28
Oct 2006
Korean from a Chinese Textbook
As I explained before, my wife and I are learning Korean here in Shanghai. Progress has been slow, though, because our tutor unexpectedly had to return to Korea for the summer. Dedicated students that we are, we seized the opportunity for a two-month break from our studies. She’s back now, though, so we’re back in the saddle. We all decided we needed a good textbook.
the book
We textbook we decided on with our tutor is 新韩国语基础教程（上） (New Korean Foundation Course – Part 1 of 2), published by 大连理工大学出版社 (Dalian University of Technology Press). It may not be perfect or even particularly enlightened, but compared to the cornucopia of crap with which it shared space on the book store shelves, it seems like a Godsend.
The reasons I like the text are:
1. Chapter 1 of the textbook eases into the sounds and writing system of the language with extensive explanations of the simple vowels, then simple consonants, then diphthongs, then finals, then rules of pronunciation. That’s 32 pages! There are explanations (in Chinese) with IPA, examples, exercises, illustrations of the mouth, etc. There’s even a diagram showing exactly how the Korean writing system was designed to resemble the human mouth as it makes the sounds of the language (which is something I’d been curious about for a while). I complained last time about spending too much time on writing and pronunciation before learning any useful language and I still stand by that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a very complete reference in Chapter 1 that I can come back to any time.
2. The regular chapters are broken down into pretty standard sections: (1) sentence patterns, (2) sample sentences, (3) dialogue, (4) new vocabulary, (5) Chinese translations of parts 1-3, (6) grammar explanations, (7) exercises. Nothing ground-breaking here, but it’s all very usable and practical. The grammar explanations are clear, with helpful charts and diagrams. I haven’t really spent much time on the exercises yet, so I won’t say anything about that.
3. I like how outside of Chapter 1 there is no romanization of the Korean anywhere, and the Chinese translation is on another page. This forces the beginner to trudge through the Hangul, which is a necessary ordeal.
The big disadvantage of the series is that all the listening exercises are meant to be accompanied by cassette tapes. I guess that can be forgiven since the series was published in 1999, but that doesn’t change the fact that tapes are useless to me now because I own nothing that plays them (and I’m not buying a stupid tape player).
Anyway, if you’re looking for a textbook for learning Korean in China, I think that 新韩国语基础教程 is a pretty good way to go. The two book set cost 48 RMB altogether (without the tapes).
26
Oct 2006Thank you, Andy Lau
Thank you, Andy Lau (刘德华), for one of the funniest Chinese music videos I have ever seen. Greg and I witnessed this amazing recording of a live concert while lunching at the “Kowloon Ice House” in Zhongshan Park’s “Cloud Nine” (龙之梦) mall. A search on YouTube turned up nothing, but thankfully the Tudou.com results had a clip of the exact video we watched:
For those of you too lazy or too foolish to watch that clip, let me recap the hilarity contained therein:
1. Andy Lau is wearing a white cowboy hat and a wifebeater-blouse.
2. The song is a Cantonese version of “I Hate Myself for Loving You” called 我恨我痴心 (literally, “I Hate My Infatuation”).
Well, that’s all, really. It’s funny.
Oh, and just in case you need it, there’s also a karaoke version of 我恨我痴心 set to random boy/girl scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with the song.
22
Oct 2006Metrosexual: 9 Chinese Translations
When I mentioned a presentation on homosexuals in the West for my critical discourse analysis class, I gave the Chinese translation of “metrosexual” as 都市玉男. That’s not the only translation, though. In his research, Pepe turned up quite a few other translations currently in use online. Here are the ones Pepe collected, along with their literal meanings:
“Metrosexual”
1. 都市玉男 city jade man
2. 都市美型男 city beauty type man
3. 都市中性美男 city neuter beauty man
4. 都会美直男 city beauty straight man
5. 都市生活自恋者 city life narcissist
6. 花样美男 variety beauty man
7. 花色美男 variety beauty man
8. 雌性男人 female man
9. 后雅痞 post yuppie
Translation Notes
1. 都市 means both “city” and “metropolis,” as does 都会.
