06
Dec 2007
LaoZi Academy Podcasts
From the site:
> Audio recordings from formal training. In these recordings, Master Dong Yang talks about different aspects of Dao and Daoist cultivation through the refining and growing of the internal elixir and how to prevent physical damage in the process.
Hmmm, I think some things were not meant for podcast format.
What do you think?
04
Dec 2007Suckers for Math
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of Chinese citizens (especially the college-age-ish) have great pride in their math skills. They have heard time and again that their math skills are superior to most other nations’ students’, and they believe it. This can be sort of fun to mess with.
I recently stumbled across the World’s Hardest Easy Geometry Problem. After working on it for about half an hour and realizing that it really was pretty tough, I decided to see if I could entice my wife to try it.
Now, my wife is intelligent, but she’s no math person. She earned her degree in law (and not the mathy kind). To be honest, I can’t remember her ever showing much interest in math or geometry. But I decided to tempt her with the problem.
She ended up spending the rest of the evening working on it. Ah, pride is a fun thing.
(Anyone got any other deceptively difficult math bait?)
02
Dec 2007Shanghai Cops Do Stuff Sometimes
On my way to work each morning, I ride Line 2 to People’s Square, where I transfer to Line 1. Considering the volume of people going through People’s Square during rush hour, it’s a bit insane. What makes it much worse, though, is when there are large groups of people going the wrong way through the one-way transfer channels. They make the whole transfer process much slower and more miserable, and no one is very good-tempered about it.
Honestly, if there’s anything that’s going to embitter me about living in Shanghai long-term, it’s that damn commute.
Fortunately, police officers started enforcing the one-way status of these transfer passageways a few weeks ago. This has made everything much more pleasant, and, well, orderly. Still, Shanghai police are not known for being “badass.” They’re much better known for patiently taking a barrage of verbal abuse from the very people to whom they would be giving a savage beatdown in other parts of the world.
So the other day as I was transferring to Line 1, I saw this sullen looking young guy blow right by a cop, going the wrong way. The cop placed a gentle hand on the guy’s shoulder to tell him not to go that way, but the guy swiftly shrugged it off, not even giving the police officer a glance.
At this point I was really transfixed. Would the cops just let the guy go, or would they actually do something?
That’s when another cop busted in from the side and grabbed hold of the front of the guy’s coat, yelling something at him. The young man foolishly started struggling angrily, at which point two other cops got involved and subdued the guy. Rather than just forcing the guy to go the wrong way, cop #2 roughly led the guy away, clearly planning to give him some more trouble.
It’s funny to admit it, but this incident really made my day: Shanghai cops, actively doing their job, for the benefit of the people. What a concept!
29
Nov 2007How to Learn to Order Food in Chinese
Back in the good old days, when I lived in Hangzhou, I often hung out with a motley crew of foreign teachers. In that group, when we went out to restaurants to eat, I was usually “the food orderer.” This was partly because I had been in China the longest and was most comfortable speaking Chinese, but it was mostly because I could actually read the menu.
Even if you have an education in Chinese, you can’t really prepare yourself for being handed an all-Chinese menu. I mean, for one thing, it’s all in Chinese, and for another thing, your ability to decipher the characters on that menu directly impacts what goes in your stomach. Now that’s a kind of pressure that mere tests and quizzes can never exactly compare to.
I know what they teach you in Chinese class. You get the words for 饭 (rice), 面 (noodles), and 肉 (meat) down pretty well, but come on, was anyone really paying attention during that chapter on vegetables? No way! And yet now it’s time to pay that price, because very likely, you’re only going to be able to read one or two characters, tops, in each dish name, and most dish names are four characters long. Yikes. (Insider’s tip: it really may not be too wise to order that “something-something-meat” dish!)
My co-worker JP was recently raving about the site Like a Local, because it was helping him figure out what to order. I also pointed him to How to Order Chinese Food. Both of these will help. But if you really want to learn what’s on those menus, I can tell you a better way. It’s what I did, and it really works.
