Today in China

Confucius is expected to have more than 3 million descendants over the world - 2.5 million in China, 100,000 in Korea and the rest in the United States, Malaysia and Singapore. A lot of people are claiming to be the sage’s grand grand grand … grand children. But who is saying the truth?

Well, from now on, the Beijing Institute of Genomics (founded in 1998) at the Chinese Academy of Science is proposing DNA tests for just over 1000RMB (100 euros).

Anybody wants to help me ($$$) taking the test? Maybe that one of my ancestor had an affair with an early descendant of Confucius?

Links
China Daily - 2006 06 20
Confucius at Wikipedia
Kong Family
Beijing Institute of Genomics

As some of you may have noticed… the World Cup 2006 started more than a week ago. Fortunately, it will soon ficish and Beijing Nightlife will go back to business as usual. I can’t wait to see people actually dancing at Brown’s! (Brown’s is one of the most lively bar in the Sanlitun area) They even have a Big Screen at Beer Mania!

Anyway, here comes what I want to share with you today: Chinese advertisement for the World Cup 2006! Enjoy!

DHL

Can’t wait for the next Cup…

Duracell win da game!!!

Coca Cola

By the way, what does it mean for France? A draw against Switzerland… Another draw yesterday against Korea… Are they already out of the game???

Here is a Chinese Palindrom (回字对, hui zi dui) a Colleague shared with me this morning…

上海自来水来自海上

Pretty isn’t it? It means that the running water in Shanghai comes from the see.

上海 (Shanghai) 自来水 (running water) 来自 (coming from) 海 (the sea) 上

And here is another one from the Poet Li Yu.

Li Yu ( 李禺 )
回 文 詩

枯 眼 望 遙 山 隔 水 ，
往 來 曾 見 幾 心 知 。
壺 空 怕 酌 一 杯 酒 ，
筆 下 難 成 和 韻 詩 。
迷 路 阻 人 離 別 久 ，
訊 音 無 雁 寄 回 遲 。
孤 燈 夜 守 長 寥 寂 ，
夫 憶 妻 兮 父 憶 兒 。

水 隔 山 遙 望 眼 枯 ，
知 心 幾 見 曾 來 往 。
酒 杯 一 酌 怕 空 壺 ，
诗 韵 和 成 难 下 筆 。
久 别 離 人 阻 路 迷 ，
遲 回 寄 雁 無 音 訊 。
寂 寥 長 守 夜 燈 孤 ，
兒 憶 父 兮 妻 憶 夫 。

And ermmmm… no! I will not give you an automatic translation of the poem from Google Language Tools…

Hahaha! Anyway, I tried and in fact it looks nice!

(more…)

I am 28 years old…

or 344 months old
or 1,499 weeks old
or 10,493 days old
or 251,847 hours old
or 15,110,828 minutes old
or 906,649,712 seconds old

and my next birthday celebration is in:
98 days 8 hrs 51 mins 29 secs.

Some of you around China certainly noticed that accessing Google was really difficult these last few days… Well, the explanation could be that the English language Search Engine available on Google.com is now unavailable. If you remember, that one was not part of the censorship agreement between Google and the Chinese Government. People in China now only can access the censored version on Google.com.cn.

The “funny” part of this is that GMail and other Google based service have been quite unstable end of last week. GMail is hosted as http://mail.Google.com and it seems that it took some time for either the Chinese Government or Google Team to sort this out. Now, the access to GMail is stable again.

But Google.com remains not accessible…

And by the way, I grew 627 seconds older since I started to write this post! ^_^

Links
News on Google Blogoscoped

This morning, on my desk, I found a red paper bag full of candies… On it was written:

Tell me, do you love me?
Whisper softly, sweetly, as of old!
Tell me that you love me, Tor that’s the sweetest story ever told.

