19
Jul 2007
Building Fights Back, Bites Excavator
Thank you to the ChinesePod fans that visited China, took this, and then shared it with us.
19
Jul 2007A Disturbing New Trend
The most annoying form of advertising, by far, is the guys that pass out little business card ads around the city. They do it on the subway, and they like to hang out around subways, particularly at the top of escalators, where they can push their unwanted ad-cards on you.
Then there’s the most annoying form of transportation, the motorcycle guys. They carry around an extra helmet and park outside subway stations so that when you come out they can yell “hello!” at you (translation: “want a ride?”).
Well, it seems that the motorcycle guys have taken a lesson from the ad-card kids, and starting just recently they now get right up in the faces of commuters coming off the escalator outside the Zhongshan Park Station to badger them (see picture at left). Ah, what a perfect union of unpleasantries.
I’m a wuss, so I took this picture from a distance. They noticed me photographing them, though, and it did kind of freak them out and make them unhappy. (Take that, pushy motorcycle dudes!)
17
Jul 2007Prison Break Tattoo
I passed by a tattoo shop near my home the other day and snapped a picture of it. I briefly mused that with more and more Chinese tattoo shops opening, maybe foreigners can come to China to get their tattoos and finally get the Chinese characters right! (Of course then most people would have a language barrier to deal with, but that seems more surmountable to me than depending on a random tattoo artist to really know Chinese characters.)
Anyway, after looking at the picture of the shop at home, I decided to check out its website, yueyutattoo.com. Here’s what greeted me:
I hadn’t paid any attention to the Chinese name of the store until I saw its website. The tattoo shop is capitalizing on the success in China of the TV show Prison Break to sell its tattoos. The Chinese name for “Prison Break” is 越狱 (Yuèyù). I understand the main character has a big tattoo vital to the storyline.
15
Jul 2007Your Dog is a Flashcard
This dog is a flashcard!
Sure, you may enjoy your dog’s company, and maybe he can lift your spirits when you’re down in the dumps. But what does your dog really do for you? Precious few dogs even fetch their masters’ slippers these days (not to mention the morning paper). It’s a disgrace.
So it’s time to put your dog to work! Make your dog into a flashcard. Buy this shirt and put it on your dog, and then instead of merely prancing around in empty-headed glee, he’ll actually be educating you, continually exposing you to the character 狗 (in the perfect context) and how to pronounce it: “gǒu.”
If you’d like to take it a step further, your dog could even educate you on the characters for dog meat: 狗肉. Your Chinese houseguests are sure to love that. (Just be sure they realize it’s a joke.)
Note: After creating the “dog meat” t-shirt I did a check, and indeed, I am not the first person to make such a shirt. Gou-rou.com had already thought of it (shocker!). Their shirt promotes their website, and mine promotes education, though.
Both the 狗 Flashcard Dog Shirt and the 狗肉 Flashcard Dog Shirt are available in the Sinosplice Store. Thank you for your support!
12
Jul 2007Drug Lesson Testimonial
ChinesePod has a reputation for creating extremely useful lessons. We’ve done one on buying feminine products, and one on specifying that you want your beer cold, to name just two. I thought our recent lesson entitled The Drug Dealer was pretty interesting, but maybe not quite as practical as some of the others. But then we got this testimonial in the comments:
> interesting lesson… i have a chinese friend who was telling me about a friend who likes to do drugs. I asked “what kind of drugs” and my friend replied “i don’t know how to say in english, but their head will shake” i assumed it must be something like ecstacy, but now i’m sure – thanks chinesepod
Well, you’re weclome, KennyK. (摇头丸, literally, “shake head pill,” is the Chinese name for ecstasy.)
10
Jul 2007Questions for Yao Ming, and Other Tall People
A friend of mine is supposed to interview Yao Ming next weekend here in Shanghai. The Yao Ming.
He’s a famous guy, so I can understand if she feels a little nervous about interviewing him. Since I have a lot of experience in China and being tall, I thought I’d help her out a bit. These are the questions tall people love to be asked that she can ask Yao Ming:
1. How tall are you?
2. Do you play basketball?
3. What size shoe do you wear?
4. How’s the weather up there?
(Well, 3 out of 4 is not bad.)
I know what you’re thinking: those are the exact same questions we’d ask a non-Chinese tall guy! Amazing, isn’t it? Some facets of human nature know no cultural bounds.
