Male toil

And the ladies are what, letting their hair down?

Oh, no, hard work awaits both genders.

I don't know what they are doing there,
but sounds pretty menacing.

... Might be it is just a suggestion to mind your manners and keep the bird from flipping though.

Almost there

Not too long ago the guys at Sinocidal ran a caption contest for an amusing picture:

Well, quite suprisingly I realized that our heros were not taking it easy and by now the situation improved - they are half way there!

Clothes and destination changed a trifle, but the perseverance of the train-jamming folks is sure to get them there.

Borrowed from here. Thx Alex.

UPD. Seems like this way of taking care of ladies is a pretty popular gentlemen's pastime. I couldn't refrain from putting all three of those photos in the same post to establish this sort of a parallel.

Another menu

Knowledge of Russian is necessary (yet another reason to learn foreign languages):
Machine translation continues to make us happy with its priceless semantic findings.
There is more at the original site.

It's like meeting the fresh fruit, romantically

Where I have been today.

A very nice pizza place here in Zhuhai. Nothing bad about the place - the food was tasty, the waitresses attentive and relatively pretty, the menu well-organized and quite romantic:
(Highest grade of dessert from southeast Asia, Decorate with the unique fresh fruit, meet them like meeting by chance romantically)

After perusing my menu, I went to the restroom. And it was there that quite by chance, and not exactly unromantically, I met those fresh fruit. They were hanging there on the wall, side by side, inconspicuous, a trifle out of place, but for the most part amusingly organic, shyly blending in with the general atmosphere of the place. Used as symbolic denotations, the fruit non-verbally indicated the room for the gents, and that for the dames respectively (and a little less respectfully). Which is which, I trust you may easily guess on your own. Quite an original, touching and daring design, - and I immediately developed a liking to the creative streak and the design taste of the restaurant management.

At the second glance the menu seemed loaded.

Further, the machine translation tools issued several noteworthy gems.

The list of viands presented us with a description of how the dish was made:

We learned what one-piece grilled things do in Japan:

The capital of the New York State is shown in a debunking light - now we know how they deal with triumphant outcomes:
The last dish on today's menu offers a certain variety for the flight of imagination; whatever happened there, you can have it for 10 yuan:

TM fusion

A chaser to my post about Nokia'ed Samsung - there was that pic on the net quite a while ago:


Now - I always thought that those funnies jump under the noses of the select few extremely lucky people who are able to detect fun around us.

But hey - I was lucky this time too. And it is not a sneaky driver of a Pepsi truck taking a swig of the competitor on the sly - here is a full-blown campaign on wheels. I guess they are trying to kill two birds with one stone - creating intensified customer awareness in the fledging Chinese market. Either that or the Swedes really got next to the Japanese of which I am not aware, the ignoramus...

Non-related cultural note. Pay attention to the plastic-covered bicycle seats - it is a useful habit - usually after a day of having the bike parked outside you can virtually write in the dust accumulated on it.

6 word stories

After yesterday's post with allusion to Hemingway's six word story, I found several similar gems on the net - which I mischievously will copy-paste here. The fuller version you may find here (that's where I have ruthlessly snatched it from) and here.

So here is the list. I am not flaming here, but you might try creating your own 6-word masterpieces. And even share it with me. Mine is at the bottom of the list.

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please.
- Steven Meretzky

We kissed. She melted. Mop please!
- James Patrick Kelly

It’s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O’Bannon

I’m your future, child. Don’t cry.
- Stephen Baxter

Epitaph: He shouldn't have fed it.
- Brian Herbert

Nevertheless, he tried a third time.
- James P. Blaylock

Thought I was right. I wasn't.
- Graeme Gibson

I saw, darling, but do lie.
- Orson Scott Card

Dorothy: "Fuck it, I'll stay here."
- Steven Meretzky

Seven years. Unearned degree. Already balding.

"Enlarge!"... Email's right or 'tis winter?

School Desk Graffiti

When I was at school I remember we used to write on the desks names of those popular rock bands (I personally did Metallica, Twisted Sister and Helloween - with all the picturesque elaborations of logo details), excerpts from their profound lyrics (which I am now afraid to even recollect), or messages to those who would sit at that particular desk next ("if you don't wanna study, add a car to the train" - with a nice long train formation puffing form one end of the desk to the other), or some useful technological images ("the lecturer sleep-mode button"), or various verbalized and engraved emotional cries form the depths...

Anyhow, the messages stood for something - some declaration or claim or what not.

I do realize this picture taken at a Chinese university symbolizes the quick-witted attempt at a crib for an exam of sorts, but it does have the air of a slogan and at the same time some existential drama. It was a surprise to see it glaring in solitude from the otherwise chaste greenish-yellow wooden surface. Gave my imagination a nudge in the context of the country's love for sloganism, struggle against the population boost and the sexual revolution in the minds of a trifle westernized pubescence-swirled students.
Only 5 words:
induce abortion
sexual intercourse
abandon

Food for thought along the lines of Hemingway's six word story.

Hooray! Hooray!

