19
Aug 2005
Return of Doom
Jamie Doom is back in the game. He recently started updating his long-neglected weblog Doom in China (even though he’s not in China right now). Now his weblog is called “Doom in….” Presumably his weblog will be called “Doom in… China” when he moves back to China.
He kicked off his return to blogging with an entry about… me! Well, in part, at least. (Here’s my my version of that night.)
You’ll also be entertained by his story entitled “I Killed a Chicken with a Tennis Ball: Am I Evil?” (By the way, the answer to your question, Jamie, is YES.) There were also some comments on that entry which I found very interesting….
Finally, I was pleasantly surprised to find original poetry in his blog the other day. Poetry! Rarely do China bloggers tread that territory (except for Todd). I really enjoyed this work: New Water Lillies Bathe in Scented Breeze and Sun While Old Willows Silently Observe.
18
Aug 2005Science (something) Sect
I hate celebrity gossip. I think it’s the stupidest thing. Why should we care about that stuff?? What bugs me the most is when I realize I am actually somewhat following it. I don’t want to, I don’t mean to… how does it happen?? I find it even more ludicrous that Chinese people sometimes also follow the celebrity gossip of Hollywood stars. Yeah, I shouldn’t be surprised, in this age of international media… but still. It’s ridiculous.
Last night I accidentally got involved in a celebrity gossip chat with my girlfriend. Argh! (Disclaimer: neither of us really knows what we’re talking about here, so if we’re wrong… ummm… so what??)
> Me: So you wanna watch a DVD tonight?
> Her: What DVD were you thinking?
> Me: How about Mr. and Mrs. Smith?
> Her: (wrinkles her nose)
> Me: Oh yeah, you saw that already… You didn’t like it, right?
> Her: Right. I just can’t believe he would do that to his girlfriend. I feel so sorry for her…
> Me: Huh?
> Her: You know, how he left her for that other woman…
> Me: (realizing what she’s talking about) Oh! You mean…
> Her: Yeah! Peter!
> Me: Haha… Not “Peter”… It’s “Pitt!” Brad Pitt!
> Her: Right… he left that one girl for the woman in this movie.
> Me: Oh, right. He left his wife Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie.
> Her: Right. Because of this movie!
> Me: So you don’t like it because you don’t like him.
> Her: Right.
> Me: OK, I guess that decides that…
> Her: Which one would you choose if you were Brad Pitt?
> Me: (suddenly sensing very dangerous ground) Ummm…
> Her: I think I would choose Angelina Jolie. She’s younger and sexier.
> Me: (relieved) Yeah, me too.
> Her: Men always go for the younger woman. Like Tom Cruise.
> Me: Yeah.
> Her: I think they’re kind of a cute couple.
> Me: What?? Why don’t you hate Tom Cruise? He did the same thing that Brad Pitt did. He was married to Nicole Kidman, and then he did a movie with Penelope Cruz and divorced his wife. And he didn’t even stay with Penelope Cruz long!
> Her: Oh, really?
> Me: Yeah! And plus he’s crazy!
> Her: He is?
> Me: Yeah, you haven’t heard?
> Her: I heard that he and his girlfriend are having some troubles. One reason is that it’s Tom Cruise’s third wedding and he wants to keep it small and simple, but his girlfriend would like her wedding to be a big affair.
> Me: Hmmm.
> Her: The other is that her family is Catholic, and one time when Tom Cruise was talking to her father, he got in a big argument with him over religion. It almost came to blows! You know, because Tom Cruise is in that one religion… science something sect… [科学-什么-派]
> Me: Oh yeah… [“Scientology”]. (I had no idea what that was in Chinese)
> Her: So Tom Cruise is really crazy?
> Me: So it seems. There are all sorts of clips documenting it on the internet. Wanna see?
> Her: OK.
Celebrity Names in Chinese (absolutely worthless — don’t learn these!):
– Brad Pitt: 布莱德·彼特/皮特 (His last name in Chinese sounds like a transliteration of the English name “Peter,” so he gets called “Peter” a lot by the Chinese.)
– Tom Cruise: 汤姆·克鲁斯
– Angelina Jolie: 安吉利娜·茱丽 (Characters vary somewhat. Why didn’t they just use 周丽 for her last name??)
