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Archive for June, 2007

The all-new McMao’s value menu!

孙智谦 on 23 Jun 2007

Tens of millions served

How’s “In the name of Chairman Mao we promise all dishes on the menu are half-price” for an advertising slogan? That’s what a poster hanging outside of a Nanjing restaurant says, along side it the image of Chairman Mao himself. Apparently, people so worshiped Mao back in the day that people would make promises to him (even though he wasn’t there to hear the promises) to prove their honesty, and the restaurant is hoping to capitalize on that. And it seems to be working so far. One restaurant patron is quoted as saying, “If someone makes a promise to Chairman Mao, he was telling the truth. You should know that Chairman Mao was our idol and nobody would dare cheat on him.” (nice job of coordinating your tenses between your two clauses, lady. - Sincerely, the Grammar Police) The article also adds that she thinks that the restaurant will be credible since it promises to Chairman Mao.

To further play on the nostalgia of older people, the restaurant’s inside is decorated in the Mao-era style. The paint inside is mixed with straw to make the walls look old, and there are propaganda-like banners with slogans such as “Work hard with quality to catch up with Britain and the United States in 15 years,” and “We’re all proletarian brothers, sorry to make you pay.” I call malarkey on that last one! Nothing like pulling at people’s nationalistic heart strings to sell products or services. That’s actually more of a capitalist approach than a communist approach. Tsk, Tsk. But [sarcasm] it’s totally ethical, I promise to Chairman Mao! [/sarcasm]

Of course, you can’t please all the people all the time. In true Chinese fasion, an employee of Nanjing’s industry and commerce administration said they “allowed businesses to reminisce about the past, but the commercial use of portraits of national leaders was illegal according to the country’s advertising law, and said they would inspect the restaurant later.” Joy! People are allowed to reminisce! And the article quotes a passer-by surnamed Song (宋) as saying that he doesn’t like the slogan and that he thinks it’s “sullying Chairman Mao’s name.” No comment here…

Link to article

Avril Lavigne: killing my opinion of Canadians since 2007.

孙智谦 on 16 Jun 2007

I can’t believe we’re exporting this garbage to other countries.

I came across a video on YouTube earlier that really grates on my nerves. It’s Avril Lavigne trying to sing her song “Girlfriend” in Chinese, and it’s bad. Really bad. Her accent is kind of almost good, but at the same time still really, really bad. There are other videos of her covering the song in other languages, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch any of them because this one was just too painful. She obviously couldn’t sing the lines all in one take, so they had to perform some [not-so] creative editing to get her words to fit with the song, and the result is a really choppy vocal “performance” in which she sounds like a drunk, stuttering computer. Did I mention that it’s bad? Now, Chinese isn’t the easiest language to speak, but it’s not hard to sing in Chinese because you don’t have to worry about tones. I just can’t believe that someone would actually sign-off on this version of the song and say, “Yep, that’s what I want people to hear from me in that foreign country.”

Normally I would be much kinder about this kind of thing in the interests of building people up and being positive, but the song’s vulgar, too, so I feel justified totally bashing it. Any song that says “mother f***ing” in it shouldn’t be translated in any way into any other language. Granted, only the chorus of the song is actually sung in Chinese, but that doesn’t make it any less crappy to send it overseas. Couldn’t they have picked a non-profanity-spewing song to dub into other languages? I just think it’s really, really trashy for your one foray into a foreign culture to come along with that phrase. And she’s married, anyway, so why does she need to sing a stupid song like this?

Should you choose to watch the video, you can safely stop at about 25 seconds and see what I’m talking about before any English (and then profanity) comes in…that is, if you can make it that far before it grates on your nerves so much that you stab pencils into your ears.

Link to crappy video. Feel free not to watch it.

Neglected wife: 1, Neglectful husband: 0

孙智谦 on 15 Jun 2007

“Where have you been, dear?”

It’s an age-old conflict between married men and their wives. Guys want more independence from their wives, time to hang out with their buddies and do “guy stuff”, and women want more attention from their husbands, a sympathetic ear and maybe some spooning. But, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it rages on with no hope of an end in sight. Except for maybe one couple…

A Hainan woman surnamed Huang (黄) has found a creative, if somewhat extreme, way of getting some more attention from her husband. Rather than doing the typical nagging that so many wives do to get their husbands to stop going out and eating and drinking with their buddies so much, she’s decided to shave her head. Now, in America this kind of thing would give a husband more reason not to want to spend time with his wife (”Dude, I tell you. My wife is crazy! She shaved her head”…takes another sip of his beer), but in China it’s pretty clever. Apparently, it’s a pretty big deal for your wife to come with you to business-related social events if you’re a Chinese business man. Maybe it has something to do with the all-important concept of “face”. But nobody wants to take his shaved-headed wife to a social event, though, because it would make him look bad. So she shaved her head and says she won’t let her hair grow back until he changes his ways and spends more time with her. Genius! I’m betting his buddies will be eating and drinking with one less person pretty fast.

