Archive for August, 2007

Chinese Idiom: 如鱼得水 (rú yú dé shuǐ)

孙智谦 on 31 Aug 2007

 
fish in water
 
In light of the fact that I don’t feel like making fun of the news lately and that most of the China-related news involves more and more product recalls, I thought I’d post something different, the story and meaning behind a Chinese idiom. I’ll probably make it a pretty regular thing.
 
For the most part, Chinese idioms are just a few words long, and they’re extremely misleading. If you don’t know the stories behind the idioms when you first see or hear them, you’ll probably end up forming the wrong conclusion as to what they mean. Of course, once you understand the stories behind them, they make perfect sense. They’re kind of like cultural inside jokes.
 
Today’s idiom is actually kind of rare in that you might actually get the meaning of it by just hearing it used in a conversation. The English translation of 如鱼得水 (rú yú dé shuǐ) is “to feel just like a fish in water”. The story behind it goes like this:
 
During China’s Three Kingdoms Period, a man named Liu Bei went to Hubei Province three different times to ask a guy named Zhuge Liang for help with military affairs and politics. Finally, Zhuge Liang relented and helped him, and as a result they became the closest of friends. Liu Bei told his ministers, “Having Zhuge Liang to assist me, I feel just like a stranded fish that has been put back in the water.”
 
The idiom is used to describe finding the perfect companion or situation, known in some [non-Chinese] circles as Shade Luck.
 

Chinese Idioms and Language | Comments (0)

Captain, check your sticks!

孙智谦 on 22 Aug 2007

Guy eating with chopsticks
Just think, you could be eating your Chinese food with these very same chopsticks!
 
Today’s unsafe export of Chinese goods comes from Beijing, where a factory has been recycling people’s used chopsticks and then reselling them without disinfecting them at all. Yummy. Beijing News says that officials there have seized about 500,000 pairs of the germy disposable bamboo chopsticks and a machine used to package them. The article says that the factory has been selling about up to 100,000 pairs a day. But the owner of the factory said he had sold the chopsticks for a dirt cheap 0.04 yuan a day and made around 1,000 yuan (that’s $130 US) on any given day when business was good. Not being one to shy away from 5th-grade math, I did a little calculating to check the things, and if my calculations are correct (I didn’t say I’m good at 5th-grade math), he actually sold about 25,000 pairs of dirty chopsticks a day, nowhere near 100,000. Nice math, Reuters! 1000/0.04 = 25,000, not 100,000. Now, it’s not to say that there weren’t days that he did sell 100,000 pairs of chopsticksk, but the way the article is worded, it’s clear they were going for sensationalism and panic. But still, let’s say he’d been doing this for 2 months (60 days) and selling 25,000 pairs a day before he got caught; that’d mean he sold 1.5 million pairs of nasty, already-been-in-someone-else’s-mouth chopsticks. Nasty. Oh, and he had no license to sell the chopsticks in the first place, so who knows how long it had been going on before he got caught. You could’ve used his unsafe chopsticks last month or just last week and not even realized it. You could have some weird oriental disease ravaging your body right now, as you read this, all because you decided to “go native” and use chopsticks at a restaurant. How’s that for a possible panic-inducing statement? Man, I should totally work for Reuters.
 
But it’s gonna get better, right? Probably not soon. According to the article, China “lacks the manpower to enforce food and drug safety regulations at home or for export.” But, hey! They check their imports carefully! That’s good to know. Thanks, China!
 
The article also pointed to one possible cause of the problem, saying, “A lack of business ethics and a spiritual vacuum after China embraced economic reforms in the late 1970s have been blamed for unscrupulous business practices and corruption.” Ya think? A large number of the people in China don’t believe in any higher power, but they do believe in money, so of course they’re going to be morally devoid and corrupt in their business practices. It’s to be expected that a largely godless society would react to total freedom and a lack of safeguards in such a way. It’s imperfect human nature.
 
I feel bad for the Chinese as a whole, though. I’m sure there are plenty of scrupulous business owners in a society of 1.4 billion people, but as the old saying goes, “one bad apple takes two to tango”…or something like that. I wonder when and what the next product recall/outing of corrupt Chinese businessman will be. Whatever it is, I’m not using disposable chopsticks for a while, that’s for sure.
 
Link to article
 

China News and food | Comments (0)

It’s [Chinese] indie rock ‘n’ roll for me

孙智谦 on 17 Aug 2007

 
Re-TROS band shot
Re-TROS (L to R): Hua Dong guitar/vocals; Liu Min, bass/vocals; and Ma Hui, drums.
 
It was 5:30AM, and I grumbled to myself as I usually do, irritated about how closely morning follows night five of the days of the week. Every day I’m awakened by one NPR correspondent or another talking about one news item or personal interest story or another from around the world. I normally just lie in bed for a good twenty minutes, not paying much attention to what’s actually being said but not wanting to actually get out of bed either. But today was a little different. This morning, Lisa Chow was showcasing China’s latest export: anti-establishment music. Of course, I perked up a bit.
 
