Fuddland
Category: China
In February 2006 I moved to China. These are some of the things that happened while I was there.
This category also has the following subcategories [number of entries in brackets]:
- Chinese [Language] [6]
- Cultural Experiences [46]
- SQR [2]
- Sightseeing [8]
- Sinomoblog [51]
- Sinonews [48]
- Suzhou Gardens [3]
- Teaching in China [13]
- Travelling in China [6]
New year, new weblog entry!
I’ll get back into things slowly with a few photos of my winter holiday to Mount Emei, starting with the candles at Wannian Si — the Temple of 10,000 Years.
Mount Emei is one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism, and there are dozens of temples and statues honouring Puxian and his six-tusked elephant.
In the dead of winter there were almost no other people staying in the monastaries, and walking through the winter-wonderland forests there were times when we could hear no sound apart from the crunch of the snow under our feet. Even the monkeys were relatively well-behaved.
In: China / Travelling in China
2010 / 01 / 01 – 12:53 | Comment [1] | Top
To me, that “When in Rome…” expression is merely meant to encourage you to be a little adventurous. It means, “run naked from the sauna and jump into the freezing waters of a lake in Finland”, not “club a baby seal to death while passing through north-east Canada”.
It is not anywhere near a justification for abandoning the common courtesy and manners that you’ve been brought up to respect, just because you have seen some locals behaving in a way that wouldn’t rub in your home country. So while in China it might be—legally and traditionally—all right to light up a cigarette at the table while others are still eating, when you’re British or from the US, Canada and any of the other countries of the world that have realised just how stinky that smoke is, you should know better and I will give you a withering stare over the top of my fork until you stub that filth out.
Similarly, if you’ve travelled by public transport here, you’ve probably seen some Chinese people listening to music on their mobiles without the use of headphones. This is intensely annoying. You know damn well it is, because when you were living in your homeland, whenever anyone had his or her headphones bleeding music into the surrounding air, you tutted and rolled your eyes and exhaled with exasperation. But the thing you haven’t quite got is, they tend to listen to music like this only on public transport—crowded bus journeys that will be over relatively soon.
So why on Earth you—and I’m now talking to the Western man at the table next to me as I write this—think it’s all right to sit in a cafe, playing music on your laptop speakers when there is already muzak on, is beyond me. It’s easy to tune out the muzak, but as soon as you add your inane tinny beats to the mix, it becomes a spasmodically syncopated annoyance that is impossible to ignore. [And you haven’t even ordered anything to eat or drink.]
Last week I had the perfect storm of North American man who had already proven himself to be the worst speaker of Chinese in the whole of Chinadom when attempting to communicate with his local girlfriend, sitting three feet from me smoking a cigarette, oblivious to where the smoke was drifting [yes, all over me], playing Stand By Me on his iPhone speakers and singing along, in a cafe where people are trying to read, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The girlfriend was steadfastly ignoring him. I wish I knew her secret.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2009 / 10 / 19 – 17:24 | Comment [1] | Top
See, this is what happens when you don’t listen carefully. [Spotted in Carrefour Supermarket’s dog chews section, Chengdu.]
In: China / Sinomoblog
2009 / 10 / 13 – 18:40 | Comment [0] | Top
Latest entry in the SQR blog, “Village schools still struggling to be rebuilt.”
After the earthquake destroyed many of the local village schools in Qingchuan County, it was decided that rather than rebuild each small school, a large central school would be built in the nearest town. Unfortunately, for many of these villages the nearest town could be more than twenty kilometres away, along roads that have frequently been blocked by landslides, or made inaccessible by local rivers bursting their banks during the rainy season.
Read the rest of the entry, and note the coded language. For, “People started to wonder if…” read “Everybody knows that…”.
2009 / 10 / 10 – 15:33 | Comment [0] | Top
Getting to know the streets Chengdu is proving to quite tricky. Normally I have a fairly good sense of direction, but—after being spoiled by the ease of a navigating grid-based city such as Suzhou—I’m finding it difficult to get my bearings on the sprawling, criss-crossing roads of Chengdu.
Compounding the organic layout of the city are two further annoyances. Almost every street is undergoing major roadworks, and every day a different one of them has been cordoned off (slogan: “The inconvenience today is to facilitate tomorrow”). It’s not so much “inconvenient” as “ridiculous” that a taxi going to the supermarket costs twice as much as it does making the return journey.
A more permanent confusion is that the street names in my neighbourhood are all Fang-something-or-other. Fangcao East Road is perpendicular to Fangcao Road, and someone was clearly having a bit of fun labelling the junction “West Fangcao East Road”. And then there are two Fangcao West Roads: First Fangcao West Road and Second Fangcao West Road.
