While "random photos from around Asia" might not be the greatest blog title this is in essence what these are. I quite like the photo of the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium and the tourist with the drone from Laos. Overall I think I am most happy with this set of photos. I guess with travel I saw new places so consequently the photos of those places are new. In Shanghai I often did just my daily life or saw the same things several times.
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These are just some of my favorite photos arranged in no particular order. Many of my photos in the first semester were from some of Shanghai's more touristy and more famous areas, like Pudong or Thames Town. That doesn't bother me too much, sometimes places are famous for a reason. Still, I do have some great photos from the less famous places, like the subway stop photo. To be honest though, I think the picture of East China Normal's Mao statue overlooking the Global Harbor Mall is the best photo I took all year.
One of the delightfully interesting things about tonal languages like Chinese is that you get access to a whole bunch of interesting new forms of word play and puns centered around the tones. While many great scholars in Chinese history have used the tones to write fascinating poetry, modern Chinese netizens just want to say "fuck your mother." In Chinese, a particularly powerful insult to say "fuck your mother," in Chinese characters this is 肏你妈 (mini fun fact: 肏 is considered so offensive that many Chinese don't actually know how to write the proper character since it combines both the characters for enter "入" and meat "肉") and in Chinese Pinyin (the most popular way to romanticize Chinese) cào nǐ mā. Unfortunately for profanity loving Chinese, the government in their efforts to preserve the harmonious internet have made it difficult to find somewhere to curse online. Thankfully, an anonymous user on Baidu Baike discovered the Grass Mud Horse, in Chinese characters 草泥马 and in Pinyin cǎonímǎ. This anonymous user found these mythical creatures in the Mahler Gobi Desert, in characters 马勒戈壁 and in Pinyin Mǎlè Gēbì, resembling the Chinese for "your mother's fucking cunt," in characters 妈了个屄 and in Pinyin māle ge bī. The Grass Mud Horse has really taken off as a Chinese language meme. You can now buy little stuffed Grass Mud Horses, and t-shirts with pictures of Grass Mud Horses underneath the characters "草泥马." Hopefully, the majestic Grass Mud Horse will continue to roam the Mahler Gobi Desert for years to come. I wasn't planning on taking another trip this semester but my Neo-Confucian Philsophy professor set up a rather neat sounding trip to Hangzhou for this weekend. It will be a short trip, two days one night, and a very cheap trip, but it should be cool. Hangzhou is a city in Zhejiang Provence noted for its famous West Lake (西湖), Neo-Confucian philosophers, and increasing importance as a center of eCommerce. Wikipedia also says an extension of the Kaifeng Jews formally lived in Hangzhou but now there is no remains of the Hangzhou Jewish community.
Before getting to Shanghai, the only two World Expos I knew about were the New York Worlds Fair and the Great Exhibition in London. That is, until I came to Shanghai and learned about the Shanghai Expo 2010. Unlike the Olympics, many of the sites built for Expo 2010 are still in use today. Most famous of these is the former China Pavilion, now the China Art Museum, although a good chunk of Pudong and many of the Metro lines were developed specifically for Expo 2010. However, some of the other pavilions built for the Expo 2010 are not currently in use and are just rotting away. Expo 2010 seems to have been a positive thing for Shanghai overall. It helped establish Shanghai as a world city and improved a good deal of the infrastructure in the city. I guess the real reason why the Shanghai Expo 2010 helped the city while many of these major world events end up only adding a massive pile of debt to a city is that Shanghai got some use out of the majority of the facilities built for the exhibition. The Shanghai Municipal Government and the Communist Party Committee knew that Shanghai needed more public spaces and more public transit if it was to become a real world city. One of the reasons I like Shanghai more than Beijing is that, because of Expo 2010, the Shanghai public transportation system is simply better than Beijing's. While Expo 2010 might not be as great as the City Government and the Shanghiese describe the Expo as, it did help the city of Shanghai develop.