2. 美 could also be translated “beautiful” in all instances above
3. The same word “variety” was used for both 花样 and 花色, even though they’re different words. When examined at the character level, both contain the “flower” character, but the latter also contains 色, which in other words can mean “color” or something close to “sex.” I’m not sure exactly how the use of these words impact the feel of the Chinese translation.
Translation into Chinese can be pretty tough. I do find it very interesting to see the variety of translation attempts when a new, diffult to translate English word appears in Chinese media. Usually a certain period of time is required while society settles on one or two, effectively pushing out the rest, which are then are mostly forgotten by society.
After several years of hype, the whole metrosexual fad seems to be dying, and the English word might just die with it. If it does fall out of usage, though, that doesn’t necessarily mean its corresponding Chinese translation will. The Chinese might decide to keep the word around for their own purposes. Time will tell.
20
Oct 2006China, More Tissues (please)
handing out tissues in Japan
When I went to Japan in 1997 to study for a year, it was my first time out of the United States. I knew Japan would be different, but I had very few expectations. I went out there with a year’s worth of Japanese, eyes wide open, and a brain ready to soak it all up. Of the many, many cultural peculiarities I noticed in Japan, one of the most convenient was the tissue pack advertising.
It’s a simple method. Someone goes to a crowded metropolitan area with a box of small packs of tissues. On the tissue packs’ plastic wrappers is advertising. People are quite often willing to accept free tissues, and happily carry the advertising with them wherever they go. Everyone wins.
When I first arrived in China, I discovered how important tissues are here. You use them as napkins, you use them as paper towels, you use them as toilet paper. You really shouldn’t go anywhere without a small personal tissue supply. I found myself really wishing that the Chinese would adopt the tissue pack advertising method.
Here in Shanghai the primary method of street advertising is handing out business card-sized ads in and around the subway stations. I imagine it doesn’t work well at all. The workers handing out the cards are extremely annoying, and no one wants the cards. Subway sanitation workers are always sweeping them up. It seems like the tissue pack advertising method would be perfect for China.
I have actually seen the method used here in Shanghai at least twice. I got a free pack of ad-swaddled tissues outside of the South Huangpi Road (黄陂南路) subway station just last week, and I saw it once before, a long time ago. This really needs to catch on.
Related:
– Tissue Issues (Sinosplice)
– examples of Japanese tissue packs (Flickr)
18
Oct 2006Some t-shirts I've seen lately
These were all spotted on t-shirts on the streets of Shanghai:
– Labial
– Herpes Club
– Naturally Two-Two
– Tomorrow is Peace. Tomorrow is Yesterday.
I have no explanation for the first two, although to be fair, “labial” is a legitimate linguistics term, and “herpes clubs” actually do exist (although I can’t imagine there being t-shirts for it). The second one is obviously a knock-off of the Taiwanese clothing company “Naturally JOJO.” The last one is confusing because there are no grammar or spelling mistakes, and it almost makes me want to believe that something clever is going on, but in the end it really just doesn’t make any sense at all.
16
Oct 2006IPTV for Shanghai
IPTV advertisement
I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot about IPTV lately. The image at left is the ad I now see every month in my phone bill from China Telecom. So what is IPTV? According to Wikipedia:
> IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) describes a system where a digital television service is delivered using the Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection. For residential users, IPTV is often provided in conjunction with Video on Demand and may be bundled with Internet services such as Web access and VoIP.
I’m going to be moving into a new apartment soon, and IPTV is an option I’ve been considering. I’m not sure how wide the offerings are, if it compares with satellite TV (which can be a slight hassle because it’s technically “illegal”), and how easy it would be to use in conjunction with satellite TV.
Oh, and then there’s also the whole “why pay for something you can get for free online already?” issue. Well, it’s not that simple. The internet here is slow. YouTube is slow. Bittorrent downloads take a long time. The IPTV connection should be fast; real “video on demand.” For the time being, it may very well be worthwhile.
I’ve done some internet research, but I think what will help inform me the most is to make a trip to the China Telecom building (I need to go there to pay an overdue phone bill anyway) and see what they can tell (and hopefully show) me.