One of the other Fangs (Fanghua Street) is in the shape of a horseshoe: its entrance and exit both intersect Fangcao East Road, which I just know must have led to some confused rendezvous, with both people insisting that they are indeed waiting on the corner of Fanghua and Fangcao East.
But I’m sure it’ll get easier to find my way around over the coming months. Right, time to head off to work. I’m sure my front door is here somewhere…
2009 / 10 / 08 – 07:59 | Comment [0] | Top
The good news: following a bout of pretty heavy rain, the massive scary spider has gone.
The bad news: we don’t know where. Eeeek!
The best news: the kitten is still around.
In: Animals & China / Sinonews & Photos / Sinophotos
2009 / 10 / 04 – 22:35 | Comment [0] | Top
A new venture between the well-known hair stylists and a toy company of my youth?
In: Moblog & China / Sinomoblog
2009 / 10 / 02 – 15:16 | Comment [0] | Top
I’ve been living in Chengdu for just over two weeks now, gradually expanding my neighbourhood as I find places to eat, drink and be merry. Our new flat is much larger than the pokey little number we had in Suzhou [but at three-quarters’ the price], with a marvellous-sized kitchen and—being on the ground floor—we even have a good-sized back garden all to ourselves which we’ll be able to enjoy more once we get some furniture out there.
Actually, there are two other reasons why we’re not currently making more of the back garden. The first, main reason is that a cat decided to give birth to her two kittens there several weeks ago, and being feral she’s rather wary of us. Sadly, a few days ago I found that one of the kittens had not survived. [It was noticeably smaller than its sibling and walked with a limp, so was not off to the best start for a feral life.] It was given a simple burial under a nearby bush, two chopsticks marking its resting place. The surviving kitten seems stronger and we hope it will soon be big enough to escape the confines of the garden and be able to fend for itself.
While I was looking for a suitable place to dig the hole I almost walked face-first into the second reason why the garden isn’t my favourite hang-out at present: the most alarming-looking garden spider I’ve seen.
[There’s not much in those pictures to give you a sense of scale, so let me assure you, those are not taken with a macro lens. The spider is about nine feet in diameter. Think Shelob only scarier.]
My role in my new job has been rather undefined so far, but that’s the nature of the beast as the organisation reorientates itself from focussing on emergency relief towards project-based sustainable development. While I get to grips with looking for grants and putting together proposals there are plenty of other things that I’m much more comfortable with for me to do when I need a bit of a break: sorting out the website; organising and verifying the information that is coming in.
Despite being about 1,200 miles closer to Europe than Suzhou, Chengdu is definitely has a more “Chinese” feel about it, being a lot more inland and, moreover, not trying to soak up the overspill of Western influence from Shanghai that Suzhou has been attempting over the last fifteen years. It’s the fifth biggest city in China but, much like London, it doesn’t feel overwhelmingly huge. Yesterday I was taken out of the city for the first time, to see a nursery school only a couple of hours’ drive away in the countryside that had partially collapsed in the earthquake. We are hoping to fund the rebuilding, but the contractors have come back with quotes several times higher than originally estimated. Which reminds me, I must look up the Chinese for “cowboy”, I’ve a feeling it’s going to come in handy over the coming months.
The bigger-than-usual National Day holiday is coming up later this week and we hope to see a bit more of the city—including checking up on the pandas I saw over two and a half years ago.
2009 / 09 / 29 – 12:57 | Comment [1] | Top
The public zoo here in Suzhou really needs to work on its publicity. I’ve lived here for over three years and it wasn’t until about two weeks before I was due to leave that I learned that the zoo houses two of only four known remaining Yangtze Giant Soft-Shelled Turtles—possibly the largest species of turtle in the world.
Even more worrying, of the four that are left, three are male. The sole remaining female lives, along with one male, here in Suzhou. The other two males are in Vietnam. A conservation breeding programme is in effect, which I learned about through a public talk given at The Bookworm, but you really wouldn’t know it just from visiting the zoo.
The water in the turtle pond is part of Suzhou’s network of polluted canals; the pond is open-air and there are no staff on hand to stop idiotic members of the public throwing cakes, biscuits, bread, soft-drinks, as well as spit and litter into the pond; there is construction going on all around, which is apparently going to lead to a much-improved living environment for the turtles, but the stress of all the noise and chaos isn’t really going to help these last two hopes for the species to produce any offspring.
Almost as soon as they were introduced, despite not having seen an opposite member of their sex for a very long time, their instincts took over and the female deposited some eggs in the pitiful sand pit at the top end of their enclosure. Half were collected by the conservation staff and placed into three different incubators [three different temperatures], and half were left in the sand to develop naturally. But none survived.