– Jennifer Aniston: 珍妮佛·安妮斯顿
– Katie Holmes: 凯蒂·霍尔姆斯 (This one was slightly harder to find.)
“Scientology” in Chinese (could potentially result in some interesting conversations and/or jokes!): 科学论派 (literally: “science theory sect”)
17
Aug 2005The Foreign Teacher Role
In China foreign teachers are called 外教 (a shortened form of 外籍教师). Literally it means “foreign teacher.” It’s a simple descriptive term. There’s nothing wrong with it.
And yet I don’t like to be called a waijiao. Why? It’s the connotations that usually come with the word. A waijiao can come in many shapes and sizes, but typically:
– A waijiao is white.
– A waijiao is most often male.
– A waijiao is young, likely fresh out of college. (Alternatively, he could be retired.)
– A waijiao is entertaining.
– A waijiao doesn’t speak much Chinese, if any. (If he does, it’s likely entertaining.)
– A waijiao doesn’t really have any skills other than being a native speaker of English. Sometimes they’re OK teachers.
I know… I am white. I am male. I am young. However, I am not in China for anyone’s entertainment but my own, although that’s certainly not my main reason for being here. And I do speak Chinese. I am not without skills. I don’t like to be pigeon-holed.
I was a waijiao for 3 1/2 years in Hangzhou. I enjoyed that job, and I was good at it. Then I was a waijiao teaching kids for a year here in Shanghai. That was a valuable experience too. But now I would like to move on… I like teaching, but I don’t want to make it my career. (Not TEFL, anyway.)
And yet to most Chinese people, if you’re a foreigner and you’re young, you’re either a student or a waijiao. If you’re not young, you’re either doing business here or you’re a waijiao. There’s really not much else.
Ironically, now that I have finally moved away from the role of waijiao with my current job, I’m returning to the pigeon-hole by becoming a student again. Plus they still call me a waijiao at work anyway even though I’ve corrected them on numerous occasions. Micah is a (skilled) waijiao, and I guess it’s too much to remember that we actually have different roles at the company.
When I get out of grad school I’m going to have to wreak havoc on all this waijiao stereotyping.
I do three main things at my job now:
1. I edit a new line of textbooks for Chinese kindergarteners. I don’t decide the lesson themes, but I play a role in determining the vocabularly to be taught, and I write the lesson text. My lessons must be of the appropriate level, but not contain too much difficult or unfamilair vocabulary or grammar. The lessons must also have rhythm, because they are set to music and sung as songs. When these books come out, my name will be in the books as writer.
2. I play the Chinese voice of a cartoon character as well as the English voices of several characters. I also manage the recording of the international versions of those cartoons, which involves putting together a team of voice talents and overseeing the studio recording. (I’m doing that this week and next week.)
3. I translate the cartoon scripts from Chinese to English, which are then used to record the international version of the cartoon. I also translate other parts of the textbook line for the international edition.
16
Aug 2005"Thirsty" is a nice way of putting it…
The frame at left is from a comic strip called The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch. (Apparently he doesn’t want people linking directly to certain comic strips. “Kids Are Thirsty” is currently at the top of the list, but if you’re getting to this blog entry late, you may need to scroll down a bit to find it.) It’s an excellent comic strip… it’s a lot like The Far Side, but a bit darker and with its own distinct brand of humor, of course. It’s far from derivative.
After teaching kids in Shanghai for about a year, I don’t feel this “Kids Are Thirsty” comic is much of an exaggeration. Is it kids everywhere, or Chinese kids in particular? Not having taught kids anywhere else, I can’t make the comparison.
Whatever happened to the Kool-Aid man, anyway? Is he still doing his thing? If not, maybe he met his demise in China.
15
Aug 2005Typhoon Pics
The typhoon passed through Shanghai over a week ago, leaving behind lots of water and more than a few toppled trees. Fortunately, it also left a few of us with some great photographs. Check out Shanghai Sky‘s typhoon set on Flickr: Train Station. (Hey, better late than never, right??)
