09
Mar 2006
Telephone Scam?
On Tuesday I got a morning telephone call. I was still sleeping at the time, so what I was about to hear didn’t make much sense to me. I was told I was supposed to come pick up some information that I needed. “Who are you?” I asked. “This is the blah blah blah Center,” she told me. Never heard of it.
“What information is this?” I asked. “Why do I need it?”
“Have you bought stock?” she replied.
“No.”
“Do you have insurance?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, you need this information on new financial regulations applying to your insurance. Please come to our office this afternoon at 3pm and pick it up. Don’t forget to bring your ID (身份证).”
I wrote down the address (some place in Xujiahui) and got the phone number. Then I forgot about it.
The next day the woman called back and asked why I hadn’t come and picked up the information. This time I was more awake, so I demanded more information. Who was this? Again, the blah blah blah Center. Meaningless. I decided to be a wuss and put my girlfriend on the phone to get to the bottom of it.
My girlfriend ascertained that the woman didn’t know what insurance I had or even what my name was, but still insisted that I needed the information. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t Chinese. My girlfriend asked why my insurance agent hadn’t notified me about this, and she was given some excuse. My girlfriend asked why it couldn’t be mailed or sent by courier. It just couldn’t. It all seemed veeeeerrry fishy.
I called my health insurance company (AIA), and my agent told me she didn’t know anything about this “financial information” I supposedly needed. She advised me to ignore this woman. She thought that if I went to the address they would probably try to sell me some kind of fake insurance.
Well, the conwoman called me again for the third time today, wanting to know why I still hadn’t picked up my “information.” Even though I wasn’t planning on going in, my girlfriend already told her yesterday that I’d pick it up tomorrow. Since I was now convinced that it was some kind of scam, I yelled at her and told her I knew it was a scam and to never call me again.
I’ve gotten very few telephone solicitations in China, let alone such a bold telephone scam. Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing?
07
Mar 2006Karaoke Notes
I’d been telling my girlfriend that we’d do karaoke sometime soon ever since Valentine’s Day, and last night I finally made good on that promise. We showed up at “PartyWorld” (AKA 錢櫃) at 11:45pm, and, thrifty young souls that we are, waited around for fifteen minutes for the hourly rate to drop from 158rmb to 58rmb.
I, of course, abhor karaoke. I can’t sing, and I don’t particular enjoy proving that to the world, even when “the world” in Asian style karaoke means only the other people in the private karaoke box with you. My girlfriend is a good singer, though, and she doesn’t like much crappy pop, so I don’t mind going to karaoke with just her. She sings, I eat. (If drinking happens to be on the agenda, I sometimes end up singing.)
So I’ll just mention here a few songs I found noteworthy. Most of them are not new at all.
– 嘻唰唰 by 花儿乐队 (Flowers) (click for Baidu MP3 search). I’ve written about this poppy punky band before, but they’ve caught my attention again. The title of this song could be another entry in the onomatopeia vocabulary list, and the fun immaturity of the song reminds me of Leather Jacket by Screeching Weasel (but not nearly as punk). In keeping with the sound suggested by the song’s title, the band was dressed as window washers in the video. This song is currently one of the most popular titles at PartyWorld.
– 完美的一天 by 孙燕姿 (Stephanie Sun) (click for Baidu MP3 search). This song really reminded me of a lot of Japanese pop I’ve heard, maybe a little like something by Chara. I guess it’s largely the rhythm that makes it seem like a nice change from a lot of Chinese pop. The video also struck me as Japanese-esque, with the singer being pushed through a supermarket in a shopping cart, and later hanging out with a giant inflatable leaning Astro Boy on the beach.
– Phonebook by 林凡. 林凡 is a decent singer I guess. I wasn’t totally paying attention, but I think in this song she’s brooding about friends and lovers from the past, and she has found an old notebook with names and numbers of those people. The thing is, she calls this book a “phonebook.” So while she’s earnestly crooning about these former relationships, she suddenly busts out with the English line, “IT’S AN OLD PHONEBOOK” (which is in all caps on the screen, of course). So amidst all this mushy nostaglia, I get this image of an old phonebook like the one we used to keep next to the microwave in the kitchen shoved in my face. Awesome.
