Shanghai are right now having the same race as Beijing had last year before the Olympics. They are trying to clean the city, improve infrastructure and the most difficult of them all, try to educate the people both regarding to be able to speak some english and not burp too loud in restaurants etc before all the foreigners comes to the World Expo that starts in May.

So I came across this piece of news (thanks JingJing) that they have placed some posters that people can learn a few phrases of English. So it not only has the english and Chinese translations but also a “Chinglish” phonetic pronunciation guide. For example, the last one is “bye bye” and in Chinese its “zai jian”, but the chinese characters for “phonetic guide” is “white white” which in Chinese is “bai bai” and sounds like bye bye. So far so good.

But then they have the phrase “Just a moment please” or as its written “Just moment please”  and the Chinglish sounds just so funny and not even close, pretty much like “Jie si te mo men te pu li si”. And the “please” when its pronunced with these characters sounds more like the english “police”.

Tags: Shanghai. World Expo

Usually finishing a phone call with my friends takes 2 seconds… its like “oh yea, talk to you later, bye”. Chinese people has some habit on dragging it on for 10 or 20 seconds, and its basically just incoherent mumbling of “hm.. hmm.. hao hao.. en.. en.. aaa… aaa.. hao de hao de… en… en… hmm hmm… hao… bye bye”.  Jeezzee maaan, get on with it. Try to listen next time a chinese person is on the phone and clock him or her. Then we maybe be able to present a winner of longest mumbling contest later on.

hao.. hao… mmm..mmm.. en.. en… hao de hao de… zai jian

Tags: phone calls

Today I went to the bank to pay the telephone bill and internet. It usually sums up about RMB150-160 per month. Today I got abit surprised as the lady at the counter said it cost RMB160, 160, exactly!!! The slip i got showed that the acutal feel was RMB159.60 but the had rounded it up to an even 160. Thank god, then I dont have to get those 10jiao coins etc that always ends up in my washing machine because I forget them in my pockets.

However I can imagine that a number of Chinese people would have been really upset and demand to speak to the bank manager in order to get their RMB0.4 back (USD 1 equals around RMB 7)

Tags: banking, coins

Air China are upgrading both their air crafts and services in order to for real compete with the established foreign airlines. They are now calling their first class service “Forbidden Pavillion First Class”. They are of course thinking of Chinese previous emperors that lived their life in “Forbidden city” in Beijing. Its not called forbidden city in English or Chinese, its called the “Imperial Palace or “gu gong” but the forbidden city was for the “normal people”  that never ever got close to the Palace. So is maybe Air Chinas first class now then also… who knows…

Tags: Air China, airlines, first class

The huge parade that we normal people just could see on TV from the 60 year anniversary of PRC was a grand propaganda in all aspects. A Chinese friend of mine that was away from Beijing called me and asked if the blue sky was really blue or if they faked it with filters or at the TV station somehow. Well on that day it was clear blue sky and quite windy, but the blue sky was mostly thanks to Beijing Weather modification institute that sprayed the clouds with some chemical that probably will give us cancer in the future, but what the hey… The sky was really blue.

Tags: Beijing weather modification, TV

Right now I am attending the Canton Fair, the worlds biggest sourcing fair I would say. I am not looking for anything special but wanted to check out if there were anything that would be something for the European market. So IO didnt go for the lowest price products which usually are “me too” or “same same” products. Those are already on the market in millions.

I found a Ipod, bluetooth, computer media central that was good sounding, solid built, and some cool designs. One of their biggest seller was a “look-a-like” piggy bank where you could insert a USB in the “backside” or Ipod on the top. Cool and great sounding. A businessman next to me said to the sales person “Its great but I wont sell a single PIG media station in Israel”. This company has done their quality homework but missed the cultural/religion believes in that part of the world. Anyway, the sales person said “order more than a 1000 items and I will make you a PANDA design”.

Lets see, maybe they will be PANDA media stations in Israel in a near future

Tags: Canton Fair, media, Religion

Well, most news in the west is regarding the pollution, the major bad impact on nature that China has. Of course its true, but it havent been true unless western teenagers etc want to buy H&M jeans for$20 or what ever. So in our hunt for the cheapest labor west has sort of exported their production and its problems to China. BUT, Im currently in south China and many cities work very active on improving their environmentally profile, trying to get rid of or ban old technology, cooperate with western countries that has come far on these matters and the latest I saw now is a town south of Guangzhou that all street lights are LED. At least they are proactive and not like the USA wankers that always turn these environment agreement down because its has “bad” impact on bussiness development, yea, right, what development… printing money out of thin air and handing out credit cards to home less people

Tags: environment, LED

October 1st is the “birthday” of PRC and this year is the 60 year anniversary. They have been lots of speculation about the celebrations and parade. It pretty soon was clear that most areas if interest in Beijing would be closed and all along the Chang an jie was totally off limits for us ordinary people. I went out  today around 11am for some lunch at my local restaurant. The streets was empty, no cars, no bikes. Ghost town feeling. When I came close to Gong ti Bei lu it was some military and policemen standing on post and totally empty on cars. Not every day you see empty streets like this in Beijing

Later on after having my lunch I met some friends and they said the tanks from the parade would take this way back to where ever they keep these things. So here they are, some of the tanks from the parade on October 1st 2009. Happy anniversary China, although these kind of parades sort of reminds me of something out of the cold war and red square Moscow in 1980 something…

Tags: 60 year anniversary, parade, PRC, Tanks

Me and a friend were having dinner at a local place in Beijing where they serve excellent food from Xin Jiang. Mostly bbq lamb and beef. We ordered a leg of lamb but it was kind of hard to eat as is. Then we asked the waiter for a knife. And I guess they didn’t get that request alot because we got a blade from a wall paper knife (not sure if that is the proper word in english), but you get the idea. Its a long way to Guide Michelin, but food rocks big time.