Cinderella Teaching in the Greatest Monkey Show on Earth (1)
An open letter to my students:
Two men recently completed a controversial recreation of Mao’s Long March. At every point along the march, people stared at them and puzzled over their purpose. On one particular occasion, a rural farmer walked up to the travellers and asked, “are you here to do a monkey show?” The historian-marchers, having long ago tired of explaining their journey, wearily assented. “Oh,” the farmer replied. “So…where are the monkeys?”
One of my colleagues (your teacher) a year ago told me that there were two types of expatriate educators in China: performing and non-performing monkeys. It was his feeling that neither administration nor the student body understood any of the reasons he elected to remain in China as a teacher.
Any of you who have been my students in the past two years have seen the movie Cinderella Man. Many of you remember two of the questions I asked following the movie: who would you most like to be in the movie, and who do you think I would most like to be? A few of you knew immediately what my answer would be. It’s the same answer I would expect from anyone who has devoted their life to pedagogy. Some of you wanted to Jim Braddock, champion of the world, devoted parent, and courageous cum-victorious underdog. Others of you would be happy being the rich, yet hardly kind, fight promoter. And a small group of you were comfortable, as I was, picking Jimmy’s trainer as our role model.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have great successes in my life, but my greatest pleasure comes from seeing any one of my students succeed emotionally, personally, financially, or professionally.
Some doomsayers think that China’s spectacular growth is a fairy tale and doomed to a tragic end. If I believed that, I wouldn’t be here. But I believe that some of your notions about education, teachers, and Western culture must change or this will be a very short chapter in book 4,000 years in the making.
Many of you know that my expectations of you in class are different than some other foreign experts. I expect you, for the short time you are in my classroom, to behave as though you were a guest in a foreign country. I expect you to rehearse new patterns of behavior and to make a paradigm shift in your thinking about business and culture in order make to more effective global citizens and international businessmen.
I returned this week from a vacation of sorts, as I spent most of it reading and researching Chinese history and culture in order to better integrate myself into this society and to become a better teacher.
I can probably never expect to be more than a shengren, an outsider who one day you may come to know and trust as more than just an acquaintance. I know that I already view many of you as shuren, or as zijiren, special people for whom I will always have a place in my heart, and for whom I will always make time should you need me.
Here are some of the things I learned:
- I learned that if your country’s explosive growth continues at its current rate for the next 28 years, your economy will be as large as that of the United States. While this sounds impressive, the reality is that you will still have only one quarter the spending power per capita at that time as your counterparts in America.
- Your country, as estimated by UNESCO, will be 20 million college seats short of its needs by 2020.
- In fields like engineering, only ten percent of your current college graduates, because of a lack of resources (including high-quality foreign teachers) and an advanced curriculum, will be able to compete with their global contemporaries.
- China invests seven dollars of research and development money for a return of one dollar in new production output. Conversely, America’s ratio is one to one.
- Your economy has doubled in size every six years, and 250 million people have been pulled up out of poverty. You have the second largest foreign reserves in the world. You made 25% of the world’s televisions, 60% of the world’s bicycles, and 50% of the world’s shoes and cameras.
Sun Zi’s 36 strategies have served you well to this point. You have used offensive, defensive, and deceptive strategies to create the most enviable economy in the world. But to sustain your growth, you will need better knowledge of your enemy. As you know, Sun Zi said,
“Know your enemy, know yourself, and you can fight 100 battles with no danger of defeat. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, the chances of winning and losing are equal. If you know neither your enemy nor yourself, you are bound to perish in every battle.”
Business is war. Were I still a military man, I might be guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It is my bounden duty to prepare you for battles in negotiation, acculturation, and professional assimilation. To further drag out this metaphor, I am the training officer who will ultimately be responsible for your campaign successes and failures.
For me, statistical data like that above isn’t much more informative than astrology in that it instructs you in what you can and should avoid. You can change a timeline that hasn’t yet been drawn.
I’m neither a performing monkey nor do I have a troupe of them for your enjoyment. I’m a teacher and a foreign who spends nearly 24 hours, seven days a week learning about and adapting to a China I’ve come to love dearly. All that is asked of you is that you honor my commitment and the commitment of other foreign teachers who take their jobs and their place in this society seriously. On one hand, a few hours a week against the rest of your life is a small sacrifice if you learn nothing. On the other hand, if it creates in you a kind of mental muscle memory that secures your position in even one future negotiation, it was time well spent.
With congratulations to the graduates of 2007. I will always be your cornerman.
