Little apples

I don't really care that much for what's hot and what's not in the Chinese pop charts, but recently one particular song is almost impossible to avoid.

For several months now not one day has passed by where one didn't hear that song somewhere - in a radio at the little food stall, as music video on TV screens in restaurants or electronic appliances stores, out of speakers in front of hot pot and BBQ joints or fashion stores, and of course on dancefllors in bars and clubs.

Not one day.

And as I've been to places allover the country in the last couple of weeks I can say - it applies for the whole country - be it the prosperous provinces on the east coast, be it Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Gansu, or the tibetan outskirts of southwestern Sichuan and Yunnan - it's everywhere.

Reminds a little bit of the "Gangnam Style" hype a while ago.

Therefore hereby I wanna give the chance to share my mixture of amusement and ear pain that song gives me after hearing it on a daily basis for a while now.

The "Chopstick brothers" with "Little apple" (Link from Youtube):

We take your money with a smile.

You can criticise China and especially it´s government institutions for a lot of things:

authoritarian rule, violation of human rights ,intransparency, corruption, inefficency, abuse of power, overboarding bureaucracy.... you name it.

But at least that government and it´s tax authorities say thank you when they deduct the individual income tax from your salary.

The picture below shows the lower section of my tax slip:

What makes China's tax bureau kind of a benchmark for the one or another national tax bureau out there - friendliness and multilingualism - that´s something at least the German tax authority is not really famous for......

How Chinese jog.

Without spoiling to much - they come uniformed and in rather large numbers.....

Probably took the wrong turn.

When you come to visit China, you got to see the Great Wall. It´s a must, so to say. Otherwise it would probably be like being in Paris without seeing the Eiffel tower or being in Las Vegas without going gambling or to a show.

I´ve been to that Wall a couple of times already, in my "earlier" years as a tourist myself, since I´m in Shenyang as a "tourist guide" to friends visiting us every now and then. So I´ve seen a fair bit of the Wall, especially at our closest spot, Shanhaiguan, two hours by train from Shenyang.

It´s still always fun to go there, but that "whoa"-effect seemed to fade a little - even at that place "Old dragon head" where the wall reaches the sea.

Unless, of course, you see something you wouldn´t expect - like the huge dredger stranded maybe 10 m away from the most eastern part of the Great Wall.

If that thing was supposed to dig somewehere close and the anchor chain burst or the crew tried to take a shortcut through the rocky waters around this segment of the wall to reach the nearby harbour quicker, no idea. Neither how lang the ship already was and still will be there.

The Chinese tourists however seemed not to mind at all - they took their souvenir pictures as if the ship wasn´t even there.

For pictures of the "Old dragon head" without stranded ship (but with extra sun) you can read my post about Shanhaiguan.

A little teaser.

To show that this blog is still updated occasionally for the handful of readers and as I´m still working on the post about my visa run to Hong Kong in February, here is a little teaser - unfortunately, for it to be entirely amusing, you should be familiar with the German language. At least with the fact that "popo" means "butt"...

Other upcoming posts in April will evolve around more winter fun in Chinas northeast as well as a mongolian wedding I had the honor to attend in March. So swing by....

Where better NOT to park your car in Shenyang.

A little advice: When in Shenyang, better avoid parking under bank branch signs on a windy day..... or else:

Smoking in the car allowed? No. Pets? Of course.

Had a rather unusual encounter at a cab ride yesterday: The driver had his pets, two loudly chirping finches, in a small cage cramped into the middle compartment between driver and front passenger seat:

 

Birds are still a quite popular pet here in China, especially singing birds - whenever you cross a big square or stroll a park you´re likely to see (mostly) a retiree sitting beside one or several cages with a singing bird in it, hung  in a tree in  the afternoon sun to let the birds enjoy some fresh air (or at least what counts as that here in Chinese cities...) and get them to chirp and sing.

For me it`s always a little strange to see those finches, titmice and whatnot else in cages, as those are mostly birds considered "wild animals" in my home country. But then, there it`s popular to have budgies, parrots and canaries as pets in cages, and I doubt they would enjoy their freedom less than any other bird....

The two finches in the picture had food and water in the cage but seemed a little frightened by their home moving along with the car all the time. I consider letting your pets live in your car a rather stupid idea....

Does it smell funny in here?

 O.k., I admit it, you need to go a pretty long way over two languages to connect those two pictures thematically, but as we "dschörmans" are almost all bilingual, it should work.

