individual words and short phrases, but whole sentences without even translating them, it feels a little surreal. It’s kind of like one of those Escher works. You really can’t pinpoint at what point the bird became a fish.
But the truth is, if you’ve been not just “studying,” but using your language skills for any length of time, the ebbing of conscious translation has already begun. If you try, you can sort of feel it. It’s this weird sensation called “fluency” creeping up on you, ever so subtly.
15
Feb 2012Ideas for Moms’ Trips to Shanghai
I’ve been away from blogging recently as my parents were here visiting their new granddaughter. It was only their second trip to Shanghai, and before they got here I spent some time wracking my brains for good things to do. There are tons of things to do in this city, but so very few of them are obvious. The best ideas always seem to occur to me too late.
Mary Ann, an AllSet Learning client of mine who is a mother herself, had recently compiled a list of mom-friendly activities for her own mother-in-law’s visit, and she kindly shared it with me, along with her comments. I thought some readers might find it useful, so here it is, with her persmission:
– Urban Planning Museum. I find it interesting, and I think most people who like cities are usually into it. The top floor now shows a short movie which shows a 360 panoramic view of Shanghai from Hongqiao to Pudong. I haven’t seen it but my kids and visitors have and everyone has liked it!
– “Ghost Market.” That Antique market on early mornings on Saturdays and Sundays near Yuan gardens. I find it fascinating that so many people come to Shanghai from the countryside to sell ceramic shards. I like to watch the background social scene but picking through some of the stuff is fun too.
– Old China Reading Room on Shaoxing Lu. Restful place to browse books and drink tea (nice Austrian cakes at Vienna Cafe nearby)
– Glasses Market above the Railway Station. Since your parents aren’t shoppers, the one market that they might be able to get something at and take part in Shanghai commerce madness is the Glasses Market. They should bring a prescription with them from the U.S. and get some glasses made. People with glasses can always use a spare and much much cheaper than in Europe, I’m assuming the same in the U.S. My friend’s ophthalmologist sends all her patients to Bright Eyes Optical (stall 4056). I have taken people to get glasses done there and they were all were happy afterwards. Speak to Linda; she speaks English (in case your parents go on their own).
– Historic houses on/around Sinan Lu. Visit the ones converted into museums.
– Walking Tour. Yes, I’m insisting on this! And no, you can’t walk them around with an app instead! All parents like this sort of thing. Of course skip the cheesy ones but do go for the historian-led ones, or at least the ones led by guides with more street cred. The highly recommended guy who does the tours of the Jewish Heritage sites is an Israeli journalist/historian who runs shanghai-jews.com.
– Hang out at a Tea House. You probably know of a good one. [Actually, not really!]
– Foot Massage or other treatment at Xiao Nan Guo (Hongmei Lu). Have you been here? I’ve only eaten there a few times. The spa part of it has all spa typical treatments available PLUS there’s entertainment, which I think is daily. I think it would be great to take them to a foot massage while watching a show of russian dancers. Why, they may ask? Well… why not? Sounds kooky but that’s the point. Anyway, supposed to be pretty affordable so it could be something to do.
– Propaganda Poster Museum.
– I accidentally came across a place in the Old town where they sell books by weight… quite amusing. Have you seen this? Isn’t one of your parents a librarian? Might be worth a bit of a hoot if in the area…
– Spin Ceramics on Kangding Lu. Something for themselves or for a gift. Do you know this place? Fab stuff at great prices.
Sadly, my parents only got to do the first thing on this awesome list, but they did have a great time (despite Shanghai’s inhospitable winter weather). Hopefully someone else will find it useful.
Another client recommended Shanghai Pathways for tours, but we ended up just not having time for so many activities.
If you’ve done any of these things or have anything else to add, please leave a comment!
Related Posts:
– China Lite (2011)
– Micah and John on Touring Shanghai (2008)
31
Jan 2012Three Simple Uses of the Other “Ma” on a Bag
I recently wrote about my personal experience with the particle 嘛 (not 吗), and how a dictionary entry helped me get a feel for how the particle is used. That dictionary entry, again, is from the Oxford Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary (blog post here):
> 嘛: ma (助) 1 [used at the end of a sentence to show what precedes it is obvious]: 这样做是不对～！ Of course it was acting improperly! 孩子总是孩子～！ Children are children! 2 [used within a sentence to mark a pause]: 你～，就不用亲自去了。 As for you, I don’t think you have to go in person.
