And happy as I am to have him, I can't help feeling like the runt of the litter.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
MEIN BRUDER IST HIER / 我弟弟在这里
And happy as I am to have him, I can't help feeling like the runt of the litter.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
SHANGHAI (上海) PHOTOGRAPHICAL SPECTACULAR
I'm back in Beijing now, where the streets still run red with the refuse of spent fireworks. Shanghai was beautiful and the teensiest bit warmer.
There were even times when I could stroll along the riverfront gazing at the space-age skyline of the Pudong (and the floating LED billboards) with neither hat nor scarf!
I have a deep affection for this city, which made a very strong impression on me the first time I visited, but I've still got family in town and don't have the time to wax poetic about my love of the place. What follows are a few pictures and choppy details that I might embellish later.
The skyscraper to the immediate left of the Aurora building (seen below) will be the new tallest building in the world when it is finished (sadly trumping the marvelous Taipei 101). One night we had cocktails on the 87th floor of the skyscraper right next to it. In a word, swank.
Another view from a river cruise with the Oriental Pearl TV tower in the foreground.
On the opposite side of the river, new Shanghai rises behind the comparatively tiny but still grand buildings of "the Bund".
I installed my charges at the Astor Hotel on the northern end of the Bund, having reserved Einstein's room, where the great scientist spent a few nights in 1922.
The lobby:
Carrie and I had stayed in the old servants quarters' on the top floor of the Astor a few years ago but as they have since been upgraded, I removed myself to a nearby hostel which more closely matched my means, and, um, revolutionary fervor.
Shanghai is so pretty. Everywhere you look there are grand boulevards and ambitious architecture. One skyscraper (not pictured) looks just like Saruman's tower.
This scale model of the city of 15 million gives some sense of its enormity. Also, it really makes you feel like godzilla must before he gets his stomp on: WANT TO CRUSH WANT TO CRUSH!
The old part of the city is well-preserved and lively, with some nice quiet temples.
And the museum is absolutely stellar.
You'd expect some good ceramics from a country which got its English name from the plates it produced, and in the Shanghai Museum you'll get them. This is my favorite pattern.
Some people like Blue Willow or Lenox Rose, but I'm putting Peaches & Bats in my hope chest.
There were even times when I could stroll along the riverfront gazing at the space-age skyline of the Pudong (and the floating LED billboards) with neither hat nor scarf!
I have a deep affection for this city, which made a very strong impression on me the first time I visited, but I've still got family in town and don't have the time to wax poetic about my love of the place. What follows are a few pictures and choppy details that I might embellish later.
The skyscraper to the immediate left of the Aurora building (seen below) will be the new tallest building in the world when it is finished (sadly trumping the marvelous Taipei 101). One night we had cocktails on the 87th floor of the skyscraper right next to it. In a word, swank.
Another view from a river cruise with the Oriental Pearl TV tower in the foreground.
On the opposite side of the river, new Shanghai rises behind the comparatively tiny but still grand buildings of "the Bund".
I installed my charges at the Astor Hotel on the northern end of the Bund, having reserved Einstein's room, where the great scientist spent a few nights in 1922.
The lobby:
Carrie and I had stayed in the old servants quarters' on the top floor of the Astor a few years ago but as they have since been upgraded, I removed myself to a nearby hostel which more closely matched my means, and, um, revolutionary fervor.
Shanghai is so pretty. Everywhere you look there are grand boulevards and ambitious architecture. One skyscraper (not pictured) looks just like Saruman's tower.
This scale model of the city of 15 million gives some sense of its enormity. Also, it really makes you feel like godzilla must before he gets his stomp on: WANT TO CRUSH WANT TO CRUSH!
The old part of the city is well-preserved and lively, with some nice quiet temples.
And the museum is absolutely stellar.
You'd expect some good ceramics from a country which got its English name from the plates it produced, and in the Shanghai Museum you'll get them. This is my favorite pattern.
Some people like Blue Willow or Lenox Rose, but I'm putting Peaches & Bats in my hope chest.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
HOLY PYROTECHNICAL CHAOS!