I’m still no fan of (sober) karaoke, but I gotta say, it’s a lot more tolerable when it’s just the two of us and I have some veto power. It was also a refreshing musical smack in the face, considering all I’ve been listening to for the past few days is I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.
Related: Using Baidu MP3 Search
05
Mar 2006Weight Loss Pun #2
I noticed this one a while ago (sometime after Weight Loss Pun #1), once again on the back of the passenger seat in a taxi:
> 双层紧肤吸脂，满足小“腰”求。
It’s an ad for “double layer” “tight skin” liposuction, which is supposed to meet your “little waist requirement.” (Yes, it’s a horrible translation, I know, but it’s a pun, so I don’t really see how I can do a good job.)
So the pun is on the words 小要求 (“little demand”) and 小腰 (“little waist”).
At least for these two cases of weight loss treatments, the puns are terribly obvious because the punned characters are in quotation marks each time. Would too many people not get them otherwise? Oh well… it helps us foreigners get them a little more easily, at least.
04
Mar 2006白忍者：现实的礼物
白忍者是一系列在线漫画，由美国人画的。虽然画的不太漂亮，但漫画的独特幽默令我喜欢。我把一个名字叫“White Ninja gets his son a practical gift”的漫画翻成中文了。（注：读的方向是左到右）
我为什么会选这个漫画翻译成中文主要有两个理由：一、我觉得中国人会感到幽默。二、我认为许多中国人对美国的亲子关系有一种误解。虽然这个漫画的内容很夸张，但它能代表这种误解。在美国“到了18岁该搬出去”的观念并不那么普遍。我家就不是这样，而且朋友的家都不是这样。但孩子长大了，自然会想独立起来。
03
Mar 2006Vocabulary Lists Are Back!
A long time ago I made a page for names of different types of alchohol in Chinese. At the time, I had grand visions of lots of atypical and interesting vocabulary lists (i.e. no list of “countries” or “animals” or “fruits” in Chinese). That project stalled. For a long time.
Well, it’s back: Sinosplice Vocabulary Lists. Right now there are only three, but that number will expand. I’ve already started working on some new ones. (I also gladly accept additions to existing lists or new list ideas.)
One of the new ones is Chinese Onomatopeia. I compiled this list myself, and I haven’t found a similar list anywhere else on the internet. So get it here first, until other people copy it! (Better yet, link to it and give me some Google rank love.)
Onomatopeia are fun. My dad taught me a love for animal noises in foreign languages, but there are more than just animal noises in the list. Here are some wacky questions you can answer by browsing the list:
1. What noise in Chinese sounds like the name of a cheese in English?
2. How many of the 52 Chinese onomatopeia in the list are identical to the corresponding English onomatopeia? (Hint: not many!)
3. What bird makes the same noise as a frog?
4. What Chinese onomatopeia are missing? (Hint: this is a trick question to which I do not know the answer!)
The other new list is Cartoon Character Names. Kastner helped me out by compiling this one. I still owe him for that. (Thanks, man!)
Your conversational Chinese may be pretty decent, but you can likely stand to take it up a notch or two by adding the Chinese names of the Transformers, He-Man, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to your vocabulary. Yes, you need this. (Did I mention it impresses the ladies?)
With the exception of the original alcohol list, I have been using AdsoVocab to generate the lists. The auto pinyin completion saved me a lot of time. I recommend you check it out if you have not seen it already.
I would love to add stuff like this to my site all the time, but the sad, ironic truth is that I very rarely have time for this kind of thing anymore because I’m going to grad school so that maybe I can get paid to do something like this down the road. Anyway, enjoy! I’ll be out of grad school in 2007.
