UPDATE: I have reposted this on Tianya to give it some air time among Chinese readers. By now the post has stabilized at around 3000 reads and 50 comments, I don’t think it will go much further. It was a nice experiment in Chinese BBS propagation, I will analyze the results soon.

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译不达意

帮助迷失于中文中的老外找回爱之路

卖抠是我的好朋友。我们在美国老家是小学同班。虽然好几年没见面，但是我们的关系还是很密切。所以上个星期收到他的求救信让我很惊讶。他居然在中国！ 还说他一个人无友可靠！

我马上回邮请他来上海我家住几天，看看能不能帮助他。

他写的让我太诧异了。更奇怪的是，居然我发现他会中文。我迫不及待的要他说这是怎么一回事。他说一年前，在我们美国的老家，因为那个金融风暴他的公司倒闭了。他失业了不知道该怎么办，有一天在路上看到了一个广告说“学会中文掌握未来！”就决定了报名上中文课。谁想到卖抠爱上了他的老师曹晓琳，一个来自江西的留学生。不到三个月他们就谈了恋爱。

当然，有了中国的女朋友，卖抠的水平也进步很快。卖抠彻底爱上了曹晓琳，下定决心在她学年结束回国的时候一起去中国留学。为了尽快过语言关他每天从日出学到日落，做练习，甚至阅读中文的经典文学作品。到年末，他的中文已经好得不得了。只不过是，由于他大都分是从书里面学的，还缺了一点口头语能力。他讲得很书面，发音也不分声调，听起来怪怪的。

卖抠到我家的时候很难过，到中国以来他没办法联系晓琳。他还说不会再信任中国人，没想到这里的人会这样去欺负老外。我感到很奇怪，在中国住了好几年没碰到过什么问题，肯定因为文化差距有了个误会！ 我逼迫他立刻说出来到底发生了什么事，还要他仔细的描述所有的细节，看有没有什么地方他误会了晓琳。他告诉我下面这个故事：

*  *  *

卖抠是三天以前到达中国的。原来的计划是他到南昌机场时，晓琳来接他，带他去父母家介绍介绍。谁能想到偏偏那天下班之际，晓琳的老板找她加班到很晚。卖抠在飞机上没收到她的信息，到南昌他很难为情地发现不是晓琳而是他素不相识的曹爸爸来接机。

到了曹家，等待晓琳回家的只有他们仨：爸爸妈妈和卖抠。卖抠听不太明白他们的江西的口音，不了解晓琳在哪里，感到很寂寞。但是他怕第一次上门留下不好的印象，只好微笑地听着而不开口。不过一会儿，晓琳的妈妈端上了晚饭。

“卖抠，你先吃一点我们特色豆腐,” 曹妈妈说, “你们美国是不是没有豆腐吃的？”

“是的，基本上我们更喜欢芝士。”

“啊，真的吗？” 曹妈妈奇怪地说。

曹爸爸打破了一时的沉默：“卖抠，你们这几天在江西有什么计划，想去什么地方玩？”

“随便吧，我们美国最喜欢搭便车去自由自在地享受。”

“天哪!” 妈妈说, “你们真喜欢那个！”

“对，只要有司机接受，我们就很高兴随着他去”

曹妈妈的脸变得煞白，难过的说：“那么，我们晓琳也要参加那种活动吗？”

“对啊，她最喜欢，在美国的时候习惯了！”

曹爸爸打断问卖抠：“那到底你们要去什么地方？”

“我们去看什么地方要留学？”

“怎么留学？“

“对啊，我很想去上海她那边，她更喜欢北大，我们大家要解决留学的问题。”

“卖抠！你的父母叫什么名字！？”曹爸爸严厉地大声说。

“Tamara, Ben Seller, 晓琳没有告诉你们吗？”

曹妈妈吓了一跳道：“她说过，说过，只不过是我们忘记了，你先别急了。”

“你父母到底给你什么样的教育呢！” 曹爸说。

“这个。。。 基本上都是新教的教育”

“天哪！”

“对啊，老子也想跟晓琳一起了解一下。曹太太放心，虽然晓琳说没经验，但只要细读细读道德经都可以掌握了！”

突然曹妈妈站起来哭着离开房间，卖抠没有太理解她是怎么一回事。

“真是！” 爸爸喊起来， “你真不要脸！看你把我女儿弄成这样！我告诉你，我们这家可能是落后，不了解西方流行的习惯。但至少我们有道德！我的女儿万万不会接受这种对待！！”

“曹先生，我们大家可不是很好吗？”

“这里是个文明的家庭！你给我滚出去，否则我叫警察。你个流氓，你有严重的心理毛病，先回国看病，别赖着我们女儿！！！”

“可是。。我。。曹先生，晓琳到底在哪里啊！”

突然曹爸爸站起来，把可怜的卖抠推出去，没有再回答他的问题，而用力甩上了门。卖抠只好打车回南昌市中心试试联系晓琳，但是打电话打了半天都打不通。他最后想起来，他美国的老哥们儿在上海，就给我写了个邮件。以后的故事你们就知道了。

真奇怪！谁能帮助我把这件事情搞明白？

研究研究但还是没希望

听完卖抠的故事，我觉得晓琳的父母肯定对他的计划感到不高兴。我跟卖抠解释不要随便说话，中国的家庭比较保守，肯定不喜欢他这么“自在自由的”旅行的计划。卖抠还不懂为什么晓琳不接他电话，我说她是为了孝顺，父母说不要接她就不接。我说先要去了解她的父母有什么问题。

