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Dear friend,

I am Mr. Jin Chang Bank Manager of a reputable Bank in China.
Please contact me for an urgent business Update.
Thank You.

Jin Chang

I’ve taken a jaunt to Indianapolis, where I’m staying with the Johnson family.  My friend Evelyn (formerly Evelyn Winslow) has just had a new baby, and I’m here to take a gander at her.  Arianna is very cute, not very fussy.  We actually went to the Simpsons movie last night, and she was quiet all through it. 

As an aside, I thought the movie was pretty good, basically just a full-length version of a Simpsons episode.  I thought there would be more Apu, though, since they did all these quickie-mart tie is to promote the movie.

Cindy Sheehan.

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

There was an Impeach Bush rally today in Philadelphia. Cindy Sheehan spoke there. All these Vietnam veteran motorcycle gang members came and tried to drown out her speech with air horns. They kept shouting “God bless Bush,” which is odd, because they were so grungy looking that Bush would have never touched them with a ten-foot pole.

I just got in at about 12:30 morning. I’m staying here at Susan J’s apartment. Her two cats, the enormous Elmo and the tall but shy Guo, are keeping me company.

If you’re not too far away and you’d like me to visit, let me know! This is a base for me until the 5th, when I go to Buffalo.

Song Xiao Bo and students from Shanghai School for the Deaf

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

Song Xiaobo is profoundly deaf and speaks through sign language. He made big headlines last year when he took part in a televised national talent competition. It was mostly for finding new pop stars, and part of the program was that you had to sing karaoke. He came out and “sang” in sign language. Almost nobody had seen that before, and the viewing public was floored. He came in fourth overall. He’s also good at dance, martial arts, and fashion design. When asked by an interviewer why he learned to make clothing, he said it was to make new clothes for his mother, who didn’t have enough money to buy things for herself. He appeared today at a promotional event at the mall near my house today and accepted a donation check that Cold Stone Creamery (an ice cream store that just opened a branch there) gave to Shanghai’s School for the Deaf. Please forgive the graininess and weird color of this photo. I took it from afar and had to fool with it a lot.

Shit for your love

Not only is the product funny, Japundit’s article explains why that curled-up piece of poo is so popular.  I see it all the time on Japanese products in China.

I go through this thing about once a month where I can’t say anything in Chinese.  Of course I don’t mean that literally, it’s just that my grammar goes to pot, I can’t think of how to say things, and a lot of stuff doesn’t come out of my mouth the way I expect it to.  All this time I’ve meant to document it when it happens.  I’m wondering if because it happens about once a month it has something to do with my hormone cycle.  I had my period on about the 12th, and now I’m mushmouthed on the 17th.  Let’s see what happens next month!

“Ramen bath” offers supposed health benefits without lingering aroma of pork marrow

About a week ago they had one that said, “Kobayashi loses title, contents of stomach.”

(P.S. Is my grammar correct in the post title? I should know, right, because I’m a teacher.)

I’ve invented a new word — anyhow, it popped into my head a while back, and I think it’s worthy of popularizing. It’s hallyulicious. It’s a combination of hallyu, meaning the Korean wave (the Korean entertainment craze that’s swept Asia, if you can call something a craze even when it’s been going strong for six years), and of delicious. I think it’s especially useful describing any Korean entertainment product that is cool or amazing, or any celebrity who looks good with his shirt off.

OK, everybody. Start using it.

I’m happy to say I finally opened my wallet and bought the full series of DA ZHANG JIN (a.k.a JEWEL IN THE PALACE, or DAE JANG-GEUM in Korean). It’s a super-deluxo version, because that’s the only kind that has English subtitles. It was initially offered at 220 RMB, which is 70 RMB cheaper than any other place I’ve seen it. I bargained with the boss, saying the show was old and everyone who wanted it probably had it already, so I got the price down a little to 190.

They’ve got a new arrival, Artemis!

hppt://www.peer-see.com

Pay: 20,000 RMB per month.

Hours at work per week: 40.

Teaching hours per work: 18.

Office hours: 22. (M-F 9-5, no leaving w/o permission, even to go to other places on campus.)

Possible extra work assigned with no extra pay.

Nine days off for Chinese New Year. 

Eighteen days off in the summer. 

Usual two golden week holidays.

Expected to work if sick (unless hospitalized).

If sick, either go to school clinic or hospital 45 minutes away.

School 45 minutes away from city center, about 30 minutes away from nearest suburb. 

Either live in student dormitory for 50-100 RMB a night (non-reimbursable), or in an on-campus apartment, stone’s throw (literally) from the boys’ dorm.  Rate: 2,400-2,800 a month (non-reimbursable).  Third possibility: Rent your own apartment in town, hopefully on the school shuttle line, and have a commute each morning.

Bus from city to school stops at 9:00 each night.  Taxi from city center to school: About 100 RMB.

Nearest supermarket: 20 minute bus ride away.