It is true that I had heard about it, and also that I had experienced the last few weeks of nightly crackle and sparkle ever since the firecracker booth set up shop around the corner, but nothing had prepared me for the lunacy of the New Year fireworks displays. Starting just after dark and continuing well after midnight, there were constant explosions in the yards of all the complexes around ours as well as dozens visible along the horizon. Mind you, these were all private displays, nothing orchestrated or subsidized by the city. I don't know who had the great idea to allow unregulated sales of explosives in a newly wealthy country with a cultural devotion to displays of status, but it is on their conscience that the loss of countless fingers and eyeballs now rests. Behold the warzone viewable from my bedroom window:Lunar New Year Fireworks from Le Kougre on Vimeo.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
OUT WITH THE PIG, IN WITH THE RAT
Apologies for being such a slouch about posting lately. I've been on holiday for the Lunar New Year (falling officially on the 7th of February this year, but bookended by a week or two of vacation for most Chinese and by a generous month at my school). I've relished all the free time but have discovered that what were entertaining diversions just last week suddenly seem more like work. I haven't felt like blogging, doing research, or trying to catch up on the news and instead have been spending more time making and writing postcards, typing up my notes from the last semester plus of classes, and enjoying my tea and foodstuffs a little more.
My mother and her boyfriend will be arriving for a visit on Friday and leaving the day after my brother gets here on the 15th. Thus I'll be acting as full-time tour guide and translator until just before school starts up again. We'll spend a few days in Shanghai, which I am extremely excited about, perhaps taking a day trip to Hangzhou. Most of our time will be occupied in seeing the many sights of Beijing and going out to the Great Wall. Weather permitting, I am hoping that my bro and I can take a day trip out to Dragon's Head, where the Wall meets the Sea. Despite his legendary camera shyness, I promise that I will post visible documentation of the legendary Nicholas before the month is out.
Beijing has been rather nice this last week. Almost everything is closed, so the traffic is much reduced, and most of the estimated 10,000 construction projects (yes, that is the real number) going on in the capital seem to have shut down. The air seems just a little better, although the nonstop firecrackers and fireworks probably aren't helping.
Better yet, everyone seems to be in good spirits. The Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year, but it isn't celebrated as you might imagine. Those colorful festivals/parades with the dancing dragons that you may have seen in Chinatown are strictly Cantonese and are only seen in the South, or in Chinatowns. For the great majority of the country, the holiday referred to as Chunjie (春节）, or 'Spring festival' is a time to reunite with your family (last week saw nearly 190 million travelers trying to do just that despite some nasty winter storms), make and consume dumplings, and watch the special programs on TV all day long.
As you may know already, we are leaving the year of the Pig and entering the year of the Rat. Perhaps you are finding it a little difficult to get enthusiastic about the year of the Rat so allow me to help with some exciting rat facts from a local expat magazine:
Happy Chinese New Year everybody!
祝你们春节快乐！
My mother and her boyfriend will be arriving for a visit on Friday and leaving the day after my brother gets here on the 15th. Thus I'll be acting as full-time tour guide and translator until just before school starts up again. We'll spend a few days in Shanghai, which I am extremely excited about, perhaps taking a day trip to Hangzhou. Most of our time will be occupied in seeing the many sights of Beijing and going out to the Great Wall. Weather permitting, I am hoping that my bro and I can take a day trip out to Dragon's Head, where the Wall meets the Sea. Despite his legendary camera shyness, I promise that I will post visible documentation of the legendary Nicholas before the month is out.
Beijing has been rather nice this last week. Almost everything is closed, so the traffic is much reduced, and most of the estimated 10,000 construction projects (yes, that is the real number) going on in the capital seem to have shut down. The air seems just a little better, although the nonstop firecrackers and fireworks probably aren't helping.
Better yet, everyone seems to be in good spirits. The Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year, but it isn't celebrated as you might imagine. Those colorful festivals/parades with the dancing dragons that you may have seen in Chinatown are strictly Cantonese and are only seen in the South, or in Chinatowns. For the great majority of the country, the holiday referred to as Chunjie (春节）, or 'Spring festival' is a time to reunite with your family (last week saw nearly 190 million travelers trying to do just that despite some nasty winter storms), make and consume dumplings, and watch the special programs on TV all day long.
