You realize just how related the Chinese and English languages aren’t when you come across transliterated words. Using Chinese syllables to pronounce English words often results in something completely unrecognizable and counterintuitive to native English speakers; we could never guess what the original English word was, and, if we’ve studied any Chinese ourselves, we often feel we could come up with alternative transliterations that make much more sense.

“Qiáo ěr” (乔尔) is “Joel”, for example, but “zhōu ōu” is one of a couple alternatives that sound closer to me. “Obama” is “ào bā mǎ” (奥巴马, like “ow! bama”) even though in Chinese you could easily transliterate the vowels almost exactly (“ōu bā mǎ” / 欧巴马). The other day one of my students did this in reverse as a joke. He held up a sign for me to read that said: “Pieces war found.” To a Chinese ear it sounds like “pì shì wǒ fàngde” (屁是我放的), which basically means, “I’m the one who farted.” They thought it was funny and so did I, but only because it requires a really bad Chinese accent to make the connection between those English words and that Chinese sentence. I doubt that a native English who’s never studied Chinese would be able to connect those dots.

Last night a Chinese friend showed me Chinese blog post of unintentionally funny English translations on Chinese signage that included this worksheet of a naughty elementary student. Apparently someone’s harbouring some negative feelings toward his or her English homework:

Not only are they trying to pronounce English with Chinese syllables, but rather than just use meaningless rough phonetic equivalents they deliberately chose certain characters to turn the English words into a Chinese joke (or at least vent some homework frustrations?):

1. bus (bà sǐ / 爸死 / “dad is dead”)
2. yes (yé sǐ / 爷死 / “grandpa is dead”)
3. girls (gē sǐ / 哥死 / “older brother is dead”)
4. miss (mèi sǐ / 妹死 / “little sister is dead”)
5. school (sǐ guāng / 死光 / “dead completely / die off”)
6. pea (pì / 屁 / “fart”)
7. yesterday (yē sǐ tā diē / 噎死他爹 / “Choke to death, his dad”)
8. guess (gāi sǐ / 该死 / “should die” [This is how they usually translate swear words like "darn!" (but stronger) in movie subtitles.])
9. dangerous (dān jiǎo lā shǐ / 单脚拉屎 / “stand on one foot, poop”)
10. five (fèi wù / 废物 / “rubbish / useless (person)”)

1. Hands,hands,two hands. I have two hands (hàn zǐ hàn zǐ, tōu hàn zǐ, ǎn hái lái tōu hàn zǐ / 汉子汉子偷汉子俺还来偷汉子 / “guy guy steal a guy [cheat on your husband], I’m still stealing a guy”)
2. How are you. What is you name (hào ā yóu. wǒ sǐ yòu nèn / 耗啊油，我死又嫩)

The Chinese isn’t all correct and some is totally meaningless; he’s just cramming the characters into the English sounds. But you can see what he’s going for. Someone needs to give these kids a break, or a spanking…

Other Chinese education system stuff:

• The future looks… dysfunctional?
• “Water Brain” — high quality animation depicts the Chinese student experience
• Spinning the grades

Pronounced: shā chén bào
Means: sandstorm

Although the British reporting sometimes leaves much to be desired, there’re some intersting info/claims in this piece on a 25-year-old two-child policy experiment in China that compares favourably with the national average: Success of secret two-child policy could force Chinese rethink on family planning

I’ve seen people scooping slop out of manholes beside restaurants in Tianjin before, but I didn’t know they were doing it to skim off the waste oil and resell it back to the restaurants! If you’re not sick, you will be after reading the reports about 地沟油 linked below.

Translated from the Chinese internet: Restaurant head chef talks about drainage oil in China
From the China Daily: Old oil used in ’1 in 10 meals’

Pronounced: dì gōu yóu
Literally: drainage oil
Means: used cooking oil from restaurants that is typically dumped down the drain or directly into the manholes outside, then scooped out of said manholes by enterprising citizens and resold as cooking oil. I so wish I was kidding.

My folks came to see us during Spring Festival and we spent a couple days in Beijing. If you’ve ever wondered what Tiananmen and the Forbidden City look like, then this photo gallery is for you! Click the link or photos below.

Tiananmen & The Forbidden City 天安门广场和故宫 – 2010 Feb 21

The recently revamped China Daily has two articles on Christians in Beijing. The first, A Beijing Christian shares his story of conversion, presents a brief profile of young, successful, Beijinger searching for more meaning in life. The second, House churches thrive in Beijing, profiles the Shouwang church. I found this a little surprising considering that particular group’s recent problems in November and December.

These positive reports contrast sharply with other recent related news (click the photo below):

Back to the Future: Pre-modern Religious Policy in Post-Secular China examines China’s current policy toward religion as shaped primarily by the secularization thesis, which is now being abandoned in the West.

Counseling in China: A Comparison between Western and Eastern Styles of Psychotherapy neatly lays out major differences and hindrances to Western-style therapy in China.

Over Spring Festival my parents and I took a “hard sleeper” (硬卧) train for the first time. After all the stories I’d heard I was expecting the worst, especially since it was 春运，the Spring Festival travel season when public transportation gets beyond maxed out. It wasn’t really all that bad, though I can easily imagine how it could be really bad, depending on your fellow passengers. Definitely wouldn’t want to do it with a baby. The hardest thing for us this time was getting tickets in the first place, which required some serious string-pulling by a friend of a friend — I’m afraid to ask how he got them. But if you like to chat/practice Chinese, and you bring snacks (that you can share), a book, a cup and some instant coffee, a hard sleeper doesn’t have to be a brutal experience, at least going from our recent first trip.

I put a bunch of photos into a gallery, along with details about our ride in the captions. If a hard sleeper train ride is in your near or potential future, the photo gallery will give you a good idea of what to expect, snogging couples and all. Haha, poor mom!

Click a photo to go to the hard sleeper gallery.