Here are some more links:
– Shanghai set for IPTV rollout (China Daily)
– SMG Prepares For Shanghai IPTV Services (Pacific Epoch)
– What is IPTV? (GDBTV)
– An introduction to IPTV (Ars Technica)
– IPTV vs. Internet Television: Key Differences (Master New Media)
– What is IPTV? (iMedia interview)
15
Oct 2006如果人类突然消失了，地球会怎么样？
我最近看了一片文章叫“Imagine Earth without people”（《想象没有人的地球》），也看过一张相关的图片。我觉得内容很有意思，所以翻译成中文，跟大家分享。
（点一下看大图）
有时候觉得我们的地球很可怜，人类的灭绝就会是最大的正义。
14
Oct 2006Comparing Populations: Chinese Provinces and Other Countries
I recently came across a webpage which compares the populations of Chinese provinces with that of other countries’ entire populations. It’s fun to mentally connect these provinces with the countries below, using population as the basis:
| Chinese Province | Country |
| Shandong | Mexico |
| Guangdong | Germany |
| Hunan | Iran |
| Anhui | Italy |
| Hubei | France |
| Liaoning | Spain |
| Shanxi | Canada |
| Inner Mongolia | Australia |
| Tianjin | Sweden |
| Ningxia | Finland |
Note that the figures used come from the 1990’s. For the actual numbers, visit the source page supplied by the IIASA (a unique non-governmental, non-profit, global change research institute).
12
Oct 2006Fortune Cookies for Shanghai
Fortune cookie fortunes
Some Americans, not realizing that fortune cookies were invented in their own country, are dismayed by the lack of fortune cookies in China. It’s a fun little tradition.
I was equally surprised, then, to discover fortune cookies in Shanghai recently. Some company was offering free fortune cookies at Zentral (a yuppie restuarant). The catch, of course, is that there’s advertising on one side of the fortune slips.
On a side note, one thing that really annoys me about fortune cookies is when my fortune is not even a fortune. Take these fortunes for example. “Home is where the heart is” is not a fortune! You get fortunes like these all the time. I don’t want some cute motto, I want a fortune. I want to know what my future holds. The more specific, the better. For example, “you have only three days to live” would be an awesome fortune to get. It doesn’t have to be true; in fact, I rarely make my major life decisions based on fortune cookie fortunes. (Take note, fortune cookie makers.)
11
Oct 2006TagCrowd on China Blogs
Hank at Network Sense introduced me to TagCrowd, a site which takes a chunk of text and displays the highest frequency words as a tag cloud. He tried it out by copying all the text on the main page of several blogs. Interesting results. Here are two of his results and two that I did:
Sinosplice (before this post):
ESWN:
09
Oct 2006Homosexual Discourse for China
My critical discourse analysis class is getting interesting. The professor has assigned small group presentation topics. All five topics are related to homosexuality. Pepe and I have “homosexuality in the West.” Yeah, pretty huge topic. Other topics are pretty narrow, such as “lesbians in China.”
Just as a reminder about what we’re going to be analyzing:
> Discourse analysis challenges us to move from seeing language as abstract to seeing our words as having meaning in a particular historical, social, and political condition. Even more significant, our words (written or oral) are used to convey a broad sense of meanings and the meaning we convey with those words is identified by our immediate social, political, and historical conditions. Our words are never neutral (Fiske, 1994)! This is a powerful insight for home economists and family and consumer scientists (We could have a whole discussion about the meaning that these two labels convey!). We should never again speak, or read/hear others’ words, without being conscious of the underlying meaning of the words. Our words are politicized, even if we are not aware of it, because they carry the power that reflects the interests of those who speak. Opinion leaders, courts, government, editors, even family and consumer scientists, play a crucial role in shaping issues and in setting the boundaries of legitimate discourse (what is talked about and how) (Henry & Tator, 2002). The words of those in power are taken as “self-evident truths” and the words of those not in power are dismissed as irrelevant, inappropriate, or without substance (van Dijk, 2000). [source]
It’s also important to note that discourse includes not only traditional language, but all forms of symbols contained in advertising, media, fashion, etc.