Now I’m definitely not anti-establishment. I’m not a beatnik or an elitist, and I don’t walk around in “skinny jeans” rejecting everything mainstream and whining about how a formerly cool band sold out when they released a particular album. And I can’t stand the whole “being different for the sake of being different” scene. It’s just not me. But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate creativity and music that doesn’t sound like everything else on the planet. In fact, I rarely listen to mainstream radio because everybody sounds the same. Needless to say, I was pretty happy to hear some non-mainstream Chinese music advertised in a part of the media with such a large audience.
 
Since I’m not into politics (read: I hate it), this post isn’t focusing so much on the band that was featured on NPR this morning as it is focusing on Chinese indie rock itself. I first got into it when I happened upon the website for Modern Sky (China’s largest independent record label) a few years ago. Although I couldn’t read much Chinese at the time (still can’t), I managed to find a place on the site to sample the music of some of the label’s featured bands. I was impressed. In a culture where standing out from the crowd is discouraged, there was quite a bit of well-written independent music in styles varying from trip-hop to garage rock. Some of it’s really good. So I decided to look around for more Chinese indie music and found bands like Hopscotch (跳房子), InLove, Wang Fu (旺福), and Cold Fairyland, who have a very well-polished sound. And Pixeltoy, My Little Airport, and The Marshmallow Kisses definitely deserve a mention as well. There’s a large variety of great music in just those few bands, and there’s a lot more Chinese indie music that I still haven’t explored, so I’m likely to find a lot more to love.
 
If you’d like to check out Chinese indie music yourself but are worried you won’t understand any of it because you’re monolingual, you can rest easy. You don’t always have to speak Chinese to appreciate a lot of the indie rock coming out of China; some of the better bands like Hopscotch (跳房子) and My Little Airport actually write a lot of their lyrics in English. You can find their music and lots more on Last.FM. Most of the Chinese bands I listen to are bands I found on that site. It’s actually a great resource for finding new music in any genre.
 
While NPR is just one media outlet, and the majority of the world has never heard much of today’s independent Chinese music, it’s still encouraging to hear Chinese bands featured in their articles because it could potentially lead a lot of exposure for hard working artists. Who knows where that kind of coverage could lead? Maybe some of these bands will play Nashville some day…yeah, probably not.

Culture Clash and Entertainment and Music | Comments (4)

Ret’s Rearn Engrish!

孙智谦 on 15 Aug 2007

I’m sorry, but I gotta say again how awesome the total quirkiness and creativity of Japanese culture is. So much of their stuff is just so off-the-wall that it defies description, so I won’t even try. It would sound completely retarded if I did. But it’s hilarious. I’m addicted to Zuiikin English, which is an English learning video series. Language learning videos may sound boring, but in true Japanese style, Zuiikin English is totally bizarre and really entertaining, even if you’re a native English speaker. It’s not only the execution that’s funny but what they choose to teach. They teach rather abrasive, not-used-every-day English, but they do it with constant smiling, and sometimes they jazz things up with horribly-written and poorly-acted skits. Check out the video below to see what I’m talking about. A word of warning: If you’re prone to getting catchy tunes or chants stuck in your head, you may not wanna watch.
 

 
It’s like a train wreck, isn’t it? Simultaneously irritating and entertaining. Man, I really wish China would come up with stuff like this. Compared to Japan, you’re a bunch of stuffed shirts, China. Come on, get with it!
 

Culture Clash and Entertainment and Language and Random Stuff | Comments (0)

Train wrecks and Chinese kisses

孙智谦 on 14 Aug 2007
 
I was surfing Youtube yesterday and came across a great music video by a Chinese singer named Michael Wong (光良). It’s very sweet in its sentiment, and the song is nice, too, if you like romantic ballads. But about 2:45 into the video, there’s a kissing scene so awkward that it almost made me shudder. It’s a really bad kiss. It looks more like two trains colliding or like they’re engaging in some kind of facial shoving contest rather than kissing, and it’s about the most un-romantic thing I’ve ever seen (and I’m not talking about the fact that her nose starts bleeding during their kiss). Some people just aren’t good kissers, I suppose.
 
But when I think back to all of the Chinese movies I’ve watched over the years, I can’t recall a single good kiss in any of them. Pretty much all of the kisses I’ve seen in Chinese movies are of the clumsy face-crash sort. But I’m not sure why that is. I know that Chinese culture isn’t big on public displays of affection, so maybe it’s just that no matter how good the actors and actresses are, they just can’t get past the cultural taboo of kissing in front of dozens of people when they’re filming a kissing scene. Despite the fact that I haven’t seen one good kiss in a Chinese movie, I tend to highly doubt that an entire culture of people would be bad at kissing. That sounds too much like a generalization or stereotype to make me comfortable. So there has to be some other explanation for this.
 
I’ve never kissed a Chinese girl, and I’m not Chinese, so I can’t comment on the ugly on-screen kiss phenomenon and whether it reflects real-life kisses. Maybe someone reading this blog can help enlighten me. If you have a good idea as to why all on-screen kisses in Chinese movies stink (or if you know of a good one in a particular movie), let me know by posting a comment.
 