08
Jul 2007Wear Your Ambivalence
…or your indifference, or your befuddlement, or your joy of pushing people’s buttons. Wear one of these shirts:
The simple design in the t-shirts above is based on one I did in 2002 and called “Sinoamerica.” I like it largely because its meaning is so ambiguous. It’s unity, it’s harmony, it’s neutrality, it’s loss of identity. The colors stay blithely out of nationalism’s grasp.
For a long time I’ve liked the idea of designing t-shirts. Last year I did a tiny experiment in the form of a “Please speak Mandarin” t-shirt. I wanted to know if anyone would buy a t-shirt I put up. I figured if anyone went for something that simple, then it might be worth putting a little more effort into it. Well, some people did buy that design, and now that the weather is warm again, this is my second baby step in the t-shirt direction.
Anyway, I appreciate the support. I’ll be putting out a new t-shirt every Sunday this summer. Here are the links to buy this design: purple, green, brown, gray, the Sinosplice Store. Thanks!
07
Jul 2007Do these DVDs look pirated to you?
Actually, the movies above were not pirated. They were purchased in Carrefour, a reputable grocery store, for about 20 RMB each. My point is… how can you tell?
A lawyer friend of mine recently visited China. He wouldn’t buy any pirated DVDs because he had heard horror stories of a friend of a friend trying to bring back fifty DVDs and getting busted by U.S. Customs, and fined something like $1,000 per DVD. Scary.
But if I bought fifty of these legit DVDs at Carrefour and tried to take them back home, how would customs know they’re not fake? You can buy pirated DVD-9 DVDs that look just like these. The way I see it, you’d have to show your Carrefour receipt. Your faded, blurry scrap of paper written all in Chinese. Would that really work?
And if it did work, does that mean that all you need to get your DVDs through customs is a receipt? Those would not be hard to produce. Something doesn’t fit.
Does anyone really get busted for bringing pirated DVDs back into the States? If so, can one also get through with legitimate Chinese DVDs? I really wonder this.
06
Jul 2007Condoms and Sexual Vocabulary in Chinese
ChinesePod just did a lesson on condoms. It was an amusing dialogue. (You can listen to just the dialogue on the online player by clicking on “DIAL” and then the play button.)
Then in the comments someone posted a link to the largest collection of sexual vocabulary and slang in Chinese (and English and Swedish) that I’ve ever seen. Impressive. It’s called 牛X语言, and yes, you might find it obscene, so click at your own risk.
03
Jul 2007The Most Cliché China Photo
Check out this picture:
These were the thoughts running through my head leading up to the shot:
> Wow, look at the size of that load. I should take a picture. Hey, this is totally one of the most cliché China photos ever: the “big load on a tricycle” photo. And this load isn’t even that big. In all my time in China, I’ve never taken that picture, though. I’m gonna take it.
So the above is one of the great China photography clichés. We’ve all seen these things. Many of them are about contrasts, such as the high-power businessman talking on his cell phone next to the peasant carrying produce. Or the old home getting torn down with the huge skyscraper in the background.
I’m curious, though… what is the most cliché China photo to you? Link to the photo in your comments!
01
Jul 2007The Go! Team Rocked Shanghai
photo by Shanghaiist
This was the only show I’ve really ever looked forward to since I’ve come to China, and it didn’t let me down. If you know The Go! Team‘s music, you expect energy. The band definitely delivered last night. If you were thinking of going, but didn’t go… bad move!
Their live show highlights the vocals a bit more than their recordings do, but it was a good decision; Ninja was quite entertaining to watch.
They also played material from their upcoming album release, and what I heard sounded promising: familiar Go! sound, new Go! tunes.
30
Jun 2007Trojan Condoms Ads on Shanghai's Subways
On Thursday I noticed three kinds of Trojan condom ads in the subway car I was riding*, and I’d never seen Trojan ads on the subway before. Trojan is getting into the market a bit late; the dominant foreign company is Durex.
What interested me was the content of the ads. One of them was a long horizontal ad which read 不只是神话…… (“it’s not just a myth”). Another was a rectangular ad which briefly recounted in both Chinese and English the Trojan War story, focusing on Helen’s role as the motivation for the war. The last was on the subway door, and it was a 9-by-9 grid of the Trojan condom logo in various colors. None of the ads contained anything about condoms or safe sex, with the exception of the inclusion of the Trojan China website: trojancondoms.cn (which only clues you in if you know English).
