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.
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Code-switching is a linguistic term for when speakers of two languages (like say Chinese and English) who can each speak both languages mix words and phrases from the languages together. While code-switching is a still controversial area for linguists most agree that code-switching is a thing. For example, one of my classmates commented "the 天气 today is 不好" or in English English "the weather today isn't good" or my friends will say "yesterday the 阿姨 was 很麻烦" or "the maid was being troublesome." These sentences aren't really English but they also aren't really Chinese ether, they is a mix of both languages. I myself will great people, even my English speaking foreign friends, with a 你好, say goodbye with a 再见, and say "thanks" with a 谢谢. Sometimes people will also throw in whole Chinese sentences in an English conversation. So for instance today when I had to answer a question for a classmate I commented to my friends who I was talking to "他是我的同学" or "he is my classmate." In general, I have noticed the more confidence someone has in their Chinese the more code-switching happens. My friends who just started studying the language use Chinese words far less than my friends who have studied Chinese for some time. I even noticed I have been code-switching more in my second semester at ECNU than my first. Apparently this is just a normal part of speaking multiple languages with others who speak the same multiple languages. It is apparently super noticeable in Hong Kong where most of the population speaks Cantonese and English so they will often use English words or phrases embedded in otherwise Cantonese sentences. I have also noticed I will embed more Yiddish in my English the longer I spend at Chabad, at home, or talking with other Jews in general. At Chabad, a comment like "oy vai ist mir, he's a schmuch" or "ugh, he is an idiot" is not uncommon. I am glad most of the people at Chabad don't have the best Chinese, I don't even wan't to know what my English would be like then. I think some people back at Juniata will lose me when I mention "chhhh! Our 服务员 is a putz" or "ugh, our waiter/waitress is an idiot."
While most people view China as a single monolithic nation-state the Chinese view of themselves is a bit more complicated than that. All mainland Chinese citizens are classified as members of one of 56 ethnic groups (including one "undistinguished" category and one "nationalized" category). The majority of Chinese, about 91%, are Han Chinese (汉族) all of the 56 ethnic groups are members of the Zhonghua Minzu (中华民族). Some groups, like the Hui (回族) or the Miao/Hmong (苗族) people I have previously discussed here, are found almost exclusively in China others, like the Chinese Russians (俄罗斯族) or the Chinese Koreans (朝鮮族) have ethnic nation-states of their own. Some, like the Manchus, speak almost exclusively Mandarin Chinese (I believe there are about 10 native Manchu speakers left on Earth) while others, like some of the Maio I met and some of the Zhonghua Minzu of Sishuan, don't speak standard Mandarin at all. Most of the Zhonghua Minzu are proud Chinese, some however, most famously the Tibetans and the Uyghers, are actively pushing for independence from the PRC. 56 ethnic categories is a lot it actually doesn't cover the full extent of Chinese cultural difference, the Chinese Jews and the mix-race communities of Macau and Hong Kong don't have a formal ethnic grouping. While the Zhonghua Minzu are an interesting bunch it is actually quite hard to say anything meaningful about them as a group. Even though they are all Chinese, they all Chinese differently if that makes sense.
In my Chinese Civilization class, we discussed the fall of the first three Chinese dynasties: the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou. While the actual stories for how the dynasties fell are different, history does seem to echo. King Jie of Xia (桀), King Zhou of Shang (紂王), and King You of Zhou (周幽王) are all depicted as excessively cruel. King Jie of Xia built his favorite concubine a lake of wine and would only drink if he was riding on the back of someone else, King Zhou of Shang one upped him by not only building a lake of wine but by making an island with trees made of sticks of roast meat, while King You of Zhou got away from the wine he did mobilize the Zhou military because his wife thought it was funny. While the Chinese scholars traditionally accept the reports of ancient historians, the Doubting Antiquity School of Chinese thinkers and Western Sinologists have come to question the accuracy of the ancient Chinese historians. While the Doubting Antiquity School would accept that there was likely historical a King Jie, King Zhou, and King You they would question whether they actually did what they were reported as having done. Usurpers who wanted to cement their claim to the throne would need to show that the previous dynasty lost the mandate of heaven by being bad rulers, one way to do that would be to make your court historian write mean things about the previous emperor. Chinese thinkers and sages, like Confucius, would use the stories of old kings to show the current emperors how not to behave, so might have made exaggerated stories of old kings to make a point. While Jie and Zhou might have been alcoholics, You liked to play pranks on his vassals, and all of them might have been ineffective tyrants, later peoples made them look worse to suit their own purposes.