Culture Clash and Entertainment and Music and Random Stuff | Comments (2)

Is this my future? Please forcibly shave me bald if I start doing this.

孙智谦 on 09 Aug 2007
 
Ah, yes, the ever-present comb-over. I think in probably every culture in every time period ever, men have employed this tricky little technique to fool other people themselves into thinking that they’re not losing their hair. Most people aren’t so good at it, but one guy in Japan is a master. Check out the video above (if you haven’t already). I’m losing my hair too, albeit slowly, so if I ever start doing a bad comb-over, someone please just shave me bald in my sleep. Because no matter how good it looks, it’s still a comb-over and still sad…
 
 

Culture Clash and Random Stuff | Comments (5)

China’s dollar sales ‘nuclear option’

孙智谦 on 08 Aug 2007

Nuclear Explosion
Ouch.
 
China seems to be wielding some of their soft power in a harder way lately. Beijing is sick of Washington’s efforts to force a yuan revaluation to balance the trade defecit, and they’re doing something about it.
 
What exactly are they doing? Well, China owns $1.33 trillion in foreign reserves, including $900 billion in US bonds, and they’re threatening to unload them, which could effectively nuke the US economy. That would hurt a bit.
 
He Fan at China’s Academy of Social Sciences told China Daily, “China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency. Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced the their dollar holdings. China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.” In other words, “push us, and you’ll be really, really sorry.”
 
It’s like a big playground shoving match between two kids that just don’t understand each other and don’t particularly seem to want to. Or, as someone I know put it, “We are Klingons to them, and they to us. We just don’t ‘get’ the other’s culture. At least the Joe Sixpack guys don’t.” It’ll be interesting (interesting in a “oh, crap, I hope that doesn’t happen” sort of way) to see how this whole currency revaluation thing plays out.
 
***Update: Apparently this is just the Chinese government blowing off some steam because almost every analysis I’ve read of this option says that it would probably hurt China a lot as well and that it would probably end up being a good thing for the US economy in the long run since it would get some of the debt out of China’s hands. I’m no economist, so I’ll leave that debate up to other people. I just thought I’d give an update on the story***
 
Link to article
 

China News and Culture Clash | Comments (0)

Spotlight on 旺福 (Wang Fu)

孙智谦 on 07 Aug 2007

Wang Fu
 
I love this band’s sound so much that I thought I’d introduce my readership [of 4 people] to them. This is 旺福 (Wang Fu/Won Fu), a Taiwanese band whose sound ranges from a sort of big band/swing sound to a 50s/60s rock sound to a modern rock sound to (strangely) a sort of kids-party-songs kind of sound. They’re a lot more versatile than most of the American bands out there these days. And they’re solid musicians, too. A lot of modern bands just stick to straight power chords and 1-4-5 arrangements, but they seem to use lots of jazz chords and make more complicated arrangements. The vast majority of their songs have ridiculously catchy tunes, which is great except when you don’t know the words to the songs and get them stuck in your head. That’s what happens to me all the time, and misery loves company, so I thought I’d introduce them here.
 
They have 2 albums, 同名专辑 (Tong Ming Zhuan Ji) and 旺福志 (Wang Fu Zhi). Both are excellent, and while I think 同名专辑 has more good songs on it, 旺福志 is well worth buying. If I can find some good mp3s of their songs, I’ll post them. Until then, try watching the video below. You’ll notice the singer in the picture (in the turquoise) isn’t the same girl singing in the video. The girl in the video has left the band because she and the guitarist broke up (or at least that’s what I’ve heard).
 

 

Music and Random Stuff | Comments (1)

F-Cup cookies!

孙智谦 on 06 Aug 2007

Book cookies
This can’t possibly not work…
 
Those crazy Japanese are at it again! If you’re a woman tired of having small breasts, you can eat these cookies (apparently 2 a day) and watch your cup size increase! I’m sure the claims are totally legit. They’re printed on the box, so they must be true. In case you can read Japanese better than I can (better than I can = at all), I’ve included a link to the product page below.
 
Link to product page
 

Random Stuff and food | Comments (0)

China’s rural motivational geniuses!

孙智谦 on 06 Aug 2007

Mom and Child.
“Honey, you’re just another tomb.”
 
Chinese culture is full of subtleties that take a lot of study to fully appreciate, but when it comes to motivating people, sometimes that kind of all goes out the window. Because of the surging population, China has set strict limits on how many children most couples can have. It’s not really easy to get people in general on board with a policy like that, but Beijing tries its best. Unfortunately, rural governments sometimes lack the communication skills to motivate people effectively. The National Population and Family Planning Commission has had to crack down rural governments’ use of “crude and insensitive slogans” to to try to persuade people to comply with their population control policies. But what’s so offensive about things like ‘Raise fewer babies but more piggies,’ and ‘One more baby means one more tomb.’? Those are perfectly acceptable [to complete morons].
 
I’d like a Sensitivity Combo with a side order of Couth, please.
 
Link to article
 

China News | Comments (0)

Next Page »