Category: in china

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in china just life links and ideas postcards postcrossing

our own little ikea hack

a few months ago, at ikea, we noticed this pot lid holder. we don’t have a lot of pots and less pot lids even, but we purchased it anyway. guess what we use it for… postcards, of course!!

postcards stand 3

it’s isn’t exactly an ikea “hack”, but it fits our needs well. also, the higher racks are smaller and the lower ones are larger, which comes in quite handy for those big sized ones.

we don’t like the idea of “storing” postcards away, once received. they make us happy, so we want to look at them! :)

more pictures, on flickr (click for larger):

postcards stand 2     postcards stand 1

Categories
in china

on beijing air pollution, 2 weeks ago


“Beijingers were warned to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels across the capital hit the top of the scale, despite repeated assurances by the government that air quality was improving.
“This is as bad as it can get,” a spokeswoman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau told AFP.

“Level five is the worst level of air pollution. This is as bad as it has been all year.”

According to the bureau’s website, 15 out of the 16 pollution monitoring stations in urban Beijing registered a “five” for air quality rating.

The main pollutant was suspended particulate matter, which is usually attributed to coal burning and automotive exhaust.

“Old people and young children should reduce outdoor activities and protect their health,” the spokeswoman said.

The Beijing Evening News warned residents not to do their morning exercises on Friday as pollution levels were likely to linger over the capital until a cold front moved in and blew some of the bad air away later in the day.

A lack of wind in the capital over recent days has led to a heavy cover of smog trapping in the pollutants, the paper said.
By nightfall, the pollution was still horrendously thick.

Beijing’s air quality is routinely rated among the worst in the world by international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, with rampant coal burning, regular dust storms and a growing number of cars cited as the main reasons.

The head of the government’s information office, Cai Wu, told reporters on Thursday that Beijing’s environment was improving and they should have “full confidence” that the Olympics would be pollution free. ”

hard to believe, mr. wu… !

(from physorg.com, image by princess pie on flickr – the image is from february 2007.)

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foooood in china

sweetness is superficial!

kumquats!

“It is difficult not to love: the kumquat is like a tidy orange. You get the punch of zest and sweetness without a lot of drippy juice.” (from the new york times:)

i had never heard of kumquats before coming to china – and the reason i picked them up in the supermarket was because i mistaken them with little oranges. but as soon as i got home and started pealing one, i knew these little guys were no ordinary citrus.

so i waited for my chinese lesson to ask the teacher about them. it turns out, you can eat just the peal, which is sweet, or eat them whole, by chewing chewing chewing (this instructive video shows how to eat a kumquat).

the inside is unexpectedly tart for those of us expecting mini-oranges (but not too tart), so you really need to chew a bit to get the flavours mixed and get the best combination.

“The size and shape of a large olive, the kumquat is like an orange in reverse, with a sweet skin and tart pulp. So you don’t have to peel the kumquat; you simply eat the entire fruit. Thus its brilliance.”
(from the same article)

indeed!

Categories
in china

ting bu dong! (i hear you, but i don’t understand!)

flickr

you know tones, right? the way we rise our voice in the end of a question, for instance? that’s a rising tone. mandarin has tones too, 4 of them plus a neutral one. and they use them in every single syllable!
it might be hard to understand what i mean. so here’s an example:
* bīng (spoken with a flat and slightly long ‘i’) means frozen
* bǐng (where your voice ‘i’ starts in the middle of the tone, takes a dive and then rises) means cake.
* bìng (spoken with a sharp falling ‘i’) means sick.

the consequences? a foolproof recipe to (a funny kind of) frustration. you want to say chicken and you say “how many” (jī and jǐ). you want to say country and you say fruit (guó and guǒ). you want to say fish and you say rain (yú and yǔ). *sigh*

speaking chinese is like playing a memory game. is this the word i want? did i remember the right tone? naturally, they don’t understand you if you don’t pronounce words correctly (except in specific contexts). i mean, why should they – to them it’s a different word!

we have a little game going on: saying our street name so perfectly that the taxi driver understands without us having to repeat it. which is a hard task, even after hundreds of taxi rides. this is the tipical scenario when we enter a taxi (dialogue without tones, too much work!):
us: nihao! (hi!)
taxi driver says: nihao! qu nali? (hi! where to?)
us: dong xin lu, wu ning lu. (dongxin road, wuning road)
taxi driver confused: wuning lu… shema lu?* (wuning road… what road?)
us: dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu. dong xin lu… (dongxin road! dongxin road, dongxin road… – all spoken with minimal tone variations, each time slowlier…)
taxi driver: ah! dongxin lu!
us: dui! (yes! with a very happy face)

and off we go, feeling more or less proud according to the number of times we had to repeat it. one day we’ll be as good as dashan, just wait and see!

* wuning road is very big and easily recognizable. dongxin road is not.

Categories
in china

the olympics are coming to beijing.

olympics games

we hear that sentence everyday.

you turn on the tv, and *pouf!* the new stadium is completed, the torch is now somewhere being carried by somebody else, the theme song is released. the logo itself is omnipresent in every advertisement, on every metro station, on the most unexpected places, including milk cartons and name cards.

(if you’re portuguese, you probably remember we went through the same thing when we had the expo98, or when we hosted the euro2004. )

and that would be ok, if things weren’t touching the surreal. examples:

* thousands of babies have been named “olympics”

* the air quality headache

* migrant workers being persuaded to return home during the games

* the the tickets fiasco

* breaking the spitting habit
* Smog and Mirrors: China’s Plan for a Green Olympics, on Wired

just to link a few headlines catching my attention. for me, the cherry on top of the cake is this movie from cctv (removed the video player because it seemed to be crashing in IE, weird).

and what is that, you might ask? it’s a sketch teaching “olympics etiquette” to chinese people, being regularly broadcasted in the state television. a sort of “how you should behave next year when all the foreigners flood the streets of our country”.
it seems quite inoffensive, but to us it’s very amusing because none of what is being taught there actually happens.

for instance, i’d still be at the crossroads if i were to wait for cars to stop to let me pass – even when the light is green for pedestrians! (try this video for the real picture of what happens at a crossroad in china).

and the other day i felt off my bike just at the entrance of my home complex – stuff in my bag all spread on the floor around me (luckily i got away without a scratch). do you think any of the guards standing 5 meters away came to help? right… i guess they haven’t seen the ad yet!

seriously, i believe people coming to china are in for a big eye-opening surprise… which is good.

ps – by the way, someone came up with a cartoon to explain the way the olympics logo was created :D


 

ps2 – i can’t wait for the 2010 world expo craziness here in shanghai! “better city, better life” being the theme. *insert pollution-induced-cough here*. how appropriate :)

(rant prompted by joão ‘s post on the 2008 olympic games’ other side).