The female is around 80 years old and the male could be 100, or perhaps older, and if their life-expectancies are similar to other species of turtle then they may only be in middle-age. Turtles have been known to reproduce virtually up until they die of old age, so there may still be a chance that future batches will be more successful, but so little is known about this particular species that they’re not even sure if they are giving them the right diet—although it’s a safe bet that biscuits and spit are not exactly part of a natural diet.
For political reasons, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of the other two males being given a shot at becoming fathers anytime soon—at least, not through natural means. At the talk, the possibility of using artificial insemination was discussed and is an option they are considering. It’s worth mentioning that just a couple of years ago, there were six of these turtles left, but two died while the conservation programme was in the process of being set up. If the female passes away just as suddenly, that’s it: another extinction, right under our noses. Perhaps being well aware of her critical importance, the smaller female stayed well away from the public end of the pond, but the big male swam over and gave us a chance to see this incredibly rare creature from just a few feet away.
In: Animals & China / Cultural Experiences & Indexed
2009 / 08 / 09 – 11:58 | Comment [4] | Top
As well as enjoying the delicious dishes, we played a few non-drinking games at my leaving dinner.
- Don’t guess the number
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Person X [secretly] writes down a number between 1 and 100 [not inclusive]. The players take it in turns to guess what the number is—or rather, what it isn’t. After each guess, if it isn’t the number on the paper, the guessing range is narrowed by whatever the most recent guess was.
For example, suppose the number to guess is 76. Player A [wrongly] guesses 23. Now the guessing range is narrowed to between 23 and 100. Player B guesses 87, so now the range is 23 to 87. And so on, until someone lands on 76 and has to perform a forfeit. [In our case, the forfeit was eating one of the hot chillies.]
Handy hint: Chinese people are quite superstitious about their numbers so if you want the round to be over quickly, write down the lucky 8 or 88. If you want it to last for a long time, write 4, 14 or 44, all of which would be considered unlucky.
- Lip-reading
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A variation on the Telephone Game [which is the less offensive name for what the British call Chinese Whispers]. The first person thinks of a word or phrase and mouths it to the person next to them, without the other players being allowed to see. They are only allowed to mouth it twice. The phrase gets passed around the circle until the last player says what he/she thinks it is.
This game is probably quite boring in English, but since Chinese is a tonal language, it is a lot harder to read what is being said from the shape of the mouth alone. When it was my turn, I started with “tiger”, which morphed into “rat” along the way and finally emerged as “teacher”.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2009 / 08 / 07 – 18:07 | Comment [0] | Top
Last Sunday I had my farewell dinner with some of my colleagues from Longwin. This is what we ate:
Yum! [Except for the chicken feet. I didn’t sanction that order.]
In: Food and Drink & China / Teaching in China / Longwin Modern English
2009 / 08 / 06 – 13:12 | Comment [3] | Top
Way back in the mists of I-first-got-to-China time, I said that one of the reasons I had decided to broaden my cultural horizons was a desire to move into the non-profit field. After getting a bit stuck in a rut, thanks to some gentle nudging by Mary, about a year ago I started on a concerted effort to save up a good wodge of cash in order to support myself for a stint of volunteering.
During my travels in Yunnan I had come across a flyer for an organisation that runs a development worker training programme at the Yunnan Institute of Development [YID] in the small city of Yuxi, which sounded right up my alley, so that was where I set my sights. However, as the months went on it became clear that the prospects of employment for Mary in Yuxi were pretty much zero, and we began to wonder about other options. [But that was really my only reason for looking for other ideas. I’ve been in touch with the woman who runs the programme at the YID, and it really does look worthwhile.]
Around the same time, my friend Peter—co-owner of the Bookworm chain—had talked to me about moving to Sichuan and coming to work for his NGO, Sichuan Quake Relief [SQR], which he had founded with a chap called Mark the day after the earthquake struck last year. It was initially involved in the emergency relief efforts, but a year later the focus is shifting towards project-based rebuilding and development work, for which he needs someone to research and write grant proposals in order to secure funding from domestic and overseas organisations, as well as be involved in the operation of those projects. So from September, that someone is going to be me: relocating to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, doing full-time, practical, real-life work, trying to help rebuild the lives of the millions who are still living in tents, on basic food allowances; still suffering from aftershocks and landslides that hamper their efforts; living in even worse poverty than they were before May 12, 2008. It’s going to be quite the challenge.
2009 / 07 / 28 – 16:51 | Comment [0] | Top
My new favourite sign in Suzhou, at a new Italian cafe. I like to imagine the meeting:
Right, what do we sell? Coffee … er, other drinks … ooo cakes, yes! What else? ‘Relax’? We don’t sell ‘relax’. That’s a verb! Oh all right, we sell relax. And …? Music? Again, we don’t so much sell that as play-the-same-mp3s-over-and-over. Okay, I suppose that’s all … Wait! Bread!
