Today in China

Third week of the tournament!

Our Goal Keeper was sick and I replaced him… :-S

Because of that, we are now 5th of our group, just after Napolimania. So, we MUST beat them next Monday in order to go back to our 4th position!

Let’s hope Nicolas, our outstanding Goal Keeper, will recover soon. With him on the pitch we will definitely make it to the next round!

I updated the results in the following two tables…

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Are Quizlets the next evolution of Flashcards? On Quizlet.com you may start to learn vocabularies in a wide range of different languages; amongst them: Chinese.

While the Quizlets provided for for Chinese are still very limited, you might want to take a look and maybe help the community by providing vocabulary lists from your own Chinese lessons.

Here is the mission statement of Andrew Sutherland, the guy behind Quizlet.com:

My mission for Quizlet is to make learning vocabulary not a chore. I know a lot of teachers assign vocabulary to students, but few students actually “absorb” words into their vocabularies after they take their test. Which kind of defeats the purpose, right? So Quizlet is my response - it aims to make learning fun, thus make learning effective. At the very least, it can help students do better on quizzes and tests even if they don’t fully “absorb” their words.

And here is the explanation about how it works:

1. You enter a vocabulary list of any words or data you want. (ex. SAT words, history dates, French-Spanish translations, etc.)
2. Quizlet gives you a specialized learning mode, flashcards, randomly-generated tests, and collaboration tools for classmates to help you study those words.
3. You ace your test.

Couldn’t be easier!

This year, for the Chinese New Year, we plan to go to a place at least as paradisiac as boracay or Sipadan… maybe just a little bit colder!

Here are some pictures from that place! (Thanks for the pictures Olivier!)

And then, temperatures from the 10th of January till the 30th. It sometimes goes down to -32°C… brrrrrr

I’m leaving from the 16th until the 28th of February. Of course, do not expect me to be reachable neither by email or by mobile phone as we will be in the middle of… nowhere!

This story happened recently in Jinan (济南, Jǐnán), Shandong Province (山东, Shāndōng). Pan Aiying, teacher at Wutou Middle school got her bag stolen while riding her bicycle back home. Her bag contained her mobile phone, bank cards and 4,900 RMB. Instead of calling the police, she decided to contact the thief on her stolen mobile. She first called the thief but her call was rejected. She then started to send the following SMS:

“Hey, buddy. I’m Pan Aiying, a teacher from Wutou Middle School. You must be going through a difficult time. If so, I will not blame you,”

“Keep the 4,900 yuan if you really need it, but please return the other things to me. You are still young. To err is human. Correcting your mistake is more important than anything,”

And so on…

After 21 SMS, she gave up and decided to call the police the next morning. The next day, before she called the police, she found her bag with everything inside in her courtyard. Within the bag was the following note from the thief:

“Dear Pan: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Please forgive me. You are so tolerant even though I stole from you. I’ll correct my ways and be an upright person.”

…

Source:
China Daily, 2007-01-23

I know it’s a little bit early bu after celebrating 2007, we will soon have to celebrate the Chinese New Year! If you want to impress your Chinese colleagues, I recommend using the following Pigs in your emails!

If you need some information about simpler Asian Emoticons, please check my previous post on Asian Smileys!

Thanks Zhao Na for sending this to me!

Happy New Year of the Pig! 猪年快乐！

I met Oona from Frontiers School, dedicated to providing high quality mandarin programs for foreigners. They have more than 25 teachers with an average of 6 years experience in teaching foreigners. Their students come from more than 40 different countries.

She told me that they are organizing a party at la Baie Des Anges near Houhai on the 26th of January.

I’m not sure I want to say thanks to Christophe for forwarding us this news… We were getting close to the expected date for the completaion of the reparation of the Internet Cables that were damaged near Taiwan during a 7.2 erthquake last December 26!

Well, they just discovered another damaged section of the cables. They are now expecting to finish the reparation around mid February! And they are not even sure of this!

The rest of the repairs would be completed by the middle of February, if weather permits.

With the Chinese New Year around the corner, I don’t expect to have a decent connection before the end of the Chinese New Year, end of February. Two months to repare “The Internet”, can you imagine that? I’m wondering what is the cost of such a breakdown…

As Chris says: The Year of the Pig will bring a faster internet

Source:
The Age, 2007-01-17

Then maybe you’ve noticed that recently, the police in Beijing is getting more inflexible on the illegal scooters, the ones without License Plate or with a License Plate from Hebei province.

I remember, when I bought my first scooter in Beijing 3 years ago for 2500 RMB (250 euros) + 400 RMB (40 euros) for a fake driving License and License Plate… :-S

But more and more people have noticed that gas stations around Beijing will just refuse to sell gas if you have a Hebei License Plate or no Plate at all.

So, should we all buy legal License Plates? I’m not so sure…

First, these License Plates cost a lot. But more than that, you would still face the risk of a dramatic change of the law, similar to the one experienced by people in GuangZhou. The authorities have just decided to ban any two-wheeler in the city. As you may see on the picture, they are stocking the motorbikes waiting to find a way to properly recycle them. The owner of the bike will get a compensation of 800 to 1600 RMB (80 to 160 euros) as well as job training for the ones that relied on their bikes to earn their lives.

So, will you take the risk of going to a jing-A License Plate?

Maybe that in the near future you will need a special authorization to make a movie such as JJ’s “Ride in DaShanZi”?

The following often happens to me…
1. I buy a DVD in one of the *official* shops around Beijing,
2. I watch it on my nice 32 inches television,
3. The movie is then released in the theaters around China,
4. I sit and cry, because I would have enjoy the movie a lot more if I only waited for a few weeks and watched in theater.

I could of course wait a few weeks. However, with only 20+ foreign movies officially released in China per year, how could I know for which movies I have to wait and for which other movies I can watch the DVD straight away?

Well, here is the official list for 2007! Some of the release dates are missing. I will try to add them as soon as I get them…

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