Rude Banner

This could only be funny to someone who has studied Chinese. It is slang for a very naughty word, even though the point of the banner was originally to attempt to encourage all of the residents not to throw their garbage around.

What is a Televangelist?

Please click on this picture to see the full size version.
One of my test questions was 'what's a televangelist?' The student gave a very satisfactory answer. I at first marked it wrong, but then decided to give full credit as it was certainly true, if not precisely the answer I was looking for. Some of the other answers are worth noting as well.

Back to School

I finished my first day of classes today. Only 2 hours on Mondays, and I have Fridays off. I teach a total of 14 hours a week which is two hours less than last semester. Many Chinese professors teach 12 hours or less, which is about the same as the class load for teachers at the University I graduated from. Last semester one of the foreign teachers was teaching 22 hours a week. But she had previously taught 40 hours of English a week at a job in Singapore. Most of my students are Sophomores this year. They are the same students from last semester. I also have two classes of Juniors. I am teaching Culture of Great Britain this semester, and maybe of other English speaking countries if I run out of things to say about Britain. Most of my friends laugh at me when I say I am going to teach British culture. They may be right to scoff, but I plan to enjoy teaching this subject this semester, and maybe even learn something myself.

I have posted some pictures of the Campus. The first picture is the rock on which the name of the College I teach at is carved. Its called Ou River College. The Ou River is one of the main geographic features of Wenzhou. The second picture is an administration building with lots of offices of important people of Wenzhou University. The small round building in the foreground is marked as housing the University Museam, but I cannot corroborate that as I have never been in to see. I mostly posted these photos because I haven't posted any of the University yet, and these aren't bad considering I took them with my cellphone camera.

Olympics

Who says the olympics shouldn't take place in China. Olympics in China is fun, here are some examples.

Adjectives: French swimmer Bernard is described as "The Brute-sized Frenchman" in the Chinese Media.

The other thing I will mention briefly is the olympic hostesses which were celebrated with the headline Perfect hostesses outclass sexy cheerleaders by the Chinese English language daily.

Being a hostess is not easy, below I have copied some requirements mentioned in the above article.

"Hostess candidates ... aged 18 to 24, between 1.68 and 1.78 metres in height (5 ft 5 ins and 5 ft 8 ins), with a "ruddy and shiny complexion", "elastic skin" and "a plump but not fat body".

"Their faces needed to meet standards including the ratio between the "width of the nose and the length of the face" and "width of the mouth and width between the pupils", with eyes three-tenths the length of the face."

The last thing I would like to mention is a resounding victory of Chinese Pigdin English (Charmingly called 'Chinglish') signs and menus, etc. These have been the victim of a campaign for their total destruction, but in a masterstroke Reuters article the author states "Texas-based Global Language Monitor (GLM), which analyses word usage trends, said Beijing was fighting a losing battle and should celebrate "this delightful mixture of Chinese and English"."

Thank God the Olympics isn't all about sports and obnoxious 'olympic spirit'.

Irrigation

China is famous worldwide for her early development of complex irrigation technology. For example Dujiangyan in Sichuan province in the area recently hit by the huge earthquake and also in Xinjiang province there are amazing underground irrigation tunnels, perhaps not made by Chinese originally, but within the country of China today, so we won't split hairs to use an expression from the vernacular. Modern irrigation techniques are not so amazing as those of the days of our forefathers, but do go a long way in the labor-saving department. A couple of days ago I took this picture of the local landscape engineer at his craft. Notice the large section of cast iron pipe protruding from the bow of the boat.

And sure enough the next day I woke to a couple of rice paddies on what heretofore had been dry ground.

PRC Tourists

This is a political advertisement from Taiwan. It was paid for, I believe, by Chen Shuibian's party. The basic idea of the ad is that if people from the mainland come they will trample and rampage all over the island. The caption runs something like "Public parks change into public toilets, a conversation becomes a spitting contest." The second bit about spitting can't really be translated because its a clever pun, but you get the idea. Some of the Taiwanese politicians for some reason believe that their constituency can be made to believe that tourists from the mainland will immediately proceed to make the whole place stink by urinating and tossing garbage about the entire place as soon as their plane touches down and that everyone in Taiwan will die from the infectious diseases that flood the island as soon as the hapless tourists got there, mostly due to tuberculosis from all the aforementioned supererogatory expectoration. I found this picture some time ago and meant to post it, but forgot. Since then I haven't heard much about Taiwan, so they are either all dead from tuberculosis, rabies or some other complaint, or I need to bone up on my current events.