[I don’t think I misremembered it, but that URL gives me “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname),” and none of my searches (Google, Baidu) turned up a Trojan condoms Chinese website. “Trojan Condoms” is 特洛伊安全套 or 特洛伊避孕套, depending on which word for “condom” you like. Most of my searches did turn up this video on Chinese YouTube clones, which is pretty funny, but NSFW and not for kids.]
I know the Trojan subway ads could be a marketing tactic, but it doesn’t seem at all compelling. I doubt the typical Chinese commuter knows what Trojan makes, or will connect any of the ads with condoms, and they’re not interesting enough to get people asking what they’re for. So… What’s the point? I really wonder if Trojan knows what it’s doing in China.
Trojan condoms went on the Chinese Market in May of this year.
* Sorry, I wasn’t able to snap pictures even though I had my cell phone cam with me, because the car was just too jam-packed.
28
Jun 2007Flickr Blocked Hardcore
Recently Flickr images were being blocked, but not the site. I posted a link to a workaround.
Now the whole site is full-on blocked.
From Jonathan:
> I’m told that this is a layer 7 (application layer) block, which is apparently serious.
Layer 7? I don’t know what that means, but this is quite inconvenient.
[more news]Update: As of 11:36am, Flickr seems to be back, unblocked.
27
Jun 2007ChinesePod Movie Madness
ChinesePod has recently been developing its “Extra” content. That refers to content that is not in a daily podcast lesson. One of the Extra features is one called Movie Madness, conceived by Dave Lancashire. The concept is this:
– You’re given an audio clip in Chinese.
– The clip comes from the Chinese dubbing of a well-known Hollywood movie.
– Based on the Chinese audio, guess what the movie is.
Here are the first five that we’ve recorded (each podcast is about 5 minutes long, even though the movie clips are much shorter):
– Movie Madness #1
– Movie Madness #2
– Movie Madness #3
– Movie Madness #4
– Movie Madness #5
This is actually harder than it sounds (maybe even slightly… oh, I don’t know… maddening??). The challenges are:
– It can be hard to find movies that are dubbed (especially movies that aren’t cartoons or that aren’t really old).
– The Chinese dubbing can fly by at incredible speeds, greatly reducing the chances of recognition even for really familiar scenes.
– Some really well-known movies don’t have any memorable lines.
– You pretty much have to take what you can get from your own Chinese DVD collection and what’s available in the shops around town.
More than just whining, I’m actually asking for help. If you’ve got audio movie clips from well-known movies dubbed in Chinese, send them in! (They’re pretty easy to record if your computer has a DVD-ROM drive and audio recording software like the free Audacity.)
25
Jun 2007Reasons to Love Beijing?
The whole Shanghai vs. Beijing debate is somewhat tired, I know, so I’m not interested in rehashing it. I’m not going to bash or gush over either city. Rather, I’ve had sort of a change of heart about Beijing, and I’d like to tell why. To be honest, the more time I spend in Beijing, the more I like it. But I doubt I’d ever voluntarily relocate to Beijing.
Still, if I found myself in any of the following scenarios, I’d definitely choose Beijing:
– If I were a student of Chinese enamored with the Beijing accent or couldn’t stand hearing other dialects (there are many such students, I know)
– If I were a student of Chinese that insisted on only the very best in Chinese pedagogy that the mainland can offer
– If I were a student of Chinese enamored with xiangsheng
– If I were really interested in Chinese politics
– If I were really into the Olympics (this one has a shelf life of only a little over a year, though)
– If I were an artist or musician of any kind
– If I were really into Beijing’s hutong and siheyuan culture
– If I had a love of baijiu, that vile white rice wine
– If I liked big cities but couldn’t stand the pressure of living in a very fast-paced city
– If I were rabidly anti-corporate (I’ve noticed that international chains like McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut are much more widespread in Shanghai than in Beijing)
The only one that comes close to describing me is the last one. I’m not real happy that the restaurants which surround my apartment near Zhongshan Park are nearly all chains; it’s hard to find a good, privately-owned restaurant around here. I noticed about Beijing this last visit that there are so many little cafes and bars still. (One of the things Dave misses about Beijing most, it seems.) The only bar in Shanghai I’ve ever really felt comfortable in is the old Tanghui, and it’s long gone. None of the others have that vibe, and most aim for a bigger, “higher class” crowd.
