Insane Ramblings...

For those who are Google translator challenged, "Insane Ramblings..." is part of this blog's name. It is, and always has been, called "Insane Ramblings... and Orthodox Ecclesiology". I excel at the former (but not THIS good!), and I leave to your judgment how well I do at the later. Anyway, here are some insane ramblings for today.

The Chinese Restaurant Review Blog that never was...
I have long talked about reviewing Chinese Restaurants, as there are both good and bad ones in every city. In the last week I have experienced the über-disappointing "China Lantern" and the surprisingly excellent "Chong's Cafe Express" in Pueblo, Colorado, U.S.A..

Broken Glasses, Hidden Contacts...
This week my glasses broke while I was reading at home. So after a long time of not wearing them, I am back to wearing contacts every day. I had to find the first, as I am still not completely unpacked at our new home. But this super innovative cointact case that I got in ChangSha, HuNan, P.R.C. makes it much more tolerable IMO!

Wagons East...
Yes, for those who did not notice, we are now living in downtown Pueblo. Pueblo West was too expensive (and windy!). We actually love living downtown and it really feels like home. A nice feeling to have until we move again next year.

I am no Longer a Libertarian and am now a Communist...
Well, according to Juvenaly Martinka I am anyway. I think that is meant as a compliment as he is a big fan of KGB Agents Drozdov & Mikhailov. :-P Speaking of Facebook, I just was found by 2 friends that I have not seen or heard from in about 15 years! Since 1993 when my 16-year old daughter was only 1-year old! I wonder how different of a dad I will be with my next 1-year old child?

Free Pancakes at iHOP tomorrow...
Happy Shrove Tuesday!

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HOW-TO: Another 7 Reasons to Learn the Chinese Squat Toilet

We were designed to squat for bodily functions, including childbirth. It only seems uncomfortable because we have been alienated from our natural habits.

1. Makes elimination faster, easier and more complete. This helps prevent "fecal stagnation," a prime factor in colon cancer, appendicitis and inflammatory bowel disease.

2. Protects the nerves that control the prostate, bladder and uterus from becoming stretched and damaged.

3. Securely seals the ileocecal valve, between the colon and the small intestine. In the conventional sitting position, this valve is unsupported and often leaks during evacuation, contaminating the small intestine.

4. Relaxes the puborectalis muscle which normally chokes the rectum in order to maintain continence.

5. Uses the thighs to support the colon and prevent straining. Chronic straining on the toilet can cause hernias, diverticulosis, and pelvic organ prolapse.

6. A highly effective, non-invasive treatment for hemorrhoids, as shown by published clinical research.

7. For pregnant women, squatting avoids pressure on the uterus when using the toilet. Daily squatting helps prepare the mother-to-be for a more natural delivery.

Here are some humorous advices for learning how to do it: http://www.worldhum.com/features/how-to/use_a_squat_toilet_20060923/

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QQ 2009 for Linux, Mac, iPhone, and Windows Updated!

According to the Lost LaoWai Blog, the Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows versions of QQ were updated to 1.0 Beta 1 within the last day. Here are the links:

• Linux (DEB, RPM, TAR.GZ, or LoongSon Lemote Loonux) version 1.0 beta 1
  
• Mac OS X Tiger or Vista (PowerPC or Intel) version 1.0 beta 1
  
• Windows 2000, XP, or Vista version QQ2009 1.0 beta 1

Also this month TenCent's QQ forum for international users was opened up at http://www.IMQQ.com.

QQ is also available for the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch version 1.2.

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Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... Just not now!

Whatever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"?

I find out today that after the paperwork in America is done for my wife's spouse immigration visa, that the wait in the American Consulate in GuangZhou is currently 120 days. 4 MORE MONTHS! Then after her interview, it will take about 2 weeks for her to be mailed her visa and then she can make a flight booking.