The Trendsetter

This is the extremely fashionable man who I found waving at me, smiling at something and doing little dances when on the bus just outside Willow Market. We were stuck in traffic, so I had plenty of time to take some glamour shots of the duffer.

Various 拼音输入法 and the "Sometime-gay Sometime-brooding Monkey"

I have recently become enamoured of the new software that has become available online for entering Pinyin romanization. I have been using the Google system for over a year now and while I may be biased, or just ignorant of a more attractive alternative, it is still my favorite. I have also used for the past couple of months the system from Sogou. It is also a good system, and it has attractive 'skins' with which to update your Chinese Character typing software and step into line with the latest fashion. This is, indeed, the inspiration for this post. My favorite skin is the sometime-gay sometime-brooding monkey, as I in my infinite wisdom have deemed the only likely construing of 悠嘻猴 in the native tongue, as it were.


The Pinyin romanization schemes can be accessed from the links below:
谷歌拼音输入法
搜狗拼音输入法
QQ拼音输入法


And the 'skin' in question here, or from the Sougou page above:
悠嘻猴皮

sometime-gay sometime-brooding monkey 'skin' illustrative and instructing figure

Of course the most important part of the input system is the advantage it offers over others. The three I have described above are superior in the following aspects. Of course they are free and easily accessible by download, although the Microsoft input system can often be hounded from said company at a considerable waste of life on the part of the Microsoft customer, it is not advisable if he values his sanity. Some almost neolithic systems can be downloaded from any Chinese website bursting with trojans, or can be had from the dustiest old box at the now superannuated DVD and software shop at any mall in China.

On to the real advantages, The software updates itself automatically and will integrate new words and terms. They also can remember words an individual uses frequently and will even remember things it doesn't normally recognize as words if they are used often. In Sogou the user can even save shortcuts to frequently used, but rare characters. In both Sogou and Google there are registration schemes where one can sign in from any computer and the information about user preference will be downloaded automatically from the Internet. QQ also allows the user to check the pronunciation of an unfamiliar character by first typing u and then entering the stroke order.

An interesting feature unique to the Sougou software is that the user may opt to download expansions which include words and expressions specific to the user's favorite video games will in turn update the program with new vocabulary as it becomes current. It is not useful to the author, but is certainly an inspired scheme. It is also a good thing these are separate from the main vocabulary as users unfamiliar with the expressions of certain online games might become quite confused when they came uninvited into his compositions or conversations inadvertently.

The Park on the Island in the Lake

Sometimes people ask me why I married my wife. They just use a different tone when they ask, for example: "What attracted you to her?" or "What made you fall in love?" What follows is a partial explanation. My wife has the habit of imparting humorous and entertaining tales when I least expect it. Usually they are bucolic tales from her rural home, as is the following. At other times they might be from the news or internet. Without further ado, I would like to impart the latest one.

Two days ago my wife and I were relaxing at my mother in laws house. I was upstairs reading while she was downstairs chatting with her mother and grandmother. The wife later recounted part of the conversation.

About a week ago there were three migrant workers from sichuan sitting in a pavilion in the park on the lake right across from the inlaws' house. The pavilion in question is the second one from the right, just to the right of the covered hallway. The picture in question is from February when they were burning brush in the field in the background. I had planned several posts of chinese people burning things, esp. garbage; these, sadly, have not yet come to fruition, but I digress.

The workers were sitting in the pavilion relaxing and a local came in to the same pavilion and sat down. The non-locals told him not to sit there, they were sitting in the pavilion. The local said,
"So what if I do sit here?"
"We'll throw you out!" they replied.
"Throw me out then!"
They jumped on him, but the local was strong and the three sichuanese couldn't get the best of him. One said:
"I'm going to get a knife, and when I come back you're dead for sure!"
The local man just ignored him, but sure enough, the sichuanese came back with a kitchen knife and hacked each of his arms to the bone in three places.