01
Mar 2006Forced Healthy Eating
I first came to China when I was 22, and my metabolism was raging. I was one of those people that could eat anything, in any quantity, and remain skinny. Combined with the fact that I’m not a very picky eater, I had a grand time in my new environment. (Oil? What oil? That’s juice! [slurp!])
When I was 24 my metabolism finally decided to slow down from a full-on sprint to a slow jog. It took me some time to adapt my eating habits, so I chunked up a bit. It certainly didn’t help that I was living in a ZUCC teacher apartment, with an on-campus convenience store conveniently located right next door. Beer has never been much of a factor in my weight gain/loss, but the snack foods — like crazy Lays and anything by Glico — were plentiful, and my cupboard was always stocked. Not the healthiest.
After moving to Shanghai, supermarkets and convenience stores are nowhere near as convenient. Instead of being right downstairs, the nearest convenience store is a five minute walk away. That might not be far at all, but my laziness is almost always stronger than my attacks of the munchies (particularly in the winter). Furthermore, I don’t stock up because the supermarkets are 10-15 minute walks away–easily within walking distance. But walking to (and mainly from) the supermarket means you have to carry everything the whole way. I could take a cab back, but I’m too cheap. Consequently I buy significantly less on my trips there, especially when it comes to snack foods and drinks (which are always the heaviest).
So now when I find myself getting an attack of the munchies, I go into the kitchen and find… nothing. Leftovers from dinner in the fridge, and virtually nothing else. Drinks are generally limited to water and tea. I very rarely have food delivered because I’m cheap (Sherpa’s is expensive, dammit!) and impatient. I find myself considering raw spaghetti noodles as a snack, or speculating on how they would taste with barbecue sauce on them. I literally have nothing to snack on. Last time this happened I got so desperate I ate an orange. My snacking skills are totally slipping.
As a result, I’m pretty slim these days, even if I don’t get nearly as much exercise as I should. My weight sticks to around 200 lbs. (I’m 6’4″).
So there you have it: better health in Shanghai through laziness and cheapness.
Related: Junk Food Review, Junk Food Review 2
28
Feb 2006口语中的连词
现今，不少的人埋怨中国学生的语文水平日益恶化。一位中国朋友举了以下的例子：
1. 她走了。她为什么走呢？我就不理解。
2. 于是她走了，那么她为什么走呢，所以我就不理解。
3. 然后她走了，然后她为什么走呢，然后我就不理解。
这位朋友的观点是：一、如今有的人在没有必要用连词的情况下还是会去滥用。二、汉语中的连词丰富多彩，但是如今有的人选择只用一个“口头禅”连词（往往是“然后”）。
作为一个在中国当地学习汉语口语的外国学生，我得承认从日常生活中我只能学会最基本的连词，像“然后”、“因为”、“所以” ，因为一般的现代中国人在生活中用连词不甚丰富，而且会出现误导的现象（像“然后”）。因此我以为想掌握汉语连词的留学生最好从文学中学连词的用法而不是从生活中。
27
Feb 2006Spring 2006 Class Schedule
People keep telling me they want to hear more about what it’s like to be a grad student in China. I promise I’ll say more in the future, but for now here’s my class schedule for this semester. At this point I haven’t even been to the first class yet for most of these classes, though, so I can’t comment on the content yet.
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Mon |
Tues |
Wed |
Thurs |
Fri |
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10:00- |
Modern Chinese |
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Studies in Pragmatics |
Modern Chinese |
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Lunch |
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13:00- |
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Chinese Syntax |
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Sociolinguistics |
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Oh wait… I can comment on one thing. You’ll notice that one of my classes is “Modern Chinese,” which you might remember is what I was tested on to get into grad school in the first place. I got a B on that test. So why am I taking it again?
Well, because I don’t have to take the English or Chinese political theory classes, I have to make up the credits somehow. My advisor suggested I take the second semester of Modern Chinese in order to strengthen my understanding and get 4 credits pretty easily. I’m taking the “Studies in Pragmatics” course for the same reason. Both are in the college of Chinese as a Second Language (对外汉语), and since my advisor is a head honcho in that department, it’s easiest to arrange classes there. That’s OK, since my interests in applied linguistics lean heavily toward Chinese as a Second Language anyway.