Shanghai bloggers report on the typhoon:
– Micah
– A Backpack and a Keyboard
– scRambler
– Wang Jianshuo
– Shanghaiist
12
Aug 2005Officially a Student
I think I’m officially a student of ECNU/华师大 now. On Wednesday I did two important things: I paid one year’s tuition out of my hard-earned Shanghai savings (21,777 rmb — ouch!) and I put through my student visa paperwork.
Unfortunately, they say they still can’t tell me how many classes/credits I’ll have my first semester, or which ones. I have to wait until registration on September 5th to learn that. I can’t even talk to my new adviser about it because he’s still on vacation. Classes start Sepember 12th.
My passport with new student visa will be delivered to my doorstep on August 17th. That’s gonna cost me 850 rmb, I believe (400 rmb for each semester, plus a ripoff 50 rmb for delivery). I’ll need that two days later to fly to Changchun, where I’ll be attending John B‘s wedding on the 20th. (Congrats to him!) I’ll be doing the overnight train thing back, leaving on the 21st and arriving in Shanghai on the 22nd.
11
Aug 2005Buddhist MP3s
I’ve visited quite a few Chinese Buddhist temples in my day, and those temples invariably have Buddhist music playing in the gift shop. I’m frequently somewhat attracted to that music, even though I can’t understand it. There’s just something about the chanting… the feel of it. I never liked it enough to actually buy a CD, though.
Recently I had the idea of looking for this kind of music online. Baidu’s MP3 search was the natural place to start. (See my tutorial on it if you don’t know how to use it.)
First I did a search for 佛教 歌 (buddhims, songs) in Baidu web search. I clicked on the top result (on fowang.org). Sure enough, it was a listing of Buddhist songs. They were supposed to be downloadable MP3s, but none of the links worked. No problem.
I opened a new tab and went to Baidu’s MP3 search. I copied and pasted what I deemed to be key words from the names of the songs in the fowang.org listing. I got some decent results with the following terms (click on the Chinese to see the search results):
– 佛 (Fó, Buddha)
– 阿弥陀佛 (Ēmítuófó, “Buddha preserve us.” A common refrain in Buddhist prayer, also known as Amithabha.)
– 观音 (Guānyīn, Goddess of Mercy)
– 菩萨 (Púsà, Bodhisattva)
– 经 (jīng, used in scripture/prayer names)
– 咒: 大悲咒, 大明咒, 普庵咒 (zhòu, something like “incantation,” used in the names of ceremonies)
– 梵唱 (fànchàng, Buddhist chanting)
I’m no expert on Buddhism, so if I’m off on any of these brief explanations, feel free to let me know.
Obviously, you don’t have to stick to these searches; you can find your own terms and copy and paste them into the MP3 search box, even if you can’t type Chinese. Your computer will need to support GB2312 (Simplified Chinese) encoding, however. Baidu doesn’t use Unicode.
If you can view Chinese in your browser but can’t read it, you can still download the songs that Baidu MP3 search turns up. Look for songs with a relatively large filesize (over 1 M). Rightclick, then “Save as.” You may want to rename the file when you save it.
That should give you a taste of some Chinese Buddhist music. If you like it, consider making a visit to a Chinese temple and actually buying a CD.
10
Aug 2005While Searching for Tabs…
I have gotten several requests for the guitar tablature for the song 月亮代表我的心, so I did a search for them and found them in about 20 minutes. They’re hosted by a Chinese music site: www.yf66.com.
In the process, I necessarily learned the word for “guitar tabs” in Chinese. It’s 吉他谱. This is unsurprising, as the character 谱 has the meaning of “musical notation” itself, so you can just tack the word for “guitar” (吉他) onto it. Normal musical notation with the staff and all that is called 五线谱 (“five line musical notation” Heh…). There’s also a simplified musical notation which uses numbers in place of notes, and you can see amateur pianists all around China using it. It’s called 简谱 (“simplified musical notation”). If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this 简谱 for 月亮代表我的心.
Anyway, as with any search, my search for guitar tabs for “The Moon Represents My Heart” resulted in quite a few deadends before I found what I was looking for. Most of what I found was annoying crap, but I did discover a video that sort of cast a spell on me.
The video is just a short clip of a Chinese girl playing 月亮代表我的心 on her guitar and singing the song. It’s not that the girl is a babe or an amazing singer. She’s rather ordinary-looking. In fact, she could easily have been one of the many students I taught in Hangzhou. So what makes the video special?