即然卖抠没有办法和他们沟通，再说他最怕再回去南昌面对曹爸爸，毕竟我只好提出我直接联系晓琳，和他见面了解一下到底发生了什么事。

她电话里面听起来很愤怒，一听到我是卖抠的朋友就要赌气挂断了。我马上说卖抠是多么好的个小伙子，他多么绝望，整天哭泣想着她。她终于松口同意解释一下，到底那个不幸的晚饭中发生了什么。她告诉我从妈妈听来的故事，弄我目瞪口呆。真是一个莫名其妙的对话，满口脏话的，甚至我不敢在这里写下来！

我回家花了很多心思分析她所说的故事，但不管怎么样还是没法搞明白。晓琳讲得这么厉害，不会是个简单的误会！除非曹家人都疯了我想不出来一个符合逻辑的解释。我开始嫌疑卖抠没有告诉我所有的细节。。。我家里面的气氛变得很闷。

过几天，卖抠最后放弃了，说反正他和晓琳的思想差距太大了。他已经买好了回美国的飞机票。最后一天他都没有情绪说话，我为了让他高兴给他说一下“Chinglish”的笑话，这是，中国人讲英文的搞笑的小故事。。。突然那个时刻我来了灵感，想起来了答案。我马上拿一张纸再记下来他描述的那个对话记录。

最后时刻找到了答案 !

我居然了解到的是这个：卖抠和曹父母之间的问题原来不是文化差距，而是语言不通！卖抠在江西的时候无知无觉得讲了很奇怪的个语言，只有我们老外能听懂的：老外话，Laowainese。我把卖抠说的话都翻译成中文再写下来了。结果让我很惊讶！怪不得小林的爸爸发火！！

要是读者会“老外话”的话，你肯定早就搞明白了。为了帮助那些没学过“老外话”的中国朋友，下面考配过来了我的翻译。你可以把鼠标箭头放在划线的词语上，看看“老外话”的翻译。

这就是曹家人那天在吃晚饭当中听到的不可思议的谈话：

“卖抠，你先吃一点我们特色豆腐,” 曹妈妈说, “你们美国是不是没有豆腐吃的？”

“是的，基本上我们更喜欢吃屎。”

“啊，真的吗？” 曹妈妈奇怪地说。

曹爸爸打破了一时的沉默：“卖抠，你这几天在江西有什么计划，想去什么地方玩？”

“随便吧，我们美国最喜欢大便吃去自由自在地享受。”

“天哪!” 妈妈说, “你们真喜欢那个！”

“对，只要有司机解手，我们就很高兴随着他去”

曹妈妈的脸变得煞白，难过地说：“那么，我们晓琳也会参加那种活动吗？”

“对啊，她最喜欢，在美国的时候习惯了！”

曹爸爸打断问卖抠：“那到底你们要去什么地方？”

“我们去看哪里要流血”

“怎么流血？“

“对啊，我很想去伤害她那边，她也喜欢被打，我们打架要解决流血的问题。”

“卖抠！你的父母叫什么名字！？”曹爸爸严厉地说。

“他妈的笨死了！晓琳没有告诉你们吗？”

曹妈妈吓了一跳道：“她说过！说过！不过是我们忘记了，你先别急了。”

“你父母到底给你什么样的教育呢！” 曹爸说。

“这个。。。 基本上都是性交的教育”

“天哪！”

“对啊，老子也想跟晓琳一起了解一下。操太太放心，虽然晓琳说她没经验，但只要吸毒吸毒道德经都可以掌握了！”

突然曹妈妈站起来哭着离开房间，卖抠没有太了解她是怎么一回事。

“真是！” 爸爸喊起来， “你真不要脸！看你把我女儿弄成这样！我告诉你，我们这家可能是落后，不了解西方流行的习惯。但至少我们有道德！我的女儿万万不会接受这种对待！！”

“操先生，我们打架可不是很好吗？”

“这里是个文明的家庭！你给我滚出去，否则我叫警察。你个流氓，你有严重的心理毛病，先回国看病，别赖着我们女儿！！！”

“可是。。我。。曹先生，晓琳到底在哪里啊！”

*  *  *

这就是我的老兄卖抠的故事。还好他那天没坐飞机，决定待在中国坚持找回他的心上人。他很辛苦，只有过几个月才找到了办法跟晓琳沟通，最后他们再合起来了。

那你们学中文的老外想一下，看中文里面的声调和发音是多么重要，以后好好学习。请大家不要再犯我的朋友卖抠的错误。

.

1. that is, you will be lost in the translation of Lost in Translation

When I first got to Shanghai 3 years ago I was young and my heart was full of ambition. Eager to make a name for myself in the local business circles, I handed out my name card liberally to all those smiling locals that pullulated in the networking events, actively introducing themselves and offering their cards in the lovely Asian two-handed fashion.

It took me a few weeks to understand how things work in Shanghai, and by then my card had already become a commodity in the IDs market, classified right up there under the header: First Class Expat Suckers.

The downside of this is that a good 75% of the text messages I receive since then are adverts. The good side is that these adverts are among the most extraordinary that I have ever seen, giving a good insight of the resourcefulness and creativity of the Shanghai underworld.