Posted 23 July, 2007 in Chinese Proverbs, Guangzhou, Internet marketing China, Chinese Internet, Heartsongs, Macau University of Science and Technology, China Expat, China Business Consultant, American Professor in China, Chinese Education, The Great Wall, past posts, China Cartoons, Teaching in China, Expats, Intercultural Issues, China Business, Confucius Slept Here, Guangzhou China, Chinglish, Personal Notes, China Expats
I will meet you for Coffee at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk…. (9)
Adam writes on the Lehman Law Blawg [sic] that the new ordnance in Shanghai requiring foreign businesses to add Chinese characters to their name is “misguided.” He goes on to make his case: “The claim that a foreign-language-only name is a major impediment to Chinese-only speakers is dubious. Even if potential customers cannot say the name, they can refer to it in other ways, for example, ‘that pizza place on the corner of Taicang Lu and Huangpi Nan Lu.’ As for access by taxi, unless you are going to the Shanghai Museum or some other such well-known landmark, names are useless. Whether you say City Diner or a Chinese name, you’re going to have to tell the driver ‘intersection of Nanjing Xi Lu and Tongren Lu’ to get where you want to go.”
Adam, I kind of expect to be reading Chinese (authentic Traditional Chinese) in Guangzhou, and even Portuguese in Macau. Just a guess on my part, but there seems to be some ethnocentrically driven historical precedence for the annoying habit of the local governments insisting on being able to navigate streets and order in eateries using their native tongue….
In China, that country bordering the country with the man with strange hair that is building a nuke, people brought up during the cultural revolution who don’t read English or Pinyin, probably don’t know the Hard Rock Cafe from a day-old bread store, but they have heard of Xingbake (the Chinese name for Starbucks) the American coffee joint or Kendeji (pronounced cun-dutch-ee) the chicken emporium. And even the Cantonese taxi divers can take you to either one if asked…
Adam gives his jury summation thusly: “Finally, foreign-language-named businesses add to the cosmopolitan air of a city. As one strolls through the streets of New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, one will see many Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese or other foreign-language-named businesses without English translations. Because Shanghai is unique in Mainland China as an international and cosmopolitan city, this diversity should be celebrated, not hindered.” Adam might have had me here if he he hadn’t introduced reasonable doubt in his argument by saying “Shanghai” and “free market” in the same sentence…But then, I lived in Chicago and did see a few businesses in ethnic neighborhoods with signs exclusively in the area’s dominant language, but most ethnic businesses in most cities have romanized names as well….The businesses intentionally wanting to appeal to immigrants left out “ease of menu translation” in their business plan to-do lists. The places looking to be cosmopolitan were smart enough to add English characters.
And if 谷哥 (Google) and 肯德基 (KFC) haven’t filed any ethnic diversity lawsuits because people here now know them better by their Chinese monikers, I doubt 星巴克 (Starbucks) is headed to court either.
By the way: “Guido”and “Boris” (their English names) from Guangzhou’s Tourism Board want to pay you a visit to discuss ways to improve on internationalizing their hick towns Hong Kong and Guangzhou… And “Makudonorudo” (the Golden Arches) in Japan wants you to represent them as they are tired of their name sounding like a morning rooster in the ads that air in the backwater town of Tokyo….
Adam is held in contempt of culture unil further notice…
Posted 21 July, 2007 in The Internet, Chinese Internet, Guangzhou China, 中国, Chinglish, Guangzhou, 中文, Education in China, China Law, Shanghai, China Expat, China Business Consultant, In the news, Confucius Slept Here, Greater Asia Blogs, Asia, Asian Humor, China Humor, Humor, Japan, China Expats, Weird China, China Business, China Editorials, Intercultural Issues, China web 2.0
One World, Many Schemes…. (0)
A report in the China Daily warns: “China may be famed for fake goods, but don’t mess with the Olympics.” Is this a logic puzzle? I think Beijing will do better curbing Chinglish, getting the gum scaped off Tiananmen Square or getting an accredited degree at Macau University of Science and Technology.
Hey, but so far the Olympic IP patrols have logged 1,556 cases of violations involving souvenirs. This sounds good, but, the goods seized over a three year period have only amounted to about $1.9 million USD and the fines handed out totaled $1.1 million USD. OK, do the math: $1.1 million divided by 1,556 equals about $707 dollars a case. What a deterrent!
In all, 428 cases have been “uncovered” since the beginning of 2006. Here in Guangzhou 428 cases wouln’t close even one of the bootleg speakeasy joints near me and $707 dollars would not be more than a couple of days worth of gross.