In: Moblog & China / Sinomoblog
2009 / 07 / 26 – 10:51 | Comment [2] | Top
I had oh-so-very high hopes for this eclipse.
My attempts at viewing the Cornish Eclipse in the summer of 1999 were thwarted by overcast skies, so I was quite excited to learn that the path of the total eclipse of the century was passing straight over Suzhou. I decided that heading out to Tianping Hill would give me a good vantage point, surrounded by trees below and noticeably less pollution than the downtown area.
But, as much of the rest of the eclipse-watching world found, when the day arrived there was nothing to be seen but an overcast sky. Ever the optimist, I got together my camera, tripod and newly-purchased solar filters and was soon making the ascent in the light drizzle.
About halfway up, the skies opened and the rain went from drizzle to downpour in a matter of minutes. In my morning grogginess I’d forgotten to pack an umbrella, but a passing pair of students sidled up to me and offered me one as they huddled under another. It soon became obvious that the Sun was never going to be visible, so I thanked the two girls for their loan and headed back down to catch the bus into town. I was still on the bus when the darkness descended, which was impressively swift and all the more eerie for the torrents of rain that were hammering the roof and roads.
Still, at least I got a couple of decent shots of the lotus pond at Tianping Hill before the rain started … and there’s still next January to look forward to.
In: China / Sinonews & Photos / Sinophotos
2009 / 07 / 24 – 23:08 | Top
We went to see Star Trek last night—excellent stuff, probably going to watch it again tonight. But one thing that doesn’t sit quite right is the Chinese name: the poster says
In: China / Sinomoblog
2009 / 05 / 24 – 17:44 | Top
As I made my way into the empty meeting room at just before half-past two to observe the three-minute silence, I thought about telling my colleagues what I was doing, but decided against it: it’s a personal choice, and I was interested to see how many people actually stopped work to mark the first anniversary of China’s worst natural disaster for thirty years.
I was surprised to find that no-one else stopped what they were doing. Not in my office, nor on the street below. I had been told that the city air-raid siren would sound at 2.28pm, lasting for the full three minutes, but over the sound of car horns and construction, I could only faintly hear the siren carried on the wind from the downtown area a few miles away. Either the Industrial Park area, where I work, doesn’t also have one, or for some reason it was not used. From the 28th floor I looked up and down the street, into the construction sites and at the cars and buses, to see if I could spot anyone who had downed tools or pulled over, but people were seemingly oblivious. I asked several [Chinese] friends in other offices in the area if their companies, or even they themselves, observed the silence, but no companies did, and most individuals didn’t either.
This is not to say that the nation is at all unsentimental about the tragedy: there are plenty of events taking place all over the nation to commemorate the earthquake, not least a day of specially-dedicated television. Given that many of the office blocks around here shook with the force of the quake, 2000 miles from the epicentre, I just thought more people here would mark it too.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2009 / 05 / 12 – 14:42 | Comment [0] | Top
My taxi had to wait [horn honking the entire time, naturally] which this chap scooped up the noodles that had spilled off the back of his bike. They were uncooked, and I can’t help but worry about where he was taking them. This street has a plethora of restaurants, some of which I have been known to frequent in the past. Rice for me from now on, I think!
In: Moblog & China / Sinomoblog
2009 / 05 / 07 – 21:11 | Comment [0] | Top
I quite often have to talk to students about Western dining habits—the differences, the etiquette, and so on—and one of the phrases that appears in their vocabulary list is, “going Dutch”. The phrase always requires an explanation, after which the students generally nod and say that in China it is called “AA”.
The term “AA” has puzzled me since I first heard it, being made up of English letters as opposed to Chinese characters, and no-one seemed to know what it actually stood for. In fact, most of them had never even thought to wonder.
“What does ‘AA’ mean?” I would ask.
“Go Dutch,” the reply would come.
“No, I’m not testing you on something you just learned. I mean, what does it stand for?”
“Oh … we don’t know.”
They wouldn’t even guess, and I was similarly stumped. [I could see no obvious connection with alcohol or automobiles.] Until, that is, yesterday, when a student was finally able to put me out of my misery.
As anyone who has learned a language while living or working alongside its native speakers will testify, one’s vocabulary can have some fairly eclectic entries. I knew how to say “mobile phone charger” in Chinese before I learnt the colours of the rainbow, simply because buying a new one was more of a priority than shopping for oil paints. [And when I do get around to building up a palette, it will probably conspicuously lack a purple, because I have immense trouble pronouncing that particular hue.]