Not too long ago, I encountered this little coin purse/bag, which offers three very concise uses of our particle 嘛:
The text is as follows (broken into three lines to make it easier to discuss):
> 1: 钱嘛
> 2: 纸嘛
> 3: 花嘛
OK, now clearly, this is the same 嘛 particle. But what does this actually mean??
First, “钱嘛” means something like, “it’s money,” as in, “we all know what money is, and what it’s for.” This could also have been expressed more verbosely by: “是钱嘛” or even as: “不就是钱嘛” (“isn’t it just money”??).
Second, “纸嘛” quite simply means, “it’s (made out of) paper (as we all know).” Duh. “It’s just paper.” This usage is basically the same as the first.
Last, we have “花嘛,” which is slightly different because it’s a verb. Still the idea is quite similar. It’s for spending. You might translate this into English as, “so just spend it!” Another way to put it in Chinese would be, “想花就花嘛” (if you feel like spending it, just spend it).
The words on this bag strike me as a Shanghainese, female way of looking at money. But maybe that’s because the bag belonged to a girl I know…
Related Grammar Links:
– Expressing the Self-Evident with 嘛 (Chinese Grammar Wiki link)
25
Jan 2012Personal Experience with the Other Particle “ma”
I remember quite distinctly the way I learned the sentence-final particle 嘛. I had only been studying Chinese for a little over a year, and thus was quite familiar with the yes/no question particle 吗, but not this new 嘛, which seemed a bit more complex. I might have studied it before and just ignored it, but once I was on the streets of Hangzhou and hearing it all the time, I knew it was time to start figuring out what this 嘛 was all about.
So I broke out my trusty old Oxford dictionary (we still learned Chinese from actual books in those days), and looked up 嘛. Here’s what I found:
> 嘛: ma (助) 1 [used at the end of a sentence to show what precedes it is obvious]: 这样做是不对～！ Of course it was acting improperly! 孩子总是孩子～！ Children are children! 2 [used within a sentence to mark a pause]: 你～，就不用亲自去了。 As for you, I don’t think you have to go in person.
I know some people hate learning from dictionaries, and grammatical concepts especially can be difficult to learn that way, but for me this explanation was a revelation: used at the end of a sentence to show what precedes it is obvious.
I think a lot of us have personal experiences in which we acquire a new word, and the memory of those specific vocabulary acquisition experiences stay with us long after we internalize the words themselves (one of my own personal examples is my attempt to buy a bug zapper light). This is quite natural, and it’s also one of my key misgivings about SRS. The way we naturally acquire language stays with us and reinforces the entire process, tightly binding words, meaning, and real-world experience. SRS (or simple word lists in general) can’t really offer this deep of a connection.
But back to my dictionary example… How is this any different from an SRS learning method, divorced from a real-world connection? Logically, I feel like looking up a word in a dictionary isn’t much different from being presented a word electronically. Sure, there’s the tactile interaction with the book, and the effort involved in getting out the book in the first place, and the act of physically flipping to the appropriate page, then locating the appropriate headword with my finger. How much “momentum” do these behaviors actually amount to, in a learning context?
Although I can’t think of many compelling instances besides my 嘛 example, I definitely feel that there are words which I learned (and not just “learned,” but developed a strong connection to) largely due to a dictionary. This leads me to two important questions:
– How many of you out there have clear memories of really learning a word or expression through a dictionary? What was it that made it so memorable?
– How many of you out there have clear memories of really learning a word or expression through SRS? What was it that made it so memorable?
For me, I think the dictionary’s explanation struck me so poignantly because I had actually already expended a significant amount of mental energy on the use of 嘛 but I had not yet been able to express the ideas concisely, and the 嘛 entry did just that, right when I needed it.
Please share some of your own personal learning experiences in the comments. I’m very interested to hear what you have to say.
Related Grammar Links:
– Yes/No Questions with 吗 (Chinese Grammar Wiki link)
– Expressing the Self-Evident with 嘛 (Chinese Grammar Wiki link)
22
Jan 2012A New Resource for Chinese Grammar
It’s hard to believe I’ve been working on this project for a whole year, and also thinking about it, in some form or another, ever since founding AllSet Learning. Today, I’m quite happy to finally release the AllSet Learning Grammar Wiki.