The Beijing Olympic body has registered the seven main Beijing Olympic trademarks, including the “friendlies” and they are reportedly moving ahead to register 69 other Olympic trademarks, including the torch design. THE GAMES ARE NEXT YEAR! Somebody forgot this part of the early planning?
I was a bit stunned that the Trademarked products will only add $30-45 Million USD to the assets side of their $38 billion Oympic debt: Licensed merchandise in the last two Olympics grossed about $300 Million and the host city pockets 10-15% of the total. The Backstreet Boys make that much on pajama royalties don’t they?
I think some smart entrepreneur will set up an authentic licensed shop online and smart shoppers will inspect goods carefully while avoiding vendors at the Great Wall that sell watches with Mao waving an Olympic torch.
I bought several “Friendlies” (before their name was changed to the expectorant “Fuwa”) collector coin sets for friends, but made sure they had the goverment hologram and unique certificate number inside. You could actually an offical number provided and verify authenticity and no, the call wasn’t answered in Nigeria.
I did pick up a couple, like the one below, that have no company name and no contact number printed on them, so I am guessing they will eventually have less value than a McDonalds’ Happy Meal insert.
VERY similar to the i-Pod won by D.M.P. and sent back to me by customs:
Everything looks, and almost acts, exactly like the real deal, but the wheel does not turn….
Picture taken with my Macbook–a real one–albeit with a broken screen…..
Posted 8 July, 2007 in The Internet, Wholesale Products China, 中国, Chinglish, Travel in China, Chinese Media, Beijing Olympics, 中文, Macau University of Science and Technology, In the news, Photos, Intercultural Issues, Asia, Asian Humor, China Editorials, China Sports, Weird China, China Photos, China Olympics, Humor
Nothing Funny Happened on the Way to Shanghai (7)
Remember the old joke I shared with you a few months ago about the airliner flying over China with transponder and communication difficulties? Somehow the tower figured out they were trying to ask the time, and they responded with, “If you’re Singapore Air, it’s 1300 hours. If you’re United, it’s one o’clock. If you’re China Eastern, the big hand is on the twelve, and the little hand is on the one. And if you’re Dragon Air, it’s Tuesday.”
There were a handful of positive things on David and my recent trip to Shanghai, and one of them was being on time for an interior China flight for the first time in two and a half years. I thought this was a harbinger of good things to come, but I was wrong.
David and I used a China travel service (I’m a very slow learner) to book a hotel in a location that would be reasonably convenient for all the places we would travel to in Shanghai. The hotel and the staff looked like the barnacled versions of rthe set from the latest Pirates of the Caribbean sequel…
Let me continue to digress. I’ve always had this impression of Shanghai as this up and coming, modern, and sleek city that would someday soon supplant Hong Kong as an economic and cultural mecca for China. Some of my favorite bloggers correspond from here. So I’m hoping that this is just a one-off, skewed view of one portion of this city. Of course, I haven’t been psychologically “right” since my trip to Thailand. I’m currently suffering from gender identification disorder (GID): I compared the women in Shanghai to the men in Thailand and damed if the women dis not measure up. Maybe it’s time for that laser surgery. (on my EYES…)
We quickly determined that there were only two English-language stations on the hotel TV, one of them being a mindless version of ESPN China with replays of snooker marathons. The other channel was Chinese HBO. My best guess is that Chinese HBO in Shanghai has a transmission lag built in for the censors. Unfortunately, it’s about a ten-year delay. If you’re into B-grade horror movies rehashed from the Scifi Channel, well-known shows from the late 70s, or formulaic teenage drivel involving monkeys gone wild, you’re in luck! If you’re a six year old, or were a six year old at the time of transmission, you’ll also be quite pleased. The most recent release we caught was Arthur, with Dudley Moore, who I’m sure would be happy to know the broadcast first started its journey to China while we was still alive.
Our next adventure was the search for that hard-to-find creature, the toothbrush. In Guangzhou, we’d pass 16 hospitals and 14 medicine stores (albeit mostly knock-off products) in the course of two blocks, but it appears that no one in Shanghai takes much for colds or considers dental hygiene a high priority. During our travels, we passed herds and packs of common urban China wildlife: beggars, the RolexDVDbagwatch man, and prostitutes, but no one hawking designer Oral Reach on the street. The nearest drug store in the direction we went was six hawkers, twelve prostitutes, and four beggars from the hotel. Since that accounted for about 7 blocks, we decided to stop at Taco Bell for a well-deserved break.