As you may know already, we are leaving the year of the Pig and entering the year of the Rat. Perhaps you are finding it a little difficult to get enthusiastic about the year of the Rat so allow me to help with some exciting rat facts from a local expat magazine:
- A group of rats is known as a mischief
- One pair of rats can produce 2,000 offspring in a year
- In related news, 2004 saw the development of food-flavored birth control pills for rats by the Sichuan Centers for Disease Control.
- Rats laugh (but then we knew this already, right blammo?), emitting high-pitched squeaks of joy when they are expecting and receiving physical pleasure (which includes receiving morphine, having rat sex, wrestling one another, and being tickled).
- Rats have belly buttons
Happy Chinese New Year everybody!
祝你们春节快乐！
Friday, February 1, 2008
SORRY FRIENDS, NO "SEXY AUNTY IN BATHROOM" HERE...
A few weeks back, in a fit of insecurity over my internet presence, I installed a counter on my blog. At the time I innocently thought it would simply tell me if anyone was reading what I was putting time into posting (I knew many of you were, but I was feeling insecure, ok?), but it actually told me so much more. The site I went through tracks all sorts of things that I never considered could be so easily ascertained. And now, I can never go back to the before-time, to the time of internet innocence.
In the 42 days since I installed the magical device, 269 unique visitors have been responsible for 630 page views on 485 separate visits (and perhaps more - you can see for yourself on the wee monitor if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page). On the site itself, I can look at this data broken into several different groups such as geolocation, page tracking, and referrers.
In the section on referrers, I can see whether people have come to CougDom via the blogs of friends, on their own, or whether they have arrived through a search. Here is a sampling of some of the ways people have been directed here via the mysteriously arbitrary hand of google:
angry kitty
dog farmer's boys
racist toothpaste
childrens bedroom furniture pictures
international tractors
others
sexy cougar ladies
sick cougar pics
lazy cougar
black lionhead rabbit
chengdu hookers
muffled voices
hi sailor wav
And there are so many more. Who knew that so many out there are determinedly searching for "puppy with mohawk" (2 hits), or "hello kitty face mask" (3 hits), and more importantly, who are the charming, naive souls googling "Chinese cougar holiday" or "cougars and pandas getting along", and why have I not befriended or married them already?
I adore the internet, really I do, but outside of the limited realm of my own interests, which are amply served by its circuits, I find it much too overwhelming to conceive of the enormity of the thing in its totality. Still, this tiny window on the interwebs has both startled and amused me. A few hundred people ain't much really, but the data hints at the incredibly volume of searches, prowls, and electronic ambulations that are taking place all the time and almost everywhere.
A full 70% of my visitors are from the U.S., which is understandable, but that means a whopping 30% are outside of it. In total, I've received visits from the residents of 28 different countries. Many of these make sense, since I know people in England, Taiwan, Germany and the Netherlands, but why on earth am I so seemingly popular in Australia (8 hits) or Malaysia (3 hits)? I used to be able to look at the national breakdowns by city, but this function hasn't been working lately, so I can't chide my friends in Bloomington, or wonder who I might possibly know in Atlanta who visits at least twice a week.
I can also figure out where some searches originate by looking at the language being used. This is how I have discovered that the Danish are oddly interested in "Case International tractors" (4 hits so far, all of which were, to their likely befuddlement, directed to my May post on Blammo) and the Germans, perhaps less surprisingly, interested in "female domination".
It really was rather naive of me to start up the blog based on my nickname (and that awe-inspiring video) and not think of how many people would accidentally arrive here when they were instead looking for that other kind of cougar ("cougar bars", "cougar dating", "sexy seattle cougar"), or even of the innocent cougar lovers overwhelmed by the new meaning of the word and just looking to find out about those fearsome beasts ("cougar cats only", "people fighting cougars"). I feel a little, well, strange, about strangers happening upon this site, but I also welcome interest in China and my tiny little life here. Then again, call me crazy, but I really don't think I want the person looking for "giant cock domination", "best sexy massage in beijing", or "sexy aunty in bathroom" to find my little internet hidey-hole. Although, based on the stats on average length of time spent by visitors, I'm guessing most of the perverts and random googlers that land here see a picture of a chick's face on a cougar body, and hightail it on out of here. Which is good, because THERE'S NOTHING HERE TO SEE.