Link to article.

Chinese tea and weight loss

孙智谦 on 14 Jun 2007

Tasty and good for you

Westerners may laugh at the thought of sticking needles in somebody to help treat illness; they may scoff at the idea of natural herbal treatments for diseases; they may even use a toilet that you sit on rather than squatting over (admittedly, I hate the squat type toilets…it’s too much like playing Twister). But they can no longer deny the weight-controlling power of tea! Scientists have proven that drinking certain kinds of tea (especially oolong tea) helps lose weight. Take that, Westerners!

According to the article, scientists were doing a five-year study and discovered five genes related to fatness (or obesity, but in the interests of not being guilty of blatant plagiarism, I chose the word fatness), but they also discovered that tea’s polyphenol compound, which is especially found in oolong tea, aids weight loss. The article doesn’t go into the scientific causes, unfortunately, but it does seem to refer to a fetus as being a part of the human body rather than a stage in the development of a baby (”When children are still in the fetus…” Huh?). Still, it’s a case of thousands-of-years-old natural healing wisdom being vindicated in the face of a pill-popping, doubting society, and that’s a good thing in my book.

Unfortunately for the lazy, the researchers admit that there’s no quick fix for weight loss. Well, no safe quick fix. There’s always seppuku, but disemboweling oneself can hardly be considered safe. The researchers say that a healthier diet and lifestyle will help. So in addition to drinking oolong tea, you may want to opt for the turkey sandwich on whole wheat with fat-free cheese instead of the double quarter-pounder with cheese and fries. Oh, and you should exercise, too. Don’t shoot me; I’m just the messenger. And I’m about to go have a cup of oolong tea.

Link to article.

Thailand: Beating someone up for sport = get out of jail free card

孙智谦 on 13 Jun 2007

I’m not convinced this is a woman…

This is like Rocky with a weird twist. Twenty-four year old Samson Sor Siriporn (heheh) managed to get out of prison three years early because of a boxing match. She got caught selling “ya ba” (crazy drug) when she was seventeen and was sentenced to ten years in prison. And if Brokedown Palace is accurate at all (yeah, probably not), I’m sure that seems more like thirty years. But here’s the twist…she trained as a boxer while she was on the inside so that she wouldn’t get the poop kicked out of her all the time, and that eventually led to her winning the WBC light-flyweight title and getting out of prison 3 years early. Apparently, going from a drug dealer to someone who beats the crap out of somebody gets you paroled in Thailand. It only makes sense…

So if I ever decide to sell drugs, I’m gonna train as a boxer first and then move to Thailand to sell them. I figure if I’m already a good boxer when I first go to jail, I’ll just start beating people up left and right and challenge a woman from Japan to a bout to become the female light-flyweight champion (nevermind the fact that I’m a guy), beat her, and then get out of jail faster. The way I see it, I’d be out of jail in just a few months. I’m sure it would work! I see NO flaws in this plan at all.

Link to article.

Great Expectations

孙智谦 on 13 Jun 2007

China seems to be swinging for the fences in their estimate of how many TV viewers the 2008 Olympic Games to be held in Beijing will draw. State media says they’re expecting about four billion people to watch the Games, which is a full billion people more than the 2004 Games, which were held in Athens, Greece. That’s like 60% of the world’s population! I’m doubtful that they’ll be able to accomplish having a full billion more TV viewers than the 2004 Olympics had, but I can certainly see the fact that the Games are in China being a big draw in itself. People the world over are intrigued by China’s beautiful and interesting culture. And the Chinese are a traditionally stick-together-for-the-good-of-the-whole kind of people, so if the central government goes on a campaign to promote viewership, I could see their getting a couple hundred million more viewers, provided they don’t mind passing out some free TVs to people who don’t already own them. It would be great to see those kinds of numbers for the games, if for no other reasons than to show people what today’s China is like, that it’s not as backwards as everybody imagines (at least not in the cities), and how endearing its people are. Although I think Shanghai would’ve been a better choice of cities, I’ve never been to the mainland, so I really can’t comment with any authority or actual knowledge. I really hope they hit their numbers. 加油！

Link to article.