The messages include special cards to spy on someone’s conversations, loving daughters I never knew I had, or innovative credit at advantageous rates of only 3-figures percent, right in the middle of the financial crisis. For a while I have given up reading them, as I considered I had already seen all there was to see. But recent evidence reveals that this field of research is far from exhausted. See the last message:

Go to Switzerland to enjoy the Living Cells of a (Sheep) Foetus Injection treatment, totally repairs the decaying organism. During the whole process a translator will look after you. This will make you rejuvenate, your youth will glow again in a totally new life experience. Telephone:X.

Like usual, excuse the inaccuracies. It would be easier if I chose originals that made more sense, but I like translating dangerously. The main problem here is with the character 羊, which is a sheep, but in words like 羊水, it just means amniotic fluid.  That is why sheep is in parenthesis, indicating that the expression 羊胎素 might actually refer to a normal (human) foetus. Just how much more disgusting can this get.

Working Questions: What exactly are these guys selling? Is it just a scam, or do they really have a place in Switzerland for old Chinese who are rolling in it?  Anyone tried the Living Cells of a Sheep Foetus Injection? If I try it, won’t my bodily hair grow white and fluffy like a little lamb?

Like usual, CNY readers are invited to call the number and test the treatment at your own risk and peril, post results in comments below.

Without any more preambles, let me introduce you to the Oriental Morning Post, one of the two big morning papers in Shanghai. Here are some of their front pages this week:

Look at these front pages carefully, have you noticed there are adverts? Yes. I buy this paper every morning and I was very excited to see they have found an innovative way to face the crisis: just get rid of the news and replace them with ads. Gray Lady, Mr. Murdoch, are you paying attention? Herein lies perchance the salvation of the press.

Seriously. Let me tell you a funny story about the death of a newspaper.

Like New York, Shanghai has two main morning papers that are in fierce competition with each other, the Oriental Morning Post and the Shanghai Morning Post. The former is a young paper that belongs to the large media group Wenhui, owner of the English language Shanghai Daily. The latter is part of the Jiefang Group, a historic paper controlled by the Shanghai committee of the Communist Party

The struggle between these newspapers reflects a story that is happening all over China, where relatively independent [2] groups are competing with the party media, and editors on both sides are led to push the thin line of information control in order to attract more readers. The party media has the advantage of established old reader bases and closer political coverage, so it is the “independent” media that is usually more vulnerable to attacks.

In the last few years, just like in the West, the menace of the freebies both online and offline has been a nightmare for these companies. Only in Shanghai the Metro Express reportedly has more readers (~1 million) than the two Posts together, and the internet continues to attract users by the millions.

Some have argued that the key for the survival of the big papers is reference columnists and quality, independent reporting. In a country where being an opinion leader can lead you straight to prison, and most of the news are directly copy/pasted from the Xinhua press agency, it hardly make sense to pay for the morning paper. The Metro has the same news, and the only way to get commentary on any important matter is surfing the internet fast enough to get there before the censors.

Today I asked my Shanghainese friend Mary Fu why she thinks the Oriental is better than the Metro Express, and she answered, literally: “they are similar, but the Oriental has less adverts“.

The Great Leap Forward

But let’s get to the point now, namely: I have strong reasons to suspect that the Oriental is playing a “Great Leap Forward” on its advertisers. In other words, it is reporting completely unrealistic numbers of readers. I have various reasons to believe this, mainly:

• They have been reporting the same figures (400,000) at least since 2008, while the conditions have severely worsened since then.

• They are playing desperate tactics, like the above front pages. In fact, in their table of prices for advertisers the “whole front page ad” is not even an option.

• If I know the Shanghainese well, they are not the kind of people to get ripped off 1 RMB every morning for something they can get for free.

I know it is ugly to accuse without proof, but frankly: doesn’t it look like the guys are struggling to pay the bills, and they have managed to find two wealthy foreign companies confused enough to part with half a million RMB? And perhaps they even cooked it up with an advertisement agency who has some good guanxi [3] in the group?

Pure speculation. Forget it, don’t listen to me. I recommend everyone to continue buying the Oriental Piaget Post. And I wish all the luck in the World to those 300 employees who are seriously going to need it.

Leading the Way for the Demise of the Newspapers

And now, for the desperate media leaders who are willing to try the new Chinese model, here are some some illustrative examples of the zombie life led by the long deceased Chinese journalism. Most of my examples are taken from Danwei, the best newspapers watching site I know.

Exhibit 1: Classic example of an advert disguised as news in a front page in the Oriental Guardian of Nanjing. With a characteristic lack of ethical principles learned from the censoring authorities, a large part of Chinese mainland newspapers routinely sell news space to advertisers or post adverts without any indication of their real nature.

Exhibit 2: From our very own Shanghai Oriental last week. On that day “Mont Blanc” must have smelled a rat, and the Post had to actually do a front page. In a desperate move to attract some eyes they pasted an unrelated photo of the sexiest woman in China. No article to go with it.

Exhibit 3: This is the kind of clever detail that makes me go back to Danwei all the time. Chongqing journalists are smarter than Shanghainese ones, it seems. See how they use their prime minister Wen to sell reading glasses on the front page. Pure genius!

Exhibit 4: See this Oriental Post from a few weeks ago, where the front page reports on the market price of an alpaca. This is a lame attempt to get back young readers lost to the internet, using an aging meme that is quickly becoming unfunny. Another innovation by the Post editors.

I could go on for ages with examples, I didn’t even spend 10 minutes looking for these. But enough is enough. Now I want to take you back to the West and try to picture the future in your mind.

Do you imagine what will happen when the New York Times follows the downward road pioneered by the Shanghai press?

Tell me, does the future look so bad?

