American Professor and King of Nothing

Occasionally I go blogroll diving. It is akin to dumpster diving, but instead of selling my treasures on Ebay I get paid through a good laugh, some new insight or a a fresh post to share. And I come out of the whole blog experience smelling a lot better….

This will be part of an ongoing series featuring little known websites and blogs based in, or writing about, China that deserve a look. There is some wonderfully creative stuff going on out there/in here….

A Black Man in China

It’s a podcast from a Cleaveland Ohio expat. Be sure to watch “No size fits all” where he spends the day hunting for clothes here in OZ….

Second on the list is a humor site that often posts Chinglish sightings and occasionally other China nonsense. From hairlarious.wordpress.com:

1. In a Beijing hotel lobby:
The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.”

2. In a Shanghai hotel elevator:
“Please leave your values at the front desk.”

3. In a Hangzhou hotel:
The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid;

4. In a Jilin hotel:
“You are very invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.

5. In a Wuxi dry cleaner:
Please drop your trousers here for best results.”

6. Outside a Tianjin clothing shop:
Order your summer suits quick. Because of big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.”

7. In a Xian tailor shop:
“Ladies may have a fit upstairs.”

8. In a Guilin hotel:
“Because of impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.”

9. An ad by Kunming dentist:
“Teeth extracted by the latest methodists.”

10. In a Hangzhou zoo:
“Please do not feed animals. If you have suitable food give it to the guard on duty.”

11. In a Taiyuan bar:
“Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.”

12. In a Huashan temple:
“It is forbidden to enter a woman. Even a foreigner if dressed as a man.”

Also seen on hilarious:

Enjoy!

For a great non-China related site head over to the very funny Internet Class clown Cap’n Platy, the sharpest guy on the planet, at Platypus Society

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Guest post by DD

On Saturday night I met the handsomest Indonesian boy in Guangzhou at the Mansion in Guangzhou, though in this picture he is happily cruising around Macau. I guess he knows how to light up all of south China.  He works at a small, high-quality bar in downtown Guangzhou as the event manager.

Ladies and gentlemen, leave a note if you find this. And everone mention how handsome he is!

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Books have been virtually replaced by blogs. But, puns aside, many of them showcase the transformative elements Pablo Neruda* suggests as essential to written art in Ars Magnetica:
“From so much loving and journeying, books emerge.

And if they don’t contain kisses or landscapes,
if they don’t contain a woman in every drop,
hunger, desire, anger, roads,
there are no use as a shield or as a bell:
they have no eyes and won’t be able to open them….”

Here I have I have tried to smooth the stubble of memory, share poetry, attempt humor, journal my social conscience, and reconcile my longings while shoutng to you in some far-off room. I leave here absolutely bewildered that anyone, other than my long-suffering friends, ever returned to listen. I am grateful you did.
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It is a little dirty up there, but…

They used a Guangzhou traffic engineer…

America does not always get it right either….

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Chinese youth are more addicted to video games. text messaging and online chats than any other group I have seen worldwide. Students will happily risk a failing grade in class in order to keep up with the daily movements of their friends. They text message each other so often that GPS is uneccessary.

Beijing has been concerned for a while and bootcamps for the addicted are springing up country-wide. The Beijing Military Region Central Hospital was turned into a boot camp for the Internet-addicted a few months ago. According to the director of China’s of the program, people treated there have a hard time distinguishing between real and virtual worlds. Me too, but it has nothing to do with the Internet and more with being an expat…

According to a recent post by Boing Boing: “The Chinese government is imprisoning and giving electric shocks to people it thinks have become addicted to the Internet. Alarmed by a survey that found that nearly 14 percent of teens in China are vulnerable to becoming addicted to the Internet, the Chinese government has launched a nationwide campaign to stamp out what the Communist Youth League calls “a grave social problem” that threatens the nation.

Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts said that the clinic is based on the idea that there are many similarities between his current patients and those he had in the past.

In terms of withdrawal: “If you let someone go online and then he can’t go online, you may see a physical reaction, just like someone coming off drugs.” And in terms of resistance: “Today you go half an hour, and the next day you need 45 minutes. It’s like starting with drinking one glass and then needing half a bottle to feel the same way.”
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Not featured in Lonely Planet:

Via the Hao Hao Report and Cox Washington is a upgrade on the Chinglish battle going on in Beijing: “Visitors to China’s capital can stroll through “Racist Park,” enjoy a plate of “Crap in the Grass” and stop by a Starbuck’s franchise for a cup for “Christmas Bland” coffee.

Now the Beijing government is trying to clean up such mistranslations and sloppy editing (including the inversion of ‘a’ and ‘r’ in carp on menus) before an expected 500,000 foreigners arrive for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The campaign includes teaching 300 English phrases to 48,000 taxi drivers, helping private restaurants edit menus and standardizing public signs.

The English translations on signage range from charming mistakes to baffling renditions that spread anger and confusion.

In Shanghai, which will host several Olympic soccer games, at least one public toilet equipped for handicapped use is emblazoned with the malapropism, “Deformed Man Toilet.”

There is such a plethora of entertaining “Chinglish” – the unusual and sometimes incomprehensible phrases that result when Chinese meets English — that several online communities are devoted entirely to sharing entertaining snippets.

A collection of photographs posted on the photo-sharing Web site flicker.com includes of a Chinese sign marking a loading zone but bearing the English message: “VEHICLE-TAKING SPOT.”

Many of the funniest examples are found on packaging, such as instructions on a Chinese-made candle warning owners to “keep this candle out of children.”

