Shī Shì shí shī shǐ ("Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den")

By Kevin

One of the frustrating things about learning Chinese for a foreigner is the number of homophones (or homonyms, if you prefer) -- words that sound either exactly the same or nearly the same. In English we have plenty of homonyms. I'm sure English learners struggle with "two," "too" and "to," but it's nothing compared with Chinese. 

The number of homonyms make it easy to misunderstand Chinese when hearing a word or phrase taken out of context.

I was reminded of this when going through my Chinese flashcards the other day. On my phone, I often use a flashcard program called Memrise to help me remember vocabulary. I have it set up to sometimes play the audio for a word, then ask me to provide the definition. When you don't know the context of how a word is being used (like, say, in a flash card program), sometimes it's hard to guess its meaning. A simple word like shī could mean "teacher" (师), "wet" 湿 "poem" 诗,  "lion" 狮 or "corpse" 尸. And  if you aren't careful to listen for the intonation of each word, it might be impossible. Change tones and you could wind up with "time" "ten" "true" "stone" "food" or "to know." And that's just with the second tone - there are four (plus a neutral tone). There's even a famous Chinese poem concocted to show the limitations of pinyin (courtesy of wikipedia) that only uses the sound "shi":

Shī Shì shí shī shǐ

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.Shì shì shì shì.

In characters, it looks like this:

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。氏時時適市視獅。十時，適十獅適市。是時，適施氏適市。氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。試釋是事。

Translated, it means: 

"Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" 

In a stone den was a poet called Shi,

who was a lion addict,

had resolved to eat ten lions.

He often went to the market to look for lions.

At ten o'clock,

ten lions had just arrived at the market.

At that time,

Shi had just arrived at the market.

He saw those ten lions,

and using his trusty arrows,

caused the ten lions to die.

He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.

The stone den was damp.

He asked his servants to wipe it.

After the stone den was wiped,

he tried to eat those ten lions.

When he ate,

he realized that these ten lions

were in fact ten stone lion corpses.

Try to explain this matter.

Even compound words made up of two or more characters can sometimes be difficult to guess without context. When the audio for shí jiè appeared in my context, I had to think carefully. After all, there were four different words I'd learned with similar pronunciation. With this exact pronunciation, it can mean "season" (时节) or "the 10 commandments" (十诫). With different intonation, " shì jiè" can mean "the world" (世界 shì jiè) or "field of vision (视界). And shījié (失节) means disloyal, whereas shǐjié ( 失节) is a diplomatic envoy. My dictionary lists at least 13 different meanings for "shi jie."

Often this is one of my biggest difficulties when conversing with a Chinese friends. I might think I understood what somebody was talking about, but then find myself suddenly confused. I'd look up a word that I thought I understood and discover that it has a homonym that has a completely different meaning, which I was unsure of. It's one of the reasons one of our teachers, when we came to China assured us that "the first ten years (of studying Chinese) are the hardest." 

Chinese people often ask me why I don't listen to more Chinese radio or watch more Chinese television (I really should, but my listening level is closer to Juliana's than that of an adult, so her cartoons are somewhat suitable for me). The puns are one reason. It's just harder to catch those things when someone's speaking fast and I can't interrupt them to ask a question to clarify meaning. Hoping that we'd have enough Chinese to understand a Chinese cross-talk program (a popular category of skit) after two years of study is clearly a stretch. Chinese humor is all about puns and wordplay. And more and more, the internet is filled with it. 

Last semester, my tutor pointed me to an assortment of relatively obsolete characters, which are gaining new life on the internet. One example is the character 囧, pronounced jiong. On the internet, it's basically transformed into an emoticon to express embarrassment. Look at it -- it's a bit . But even more, people have been using words that sound the same as a word that has been put on a blacklist by the government, trying to convey an entirely different meaning. 

This article gives some perspective: 

According to Moser, the Internet has become a place for people to play with the Chinese language. Puns and wordplay have a long history in Chinese culture. Chinese is the perfect language for punning because nearly every Chinese word has multiple homophones. Homophones are two words that sound similar but have different meanings like hare that rabbit-like creature and the hair on your head. In Chinese there are endless homophones.

“Because there are so many homophones there’s sort of a fetish about them,” says Moser. “As far as the culture goes back you have cases of homophone usage and homophone humor.” Many times forbidden or taboo words in Chinese are taboo precisely because they sound like another word.