Imagine our excitement to come from Guangzhou to find a Taco Bell. Instead of finding Tacos, Bells, or the greasily satisfying goodness of its American counterpart, we found a staff of very unhappy-looking Shanghainese dressed in novelty-store sombreros and ponchos. It took me a minute to place their expression, but then I remembered: my mother’s Chihuahua looked similar after being dressed in an Afghan knitted by my mother. Some things are just not meant to be.
We never did get that toothbrush, so we decided we use toothpicks and shirtsleeves, and take a meandering route back to the hotel in hopes of discovering some cultural treasure, or at least some amusement. We passed the Shanghai Grand Theater, which visibly lives up to its name from the outside. It’s has a Maxine’s restaurant with no customers and lots of waiters in tuxedos, looking about as comfortable as the sombrero-clan in Taco Bell, and a DVD/CD emporium next to the box office filled with much better packaged, but 20 yuan bootleg versions of their 5 yuan ($0.60 USD) Guangzhou cousins.
Thinking we might take in an off Broadway show, we checked the ticket prices for Mama Mia!, which was both the current show and our reaction to cost. One seat was the price of our round-trip ticket from Guangzhou, but we assumed that these were really famous, important actors as their names were covered with umlauts.
It was roughly thirteen prostitutes, two beggars, and 11 hawkers back to the hotel, where we wondered if we should order in for dinner or venture back out into the streets. To make a long story longer, let’s fast forward to the evening meal. We did a 180 from the toothbrush escapade and headed in the direction of bright McDonald’s signs in the process discovering that at night the predators become much more aggressive: maybe it’s a night vision thing. After David got a cold milk tea literally ripped out of his hand by a very thirsty-looking man I would have strangled but for fear of contagion, we decided to be more aggressive in our stance. From that moment on, calls for massages and Singapore girls were answered with shouts: “I’m GAY!” (I am not), or “I have AIDS and I am not afraid to use it”, which does flummox these guys.
We did catch a talented street band playing in the midst of all this. But, their repertoire was mostly torch songs, which had enough pedestrians and beggars in near tears to allow us faster passage to a Hunan restaurant, where a culinary self-immolation seemed preferable to returning outside. We stayed so long they turned off the AC to turn us, the last customers, out. So it was back through the gauntlet, where one really never had to buy a massage because of all the manhandling they gave us trying to get us to buy one. We finally made it back to the shipwreck hotel, where we fell asleep watching the end of the snooker tournament.
Several good things did happen on this trip, but that is another post . All of this made me think of my last entry: so what would Buddha do if every person he met in the street was a prostitute, a beggar or fake Rolex dealer?
He’d catch the next flight out of Shanghai. And so we will…..
Just in case you were wondering, Chinglish is alive and well in Shanghai:
Would that it were so, aye?
(thanks to Witty World for the photo)
Posted 5 July, 2007 in Guangzhou, Guangzhou China, 中国, Chinese Medicine, Travel in China, Shanghai, American Professor in China, 中文, Chinglish, Just Plain Strange, Asia, Asian Women, Asian Humor, Intercultural Issues, China Cartoons, Confucius Slept Here, Weird China, China Sports, Humor
Cinderella Teaching in the Greatest Monkey Show on Earth (5)
An open letter to my students:
Two men recently completed a controversial recreation of Mao’s Long March. At every point along the march, people stared at them and puzzled over their purpose. On one particular occasion, a rural farmer walked up to the travellers and asked, “are you here to do a monkey show?” The historian-marchers, having long ago tired of explaining their journey, wearily assented. “Oh,” the farmer replied. “So…where are the monkeys?”
One of my colleagues (your teacher) a year ago told me that there were two types of expatriate educators in China: performing and non-performing monkeys. It was his feeling that neither administration nor the student body understood any of the reasons he elected to remain in China as a teacher.
Any of you who have been my students in the past two years have seen the movie Cinderella Man. Many of you remember two of the questions I asked following the movie: who would you most like to be in the movie, and who do you think I would most like to be? A few of you knew immediately what my answer would be. It’s the same answer I would expect from anyone who has devoted their life to pedagogy. Some of you wanted to Jim Braddock, champion of the world, devoted parent, and courageous cum-victorious underdog. Others of you would be happy being the rich, yet hardly kind, fight promoter. And a small group of you were comfortable, as I was, picking Jimmy’s trainer as our role model.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have great successes in my life, but my greatest pleasure comes from seeing any one of my students succeed emotionally, personally, financially, or professionally.
Some doomsayers think that China’s spectacular growth is a fairy tale and doomed to a tragic end. If I believed that, I wouldn’t be here. But I believe that some of your notions about education, teachers, and Western culture must change or this will be a very short chapter in book 4,000 years in the making.