The fact that hundreds of thousands of English speakers will descend on China for the Olympics prompted a government-led campaign reminiscent of mass mobilizations of the 1960s and ’70s.

In Beijing, several district governments offer citizens free English classes with the goal of boosting the number of foreign-language speakers from today’s 3.2 million to 5 million by 2008, when they will be called on to help the city “host a most excellent ever Olympic Games,” according to a poorly edited English version of Beijing’s “Plan of Action for the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program.”

Uh…

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Zoolologists worldwide have gone to a lot of trouble in recent years to ensure the survival of a rare and beautiful species. But, a couple of new projects make you wonder whether or not the zoo keepers have wee bit too much time on their hands….

China is still building a breeding “base” for giant pandas in another effort to save the endangered species from extinction. Wang (do not go there), the director, said that the base will contribute more to the research and breeding of giant pandas as well as to their training before their release in the wild. Males are rehearsed in panda pick-up lines and taught to smoke before being let go and a reunion is planned for sometime in 2006. Giant pandas are notoriously unproductive. There are only about 1,500 of the much-loved black and white creatures left in the wild in China’s the giant pandas living in the Qinling have been separated geographically for 50,000 years from those in Sichuan, experts said. “The giant pandas in Qinling is a more endangered sub-species of giant pandas,” the official said. I think I had him in one of my oral English classes. A recent survey indicated that the number of giant pandas roaming in the wild of Shaanxi has reached 340 thanks to effective protection measures.   The cake-taker though comes from Thailand.  According to National Geographic A Thai zoo is hoping that “panda pornography” will spark romance between its two giant pandas, which were married by proxy (monkeys stood in for them?) last November in an elaborate Chinese-style ceremony. “Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui have called Thailand’s Chiang Mai Zoo home for the past four years. Zoo officials had hoped that the warm Thai climate would spark the pandas’ hormones and trigger their desire to mate. Instead they are insisting to go to dance bars and the beach. But the animals, on loan from China for ten years, have yet to start a family. A first mating attempt earlier this year failed to produce offspring, and the pandas have remained platonic pals (But, the male doesn’t call or write or anything laments the female) since then—prompting officials to launch their unique plan.” Maybe one of them is just really ugly, or has a unacceptably colorful panda past? “They don’t know how to mate, so we need to show the male how through videos,” project chief Prasertsak Buntrakoonpoontawee (If you can say that three times REALLY fast I will send you the centerfold from the 2007 Panda Babes Calendar)t told the Reuters news service. Chuang Chuang, the six-year-old male, will view films of other mating pandas when scientists judge him to be relaxed and receptive—perhaps just after a tasty dinner. “If all goes well, the racy video will be both instructional and inspirational, showing Chuang Chuang the reproductive ropes and causing him to see five-year-old Lin Hui in an entirely different light. “Ya, but don’t pandas gain like 40 or 50 kilos on TV? The story goes on to say, their solitary nature could mean that even some wild animals are unsure of themselves with the opposite sex.

I think that maybe they just want a bit of privacy.

by Lonnie Hodge 

Asia,Asian Humor,China Humor,Environment,Humor,Just Plain Strange,Thailand,Weird China

Much ado is made about the dearth of creativity in Asia as compared to the rest of the world.

I know that I have often critqued Chinese creativity, but I sometimes tend to see common Chinese people as remarkably creative especially in light of resources available in poorer areas. Here are some great examples, via slide show, of necessity indeed being the mother of invention:

New Year’s is only a few days away…

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Though the The Opposite End of China and Riding Sun have cornered the market on China photo caption contests, I can’t resist asking for you for a bit of help with the pic’ that froze my keyboard. It is the chorus extras on the tarmac above the heart that really got me:

The winner(s) will receive a gift certificate worth a 100 RMB shopping spree at Deng’s DVD Speakeasy in Guangzhou. That’s 25 movies or (with my “Pirates of Canton” discount card) an equal number of “crash resistant” software programs!

I will choose a winner or winners by Monday of next week.

Happy VD!

Asian Humor,China Photos,Humor,Weird China

Here’s a little Valentine’s Heart warmer:

On the exterior window ledge in my apartment building’s hallway someone has burned the semblance of several thousand dollars in Chinese money. It is a common ritual meant to give the deceased a few extra bucks on their travels through the after-life. I guess dead Cantonese merchants don’t check the money as closely as they do in this reality.

I learned from an article in the NY Times about a strange twist on attending to the needs of your dearly departed family members in a rural town located between Beijing and Shanghai: It is called “After Life Marriage” when Traditional Chinese families, worried that an unmarried dead relative may be unhappily alone, provide them a corpse bride. “To ensure a son’s contentment in the afterlife, some grieving parents will search for a dead woman to be his bride and, once a corpse is obtained, bury the pair together as a married couple.” A family searching for a female corpse typically must pay more than 10,000 yuan, or about $1,200 ( almost four years of income) for a bride. I would say that is rather stiff, but….Sorry.

Families do what they can and sometimes make a matrimonial figure of straw and bury it next to the dead son to substitute for the spouse he never had or pay about 2,000 RMB for a body that has washed up on nearby river banks. According to the New York Times: “The Communist Party has tried, with mixed success, to stamp out beliefs it considers to be superstition. But the continued practice of the ancient custom in the Loess Plateau is a testament to the region’s extreme isolation. In other parts of rural China, it is difficult to know how often, if at all, the custom is followed.” It is at once the most compelling and chilling of Confucian customs and ancestor worship that demands familial loyalty even in death. It could become much more prevalent with the coming shortage of living, breathing eligible females.

By Lonnie Hodge

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Tiger Beer – Reincarnation – video powered by Metacafe

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