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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. Today I submitted my last final, a paper on the similarities and differences between Greater-Chinese and American commercial film for Chinese Contemporaneity Cinema, so felt like I should discuss what my plans are for Jared in China. I will staying until June 1, a bit after the formal end of my program.
As with all things, I always planned the Jared in China blog to be a temporary; I expected to end Jared in China when Jared was no longer in China. To be honest, I actually expected my only reader to be my Mom and to kill Jared in China with little fanfare. To my surprise I usually get between 100-200 hits a week here, sometimes even more, so I now feel like I should explain my plans for Jared in China. I am still planning on ending the blog. I just don't think I will have as much to say nor will you have as much interest in reading about my summer studying for the LSAT and GRE tests in New Jersey. The good thing about writing a blog while abroad is almost everything I do is somewhat inherently interesting. It doesn't take much to make a trip to the fresh, aka live, fish section of a Chinese grocery store a fun read, but, once I return, my trip to an American grocery store is a weekly chore for most of my readers (although I don't know for certain since I only have the free web hosting subscription and that package doesn't include my readers location). I am not planning on ending Jared in China the minute I return to the United States. I am planning on doing travel updates at major stops on my trip home, likely just Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and home home. Since I took so many photos during my time in Shanghai, I would like to do a top photos post or two. I am definitely going to do some kind of China retrospective once I return to the US. I am not sure how long this retrospective will be, I might have to break it up somehow but I will only know that once I start writing it. Since I am going to be summarizing 9 months of my life I am expecting it to be long. I will need some time to decompress before writing it though. I would also like to do a blog statistics post of some kind. Finally, I am planning on turning some of my experiences in China into more formalized projects. I will hopefully be able to use my time in China as inspiration at least for a Juniata College Liberal Arts Symposium project next school year. I have a few other ideas for things I would like to base off my time in abroad but those are so rough I don't wan't to go into them. I expect that something about my time in China and Asia will come to benefit me later on in a way I can't foresee now. While I don't plan on becoming Professor Miller of East China Normal University you never really know when things pop up again. I would also like to note that I do plan on keeping a normal posting schedule until I leave China on June 1. I would like to thank my readers for the continued support of my blog and myself throughout my year abroad. Actually having readers who might get annoyed at me if I didn't write defiantly motivated me to write more regularly than I normally do. I would like to apologize for the occasional periods where I was not as diligent with posting as I should have been. I would also like to apologize for some of the misspellings. While the end of Jared in China might be a bit sad, I plan to keep doing interesting things for quite some time. Who knows, perhaps I will come back to blogging, perhaps I will think of a better name for my next blog than Jared in China. Today, a friend of mine and I went to the 50th Anniversary Show for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, an award for exceptional story writing and artwork in children's literature. Once every two years the International Board on Books for Young People will award one artist and one writer a Hans Christian Andersen Award for their work. At the last awarding of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016, Chinese children's author Cao Wenxuan (曹文轩) won in the literature category, making him China's first Hans Christian Andersen Award winner in ether category. Consequently there was a showing of the art award winners in Shanghai. Many of the artists who work on pictures for children's literature are actually very talented artists in their own right. It was actually really interesting to see some of the original drawings for this stuff. They had quite a number of the lithographs from the 1970 illustration winner Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are along with lithographs for some of Maurice Sendak's other works. I remember reading Where the Wild Things Are when I was little so it was actually really neat to be able to see some of it in person, My friend particularly liked the images from the 2000 illustration winner Willy the Wimp by British author and illustrator Anthony Browne, because my friend grew up with the Chinese versions of his works. It was a small exhibit that was a bit pricey, but I guess it was worth the money just to see the Maurice Sendak stuff.
Today was ECNU's International University Showcase where students from their many programs talked about their home universities. I volunteered to table for Juniata and I guess it worked out. I did get a free hat, notebook, and lunch (I can now state with confidence that Subway in China is basically the same as Subway in the United States), but I didn't get very many visitors. The few students who visited my table were looking for graduate programs, something that Juniata lacks. I find some successes with the professors who liked to recommend small liberal arts institutions, like Juniata, to their students who wanted to study abroad. Hopefully that should become something, but who knows. I guess part of my problem was I was next to Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, two universities who do better on standard measures of university "goodness" than Juniata. Johns Hopkins in particular is way more famous than Juniata so tended to get more students interested. I guess it was cool to play admissions officer for the day and I got some cool stuff so that is nice.
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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
November 2021
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