Lu, 妳怎麽樣？
Lu,
妳好！妳還看我的Blog嗎？我等inLove出新專輯。我給我的幾個朋友聼你們的專輯。 他們都很喜歡。你們會什麽時候出新專輯？ 請留言吧！
謝謝！
孫智謙 (Chris)
(4 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
Loading ... (4 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5) Loading ...Best news in a long time…
| The news is depressing lately. Well, it’s actually pretty much always depressing. But I just got some great news to offset some of the doom and gloom! After almost 4 years, InLove is finally releasing a new album in July! The singer, Lu, kindly stopped by the site to leave a message about it. Here are her comments (in part) below: |
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| I’m really excited about this because their first album was awesome. Every song on it had a certain warmth that kept me wanting to listen again and again. If this were the 80s, when all we had were records or cassette tapes, I’d probably be on my 4th or 5th copy of it because I would’ve worn out several copies already from listening so much. Check out the video below for a taste of their sound: |
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...A turn…for the worse
| When I first heard the opening piano of this song, I thought, “Wow, this is gonna be good!” But then Wilber Pan started to sing, and I quickly realized that this was going to be a case of a great song ruined by a bad vocal performance. Like I said, the piano is very nice, and the melody is nice, too. But who gave the recording of the vocal track the green light? And how close was he standing to a jet engine when he did so? I’m not saying it’s an absolutely horrible vocal performance, but it’s more suitable for karaoke in a private room with friends than being put on an album for the whole world to hear. It’s just a very amateur performance. His vibrato sounds forced, it sounds like he’s having a hard time singing as low as low as he does in the verses, and his tone isn’t very good in the chorus, either. Even the background vocals sound rough to me. It could be that it was done on purpose so that they didn’t overpower the lackluster performance on the main vocals, but if you have to do that, either key the song differently for the singer, or just have someone else sing it. I haven’t heard any other of Wil’s ballads, but if they’re all like this, he needs to avoid them in the future and stick to hip hop (which he does well), for our ears’ sake. |
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...8 mistakes to avoid when learning Chinese
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| I just came across a great post on TheChinaExpat.com highlighting some common mistakes learners of Chinese make, and I thought I’d post about it here. The eight mistakes highlighted by the post are: 1.) Not mastering the tones, 2.) Not learning characters, 3.) Killing yourself learning characters, 4.) Focusing on progress over process, 5.) Not making good Chinese friends, 6.) Not using the best learning materials available, 7.) Choosing poor classes, and 8.) Not using [awesome] tools for learning Chinese. |
| Number one, I have to say, is usually a matter of ability. Some people I know who really try hard to learn Chinese just don’t have the ear for the tones. They try and try and try but never get the tones down. Everything they say is said with a rising tone, which is pretty hard on native speakers’ ears. So for those people not to master the tones is understandable. But I’ve also met some extremely arrogant foreigners who just plain don’t care about tones and don’t try to learn them. Not long ago, I talked to a guy who had lived in Shanghai for over 2 years. I had heard he had been living there before I met him, so I was fully expecting his Chinese to be pretty amazing. But then he opened his mouth to speak, and he sounded horrible. And he went on to say that he doesn’t care about the tones and doesn’t think they’re important to the language. Tones are an integral part of Chinese! To say they’re not important is incredibly disrespectful to Chinese speakers. It’s the equivalent of someone saying, “I don’t think consonants are important for speaking English.” It’s just wrong, and if you have that attitude, you don’t deserve to be understood. |
| I also appreciated number four. I at times struggle with this myself. It’s easy to get discouraged by the fact that you just can’t express yourself fully in any situation, read and understand any newspaper, and follow any movie’s plot without subtitles after studying the language for over five years. But apparently it’s realistic to expect to have to study Chinese full-time (and probably live in China) for 10 to 20 years before becoming truly fluent in all respects. But if you focus on what you can’t say/understand rather than on using what you can say/understand, you’ll have a hard time progressing beyond where you currently are. The ChinaExpat post links to some pretty encouraging (or discouraging, depending on your disposition) articles about the subject. |
| The other points seem to me to be pretty good advice as well, so if you’re just now beginning to learn the language, go check it out. You’ll save yourself time and frustration. |