So here it is:
How to Learn to Order Food in Chinese
28
Nov 2007SpanishPod Has Arrived
A while back I wrote about studying Spanish again. Well, I have a little secret about that to reveal. My teacher is none other than the vivacious Liliana of SpanishPod, and she’s a lot of fun!
SpanishPod is Praxis Language’s new website for learning Spanish. A while back they had one called SpanishSense that I wasn’t really involved in. Long story short, that one was a “learning experience.” Now I’m involved, and I’m happy to say that this time we are getting it right. We owe it mostly to the amazing new hosts: J.P. and Liliana.
J.P. is an awesome linguist (aren’t they all?) from Seattle who has done his time in the trenches (teaching Spanish in high school). He’s a fun guy with great fresh ideas about learning, and he’s even kind enough to help me with my thesis.
This SpanishPod promo was unpaid (unfortunately), but I’m doing it this time because SpanishPod is really good. Maybe it will one day be as cool as ChinesePod, with ninjas and Godzilla and alien abductions and everything. Check it out.
The SpanishPod Team: JP, Liliana, Leo, and Adri
(this is the coolest pose they could come up with)
24
Nov 2007The End of a Golden Era for Hello Pizza
This news is almost two months late. Apparently I have been remiss in my pizza-eating duties recently. Nevertheless, it is earth-shattering news. Pizza news.
Hello Pizza, a Shanghai-based company which used to deliver 10 RMB pizzas to the masses of western Shanghai, was well loved by the English teachers, the students, the tight-fisted, and the poor. Its claim to fame was pizza which was “really not bad at all considering how cheap it is.” But Hello Pizza has recently changed its prices. Yes, gone are the days of (almost) 8 pizzas for $10. Now the cheapest pizza on the menu is 25 RMB (about US$3).
It makes good sense business-wise. But it definitely pushes me a little closer to ordering Papa John’s or New York Pizza instead of Hello Pizza every time I need my pizza fix.
Below are the menu scans featuring the tragic changes for you weirdos that like that kind of thing. (more…)
20
Nov 2007Recycling When It Counts
Yesterday a Canadian was giving me a hard time at work because I threw away my plastic drink bottle instead of putting it in the recycling box. I thought this was kind of funny. Oftentimes in China you see waste receptacle with one side labeled “for garbage” and the other side labeled “for recycling.” Then you look inside the thing and you realize that both sides just go to one big garbage bag. Now, tell me… are you really going to make sure you throw your recyclables in one side of the garbage bag, and your garbage in the other?
At most other places, anytime you throw anything out in China, it’s going to be picked through later for valuable recyclables. I simply threw away my plastic bottle in the office because I felt very sure it would be rescued for recycling by someone whose livelihood depended on it, and they’d be going through the same garbage whether I threw away that bottle or not.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m all for recycling. But what’s the point in empty gestures when you know what’s going on? Let’s recycle when it counts.
Steve at Praxis Language told a good story which illustrated this.
> A friend was taking a cruise on the Yangtze River in China. He was enjoying the cruise, but disgusted to see many passengers throwing their garbage overboard, into the river. Determined to do the right thing, he made sure to always walk all the way to the far end of the deck to the one garbage can to dispose of all his trash. It was a pain, and he was only one person vs. the littering masses, but it was the right thing to do.
> Later in the cruise, the garbage can filled up. A custodian went over to take care of it. To the friend’s horror, he lifted the garbage can and upended its contents into the Yangtze River.
Hmmm, on the one hand, always “recycling” (even when it’s pointless) reinforces good habits. On the other hand…
17
Nov 2007Haha, I got two pistols
A great picture I stumbled upon on Flickr:
Photo by Snow Kisses Sky.
Related: Military Weaponry for Kids
14
Nov 2007Food Budgets for China
Friends planning to visit China always ask me how much they should budget per day for food, and I always give them the same very helpful answer: “it depends.” It depends mostly on: (1) how you want to eat, and (2) where you’ll be.