The one downside is that the Modern Chinese class is an undergraduate course. I don’t mind taking class with the kiddies, but undergrad courses mean undergrad testing style: lots of memorization and written tests. All my other classes only require attendance and a final paper. Oh well. That I’ve learned that Modern Chinese stuff once before should make it easier. (And fortunately the prof said they’re not going to be covering much of the dreaded 修辞!)
27
Feb 2006汉语中的逗号
从小我的语法老师一直强调：写英语的时候必须要分清楚哪里应用句号，哪里应用逗号。如果分不清楚就是错误！开始学汉语时我发现在汉语的语法规则当中，句号和逗号的使用似乎不是那么严重的问题。或许这是因为中文标点符号的历史比较短，所以规则不是那么死板。我认识的一位美籍翻译甚至说过：
> I think that the way Chinese is presently written, with clauses related by topic and linked by commas, is a better reflection of the way people think than is the structure of written English.（我认为当代汉语的写作用逗号来连接相关的分句，因而要比英语书面语的结构更好地反映人的思路。）
虽然学汉语的外国人肯定需要不少的时间掌握汉语写作的基本原则，我仍然觉得句号和逗号的问题不大。学习英语的中国学生反而要学很多年的英语才能掌握英语语法规则中的句号和逗号的区别。中国学生往往会把该分成几个句子的英语用逗号连接而写出一句很长却不符合英语语法的句子。
26
Feb 2006Fonts on the IELTS
I’ve been helping a student prepare for the IELTS (雅思 in Chinese), and she recently brought an interesting point to my attention. In her book of practice tests (a quality book published by Oxford University Press), different fonts were used for different reading selections. For example, a selection about biology was written in Times New Roman, whereas an article about education was written in Arial, and a passage about blindness and visualization was written in Verdana. She wanted to know if the real test was going to be like that.
I was impressed by her observation, but I had no idea to respond. Does the IELTS use a standard font, or does it vary the font from passage to passage? I’ve done some preliminary research, but I’ve been having trouble finding an answer because when I use “font” as a search term, Google ever so helpfully includes font tags and CSS text in its search, rendering the search results useless.
I asked my student if she thought the choice of font affected her performance. She responded, “Yes, it does. Sorry, I’m sensitive.” Heh. It would probably affect anyone at least somewhat on the unconscious level, but her years of experience in the marketing industry brought it to her conscious attention.
So, I’d just like to know… does anyone know if the IELTS actually varies the fonts of the passages on the real test? If not, which font does it use? If so, why does a respectable publisher vary the font in the practice test?? I think it’s good practice to expose students to different fonts, but in a test prep book, I don’t think it’s justifiable unless the test itself uses various fonts.
25
Feb 2006Bad Sample Sentences
I’m currently doing some editing work for a Taiwanese book on English. It’s one of those books that takes the most common English words, organizes them alphabetically, then provides a Chinese translation, English sample sentence, and Chinese translation of said sample sentence for each word. Now, since each word only gets one sample sentence, it’s important that the usage in each sentence (1) corresponds to the most common meaning of that word, and (2) provides clear usage of the word.
OK, now let’s look at two entries I was given:
1. are (v. 是): You are kindly. 你很亲切。
2. bun (n. 小圆面包) Mary always wore her hair in a bun. 玛莉总是把她的头发挽成一个圆髻。
Even if you can’t understand the sample sentence in #1, if you look carefully, you can see that the definition (v. 是) given is nowhere to be found in the sample sentence. This is because of a major difference between Chinese and English grammar. The person writing the sentence seems to be completely unaware of this point. Since the author is choosing the definitions, doesn’t it make sense to choose sample sentences in English which can be translated in such a way that the word in the definition will appear in the sample translated sentence? Well, not to some people, apparently.