| Link to article |
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Adultery is [sort of] a crime in South Korea
 South Korean actress Ok So-Ri |
| Here’s something I didn’t know. South Korea is the only nation outside of Islamic states that has an actual law making adultery a criminal offense. It’s been challenged multiple times but has always been upheld based on the premise that “adultery is damaging to the social order.” Hmmm…totally disregarding a sacred institution for the sake of your own gratification…Yeah, I’d say that could be damaging to the social order. Of course, the law is apparently extremely gummy…As in this actress’ case, very rarely are people actually sent to jail for it. Ms. Ok received an 8 month suspended sentence, and her lover received a 6 month suspended sentence. *sigh* |
| Could she have a more fitting name for this situation? |
| Link to article |
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The unspeakable horror of life inside a North Korean prison camp…
 Shin Dong-hyuk is the soul escapee of North Korea’s prison camps |
| He may be a free man in a physical sense, but Shin Dong-hyuk is still a prisoner. He is the only man known to have successfully escaped a North Korean prison camp, but he still bears physical scars and lives with unimaginable emotional anguish. Born in Prison Camp No. 14 to parents of a marriage arranged by prison guards as a reward for his father’s good work as a mechanic, he has experienced unspeakable horror in his twenty-six years of life: torture by fire in an attempt to extract a confession about a family conspiracy that he knew nothing about, having half of one of his fingers cut off as a consequence of accidentally dropping a sewing machine at the prison camp’s garment factory, and witnessing countless executions in the prison camp’s square, including those of his own mother and brother. His cousin was raped by prison guards, and food was so scarce that one young girl was beaten to death for having just a few grains of contraband wheat in her pocket. He even once picked just three kernels of corn out of a pile of cow dung, wiped them off, and ate them, considering himself lucky for happening upon such a treat. He says that growing up in the prison camp, he never heard the word ‘love’ and that he can’t grasp the concept of forgiveness that he hears spoken of at church. Perhaps the most tragic of all: he suffered all of this simply because he was born to his father, who was in turn guilty because of being the brother of two men who had collaborated with South Korea during the Korean War. |
| The Washington Post article I sourced goes into even more heart-wrenching detail about his life inside the camp and the mental and emotional anguish he has experienced since breaking free of his prison. And similar situations no doubt play out daily among the estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inmates in North Korea’s prison camps. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around how any human could endure such suffering. The fact that he did is a testament to how well the human mind is designed. I can’t help but feel a bit guilty for being in a comfortably heated room as I write this. To say that it is unfair that I was born here in America and that he was born there in such a demonic place is the grossest of understatements… |
| Link to article |
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...A $61 cup of tea, or how the annoying Chinese custom of not patiently waiting your turn partially caused me to get a parking ticket
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| I recently went on a long trip up to the northeast of the United States. My first stop was New York. I love New York…the excitement, the mass of people from all backgrounds, the public transportation! But driving and parking aren’t so fun. My first day there, I took my trusty GPS to help me get to where I was going that day. A GPS isn’t really all that trusty in a city like New York because half of the buildings block the satellite signal from getting to the GPS. But with a little patience, I managed to find my destination, only to realize that there was nowhere to park. So I drove around for about 10 minutes in circles looking for a place. Eventually, as I was making my 3rd lap, I found that there was a parking space right in front of where I wanted to go! “Awesome!” I thought. “This totally rocks!” So I parked and went down the street and around the corner to get a hot tea with milk. I walked in, ordered my tea, and wandered up to the vicinity of the counter, where the girl behind the counter was helping another lady. I waited patiently for my turn. As soon as the other customer left, though, two more customers elbowed their way to the counter and paid for their tea and whatever else they bought. I stood there rather sheepishly, not wanting to loudly demand my right to be served next and thinking that the lady behind the counter would serve me next anyway. Then, as those customers were leaving, a couple more came in and did the same