The pictures show the fronts of little clothes stores in my neighbourhood.

For all those who can`t speak German - "Furze" is the imperative of the verb "furzen", which means "to fart".

 I don`t blame the first shop because in north-east China it`s not really necessary to speak German at all (except maybe you work for BMW) and actually "furze" in English seems to be an alternate expression for gorse. In the UK they even name schools after it:

http://www.furzeplatt.com/

 the meaning in german being "fart flat senior school".

Wouldn`t send my children there.......

and still wondering  about why the second store gave itself this name.

An explanation might be that the Chinese owners mistranslated the character 味 (wèi) as it can have the meanings flavor, taste, fragrant or sometimes smell to choose from.

And they chose wrong......

It`s cold today. And smoky.....

The picture shows the difference in temperature between the town I lived before in Germany and the town I´m living now. Local time here in Shenyang was 10.30 am when this screenshot was taken. Makes 3.30 am in Germany.

And yesterday in the locker room of my fitness center I was wondering why nearly all Chinese were already wearing long johns.  Guess I have to catch up soon....

Still curious about whose standards the "Smoke" follows. If it`s according to European standards, hell, I guess you would have to write it about almost every bigger Chinese city almost every day. If it`s according to Chinese standards, well, I already had "smokier" weather here. A lot "smokier".....

Disney`s total mobilization

The characters 总动员 (zǒngdòngyuán) stand for "general/total mobilization". So a rather militaristic expression. Knowing this, the following Chinese translations of this little collection of Disney movies appear a bit strange:

Ratatouille - "delicious food total mobilization"




The Incredibles - "super humans total mobilization"




Finding Nemo - "seafloor total mobilization"








I´m wondering - is this coincidence? Was the same person responsible for the translation of all the three movies? Was this person just not that creative or has a military background? Or is this an attempt of subconsciously influencing little children to later join the Chinese army? Or is the similarity in the titles just for ensuring good feng shui on your DVD shelf?

Well, I don`t know. And don`t care. Somehow feel the urge to fill out an army registration form right now....

Sea intestines, anyone?

Last week we went out with about a dozen of my girlfirend`s Chinese co-workers for dinner and karaoke. The latter will be a story for itself here anytime soon, today it`s all about the advantages of eating out with locals. Firstly, of course, there`s the opportunity to train your language skills - although Chinese working for international companies are able to speak English (and some even German) more or less fluently, with a ratio of two Germans to a dozen Chinese eventually a lot of Chinese was spoken and had to (at least tried to) be understood. Or not.

Anyway, secondly, there`s the chance to try dishes you so far didn`t know of, couldn`t read on the menu, that didn`t look appealing or until then you did not dare to order. But the Chinese do.

In China, when it comes to eating animals, there are no boundaries like "too cute" or "too disgusting" that would hinder them to increase their menu variety. Personally, I find that very consistent - once you`ve decided for yourself that eating animals is o.k., be it as an individual or a society, why not eat all of them. Although when going out by ourselves we mostly stick with our western socialization of ordering beef, chicken, pork, sometimes fish. 

In bigger restaurants like the one we went with our Chinese friends it is often usual that the big variety of seafood is displayed in big basins to choose from. And honestly, who of us would have ordered those little fellas in the middle of the lowermost row in the picture on the right? (click on pictures to enlarge them) Well, I wouldn`t, besides the fact that apart from being displayed in Chinese restaurants I haven`t seen them anywhere else before. But they definitely look like they`re called in Chinese - 海肠 (hǎicháng), the word-by-word translation would be "sea intestines" or "sea sausage", as the character 肠 (cháng) can mean both, intestines or sausage. Yeah, let`s you sometimes think twice before ordering something having this character in it`s name. For the fellas on the picture in my opinion "intestines" fits better. For increased disgust imagine them moving like worms, as that`s what they did in this basket.

Well, one of the Chinese obviously considered them looking tasty enough to order. To make a long story short, of course we tried them - to learn that they don`t taste as disgusting as they look - rather "harmless",with no real distinctive taste. But pretty tough to chew, though, having a stringy consistency like a rubberband. Definitely won`t become one of my favourites........

A small step forward.....

Hanging above urinals in several public toilets in the metros of Shenyang and Beijing :

 "A small step forward, a big step for culture"

A Trojan horse...

In China, they put meat in everything - even a sausage into a sweet waffle on a stick. Much to my girlfriends chagrin.