During tour of school, two different employees asked me if I went to church on Sunday (?!?).

840 Cats Saved from Dinner Death

Made in Germiny.

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

I found these in a local Hotwind store yesterday. Only 49 RMB!

I found this on John Pasden’s Sinosplice.  Just like Liu Xiang, he’s another student at my school who I’ve never even seen.

Sexual Vocabulary in Chinese

As an added bonus, you can also use this site to learn dirty stuff in Swedish!

Well, probably it’s not, but I’m losing sleep over it and worrying about it a lot.

It all relates to the kitten. I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but here is how I ended up taking her in: There was a tiny kitten abandoned near my house. I mentioned it to my friend. My friend’s co-worker said HER friend wanted a kitten. Therefore, I too hastily picked it up and took it inside so it’d be findable when the person came to claim it, plus I wanted to keep it from being run over. Well, it turned out the person didn’t want it after all. I thought it would be cruel to throw it out again, so I decide to keep it for two weeks until this expat animal adoption group had a meeting. It turns out not only would I have to spay the cat beforehand, I’d have to pay about US $40 to participate, and another US $60 if someone wanted to adopt it. It’s a moot point though, because they are refusing to let any strangers bring animals because they have too many. Then I started putting ads for the cat online, and someone responded quickly. The problem was that when he and his friend came to look at it, she got scared and hid and wouldn’t come out. I explained that she’s just like that and she’ll be okay in like a day, but they decided they didn’t want her.

So a month later I still have her. I like her in some ways, but at other times I really hate her. She’s starting to get destructive. She’s also noisy, and runs around like a maniac at night when I’m trying to sleep. I guess one of the problems is that I don’t have the desire to play with her whenever she likes, so she gets all hyper.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. One plan is to coax her to go outside so she can run off steam more, but she’s totally scared of that. I put her out for a while today, for like half and hour, and she was all trembling and panting so I took her back inside.

I feel I was dumb to take her off the street so impulsively, and now I’ve got this big responsibility. Should I have tried to guilt the original person into taking her, telling her she was the cause of all this mess? Well, if it hadn’t been for me taking it inside, I wouldn’t be in this position, so it’s probably not true.

I’m even going to the US in like two weeks. I’m not sure what to do. I’ve talked to the ayi who says she will come sit with it every day, but I’m afraid the animal will be really destructive if left alone that much.

I really don’t know what to do.

Self magazine recently surveyed 1,000 Chinese women about which man has the world’s most desirable sperm, and a student at my school placed fourth!  Here are the results, as republished by China Daily, and then by Shanghaiist:

1.  Liu De-hua (Andy Lau)

2.  Bill Gates

3.  Takeshi Kaneshiro

4.  Liu Xiang (of 110-meter hurdles fame)

5.  David Beckham

6.  Li Ka-shing (property mogul)

7.  Tony Leung (I’d imagine it’s Liang Chiu-wai from IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, not the one from THE LOVER, who is sort of a drunk and really looks his age now.

8.  Louis Koo

9.  Wang Lee-hom (a fellow NY State-er!)

10. Brad Pitt

Warmly welcome you (as Chinese people would say) to look at my new Flickr photo set, China at work.

Taiwanese Director Yang Dies at 59

I’ll have to get on the stick and watch the rest of YI YI, which I started watching like four years ago, really liked, but never finished.

The one thing I’ll always remember about Edward Yang is when we saw one of his films in a class I took, this one undergrad guy liked it so much he vowed in front of us all to go to Taiwan to become Yang’s disciple.  A few years later I turned on the Taiwanese game show WO CAI, WO CAI, WO CAI CAI CAI (I GUESS, I GUESS, I GUESS GUESS GUESS), and who did I see as a contestant, but that guy!  I’m pretty sure it was him because I always remembered him due to his remarkable resemblance to Adam Sandler.

Today I was thinking of the guy I met at the Xi’an mosque and how confused he must be about all the stuff going on in the UK.  I met him while I was touring the mosque with Phil and Amanda.  I’m not sure what his title is, but he stands in front of the prayer hall and answers whatever questions you have, gives you little pamphlets about Islam if you want them, etc.  There is a guy with a similar job at a lot of Buddhist temples.  We started chatting, and it turned out he was really suspicious about 9/11, saying nobody knows who was really responsible.  He was also really pissed off about the bad image of Islam in the West, that people there think it is really scary but it really isn’t, etc.  He must be confused and astonished by all this British stuff.  He’s a Hui person, and as far as I know, Hui people really aren’t militant about anything.  They’ve been associated with a few protests against insulting things about them in textbooks, but that was just carrying banners and demanding apologies and stuff.  They’ve never been associated with any violence.  They don’t really identify with or get involved in the Middle East conflict.  They’re very live-and-let-live people, as far as I know.  It’s kind of like if Quakers in some part of the world started doing car bombings.  Imagine how confused American Quakers would be!