And so it was that, somehow, a student who earlier in the class had no idea what “to go on a date” meant, was able to inform me why “AA” means “to split the bill”: it stands for “algebraic average”, which is what most people mean when they say, “take the average”, but in the world of maths is more commonly called the mean.
This of course answers another question that I frequently get asked, namely why—given my background—I’m not teaching mathematics in China. Any country that adopts a mathematical phrase into its everyday language clearly doesn’t need any help from me.
In: China / Chinese [Language] & Indexed
2009 / 05 / 07 – 15:22 | Top
This Friday, May the 1st, is China’s Labour Day—a national holiday to celebrate the toils of the worker, so our school is closed for the day. But since Friday is one of my usual weekly days off, I asked if I could choose which day I would like to have off in lieu, as we have done in the past when a public holiday falls on a regular day off.
“Oh, you’ve actually already had it,” came the reply. “Remember during Spring Festival when we gave everybody a four-day break instead of the usual three? That’s because we ‘borrowed’ one day from Labour Day.”
In other words, the company took it upon themselves to move our public holiday by three months and tack it onto another one. Whilst the one-day-longer Spring Festival break was of course welcome, extending the period that employees have to go until their next long weekend is not so good for morale. And since the school is still closed for this Labour Day, the poor people who don’t usually have Fridays off have to actually make up for the closure by working one of their days off during the next couple of weeks. As you can imagine, there are some unhappy mutterings going on below management level.
Still, it could be worse. Last month the local government in Guangdong province announced plans to return the Labour Day holiday to its former status as a week-long public holiday [a so-called Golden Week], in order to stimulate the local economy. The plan was initially approved by the Central Government and people duly went ahead and booked trips lasting most of the week. But when several other regions also announced plans to follow suit, the Central Government reneged and Guangdong was forced to scrap its official plans. But it looks as though lots of people are still going ahead with their trips, presumably either taking a couple of days of their annual leave, or perhaps even asking for unpaid leave.
Now I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that officially announcing a public holiday, only to cancel it after people have already made plans, is not only going to make people a bit annoyed [since when has that ever affected a policy change decision?], but more importantly is actually going to negatively affect the local economy, as people who go ahead with their trips are forced to save even more that usual to make up for spending-without-earning. I’m sure there have been plenty of unhappy mutterings down in Guangdong this past month or so too.
In: China / Teaching in China / Longwin Modern English & China / Sinonews
2009 / 04 / 29 – 14:53 | Comment [0] | Top
Our building is having its windows washed this week—by men hanging from single, very old-looking ropes, with no back-up line. Here’s what that looks like from the 28th floor.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2009 / 04 / 27 – 23:09 | Comment [2] | Top
One of the niggling differences in working in China is the way you receive your salary: unlike in the UK, where you simply give your bank’s sort-code and account number to the finance department, in China your company decides on one particular bank to use, and the employees must all open an account with that bank if they want to be paid.
And so I am now a card-carrying customer of the Agricultural Bank of China, famed for the largest bank robbery in the history of the country. Since the four largest banks in China are all state-owned, there seems to be very little to distinguish them, and I’m not entirely sure why my company opted for this bank down the street when there’s a branch of Bank of China in the same building as our office. Perhaps it’s because of the 5% discount account-holders enjoy at the nearby Subway sandwich shop.
In: China
2009 / 04 / 18 – 11:48 | Comment [4] | Top
It’s been over about three years since I wanted to transfer money from here back to the UK, so I did a quick search for what information I needed to provide to the bank and was pleasantly amused to find my own post about it come back as one of the first hits. Armed with the relevant details, I went to my local Bank of China branch and told the nice lady at the Foreign Currency Transfer desk what I wanted to do.
Unfortunately I hit a bit of a snag because, as I was informed, a foreigner is only permitted to transfer up to US$500 worth of RMB per day. The amount I wanted to transfer was a bit more than that, and I didn’t really want to be going to the bank every day for the next couple of weeks, paying bank changes every time, so I asked if there was a way around it.
The first suggestion was to get an official tax statement from my company declaring that I’d paid the relevant taxes on my income. Whilst I have indeed been paying said taxes [honest gov’nor], I’ve tried getting the official form in the past and the best my company offered me was a spreadsheet printout stamped with the company seal of officialness. I showed it to the nice lady and she said it wasn’t the right thing. I was just about to leave and steel myself to try and extract the official official tax statement from my company, when the nice lady had another idea.
Chinese citizens are apparently allowed to transfer up to US$50,000 a year out of the country, and it turns out they can do this on behalf of a foreign friend. Naturally I can’t vouch for the true legality of this, but I was reassured by the nice lady that no trouble would befall the Chinese citizen in question provided they did not exceed the yearly limit. In that case, I said, could she be my friend for the afternoon and help me transfer the money on my behalf? [Having been asked countless times by complete strangers here if we can be friends, I had no qualms about returning the request on this occasion.] But she said that as a bank employee, she could not help me.