At the conclusion of the story my wife's grandmother said,
"Just hope you can find food to keep your stomach full. Finding food to eat for a few more years is all anyone can really hope for..."

drive-by

Yesterday I was on the public bus headed back to my home at the foot of Tea mountain in the desolate university 'town.' The bus was nearing the university town when my wife and I noticed the right rear wheel lurch into one of ubiquitous potholes filled with mud and gravel sending a spray of murky liquid directly into the face of a young man who was riding his moped at close quarters. We both gasped in empathetic disgust, and my wife said she would have stopped the bus and demanded recompense, which is exactly what the young man did. He followed the bus under the overpass, and overtook the us when we had to slow down where the road has not been finished yet. he then stopped his moped directly in front of the bus and the driver opened the door so they could have a shouting match. It is at this point I must apologize to the reader, for this tale is anticlimactic. They just shouted for awhile, and did not fight or even swear at each other. I should have taken a picture, but didn't. Eventually the young man left when he realized that the bus driver was willing to say sorry, but with a caveat, he still blamed the moped rider for not looking where he was going. We saw another person get nailed by a careless driver the same day, but this was a pedestrian, and while he swore the car drove on and there was no fight then either.
I suppose this post is somewhat disappointing, but at least now the reader can share mine and I will feel better.

Chinese Antiterror Unit

Here are a couple of nice pictures I found of a Chinese Anti-terror Cavalry Unit. I guess it would be helpful for chasing terrorists down the runway or any other flat paved area so you don't get tired and have plenty of energy to wrestle with them. Maybe it makes the bad guys collapse laughing and you can just bring them in.

I found these photos on the xinhua website a couple of days ago.

Chinese Bling

I found some pictures I took in Honk Kong the first time I went which I think might have been last November. The pictures are of huge pigs made of 24K gold. (I took them in 2007, which was still the year of the pig.) I am a big fan of Chinese pigs be they gold, stuffed animals or some sort of food product. I am not used to trotters, and hate liver, but anything else goes. Kidney is great, and intestines are even decent if prepared nicely.

Statistics are fun. I like it when a statistic is published like the following one and people are expected to take it seriously.

"For Deng Jun, a child psychologist in Beijing, books such as Give Me Back the Dream portray the reality for millions of young people. 'Official government statistics speak of between 500 and 700 teenagers reported with depression in China, but these figures are very conservative,' she said."

This quote is from The Guardian and the full article can be read at this link.

I really wonder what is meant by publishing a figure like this. Is anyone going to believe it? This would mean there are between two and five depressed teens out of each million or so in China.

I found some great blog posts. Both of them I found through Danwei. The first is about a pamphlet from the eighties right after China began to make reforms under Deng Xiaoping and open up. The pamphlet is all about decadent music from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and America. There is a translation of some good bits from the pamphlet and a link to a PDF version of the original here.

I found a link to a great blog -- Zhong-Mei -- by an American living in China through Danwei, the same site mentioned in the above paragraph. The blogger Zhong-Mei translated a magazine article from tanhuang chunqiu about the Beginning of the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution in 1966. A very interesting article, translated very nicely. Here is the Danwei link.

I found this link on danwei.org for a video they did on Graffiti artists in Shanghai. Here is the Youtube link for the interview, and here is the link to the same video on tudou dot com if you are in China, it is quicker. Definitely worth watching if the subject interests you. Decent interviews as well as some nice shots of actual work and also information on where to go to find pieces.

As you may have heard in the news, They last three days were national days of mourning for the Chinese people. On Monday there were three minutes of silence in remembrance of all those who died or were hurt in the earthquake on May 12th. On Monday afternoon I went to finish some official procedures for my Foreigner residence permit. I had to go to the Bureau for Public Pacification, get my picture taken and hand in a few forms. On the way there, the radio was announcing the three minutes of silence. While I was getting my form reviewed by the bureaucrat I got a cell phone message saying at precisely 2:28 there would commence three minutes of silence, and also that all boats, trains, trucks and cars would stop and blow their horns. Sure enough, a minute later the bureaucrats all stood up and everyone in line stopped pushing and stood still and quiet for three minutes. I would have liked to have been on the street in order to see the scene, but it was still moving were I was. I was in a large hall that fell totally silent besides a child talking and muted horns and sirens could be heard from outside. I felt as though it was completely appropriate memorial and it was inspiring as well as moving to think that all across such a vast country everyone was doing the same thing.