A good example of this is the number four, which in Chinese sounds like the word for death and the number eight, which sounds like the word for prosperity. Moser has a Chinese aunt who used to work for the phone company and she could make money selling phone numbers. People would beg her for a phone number with a lot of eights. “People would actually give her gifts or bribes for an auspicious phone number,” says Moser.

Today, wordplay online has less to do with getting auspicious numbers and more to do with getting around censorship. Moser cites an example of a recent phrase he saw online mentioning the Tiananmen Square incident – only the netizen didn’t use the words “Tiananmen Square” or even 6/4, which refers to the date the incident took place. Tiananmen Square and 6/4 are both censored online. Instead the netizen referred to the “eight times eight incident.” Moser was confused when he first saw the reference. “And then I figured out, eight times eight is 64,” says Moser.

The Internet is ripe with clever examples of how people evade the censors. However, censorship is just one reason netizens play with words online. Another is the very technology that enables people today to input Chinese characters onto their cell phones and computers.

Jack Wang explains how he types Chinese characters with his phone. He uses an English keyboard and uses the pinyin system. Pinyin is the method for converting Chinese characters into our alphabet. For example, the Chinese word for “today” is 今天, which is rendered into pinyin as “jintian.”

Wang types the English letters “jintian” on his phone. As he types the first three letters, “jin” a list of Chinese characters pops up on the screen. Each different character sounds just like the word for today, “jin” but means something completely different. Wang points to each possible character and explains its different meaning: gold, clothes, only, and finally 今, the character for “today.”

Everyday, people are typing in a word like “today” and seeing all of the potential homophones for that word. This says David Moser has fueled wordplay like never before.

“I think that’s given rise to a lot more puns then would normally have been uttered in the earlier days when you had to just pull everything out of your head,” says Moser.

People have gotten even more creative playing with this input system to intentionally create new Chinese slang, translating English phrases into pinyin and then into Chinese characters. The meaning of these new words can seem random but they’re not. For example the Chinese character for glass, 玻璃, pronounced “boli” has come to mean “gay man.” Turns out, the slang term actually comes from an English phrase, “boy love.” But netizens have abbreviated the phrase into the English letters “B L” and then they looked for a similar abbreviation in Chinese, typing “B-L” into their computers and out popped the character for glass. “Suddenly the word glass was being used for male homosexuals,” says Moser.

Beating censors sounds like a great idea for proponents of free speech. But I think it probably only works for native speakers. For us foreigners trying to learn Chinese, it's a recipe for disaster. If Chinese people start using Chinese characters to convey meanings that are completely separate from their literal meaning, the likelihood of me catching it is next to nothing. Unless I have someone "in the know" to explain that someone is describing that man as a "bottle" means he's homosexual, the meaning will completely fly over my head. I'd probably guess they mean the man is weak, or easily breakable. 

If you enjoy Chinese and seeing the difficulties of translating these many different homophones into English, be sure to check out my Chinglish book "Chinese + English = Chinglish" on Blurb and Amazon.

Walking advertisements

By Kevin

Once again, we were an advertisement. In exchange for the use of one of the first 70 degree Spring afternoons of the year, we were giving  the University "face." But that's not what we were told going in. All we were told was that there would  be an activity (活动) in the afternoon involving sports. And that we must come and participate. There's no asking:  when you are a student, the school often tells you what to do.

The cameraman we had to wait for before starting

When we arrived with around 150 of the other foreign students on campus, the teacher in charge divided us into four rows of people and explained that we were going to be filmed by CCTV (China's national TV station) and the local Ningxia TV station because Ning Da is participating in 留动中国 (meaning "stay active China," I think) -- an activity meant to promote "healthy exercise" (redundant, I know), cultural exchange and "joining hands in  the sun" for foreign students living in China. It sounds like participating schools were supposed to arrange 3-on-3 basketball  tournaments, ping-pong matches and 毽子 (jianzi) (a sort of traditional Chinese hacky-sack) exhibitions,  in addition to other cultural activities. While we waited for the videographer to show up, a reporter  started making the rounds, interviewing several students, including our teammate about all sorts of  things. I heard a few questions about food and studies and why he came to China. Nothing could start  until the videographer was there.