What is it? Well, in a nutshell, it’s a mini-Wikipedia devoted entirely to Chinese grammar. Think comprehensive, think interlinked, think referenced. I’ve felt for a while that Chinese grammar has needed its own champion online, and since forming AllSet Learning, I’ve finally got both the need and the means to make it happen and keep it going.
I won’t say too much here; there’s a blog post on the AllSet Learning blog introducing the features and concepts behind the Grammar Wiki. Obviously, you can also just go straight to the wiki and check it out.
There’s not yet any public forum on the AllSet Learning websites, so if you’ve got feedback, feel free to leave it in the comments here. Please do read the AllSet Learning blog post first, though, as it may answer some of your questions. I’d also like to reiterate that the Grammar Wiki is not finished, and I’m not sure it ever will be, but with 500 articles and a good juicy set of grammar points it’s now at a point where it’s clearly useful to learners, so it’s time for it to emerge from its cave and be exposed to the rest of the world.
Finally, I’d like to thank the AllSet Learning interns who, over the past year, have helped make the Chinese Grammar Wiki a reality: Lucas, Greg, Hugh, and Jonathan. You guys were an immense help. Thank you also to all bloggers and friends who help spread the word by linking to the Chinese Grammar Wiki. Please help spread the word!
That’s all for now… Happy Chinese New Year!
20
Jan 20122012, Year of the Dragon
Well, it’s almost Chinese New Year, and this new one is the year of the dragon. It didn’t escape too many Chinese designers’ notice that it’s pretty easy to turn a “2” into a dragon, so lately we’re seeing a lot of designs like these:
Here’s one that’s a little different:
Not as fun as last year, though! I’m still not a huge fan of this holiday, and it’s getting harder and harder for this country’s residents to go home to it celebrate it properly, but it’s still an interesting time of year.
Happy Chinese New Year! 新年好！ (The new year starts Monday.)
17
Jan 2012Shanghai’s “Fake Collars”
I’ve been living in Shanghai a while now, but it wasn’t until just recently that I ever heard of Shanghai’s “fake collar” shirts (假领子). Technically, the collar is not fake at all; the collar helps to create the illusion that the wearer has on a full shirt under a sweater, when in fact he/she does not. They even have little straps on the sides to keep them in place!
Naturally, this calls for pictures:
According to this website, these “fake collars” are a Shanghai creation. My mother-in-law (a Shanghai native) proudly explained to me that they were invented to preserve a well-dressed appearance in a truly Communist age when neither clothing nor fabric were cheap. “We all wore them,” she said. “We could buy quite a few jia lingzi for the same price as one shirt.” When worn under a sweater, they create the impression of full, proper attire. Quite innovative! (Reminds me of all the ways I used to fake having taken a shower when I was little.)
These things were common from the 60’s through to the 80’s, but have long since fallen from favor, now that ordinary people actually have a little bit of money. Apparently you can still buy them in Shanghai, somewhere on Sichuan Road. I’ve gotta get my hands on one of these. (They also just might make for an interesting souvenir!)
10
Jan 2012Dashan on Why Foreigners Hate Dashan
After reading this post on Quora, I’m now quite convinced that no one has given the question of “why (western) foreigners hate Dashan so much” as much thought as Mark Rowswell, the man behind Dashan (大山).
I should warn you: the entire answer is quite long, but it’s worth a read. Mark breaks it down into these parts:
- Overuse – People are sick and tired of hearing the name “Dashan”;
- Resentment (Part A) – Dashan’s not the only Westerner who speaks Chinese fluently;
- Resentment (Part B) – Being a foreign resident in China is not easy and Dashan gets all the breaks;
- Political/Cultural – People wish Dashan had more of an edge; [I found Mark’s reasons for Dashan’s lack of an edge especially interesting, since they relate to a Chinese tendency toward sensitivity to foreign criticism]
- Stereotyping – The assumption that Dashan is a performing monkey.
Looks to me like people can quit asking this question. That’s the answer. But I also feel like we’re getting this definitive answer at a time when all the hubbub about Dashan has finally started to die down.