Many of you know that my expectations of you in class are different than some other foreign experts. I expect you, for the short time you are in my classroom, to behave as though you were a guest in a foreign country. I expect you to rehearse new patterns of behavior and to make a paradigm shift in your thinking about business and culture in order make to more effective global citizens and international businessmen.
I returned this week from a vacation of sorts, as I spent most of it reading and researching Chinese history and culture in order to better integrate myself into this society and to become a better teacher.
I can probably never expect to be more than a shengren, an outsider who one day you may come to know and trust as more than just an acquaintance. I know that I already view many of you as shuren, or as zijiren, special people for whom I will always have a place in my heart, and for whom I will always make time should you need me.
Here are some of the things I learned:
- I learned that if your country’s explosive growth continues at its current rate for the next 28 years, your economy will be as large as that of the United States. While this sounds impressive, the reality is that you will still have only one quarter the spending power per capita at that time as your counterparts in America.
- Your country, as estimated by UNESCO, will be 20 million college seats short of its needs by 2020.
- In fields like engineering, only ten percent of your current college graduates, because of a lack of resources (including high-quality foreign teachers) and an advanced curriculum, will be able to compete with their global contemporaries.
- China invests seven dollars of research and development money for a return of one dollar in new production output. Conversely, America’s ratio is one to one.
- Your economy has doubled in size every six years, and 250 million people have been pulled up out of poverty. You have the second largest foreign reserves in the world. You made 25% of the world’s televisions, 60% of the world’s bicycles, and 50% of the world’s shoes and cameras.
Sun Zi’s 36 strategies have served you well to this point. You have used offensive, defensive, and deceptive strategies to create the most enviable economy in the world. But to sustain your growth, you will need better knowledge of your enemy. As you know, Sun Zi said,
“Know your enemy, know yourself, and you can fight 100 battles with no danger of defeat. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, the chances of winning and losing are equal. If you know neither your enemy nor yourself, you are bound to perish in every battle.”
Business is war. Were I still a military man, I might be guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It is my bounden duty to prepare you for battles in negotiation, acculturation, and professional assimilation. To further drag out this metaphor, I am the training officer who will ultimately be responsible for your campaign successes and failures.
For me, statistical data like that above isn’t much more informative than astrology in that it instructs you in what you can and should avoid. You can change a timeline that hasn’t yet been drawn.
I’m neither a performing monkey nor do I have a troupe of them for your enjoyment. I’m a teacher and a foreign who spends nearly 24 hours, seven days a week learning about and adapting to a China I’ve come to love dearly. All that is asked of you is that you honor my commitment and the commitment of other foreign teachers who take their jobs and their place in this society seriously. On one hand, a few hours a week against the rest of your life is a small sacrifice if you learn nothing. On the other hand, if it creates in you a kind of mental muscle memory that secures your position in even one future negotiation, it was time well spent.
With congratulations to the graduates of 2007. I will always be your cornerman.
Posted 1 July, 2007 in Chinese Proverbs, Guangzhou, Internet marketing China, Chinese Internet, Heartsongs, Macau University of Science and Technology, China Expat, China Business Consultant, American Professor in China, Chinese Education, The Great Wall, past posts, China Cartoons, Teaching in China, Expats, Intercultural Issues, China Business, Confucius Slept Here, Guangzhou China, Chinglish, Personal Notes, China Expats
Blog of Dreams (5)
The Dream:
Our dream is to travel in 2007 to every mainland province in China. During this journey, it is our intention to chronicle the everyday lives of ordinary Chinese citizens. Our motivation for the trip came from a group of women known as the League of Extraordinary Chinese Women. The LOECW was comprised of 5 women from various walks of Chinese life—wives, semi-professional women, a bookkeeper, and a student. The one thing they had in common was advanced-stage HER2 breast cancer. These women, with little access to formal education and less information from outside sources about the disease they had contracted, naturally and courageously combated their disease with friendship, enthusiasm, meditation, and what medical care they could afford.
One member of the original group has survived, and a newer, younger member has been added recently—a 22-year-old student who lost her leg to bone cancer. Both of the survivors lack the financial wherewithal to apply standard medical treatment to their illness. We devoted time and energy from our blogs and lives to raise money for members of the league. As a result of our initial efforts, we were able to extend the life of some members, and we enabled the student to purchase a prosthetic leg.