East China Normal University’s first campus, the one I am studying at, is located on Zhongshan North Road (中山北路) in Shanghai. One subway stop away from ECNU is Zhongshan Park (中山公园) located unsurprisingly in Shanghai along Zhongshan North Road. Literally Zhongshan translates into English as middle mountain road, but Shanghai doesn’t have any mountains. To add to the confusion, other cities who both on the mainland and on Taiwan also have streets and parks named Zhongshan, even cities without any mountains at all. So what is Zhongshan and why do half the cities in the country feel the need to have something named after it. Zhongshan isn’t an it, he was a man who is more famous in English as Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (a man who I have written a bit about previously). While Sun Yat-Sen (孙逸仙) has become the most popular transcription of his name in English, in Chinese he is better known as Sun Zhongshan (孙中山). Sun is an interesting character in Chinese history partly because of his continued importance on both Mainland China and on Taiwan. Sun and his Kunmintang Party were the people who overthrow the last Emperor of China, Puyi, and put Dr. Sun in charge as the first President of the Republic of China. Unfortunately for the new President Sun, China was in the middle of decades of political upheaval. Sun spent much of his life in exile, fighting to take back control of China from various warlords, or trying to fix the mess that was the China in his day. Despite this, history views Sun quite positively; he has the almost unique distinction of having a good reputation in the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Hong Kong SAR, and the Macau SAR. Both the People’s Republic and Republic of China see Sun as a founding figure. The Republican government established by Sun still controls the Island of Taiwan and, up until the last Presidential elections there, his Kunmintang Party still controlled the government. On Mainland China Sun is seen as the “Forerunner of the Revolution” that paved the way for the Socialist Revolution of Mao and eventual perfect Communism. The result of this split reputation is that Zhongshan Parks can be found from Beijing to Taipei and Zhongshan Roads can be found from Shanghai to Macau. It is unlikely, dispute the best efforts of Beijing, that we will see the reunification of China soon, it is even less likely that we will see the complicated mess of Chinese entities adopt a common world view. Therefor it is likely that Sun Yat-Sen will keep his somewhat confusing reputation as a founder of two governments who don’t recognize each other, have different legal systems, and who claim each other’s territory. This morning, I was woken up by a Skype call with my Mom who is actively at my family's Thanksgiving party in New Jersey. Because of how time zones work, even though it is November 25th in Shanghai, it is still the 24th on the East Coast of the United States. I enjoyed popping in for Thanksgiving, even if it was a bit confusing for not fully awake me. While this 12 or 13 hour (depending on day light savings time) is somewhat difficult to wrap your head around, fear not China has even more time zone weirdness if today also being tomorrow or yesterday makes too much sense for you. If hypothetically I was studying in Western China in cities like Lasa, Tibet Autonomous Region or Chengdu, Sichuan Provence the legal time difference would be the same 12 or 13 hours. Unlike many countries, all of China legally sets their clocks to Beijing's time zone instead of using the 5 time zones China actually covers. While this is ok for someone like me in Shanghai who would be in the same time zone as Beijing anyway, the significant difference between solar time and clock time poses a real problem for people in West China. Many just ignore the law altogether and use either what time zone they should be in or they adjust their schedules to compensate for the difference in solar time and clock time; hypothetically you would have lunch at 10:00AM when it is solar noon instead of having lunch at 12:00PM which is clock noon. This time zone oddness also means that the largest amount you would ever officially have to change your clocks by crossing one time zone is if you went from far West China (UTC +8:00) to Afghanistan (UTC +4:30). Afghanistan is one of a few countries to use a non-standard half an hour time zone. China also borders North Korea who, interestingly but kind of unsurprisingly, uses the non-standard half an hour time zone of UTC +8:30. If you really wanted to mess with your time zones and didn't care what countries you had to go to do it, an overland trip from Afghanistan, through China, and ending up in North Korea would be your best bet. I fully expect that Thanksgiving I won't have to deal with any of this time zone stuff, since I will be celebrating Thanksgiving from New Jersey, USA.
