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“It is better for the brain to use chopsticks rather than a knife”

November 24, 2008

Here’s a little titbit from an otherwise deeply uninteresting bus-ride a couple of weeks ago. (My silent spell of late has been due to a nasty bout of tonsilitis I’ve been fighting.)

It isn’t unusual, any native English speaker will testify, for foreigners in China to be approached by strangers keen on improving their spoken English. A popular location for this seems to be public transport (no escape routes, see). I was the recipient (victim?) of this honour (time-hijack?) the other evening on my trip home from Beida. My most recent four-bus-stop student was so delightful I can’t resist writing it up.

Below is a picture of ‘David’, a Beijinger in his 50s whose profession I didn’t catch. My conversation with him on the bus (what is the population of England? does everyone have two cars?) took a twist when he matter-of-factly took out a dictaphone and pressed record. When he arrives home tonight, he explains, he will ‘listen to my British English again and practice’. Fair enough, I think. Hao banfa.

Once we exhaust the topic of how much a Brit earns in a month, David produces the most tattered, battered, dog-eared English dictionary I have ever seen. He consults his notebook to check the page number to open it to, points to the word in the top-left corner and asks me to pronounce it in my ‘British English’, while the red-light of his dictaphone hums. Then the one below it. And below that. OK, next one….

At his request, I spend a merry five minutes working my way through an entire double-columned dictionary page. From ‘pathomorphology’ to ‘pheromone’. This, it transpires, is David’s method for teaching himself English. He has been working through this dictionary for 7 years (already at P!), while cornering unwitting English speakers on his daily commute. In retrospect, it explains his impressive, and for the most part utterly useless, vocabulary.

David, wherever you are and whichever bus line you’re frequenting, I wish you luck. Before we parted company, I asked if I can flick through his notebook. It’s full of bizarrely irrelevant English phrases, including the gem:

It is better for the brain to use chopsticks rather than a knife

My curiosity is piqued, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some hard science behind that claim.

David with his dictionary and dictaphone

David with his dictionary and dictaphone

Chris Patten: “my first sight of China”

November 3, 2008

Chris Patten was in Beijing this weekend. He spoke in the Bookworm on his new book, ‘What’s Next?’ (answer: a painful reminder of how expensive it is to buy English books in China). Here are a few choice quotes, besides his endorsement of Barack Obama:

“The US is still the only country that matters everywhere”

“Why is Europe Venus instead of Mars? Well, we tried Mars and it turned out pretty disastrously”

“I’m a believer in democracy despite Governor Palin”

“The House of Lords [in Britain] is a proof of life after death”

To mark the moment, here is Chris Patten talking to me about his first visit to China: an excursion from Hong Kong to the then “sleepy fishing village” of Shenzhen in 1979. How times change. Below it is a Mandarin subtitled version (translation by Wang Yao).

For more from this interview, see my earlier post. Go on.

Postscript: the following evening, Lord Patten hosted the Beijing launch of the Campaign for the University of Oxford (he is their Chancellor). Contrary to popular opinion, Oxford does not have hidden caves filled with gold bullion beneath its dreaming spires. It needs the generosity of its alumni if it is to survive this century as a world-leading teaching and research University. (Full disclosure: I was the web editor of said Campaign last year.)

Must reads

October 24, 2008

I tend to highlight the pieces I enjoy (and egocentrically think everyone else will) in the ‘6 Articles I’m reading’ feature, below-left. Once in a while, I stumble across something I feel deserves higher billing. Like these two posts from the indispensable Global Voices Online.

The first is the translated account of 40 parents of missing children all over China, who come to Beijing to petition for them. It’s the most moving thing I’ve read while in Beijing.

The second is the story of Chinese bloggers (again, self-told and translated) on the trail of Beijing’s hidden ‘Black Jails’. It’s a topic which has been floating around the blogosphere.

Both longish – by internet standards. Both worth it.

Beijing at work

October 19, 2008

To continue in a photographic vein, here are two pictures I took recently of Beijing workers. This coming week (like the last) I will be a study hermit, with little time for blogging…

Workers in Ritan Park. What kind of work they were doing precisely, I couldnt fathom. They were cutting the grass with miniature sycthes: possibly picking flowers? Or their boss is simply too cheap to spring for a lawnmower.

Workers in Ritan Park. I couldn't fathom what kind of work they were doing precisely. Cutting the grass with miniature sycthes: possibly picking flowers? Either that, or their boss is simply too cheap to spring for a lawnmower.

Construction workers eating baozi in the early morning.

Construction workers eating baozi and soup in the early morning.

Update: I’ve since asked a Chinese friend about the first pic. They were most likely planting fresh seed. And weeding while they went along. Seems obvious now.

Beijing skies ablaze as seperatist terrorists firebomb the National Stadium

October 19, 2008

Just kidding

Not really. Just a rather late upload of a photo I took from my flat of fireworks over the bird’s nest at the Paralympics closing ceremony.

But I live in hope that I had some of you for a moment there.

Averagely paid men with buttons

October 13, 2008

In its first six weeks of existence, 6 was blocked in China. It’s now accessible in the mainland, thanks to a new IP address (effusive thanks to my brother for his help).

There’s no definite answer to why the site fell on the wrong side of the ‘Great Firewall’. Certainly nothing to do with me or the site’s content. Most likely it was collateral damage from sharing the same IP as other potentially blocked website. The blogging software I use (WordPress) is also targeted in China – but 6 is hosted on a private server, not by WordPress, so this can’t have been it. New blogs are often blocked right off the bat in China: another possibility in a guessing game with no apparent rhyme or reason behind it.

All in all, the impression I got from weeks of head-scratching, conversations and attempts to unblock this site? There’s no crushing efficiency to the net nanny, just averagely paid men and women with buttons. Often covering their behinds with a guilty-until-proven-innocent philosophy. It’s a story of mouses and men.

Nor is it too difficult to slip through the cracks of the system, both in posting and reading content: just bloody inconvenient. I’ll testify to that, given my access woes and temperamental Cisco* client VPN (like a proxy, only better). Still, where there’s a will…

Rebecca MacKinnon wrote a post worth reading on how the firewall is just part of the larger censorship machine in China. Ironically, as I now try to refind it to give a link, I see it is blocked. So here is an excellent, if old, piece on the topic by James Fallows instead.

Written while locked out of my flat and reminded of how cut off you are without 24-7 internet access and RSS feeds

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* Cisco, ironically, is the firm that provided the Chinese government with the technology to create the Great Firewall in the first place. I find it fitting that if they built this wall, they should provide me with the VPN to climb it.

Update: Back in the flat, back on the VPN. Here is the link to Rebecca MacKinnon’s post

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