So my idea was to examine what’s going on with the term “metrosexual.” Here are some questions I think are worth exploring:
– Does the “metrosexual” style, by making stereotypical visual clues of homosexuality ambiguous, serve to bring homosexuals closer into society? (Is it a sign of greater tolerance?)
– Are the “sterotypical visual clues” just ridiculous or are they significant?
– How do homosexuals feel about the metrosexual phenomenon? How does it impact the gay community?
– Why is “metrosexual” strictly a male phenomenon? What’s going on there with the gender dynamic?
I’d be interested in hearing my readers’ ideas on this. Helpful links are also welcome. I haven’t really been in the US for most of the metrosexual phenomenon, and I don’t know how widespread it is either.
The presentation will be a mere 10-15 minutes long, so we don’t need to go super in-depth. We also need to provide visuals with a PowerPoint presentation.
I was never particularly interested in homosexual studies, but somehow discussing it in grad school in China makes it way more interesting to me. (By the way, Pepe says “metrosexual” in Chinese is 都市玉男. I’m a little disappointed that the -sexual (-性恋) got nuked in the translation.)
Note: Hateful, ignorant, and useless comments will never see the light of day.
06
Oct 2006Asian, Brunette, Blonde
Asian, Brunette, Blonde: that’s the order. A friend of mine recently explained this to me.
Most people with any China experience know that when there’s an Asian among a group of foreigners in China, Chinese restaurant/hotel/etc. staff will naturally approach the Asian in the group. This is very understandable; there’s no way of knowing that one of the white people has been in China 10 years but the Asian has lived in Idaho all his life and doesn’t speak a word of Chinese. It’s still a fair enough assumption.
A friend of mine (who is dark-haired) explained to me that she has two friends she hangs out with frequently in China: an Asian and a blonde. When the Asian friend is present, Chinese staff all approach her for any communication needs. No surprise. The funny thing is what happens when the Asian friend is not present. The Chinese staff all naturally go to the brunette rather than the blonde. Never mind that the two girls are “equally white”; apparently subconsciously, darker hair equals higher likelihood of speaking Chinese.
Funny stuff.
04
Oct 2006Letting the Kids Fly
The other day as I was walking through my apartment complex I noticed what appeared to be a child of 3 or 4 and his grandmother. The child was on one of those little toddler vehicles, pushing himself along with gusto. As the child got farther and farther away from his grandmother, I heard her start to make some noises as she hurried to catch up.
I knew what was coming on. The kid was about to get a volley of “be carefuls” and “stay near mes” and “that’s dangerouses.” This is what it’s like to grow up an only child in China.
But I was wrong.
As the child pushed happily along, the grandmother called after, “you’re flying, you’re flying!” The kid was delighted.
It felt great to be wrong.
02
Oct 2006"Obsolete" Chinese Words
People’s Daily has an article on the changing Chinese language entitled 49 obsolete Chinese words (part 1, part 2, part 3). The really annoying thing about the article, though, is that it tells you the English translation of the obsolete words without telling you what the actual Chinese words are. (The second most annoying thing about the article is that some of the words are definitely still in use.)