3-on-3 basketball "trials"

It really came as no surprise that our sports activity, which the school's website called "trials" for a national competition featuring foreign students didn't actually involve most of us doing something we wanted to do or really learning anything. After all, this was a made-for-TV event. Not an actual activity for  our enjoyment or enrichment, no matter what the propaganda said. At the root, I figured it would be some sort of face-giving publicity stunt, no matter how much it had been dressed up as a fun outing. In fact, though we were told it would involve playing  sports, very few were chosen to don University t-shirts and compete. The school chose six guys they'd heard could play basketball (two of them our teammates), gave them T-shirts and split them into two teams. The rest of us were just told to  be there.

A handful of students played. The rest of us were the audience.

Foreign students holding signs

We were supposed to simulate a "real" competition. The athletes would play their hearts out. The rest  of us were told to 拉拉手, which I took to mean, be cheerleaders (the closest dictionary entry I could  find to this says "to shake hands" -- either that or maybe I got the tones wrong and she meant 辣手,  which means "troublesome" or "vicious" -- I'm guessing that none of these are what she was going for).  We were to mimic the way Chinese students constantly cheer on their classmates at sports meets and basketball games , shouting the traditional Chinese cheer of “加油” (add oil! -- meaning  something like "more effort" or "go team"). But few joined in. Most  just watched. We just weren't  naturals. Teachers repeatedly attempted to start a chant, but it would die before the third or fourth repetition. A few chanted cheers in Russian or other native languages. Students who were given an assignment to hold four signs reading 留动中国 held the signs with less and less enthusiasm as the game went on. The student  tasked with holding up the 宁夏大学 sign tried to prop it up using a package of water bottles, then later by attaching it to another student's backpack.

Student shows off his prowess at jianzi, a Chinese hacky-sack-like game

The basketball players played a fierce half-court game for 15-20 minutes, long enough for our teammate to get a  bloody nose and hurt his knee. Then, as they finished their  game, the teachers pointed the rest of us to the other end of the court and told us to watch and learn how to pay 毽子 (jianzi). In this game, which has been around since the fifth century, we all spent a few minutes attempting to use long-dormant or non-existent hacky-sack skills as we kicked around a shuttle-cock made from four brightly colored feathers attached to two or three small quarter-sized pieces of metal. A few  students from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had obviously played something similar before because soon they  were jumping in the air, tapping the feathered hacky sack back and forth, showing off for the cameras.  A teacher tried to get the rest of the students to gather around and again cheer them on for the  cameras. By this time the crowd had shrunk to maybe 100 students. And half weren't interested in  anything more than chatting with friends.

By the time we made it to the third activity, the ping-pong "tournament," only 50 or 60 students were left to crowd around the ping-pong tables in the  classroom building. But still the cameras rolled.

Wang Hui, school director, interviewed by NXTV.

In the end, I don't know if it had the desired effect. Perhaps if the competitions were real, rather than made-for-TV, people would have gotten into it.  Perhaps if everything didn't feel so staged and manipulated it would have worked. But it didn't. It  felt forced because it was. But maybe that's not how the school saw it. After all, the local news did run a report on the event, trimming out the fat and concentrating on the action and conveying the message the school was going for: "The primary (goal is) to offer our foreign students and Chinese university students a platform to interact and at the same time give them more opportunities to experience Chinese culture," said Wang Hui, the director of the School of International Education.

The only interaction we had with Chinese University students was with the three who served as referees of the basketball and ping pong matches. We probably could have gleaned the Chinese love for ping-pong or basketball without attending a staged event. The jianzi activity was interesting, but most of what I learned about Chinese culture came from reading Wikipedia after learning that the sport isn't actually called "Chinese hacky-sack."

So I guess I learned two things - the importance of giving face and the name of the hacky-sack-like sport.Being the foreign faces in the crowd often gets us roped into events ostensibly for education's sake. But really it's all about giving face or  publicity sake. We often go along with the publicity shoots because they "give face" to our hosts. "Face" is a huge thing in Chinese culture, so our hosts are generally more appreciative (at least when we were teachers they were -- as students, it's more of an expectation). Surely the school didn't gain as much face as it  wanted. I wonder what we'll be roped into next.