“How you want to eat” includes not only price range, but also type of food. If you’re in Shanghai (expensive!) and you want to eat good Western food (expensive!), you’re going to end up paying a lot (expensive + expensive). If you can eat all Chinese food (cheap!), and your vacation is to the forgotten corners of Shanxi Province (cheap!), you won’t spend much at all. Most travelers can manage a balance between the two. So with these two factors in mind, I give you my three simple budgets (the numbers are per person):
The Shoestring Budget
– 5 RMB breakfast
– 10 RMB lunch
– 20 RMB dinner
On this budget you’ll eat fine if you stick to cheap Chinese food. Shanghai will be a little tough, but you can still do it. You don’t have to eat street food all the time, but you can’t afford fancy restaurants. As for Western food, you can afford a McDonalds value meal for dinner, or maybe a cheap Taiwanese chain’s version of Western food, but not much else. You can also afford the cheapest cup of Starbucks coffee… for dinner.
For breakfast you’ll probably be eating at one of the little stands on the street. Just notice what Chinese people eat. Lunch is probably going to be some kind of cafeteria or small restaurant (look for the meals ending in 饭, because they come with rice). Dinner will be a similar small restaurant.
The Modest Budget
– 10 RMB breakfast
– 20 RMB lunch
– 50 RMB dinner
This is not a hard budget to do. You can buy bread and juice and yogurt for breakfast. You can afford McDonalds for lunch if you must, and you can eat better dinners. You can also have a few cheap dinners to save up for a more lavish meal. (Obviously, eating Chinese is the way to go.)
This budget is also nice because it works out to a little over US$10 (damn you, falling US dollar!). I actually loosely follow this budget in my daily life here in Shanghai.
The Comfortable Budget
– 10 RMB breakfast
– 40 RMB lunch
– 100 RMB dinner
If you find everything in China “so cheap” and you have the money to spend, this should do it. You can’t afford all-you-can-eat buffets at the Radisson on 100 RMB, but if you eat cheap for several nights you can. If there are two of you, you can afford to eat at most places (even in Shanghai), provided you don’t go crazy (especially with the alcohol). If there are four of you eating Chinese-style (sharing the dishes), you can definitely have some really great dinners on this budget.
This only works out to about US$20.
A few final notes:
– If you’re planning on drinking a lot at these meals, that is not taken into account
– Eating in larger groups, especially for dinner, will get you more for your money
– I’m assuming a pretty modest breakfast, so if you eat a lot in the morning, you might have to adjust the figures
Enjoy!
12
Nov 2007How to Evaluate a Random Language for Acquisition in an Hour
Ever since reading Tim Ferris’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, I’ve been reading his blog occasionally. He has some interesting ideas on language learning, and I value his opinion because he’s a smart guy and he’s apparently gained competence in many languages. I’ve considered writing about some of his ideas before, but when his latest article hit the internet hotlists last week, I had to put in my two cents.
My overall impression of Tim Ferris is that he’s a very bright, enthusiastic go-getter. He has written an inspirational, interesting book with valuable information in it, but I think ultimately the man is not in touch with his audience, i.e. the people who actually read his book in order to put the ideas to use. To put it another way, Tim Ferris’s ideas are interesting and they work for Tim Ferris, but they’re not going to work for most people. Whether Tim Ferris knows this or not is unimportant; he’s still making big bucks.
His latest article is called How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour. I have to say first that the title is entirely misleading. The whole point of the article is to describe a method for assessing a foreign language that will help you to determine how easy it will be for you to acquire. This is not what “learn a language” means to me. I know Tim Ferris is good at hype, but this is pretty blatant false “advertising.” It just makes him look bad.
Now suppose the title were not misleading. Suppose he titled it How to Evaluate a Language for Acquisition in an Hour. What’s the point of this? How many of us are really just looking for a foreign language–any language–to learn? It seems to me that the reason so many Westerners are starting to study Chinese is that they feel it will be useful to them in the future. Or maybe they feel a personal connection with it. It’s pretty safe to say there is some reason for it. The only person who’s going to choose a random language to learn based solely on ease of acquisition is a linguist with too much time on his hands… (perhaps someone who only works four hours a week?). If you’ve already got your language picked out and just want to evaluate it using Tim Ferris’s method, that makes sense, but it seems like the method would be really useful only to someone trying to decide between Japanese and Spanish or some similar situation.