I’m sure the one who stayed long enough in China - I would say two or three months - guessed already that one of my Chinese colleagues got married recently. Indeed, Wang Yesong got married last Thursday, on a very special day, the first day of the 6th month of 2006. After someone gets married in China, he/she will bring candies to his/her friends and colleagues to bring them happiness and luck and of course to warn them that they just got married.

The Chinese ideogram on the left is the one of the double happiness. It is formed of two juxtaposed 喜 Xi. And here comes the story of this character…

During the Tang Dynasty, a student was on his way to the capital to pass the national final examination. The best students would be selected as the ministers in the court. Unfortunately, he fell ill halfway in a remote village in the mountain.
Thanks to a herbalist doctor and his daughter, he recovered quickly. After a few days, when he had to leave he found it hard to say good-bye to the pretty girl, and so did she… They fell in love!
So the girl wrote down the right hand part of an antithetical couplet for the student to match:
“Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration.”
The student told her that he can make it but that the girl had to wait until after the examination.

The young man went to the capital and won the first place. Also the winners were interviewed and tested by the emperor. Luckily, the student was asked by the emperor to finish a couplet, which would need a right part as the answer. The emperor wrote:
“Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss.”
The young man realized immediately the right part of the couplet by the girl was the perfect fit to the emperor’s couplet, so he took the girl’s part as the answer without hesitation. Delighted, the emperor selected the young man as Minister in the court and allowed him to pay a visit to his hometown first before holding the post.

The young man met the girl happily at home and told her the emperor’s couplet. They soon got married. For the wedding, the couple DOUBLED the Chinese character, HAPPY, together, on a red piece of paper and put it on the wall to express the happiness for the two events.

And from then on, it has been taken on and became a social custom.

恭喜! 恭喜! Gōngxǐ! Gōngxǐ!

Links
Chinese Wedding - Wikipedia
History of the Double Happiness - About.com

That’s it! We just met The Others this afternoon and we are now one step further to be part of the same familly. The Others are coming from Gemplus and are merging with us - Axalto - to become Gemalto, the biggest Smartcard Vendor in the Universe…

What it really means for us? It is yet to be known…

By the way, do you like this new logo?

oooops… The logo is not yet official… You’ll see it next week! Instead, I put an image - from ITRManager.com - about the merging.

Update
Today is the Gemalto launching day… Here comes the Gemalto Logo!
So, do you like it?

Links
Axalto
Gemplus
Gemalto

A good friend of mine introduced me to Sketchup, a 3D modeling tool that just got bought by Google. The purpose of Google is to open an easy to use 3D tool so that people around the world may help them modeling the world for Google Earth.

However, you do not have to model the White House or the Taj Mahal (See Sketchup Examples), you may also use it to model your own furniture… And here is what I produced for my new Computer Desk!

And here is a variant… It looks less heavy than the first one and I cut it in three parts to fit in the elevator!

Links
Google Sketchup
Google Earth

The fifth day of the fifth month of the Lunar Calendar is the day of the Dragon Boat Festival.
This festival commemorates the suicide by drowning of the Chinese poet Qu Yuan. The Poet committed suicide after getting disgusted about the corruption of the Chu (楚) (722-481 BCE) government. Qu Yuan was known to be a good man and the local people decided to prevent the fishes from eating his body. Therefore, they provided food to the fishes and tried to scared them using boats with a Dragon Head and noisy drums.
That’s why every year, Chinese people organize Dragon Boats races and eat Zongzi (粽子, zòngzi), glutinous rice packed in bamboo leaves.

June 1st is the International Children’s Day in numerous countries.
The origin of the ICD is quite unclear but one of the possible origins is interesting…
The first ever celebrated ICD was during the the World Conference for the Wellbeing of Children in Geneva, Switzerland in 1925. In 1925, the Chinese consul-general in San Francisco gathered a number of Chinese orphans to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festiva (端午节, Duan Wu Jie). That year, the Festival happened to be on June 1st, and also coincided with the conference in Geneva.

Links
Wikipedia - Dragon Boat Festival