Farmers work the fields at Ningxia University's experimental farm

As students, we've been taken to a  farm owned by the university so we could be photographed by  local media among the fields, we've given New Year's performances for University and governmental leaders from China and several other countries and gone to teach Christmas lessons at a local  university. As teachers, we've had colleagues and students ask if they could take our photo so they could advertise their school (even though we didn't work there), invite us to spend a day playing at the  kindergarten (meaning teaching the kids some English songs), ask us to give high school students an  impromptu English lesson and invite us to be interviewed for school radio programs, among other  things. The difference between the two was that as students, we tend to be told to participate, whereas  as teachers, it's a request. Often it's a very urgent request because they've already told others that  we will participate, but at least it gets phrased as a request. We then must decipher how urgent it is.

But sometimes, as students, when told that we must participate, it's just not feasible: there was the  2-1/2-to-three-hour one way bus ride last Spring to Shapotou,

Shapotou, sand dunes along the Yellow River in Ningxia.

a scenic sand dune along the Yellow  River. I went alone. It was interesting, but the full-day trip just wouldn't have worked with then 1- and-a-half-year old Juliana skipping all naps. Then there was the 5K our first fall in Yinchuan. Students were told that  they would be going to a small city an hour away, where there would be a 5K run. We were assured that we wouldn't have to run it if we didn't want to do so. We foreigners were also encouraged to bring our kids and assured that we wouldn't need a stroller. Thankfully, we declined the invitation, using the baby excuse. The bus dropped everyone off at the starting line, then drove to the finish line, forcing everyone to at least walk the route. Glad we decided not to go to that one. Carrying then 1-year-old Juliana for the whole route would have been terrible.
I can't help but wonder what the next face-giving event will be.

Progress

There are a lot of times in the midst of studying Chinese when it's hard to feel like we're making a lot of progress. Lately it seems like lots of our classes have been filled with confusing grammar rules and the fifth word that means almost exactly the same thing as the other four, except for one small contextual nuance that can't fully be explained. And the measure words – oh man, does Chinese have some measure words.

For about every fourth new vocabulary word, we learn a new measure words. English has different measure words too: a pair of pants, a cup of coffee, a slice of bread. But it's amazing how many times we can just say “a” or “the” or don't even have to use a measure word at all. Thank you, English. A few examples of Chinese measure words:

片 pian – for things that are flat, thin pieces (a pill, a large grassy area)

张 zhang – a measure word for flat objects (a table, a bed, a piece of paper)

支 zhi – for long, thin, inflexible objects (a pen); for troops; for songs; for wattage; and for the size or quality of yarn.

根 gen – for long, thin objects (a banana, a match, a piece of string)

There are different measure words for a pair of eyes and a pair of glasses, a letter, a book, a newspaper, a present, a tv, a road, a mountain, a piece of clothing, a class period...you get the idea. Usually to introduce how these myriad measure words are used, our book says something useful like, "a measure word."

As always, we feel the difficulty of both of Kevin and I trying to learn Chinese while also being parents. It's hard not to compare to someone who is able to spend 20 hours a week in class, meet with a tutor every day, and (novel thought) study every day too! I'm only in class 10 hours a week, meeting with a tutor 4-5 hours a week, and my study time is more often than not 2-5 snatches in between Juliana's suddenly urgent need for attention. She's just like a cat – as soon as she can sense I'm trying to focus, she does her best to put herself directly between me and my book. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really learning that much at all.

So it's helpful to look back every so often and be able to see progress! I sometimes forget how very, very little we knew starting off, even after 5 years living in China. I used to be able to answer a few, very basic questions before starting to flounder. Now I can carry on conversations for half an hour or an hour. Maybe not deep, eloquent conversations, but communicative ones all the same. Last week I called my Chinese friend from Yangzhou, and she was thrilled that we could talk in Chinese and I could understand her. Last weekend we spent the morning at the home of a random family Kevin and Juliana had met outside and only used a few words of English.

Juliana and her new little Chinese friend find words, Chinese or English, rather unnecessary.

I looked back at the first lesson in our reading book where we were reading this:

Reading Text: Lesson 1

Compared to last week when we read this:

Reading Text: Lesson 21

I could not write any Chinese before this year, and my writing is still not great. I don't practice it too much except in class and writing homework because it's probably the area I'll use least in the future. Even so, I can write (and even remember how to write) a whole lot more characters than before!

Notes from class

It's exciting to remember we are making progress.  Yay for us!

Little Swallow

By Kevin

The week before last, my tutor was away, serving as a translator at the big Sino-Arabic Summit held in Yinchuan to promote trade between China and the Arabic world, largely through the production and export of Halal foods and the import of oil.

So, I had a substitute tutor. It was a bit frustrating at first.