Despite all the misleading hype, it’s still an interesting read, and what he says makes sense. Check it out.
11
Nov 2007Photocopying an Entire Book
One of the nice things about living in a country with a total lack of respect for intellectual property laws is that if you really need to, you can have an entire book photocopied for cheap.
I borrowed a book from my professor which compiled the results of various investigations into foreigners’ studies of Mandarin Chinese. There were quite a few investigations with some relevance to my own research, so I really wanted to buy a copy of the book. None of the bookstores in Shanghai carried it, though, and the bookstore employees seemed to indicate that special ordering it would be a long, difficult process. Even good old 当当网 (China’s most famous online book seller) didn’t have it.
Rather than launching a long crusade to track down a seller of the book, I finally just had my professor’s copy photocopied in a little shop near the school. The book’s cover price was 29 RMB. My photocopied version, bound and all, was 25 RMB.
I still would have rather bought the official book, but this convenient alternative is not so bad.
[For those of you interested in the specifics, the charge was 0.1 RMB per page, but each page was A4, horizontal, covering two pages of the original. So the 450 page book came to 22.5 RMB total, plus 2.5 RMB for binding. I dropped the book off in the evening and picked up my copy the next day around noon.]08
Nov 2007Chinese Learners Wanted
I am doing a small experiment for my Masters thesis, and it involves recording the Mandarin Chinese of Westerners. If you’re a “Westerner” (exactly what that means will have to be defined after I examine the size of the pool of learners I can work with), and your Chinese is at the elementary to intermediate level (equivalent to 1-2 years of formal study), then you’re who I’m looking for!
The recording session will be in Shanghai at the end of November, and should only take about an hour. I will try to make it as fun as possible.
I can’t tell you the exact nature of the research until after the recording (and it’s changed a bit from what I may have posted earlier), but let me assure you that it’s utterly fascinating. Don’t miss out!
Please e-mail me if you’re interested. My e-mail is at the upper right corner on my website.
Update: Thank you to all the readers that have e-mailed me trying to help out. I really appreciate it. Let me answer a few common questions, though:
1. Yes, it has to be at the end of November. (My thesis comes with various deadlines.)
2. Yes, it has to be in Shanghai, in person. (It has to be a controlled experiment; it’s not just for fun.)
05
Nov 2007Examining the Halfpat
I don’t know how I stay ignorant of some things for so long. Take the term “halfpat,” for instance. I just learned it the other day. I might be one of the last foreigners in China to learn it.
halfpat: also known as a “local hire expat.”
> Attracted to China by either a sense of curiosity, or a strong belief in China’s potential, the halfpat (including overseas-born ethnic Chinese) is generally a recent graduate or young professional who have moved to China without a predetermined career path.
I got this definition from the white papers and reports page of a website called All Roads Lead to China.
I find this term interesting because it applies to me, but I’m not sure if it’s actually useful or just some annoying buzzword. I can’t really imagine myself using it in normal conversation.
04
Nov 2007Mouse Umbrella
Mouse Umbrella is a “free beautifully illustrated Chinese/English children’s book.” I probably would have written about it sooner if it were e-mailed to me rather than submitted as a new blog on the CBL.
The author’s explanation:
> As an educator I was hoping you would take a look at my book and give me some feed back. This beautifully illustrated 6 page haiku is intend for Pre-K children who speak Chinese as a first language or English speaking children learning Chinese as a second language. A little mouse is enjoying a bright red cherry at a restaurant when he is washed away by a flash flood. He has only a drink umbrella to help him. Originally written and illustrated by me – Tansy O’Bryant as a bridge between Chinese speaking children and English speaking children. Chinese translation was provided by and Chinese student who was afraid to write because her characters where not perfect. It was esteeming for her to know that the act of not writing is far worse than a little “wobbly” writing. Helps children understand both the power of writing and the beauty of reading with Mouse Umbrella.