Another thing that does make a difference to me is the fast pace of Shanghai. I don’t like it. It gets under my skin and in my bloodstream. I can feel it happening, but I can’t seem to prevent it. Hanghzou was totally relaxing, and Beijing is a lot closer to Hangzhou in that respect. And yet, in that easy, relaxed atmosphere I feel like I could float along forever and never do anything with my life. One of the main reasons I choose Shanghai is closely related to the fast pace, I think: Shanghai is a better place to get into business. And because I’m in China for the long haul, I’m very interested in where work prospects are best.
I’m not the kind of person that makes a huge deal about where I live. I feel that I could be happy in most environments, if I’m there to do something I want to do. The bottom line is that I choose Shanghai because my wife is here and my work is here. I’m happy here. But every time I go to Beijing I see more reasons to love it, and I think that in another life I could easily see myself in the Beijing camp*.
*Worth mentioning: I’ve never been in Beijing in the winter or during a dust storm.
23
Jun 2007Misheard in Chinese
My family has a ball with misheard English (“dancing plaid” being a favorite), but a whole new world of hilarious confusion opens up when you switch to a different language. These two were heard the other day:
– 香橙 (“fragrant orange”) mistaken for 香肠 (“sausage”) as an ice cream flavor
– 谢谢光临 (“thank you for coming”) mistaken for 西瓜 (“watermelon”) as a farewell greeting
Given China’s myriad of dialects/topolects/languages and the resulting substandard varieties of Mandarin, one can expect this kind of thing to be quite commonplace in the PRC. The miscommunications seem especially bizarre when you translate them into English. Have you heard any good ones in Chinese?
21
Jun 2007Thesis Proposal in China
Today I had to officially submit my masters thesis proposal to a panel of professors at East China Normal University. In Chinese, the verb for going through this process is 开题. When you propose your thesis topic, you have to give each professor on the panel a copy of your proposal, or 开题报告. Then you summarize what you’d like to do in your thesis, and ask the professors any questions, if you’d like. The professors ask you questions about the scope of your thesis, controlling certain variables, theoretical basis, how your thesis will differ from existing research, etc. If all goes well, they will give you a few recommendations, approve the topic, then sign some paperwork and it’s all over. (I wish I could compare the process to an American version, but I’ve only ever been a graduate student in China, so I can’t.)
My thesis proposal was approved. I still have to revise the scope of my experiment somewhat, but I’m going to be studying some of the problems that North Americans have with the tones of Mandarin Chinese as upper elementary level exchange students in China.
In preliminary research on my topic, the most relevant and interesting paper I came across was a research paper by Dr. Qinghai Chen, who is currently a professor at the University of Michigan. Dr. Chen’s doctoral dissertation was done at Brigham Young University in 2000, entitled “Analysis of Mandarin Tonal Errors in Connected Speech by English-Speaking American Adult Learners: A Study at and Above the Word Level.”
The part of the abstract that intrigues me most:
> Findings at and above the word level jointly led to a summary of tonal error patterns, a discussion of relevant learner factors, an acquisition order of tonal contrasts, a set of criteria for better tones, and pertinent pedagogical suggestions.
So far I have been unable to get a full copy of the dissertation. I have contacted Dr. Chen and am awaiting his reply, but I’m afraid he might be on vacation or something. If anyone has an electronic copy of this paper, I would greatly appreciate the help!
Update: I got several e-mails offering help in acquiring Dr. Chen’s doctoral dissertation, including one with a PDF copy of exactly what I’m looking for (and within 12 hours of publishing this post). You readers are awesome! Thank you.
19
Jun 2007Back from Beijing
Just got back from Beijing. I have more thoughts on that city, for those that can stand them, but I’ll be posting them in a few days. In the meantime, you can read Brendan’s account of my little meetup with him.
16
Jun 20074-Man VIP Seating
Now that I’m a “Shanghai snob,” I had to laugh at Hangzhou’s East Train Station waiting room VIP seating:
14
Jun 2007West Lake No. 1
I love stylized Chinese characters.
It says 西湖一號 (West Lake No. 1). This is a good example of mainland Chinese designers using traditional Chinese characters for artistic effect (號 rather than 号).
Taken next to West Lake in Hangzhou.