thing. Suddenly I remembered that I was in Chinatown, that in Chinese culture lines practically don’t exist, and that the Chinese government had even gone to the trouble of naming the 11th of every month “Queuing Day” in an effort to make Beijing more comfortable for the people visiting from the rest of the world during the olympics. “When in Rome…,” I thought to myself, and stepped right up to the counter so that I could not be ignored. I paid for my tea and was out the door in under 30 seconds. I was feeling pretty good about my cultural sensitivity as I walked back to my car, proud that I had respected the Chinese people and handled the situation without coming across as a jerky foreigner…until I saw the meter maid writing me a $60 parking ticket. I didn’t notice the yellow paint on the curb when I parked, but she was all too happy to point it out to me as she wrote me the ticket. Had I gotten there about 30 seconds earlier, I would’ve been able to move before she started the ticket, she said, but since she had started and put it in the computer, she couldn’t stop writing it. Ugh… |
| Now, anybody that knows me knows I’m a huge fan of the Chinese language and people and culture. And I can understand where this annoying custom comes from: in a country of over a billion people, with extremely crowded cities, to wait your turn in every instance could turn out to cost you your youth. A young man may go to the store to buy something simple and then on the way out of the store suddenly find himself an old man because of having patiently waited his turn in line while millions of his neighbors jumped in front of him. Yes, I’m exaggerating, but to make a point. To some degree, it makes sense that the more assertive people will get the most benefit. But seriously…even if it’s absolutely packed with people, it won’t take you THAT long to get out if you wait your turn to pay for food in a bakery less than 1000 square feet in size. Just wait your turn! You won’t die…and I won’t get parking tickets. |
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The Chinese version of ‘Ugly Betty’
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| I’ve been a bit busy recently and haven’t had time to keep up with any Chinese news of any sort (and probably won’t have that kind of time from now on, so this blog will end up being pretty stagnant), but RedKemp found a short but interesting story about the Chinese version of Ugly Betty, which is coming out soon. The verdict: She’s totally cute! I totally agree with Redkemp that all those “hottie-with-glasses-and-braces = ugly” movies and TV shows out there are stupid. If Charlene Choi, Halle Berry, or some other hottie had black-rimmed glasses and some ill-fitting braces, I’d be the first guy there to comfort them in their ugliness. Apparently Chinese audiences agree that she’s too cute to be called ugly. This article brings out that “Audiences hold the view that the “ugly girl” is beautiful, with a normal figure, big eyes and long hair, aside from the deliberate ugly costuming.” For once, I’d like to see someone truly unattractive cast in one of these roles; maybe if there were more “ugly” people on TV and in movies, the world in general would get used to it and wouldn’t be so obsessed with looks. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, is it? |
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Chinglish: The perils of computer translation
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If you’re going to rely on a computer translation to name your restaurant in a foreign tongue, it’s probably best to follow these simple rules:
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| Link to source article |
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Check out Neocha.com for Chinese indie music
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| Are you tired of Chinese popular music? I am. Over all, it stinks. I mean, I’m a huge Jay Chou fan, and I like almost everything Sun Yan Zi and Wang Li Hong put out. But for the most part, Chinese pop music - like pop music everywhere - all sounds the same, and it’s all pretty mediocre. No creativity, no individuality. I really appreciate the traditional Chinese value of putting the group over the individual and not rocking the proverbial boat, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. It absolutely fails when it comes to music. Music is supposed to be creative, so just following along with the crowd definitely doesn’t cut it. Thankfully, in every culture there are always those independent people who like to experiment with new sounds and ideas and create something fresh. (Really, if you haven’t checked out InLove, do it. Yes, Lu, I’m always advertising your music!). I recently came across a post at Lost Laowai reviewing a great site called Neocha (aka “new tea”). I won’t go into what the review says since that would be totally redundant. Just check it out for yourself or head on over to neocha.com to get connected with great (and of course some not-so-great) Chinese indie music. |
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