Engrish

Occassionally, you will see these funny signs in China. I think they are machine translated. You may find these dishes funny or horrid…

The week beats the fish soup – yummy! Please have a “Sand”.

I would like a cold cow of the west please.

The carbon buuurns, oh please help me.

Happiness – 喜

This week we are learning the verb “to like”. The Chinese word for “to like” is actually a phrase consists of two characters.: “happiness” 喜+ “joy” 欢. Although for such a simple English word, the Chinese phrase seems to be quite complicated to write, both characters are indispensable for any Chinese person.

So, the bad news is – we have to learn it and learn it quick because this is an especially useful word.

In particular, we want to focus on the word “happiness”. Since this is a key word in the Chinese existence. When we get married, the one single word to signify such event, such moment is this word. Here is a modern couple’s wedding invitation celebrating their marriage in Shanghai. You can see the creative use of the ”happiness” word.

Interesting “Hidden” News from Associate Press

I read upon a brief piece of news yesterday from the Metro newspaper. I didn’t notice it from other major US media which corresponds to the Metro report indicating that this country is keeping it quiet regarding the details so far.

Here is a more lengthy report from the British Telephraph News:

—————————————————————————————————————–

China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by “blinding” their sensitive surveillance devices.

The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.

Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon’s annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat.

“After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line,” Defense News said.

The document said that China could blind American satellites with a ground-based laser firing a beam of light to prevent spy photography as they pass over China.

According to senior American officials: “China not only has the capability, but has exercised it.” American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under attack “several times” in recent years.

Although the Chinese tests do not aim to destroy American satellites, the laser attacks could make them useless over Chinese territory.

The American military has been so alarmed by the Chinese activity that it has begun test attacks against its own satellites to determine the severity of the threat.

Satellites are especially vulnerable to attack because they have predetermined orbits, allowing an enemy to know where they will appear.

“The Chinese are very strategically minded and are extremely active in this arena. They really believe all the stuff written in the 1980s about the high frontier,” said one senior former Pentagon official.

There has been increasing alarm in parts of the American military establishment over China’s growing military ambitions.

Military experts have already noted that Chinese military expenditure is increasingly designed to challenge American military pre-eminence by investing in weaponry that can attack key systems such as aircraft carriers and satellites.

At the same time, China is engaged in a large-scale espionage effort against American high-tech firms working on projects such as the multibillion-pound DD(X) destroyer programme.

Several spy rings have been cracked and the FBI is increasing the number of counter-intelligence staff tracking the Chinese effort.

What’s the difference between Chinese and American Culture

I found this interesting site on the web using a test to define Chinese and American culture. It also has a list of other countries for your own curiosity…

How to tell if you are an American. Read and scroll down the page to read the specifics.
How to tell if you are a Chinese.

Chinese Language and Christianity

Hi everybody,

I regret that I couln’t meet you at our usual time today. I hope you had fun practicing the tones you’ve learned. I want to use this web space to share with you some of the lesser known facts related to Chinese.

Today I want to tell you about one effect Christianity – in particular Catholicism had on Chinese.

Now that you are introduced to Pinyin, what do you think of the origin of Romanization? Do you think it is as old as the written Chinese? Were you surprised that it is based on Roman alphabet?

Pinyin is only the current standard way of Romanization for Mandarin Chinese. In the past, many other systems existed. But compared to the entire 4,000 years of written history, this part of the Chinese language is very young. Romanization started during the 16th century when the Jesuit missionaries arrived from Spain and Portugal.

The first ever Romanization systems were created by Matteo Ricci in 1605, and Nicolas Trigault in 1625. The idea was to transcribe the Chinese using their roman or latin letters as an aid to learn Manderin.

If not for the Jesuits to initiate this effort, we would still be learning Chinese the hard way!

Later on, other Christian missionaries arrived and developed various Romanization systems. Pinyin was officially approved by the Chinese government in the 1950s. It is also recognized as the official Romanization methods by the UN and the United States. If you open a National Geographic map that’s about China, you will see all the annotation for names are written in Pinyin.

Welcome to the Chinese Learning Site

Hello Everyone!

Here is my web space for us to share our Chinese language learning process. You can register and sign in to contribute to this blog site, leave comments or questions, find links to other useful Chinese language resources.

I hope it will serve as an additional link for you while away from school. I am also open to your suggestions for additional contents to be added to this site!

Enjoy Chinese!!

Ms. Zhou