So I made a call to my very good friend and colleague [who happened to be just upstairs in my office], and within a few minutes the transfer process was underway. For some reason you have to state the amount you want to transfer in the destination currency, even though you only really know for certain how much money you have in RMB. There was a brief period of mild farce where every time they double-checked with me the amount I wanted to transfer, the exchange rate had changed and we had to recalculate that I had enough in my bank account to cover it. But it was all relatively simple to get done, and two days later the money had arrived in my Smile bank account.
By the way, my friend and I had to sign a total of four forms to complete the money transfer. When I arranged to get a throwaway pay-as-you-go SIM card for my Dad during his week-long visit, I had to sign six different pieces of paper. But at least the mobile phone company gave me a two free toiletry bags containing a toothbrush, toothpaste and a face towel for my troubles. The bank couldn’t even copy my name out of my passport correctly when I first opened the account, so it was particularly satisfying to finally close my—or rather, Davind’s—account with them.
2009 / 04 / 17 – 10:45 | Comment [1] | Top
With new-found confidence stemming from a combination of a macro lens, a photography partner or two [in the form of my Dad and my friend Lauren] and generally getting over my previous reticence, I have recently taken a great deal of candid and not-so-candid photos of people going about their daily business here in Suzhou.
Any guilt one feels about taking photos of people without their knowledge, let alone permission, is somewhat negated by the countless occasions on which I or foreign friends have been not-so-surreptitiously snapped while we’re having dinner or just walking by.
In: China / Sightseeing & Photos / Sinophotos
2009 / 04 / 06 – 14:28 | Comment [1] | Top
My Dad recently visit me for a week in Suzhou. He lent me his macro lens while he was here. Now I wants one.
In: China / Sightseeing & China / Sightseeing & Photos / Sinophotos
2009 / 04 / 05 – 08:19 | Comment [2] | Top
Here’s a quick tip on how to impress the Chinese with your knowledge of their language: learn how to write the character for die [as in the singular of dice]. Some of the classroom activities I like to do involve use of a die to introduce an element of excitement into the lesson [this sounds sarcastic but believe me, telling a group that the next person to roll a 6 has to give a one-minute talk, then watching as the tension mounts on each throw is quite amusing].
Invariably someone will point at the die and ask what it’s called in English, and I have now learnt to lean back and wait for them to make a note of it, because when they come to writing down the Chinese word, it suddenly occurs to them that they have no idea how to. They know how to pronounce it all right, “
Now before we all leap on our herd of high horses and moan about how difficult the Chinese language must be if the native speakers can’t even remember how to write it, there are currently over ten million pages indexed by Google that say “calender” not “calendar”, to cite just one of the 100 most commonly misspelled words.
So you might imagine that the character for die is one of the more complex ones, but in fact the “
[Aside: the most stroke-laden characters I can find are
In: China / Chinese [Language]
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2008 / 10 / 09 – 15:05 | Top
2008 / 10 / 07 – 10:15 | Comment [3] | Top
2008 / 09 / 14 – 16:50 | Comment [4] | Top
2008 / 08 / 19 – 11:31 | Comment [3] | Top
2008 / 08 / 10 – 10:08 | Comment [0] | Top
2008 / 08 / 05 – 09:31 | Top
2008 / 08 / 02 – 13:18 | Top
Read the rest of “We don’t need no Western toilets, steenkin’ or otherwise”…
2008 / 08 / 01 – 11:53 | Top
2008 / 08 / 01 – 10:29 | Top
2008 / 07 / 31 – 22:06 | Top
2008 / 07 / 27 – 19:59 | Top
2008 / 06 / 02 – 10:18 | Comment [4] | Top
2008 / 04 / 16 – 21:31 | Comment [1] | Top
Read the rest of “The Li River and the countryside of Yangshuo”…
2008 / 03 / 30 – 09:25 | Comment [1] | Top
2008 / 03 / 24 – 21:56 | Top
2008 / 03 / 14 – 18:01 | Top
2008 / 03 / 07 – 11:52 | Top
2008 / 03 / 05 – 16:40 | Top
Read the rest of “Three [and a bit] provinces in three [and a bit] weeks”…
2008 / 03 / 02 – 11:41 | Top
2008 / 02 / 02 – 15:44 | Top
2008 / 02 / 01 – 10:36 | Top
2008 / 01 / 26 – 14:49 | Comment [1] | Top
2008 / 01 / 21 – 18:34 | Comment [4] | Top
2008 / 01 / 21 – 10:39 | Comment [1] | Top
2008 / 01 / 12 – 13:18 | Comment [2] | Top
2008 / 01 / 01 – 01:01 | Comment [3] | Top
Read the rest of “On the third day of Christmas, my landlord gave to me…”…
2007 / 12 / 31 – 10:24 | Top
Read the rest of “Our washing machine may possibly be a little bit possessed”…