In the 42 days since I installed the magical device, 269 unique visitors have been responsible for 630 page views on 485 separate visits (and perhaps more - you can see for yourself on the wee monitor if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page). On the site itself, I can look at this data broken into several different groups such as geolocation, page tracking, and referrers.
In the section on referrers, I can see whether people have come to CougDom via the blogs of friends, on their own, or whether they have arrived through a search. Here is a sampling of some of the ways people have been directed here via the mysteriously arbitrary hand of google:
angry kitty
dog farmer's boys
racist toothpaste
childrens bedroom furniture pictures
international tractors
others
sexy cougar ladies
sick cougar pics
lazy cougar
black lionhead rabbit
chengdu hookers
muffled voices
hi sailor wav
And there are so many more. Who knew that so many out there are determinedly searching for "puppy with mohawk" (2 hits), or "hello kitty face mask" (3 hits), and more importantly, who are the charming, naive souls googling "Chinese cougar holiday" or "cougars and pandas getting along", and why have I not befriended or married them already?
I adore the internet, really I do, but outside of the limited realm of my own interests, which are amply served by its circuits, I find it much too overwhelming to conceive of the enormity of the thing in its totality. Still, this tiny window on the interwebs has both startled and amused me. A few hundred people ain't much really, but the data hints at the incredibly volume of searches, prowls, and electronic ambulations that are taking place all the time and almost everywhere.
A full 70% of my visitors are from the U.S., which is understandable, but that means a whopping 30% are outside of it. In total, I've received visits from the residents of 28 different countries. Many of these make sense, since I know people in England, Taiwan, Germany and the Netherlands, but why on earth am I so seemingly popular in Australia (8 hits) or Malaysia (3 hits)? I used to be able to look at the national breakdowns by city, but this function hasn't been working lately, so I can't chide my friends in Bloomington, or wonder who I might possibly know in Atlanta who visits at least twice a week.
I can also figure out where some searches originate by looking at the language being used. This is how I have discovered that the Danish are oddly interested in "Case International tractors" (4 hits so far, all of which were, to their likely befuddlement, directed to my May post on Blammo) and the Germans, perhaps less surprisingly, interested in "female domination".
It really was rather naive of me to start up the blog based on my nickname (and that awe-inspiring video) and not think of how many people would accidentally arrive here when they were instead looking for that other kind of cougar ("cougar bars", "cougar dating", "sexy seattle cougar"), or even of the innocent cougar lovers overwhelmed by the new meaning of the word and just looking to find out about those fearsome beasts ("cougar cats only", "people fighting cougars"). I feel a little, well, strange, about strangers happening upon this site, but I also welcome interest in China and my tiny little life here. Then again, call me crazy, but I really don't think I want the person looking for "giant cock domination", "best sexy massage in beijing", or "sexy aunty in bathroom" to find my little internet hidey-hole. Although, based on the stats on average length of time spent by visitors, I'm guessing most of the perverts and random googlers that land here see a picture of a chick's face on a cougar body, and hightail it on out of here. Which is good, because THERE'S NOTHING HERE TO SEE.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
NERDING OUT ON LANGUAGE (Part 2)
常老师 (Chang laoshi), my favorite teacher, has a pointer that she uses to urge us to use particular vocabulary words written on the board. It looks like a tongue depressor but has a little cloth person in colorful dress pasted on one end. When I or my classmate Han Wei make a mistake or evince some uncertainty with regards to the primary directional terms in Chinese shang (on), and xia (under), Chang laoshi employs the pointer, placing it either on, or atop her palm (上), or holding her hand over it like an umbrella (下). Not that this makes things entirely apparent.
Why, in Chinese, are you under a particular situation (recession, gender discrimination, etc.) and not on it? Why do you refer to the past as something you are on top of, and the future as something you are beneath (on last week, or under next month, for example)? I suppose it makes more sense than the other way around, but why not in and out, or behind and in front of? Sometimes English directional complements map on to the Chinese ones, but it isn't for any kind of reason supported by universal logic. Why, for instance, does one bliss "out" and not "in"?