I was struck by how incredibly Chinese it was, down to the last detail. The girl looks like a typical Chinese college girl, and even when she’s filming herself, she never even looks the camera straight on. She’s wearing the same kind of white puffy coat that I’ve seen so many girls here wear in the winter, complete with faux fur trim on the hood. The bare white walls behind her, the simple shelf holding just a few knicknacks guarded by a stuffed bear, the folded up Asian-style comforter behind her that’s just barely peeking out… so Chinese.
I don’t mean to imply that all Chinese girls are just like this girl or anything ridiculous like that. I’m not trying to reinforce stereotypes here. I was just really amazed how the sweet song of a girl on video could just scream “China.”
Take a look for yourself.
09
Aug 2005The Thai Biker
So yesterday I was out riding around on my bike, doing errands. It was a beautiful day, and not even too hot. A typhoon will do great things for the weather (although it ripped the top of my favorite umbrella right off when Carl tricked me into going out in it on Saturday).
I was stopped at a light, and an older, deeply tanned biker next to me started saying “hello, hello” to me. Great, I thought. So much for my dissolving the “bubble of foreignness” when I’m riding my bike.
Shanghai’s Pearl Tower
The guy made another attempt, so I looked over at him. I noticed he was wearing a big pack, which seemed kind of strange. When he had my attention, he held up a picture. I took a look. It was a postcard of Shanghai’s Pearl Tower. Then he said, “Hello, hello. How I go here? How I go here?”
I was a little confused at first. Why was some Chinese guy on a bike asking me (in English, no less) how to get to the Pearl Tower? (We were nowhere near the Pearl Tower.) Then I noticed two flags on his bike. They had Thai writing on them. So this guy was Thai…
He repeated his question again, and I pointed in the general direction. He nodded. Then the light changed, and he was off.
Too bad I was a bit cold toward him (not to mention daft); he was probably a pretty interesting guy, biking through China… and all the way from Thailand(?). Oh well. It was morning. I’m not a morning person.
But sometimes interesting things happen when you ride a bike.
08
Aug 2005Using Baidu MP3 Search
I think any modern student of Chinese should be using Baidu’s MP3 search. With it, it’s possible to find a huge variety of MP3s on the internet, and it’s totally free! (Yes, the world’s loss regarding intellectual property rights in China can be your gain!) I can imagine, though, that for a beginning student of Chinese, an all-Chinese interface can be daunting. It is my aim to make it more accessible to the beginner.
Note: to use Baidu, your computer must support Chinese fonts. Baidu uses GB2312 encoding, which should be automatically detected by your browser, but the Chinese characters will only be readable if your computer supports them.
OK, let’s suppose you’re a total beginner. You’ve heard of this hot boy band called F4, and you figure it’s as good a place as any (plus you don’t have to actually use any Chinese to search for it!).
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Go to Baidu.com.
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Click on MP3 (or you could have gone to mp3.baidu.com directly).
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Enter your search term in the box (in this case it’s “F4” without the quotes).
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Choose your format. I only want MP3s, so I select the “MP3” radio button. (The choices, left to right, are: 歌词 (lyrics), 全部音乐 (all music files), mp3, rm (RealPlayer format), wma (Windows Media Player format), flash, 其它 (others), 铃声 (cell phone ringtones).)
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Click on the button next to the search box, “百度搜索” (Baidu search). (For the future, when you do searches from the search results page, make sure you click on the left button. The right button will be “歌词搜索” (lyrics search).)
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You will see a table of your search results. Below you will find a guide to interpreting this table:
- 歌曲名: Song Title (this name is linked to the MP3s you download)
- 试听: Listen First (uses Windows Media Player in a popup window)
- 歌词: Lyrics (very useful, especially for pop music, although not 100% reliable)
- 铃声: Cell Phone Ringtone
- 大小: Filesize (in megabytes)
- 格式: Format (MP3, WMA, etc.)
- 下载速度: Download Speed (especially if you’re outside of China, this may be important)
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Right click on a title(choose from the 歌曲名/Song Title column) and “Save as“. There’s a good chance that you’ll want to change the filename, as they are often completely random or unhelpful.Update: You now have to first left-click on the song title. A pop-up window will appear containing the URL to the MP3. Right-click on that to save.