I think my complaint with #2 is pretty clear. A sample sentence should use the basic meaning of the sentence, not some relatively obscure derived meaning.
Man, I thought I was going to breeze through this editing job in a few hours, but since I have to rewrite/retranslate so many of these sentences, I’ve already spent over 2 hours on vocabulary for letters A and B alone. Good thing it pays by the hour.
24
Feb 2006Filial Piety
I recently learned that a grad student at my university worked hard over the CNY vacation and earned 8000 rmb. That’s about US$1000. That might not seem like a lot if you don’t live in China, but that is quite an impressive sum for a college student to earn in two months. To put it in perspective, my university teaching job in Hangzhou got me only 3000 rmb per month to start. Many Chinese laborers earn less than 1000 rmb per month.
The student earned the money as a Chinese tutor. The going rate in Shanghai for grad student tutors is 50 rmb per hour. That means she put in 160 hours of teaching during her vacation.
She earned the money not because she really needs it (although she has supported herself through her entire college education–something which very few Chinese college students do). Here’s the kicker: she worked so hard to earn money so that she could send her parents on a nice vacation. She just really wanted to do that for them.
This kind of thing blows me away. Even a Chinese friend of mine marveled at her behavior, calling it the definition of 孝: the Confucian virtue of filial piety. It’s stories like those that still give me a little jolt of culture shock. I mean, sure, I’d like to do something like that for my parents too, but I’d never consider it as a self-supporting grad student.
Filial piety, hard work… they may not be universal in China, but these values are still very much alive and well here. (Take a guess as to whether it’s significant that the student is not from Shanghai…)
22
Feb 2006我创造的汉字（一）
（如果你看不懂英文，你可以先看汉字猜意思，再看图下的中文翻译。）
中文翻译：
1. 一般性口臭
2. 急性口臭
3. 闲话
4. 挞克馅饼（是一种墨西哥菜。请看照片：1，2，3，4）
5. 多层营销（MLM）
6. 断臂山（电影的英文名字叫做《断背山》）
22
Feb 2006Character Creations
An older post by ChinoChano brought my attention to an amusing page on Chinese-Tools.com called New Chinese Characters. The characters are created by foreigners using existing character components (some knowledge of Chinese required). Some of them are pretty funny. Anyway, the page inspired me to create a few new characters of my own:
Key:
1. 口 (mouth) + 蒜 (garlic)
2. 口 (mouth) + 死 (death)
3. four 口 (mouths) + 女 (woman), arrangement based on 器
4. 肉 (meat) on top of 凹 (which means “concave” but represents the taco shell here). (Variant form adds the 鱼 (fish) radical.)
5. 贝 (cowrie, used in characters to mean “money,” as in 财, 购) over 众 (used as a pictographic representation of downlines)
6. 山 (mountain, but broken)
I suspect I will do more of these in the future. It’s kinda fun.
20
Feb 2006Irate Football Fan
Two weeks ago was “Super Bowl Monday.” At 6am John B and I caught a taxi to Windows Scoreboard, the place the Carl said would be “the place” to catch the big game. Well, “the place” insofar as it’s a pretty decent sports bar, beer is cheap (in the Windows tradition), and you can even get a decent American breakfast for a reasonable price. Plus they were showing the Super Bowl through satellite TV, so we didn’t have to put up with that outrageous 15-second delay.
I’m not a big sports fan at all, but I enjoy a good football game from time to time. I’d never started drinking so early before, and it was a good reason to hang out with John B and Carl, my former roommate I hadn’t seen in a while.
Excited by the breakfast food which Carl assured us would be very tasty, I ordered a 30 rmb omelette with cheddar, bacon, onions, and tomatoes. I was really looking forward to that.
When we arrived at 6:30am, the place was fairly crowded, and breakfast orders were flying. I waited a good while for that omelette, and I was getting hungry. (Plus, like a wuss, I wanted to eat before I started on my beer.) At one point I decided to go up to the bar and check on my order.