2007 / 12 / 09 – 13:46 | Comment [3] | Top
2007 / 12 / 08 – 17:10 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 11 / 25 – 09:37 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 10 / 28 – 10:57 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 09 / 21 – 10:38 | Comment [3] | Top
2007 / 09 / 18 – 15:22 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 09 / 18 – 11:32 | Comment [3] | Top
2007 / 09 / 18 – 02:53 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 08 / 02 – 11:04 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 07 / 27 – 23:05 | Top
2007 / 07 / 25 – 22:40 | Top
2007 / 07 / 22 – 13:54 | Top
2007 / 07 / 18 – 16:09 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 07 / 14 – 10:35 | Comment [2] | Top
Read the rest of “The Complete Guide to Flat-Hunting in Suzhou”…
2007 / 07 / 12 – 16:43 | Comment [3] | Top
2007 / 06 / 22 – 12:59 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 06 / 11 – 14:49 | Comment [5] | Top
2007 / 06 / 06 – 12:37 | Top
2007 / 06 / 02 – 13:34 | Comment [9] | Top
2007 / 05 / 30 – 09:50 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 05 / 11 – 09:20 | Top
2007 / 05 / 07 – 21:22 | Top
2007 / 04 / 30 – 15:51 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 04 / 26 – 08:27 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 04 / 25 – 08:45 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 04 / 18 – 17:06 | Comment [3] | Top
2007 / 04 / 18 – 12:34 | Top
2007 / 04 / 17 – 08:40 | Comment [2] | Top
Read the rest of “At least they wrote “every day” as two words”…
2007 / 04 / 16 – 17:23 | Top
2007 / 04 / 12 – 08:47 | Top
2007 / 04 / 09 – 10:04 | Comment [4] | Top
2007 / 04 / 08 – 16:59 | Top
2007 / 04 / 08 – 16:12 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 04 / 03 – 18:53 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 04 / 01 – 10:13 | Comment [4] | Top
2007 / 03 / 19 – 16:33 | Top
2007 / 03 / 19 – 08:22 | Top
2007 / 03 / 08 – 15:37 | Comment [8] | Top
2007 / 03 / 07 – 09:52 | Top
2007 / 03 / 06 – 09:05 | Top
2007 / 03 / 04 – 11:44 | Top
2007 / 03 / 03 – 15:27 | Top
2007 / 02 / 21 – 10:06 | Top
2007 / 02 / 20 – 12:09 | Top
2007 / 02 / 20 – 08:27 | Top
2007 / 02 / 18 – 13:48 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 02 / 17 – 15:51 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 02 / 16 – 10:12 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 02 / 15 – 10:00 | Top
2007 / 02 / 15 – 07:12 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 02 / 12 – 21:47 | Comment [1] | Top
Read the rest of “Days One and Two: so far so the same as ever”…
2007 / 02 / 06 – 12:55 | Comment [6] | Top
2007 / 02 / 05 – 14:12 | Top
2007 / 02 / 04 – 09:19 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 02 / 04 – 07:16 | Top
2007 / 02 / 01 – 19:39 | Comment [1] | Top
2007 / 02 / 01 – 14:16 | Top
Read the rest of “I don’t think they really thought this statue through”…
2007 / 01 / 29 – 21:28 | Top
2007 / 01 / 29 – 09:31 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 01 / 26 – 13:56 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 01 / 25 – 15:53 | Top
2007 / 01 / 15 – 10:16 | Top
2007 / 01 / 14 – 08:44 | Top
2007 / 01 / 14 – 08:21 | Comment [3] | Top
2007 / 01 / 07 – 10:28 | Comment [4] | Top
2007 / 01 / 04 – 16:06 | Comment [2] | Top
2007 / 01 / 01 – 07:01 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 12 / 31 – 21:38 | Top
2006 / 12 / 21 – 05:28 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 12 / 19 – 21:44 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 12 / 18 – 20:59 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 12 / 17 – 21:20 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 12 / 14 – 13:16 | Comment [5] | Top
2006 / 12 / 05 – 19:29 | Top
2006 / 11 / 28 – 14:44 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 11 / 21 – 17:32 | Comment [5] | Top
2006 / 11 / 20 – 14:48 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 11 / 17 – 21:47 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 11 / 17 – 21:41 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 10 / 30 – 14:21 | Comment [5] | Top
2006 / 10 / 15 – 10:06 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 10 / 11 – 10:32 | Comment [9] | Top
2006 / 10 / 09 – 22:30 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 10 / 05 – 07:54 | Comment [6] | Top
2006 / 10 / 04 – 11:08 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 09 / 30 – 09:47 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 09 / 28 – 16:14 | Top