Unlike English, which tends to adopt foreign words to get new words, Chinese tends to gets new words by combining preexisting Chinese words. For example, the Chinese word for computer is 电脑; with 电 meaning electrionic and 脑 meaning brain combining to form the complex concept of a computer. Thanksgiving can be broken down into 感恩,meaning greatful, which can iteself be broken down into 感,feel or sense; 嗯,kindness; and 节,meaning holiday. Still, my favorite example of this is turkey, which in Chinese is 火鸡,from 火 meaning fire and 鸡 meaning chicken. While I am a fan of turkey and Thanksgiving, it would be significantly cooler if instead of eating a bird with a named after a country it isn't from for Thanksgiving we all sat around the table and ate a fire chicken! While it may be a funny literal translation with our pure white domesticated turkeys you can defiantly see the fire connection with some of the more while turkeys with their glistening feathers. Even though Chinese has a perfectly good word for turkey and the stereotype of China is that the people will eat any animal under the sun, turkey is rare in China. I am sure if I wanted to buy a turkey I could get one somewhere in Shanghai, but I believe it would be quite the quest.
Two weeks ago in China's Macroeconomic Impact, the professor went off on a tangent about how some of the wealthiest Chinese buy property. Since in Chinese numerology, the mystical study of numbers, eight represents luck and money, many wealthy businessmen like buy real estate in eights. So for example, a Chinese businessmen might want to buy his new apartment in New York City for $88,888,888.88. Our professor brought up that Chinese real estate buyers would often just sit down, name a price in eights, and refuse change it because any change to the price would cause them to lose the string of eights. The eight game is not just for wealthy businessmen, often small businesses will try to get in on the act too, particularly with their wifi password. Ellen's Bar's wifi is username Ellens and password 88888888, Lamian's wifi is username lamian and password 08080808 (I think the zeros also represent money). So if you are in China and need wifi, pick a random one and try 88888888 for the password, since there is a greater than zero chance that that is actually the password
This is an issue that has come uo in both my Issues in Contemporary Chinese Society class and in my China's Macroeconomic Impact class. In China, real estate, especially in the big cities like Shanghai, is almost objectivly the best investment you can make; Chinese real estate has massave rates of return, is easy to get involved in, and is far more stable than the Chinese stock market. The only problem is that each household in China can only have two morgages. The question then becomes, how does a family invest even more in Shanghai real estate? Become two seperate households, brining your total number of morgages to four. Now, how does a couple become two households? Simple, get a devorce, because under Chinese law a household is ether one married couple or a single unmaried individual. What some married couples do is get a devorce, continue to live as a couple in all but law, and invest massave amounts of money in real estate. Professor Wei of my Issues in Contemporary Chinese Society brought up that the mood in the devorce offices was very happy, even though two or three generations of a family might all be getting a devorce together, because everyone knew they stood a chance of making a lot of money. Now, once you made your money in Shanghai real estate what do you do? Get remarried to the person you just devorced and enjoy your new found wealth.
While the Shanghai Peace Hotel (上海和平饭店) looks down right quaint now compared to the other buildings on the Bund, one of Shanghai's main drags, the Shanghai Peace Hotel still has an interesting history all its own. The Peace Hotel was built in what was then the Shanghai International Settlement, now the Bund, during the 1920s by Sir Victor Sassoon, a British supported Baghdadi Jew, as Sassoon House. With bases in Bombay, Hong Kong, and Shanghai the Sassoons were dubbed the "Rothschilds of the East" making a large part of their fortune in the then legal Opium Trade following the Opium Wars. While it may seem funny now looking a the modern skyline of Shanghai, the Peace Hotel was the largest building in the city. The Peace Hotel became a symbol of Shanghai, even though this symbolic status has been chipped away in recent years as the Peace Hotel was outclassed by larger and large buildings. Today, the Peace Hotel continues to operate as a hotel serving guests forma around China and the World, although now it is operating under the name the Fairmont Peace Hotel. |
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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