In addition to the three minutes of silence at 2:28 in the afternoon on Monday, exactly a week after the earthquake, the government also announced three days of mourning. Many newspapers printed one character in black and white on the entire front page of the newspaper, such as the character for mourning. All home pages for websites were changed to black and white. All websites for video and media (the local youtube equivalents) had search functions disabled and the only videos accessible were videos of the disaster.

I think one of the smartest things that the Chinese government has done is to bring so much media attention to the event. Because of this, there is much international support and donations, and the domestic reaction has been huge. When people see the suffering but also see that volunteers and rescue operations are effective, they are also moved to act themselves and donate money, blood, supplies and time. There is also public pressure from citizens on companies to react and donate funds at the risk of losing customers. Besides the timely and proportionate response by the government sending in the army, the media attention has played a great part in letting people know how serious it was. I know I personally didn't really respond the day it happened. I didn't pay much attention to the news until the second day when I finally realized how serious it was

The Times of London ran a great article today about how the media attention that the Chinese have been giving this disaster has brought on a much different reaction than the media coverage the disaster in Myanmar/Burma is getting.

I just returned home from a colleagues house. It was ten PM Friday night, and everyone in the dormitories was chanting go China, go Olympics. It is now 10:45, and groups of students are jogging by on the streets screaming "Go China, Go Olympics." They are blowing whistles and shouting and clapping. I am impressed by the aerobic endurance of the student body.

As you may have guessed, tomorrow, may 17th is the day the Olympic torch rally comes to Wenzhou. My students gave me a Chinese flag in class today. They passed them out during the break, as well as large characters printed on stiff board which when held up in order will spell out a sentence. I had trouble getting them to settle down after the break as they were waving their flags. One was running back and forth with a full sized flag draped over her back. They all got on a bus after class to go to town. They will stay overnight in a hotel so they can be at the right place at six or seven in the morning when the relay starts. I asked them how many people would be sleeping in one hotel room, and they said they were not planning to sleep, so they would all fit in one or two rooms.

Yesterday, the other foreign teachers and I were asked if we wanted to go to the torch relay rally. I had said yes, I wanted to go. Today they said there are no spaces. I am not really disappointed, as I fully expected them to rescind the offer right at the last moment, but I did find it quite rude of them. It sure would have been a sight to see.

This afternoon, I tried to get the teachers to tell me if I could go by myself or not. I was to understand that at some torch relay events, the roads were completely roped off and all spectators had to pass through metal detectors, but that might have just been at the torch lighting and ending ceremonies. They encouraged me not to go as they thought it would be a complete mess and maybe dangerous. The school is also encouraging all the students not to go.

The Olympic torch parade has been quite successful in China so far. As you can tell, the young people are quite wound up. I hope they can get up in time to watch it on TV or in time to get to town after all the running and yelling. It has also been a bigger success for the sponsors who were afraid to advertise heavily on much of the international route for fear of reaction. The same cautious sponsors are going all out here. Coke even sponsored a competition to choose torch relay cheerleaders for all the cities the torch will pass through. Over an hour later, the chanting is dying down. There is still an intermittent "Go China, Go Olympics," but they are fewer and farther between.

The Art of Distilling

This post is dedicated to my brother. I took these pictures with precisely the intent of showing them to you. But it is also dedicated to JPS, JLH, Tom T, Will A, and of course CAB. I didn't drink any, but I was tempted to buy a huge jug. If we had had one of these at UMass, it would have been a time.
This is a traveling distiller with his still. I gather he drives around at harvest time and stops wherever people have been fermenting their rice. He takes the rice wine and makes it into a more potent rice moonshine. I gather the still works pretty fast as there was a pretty large flow of alcohol coming out the other end. He was working at two pm when I left the house and was still there when I came home after five. I took a picture when I was going by the first time, and then when I saw he was still there I asked to take more pictures. When he saw how interested I was, he told me I should take three pictures. One of him stoking the fire, one of him ladling out the booze and reading the alcoholometer and one of him drinking the delicious product. I took as many as I could, most of which have been uploaded for the readers enjoyment.