So it is going to be until September at the earliest before she can be here. All in the name of national security! For the record we filled out the paperwork the day after we were married, which was 08-08-08. Very frustrating to me!

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HOW-TO: Call to China or from China to your home country on your mobile phone for free!

As you probably know, to call China, usually you need to dial the International access code of 001 in America followed by the country code of +86 then your friend's full phone number. But this is a very expensive call. Usually $2.00 a minute or more from your mobile phone!

But there is a way to make it cost very little or even free! No computers, downloads, or phone cards necessary. Just dial and talk internationally and pay local rates! How does it work? You give RebTel the phone number of someone you call in China or any other country, and RebTel give you a local number for them. Save this number on your mobile so you can call your friend whenever you want at the local rate. And the best thing is this: It will appear that your call is from a local number and your friend can call that number back to reach you for free!

This will also be a very convenient and inexpensive way for my wife to call her family in China once she is living in America!

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A Travel 2.0 Chinese Love Story

I was honored to be interviewed by Winser Zhao of Sino Hotel Reservations' China Travel 2.0. If you would like to read the story about how we met, and about his telling of Fei and I, you can read it at http://www.sinohotelreservation.com/winser/?p=499.

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2008 was a great year, 2009 will be a fine year

In 2008 I married my soulmate and in 2009, God-willing, she comes home. Each year just keeps getting better for me! I never really do New Year's resolutions, but this year I resolve to give up the horrible addictions to fast food and soda (pop). This will improve my weight, energy, overall physical and financial health. Please pray that I succeed! Happy Civil New Year Everyone!

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Whiny LaoWai ExPats

Recently at Hao Hao Report, (A site like Digg and Mixx for English language China stories) a story was mercifully buried where a foreigner in China was complaining that the average foreigner wage for someone with a degree and experience was "only" 131,000.00 RMB (Chinese Yuan Renminbi). Currently, that equates to over $19,000.00 USD (United States Dollars). Now, that very well may be low for an Americans working and living in the United States of America, but this is for people living in the People's Republic of China where EVERYTHING is cheaper! Keep in mind, that the average Chinese citizen earns only 10,000.00 RMB a year. I mean, even university graduates are only asking for 18,000.00 RMB a year!

Now at Lost LaoWai's community blog, a site I respect and enjoy a lot, one of the great authors is complaining about having to work 6 Sundays a year, meaning there are 6 6-day weeks to allow for some week-long holidays! I would love to work a 6 day week to get a week-long holiday! Wouldn't you?

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that Christianity gave us the popular 5 day work week (Saturday off for the Sabbath and Sunday off for the Lord's Day, the day of Jesus' Resurrection), and I am glad that Henry Ford started the standard 40 hour workweek of 5 8-hour days, with 2 days of rest, but occasionally working 6 to get 3-7 days off is not a bad trade-off either!

Seriously, anyone who goes to China should know what they are getting in to, but this complaining about making "only" 10 times as much as the average Chinese person, or occasionally having to work a 6-day work week, because you have a week-long vacation strikes me as whiny and petty. Am I alone in this opinion?

For the record, I work every Sunday and Saturday and work 5 days a week. 4 of those days are 12 hour days, and 1 day (Sunday) is a 7 hour day. My wife works 7 days a week. She works 12 hours a day, from 9:00-21:00 like me, but she gets the standard 2-hour Chinese lunch/siesta time in the middle of that day (like these complaining expats most likely have) too. For this, she earns 12,000.00 RMB annually and 2 vacation days per month that can be accrued and used all at once. Maybe that is why I have no patience for this seemingly petty whining?

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Lisa See Reviewed Some More

This last month I have read 2 more of Lisa See's books. On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family is her non-fiction biography of her family. This is very obviously her first book and very interesting, telling then story of her family in China and America over the last 150 years. She had not yet developed her writing to such a degree as with her fiction over a decade later. Lisa has quickly become my favorite writer, but this book is not in structure what (I would call great, but the information inside is, and as such I would definitely still reccomend the book.