During this first effort, we began to think about other Chinese people left behind in the wake of this huge industrial growth. Around this time, we also met Thomas Stader and Laurie Mackenzie, two expats who have devoted their time, talents, and treasures to Chinese, educationally and economically left behind, by giving them access to life-changing education. Our meetings sparked Yanzhi Liu’s interest, as he was (and still is) a board member for the US-based group The Reading Tub. Because we are educators and bloggers actively involved in search engine marketing optimization and education, we sought to find a way to organize the entrepreneurial energy of the people we met and turn it into a force that would help us, and other people, realize the dreams we now hold dear.
We decided to experiment, via the Blog of Dreams, by asking students in our global internet marketing class to take a hands-on approach to global marketing by contributing to a positive world awareness of China while aiding worthy causes. Students immediately drove a brand new blog to the number 23 position (out of 75 million) in the Favorites section of Technorati, the premiere blog aggregator in the world. Students ensured that one of our blogs was nominated for and eventually won Best Asian Blog in the Annual Weblog Awards. This blog already held dozens of top ten slots in search engine slots for keywords related to China business. So, with this kind of early momentum, student commitment and huge volunteer support, we knew we could create a project that would make a difference in other people’s lives via the Internet.
The Dreamblogue is a simple concept. We will contact people through PR Web, Blogger News Network (BNN, for whom we write), Google News, Social Networks like Facebook and our volunteer network. We will also promote an Internet MEME that asks people be to share real dreams for themselves or someone else. After a specified period of time (maybe once a month or once a quarter), we’ll select a contributor who will win a prize donated by one of our charitable sponsors. We hope to give away vacations to China, scholarships for study abroad, equipment, Software and cutting edge gadgets that will appeal to our broad demographic. We want to attract a Postsecret-type (http://postsecret.blogspot.com) interest in our blog that will drive enough traffic that we can generate advertising revenue to give to educational and medical concerns. We also plan a book about China for expat and business newcomers.
The blog will use Feedburner and Blogads as its primary advertising revenue resources. The number of ads that we allow will be limited: no more than 1 ad in our feed, 1 ad in our posts, and 1 ad in our blog ads. All of the money generated from these sources will go directly from Feedburner and Blogads to the charities we support—we will never directly handle the money.
The other advertising that we will be present on the site will be for other corporations and institutions that sponsor our adventure, and those ads will be top listed display ads in the sidebar of the blog of dreams.
Any educational concerns that join us as sponsors for the trip will have direct links on our site to translated pages or individual websites that will advertise to Chinese students and more importantly, their parents. We will do all of the search engine optimization and translation and ongoing support for these.
The Blog of Dreams will have videocasts, podcasts, a China picture contest (to be turned into a coffee table book) , a weekly Chinese horoscope, weekly Chinese recipes (also to be a book), and most importantly, the daily dreams of people from around the world. In all, the Dreamblogue has been created to be a tool of understanding and a place where dreams can be spoken into reality. We also plan a book bout
Click on the stamp above and head for the Dreamblogue. The first thing you can do to help is favorite them in Technorati and then link to them if you have a blog.
ABOUT US:
Who we are:
Lonnie Hodge is a writer, educator and SEO consultant with over 20 years of experience working and living in Asia. He is a past recipient of America’s highest honor given to a poet: A National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Writing. Because of the Unsinkable Ms Yue’s constant inspiration via, her courage in battling cancer, Lonnie, along with David, were compelled to create The China Dreamblogue.
Lonnie has done SEO for corporations and bloggers large or small. His work for non-profit groups is done without charge. To date his clients hold over 30,000 keywords indexed in #1 positions on major search engines worldwide.
Lonnie has been a lecturer worldwide on topics related to Humor and Wellness, psychoneuroimmunology, Psychopharmacology, Personal Communication, Asian Culture, International Trade, Search Engine Optimization, Marketing, ESL and Personal Growth and Development for Universities, small and large businesses, The Kellogg Leadership Program, The Fetzer Institute and more…
He is a Professor with over thirty years of teaching experience at Universities worldwide including: Baylor University, The University of North Carolina, The U.S. Army Academy of Health Sciences (while he was a soldier during a few of the Vietnam years), The University of Maryland and Business/Technical Colleges in Asia.
He is currently one of China’s leading Trade Specialists and Consultants. He is one of only two peer- reviewed and accepted SEO specialists in China.
David DeGeest is a teacher, blogger, and educator in China who regularly assists in the editing and writing of OneManBandWidth. He holds a degree in mathematics and English from Grinnell College. He came to China as the recipient of a prestigious fellowship from Grinnell’s Office of Social Commitment. In the past year, he has edited a motivational memoir and an international Bonsai book. He has devoted his time to learning Chinese, language and literature, Martial Arts and SEO while promoting the Dreamblogue.
More information will follow tomorrow.