An admittedly amusing diversion when you are home sick and not feeling the homework, words are also very powerful and not to be trifled with. I once spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what a fella meant by telling me he felt he was 'standing' in love with me, rather than 'falling' in it. Sounds safer really, but at the time I was rather offended. In Chinese, you can be "on" love (爱上), if the other party is unaware of your feelings, but not "in" love. Once two people are involved, you are "谈恋爱", or 'talking about love', and if you refer to a love affair in the past or present, you can throw in a little complement and be "at-talking-about-love".
I am always surprised when I learn of a word or saying that is identical to the English equivalent. Does the term 疼爱, or 'pain-love', indicate some universality of the experience of loving so much that it hurts, or just the influence of European languages on Chinese terms and ideas? I'm tempted to believe the former, but it does go against my best intellectual impulses.
For those less profound sensations, Chinese also has the 一夜情, or 'single-night-affection'. According to my electronic dictionary, this can also be called 一宿风流, the first pair of characters meaning 'single night lodging' and the following pair meaning either 'romantic; sentimental', or 'outstanding; accomplished'. Depending on your point of view you can pretty much take your pick. At least it makes more sense than 'one night stand' -- who's doing all that standing anyway?
Why, in Chinese, are you under a particular situation (recession, gender discrimination, etc.) and not on it? Why do you refer to the past as something you are on top of, and the future as something you are beneath (on last week, or under next month, for example)? I suppose it makes more sense than the other way around, but why not in and out, or behind and in front of? Sometimes English directional complements map on to the Chinese ones, but it isn't for any kind of reason supported by universal logic. Why, for instance, does one bliss "out" and not "in"?
An admittedly amusing diversion when you are home sick and not feeling the homework, words are also very powerful and not to be trifled with. I once spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what a fella meant by telling me he felt he was 'standing' in love with me, rather than 'falling' in it. Sounds safer really, but at the time I was rather offended. In Chinese, you can be "on" love (爱上), if the other party is unaware of your feelings, but not "in" love. Once two people are involved, you are "谈恋爱", or 'talking about love', and if you refer to a love affair in the past or present, you can throw in a little complement and be "at-talking-about-love".
I am always surprised when I learn of a word or saying that is identical to the English equivalent. Does the term 疼爱, or 'pain-love', indicate some universality of the experience of loving so much that it hurts, or just the influence of European languages on Chinese terms and ideas? I'm tempted to believe the former, but it does go against my best intellectual impulses.
For those less profound sensations, Chinese also has the 一夜情, or 'single-night-affection'. According to my electronic dictionary, this can also be called 一宿风流, the first pair of characters meaning 'single night lodging' and the following pair meaning either 'romantic; sentimental', or 'outstanding; accomplished'. Depending on your point of view you can pretty much take your pick. At least it makes more sense than 'one night stand' -- who's doing all that standing anyway?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
SOME VOCABULARY WHICH WOULD BE USEFUL IF RYAN DOBOSH WAS SPENDING HIS BIRTHDAY IN CHINA, RATHER THAN IN LAS VEGAS
牌戏/pai hu = blackjack ("cards-dead and gone")
酒鬼/jiu gui = drunkard ("booze ghost")
发牌人/fa pai ren = dealer ("dispatch cards person")
赌场/du chang = casino ("gambling area")
赢/ying = win (fatten with money/shells)
表演脱衣舞者/biaoyan tuoyi wuzhe = stripper ("demonstrate clothes-removal dancer")
老虎机/laohu ji = slot machine ("tiger machine")
Granted, that last one would only be useful were I to ever be invited to join the boys club, which I shall not be, and to which I say: 之所以你跳进黄河也洗不清，是因为你一直没请我跟你们一起庆祝你的生日.
But I forgive you, and also I miss you.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN!
酒鬼/jiu gui = drunkard ("booze ghost")
发牌人/fa pai ren = dealer ("dispatch cards person")
赌场/du chang = casino ("gambling area")
赢/ying = win (fatten with money/shells)
表演脱衣舞者/biaoyan tuoyi wuzhe = stripper ("demonstrate clothes-removal dancer")
老虎机/laohu ji = slot machine ("tiger machine")
Granted, that last one would only be useful were I to ever be invited to join the boys club, which I shall not be, and to which I say: 之所以你跳进黄河也洗不清，是因为你一直没请我跟你们一起庆祝你的生日.
But I forgive you, and also I miss you.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN!
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