It didn't start out well. He talked about how this would be a good chance for him to improve his English and for me to improve my Chinese. I quickly let him know that I wasn't paying him to improve his English. He'd get a chance to use some English because I don't know enough Chinese, but I wanted him to speak as much Chinese as possible.

It got worse when he started correcting my pronuciation of the Chinese word for the number 3 - "San." He insisted that it should be said with a long "a" sound like Americans use when saying "and." I told him that I'd always been instructed that it's a shorter vowel sound, perhaps closer to how Americans might say "on." Thankfully, Ruth's tutor came in later and told him that his pronunciation of that sound wasn't standard Chinese, nor was the "v" sound he used in "Weinan."

I never expected that my pronunciation of any Chinese sound would be more accurate than a native speaker. But I had to remind myself that Americans pronounce things differently depending on where they are from too.

Anyway, on the third day he came to tutor me, he brought an interesting children's song, "小燕子 (Xiao Yan Zi)" -- translated, it means "Little swallow." Here's a video ,
or you can watch it here.

He said that he learned the song when he was a child. His translation of the lyrics is what intested me most:

"Small swallow, who wears beautiful clothes,
Every year at springtime, you come back here,
I asked the swallow, why do you you return here?
The swallow said: "This place at spring time is the most beautiful."
Small swallow, let me tell you: this year it is even more beautiful,
We built a huge factory and adorned it with new machines,
We welcome you to always come back here."

As he explained, I stopped him: "If I was a bird, I wouldn't want to come back to a city that has a new factory."

"It's a song about progress," he assured me, a bit confused by my question.

"Not if you're the bird."

From Firehose to Punctured Straws

By Kevin

If the first two days of class were like gulping from a fire-hose, we were sipping from perforated straws during week two.

Just before stepping into the classroom on the Monday of our second week of class, some classmates summoned me down the hallway to enter a new classroom. I was handed a new schedule and told that now we were members of class “B,” rather than class “A.” Apart from the fact that we'd now have to rearrange childcare for one two hour chunk of time from our original plan of Tuesday to Thursday, my first reaction to joining another class was relief. I'd learned that several of the students in class “A” were actually second-year Chinese students, repeating the class. That explained why my mind raced to catch up with them during the first couple days of class. I figured, perhaps this class would be more suited to my Chinese level. Now I'm not so sure.

We spent the next four hours practicing  pronunciation and repeating about one-third of the content that we covered in our first eight hours of lessons with class "A" last week.

Instead of fretting because we were moving too fast, I starting wishing that the teachers would just hurry up. One of the reasons for the repetition was this class was filled with nine new students who weren't here last week and speak very little Chinese. There were five students from Mongolia, two from Kyrgyzstan, one from Tajikistan one from Uzbekistan, in addition to four of the Americans, the Canadian and the Mexican from last week's class.

Most of the second week's lessons were similar to our first day in class “B.” In spite of the name of the class, we didn't really do any reading in Reading class. After working on some basic greetings, we spent 2/3 of our time going through the pronunciation of every sound combination in the Chinese language. The teacher spent half her time listening to each of the 15 students pronounce a list of words. Most of our classmates have problems with several Chinese sounds, so it is helpful. But it's also boring for everyone who isn't being called upon. I am sure that their Pronunciation class will cover these basics, but our teacher insists that we need to go through it here too (we spent a good chunk of time focusing on pronunciation with our tutors the week before official classes began to free us up to take a “Practicum” class instead during this time to apply our learning).

In Oral class, we spoke a little, but there were few opportunities for us to practice with one another (as we would in an Oral English class). Our homework was writing: write these 20 characters 10 times apiece. Time-consuming and helpful, but not improving my speaking. Several of us longed for the challenge of the other class, even if it was a bit too fast-paced. However, I am sure that things will pick up once we get past pronunciation.

Outside of our classroom, a large gathering of senior citizens were playing in a croquet tournament, so we watched during the break. We asked our teacher what croquet is called in Chinese – 门球 (ménqiú). Translated into English, it's “gate ball.” The name seems especially fitting when you consider the shape of the characters and imagine a ball rolling through the 门.