Posted 9 June, 2007 in SEO, SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Blogroll Diving, Internet marketing China, Chinese Internet, Seo China, Travel in China, Chinese Media, China Photo Contest, China Business Consultant, China Expat, 中文, Heartsongs, Human Rights, Charity in China, The Internet, China Cool Gadgets, China Editorials, China Business, Cancer Journal, Teaching in China, Expats, China Expats, Intercultural Issues, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Top Blogs, Chinglish, 中国, In the news, Personal Notes, China Photos, Confucius Slept Here, China web 2.0
Intermediate Yueyinglish…. (0)
A few months ago I posted about The Unsinkable Ms Yue’s uncanny ability to render herself understood in any circumstance. I have often used her as an example in my classes to encourage students to forget perfection and work toward progress. instead.
I long ago set out to catalog the elements of style in Yueyinglish a rare and unusual sub-dialect of Chinglish unique to the only surving member of the League of Extraordinary Chinese Women. But, I had not seen Ms Yue for some time and heard her and David using an expanded vocabulary that the aspiring Yueyinglish speaker should know.
Some new vocabulary:
curse=of course
turnf the off=turn it on
turnf the on=turn it off
QQ=cute
newshin=new
long time ago=it was intolerably long
cookie the rice=prepare a meal
waidter=weather
rainling=raining
have the small?=do you have change?
you the one people go?=you are going alone?
only the talking, talking!=don’t get upset I am just discussing this with you
craysheen=insane
Seeulateragulator=later gator
OK, now for some practice sentences actually overheard in Guangzhou:
So, how was Spiderman?
Long time ago!
How about the actors?
The movie one people QQ. The girl no beautiful. Bad the man craysheen da.
I am sorry we got out so late
Only talking talking ma. I go one people home and cookie the rice.
The movie house was crowded
Yesu! The man no tunf the on the cellphone.
So you want to go with David to see another movie?
Newsheen the movie, curse! You the one people want to go?
No, David would love your company. See you later
The waidther no way! Rainling! Take a taxi. You have the small? Seeulateragulator.
For those of you anticipating your YYSL certificates: You wait me, OK?
Posted 8 June, 2007 in Chinglish, Personal Notes, 中国, Guangzhou China, 中文, Guangzhou, Confucius Slept Here, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Asian Humor, China Humor, Asian Women, Intercultural Issues, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, Humor
Let’s go to DIDINEYLAND! (5)
I think Lo Kam-lok, a hairdresser and aspiring Mouseketerrorist in Hong Kong, watched way too many re-runs of Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live. This moron posted a message in Chinglish on an Internet forum and threatened to blow himself, Sleeping Beauty and the US Consulate to Magic Kingdom come.
Lo claimed it was a joke, but the magistrate for the case said it was akin to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre (a better analogy would have been “free food” at a Cantonese buffet)….
They have Lo in the Goofy bin for evaluation prior to sentencing. While mouseketerrorism is not really very funny, the law he is convicted of breaking is pretty good: Seems he’s busted, not for the threat, but for “wasting police time.” Damn, that would put most Americans in jail for life. It seems it took 213 man hours and about $4,000 USD to get the low-down on Lo and that is addition to bucks spent at Hong Kong Disneyland stepping up security.
Maybe it was the place pictured above that he was intending to eliminate: The obscene photo is from a Chinese knock-off of the real theme park. Go check out The Humanaught for a view of China’s Didineyland.
Posted 2 June, 2007 in Just Plain Strange, Homeland Security, In the news, Chinglish, 中文, 中国, Weird China, China Photos, China Humor, Humor, Asian Humor, Intercultural Issues, China Business, Hong Kong
Beijing’s Olympic Oracle Bones… (1)
Tim Johnson over at China Rises is busy rifling through the 172* page Confucian journalists guide for the Beijing Olympic Games, but found time time to share some insights on the new pictographs selected for the venues:
These are much more imaginative than those from previous games and are meant to look like ancient Chinese characters of old used on oracle bones and modern day seals or “chops” as some call them. They are named “the beauty of seal characters” which should have been reviewed by the counter-chinglish squad, but I agree with Tim that they look great.
It is a marked improvement over the Fuwa that started out embroiled in controversy because of their similarity to the Japanese Kero Kero (ケロケロちゃいむ, Kero Kero Chime) from a manga written by Maguro Fujita. The characters from the 30-episode anime series on Japanese TV were supposed to be mascots at the Moscow Olympic games of 1980 before the boycott and subsequent employment of Misha the bear. I caught a look at an obscure, but useful, Chinese language learning website called Chinese Tools and saw a post comparing the Friendlies (Now Fuwa) to the Kero Kero…. The Fuwa (Chinese: 福娃; pinyin: Fúwá; literally “Good-luck dolls”) are the mascots of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. They were announced by the National Society of Chinese Classic Literature Studies on November 11, 2005, a thousand days before the opening of the games, but 25 years after the Moscow games.