After Ken of ChinesePod blogged about the article, Olivia of the Academic Team provided a list of the Chinese words referred to in the article in parts 1 and 2. I reproduce that list here, adding the missing ones, and deleting some obvious ones (like VCD):
– neighbor 邻居 [I don’t really get this one; I still hear this word all the time]
– danwei (work unit) 单位 [this word is also not gone yet]
– poet 诗人
– reformer 改革家
– special zone 特区
– conductor (on buses) 公交售票员
– radio cassette player 收录机
– wanyuanhu (10,000+ yuan household) 万元户
– daoye (profiteer) 倒爷
– Chongqing of Sichuan Province 四川省重庆
– Royal Hong Kong Police Force 香港皇家警察
– welfare-oriented public housing 福利公房
– State Planning Commission 国家计划委员会
– Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications 国家邮电部
– Ministry of Electronics 国家电子工业部
– Hainan Development Bank 海南发展银行
– miandi (taxi van) 面的
– Idall (electronics brand) 爱多
– Millennium Bug 千年虫
– Fenhuang Cola 汾湟可乐
– mao (lit. “cat,” slang for “modem”) 猫
– family letter 家书，家信
– Blue Seal Household Register 蓝印户口
– fenbi (0.01 yuan coins) 分币
– dageda (big clunky mobile phones) 大哥大
– tianzhijiaozi (a name for university students) 天之骄子
– Yaxiya Department Store 亚细亚百货
– Old Fengjie Town 奉节古城 [picture on Flickr]
– jiefang shoes (“liberation” shoes) 解放鞋
– Super Variety Show 综艺大观 [official CCTV page]
– marital status certification 婚姻状况证明
If you have any revisions for this list, please leave a comment.
Notes: Kevin of Wefang Radish also discusses the People’s Daily article, as does Shanghaiist, where Micah points out in the comments that Danwei.org has published something similar before (but shorter, and also without the Chinese characters), citing New Weekly as the source.
01
Oct 2006Arming the Brats
My friend Heather sent me a link to a NY Times article called In China, Children of the Rich Learn Class, Minus the Struggle. The article talks about the great lengths to which China’s new rich are going in order to ensure their children the cultural education befitting of China’s new elite.
This passage about FasTracKids struck me:
> The private program’s after-school sessions are held in brightly decorated classrooms, where fewer than a dozen children, typically 4 or 5 years old, are taught by as many as three teachers. The program emphasizes scientific learning, problem solving and, most attractively for many parents, assertiveness.
Yes, that’s right, assertiveness. So now that these people have gotten so adept at raising spoiled brats, the next step is to raise assertive spoiled brats.
Yikes.
29
Sep 2006Hoes Before Bros (in Chinese)
Recently on ChinesePod we were developing a lesson that uses the expression 重色轻友. Literally it means something like “heavy sex light friendship.” The idea here is valuing one’s love interests over one’s friends. In translating this phrase, the immediate English translation that sprang to my mind was “hoes before bros,” a phrase I first heard a few years ago from Wilson (in an intellectual discussion on intersexual nomenclature, of course).
Obviously “hoes before bros” isn’t quite appropriate for our site. But really, it seems to be the only set prase for the phenomenon in English. Am I missing one?
Note 1: The word “ho” has always troubled me — and not just because it’s misogynistic in nature! As a shortened form of “whore,” “ho” just doesn’t look right to me. And is the plural “hoes” (which invites confusion with gardening tools) or “hos”? There are precedents for both.
Note 2: Another common example of the 重X轻Y pattern is 重男轻女, which refers to the cultural phenomenon of valuing males over females. Do you know any others?
27
Sep 2006Busy + Pecha Kucha
Busy week. We’re preparing for the October holiday at work, which means getting an extra week’s worth of work done ahead of time. Plus, I found out those essays I wrote got decent grades, and I’m eligible for a scholarship. I will be pretty stoked if this goes through. I have to hand in the complete application by the end of this week.
This also happens to be the week I got asked to do a presentation for Pecha Kucha Night. I was surprised that I was even asked. I’m not an architect or designer or artist or whatever. But I decided to go ahead and do it. My topic is How the Internet Hijacked My Life in China. If you’re a friend of mine, you might just find yourself in the presentation.
24
Sep 2006The triple 'dui'
The triple ‘dui’
Today on ChinesePod there was an intermediate lesson called Growing Affections. A commenter named Trevor Morley called attention to a linguistic phenomenon which he aptly dubbed “the triple dui” (that’s “triple 对,” not to be confused with “triple DUI“). This “对对对” is something I’ve noticed myself, and I’ve been observing it for a while.
对 means “right,” and as English speakers, I think it’s pretty easy for us to understand how it could be used in triplicate. We sometimes say, “right, right, right” in conversation when we are agreeing with what another person is saying. 对 is a monosyllabic word, so the triple dui is actually a repitition of a monosyllabic word three times just as “right, right, right” is in English; it’s not like 谢谢, which is a disyllabic word composed of one repeated morpheme.