During week two, I did miss one day of class – on Wednesday, when the school loaded 26 of the new students onto a bus and brought us to get our medical examinations, which are required to obtain a residence permit. It took almost an hour for each of us to register and pay. We waited in line alongside about two dozen curious Hui, presumably applying for passports so they can make their pilgrimage to Mecca. During the next 2-1/2 hours, we cycled through an assortment of required medical exams. We were checked for normal things like height, weight, blood pressure and eyesight along with more exotic exams like an EKG, chest x-ray, abdominal ultrasound and blood test to make sure we don't have any major health problems. Oddly, the school was able to exempt us from having our backs examined because it might make us “uncomfortable.” Juliana generally enjoyed the attention she got as we juggled her back and forth. But, she wouldn't nap and we didn't expect to be gone so long, so she was getting hungry and cranky by the time we got home at noon.

So, the first almost full week of classes is done. And we're already ready for a break. It seems we won't truly have a “normal” week of class until week four, so we're still easing into a normal routine. Last week was the end of Ramadan. Next Monday (week three), we have no class in honor of Mid-Autumn Festival. 

 

I imagine that, by the time we reach the week-long National holiday at the beginning of October, the straws will have been replaced by fire-hoses and the Chinese will again be gushing instead of trickling into our brains.

Bolting the scene

by Kevin

When we first came to China, we were instructed that if we were ever in a taxi that got into an accident, we should leave the fare on the driver's seat and bolt the scene. As far as I can remember, last night was my third or fourth China accident, but first in a taxi. I've been in a bus that clipped a car, a van that hydroplaned into a highway pylon (a few weeks ago, on the way back from the airport). Thankfully, the lack of seatbelts here hasn't been a problem because most crashes in China are low speed.

Last night, as we headed off for dinner, our taxi was stuck behind a slow moving electric bike. Less than a block after we got into the car, the electric bike in front of us suddenly stopped. I'm not sure if the driver purposely stopped or if the power to his bike cut off. Our taxi driver safely slammed to a stop a few meters away from the bike. But then the bike driver did something unexpected--he started rolling the bike backwards and slammed its back wheel into the front of the taxi.

Nobody was hurt, but the bike rider glared and swore at the taxi driver. The taxi driver glared and swore back and got out. In China, typically, anytime there's an accident everyone leaves their vehicles in the middle of traffic and gets out to start arguing over whatever small amount the at fault driver can pay for repairs since nobody has insurance. As Peter Hessler notes in his excellent book Country Driving, usually the payoff for a small accident might run in the neighborhood of a few hundred RMB ($30-$50). Every other car is left with the responsibility of finding a way around. Our little side road to the east gate was immediately clogged with traffic that couldn't move.

Since nobody was hurt, there clearly was no damage with a half-mile-per-hour collision, and he wasn't at fault, no doubt our driver began to explain that he didn't need to pay this possibly drunken electric bike rider anything. An argument ensued.

We started asking ourselves. "When should we get out and find a new taxi?"

The answer came quickly. As crowds began to gather around our taxi (anytime there's an accident, crowds of pedestrians seem to gather to see what might happen next), the bike rider rolled his bike backwards into the taxi, crashing into the front bumper again. This time with slightly more force than the first accident. He then put his hand on his butt and grimace, feigning injury. The driver argued, then escorted the man and his electric bike to the sidewalk. Then they started throwing punches. Nothing that would draw blood -- or probably even bruises, but punches nonetheless. The driver got the biker into a headlock and onto the ground. Then they scrambled to their feet. As we got out of the taxi, we quickly picked up our pace toward the next road, where we might be able to find another taxi, the men were sparring.

We figured that though we may have been the only witnesses who could substantiate what had happened, we'd better err on the side of caution. Sometimes a crowd mentality can escalate violence and redirect it at the foreign faces. Particularly if they thought that somehow we had caused the accident. We figured the police can find us easily enough if they need witnesses to corroborate, but since a police car drove out the street just as we were leaving, we figured this "accident" would never get that far.

Old Woman Enjoying Shaanxi Opera

Old Woman Enjoying Shaanxi Opera
Originally uploaded by kevsunblush

Shaanxi Opera is a special form of grating Chinese music that the old people here are quite fond of. Every weekend and most weekdays in the main city square, you can find groups of old people playing traditional Chinese instruments. There's generally a man or woman singing traditional opera (if you've ever heard Beijing Opera, aka Peking Opera, you get the idea). The other day, I even spotted several musicians practicing in the outdoor dining area at McDonalds (I wish I had my camera that day).