Welcome to the Future of the Paper Media.

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CLARIFICATION: There are still many proud Chinese journalists who do their job honestly and the best they can under very difficult conditions. It goes without saying that the criticism here does not apply to them.

1. Yes, intranet, from now on I refuse to refer to this joke as the internet until the retards controlling the GFW understand the meaning of World Wide Web
2. By independent I mean companies not nominally controlled by the party, although obviously they are not really independent from the government directives given to all the press
3. Guanxi means relations, often – but not necessarily –  implying a shady exchange of favours. If you are going to be reading about China you better learn this word now

A bit of background: signese is the Chinese humour contained in public signs before they are translated to English. It is not Chinglish, it goes much deeper into our cultural differences, and it is funny because it shows an unexpected approach to life. Look at this sign below, it is a classic of toilet signese, a sign that hangs above millions of urinals in China, from the Summer Palace to the smallest alley in Shanghai:

A small step for man, A great leap for civilization

Approximately 50 million urinals carry this sign in the mainland. I wonder if somebody has told Neil Armstrong in his old age that his famous and well rehearsed line is remembered today by 1/5th of humanity as a hygienic measure for urinating gentlemen.

Bad aiming skills in the toilet is a common ill in all societies, any lady will tell you that. But in China the problem is most acute, and sub-urinal ponds are part of the landscape. Some ascribe it to the natural optimism common in most Chinese males. I prefer to think it is a matter of multi-tasking abilities: speaking on the phone while smoking a cigarette is not the best way to ensure full control.

In any case, the Ministry of Health prefers to not leave anything to chance, and already a tech startup is taking care of this:

Until this new product hits the market, please one step forward.

I just hope the developers are thoughtful enough to give it hands-free capabilities, ashtrays and Bluetooth.

PS. Speaking of technology, I know, if I am going to take blogging seriously I better get rid of this phone and get one that can take proper pics. The problem is I am torn between that and the best dictionary of Chinese in the World, that runs in my second hand Palm from Taobao.

But even more wierd is the logo appeared on Google.com: Happy holidays. It is 14 January today, still one month to go for the holidays in China. And I don’t know of any other place where it is holidays today. Does this mean: happy holidays to the GFW and the Net Nanny? A very very long holiday is what those 2 deserve, and to never come back: NO, I get it now, it is Happy Holidays to the employees, G has sent all its Chinese employees on leave and dedicates the logo to them. Sweet!

But the funniest thing by far I have seen today is this video that was circulating on twitter (thanks Tom!). This is China humour, I will explain it for those who don’t live here: Baidu is the only successful Chinese website that is not completely cluttered with the Wall of Characters and intrusive adverts in the style of the Chinese internet. Why is that? Because Baidu itself is from the start an obvious imitation of Google. The title of the video is: What will happen to Baidu when Google leaves China?

And the quote of the day:

Baidu it and you’ll know, Google it and you’ll know too much…

(from a Chinese tweet, translated by a commentator on the CMD)

UPDATE: another funny article here:

The last great battle of our time was underway last night as Google and China began fighting for control of every living thing on the face of the Earth. A fragile truce between the world’s two biggest powers collapsed as Google accused China of reneging on a deal which would see the search giant control North and South America and those parts of Africa where people can afford netbooks…

A middle aged man in a dark suit left this car. He didn’t look in the least embarrassed. Was he a pedophile? A cadre under the influence, bringing it home to sweetie? Or just the resigned father of a normal Shanghai girl?

I didn’t stop to ask. But I appreciated the customized kitty steering wheel, rear-view mirror and head-rest. And the heap of slain and skinned pink cats stuffed inside the back window for further upholstery use.

Take Spain, for example. The Chinese community there is largely new, not fluent in languages, and originated from one single point in China: the tiny county of Qingtian, upriver from Wenzhou. When it comes to languages, the Spanish are not much better than them, and the whole situation is full of opportunities for the literate laowai. While a simple “nihao” is usually enough to be the hero of the day, some preparation yields better results. Just wander into a Chinese shop casually dropping a Qingtianese greeting, and comment on the remarkable history of the old stone-carving county, home of the Chinese-Spanish. This makes you popular. And you can drink tea and practice your Chinese conversation for hours on end.

What follows is a true story that happened in my last day of holidays. It includes a Chinese family with extraordinary sleeping abilities, and a team of adventurous Spanish ducks. I hope you enjoy it:

It was the first morning flight from Bilbao to Paris, where I was scheduled to connect with the Air France to Shanghai. As I entered the cabin of the A319, I marked immediately a Chinese family sitting in one of the front rows: a middle-aged mother with her son.

She was wearing a shapeless purple jacket in the style of the hundred names, and her teenage son covered his head in a Korean hip-hop hoody. They stood out in the business atmosphere of the early flight. But what made me notice them—and I couldn’t help a smile—is that they were already fast asleep before I even got to my seat. As far as I could see, they didn’t switch their positions for the duration of a rather eventful flight.

From the start, the journey proved trying for my nerves. As we were taking off, there was a loud bang coming from the back of the plane, followed by a vibration that grew stronger as we flew. For a while nothing else happened, but then, as we were approaching France, the plane suddenly leant to one side, and the Pyrenees mountains turned 180 degrees around us, until we were headed back West from where we came.

The noise grew worse, and the passengers with notions of geography were increasingly anxious. The town of San Sebastian appeared below us for the second time, only this time the ground seemed much closer. All the service call beeps went off one after the other. I looked around to the other passengers and they were all looking around. Nobody spoke.