I caught this dude in a supermarket some time ago - couldn't help stopping him and asking to pose for a picture.

I am not sure how those people do communism or whether the idea is that they enroll after getting hooked (or whatever the lingo is now), but it is pretty hilarious to see such a shirt in the streets of China. I guess it may be a bigger hit in the streets of, say, San Francisco.

Anyhow, anyone interested in ordering some T-shirts?

Slumberous in China

Here is a web-site I found recently on vast zero-one'ed prairies, and it stirred up my own long-gone marveling at how and where 'these guys can sleep':
Meet www.sleepingchinese.com - a photo album of a co-expat who is stealing glances at the so often found here public embraces between the Chinese and Morpheus, stilling those fleeting (and not so much) moments in digital format.


He did what I tried to do, organizing those curious shots into a one-place collection, but I too had a couple of similar encounters - which I present here in my worthless blog. There is nothing funny or mocking therein, just a curious glance of a traveler marveling at how unpretentious my hosts can be in the matters of reposing after yet another round in the 'Survival of the Fittest' reality show.

I actually have quite a collection of this kind of pics, and many of those might have been copied from somebody else's blogs or forums for my own enjoyment, - but for the weight of time I fail to remember your honorable names, oh most worthy authors! Could you forgive me for not mentioning your excellent names while giving my friends a sneak peek at your wonderful pictures? Thank you.

This is definitely from some Chinese forum, copyright is rightly considered a mauvais ton, with which I full-heartedly agree, this should be made public!

Same Sing. The pictures at the beginning of the post belongs to the same category.

That's my own picture, I snapped it a while ago in Fujian. That's the after-the-lunch-time sleeping time of day. The cook must have been working pretty hard - at noon everybody has that community-feel eating urge, but after you are good for dozing off a few hours. Because the restaurant will be deserted. Why? 'Coz everyone is doing you-can-see-what in all the pictures of this post! ))


No trace on this one - but it has been on the net awhile. The report they are listening to must be really exciting. Hey, you heard about that learning tendency when you memorize things better in the sleep?

I took this one in Beijing, Yabaolu.

On a bus in Hui'An, Fujian Province.


Shishi, Fujian. I took it when we went there on a trip to find samples of fabrics.


This is a street on Hainan island, taken by a good person Lola. I wonder if these guys are moving together with the shadow or the automation of the process lets them blend into the shade of the tree next in line?

I can't put my finger on the memories associated with this one... Could be somebody else's.

Can it be…the most beautiful word in the world?..

Via Berlin Metroblogging:

" A competition entitled "The most beautiful ABC of the world" ("Das schönste ABC der Welt") which was held in Berlin awarded the Turkish "yakamoz" the title, the most beautiful word of the world. The jury selected it from almost 2500 words.

"Yakamoz" means "the reflection of the moon in water". The Chinese word "hu lu" (呼噜, to snore) came in second. The African word "Volongoto" (Baganda tribe), which means messy or chaotic, was voted third place. According to the jury, they selected "yakamoz" over the others because in Turkish one is able to express in a single word, what can only be expressed in other languages using multiple nouns. "

So - is the victory of "yakamoz" a kind of homage to the increasing inflow of northbound southern immigrants? And linguistically, do the parts of the word actually carry all those separate meanings making up the whole constellation, or the associations with reflections, water and moon are called in mind by social conventions?

Like you know, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! (super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragillistic- "delicate," expeali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," -> "Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty.")

At a Linguistics conference one professor said that if a culture really needs to have a name for a notion, this name will be created. An example he gave was: if a culture considers relevant to name an act of a black middle-aged man crawling over a fence at midnight (with any of the semantic constituents relevant enough to differentiate this act from any other similar, though specifically out-standing ones, - then a word will be born. I forgot if he actually gave a possible example of such a hypothetic lexical unit. I wonder what it might be...

So unless a culture needs not such a word, descriptive attributes will suffice. Another curious example of this idea is that not many languages have a single word for the back of the knee... whatever it is called.

And, finally, what made "hu lu" sound beautiful? I am sure they took into consideration all the allusions and connotations of the word's semantics. Why, Russian speakers will agree with me, not "hu li" (狐狸, fox), - talking about associations and stuff? Makes me wanna dig into the depths of the Chinese semantics with doubled effort.

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay!

Russian inside: Hardly the most beautiful semantics but amazing linguistic coincidences. Мир-труд-мяч практически :)

Linguo-cultural baby name galore

I don't even know if Chinese baby name sites exist, and I am lazy to run a search on it or even bother to turn on my fat butt and ask, but my hunch is that they are not necessary at all. As my experience shows, - and through my hands has passed many a student, - a Chinese name may be anything which sounds auspicious and thus is bound to bring good luck. That brings in my memory the university Linguistics course where we learned that certain peoples were so very impressed with the gadgets of civilization introduced by the while barbarians brave pioneers that they named their newly born "Irons", "Refrigerators" and the like. Christianity limits the number of names which seems just logical to me, but I am biased.