That’s it! Also try out the lyrics search. You can click on 歌词 (lyrics) for any search result that has them. You can also search for lyrics directly, from the search results page. Click on the right button, “歌词搜索” (lyrics search).)
Note that the lyrics are not always 100% accurate. Most are submitted by users.
For other Sinosplice tutorials, click on the tutorial tag.
05
Aug 2005Kingsoft on Chips
I don’t think I’ve ever written about it before, but it’s such a valuable resource that I really should. Every student of Chinese (intermediate or higher) should be aware of the Kingsoft Online Dictionary.
The dictionary itself is not that special… If you put in an English word, it returns some possible Chinese translations. If you put in a Chinese word (in characters), it returns possible English translations, which are linked to those words’ Chinese definitions. Naturally, it is completely Chinese user-oriented, so there is no pinyin or notes explaining the differences between the Chinese words. I pretty much never use that dictionary.
What I do use often is the 短句 (“Short Sentences”) function. You can either enter a word in the dictionary first and then click on 短句, or you can click on 短句 and then enter a word.
For example, recently I encountered the word 芯片 at the video game store. I could tell by context that it meant “chip” (as in “computer chip”). The shop’s PS2’s came installed with a mod chip (直读芯片 or 米赛亚芯片) as well as an “anti-frying” chip (防烧芯片).
Later I wanted to explore the word 芯片 a bit more, so I looked it up with Kingsoft’s 短句 function. It returned 10 sentences using the word 芯片. The simplest sentence was first:
> 芯片是计算机中最贵重的部分。
> The chip is the most valuable part in the computer.
The most complex sentence was last:
> 硅元素与计算机的关系如此密切以至于大多数人可能更容易将它与加利福尼亚的硅谷而不是元素周期表联系起来。但是随着高速运算超越芯片和机器的局限将试管、承物玻璃片、溶液甚至脱氧核糖核酸（DNA）等生物化学和遗传学工具包括在内，这种想法可能很快就要做出根本性的修正了。
> The element silicon is so closely identified with computers that most people would be likely to associate it more readily with California’s high – tech valley than with the periodic table.But such thinking may soon have to be radically revised,as high – speed computation moves beyond chips and machines to include the tools of biochemistry and genetics:test tubes,slides,solutions,even DNA. [punctuation/spacing errors theirs]
Definitely a useful tool, but I should note that Kingsoft is very much a fallible source of information. I’ve been using its products for almost five years, and sometimes it comes up with some bizarre meanings/translations. Example: when I put “chip” into the 短句 function, these two were at the end of the list:
> What carpenter,such chip.
> 什么木匠，出什么活。
> Such carpenter,such chip.
> 什么木匠出什么活。
What’s going on here? Possibilities:
– Kingsoft is more down with the latest slang than me.
– Kingsoft has some seriously outdated expressions in its database.
– Kingsoft has taken upon itself to be a creative force in the evolution of the English language.
I’m not sure which it is.
04
Aug 2005Locking Up My Bike
When I bought my new bike, at the forefront of my mind was “this is so going to get stolen.” Bike theft is so common here that my roommate Lenny tells me he thinks of bikes as a disposable product. I think of it more like gambling. But in this game, “winning” means having your bike stolen, and the more you gamble, the higher chances you have of winning. For this reason I always go with as cheap a bike as I can find. It just has to be fully functional and big enough for me to ride. (If I weren’t so tall, I could find bikes for much cheaper.)
When I got my new bike, I also bought bike locks. I wasn’t sure which kind to buy… I know that some of them are incredibly easy to break. The U-locks for instance, can be opened with a ballpoint pen, I understand. Not cool. No U-lock for me. So which lock is good?
The clerk was amazingly useless. She just kept recommending the expensive ones, and she couldn’t even tell me why they were better. The one that was supposedly “best” was a thick chain lock. In Hanghzou I used to rely totally on the kind of lock that is attached to the back wheel and I never once had my bike stolen. So I bought one of each of those locks. Two locks.