Peony in Love: A Novel is a fictional book in the same vain as Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel, a book I loved, however it is based on a true story. I cannot say too much without spoiling it, but it is a powerful story about love, fate, feminism, The Peony Pavilion, and art, that may very well now be my favorite book. It deals with the afterlife in a way you would not expect, detailing the Chinese religious thought on the subject, which makes many traditions in China come to life with anew understanding. I want to say more, but you are better off buying this book and reading it knowing nothing more than this.

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Toward Better Tones in Natural Speech

The problem, as Dr. Liao presented it, is that many learners can reach a relatively high level of fluency in Mandarin Chinese, have excellent tonal accuracy for individual words, yet still make a large number of very unnatural tonal errors in natural speech. This is a common enough problem that educators really need to be looking for ways to address it. Here is a suggested solution.

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Chinese Pinyin in 6 Mins

Cute and Short. It's a good flash for learning Pinyin.
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Odd Dreams

In the last 24 hours I have had 2 very odd dreams. For the longest time I did not dream, or remember my dreams, but after I went to China I began dreaming vividly. My daughter has had the same experience, calling it a magical land.

Anyway, my first dream was normal for my dreams, it was just a typical day of Fei and I spending time together, but it was narrated, which was very odd. Maybe because I have been reading so much lately, having finished 3 books in 3 days time. I recognized the narration voice because I was the narrator, interestingly enough.

The other took place while I napped. (I have been blessed to have taken naps in the last 2 days, helping me catch up on my sleep.) This one was even odder. I know this took place in an era of about 100-400 years ago. I was approximately 17 years old. I was from a rich family and had been given a maid who was supposed to sleep at the foot of my bed. However I let her sleep in my bed so that she could have comfort and warmth. My parents (who bore no resemblance to my waking world parents) did not approve, and I continued on with this and fell in love with the girl. At some time before we agreed to run off and elope, because I wanted to marry her, she recognized me as Nik and I recognized her as Fei, although these were not our names in this life. As I said, very odd, if there were such things as past lives, it seems it would be impossible for past lives to know future lives' names, so the logic seemed off. But such are dreams.

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2008 China Blog Awards Nominee

If you find this site helpful or interesting, you can vote for this site by going to http://www.chinalyst.net/node/46424 and clicking on the + sign. Chinalyst has voting for the best English language China blogs every year. Voting for the China Blog Awards 2008 runs from 1 December 2008 to 31 December 2008 and you are allowed to vote once per day.

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Book Reviews: "Wild Swans" and "Factory Girls"

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang was a good book comparing and contrasting the lives of her grandmother, a woman of Imperial China, her mother, a daughter of the Communist Revolution, and herself, an expatriate and anti-Maoist. The story is very good, although I think her editor failed her in jumping around in time too much. Chang has been accused of severe anti-Maoist distortions, but I have no way to prove or disprove this. I just know that this book is a very interesting look at China from the early 1900's to today and I would recommend it to any fan of China or history.

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie Chang is a fascinating look at the culture of the factory girls who come from rural China and work the factories of industrial urban China. Over the years things have changed and this has changed the power structure and traditions of China for these girls and their families. This book is a very good introspective of these girls. However, seemingly out of nowhere Chang starts putting her family history in the book. Rather than adding to the book, it distracts from it. Her family history is still very interesting, and not unlike that of "Wild Swans", but I feel that part should have been left for its own book and "Factory girls" should have been left to focused on just the factory girls, which Chang never was.

While both books have serious flaws, I would still recommend them to anyone interested in the sociology of modern and recent China.

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Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers: Tomorrow People

I always thought he was singing, "Where is your best?" I think there was a more powerful message in my misunderstanding!

Oh Lord, oh no!

Tomorrow people, where is your past?
Tomorrow people, how long will you last?
Tomorrow people, where is your past?
Tomorrow people, how long will you last?