This is the first picture I took. The light was the best, so this picture came out the clearest. Click on it to see the stream of moonshine coming out of the condenser.

The next picture is the first one I took on the way back.

Stoking the fire under the boiler

Adding more coal

The rightfully self satisfied smile of the distiller. I know I'd be smiling at least that much if I had my own still.

Filling the tasting bowl directly from the condenser

Checking the specific gravity

Tasting the finished product

If you enjoyed these pictures please don't write or comment to tell me its a hydrometer not an alcoholometer. To me, it will always be an alcoholometer.

Sad Post About Cute Animals

This first picture is a super cute kitten that I saw sitting there as I was going to see the puppies pictured below. It just looked sort of sick and was too tired to flee in fear as I stuck my phone camera in its face.

This post is mostly about dogs. My wife used to tell me stories before we were married, not infrequently, of dogs who went missing after going out on the town for the day. She also told a story about traditional dog slaughtering methods that would keep clear the consciences of the hungry, hitherto meatless soul. First a large pot is set to boil, while it is heating up, a plank is set up like a see-saw. when the water reaches a full boil, the dog is then enticed to run up the plank. when it crosses the fulcrum point, the dog tips the see-saw the other way, and it falls into the boiling water. This, of course relieves the consumer of the meat of any responsibility or feelings of remorse, because the dog fell in on its own accord, and now that the dog is dead anyway, it would be a shame not to eat the meat.

The above paragraph gives a little background on these pictures of little pups I am holding. Their mother went out one day and just never came back. Now they are filthy and shivering, but they are big enough to eat on their own.

The next anecdote about doggy suffering is one caused by my own foolishness.

One day after I went rambling in the mountains, I saw a dog on the walk home along the highway. I noticed a metallic sound when it was walking around. The nice doggy had a wire around its neck, so i decided to try to beckon it over to see if i could free it so the wire wouldn't get caught in something causing it to get stuck and starve to death. when i knelt down and made the sort of noise likely to attract a dog, it got scared and ran into the road where it was immediately smacked into by a car. I didn't dare look because of all the screaming it was doing, and I wasn't about to go chasing it around in the middle of the highway. I could only think of the dog dragging itself away from me even when still crippled and not only causing the death of a cute animal, but also several car crashes as well. At least I stopped my well intentioned efforts before taking multiple lives. I would like to talk to a Buddhist about the karmic repercussions of this action, because according to my understanding, as long as intentions are good, it still produces good karma even if the end result is just more suffering. The "fang sheng" or releasing of live animals is a Buddhist tradition here, and it is the cause of a huge traffic in animals who are raised or caught just to be released by people who buy them specifically to release them in order to gain karma. This practice often causes havoc in the local ecosystem, and most of the released animals die anyway.

I chased the dog into the road right after I watched a video on a popular China blog called shanghaiist. You shouldn't watch that video, though Its a Wenzhou university security guard beating a dog to death. What does this say about people and their attitudes towards animals? I don't know. Is this a representative picture of attitudes towards animals in this part of the world? No, not really. I like to think these are the outliers. I'm not really sure I believe the weird story about chasing dogs on a see-saw either. But it makes for interesting reading.

Chinese Signs Continued

"Stay far way from drugs"

"Believe in Jesus and obtain the blessing of everlasting life"

"Three generations of the ancestors of those who defecate or urinate here were born of dogs. The dumping of garbage is forbidden."

This sign is one I saw in 'the bureau for leaving and entering the national borders,' which issues passports. This sign was part of a series of signs telling true stories of the woes of those who attempt to illegeal immigration. The headline of this particular story reads "Foreign countries are not heaven." Almost all of the stories are about people who went to Russia and then entered the Ukraine illegally at which point they were held for ransom, beaten and raped. They are then finally released and make their way back to the motherland, usually crippled for life. I took a picture of this one because the illustration was particularly good. I guess its really not that funny, but its also pretty much what I would expect if I were foolish enough to venture anywhere near the Ukraine.

"Looking For a Fat Girlfriend 24-37 years old"

Chinese Signs

"It is forbidden to dump excrement"

"The ancestors of all who urinate in this spot were raised by dogs"