There was a foreigner in front of me trying to put in a food order. He got the extremely busy waitress’s attention and started giving her his order (in English). She gave him an embarrassed laugh and told him she didn’t understand (in Chinese). The guy tried again (in English). She apologized again (in Chinese) and started to leave. I sympathized with the guy, because the bartender could take his English order, but the bartender was really busy too, and so the foreigner might have to wait another while just to put his order in, let alone actually eat. So I stepped in and told the guy I’d translate for him. I started telling the waitress in Chinese what the guy wanted.
The foreigner did not like that. He gave me a nasty, “I’d like to order my own damn food, if that’s OK with you.” So I immediately backed off and left the guy alone. I eventually got my omelette and it was goooood. (More memorable than the Super Bowl, in fact.)
So what was the guy’s deal? My interpretation is that the guy was just in a bad mood (maybe he was a Seahawks fan?), but maybe not… I wonder how many other foreigners would be pissed off by what I did. It’s been my experience that any newcomers with no language skills are typically grateful in a situation like that. But maybe the guy has been in Shanghai a while and he’s pissed off that he still can’t order food, and thought I was trying to show off? If the guy was trying to order food in broken Chinese but the waitress couldn’t understand him, I could understand how he would get pissed at me for butting in. I wouldn’t have said anything in a case like that. But he wasn’t speaking any Chinese at all.
I find these multilingual/cross-cultural exchanges and all the emotion-laden sociolinguistic baggage they come with to be very interesting.
18
Feb 2006Adding the pinyin quicktag in WordPress
A while back I wrote about adding pinyin tooltips using a little CSS and a span HTML tag. I later mentioned that I had worked a “quicktag” into my blogging interface. Today I’ll tell you how to easily add this button to your WordPress “Write” page.
The pinyin quicktag in action
After installing WordPress 2.0, it took me a while to get around to uploading my custom quicktags.js file which includes the “pinyin” quicktag button. Since I add pinyin to words quite often, I was really annoyed by the loss of the button. It really makes adding pinyin so much more convenient.
16
Feb 2006Chinese Grammar Issues
This week I’m finally getting around to writing my two remaining final papers for last semester. Classes don’t start until something like the 27th though (I think). One of my assignments is to revise my paper on Chomsky according to my professor’s comments. That shouldn’t be too hard, except that she left a few questions on my paper that would seem to warrant entire essays of their own in order to answer. (Ah, she won’t remember what she wrote on my paper, right??)
The other essay is a response to one of the lectures given in a seminar course. The Chinese name of the course was 当代学术前沿讲座 which basically translates to “a bunch of boring lectures.” The only one I found remotely interesting was 汉语语法的问题和方法 (Issues and Methods in Chinese Grammar). So that sure narrows down my possible writing topics.
15
Feb 2006Defense and Defecation
I had to laugh when I stumbled across this the other day:
It’s an important tone difference which I learned a while ago but didn’t actually personally encounter much until this past semester as a grad student, when suddenly the word “dabian” kept popping up everywhere.
Just imagine (mis)hearing your professor tell the class: “I have to cancel class this Thursday because I have to take a dump.” The silly schoolboy in me inwardly giggled every time.
Image via chinat0wn.
14
Feb 2006V-Day Chinese Mail Order Brides!
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, direct shipping service of Chinese mail order brides has recently become avilable. Not only do they ship right to your door, but they arrive wearing the traditional qipao (旗袍). The clear shipping case ensures a few jealous looks from your neighbors as the delivery man sidles up to your door.
I for one applaud this all-out embrace of ultra-commercialized holidays. Not only do I love the over-priced Valentine’s Day rose bouquets, chocolate sets, and dinner deals that have become so common in Shanghai, but I love the Valentine’s Day mail order bride concept, which, for me, represents the ultimate in commercialized romance.
I think the shipping option pictured above may be a bit expensive, but here’s an insider tip: come live in China, and you save big on postage!
Even if you end up paying a lot in postage, remember: mail order brides are to be loved. Don’t abuse them.