I panned the Fuwa a few months back when government changed the name of the Beijing Mascots from Friendlies to Fuwa (gesundheit!) bringing good news to folks who bought commemorative coins with the old name inscribed. Why the name change was made so late and why the original announcement was kept so low key is still somewhat of a mystery. China Radio International (CRI) originally revealed the switch and listed the reasons why the name should be changed:
“Firstly, Friendly is somewhat an ambiguous name, which could refer both to friendly people and friendly matches,”(and everyone knows that none of that nonsense is consistent with the goals of the Olympic Games!) a Dr. Li from Lanzhou University was quoted as saying on the site. “Secondly, the term Friendlies has a similar pronunciation to ‘friendless’ and thirdly, the spelling of Friendlies could be spelt as ‘friend lies’.” Dr. Li also thinks Grape Nuts is a venereal disease.
Laura Fitch, a Canadian who works in China as news editor, welcomed the change, saying the name Friendlies sounded “a little bit childish” and “doesn’t really have a meaning.” Laura didn’t get out much in Ottawa, but am I still glad that this was an expat approved switch and that the whole world will now get to say the more sensibly adult Fuwa which sounds similar to the sound made by my Chinese roommate expectorating. Laura, who should have talked to fellow Canuck DaShan first, is working on changing the goofy little term for coach back to “agonistarch” which means “a person who trains combatants for games.” and Dr. Li is lobbying for the Chester in Chester Drawers to be changed to a Chinese given name and he also thinks that Car Pool Tunnel Syndrome could be more easily understood by city dwellers if we talked about taxis and underpasses. But, I digress….
* Everyone esle got a post-it-note. Johnson was given the Olympic tome after his trip to Tibet….
Posted 27 May, 2007 in Chinglish, In the news, cartoons, 中国, Blogroll Diving, 中文, Chinese Media, Just Plain Strange, Weird China, Asia, Asian Humor, China Humor, Intercultural Issues, China Editorials, China Olympics, China Sports, Humor
Banned in Beijing: Stupid Meat and Stupid Judges…. (0)
My opera singing, voice-over specializing buddy in the states (who has a set of pipes you can hear through email) sent me an article on the boring-down of the next Supergirls style competition in China.
Crying, “unhealthy songs,” non-mainstream dress, potty words, Simonesque judges who humiliate contestants and “wild hair” are a few of the things to get banned. Tears, wild hair, “low taste,” and unhealthy songs are forbidden when China’s latest version of “American Idol” goes on the air next month.
In the words of my friend: “So, where’s the fun in that?”
In related news: Beijing, actively fretting over their image, announced that its goal to wipe out Chinglish in time for the Olympics might have been a bit wistful. And nothing demonstrates that better than the name of the coming show: It will be called, “Happy Boys Voice.”
This name was infinietly preferable to the earlier and obviously much too Chinglish name, “Boys Happy Voice.” And during this sequel to ‘Super Girls Voice,” the show that drew 400 million viewers, regulators want only “healthy and ethically inspiring” songs and say the contestants should “avoid scenes of screaming fans or losing contestants in tears.” There will no overnight fame for enraptured fans here.
So, back to Beijing:
“You can’t talk in absolutes,” says Liu Yang, deputy head of the Chinglish police. “We’ll work as hard as possible to extinguish the problem and get more city residents involved,” he added. “Of course, it will still happen occasionally, but I think we can ensure that once mistakes are found, they are rectified.”
And they did a good job rectifying this one: Beijing’s “Hospital for Anus and Intestine Disease”, once lit up in garish neon lights in the central business district, is now the “Hospital for Proctology”.
Again, where’s the fun in that?
How boring is restaruant food going to be of you can no longer order “Stupid Meat,” Young Chicken Without Sex,”“It is small to fry the chicken miscellaneous,” “Mixed elbow with garlic mud”, huh?
The number two Chinglish Dick is still unsure as to what country wil be used as a standard for the upcoming changes: “Every country is different when it comes to English signs, like the US and Britain having varying standards,” he said.
I am not sure America will hold the linguistic high ground here: “It’s hard to say that a certain country is the only one worth relying on or considering” says word cop Liu in his best Happy Boys Voice.
…..Thanks Cypipes