> Share it with other educators – Download your copy at http://www.wawallletters.com/free-mouse-book.html
> Tansy OBryant
It is a nice book, and the illustrations are great. The art reminds me of one of my favorite illustrators ever, Graham Oakley. It’s not the best book for studying Chinese, perhaps, but I’m sure some of my readers will enjoy it. (Anyone out there reading stories to their children from an on-screen PDF file yet?)
31
Oct 2007Tipping Hell
I grew up in the US, so when I’m there, I know how to tip. It’s not too hard to know how to tip in my adopted home, China, because you just don’t do it. You almost never tip in China. Easy. Thus, I was totally unprepared for Turkey on the tipping front.
Somewhere around the year 2002 I abandoned the Lonely Planet and guidebooks altogether. I figured it’s more fun to just get by on scattered intelligence gleaned from friends, random strangers, and haphazard internet searches. This has always worked. But when I got to Turkey, I wasn’t sure what to tip.
I’ve got to say, not knowing what to tip really sucks. We couldn’t tip like rich foreigners on vacation because (1) we’re not rich, and (2) for a while we were having problems getting our Chinese credit cards to work, so we were tight on cash. So we were trying hard to tip only when we needed to.
At one restaurant, though, we clearly under-tipped. We didn’t realize it until we were already on our way out and we the waiter’s reaction to what we left. Man, that does make you feel like a jackass. We were at the point where it was too late to add to the tip, and we didn’t have the change to do so anyway (you don’t supplement a lousy $3 tip with $50).
For days, we were caught in this tipping hell.
Lesson learned: get the tipping rules straight before you go. (You gotta love China!)
29
Oct 2007New Notebooks
Shopping for stationery in Japan is an absolute pleasure. In China it’s sometimes fun as well. Looks like at least part of this latest round of designs is Korean-inspired:
UPDATE: Brendan has a good post on how English like in the top notebook above comes to be.
27
Oct 2007Fabricating the Known from the Unknown
This past week I started studying Spanish again after not studying or using it for over 7 years. I really didn’t know how I was going to do in my one-on-one lessons, considering my teacher would use only Spanish and I was expected to respond in Spanish. In my high school days I was reasonably fluent, but that was over 10 years ago.
It turns out that I did OK. I understood probably 95% of what my teacher said, and I managed to express myself. Sure, I blanked on words, I screwed up conjugations and prepositions, and had to pause for uncomfortably long periods of time while I reached back into the recesses of my mind and fished around for the Spanish I needed. But it really wasn’t so horrible, and it was good to be that struggling language student again.
I am sure that 7 years is enough time to completely forget a foreign language, but I think I know why I haven’t completely forgotten Spanish. The main reason is that I made a conscious resolution not to forget Spanish.
You see, when I graduated from high school and started at the University of Florida I was fairly fluent in Spanish, but I was tired of studying it, and I had never used it for real communication (i.e. in a Spanish-speaking environment). It was for that reason that I started studying Japanese and basically quit Spanish. I made a sort of decision about Spanish then: “I don’t need this anymore.”
Only two years later, after an amazing experience in Japan, I decided I did still want my Spanish, but was shocked at how much I had already lost. It was as if my brain had overwritten the old, unwanted Spanish with Japanese. I spent my third year of university reclaiming what I had lost, and a summer in Mexico to ground it in reality and bring it to life.
After that, I basically stopped using Spanish and shifted to Chinese, but I gave my brain a command: don’t lose this again. And I really haven’t, even if my Spanish is not even close to fluent anymore. But I’ll drag it all back to the front of my brain, chunk by chunk, and I’ll get there.
But a funny thing happened after my Spanish class on Thursday. I was on the subway and walking through the streets of Shanghai, and I could swear I was hearing Spanish all around me. Just random words, not coherent conversations. If I’d listen carefully and concentrate, I’d hear that the people around me were speaking Shanghainese. But it was as if my brain, trying hard to please me, was conjuring Spanish out of unintelligible (to me) Shanghainese noise. Rationally, I knew they weren’t speaking Spanish, but through my brain’s cognitive slight of hand, I just couldn’t stop hearing it. I couldn’t turn it off.