Today you say you deyah. Deyah be.
Tomorrow you say you're gone,
but you're gone so long.
If there is no love in your heart - so sorry -
Then there is no hope for you - true, true.

Tomorrow people, where is your past?
Tomorrow people, how long will you last? Come on!
Tomorrow people, where is your past? Where is your past?
Tomorrow people, how long will you last? 10 years!

So you're in the air,
But you still don't have a t'ing to spare.
You're flying high,
While we're on the low, o-o-oh

Tomorrow people, where is your past?
Tomorrow people, how long will you last? Tell me now.
Tomorrow people, where is your past? Nowhere!
Tomorrow people, how long will you last? Ten years!

Stop tellin' me the same story.
Today you say you deyah. Deyah be.
Tomorrow you say you're gone, and you're not comin' back.
If there is no love in your heart, oh now,
There will never be hope for you. No hope for you.

Tomorrow people, where is your past?
Tomorrow people, how long will you last? Ten years!
Tomorrow people, where is your past?
Tomorrow, tomorrow people, come on.

If you don't know your past, you don't know your future, everyone!
Don't know the past, you won't know the future, everyman!
Don't know your past, don't know your future, come on!
You don't know your past, you don't know your future, hey!

How many people did that one catch?
How many nations did that one catch, yeah-yeah?
Don't know the past, Don't know the future.
Don't say, don't know your past, don't know your future

How many people did that one catch?
How many nations did that one catch, c'mon, c'mon!
Tomorrow, tomorrow people...

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Sinotized: It's Not Like We Were Taught

I agree with these thoughts about China after having been an often visitor to this land as well: Sinotized: It's Not Like We Were Taught

Chinese Number Taboos are Often Local

This is from my friend LI Wan, who translated this in to English for a friend of hers.

Taboo, belonging to the category of folk culture, is a cultural phenomenon. China is a multi-ethnic country, and different nations have different totems and taboos. Taboo is the source of moral and civilization. All the Chinese people have regarded long as a totem and worshiped long all the time. When Spring Festival or other Festivals come, people in almost all areas of china will give an performance of dragon dance. In Dragon Boat Festival people will have a dragon-boat race, which reflects the nation's positive and never-give-up spirit.

1. There are many taboos in Changsha where mainly inhabit Han nationality Just as westerners view the number of 13 as a taboo, we think of the goods priced at 33, 36, 7, 94, 250, etc. as taboos.


2. Buying a house on the 18th floor is a taboo, because according to Buddhism, there is a saying like driving into the 18 floors of hell, so the land agent usually set a lower price at the 18th floor.


3. We like 8, 9 to be a number’s ending, and do not prefer the ending is 3, 4, because in china the pronunciation of 8 is the same as “Facai” which refers to making a pile,and 9 means everlasting, but 3 sounds like “Sanhuo” which means separating, and 4 sounds the same as “Si” which is an equivalent of death. In Changsha it is a taboo for 7 persons to be at table together, it is more preferable for 8 , 10 or 12 persons to have dinner together.


4. Azaleas (Rhododendron),the city flower of Changsha City, is a taboo to be used as a gift as well as chrysanthemum. Now it is the golden autumn of chrysanthemums blooming, but we'd better not send chrysanthemum to other people. Otherwise,you will find your well-intentioned behavior only arouses anger, because Chrysanthemum is always used to mourn the dead.


5. It is a taboo to present an umbrella or a fan as a gift to friends, because the pronunciations of fan and umbrella are similar to “Sanhuo”. There are also some taboos for young people when they fall in love. It is not necessarily for men to send rose to express their love. Sending some willow branches or a handkerchief may be more effective in some places. Because in China there is a wonderful legend about sending willow branches, as for the handkerchief, it means that it is made of the horizontal and vertical silk threads and silk sounds like “Sinian” which refers to missing.

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