Finally, the cabin crew appeared on the aisle, delivering row by row the official version of the facts: during take off a flying object had collided with the blades of engine 2, producing the bang and subsequent vibrations that we were experiencing. It was a common occurrence, and there was no danger. As part of the normal safety procedure, the captain had decided to return to the home airport for maintenance.

“It was probably a bird,” said the stewardess when she got to our row.

“A bird?” laughed the steward, “that was a team of big fat ducks!”

I figured he must have been instructed to keep a light mood. I tried hard to laugh, picturing circles of ducklings turning in the turbofan as we struggled to get past the sharp Basque valleys.

***

After an endless flight we were safety landed back onto Bilbao airport. As we were waiting to disembark, the pilot confirmed that the airplane was done for the day. We had to pick up our luggage first and then go to the Air France office on the second floor to request a new ticket. As usual, my suitcase was one of the last to appear on the rolling band, and by the time I got to the office there was already a long queue, about the length of a duck-stricken A319, and every bit as noisy.

The crowd was growing unruly. Some French passengers harangued the masses with true revolutionary spirit, launching slogans against all winged creatures, including ducks, airbuses, and Air France pilots. Since I was last, there was not much point in queuing, so I just stood on one side in a way to signify my disapproval. Then I noticed the focus was gradually shifting, as the keen Robespierres directed their anger to some unidentified target at the front of the queue. I walked over to have a closer look.

It was the Chinese family.

Clearly, they hadn’t understood the instructions to pick up the luggage, and they had come straight to the airline office before anyone else. They were first, and they showed no intention of giving up their position.  On the contrary, they were holding it admirably. The mother covered the rearguard with her fierce eye, while the son held fast to the desk. They were obviously well trained in conflictive queues, and they seemed unimpressed by the mob.

Linguistically, the situation was not ideal. The mother was screaming in Qingtianese, the son translated into Chinglese and an Air France employee replied in elaborate Spanglish, while the French head of office stared in disbelief. I was alone, and my faithful friend the Electronic Dictionary & Thesaurus was out of reach in the bottom of my bag. But the time was to act, and I did not falter in the hour of peril.

I cut right to the front and put in a “Qué pasa? 什么事?”. All four faces turned to me at once. The queue became suddenly quiet.

“They want to go to China!” cried the employee in Spanish.

“We want to go to China!” cried the son in Chinese.

The positions of the parties seemed to me very much unanimous, and ripe for an easy consensus. But further enquiry proved that it was not exactly so. I managed to reconstruct the following facts:

The family had slept through the flight, right until we landed back in Bilbao. Then they had not understood the strongly accented message of the pilot and they had dashed out of the plane straight to the connections desk, where they had been redirected to the airline office. And they acted so urgently because they only had one hour to catch the connecting flight. All they asked is to board their plane immediately, and they were pretty suspicious of this whole attitude of the staff in Paris.

Because they actually thought they were in Paris.

The problem was not an easy one to explain. Not only the mother’s mandarin was as bad as mine, but also she was determined, and she had a deep rooted common sense. They had just flown into Paris and therefore this was Paris, she would take no nonsense from a laowai. I used all my persuasion. I noted how the souvenir shops were selling bullfighters, and not tour eiffels. Finally the young son understood, and he helped me convince her. The fact was settled: We were in Spain, and there were no direct flights to Shanghai from this airport.

The rest was fairly easy to manage, and after a few minutes the three of us left the office with a new ticket. Once their infinite gratitude had been sufficiently expressed, I couldn’t help asking the son:

“But, how could you not realize that this is the same airport as before?”

“Well,” he smiled shyly, “Mum was just telling me that she finds all airports in Europe look strikingly similar!”

And his mother, who was tough but good-humoured, found it rather funny, and we all joined in a face-saving laughter. Then I knew I was engaged as official interpreter of the sleeping family.

***

In the end, my work as a translator served my interests well. We got our new tickets before anyone else, the last three places left to connect with the evening Paris-Shanghai. The revolutionaries were so stunned by the performance that they forgot to guillotine us, and the Air France employee gave us some free lunch vouchers for the VIP lounge. To make our wait more pleasant, she said, the company was offering one of their specialty dishes in the “Restaurant des Mondes”.

It was still far from the Spanish lunch time, so we had to wait while they opened the kitchen for us. The prospect of a free lunch worked well to improve the mood of my Chinese friends, and we had a lively chat in the VIP sofas. I took the chance to impress them with my baidupedic knowledge of their hometown. After that they opened up to me, and the last lines of suspicion finally vanished from the woman’s brow.

I listened distractedly as the son informed me of the state of the rap scene in Zhejiang. A terrible state that was, apparently, and I waited for a chance to switch topics. It was his mother that I found most intriguing. All the while she was sitting very still, as if lost in her own thoughts. She had an outside appearance that in China would be classified as “peasant”, but her proud, resolute eyes didn’t quite fit in the picture. What was she doing flying around with her single son? I finally asked him.

As it turned out, she was a renowned chef back home. Qingtian is the origin of thousands of Chinese restaurants across Europe, and their extended family had made a fortune with a popular chain of Chinese food. She had come as an expert to establish new recipes in the family restaurants in Spain, all the while teaching her son the secrets of the Chinese cuisine. They had toured the country for three months, making the company’s food “more delicious, more authentically Chinese”.

“Her most famous recipe is Beijing Duck,” said the kid, licking his lips, “You have never tried anything like that!”