I’m back to normal now.
25
Oct 2007Stage6 for China
Well, YouTube is still blocked, but Stage6 isn’t. Although you can’t beat YouTube’s sheer quantity of content, Stage6 has much higher quality video (much of it looks fine at full screen!), much longer videos (hour-long documentaries no longer need to be split up into multiple videos), and a decent download speed for those of us in China–often better than YouTube’s was. You have to install a DivX plugin to watch the Stage6 movies, but the huge improvement in video quality alone makes it worthwhile.
Here are some China-related Stage6 videos to get you started:
– China, From Red to Green (25:27): sustainable design in new construction in China.
– Why Democracy – Please Vote For Me (52:06): A documentary following the elections for class monitor in a 3rd grade class in Wuhan, China. Please Vote for Me gives a glimpse into China’s contemporary urban middle classes. It won the Sterling Feature Award at Silverdocs in 2007.
– Chinese Megacities and Transport (5:42): A short documentary about China and Chinese megacities and how they deal with strong urbanization and automobilization trends. Two cities, Wuhan and Nanjing, are introduced and their approaches towards these problems are addressed.
– The Battle for Oil – China vs. USA (50:07): China’s sky-rocketing growth and shortage of sufficient resources is forcing China to set its sights outside its borders in a frantic search for oil, but the major oil-producing countries are kept off-limits by the United States, forcing China to do business with the rogue states, African dictatorships, Iran and former Russian states – to get the oil they desperately need.
– The People’s Court (55:05): Experiments with the rule of law in China.
– China vs India – Race to the Top of the World (23:02): While China is growing and moving very fast, there are some people still believe that India has a better chance to become Super Power and sustain the growth rate.
For you “naughty” viewers, there are also a fair number of videos that the Chinese government would probably be blocking if it were paying attention. Events of 1989, separatist movements, etc…. you can find videos about them on Stage6, and they load in China.
23
Oct 2007Crabs Run Amok in the Shanghai Subway System
I had a great “only in China” moment this morning that had me chuckling. On my commute to work something smelled fishy (quite literally) ahead of me, and as soon as I saw the scene I realized what had happened.
by Aapplemint on Flickr
Apparently a woman was carrying a basket of live crabs on the subway, and on the transfer from Line 2 to Line 1 in People’s Square Station, she dropped her cargo. The basket ripped open, and three large blue crabs (about the size of an American football each) fled from their prison, scuttling off in three different directions. Despite clearly being somewhat afraid of the crabs, the woman was desperately trying to collect her precious cargo (I’m not being sarcastic here; the Chinese really love their crab, and these were some pretty big crabs). As busy commuters passed by, they couldn’t help but linger for a few seconds and smile at the comical scene.
Sadly, none of us helped her out, and none of us snapped a picture.
21
Oct 2007Life without YouTube in the PRC
So you may have heard that YouTube is blocked in the PRC. Those of us who live here have come to depend on YouTube for little 2-minute clips of entertainment which keep us smiling throughout the workday. So now what do we do?
Well, I was all set to recommend Divx’s Stage6 as a substitute. It worked on Friday. I’ve been getting into it because it has such superior video quality and also hosts long videos. However, as of yesterday, it, too seems to be blocked. I turned to a TechCrunch article on YouTube alternatives and found that many of them are not loading for me. Here are my results (Oct. 21, 10pm in Shanghai).
Accessible Video Sites
– Metacafe
– Yahoo! Video
– ifilm Spike
– Brightcove
– Veoh
– Viddler
– Vimeo
– eyeVio (Japanese)
Inaccessible Video Sites
– YouTube
– Stage6
– Revver
– Dailymotion.com
– Google Video (has never worked in the PRC; not a block)
Of course, if you want Chinese video, those sites still work. Tudou is #1, but I prefer Youku (Danwei lists more choices).