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.