“I would love to have a chance to try it,” I answered, suddenly hungry for duck.

Then the mother, who hadn’t said a word all this time, looked at me with a strange smile. I felt there was an invitation coming. Instead, she opened her eyes wide and nervously shook her son’s shoulder.

“Heavens!” she cried, “we still haven’t picked up our luggage!”

***

When I took them down to luggage collection, their belongings were still lonely turning around on the band, a number of shapeless pieces covered in woven tarpaulin. As we loaded them one by one onto a trolley, the son suddenly found something was wrong. It was the last packet, a cardboard box with some strange little holes pierced on the top. He held the box on his knees and showed me one of the corners where it had been torn open. The box was empty.

The woman was very upset. She started moving her arms up and down and speaking in her sing-song dialect at an alarming speed. I couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but the replies of her son were more composed, and I could more or less make out the gist of it:

“I told you we couldn’t take them on a plane, mum!”, he was saying.

“But how can we pass the long winter without them?”, she replied.

Suddenly I had a very dark premonition. While they were busy arguing, I walked over to the broken box and examined it carefully. As I held it up in front of me, a small, delicate object floated down from the broken corner. It was a feather.

I dropped the box as if it burned my hands, and I kicked it behind the rolling band were it wouldn’t be seen. I was in panic now, and I joined the arguing party with my own version of alarmed mandarin:

“We have to het out of here, NOW!”, I said.

“What? But the box?,” said the mother.

“Forget it!” I pushed the trolley towards the door, “we will see to that later!”

“What? But we have to file a complaint. They might have found …”

“No!”

I tried to control my nerves, as I envisioned charges for terrorism, and the dire diplomatic consequences of China’s national dish being presented as evidence of the crime. I tried to relax telling myself that at least there hadn’t been any human casualties.

“Please help us,” she said.

“We can’t do this now! Spain is a bureaucratic country, these things take a long time…” I muttered. “And anyway I’m sure your little friends are going to be fine!”

She gave me another inquisitive glance, like the first time I suggested she was not in Paris. She was clearly reconsidering about my sanity.

“Well, excuse me,” she said, “but they are important to me, and if you don’t want to help me I will have to file the complaint myself”

Just at that moment the airport PA system cracked with a life-saving announcement. All the passengers of the cancelled flight were asked to go back immediately to the second floor, were new information was awaiting us from the captain.

“Quick, this must be our lunch, let’s go before we miss it!” I translated, and this argument finally seemed convincing enough for the stubborn lady.

***

On the second floor, the slick French captain was putting in practice the company’s open information policy. The maintenance staff had just confirmed—he said—that  it was indeed the impact of external objects on the engine that had caused the vibration. The strange bodies had been already extracted and brought in from the hangar for analysis. The decision to return to the airport had proven a good choice, as it was the chief engineer’s opinion that we would have never made it to Paris.

A drop of cold sweat fell down my right temple as I considered the chances of those little animals finding their way into the turbine. Even if they managed to tear open the box and then break free from under the piles of luggage, even if they could unlatch the hold door with their little beaks, still,  how could they fly over to the engine? It seemed impossible. I remembered the laws of fluid dynamics, and how turbulent airflows exhibit nonlinear, chaotic behaviours. For the first time in my life I felt I understood the real meaning of the Chaos Theory.

In the meantime, the mother had sent her boy to inquire about lost objects, and he was explaining their problem to the captain in such a perfectly unintelligible English that the brave man could only smile politely. They looked around at a loss, only to see that their laowai friend was nowhere to be found. I had just in time slipped into the gentlemen’s restroom.

At this point, the airport loudspeakers buzzed again:

Passengers of the AF2435 to Paris, please proceed into our VIP lounge. As a special attention, we are offering you the chef’s specialty in our exclusive “Restaurant des Mondes”

***

I joined the family again as they walked down the corridor to the VIP Lounge. It seemed that the luxury meal kindly offered by Air France had conquered the heart of the frightful woman. Her expression showed no more pain for the loss of her beasts, and I hoped she had decided to give up the search. Presently, she was impressed by the quality of the service, and her mood was chatty.

“They know how to treat a client, in France,” she said conversationally, “back in China it’s not even comparable.”

“Oh, sure, great service here,”

“Even if they don’t have any proper backup plans,” she noted, “they are just great at doing nice surprises.”

“Oh, yeah, you can count on the French for surprises”

“It is all in the attitude, isn’t it?”, she said, and her only child nodded in agreement.

As we approached the “Restaurant des Mondes”, the atmosphere was so relaxed that I thought we had passed the worst. I just had to get them on our plane right after lunch, and there would be no more nonsense of lost object complaints. Then I saw the stewardess at the restaurant door, smiling. She held a large sign written in all the major languages of the World, including mandarin. It read:

TODAYS SPECIAL DISH:

“Thin-sliced duck Beijing style”

In case there were any doubts, underneath the text there was a colourful picture of a team of ducks thinly sliced as if by fast rotating blades, swimming in the dark sauce of the traditional Beijing recipe.

I tried with my body to hide the sign from their view, but I was too late. There was not much point anyway, the pictures were all over the place, and the food was coming out any minute. As we sat down, I peeped at her out of the corner of my eye. Her expression was enigmatic, the initial apprehension had turned into something more lofty. Was it triumph? I trembled.