What makes it interesting (to some of us) is that the triple dui seems to be used in spoken Mandarin much more than you would expect if it were left up to chance. Furthermore, the majority* of Chinese words are bisyllabic, which might lead one to expect an underlying trend of “twos” in Chinese. In this case, however, the triple dui seems to be as popular as the double dui (if not more so).
I don’t have any hard data to back up any of these observations (even search engines put “对对” way ahead of “对对对”), and it might also be a regional phenomenon. Any thoughts and/or reports from other parts of China?
*This fact belongs to the realm of generally accepted linguistic knowledge about the Chinese language, but if you want more info, you might check out Stress and the Development of Disyllabic Words in Chinese (PDF file) by San Duanmu.
21
Sep 2006Critical Discourse Analysis in China
I had my third Critical Discourse Analysis (批评性话语分析 or CDA) class today. I was really starting to wonder what was up with that class, but I finally got it straight. You see, having no prior significant exposure to the field, I had this simple understanding of “discourse analysis” as basically “analyzing discourse.” It goes a bit beyond that. But CDA is even further removed:
Critical discourse analysis has made the study of language into an interdisciplinary tool and can be used by scholars with various backgrounds, including media criticism. Most significantly, it offers the opportunity to adopt a social perspective in the cross-cultural study of media texts. As Gunter Kress points out, CDA has an “overtly political agenda,” which “serves to set CDA off…from other kinds of discourse analysis” and text linguistics, “as well as pragmatics and sociolinguistics.” While most forms of discourse analysis “aim to provide a better understanding of socio-cultural aspects of texts,” CDA “aims to provide accounts of the production, internal structure, and overall organization of texts.” One crucial difference is that CDA “aims to provide a critical dimension in its theoretical and descriptive accounts of texts.” [source]
Hmmm, so that explains why the first two weeks we kept talking about ideology (意识形态) rather than discourse itself. The key theorists we have examined already are:
– Karl Marx (马克思) – assumed background knowledge
– Antonio Gramsci (葛兰西)
– Louis Althusser (阿尔都塞)
– Jürgen Habermas (哈贝马斯)
– Michel Foucault (福柯)
Can you see why the Chinese might be into this stuff? They even have a great word for it: 西马. That means something like “modern Western Marxist theory.” I get a kick out of that term. It seems like such a simple word, made up of two very basic characters, but it represents such a complex body of theory.
My current teacher has a philosophical crush on Foucault just like my first semester teacher had a philosophical crush on Wittgenstein. (In my personal experience, all female Chinese professors have a thing for brilliant gay philosophers.)
Before today’s class I had to read Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (意识形态与意识形态国家机器). These days I’m kinda short on time, though, so I had a little help. I don’t feel guilty… I think by “cheating” I understood the content better than my classmates, whose comments on the text mostly amounted to, “it was confusing.”
I’m not the kind of person that gets off on this kind of philosophical stuff. Sometimes I feel like an anti-intellectual (or maybe I’m just simple-minded?). To tell the truth, I’m rather disappointed with this semester’s classes. My major is “applied linguistics,” and I really am looking for material with application. I’m no longer a wide-eyed student eager to soak up any and all knowledge; I readily discard the information I feel I have no use for, and I don’t have a high tolerance for material I find overly theoretical with little practical value.
Today, though, CDA got a little more interesting. We starting actually applying the ideological framework we’d been discussing. It looks like we’re going to be looking at a lot of advertisements and analyzing them in the contexts of gender roles, social values, consumerism, etc. I was a little disappointed that our scope was going to be so focused, but I’ll certainly take analysis of ads over analysis of things like “the reproduction of the conditions of production” (Althusser) any day.
I suggested that we analyze TV commercials from past American presidential campaigns, and my teacher liked the idea, but she asked me to find them. Does anyone know where I can get that kind of video? I need the actual files, not just YouTube links (and the classroom computer is not going to support weird .flv files). Thanks!