Deregulating China’s surnames

孙智谦 on 13 Jun 2007

“Would Mr. Wang please raise his hand?”

I’m sure you’ve heard the joke/saying “He’s got more Chins than a Chinese phonebook.” That’s funny to me not because it’s a common name in China, but because it’s totally uncommon. Most of the 1.3 billion people in China share the same 100 surnames, and I don’t recall ever meeting someone named Chin. Anyway, the lack of surnames has to be a nightmare when it comes to identifying people in a conversation in China, especially since there are so many homonyms in Chinese, meaning that there are a lot of similar given names, as well. I can only imagine how hairy it can be.

In case you’re curious, and before I get to what the Chinese government is doing about it, here’s a small breakdown of the most common surnames in China. China has…

93 million people surnamed Wang (王)
92 million people surnamed Li (李)
88 million people surnamed Zhang (张)
20 million people with one of 7 other surnames, including Chen (陈), Zhou (周) , and Lin (林)

Those are pretty huge numbers. So what is the Chinese government doing about it? They’re now allowing people to combine surnames for their newly-born children (and in general, I suppose? The article wasn’t very clear). For example, if Mom is surnamed Wang (王) and Dad is surnamed Zhou (周), baby could be surnamed Wangzhou (王周) or Zhouwang (周王). It’s a really simple thing, and it’ll open up another 1.28 million new possible surnames according to the article I’m pulling my facts from (link below). Pretty cool idea, huh?

Du Roufu, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that a lot of younger couples are already combining their surnames like that, “even though such combinations were not strictly permitted by law.” [begin sarcasm] Well, at least the government has its priorities straight. I’ve always thought last names should be strictly regulated. We can’t have people running around being in charge of their own names, now can we?[end sarcasm]

Link to article.

OK, seriously, pigs are flying…one just went past my window

孙智谦 on 13 Jun 2007

I firmly believe in this story. It can’t be wrong. After all, it’s on the internet!

Editorial Stupidity: 1
Journalistic integrity: 0

The snippet about the above picture, taken from Chinadaily.com.cn, says, “A dog looks at her puppy which is very much like a kitten at a villager’s home in Jiangyan, East China’s Jiangsu Province, June 10, 2007. Experts say a gene mutation contributed to the aberrance.” I call shenanigans! It’s genetically impossible for a dog to give birth to something like that. I don’t know what would be worse, this article being approved by an editor gullible enough to believe it’s true or this article being approved by an editor gullible enough to think people will swallow it as the truth. Either way, I think the guy should be working here instead of at a supposedly reputable newspaper.

Link to original hogwash.

The Japanese are more polite than you are

孙智谦 on 08 Jun 2007

So polite!　So tidy!

The results are in, and the Japanese are the most polite people on earth when they’re traveling. A study conducted for Expedia.com compiled the responses of 15,000 European hoteliers and found that Japanese are the most gracious travelers, followed by Americans and then the Swiss. The Japanese are described as “polite and tidy” and received 35 percent more votes than Americans.

The world’s worst travelers according to the study are the French, followed by India, China, and then Russia. I wonder if China’s ranking had anything to do with their penchant for spitting everywhere and picking their noses at the table.

The Japanese were also awarded the distinction of being “most likely to grope women and steal their underwear from their suitcases.” Ok, not really…

Link to more-interesting-than-this-post article.

My grandmother the unicorn.

孙智谦 on 08 Jun 2007

I don’t know how trustworthy this site is, but it’s weird, and it’s Asian, so I thought I’d post about it. A 95-year-old grandmother in China’s Guangdong province has a 5-inch horn growing out of her head. She says, “At first, it was only a mole, but it gradually grew and became like a horn…It causes me no discomfort, but blocks part of my view.” How weird is that if it’s true (which it probably isn’t). Her family is supposedly hoping that doctors will be able to figure out what caused it. If it were real, you’d think she’d just grind it down or cut it off or something. Oh well.

Link to article.

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Musings on Things Asian

Archive for June, 2007

The all-new McMao’s value menu!

Avril Lavigne: killing my opinion of Canadians since 2007.

Neglected wife: 1, Neglectful husband: 0

Chinese tea and weight loss

Thailand: Beating someone up for sport = get out of jail free card

Great Expectations

Deregulating China’s surnames

OK, seriously, pigs are flying…one just went past my window

The Japanese are more polite than you are

My grandmother the unicorn.

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