When it came time to park, I realized one reason why bike theft is so common in China. When I used to bike all around the campus of the University of Florida, there were bike racks everywhere. Really sturdy metal frames, set in the ground with concrete. You felt pretty secure when you locked the frame of your bike to one of those. But bike racks are relatively rare here in Shanghai. So I’m finding the chain lock I bought to be of very limited value.
One thing a lot of people do is take their bike into their building and up the elevator. Then they either keep it in the hall by their apartment door, or they actually keep it in their apartment. I don’t like that method at all. Bikes should be kept outside, thieves or no.
My apartment complex has this underground parking garage/mosquito farm. I’m not sure how safe it keeps my bike, but it seems safe. In addition, there are locks set in the ground that can lock your bike wheel securely to the ground (above). You have to pay if you want a key to one of those “ground locks,” though.
I noticed that a lot of them are unused. I also saw that one other biker used a chain lock to lock his bike securely to one of the empty ground locks. I decided that was a good idea, so I did that too. When I returned to my bike a day or two later, I found this hand-written note on my bike (left).
Without even reading the note, I knew why I had gotten it. But, dilligent student of Chinese that I am, I wanted to know exactly what the note said. Did it threaten me with something, or what? The handwriting was really hard for me to make out, however. I found that I could only decipher about half of it on my own. I enlisted my girlfriend’s help, and it actually took some effort for her to decipher every character.
Can you read it? Take the challenge!
When you’re ready for the answer, drag your cursor from one bracket to the other: [ 如需要 / 地桩锁 / 请到物 / 业申请！ / 不要占用 / 别人的地 / 桩锁！！！ ]
In English it basically means, “If you need a ground lock, please apply at the office! Do not occupy other people’s ground locks!!!”
I found a thick metal pipe I can lock my bike to instead. Let’s see how long I can keep this bike.
03
Aug 2005X-Net is here!
That’s right: X-Net! If it sounds futuristic and vaguely badass, it’s because it is!
Behold X-Net:
The vigilant observer might spot me astride this sweet piece of one-speed fury on the streets of Shanghai. I may be utilizing its convenient front basket, or ringing the bike bell to warn the unwary pedestrians in my path. I won’t be taking too many sharp turns, though, because that would involve smacking my knee with the handle bars, but that’s neither here nor there. The bike is big enough for me to ride.
<serious>Walking around Shanghai, I often feel like I’m in a bubble of foreignness, always a bit apart from my environs. When I ride my bike, however, the bubble seems to disappear. I don’t know what it is… Maybe part of it is that when I ride a bike no one can tell that I’m 194cm tall. But in Shanghai I don’t get stared at too much anyway, so that’s probably not it. Regardless, really being part of the traffic flow makes me feel like I’m a part of the city in a way that nothing else does.</serious>
Thanks, X-Net!
P.S. Dear bike thieves in China: Don’t steal this bike, regardless of how awesome I just said it is!
02
Aug 2005The name "Baidu"
I recently read a Yahoo News article titled “Baidu.com Ready for Stock Market Debut.” I read the story only partly interested until I got to the part about how the name “Baidu” (百度) was chosen. Literally, it means “100 degrees,” so I figured the logic behind the name was akin to the logic behind the name “Yahoo 360.” You know, something about connections… about connecting you to the information you’re looking for. I was quite wrong.
I found an interview with the founder of Baidu, 李彦宏. I’ll give a rough translation of the part that interested me:
> Interviewer: What does the name “Baidu” mean?
> 李彦宏: The name “Baidu” is actually related to searching. Back in the second half of ’99 before the National Day festivities I was thinking about making something — about making a Chinese search engine — and I needed a name for it. I set a few conditions for myself: The first was that the domain name should be short. The second was that it had a definite connection with searching. The third was that it couldn’t be too obvious. It couldn’t have a word like “search” or “seek” in the name; it should be a bit subtler. The fourth was that Chinese people could understand it. It needn’t be an English word that Americans would understand; rather, being a Chinese language search engine, it should be understandable to Chinese people. It was actually taken from a poem by Xin Qiji (辛弃疾): “众里寻她千百度” [something like “searching for her desperately in the crowd” (?)].
I’m not good at translating, and I’m especially unqualified to translate Chinese poetry. But I believe in this usage 度 is simply used to express a degree of intensity. Together with 百, it expresses a high degree of intensity. I, rightly or wrongly, translated it above as “desperately.” I’m not sure how close I am.