The dishes were served and, unexpectedly, nothing happened. I glanced at my two friends. The were obviously enjoying their meal, emitting now and then favorable grunts and other judgements with the assurance of the true connoisseur. Then, halfway through their ducks, they looked at each other with an understanding smile and, following some mysterious signal, the lady suddenly stood up, knocking her chair behind her, and crying out loudly:

“I want to speak to the person who cooked this!”

There was a spark in her eye as she glared at the kitchen door on the other side of the dining room. I could not think of anything to say this time, so I just sat still, helpless as the slings and arrows flew swiftly towards their target.

Seeing that no help was forthcoming from my side, the mother ignored me and took direct action. She strode across the room and, without further preambles, she thrust open the kitchen door, roaring in Qingtianese. In a minute, the cook came out sporting a high chef hat and howling even louder than her. To my surprise, he was also employing some variety of Zhejiang dialect.

Then something strange happened. The moment he saw the chef, the son stood up and ran across the dining room charging like a fighting bull, and when the three of them were at a close distance, they came together in a long, warm hug.

I stood rather awkwardly next to them, wondering what was next. The chatter of the adults had risen to undecipherable speeds under the flow of emotions. I looked at the teenager for an explanation, but he was too absorbed speaking to the cook. Finally, I managed to catch some fraction of the conversation:

“Uncle Li, we knew it had to be you, nobody else in the World can cook Beijing Duck like mother! What are you doing here?”

“You know, I got a catering contract with Air France, didn’t I tell you?”

“Uncle, you really need to help us, mother is really worried! This laowai is with us, but his Chinese is so-so, and he just doesn’t get it!”

“Say, my boy, what is the problem?”

“It is the new down-filled coats that mum bought to take home for the winter. She was so upset when we found out that they’ve been stolen from our luggage…”

What follows contains shocking images made public here for the first time. Sensitive readers are advised to close this website now before reading on.

The laowai phenomenon

Everyone familiar with China has heard of this phenomenon. When a person with non-Asian features wanders in the country he gets hundreds of local fingers pointed at him, as he is promptly and thoroughly informed that he is a foreigner (“laowai !”). Even in the 21st century, after 30 years of reform and opening, this behavior is prevalent in most areas out of the foreign-populated centres of Shanghai and Beijing.

Although some foreigners still take offense, it is by now widely acknowledged that the “laowai call” is just  a neutral form of expressing curiosity in a country that is almost entirely uni-racial. It has also been explained as part of a socializing device that consists of stating the obvious to each other, like “Hey, you are back from work!” or “hey, you are a laowai”.

Fig1: Standard testing equipment: “laowai has come!” – “laowai has left!”

But enough theory now. This Summer we took a completely different approach and decided to test the Chinese people’s humour by entering some of the most dangerous bumpkin infested areas of the country wearing the garment in Fig 1. The sampling areas selected were: the tourist village of Zhujiajiao and a fake market in Shanghai.

The challenge was phenomenal, and the reaction of the public was correspondingly massive and spectacular, with whole streets turning their heads or popping out of windows to share in the excitement. It was a great performance of what I believe is called “Kazakh humour”, its main characteristic being that nobody is sure who is laughing at who.

Among the passers-by we discerned and duly registered in the log book the 3 following attitudes:

1. Conspirational –  Those who were laughing with us.
2. Malicious –  Those who were laughing at us.
3. Annoyed – Those who felt they were being laughed at.

Fortunately, the Chinese passed the humour test remarkably well, falling mostly into category #1, with some children and local lowbrows accounting for the #2s. We didn’t encounter any crazy patriot accusing us of hurting people’s feelings, which confirms my previous notion that those people can only be so silly when under the anonymity of the internet. In any case, this T-shirt is a must if you want to be famous in a mid-size Chinese town in the first 5 minutes of your arrival.

Some more pictures of the experiment:

In the fake market

Relaxing facial muscles after hours of being pointed at

The next challenge

If you liked this performance stay tuned for the next experiment. We have obtained the necessary gear to boratize this time an altogether different social group. Equipped with the 7” mangy moustache and the genuine garment in Fig 2, this specimen will make its appearance at the next fashion show in the exclusive M1NT bar. How will the high society in expat Shanghai (more than 50% clad in fake Paul Smith) fare in our test?

Fig 2. Whiskered specimen used for laboratory testing

Take a look at the picture. This baby beeped into my life the other day at 4am, just as I was getting ready to switch into deep sleep. I knew it was spam, but I couldn’t help the reflex. I stretched out one arm, opened one eye and mentally translated as follows:

“Do you want to know the content of somebody’s cell phone conversations? Just send us the person’s number, my company will do a  special card for you. Using this card you will be able to listen to all his calls. For complete info dial: etc.”

My first reaction of course was to run for my business cards drawer and pick a couple of cards from the section “competition”. If it is a public service it cannot be immoral, I thought, and they got it well deserved, those sneaky competitors who go around trying to snitch our projects.

But then I woke up a bit more and suddenly remembered: I am in China, and it is another one of those sms.  So I just mentally marked it for my blog collection and I went back to bed. Before I closed my eyes I still had the time to draw the follwing conclusions:

1. This cannot possibly be true.  If it were, China Mobile would be facing thousands of lawsuits .
2. But then, if there is one place in the World where this might be true, it is right here.
3. Either way, the author is clever. I am sure there are loads of people out there calling the number right now. Nothing is more tempting than to know what you shouldn’t know…

So we will probaby be receiving more of these. And like I usually say in these cases: if there’s anyone out there willing to test the service for CNY, please go for it and let us know in comments.

Volunteers earn a free VIP subscription.