04
Jan 2012Punning in the New Year
My friend Andy (the guy who did the WordPress Sinosplice Tooltips plugin) wished me a happy New Year in the following way recently:
> Happy New 一二!
At the risk of spoiling the joke, allow me to explain…
1. Pinyin “yī èr” sounds remarkably like “year.”
2. This is 2012, so the characters for “1 2” are singularly appropriate.
Good job, Andy! You only get to use this pun once every 100 years, everybody, so get on it!
Last year, the punny wish was:
> Happy Chinese New Year 兔 you!
1. Pinyin “tù” sounds nearly identical to “to.”
2. 兔子, sometimes abbreviated to 兔, is the Chinese word for “rabbit.”
This year (year of the dragon), friend and ex-co-worker Jason made the following punny wish:
> Wishing you a 龍 and prosperous New Year!
1. Pinyin “lóng” sounds reasonably similar to the English word “long.”
2. 龍 (simplified: 龙) is the Chinese word for “dragon.”
Jason also added the following variation for Star Trek fans:
> Live 龍 and prosper this New Year!
Finally, I’d like to give props to my dad, who always liked the following pun. It wasn’t until recent years that I could actually verify that this pun really does work in Chinese:
> How Long is a Chinese name.
The pun doesn’t work so well when written. The joke is to say it in such a way that it’s perceived as a question, when in fact, it’s a statement:
> 郝龙 (Hao Long) is a Chinese name.
(This “joke” doesn’t work nearly as well in China, where everyone knows that Chinese names are typically 2-3 characters/syllables, and as many as 4 on rare occasion, and everyone would easily recognize 郝龙 as a Chinese name anyway.)
OK, I better shut up now before I lose all my readers.
Happy New Year!
29
Dec 2011Shanghai’s Christmas Tourists
This year I attended the 8pm Christmas Eve mass at the St. Ignatius cathedral in Xujiahui, Shanghai. It reminded me why I normally don’t go to Christmas Eve masses in China. In short, it’s a zoo.
The reason is that Christmas Eve has become a popular holiday in Shanghai, although it’s mainly a date holiday. Traffic was horrible that evening, as couples all went out in search of a romantic winter evening. Many of them went to churches out of curiosity, to see how Christmas is celebrated there.
I imagine the “Christmas tourists” that wound up at Catholic churches were a little bored. Yes, there’s a choir singing Christmas music, but it’s still a Catholic mass, and not a Christmas program. (As I understand it, some other denominations do special Christmas programs to cater to the seasonal tourists.)
For the Catholic Church, it’s certainly a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the church has a rare opportunity to proselytize to a captive audience actively seeking out what it has to offer. (Christian churches are not allowed to actively evangelize in China, so if it’s done at all, it’s normally done quite subtly.) On the other hand, the Catholic Church is there for the faithful, and the Christmas tourists really are a bit of an obstacle to normal worship.
Some examples of how the Christmas tourist disrupt the mass:
– The tourists wander all throughout the church throughout the mass, often talking in loud voices
– The tourists take photos (with flash) and video all throughout the mass, often holding the device up high, distracting everyone
– The tourists take up good seats in a standing-room-only situation, but then try to leave the packed church after 20 minutes when they get bored
– The tourists outnumber the believers, so the priest tends to direct the sermon at them, capitalizing on the opportunity
– The tourists try to receive Holy Communion, even though the priest patiently and politely explains that it’s not for visitors, requiring the priest and eucharistic ministers to do a sort of mini-interrogation to anyone in the communion line that looks suspicious (and they’re surprisingly good at spotting the faking faithful!)
It’s the last one that bothers me the most. In China there’s a serious lack of respect for religion. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given China’s history, but it’s quite startling to be presented with the fact in this way. It also makes me reflect on modern foreigners’ behavior in Buddhist temples (how bad are we?), but I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen that feels as bad as trying to receive Holy Communion after being specifically asked not to (in one’s native tongue).