For more context, here is the original poem it came from:
> 青玉案
> 东风夜放花千树，更吹落、星如雨。
> 宝马雕车香满路。
> 凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。
> 蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。
> 众里寻他千百度。
> 蓦然回首，那人却在，灯火阑珊处。
I can understand most of the poem without much difficulty, but again, I’m no translator, so I don’t want to touch it. I can confirm what Yahoo says, though. It “refers to a man ardently searching for his lover in a festival crowd.” If someone else wants to offer a translation, that would be nice. (Here’s a spoiler, though: in the last line, he finds her.)
Another interesting part of the article was this line: “Baidu.com’s advertising notes that Chinese has 38 ways to say ‘I.'” Huh? 38?! I wanted to factcheck this, so I did some searches. A lot of searches. Using Baidu as well as Google. I couldn’t find that claim anywhere. All I found was a Peking University BBS thread on the word “I” in various Chinese dialects.
Then I turned to Wenlin, my dictionary program. To my surprise, it listed 35! Not all of them are commonly used (or commonly used to mean “I”), but I guess that’s a start. In case you’re wondering, they are:
> ∾pr. 我 wǒ; 小 xiǎo; 咱们[-們] zánmen; 某 mǒu; 个人[個-] gèrén; 咱 zán; 余[餘] yú; 俺 ǎn; 弟 dì; 孤 gū; 区区[區區] qūqū; 侬[儂] nóng; 窃[竊] qiè; 朕 zhèn ∾n. 人家 rénjia; 兄弟 xiōngdi; 本人 běnrén; 老子 lǎozi; 臣 chén; 鄙人 bǐrén; 不才 bùcái; 不佞 bùnìng; 贱妾[賤-] jiànqiè; 某人 mǒurén; 妾 qiè; 洒家[灑-] sǎjiā; 晚生 wǎnshēng; 下官 xiàguān; 小的 xiǎode; 小可 xiǎokě; 小婿 xiǎoxù; 愚 yú; 愚兄 yúxiōng; 在下 zàixià; 治下 zhìxià
Whew! How many words does the English language have for “I”? Probably more than we might think at first.
I don’t know why I find Baidu so interesting, but I do. I’ve been working on my tags lately, so if you want to see what I’ve written about Baidu in the past, you can check out the Baidu tag.
01
Aug 2005Shanghainese Rap CD Release Party
I may have posted about Shanghainese rap once before, but I normally only listen to rap or hip hop occasionally. Still, the one time I went to a hip hop show at Caesar’s Pub (since closed) with my girlfriend, Brad, and a few other friends, we had a really good time. So when Brad mentioned to me that ShanghaiNing was throwing a CD release party, I was happy to go.
I don’t have a lot to say about the actual event… Obviously, the fact that you can get a record deal (with Sony BMG) doesn’t really mean your music is better. I heard a few songs I liked, and also got an earful of awful “hip hop English.” Some of the songs on the CD are not bad, however.
Here’s what the CD cover and track listing look like (click for full size):
Check out Brad’s photos of the event:
Check out Dan’s blog entry and photos of the event:
Shanghaiist also has a report on the event.
This is just the beginning of China’s rap/hip hop scene….
30
Jul 2005Why can't Asia just get along?
I don’t read a lot of blogs these days, and the topics I write on tend to come from my own experiences rather than the internet. Here’s one blog entry on Harvard’s Global Voices Online that I have to point out, though (via Peking Duck):
Inside the Japanese Blogosphere – The Anti-Korea Wave
Also interesting:
P.S. Scheduled posting, it would seem, refers to the minimum quantity of posts you’ll see. So there might be extras, from time to time, like this one.
29
Jul 2005Buying a PS2 in Shanghai
I went to my local video game shop last weekend. I took a look at the PlayStation 2 prices. I’m pretty sure this is what they were:
– Imported PS2 with mod chip installed + 1 locally manufactured controller + 10 free games: 1399 RMB
– Imported PS2 with mod chip installed + 1 imported controller + 10 free games: 1499 RMB
– Locally manufactured PS2 with mod chip installed + 1 locally manufactured controller + 10 free games: 1599 RMB
– Locally manufactured PS2 with mod chip installed + 1 imported controller + 10 free games: 1699 RMB
– imported 8 MB memory cards: 149 RMB
– imported controllers: 149 rmb
That’s right, the PS2’s manufactured in China cost more, and according to the owner the quality isn’t as good. I asked the owner why. The conversation went something like this:
> Me: Why are the ones made in China more expensive? Shouldn’t they be cheaper?