Via a respected blogger Steve Webel whom I do not know personally, but who is a thing in itself (himself?) and thus may be considered a name so popular an extra advertisement will be for him but like a drop in the sea; and via Foxnews I came to know this piece of news. At dawn of the Beijing Olympic Games a new name is gaining popularity among newly born Chinese babies: Olympics (Aoyun). Read the article snatched form the Foxnews below, but in the meantime lemme show off a little. It tickled my linguistic ego to know that "Aoyun" (奥运) is a shortened form of "ao lin pi ke yun dong hui"(奥林匹克运动会) - the whole phrase meaning 'Olympic games'. Good that the vernacular allows for shortening.

Curious thing about it - I know that at a certain time in Russia it was a trendy thing to name girls “Olimpiada”. How many middle-aged ladies are treading the newly fallen snows now - only the statistics-crazy people may know. But it's certainly a tendency.

"BEIJING — The upcoming Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for China — it's such an important part of the national consciousness that nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Most of the 3,491 people with the name "Aoyun," meaning Olympics, were born around the year 2000, as Beijing was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Games, the Beijing Daily reported, citing information from China's national identity card database.

The vast majority of people named Aoyun are male, the newspaper said. Only six live in Beijing. The report didn't say where the others live.

Names related to the Olympics don't just stop with "Olympics." More than 4,000 Chinese share their names with the Beijing Games mascots, the "Five Friendlies."

The names are Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). When put together, the phrase translates to "Beijing welcomes you!"

Chinese have increasingly turned to unique names as a way to express a child's individuality.

In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, 87 percent share the same 129 family names. That's why 5,598 people have the same name as basketball player Yao Ming and 18,462 share a moniker with star hurdler Liu Xiang, according to the Beijing Daily report.

Parents have turned to unusual combinations of letters, numbers and symbols when choosing their child's name, Li Yuming, deputy director of the National Language Commission, told the Xinhua News Agency in an August interview.

At least one couple wanted to call their child "1A," he said, while others use the e-mail address symbol (at), which in Chinese is pronounced "Aita," meaning "love him.""

Boy / Gal

Surprised as I am that my little quiz caused interest among the public, I am now answering that question about gender characteristics of the crabs featured here.
The one on the left is a boy, the other one is, well, not so hard to figure out now : )

Funny thing, female crabs are more expensive on the market these days - they go for 6 Yuan (~75 cents) apiece, whereas males are surprisingly depreciated - only 5.5 Yuan (~68 cents). Rumor has it females are tastier.

What's cooking up in Zhuhai

I always find it intriguing to know how my friends live in all those countries across the oceans. Likewise, I think, it would be thrilling for y'all to know how your old pal Sergio is scraping through in the south of China. Here I am gonna take you on an exhilarating ride through the culinary adventures of my today's evening.

We made up our minds to cook crabs. In the supermarket the stand with live sea critters was a bit to the side, with not a lot of people milling around, so we decided to give it a try and buy the three most vicious reps of the claw-wielding crustaceans. One finger was bitten, a piece of paper clawed to rags, but the first round ended up in our unequivocal victory and with the score of one-to-nil the crabs traveled across town to our apartment.

It was the first time we cooked crabs...

First we washed them with a brush,
checked for primary gender characters
(BTW, can you guess who is the boy and who is the girl in the picture above?)

and, the match ended with the smashing victory of the cooks, who steamed the three crabsketeers in a pot over a secret crafty potion of water and beer (to add beer was my ingenious pioneering invention). If you are interested, the crabs are to be steamed for half an hour with ginger and then served with a sauce of your liking.
Here it is, our blushed sea food.

Bank of China ATM shack
You know me, I am not mocking anybody for no typos/innocent mistakes. I myself am the greatest mistake-maker. But it is the beauty I see in the typos that catch my attention
Isn't there something Scandinavian in this inscription?

Slips of the pen are mightier than those of the tongue

I have been collecting excerpts from my students' essays for quite some time. Now it is about the right time to publish my little collection.

They have a certain vision of the future:

Just as ripe fruit will usually be picked to satisfy people's stomach, most graduates will function in different social positions as screws or nuts.

They have a strong belief in their thrilling and sci-fi future which defies the laws of matter and time:

College graduates will meet the great scholars' minds in the past.

Their ingenuous outlook on life cannot but be touching though it causes just a little concern for their social circles:

And I am so glad to say that I am so lucky because I have had several closed friends till now, and I feel happy every day.

They are friendly and always want to help. The only setback is they don’t know how.

I go to the library often. Here I am available to a wide variety of books.

They are keen on philosophy and are happy to cite the ‘Confucius said’ maxims:

The girl who always wear skirts is not only beautiful but also capable.

They strongly hold their opinions on gender problems... Wherever is this world going to:

Now men have become easier than women. ...Since women have been recognized more and more, have them been easier? On the contrary, they bare more than men.

Among the vicissitudes of life they are patient and enduring:

... it can see to our future that we can hold water facing our own life

Honestly, it is a relief that the university has managed to do them some good:

As a vice president of the *** association I have learned how to communicate with my head.

More to follow.