Archive for February, 2007
Lightning
So, what are the odds that the server and your computer would crash at the same time and wipe out two years of posts?
Omnis, the host company had a two-day server outage and my back-ups fried when two students plugged in a USB Drive they had used at a local photo shop. By the time the porn pictures stopped flashing and the resulting seizure stopped all was lost.
I will be reconstructing files for a couple of days and will be back on line…
Thanks to everyone who has offered help and condolences.
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How Long is a Cancer Year in China?
I think cancer years, the 12 month periods we endure when we or someone we know is battling a disease, are agonizingly longer than normal. And during those years our bodies seem to age in accordance with our perception of the passage of time distorted.
I was scouring old posts about The Unsinkable Ms Yue to add on a new site meant to raise funds for her and The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women when I came across the draft of a poem written one year ago.
The good news is: Ms Yue, though in some discomfort and worried about some lymphatic swelling, has cowed cancer for a full year. Her hair has grown back to the extent that she can almost tie it back with a band. Here is a written toast to Ms Yue, one of dozens of poetic anniversaries that will serve, by comparison, to happily distance her from disease.
AFTER BEING ASKED TO CUT HER HAIR
When she called, yesterday evening
or the night before, I had to walk
into the thick heat of Southern China
toward our prostitute of a River, beautiful
after dark and flattered by artificial light. I found it
especially hard to breathe because she reeks
of factory smoke and poverty.
During the day, the sky, one grey cataract,
ignores the whore whose name no one speaks
with longing in their voice The water was unlined:
a corpse without worry as I began to prepare
a place in my memory for what I would destroy
perhaps forever: The hair, the forty-five years
of silk still glistening with the kisses
of an adoring mother and vigilant father
She asked to me conceal the evidence
of the waning of the infinite. I was told to cut
and shave the perfect blackness, the magnificent
mystery of the history of moonlight, fires,
and the wind that has run fingers
through the remembered and the forgotten.
“Love is so short, forgetting so long”
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“Fuwa” to China’s Olympic Friendlies
I just read on China Rises that the government has changed the name of the Beijing Mascots from Friendlies to Fuwa (gesundheit!) which means “good fortune”. This should be good news to folks who bought commemorative coins with the old name inscribed.
Why the name change was made and why the announcement was kept so low key is somewhat of a mystery. It was a report aired last week on China Radio International (CRI) that revealed the name change and listed the reasons why the name should be altered: Firstly, Friendly is somewhat an ambiguous name, which could refer both to friendly people and friendly matches,”(and everyone knows that none of that nonsense is consistent with the goals of the Olympic Games!) a Dr. Li from Lanzhou University was quoted as saying on the site. “Secondly, the term Friendlies has a similar pronunciation to ‘friendless’ and thirdly, the spelling of Friendlies could be split and pronounced, ‘friend lies’.”
Laura Fitch, a Canadian who works in China as a news editor, welcomed the change, saying the name Friendlies sounds a “a little bit childish” and “doesn’t really have a meaning.” Laura didn’t get out much in Ottawa, but am I ever so glad that one state paid expat’ approved the switch and that the whole world will now get to say the more sensibly adult Fuwa. Sadly, it sounds similar to the sound made by my Chinese roommate expectorating. Laura is also working on changing the goofy little term for athletic coach back to “agonistarch” which means “a person who trains combatants for games.” and Dr. Li is lobbying for the Chester in Chester Drawers to be thrown out so nobody confuses it with a given name or a pair of pants. And both of these linguistic lamenters think that Car Pool Tunnel Syndrome is something contracted by commuters and that Grape Nuts is a venereal disease. Fuwa on you.
China Editorials,China Humor,China Olympics,China Sports,Intercultural IssuesCraigslist in China
I will not use Craigslist again. Sadly, It has become the new phishing ( the term for those who scour the web looking for emails and personal to perpetrate frauds) ground for every Nigerian scammer on the Internet block.
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Golfing 101 in China
A reprint from October …I will try to insert 10 a day…
Xiamen University, in the Southeast of China, is requiring law and business students to take golf lessons to prepare them for a business world where deals are made on the golf course. According to Fox News, Xiamen University in the southeastern city of Xiamen joins a growing number of Chinese schools offering golf lessons, but is unusual in making them a required class. “The aim is to help the students find good jobs,”a sports professor at the school, Chen Xiao, was quoted as saying.”Many Chinese business deals are clinched on golf courses.” Elite Peking University set off a debate over whether golf is appropriate for China, where most people still live in poverty, when it announced in August that it was building a practice green. Some students complained the sport was too elitist but supporters defended it as a healthy social activity. Some of the nicest golf courses in the world can already be found in Shenzhen and on Hainan (host to the China Masters) Island, but the price of a caddy might have just gone up. Finally, something for Japanese businessmen to do that won’t get them locked up.
By Lonnie Hodge
China Business,China Cartoons,China Editorials,China Humor,China Sports,Humor,Intercultural Issues,Teaching in ChinaSnakeheads, War Crimes and Hairy Chinese
This is a recaptured post from December 13th, 2005. It fits with a discussion in progress at Cal Poly’s MBA Trip Blog
Trouble is brewing once again between China and Japan:
Chinese State Council Premier Wen, Jiabao cancelled an annual meeting with South Korea and Japan stating the reason was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s five visits to Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine. This is the shrine that honors fallen soldiers and also houses WWII class A (the worst) war criminals. Wen told reporters, “the main reason for the impasse in China-Japan ties is that the Japanese leader won’t treat the history issue in a correct way …”
During my fifteen years in Japan I winced many times at Japan’s almost blind allegiance to the notion that the Chinese were inferior. It is not uncommon to hear Chinese referred to as lazy, dirty and uncivilized. And when hard line Japanese have had a bit to drink they are oft to talk about “Ketoh”, Hairy Chinese: Westerners. We are then only distinguished from the Chinese by arm, leg and facial hair.
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Learn to Speak Body….
At first I thought this might be a great teaching tool. And maybe it will be, but…
This has been on YouTube for a few months now, but you may not have seen it. Mitchell Rose, the director who put this together, has several films worth a look. and they must be good because 1,500,000 folks have already peeked at this one on YouTube. I posted it here because since coming to China 1,000,000 seems small. If I visit a city with that few people in it people in it and I am suddenly in mind of a place like Spiderbreath, Montana. But I digress…
Humor,Just Plain Strange,Teaching in China,Top Blogs,Videos,中国