2006 / 09 / 18 – 07:00 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 09 / 11 – 09:43 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 09 / 06 – 09:17 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 09 / 05 – 21:48 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 09 / 05 – 11:21 | Comment [4] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 09 / 02 – 18:30 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 08 / 25 – 22:32 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 08 / 21 – 11:31 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 08 / 19 – 09:19 | Comment [2] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 08 / 17 – 14:09 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 08 / 16 – 15:35 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 08 / 14 – 21:20 | Comment [3] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 08 / 07 – 16:07 | Comment [7] | Top
2006 / 07 / 28 – 18:47 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 07 / 22 – 19:22 | Top
2006 / 07 / 21 – 13:28 | Comment [1] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 07 / 19 – 15:31 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 07 / 14 – 16:25 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 07 / 07 – 13:26 | Comment [3] | Top
Read the rest of “Super-realistic brooches are all the rage here”…
2006 / 07 / 03 – 07:59 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 06 / 26 – 23:57 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 06 / 23 – 16:12 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 06 / 15 – 11:44 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 06 / 11 – 09:15 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 06 / 10 – 14:13 | Comment [3] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 06 / 05 – 17:18 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 06 / 04 – 02:01 | Top
2006 / 05 / 30 – 12:40 | Comment [10] | Top
2006 / 05 / 29 – 08:15 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 05 / 27 – 01:28 | Top
2006 / 05 / 20 – 21:38 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 05 / 17 – 13:34 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 05 / 16 – 12:53 | Comment [1] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 05 / 14 – 20:09 | Top
Read the rest of “Probably the last thing I expected to see in Inner Mongolia”…
2006 / 05 / 10 – 03:07 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 05 / 08 – 09:00 | Comment [3] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 04 / 29 – 15:15 | Top
2006 / 04 / 27 – 13:38 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 04 / 25 – 23:24 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 04 / 20 – 09:36 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 04 / 17 – 18:41 | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 04 / 17 – 09:30 | Top
2006 / 04 / 15 – 21:35 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 04 / 14 – 19:20 | Top
2006 / 04 / 14 – 13:43 | Top
2006 / 04 / 07 – 13:37 | Comment [7] | Top
2006 / 04 / 06 – 10:57 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 04 / 03 – 07:44 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 04 / 01 – 18:43 | Comment [2] | Top
Read the rest of “Daytrip to Shenyang—the Imperial Palace of the Qing Dynasty”…
2006 / 03 / 31 – 20:49 | Top
Read the rest of “Daytrip to Shenyang—ni hao, Chairman Mao”…
2006 / 03 / 31 – 19:17 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 03 / 31 – 10:15 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 03 / 29 – 02:06 | Top
2006 / 03 / 26 – 18:58 | Top
2006 / 03 / 25 – 21:59 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 03 / 23 – 14:01 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 03 / 23 – 12:12 | Comment [3] | Top
Read the rest of “How to transfer money from China to a UK bank account”…
2006 / 03 / 22 – 19:06 | Top
2006 / 03 / 21 – 21:42 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 03 / 20 – 21:58 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 03 / 18 – 20:37 | Comment [2] | Top
2006 / 03 / 16 – 21:55 | Top
2006 / 03 / 16 – 20:23 | Comment [3] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 03 / 15 – 21:09 | Comment [1] | Trackback [1] | Top
2006 / 03 / 15 – 20:14 | Top
2006 / 03 / 11 – 21:05 | Comment [4] | Trackback [2] | Top
2006 / 03 / 08 – 22:55 | Comment [6] | Top
2006 / 03 / 07 – 14:19 | Top
2006 / 03 / 06 – 22:08 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 03 / 03 – 14:09 | Top
2006 / 03 / 03 – 07:09 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 03 / 02 – 21:38 | Top
Read the rest of “Chinese food: here it’s just called “food””…
2006 / 03 / 01 – 13:14 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 02 / 27 – 22:06 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 02 / 27 – 11:05 | Top
2006 / 02 / 27 – 10:11 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 02 / 26 – 10:33 | Top
2006 / 02 / 17 – 09:42 | Comment [3] | Top
2006 / 02 / 16 – 14:00 | Comment [1] | Top
2006 / 02 / 16 – 07:15 | Comment [6] | Top
2005 / 12 / 20 – 17:03 | Comment [4] | Trackback [1] | Top