But no worries, I think I know just how to do that:

Make up your mind: N.1 or N.2?

Everybody knows that serious China bloggers don’t do Chinglish. That’s for newbies, and we are past the “mamma, look what I got” stage. But before you leave, take a look at this a pic I took yesterday on my way to Ningbo . It is now part of my new classified collection of Signology. And there’s more here than meets the eye.

It all started when this inspiring picture recently published on the the 55 blog caught my attention. Something was wrong with it, it was funny, and in the same time completely at odds with the classic definition of Chinglish: it was entirely written in characters!

Sleepless nights followed, while I reflected on this important exception to the rule, until I saw what might prove to be a breakthrough in the field of Asian Studies.  Working overtime, I have finally come up with  the first attempt ever to develop a taxonomy of Chinese signs. Provisionally, I am calling it Signology, and it is composed of the  following main branches:

1- Chinglish:  Discipline that studies faulty translations of Chinese signs.
2- Signese:  Discipline that studies untranslated or correctly translated signs that were already funny in the original Chinese version.

In its turn, Signese can be divided in a few subfamilies. For the moment I have found the following:

• Toilet Signese
  
• Tourist Spot Signese
• Commercial Copy Signese
• Communist heritage Signese.

Each of them has its own merits and deserves a special chapter, but they all have one characteristic in common. They are funny not because there is anything essentialy wrong with them, but because they originate from a Chinese mentality that is different from the commonly accepted Western standards of social behaviour. Just like grandpas walking birds or older ladies rehearsing their fan dances.

This is the reason why some sad, narrow-minded  foreigners living in China spit all their venom against the poor Signese, mumbling weird comments about “lack of religion” and “5000 years of history” and what not.

For the sake of brevity, I will stick for today to the Toilet Signese.

Toilet Signese

Look at exhibit 1 above: have you ever thougth of what would happen if our toilets in the West were divided in 2 sections with clear signs indicating “defecate” and “urinate” ?

I can picture the embarrasment of some gentelmen, the giggling of prudish girls and the general chaos when some responsible citizen of the community would eventually send the picture to a newspaper, accusing the Council of improper signaling.A promising political career would be broken and hundreds of innocent users irreparably shocked.

But  instead of  pointing a finger at the Chinese, the sensitive China expat will turn his eyes round to himself. And he might want to ask the following questions: At which point in Western culture did we decide that “shit” had to be banished? At which point did we became so clean, so perfect, so sophisticated that we decided to socially ignore our own bodily functions? Did nobody realize at the time the enormous potential in jokes and funny signs that was lost in the process?

Will the West eventually change this abnormal behaviour when China becomes the first World power?

Look at the park picture below and ponder.

Please don't shit or pee all over the place

UPDATE:  I just found out that  I was re-inventing the wheel: signese already exists, and this website does a great job of  it. So you can send your pictures there instead of here, and with their permission I will pick from their stock next time I want to continue developing my signese theories.

At least my classification system seems to be completely new. I am sending it to scientific journals to get it accepted officially.

I hate spoiling jokes, so those that can speak a bit of Chinese should figure it out by themselves.

For those who don’t speak Chinese, see after the fold.

SOLUTION:

By now you should have noticed that the large Mao portrait is missing on the Tiananmen Gate. Mao in Chinese is 毛，which also means fluff, or hair (mostly bodily hair).

The characters for depilation are 脱毛，脱 meaning to take off.

It is an enjoyable read and it is useful to explain to those back home that don’t study Chinese how characters work. In Europe, when you say you are studying Chinese, people always ask the same questions:  is it true that each character is a word, is it true that they are all “pictures”? And these questions are very difficult to answer accurately, as even expert linguists don’t seem to agree on whether characters should be considered words, or even on what is the proper definition of “word”.

The article is also great in that it draws conclusions that go beyond the purely linguistic, and might help understand to non Chinese-speakers the particular importance of the script in shaping the history and culture of China.

The complexities of the writing system, the inherent interest of the pictorial elements, the cleverness inherent in graphic compounds like woods and the radical-phonetic system, and even sociological facts such as the time it takes to learn the system, and the fact that English speakers of all nations can use it whatever their native dialect, would also combine to give the writing system an overwhelming character of its own. It would be seen as more important than speech; there would even be a tendency to think of words as derived from characters rather than the other way around.

And it is true that in China the writing system has an importance that trancends even today into all areas of life, from art forms to humour, marketing and, through the inherent ambiguity of  the characters’  “independent existence”, to the political speech. Expressions used by Chinese leaders can have hundreds of political analysts around the World scratching their heads and engaging in endless debate  about their real meaning, like was recently the case with Hu Jintao’s 不折腾 (buzheteng).

This only happens in China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion people and 20,000 odd characters living together in the same territory.

About the evolution of Chinese words from monosyllabic to polysyllabic (or viceversa), and the phenomenon of written Chinese taking a life of its own and influencing the spoken language, here is an interesting book by John the Francis: the Chinese language: Fact and Fantasy.

Finally, re zompist,  it looks like a very popular blog and I am sure many of you out there knew about it already. I hope I will have more time to read it, for the moment I just scanned it briefly and it looks intriguing, if a bit scary. I have found out that author Mark Rosenfelder is a conlanger, which means someone who invents new languages. He also sells kits to construct a new language, in case you are not satisfied with your own.

Whatever the practical use of all this, it is an intelligent blog,  and it is sure to make you waste many a precious office hour if you have any interest in languages. And who doesn’t nowadays.