This word will take me back to China in too few hours:
飞机
FEI JI
Airplane
(Goodbye, America, for another little while. It’s been surreal, but wonderful. And don’t call me Shirley.)
This entry was written by , posted on October 27, 2009 at 2:58 am, filed under chinese, language, travel and tagged airplane, chinese. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
This is the best Chinese-English online dictionary in the history of Chinese-English online dictionaries! At the very least, you can amuse yourself by drawing dirty pictures in the “draw Chinese character” part and see what character your picture most resembles.
That is my public service announcement for the week.
This entry was written by , posted on October 5, 2009 at 11:57 pm, filed under chinese, language and tagged nciku. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There are two basic ethnic groups in Beijing: Chinese people and everybody else.
Call them foreigners, 老外 (Lao Wai: a kind of slang expression that literally translates to “old outsider.” Perhaps a more updated and gentle way of saying “Foreign Devil.”), but when it comes down to it, you’re either A or B. Chinese or…not.
There are some gray areas (such as my friend who was born in Beijing to Chinese parents, but grew up in Canada, so is considered local by Beijingers, but not by the state), but mostly Beijingers are divided on their status of being homegrown or exported. There are some who would consider this lumping-together of non-Chinese people to be a.) wildly reductive b.) kind of racist and c.) totally bizarre, but I can’t imagine who those people would be. Maybe it’s a preserve the purity of the race (yikes) thing, but even children born of non-Chinese parents in China are not considered Chinese citizens. It’s notoriously difficult for foreigners, even those married to Chinese people, to gain citizenship or even obtain visas with really secure longevity. Considering China is increasingly becoming a major destination for West African and South East Asian immigrants, it seems that China may one day have to tackle the great rainbow-colored beasts of multi-culturealism, assimilation, and immigration policy! For now, though, in China (as in the world of reality TV fashion shows), you’re either in or you’re out.
The tide seem to be changing, though, and the idea of what is “Chinese” with it. Though Beijing is still a city notorious for brief stints by job-hopping foreigners, more and more so-called 老外 are making Beijing their permanent homes. These people are taking root, changing the cultural climate, and producing a new generation of Chinese children who don’t necessarily look or act like the Chinese of yesteryear. I’ve seen people–especially kids and teenagers–off all ethnicities chattering away in fluent Beijing-hua. This city is their home; they are, effectively, Chinese.
When people ask me what the big differences are between Beijing and New York, my obvious go-to answer is that what Beijing lacks in cultural diversity it makes up for in motorbikes. This may not be true for long, though, as a new generation of multi-cultural Beijingers take the reins. Maybe someday “foreigners” may not just be mere foreigners, but part of a real global city where the 老外is allowed inside.
This entry was written by , posted on at 11:13 pm, filed under Uncategorized, beijing, chinese, language, news and tagged beijing, foreigners, immigration. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
鸡
JI
This one has many useful meanings:
Chicken
Prostitute
And finally: bitch (but, according to reliable sources, only in cases where bitch is synonymous with “shrew” or “fugly slut,” rendering this photo a mere comic accoutrement…)
This entry was written by , posted on September 16, 2009 at 4:44 am, filed under chinese, language and tagged chinese, hookers. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.