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Chinese Tuesdays: All Japanese to me

 


I’m back from a trip to Japan, where it was interesting to see the different uses of Chinese hanzi as Japanese kanji, the same characters with similar meanings but different pronunciation. This sign, for example, says parking prohibited (驻车禁止 zhùchējìnzhǐ) and is understandable if you read Chinese, even though in China they usually use a different character for park, 停 (tíng) rather than 驻 (駐 zhù), and you wouldn't be able to read it aloud.

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My Grandmother's Grandmother

Piecing together the past through memory – by Luhai Liang

 

On the balcony, where she keeps the livestock, my grandmother is methodically murdering a duck. In her left hand she grabs the duck's serpentine neck, shiny white in the sun, in a hard grip. With her other hand she reaches for a dull knife and cuts the duck's throat. I watch the duck as it lays in a large plastic bowl, its eyes in passive shock, while my grandmother pours hot water onto its body to soften the skin, ready for plucking.

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A Kazakh in Urumqi

Christmas spirit on the new silk road – by Cobus Block

 

“Would you like to try our special Christmas fruit platter?” our waitress asks in Chinese, fur-trimmed, red-velvet stocking cap bobbing as she leans forward.

Kayrat glances my way and then responds, “Sure, bring us a platter and a pot of tea.”

“What about beer?” Yerbol asks the waitress.

Her reply is lost in the refrains of Jingle Bells, starting again for the third time.

“Bring us three Qingdaos each,” Yerbol yells, leaning back and reaching into a pocket for his cigarettes.

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China blogs Hall of Fame

 

The Blogging China event at the Bookworm is tonight at 8pm, and I'm on the panel. I hope to see some Anthill readers there. In the meantime, I’ve been getting nostalgic about old China blogs (including my own). I don’t believe the grumps who say that English language China blogs are “dead”, but there was definitely a wider range of smaller blogs back in 2007 when I first started following them. So I thought I’d enshrine some of them for posterity, alongside those which are still going strong, and list a few newer and lesser known ones too.

I’ve split this into four lists: fallen heroes, golden oldies, rising stars and hidden ninjas. I’m selective, but if I’ve missed any big ones, do add them in the comments, along with which category you think it belongs in.

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Chinese Tuesdays: Noodles


Sitting on a bus in Wenzhou last month, I saw a noodle restaurant with a creative sign. The character for noodles, 面 (miàn), was written to make it look like a bowl of noodles with chopsticks. I might have been fooled into thinking 面 was a pictograph, if the traditional character wasn't 麵, with 麦 (mài, wheat) on the left for meaning and 面 on the right for pronunciation.

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