I just uploaded a bunch of photos of people playing and enjoying Shaanxi Opera in the city square, in addition to shots of the Sports Meeting, our trip to Xi'an a couple weeks ago and other stuff to flickr. Check them out here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevsunblush/

The plot thickens

Thursday night, May 7
by Kevin

I just had the realization that my Tuesday class was in the same classroom where mass cheating going on. My joy that several of them seemed to do better on this exam has morphed into suspicion. This has also made my reaction to the class I caught more complicated: some of the desks may have had answers written upon them before Tuesday's exam, so some of Thursday's culprits may not be guilty. Grr.

Chinese + English = Chinglish

By Kevin

I apologize in advance for the shameless plug, but I just published a book titled "Chinese + English = Chinglish." You should check it out.

A couple years ago, a couple of Chinglish sign photos that I took were included in a book called "Found in Translation," which has gone on to sell more than 50,000 copies. While I thought the book was pretty good, I also thought to myself, "I can do better than that."

So this 80-page book contains more than 100 of the best depictions of Chinglish that I've managed to photograph in our three years in China. Most are prominent public signs and advertisements, but many others are packaging and clothing.

So far it's only available through online publisher www.blurb.com, but if anyone other than just family and friends show an interest, maybe wider distribution might be possible. Shipping is a bit pricy, but I discovered that if you enter this promo code: "hpfreeshipping" (without quotation marks, naturally) at checkout, shipping is free up to $10.

Oh yeah, I also made another blog about the book and Chinglish, which you are more than welcome to visit: here.

Chinese + Engl...

By by Kevin T. Felt

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Heavy metal mourning

By Kevin

As we walked to dinner last night, we were surprised to see a small tent set up outside the adjacent apartment buildings, with a pair of white-clad people mulling around outside. For a moment I thought they were nurses. Perhaps they were having a blood drive? I wondered.

"It's a funeral," a student explained.

"I've never seen a Chinese funeral before," I said, as we continued to dinner, hiding my curiosity. Somehow during my first two years in Tonghua, I managed to never see a funeral, just the numerous graves on the side of the hill outside campus. I imagine that maybe it was simply too cold. So they were held indoors. On the way back, we made sure to make a detour closer to the tent, so we could get a glimpse inside.

Inside there appeared to be an altar at one end, where a photograph of the dead man was displayed. Next to the photo, there were joss sticks of burning incense and what looked like a pile of fruit. Offerings for the departed. Alongside the tent, which looks a bit like a 15-by-15-foot, 3-sided enclosure they might use for a booth at a fair in America, were a trio of multi-colored Pinwheel-like Chinese wreaths. Inside, a pair of mourners sat on the ground, wearing baggy white clothes and turban-like hats, crying. I couldn't tell if they were relatives or professional mourners. In China there is a tradition of hiring professional mourners for funerals.

I asked about the white clothing and discovered that mourners typically wear white because the body turns pale after death.

"What will happen?" I asked.

"There will be a singer. They will sing Shaanxi Opera all night," a student explained. "Starting at midnight."

"What's it like? Is it like Beijing Opera?" Wes asked.

"It's loud like heavy metal music."

I waited expectedly last night with my earplugs ready to muffle the sound, but was surprised that they didn't start singing.

Today, however, when I came back from office hour, loud grating music was blaring and a woman alternated between singing and wailing into a microphone (yes, this is all amplified for all to hear). I saw her playing a keyboard, and other musicians played a Chinese horn and the violin-like 2-stringed Er-hu. I gathered that perhaps this is the actual funeral. Maybe yesterday was just the first day of mourning. By this time, than a dozen mourners were gathered in the outside tent, even though the temperature had dropped into the 40s. About half of them wore white clothing. Some were inside, sitting. Several men were outside, burning paper money over a fire in a bucket, lighting loud popping fireworks. Other things seemed to burn in the flame-filled bucket, which was filled nearly to the top. Probably things like paper houses, paper cars, paper TVs and other things they think the departed might need to have a comfortable afterlife. These things show their respect for their elders and keep the relative happy so he won't have to pester them on earth.

Other customs I've heard about include keeping a light shining for the dead person "to light the way" and bowl of half-cooked rice near the body. The word for "half-cooked rice" apparently is pronounced the same as "live," echoing the family's wish for life. But I couldn't tell if they were doing these things or not. In any case, it seemed, from an outsider's perspective, to have little in common with American funerals. I'm gonna have to find out more.