Note: This is just my observations of English in China, I didn't do any research into the subject nor did I run a scientific test on English in China. A few days ago I ordered a dish at the ECNU canteen called "Beef and Mushroom Rice" and this is what I got. As I read over the Chinese on my receipt I discovered that this dish should have been more properly called "Beef and Mushroom Soup." I am not sure why the translator made the decision to call this "Beef and Mushroom Rice" but it did get me thinking about Sino-English and English in China. There is a surprisingly high level of English proficiency in China. Even if people can't read, write, or speak in English they have a command of the English alphabet since English letters are use for labels. For instance a Shanghai licence plate might be something like "沪AB12345." Furthermore, many young Chinese are taught the characters using Pinyin, which is a system to romanticize Chinese which uses Latin letters. I have noticed that most people's readings stills are above their speaking skills since China's national college entrance exam, the Gaikai, only tests English reading and writing. Chinese high schools will usually focus on only English reading and writing before the test. For the Chinese who can speak English, I have noticed three accents which I will call Sino-British, Sino-American, and Chinese-English (I am not sure if there is an official name for any of these so I just made one up). Most people who speak with a Sino-British or Sino-American accent have studied in ether the UK or the US (sometimes Canada or Ireland but mostly the UK and US) and have kind of picked up the accent of the place where they studied. I have noticed that most of the people who speak with a foreign twinge to their accent are younger and wealthier, since they could afford to and were permitted to study English abroad. In a kind of random note, some Chinese have full received pronunciation British accents like they just stepped out of a P.G Wodehouse novel or a BBC Masterpiece Theater production. When my class asked a visiting professor with who spoke with this accent where he picked it up he said he taught it to himself because he didn't like his Chinese accent and now kind of regrets it. Finally, those who don't study abroad speak with a standard Chinese-English accent. Speaking with a Chinese-English accent doesn't indicate English proficiency though, while people who speak with Sino-British or Sino-American accents have very good English, people who speak with Chinese-English accents English proficiency varies form "I know how to say Hello, how are you" to "I can discuss complicated teaching methods with you in English." On a final note, I noticed that people in a Starbucks anywhere in the country have a descent grasp on English. I don't think this is because Starbucks coffee improves your English skills. I believe that the type of people who can buy 30RMB coffee are also the type of people are more likely to speak English. Starbucks, trying to look cool, hires English speaking Chinese to cater to the English speaking Chinese. Even in Changsha I found several English speakers in the local Starbuckses (Starbucki?) As some of you may or may not know, East China Normal University is one of China's major research universities. Thanks to new technology invented by East China Normal's own School of Science and Engineering I have been given the opportunity to study abroad from my study abroad. I will truly be standing on the cutting edge of both physics and history with this opportunity. Dr. Zong (棕老师) of ECNU's School of Science and Engineering in conjunction with Prof. McFly of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai have invented a BYD e5 with a built in flux capacitor that, once it reaches 141.62 km/h or 88mph, can travel backwards or forwards in time. Since the BYD e5 is an electric vehicle, only minor upgrades were needed to get the car to accept the new plutonium electric generator in the trunk. Hopefully, I will be going back to 1885 to do research on Shanghai's International Settlement, now called the Bund. Being an American, I should have few problems blending into the multinational community that was the International Settlement. Unfortunately, I will have to put my blog on hold during my time in the past though, if all goes well, you my dear readers shouldn't notice anything since for you it should feel as if as though I was only gone for a few seconds. If something does go wrong, I will be removed from the timeline so you won't be stressed about my issues at all. That's time travel for you, so it goes. For those of you who are worried, don't be, Dr. Zong and Prof. McFly have assured me that everything will be alright and I will be back safely in this time period before you can even finish reading this post. I have also been talking with Juniata, the College is willing to transfer the credits ECNU is giving me for doing this research project back when I return in September. It will be a bit of extra paperwork though, since I will be on a new study abroad experance. I will update you all soon when I get back to the future.
Note: Have a happy April Fools Day all. With our ever more environmentally conscious world, both in China and abroad, their has been increased discussion about the role of bikes for urban transportation. While cities like New York, Washington DC, Paris, and Hangzhou all using large bike stations run by the government to distribute bikes, Shanghai has taken a different approach. In Shanghai, bike-sharing is private and controlled of four competing companies. Bikes are deposited not in hubs but anywhere where the previous user leaves them. This means that there will always be enough bikes, since busy areas who need more bikes get more people leaving bikes there. Furthermore, this saves space that is often at a high premium in cities like Shanghai. In order to use a company's bikes, all you need to do is download an app, make an account, and pay the deposit. Like all bike-sharing systems, their is a fee for the usage of the bikes, but the fee is very low. Other than the usual problems with bike-sharing systems (like bike theft and damage) the biggest issue with the Shanghai model is that sometimes bikes get left where they shouldn't be since the user doesn't have any incentive to put the bike in a place where it would cause problems. China Daily reported on March 3, 2017 that the Shanghai Police seized 4,000 illegally parked bikes (mainly Mobikes). The cost for the return of the bikes, along with paying to repair any damage caused by the police, has to be eaten by the bike-sharing company alone. Though, it seems like the Chinese will park bikes almost anywhere so I don't believe this problem is exclusive to bike-sharing. It seems as though a similar system to Shanghai's could be set up in other major urban areas, potentially saving municipalities money by passing the costs of running a bike-share program off to private companies while still reaping the benefits of such a system. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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