Here’s one tourist’s account (from Weibo), which offers a nice (more respectful) perspective:
> 奔波的一天最终归于平静～第二个教堂平安夜，徐家汇天主教堂真的很美，典型的哥特建筑，宏伟壮观，空灵的圣歌，神圣的仪式…就是人太多，挤死了～信仰果真是一种强大的力量。跟着做弥撒时神父在我头上点了几下，没有给我圣体吃，而那些基督徒们在咀嚼圣体时怀着怎样一颗敬畏感动的心～安～
Here’s a rough translation:
> A busy day eventually ended peacefully… My second Christmas Eve at a church. The Xujiahui Catholic Church is really beautiful, with classic gothic architecture, really magnificent, lovely hymns, and a holy ceremony… But there were just too many people; it was super crowded. Faith is indeed a powerful force. Following along in the mass, the priest nodded at me several times, but didn’t give me the Eucharist to eat. But those Christians chewing on the Eucharist were filled with some kind of reverent emotion. Peace.
I assume the priest “nodding” at her was him giving her a blessing. Any non-Catholic can go up in the Communion line and get a blessing, but they’re supposed to cross their arms to signal that they’re not there to receive the Eucharist.
Anyway, lesson learned… next year I won’t be going on Christmas Eve again!
23
Dec 2011Even Santa Claus is on Sina Weibo
A quick search on Sina’s Weibo today revealed that Santa Claus (圣诞老人) uses the service, and his identity has even been verified (that’s what the “V” stands for: 新浪认证, or “Sina Verified”).
But actually, a little bit more reading reveals that the account is used for Christmas promotions by Sina itself:
> 新浪微博圣诞节活动
That account is actually a year old, though. There’s another one for 2011, based in Guangzhou rather than Beijing (??).
Hmmm, does this qualify as abuse of an identity verification system, at a time when Beijing is supposedly cracking down on accounts that aren’t clearly linked to real people? I’m sure Santa Claus is outraged.
Anyway, merry Christmas! 圣诞快乐！
20
Dec 2011Xiami’s Unofficial iPhone App
Recently a Chinese friend got me into Xiami. In case you’ve never heard of it, TechRice describes it like this:
> Xiami is perhaps the closest China has to a Last.fm, though in Last.fm users have to pay monthly subscriptions to listen to songs and Xiami is still completely free up until the point of download.
So think “social music site,” with both free and paid offerings.
I was interested to see how the site offers its iPhone app for download:
So what that little popover message is telling you is that you have to download the iOS install file (.IPA file), and it only works on (illegally) jailbroken iPhones.
I’ll admit I don’t have a lot of experience with Chinese iPhone apps; I mainly just use a handful of them. I’m curious how many other relatively large and popular services are doing it this way now. Xiami as a service seems much “more legal” from a western perspective than services like Baidu’s MP3 downloads, but then they go and do this with their app (presumably because Apple won’t approve the app).
Anyone?
More about Xiami:
– China’s Internet Music Industry, You Pay For Music Now (TechRice)
– Xiami versus Grooveshark (TimeOut Beijing)
16
Dec 2011The Upcoming Skritter iOS App Looks Awesome
And by “awesome,” I mean flashy (or sparky?), fluid, and fun! Check out this video:
More info on the Skritter iOS page. This is definitely an app I’ll be getting as soon as it comes out, and I’ll be reviewing it in the future.
13
Dec 2011yex, AKA HX
For the longest time, I wondered why 恒鑫茶饮 used the English name “yex.” Here’s the logo:
Doesn’t it seem like “Heng Xin” or something related would make more sense for a company called 恒鑫茶饮? Eventually it dawned on me that “yex” is actually “HX” in “fancy lettering.”
Which one do you see?
08
Dec 2011Chinese Lyrics (with Pinyin) for Christmas Songs
Sinosplice’s Christmas Songs in Chinese have been popular every year around this time for a while now, and one of the most common comments let has been, “can you provide the lyrics in pinyin?” Well, it’s actually quite a lot of work to assemble all the (correct) lyrics, which is why I hadn’t done it before. This year, however, I decided to leverage some of AllSet Learning‘s resources and finally make it happen. (They may not be perfect though, as some songs were manually transcribed, and the audio was a little unclear. So if you catch any errors, please leave a comment, and we’ll update ASAP.)
So for the MP3 audio, go to the original Christmas Songs in Chinese post. For the lyrics (simplified characters and pinyin), download here:
Christmas Songs in Chinese lyrics (1.2 MB ZIP file containing PDFs)
Note: Some of these songs (especially the religious ones) do not have easy lyrics! Think twice before you try to use some of these songs as study material.
Merry Christmas!