> Owner: Sony is Japanese! The Japanese always do this! They make good stuff and sell it to the USA, then they sell all the crappy electronics in China, for higher prices than the good stuff sells for in the USA! Why do you think we hate the Japanese?
> Me: Ummm, I thought that had something to do with historical events…
> Owner: No, this is why!
A very “Shanghai moment,” that.
The imported controllers are more expensive than locally manufactured ones, though. The owner highly recommends them, as the locally manufactured ones break/wear out too easily.
In that shop, pirated PS2 games go for 5 RMB each! I remember when I was a teenager I had to mow quite a few lawns to earn the money I needed to buy the NES cartridges I was dying to have. Nowadays, kids in Shanghai can get the newest video games for pocket change. The cost of the system itself is a bit prohibitive, though.
While I was in the shop, there was a high school boy in there seeking out the owner with all the anxiety of a parent going to visit a sick child in the hospital. It seems his mom got so fed up with his excessive game playing that she picked up his PS2 and smashed it against the ground. The owner said he could actually fix it! Meanwhile, the kid, in desperate need of his video game fix, was returning to the shop every few hours to inquire about the status of his precious PS2.
One of the games the owner was recommending was God of War. Now, I pretty much outgrew video games in college (except for the occasional game of StarCraft or original Alien Hominid), but this game had the magic to draw me completely back in. At least for a little while. There’s just one word for this game: stunning. (Also shockingly violent — not for the kiddies!) Greek mythology has never been so fun (even if it is a bit off).
If you know me, you surely know about my staunch anti-piracy stance. All this rampant piracy in China should not be supported.
But yeah, I’ve been playing quite a bit of PS2 lately.
28
Jul 2005Cricket Man
I’ve been told they exist here too, but I haven’t yet seen an ice cream truck here in China. What I have seen, as of last Saturday, is a cricket bicycle. No circus music tunes coming from this bicycle. Instead, incessant cricket chirping is what alerts you of its presence. It drew me right over.
Below, Cricket Man is showing me his goods. 3 rmb for the little crickets, 5 rmb for the big ones. You have to cut the little baskets open if you want to get them out.
Look at that bike… Loaded up, with crickety goodness! (Each of the spherical baskets on the back of the bike has a cricket inside it.)
At my request, Cricket Man is transferring a cricket to one of the nicer cages (which sell for 5 rmb each). He says they do bite, but it doesn’t hurt much. I noticed he didn’t want to touch the cricket, though.
Imprisoned again… more attractively, this time.
“Freeee meeee…”
I didn’t buy a cricket. I gave Cricket Man a tip for going to the trouble of tranferring a cricket so I could get some pictures. He said the crickets he sold will fight each other. I guess these are the crickets I heard about, so long ago…
P.S. It strikes me that maybe these are locusts, not crickets. But so what? This is Sinosplice, not Entomosplice!
27
Jul 2005Et tu, Flickr?
I’ve been having a lot of trouble accessing Flickr from Shanghai this past week, and it was going on even before I made my trip to the U.S. on July 3rd. This is especially annoying because I had started to use Flickr to host the images I use in my blog, and I was planning to move all my photo albums onto Flickr too. I already upgraded to a pro acount on Flickr and everything. ::sigh::
I wish the major web powers would be more vigilant about monitoring their sites’ accessibility in China. Yahoo owns Flickr, and Yahoo is supposedly buddy-buddy with the Chinese government. You’d think they would have the weight to keep their sites from being slowed to a crawl in China.
I’d love to hear how Flickr is loading in other parts of China.
26
Jul 2005新的软件
我马上要换这个blog的软件。我现在用的是Movable Type，但它的留言程序有些问题，所以只能换软件。
从下一篇开始我用WordPress软件，就可以留言了。
谢谢谅解。再见Movable Type！