rolling china thread 2011

err *big expressive eyes

id like to see a chinese equivalent of rush limabugh style mock-chinese, preferably on youtube

feel like china's efficiency in mocking wite ppl langauges will have big implications for the kulturkampf

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2012/01/04/the-republicans-on-china-who-knows-what%E2%80%99s-up-and-who-doesn%E2%80%99t-2/

interesting take on hu's remarks

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/beijings-culture-war-isnt-about-the-us-its-about-chinas-future/250900/

reminded that so far the most strident efforts have been made against china's own culture-producers like 非诚勿扰

it's always been embarrassing to have to rep for chinese literature because there isn't a lot of it that i feel right repping for and everything that appears in english translation is hindered by being shittily translated (99% of it by howard goldblatt).

so i dunno. to see chinese literature today devote an issue to him... with a fucking self-interview... and everything in the magazine is basically howard goldblatt school of translation stuff. really overliteral and all the chinese idioms are matched with english idioms (which would work if english writing involved a lot of pithy phrases and shit).

anyways.

i was sort of stoked to see them finally drop a second issue because i was supposed to have an excerpt of northern girls by sheng keyi in it. but there was supposedly some "controversy" because it had dirty words in it (book revolves around a girl with huge breasts who fucks her way to shenzhen). but no.

"Has he sold out his prison-mates? Why else would he get such good treatment? A large piece of pork every time."

In any case, pork was a welcome addition to their meal. Sometimes they even joked about it:
"There were bristles on the piece I got. Lots of them standing straight up, like that you-know-what down below. Ha ha ha."

"Is your you-know-what as skinny as a pig's bristle?" someone would ask in jest.

now, this type of shit is basically chinglish to me. why can't we have chinese-english translation where the final result is natural, modern english???

"prison-mates"
"you-know-what down below"
"in jest"

The heat brings out the gamy smell of the beef, but, with the amelioration of spices, only an aromatic meaty fragrance remains.

It is a heavy fragrance.

It has an authentic, delicious flavor.

:(

http://www.ou.edu/clt/vol-2-1/fiction-li-ang.html

it's actually a decentish essay but to me, it's almost unreadable if i have to read

For those under the sentence of death each Thursday night's three-inch piece of pork and cake of tofu could very well mean his "last, sumptuous supper." :(((( why is last sumptuous supper in quotation marks? likely because it represents a chinese phrase but DUDE JUST FUCKING TRANSLATE IT. WHY KEEP TALKING ABOUT A BOWL-SIZED ETC. IN CHINESE YOU SAY SOMETHING IS THE SIZE OF A BOWL OR AS THICK AS A BOWL BUT NO ONE DOES THAT IN ENGLISH

but i really like li ang and the piece is interesting so i guess i just want to say it deserves a more natural, fluent translation and more people to read it.

goldblatt had the one crack at doing jia pingwa in english and fucked it up.

theory: people that study chinese literature are so caught up in the idea that each character is crucial and must be understood and communicated that they miss the idea and the vibe and the soul of the original.

theory: howard goldblatt and lots of the other dudes that get the few chinese lit translation jobs are REALLY OLD. (recent exception cindy carter for dream of ding village and a few more that i can't think of off the top of my head).

but actually: i think howard goldblatt is good as a digging in the crates type of dude and found lots of good stuff that nobody bothered with, especially in taiwan. and i always liked his translation of notes of a desolate man by zhu tianwen.

actually, i take back everything i said about him. that self-interview upset me. it's not his fault he's basically the only show in town.

eh well those are mostly theoretical translation issues. there's the fear of turning into a modern day constance garnett, i.e. someone who translates works into stiff victorian prose.

man i get all fucked up on this hu jintao shit and i forgget that this is the actual countyr where i live and i just took X and made out with a beautiful korean girl in a club bathroom listening to david banner we need and she unhooked her bra for me and i had to ask her the first or second row when i did tback up . god it's snowing in dalian and it's so beautiful and peaceful and all the sttreetsweeper men are out sweeping snow instead of dust and i have my spring festival train tickets and i love it her despite cultural war or whatnot. lol.

http://www.ou.edu/clt/vol-2-1/interview-wang-jiaxin.html

any misty poetry fans in this motherfucker？》》》》》

http://news.ftv.com.tw/NewsContent.aspx?ntype=class&sno=2012105L05M1

http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/01/photo-showing-payslip-of-a-chinese-sanitation-worker-strikes-chord-in-netizens/

posting only because I have been to zengcheng!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/11/british-chinese-racism/print

http://www.danwei.com/serial-killers-in-china/

normally i'm super interested in serial killer stuff but I had to stop reading, probably because the police response was so weak

Good look at the Taiwan election result: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137029/daniel-lynch/why-ma-won-the-elections-and-whats-next-for-taiwan-and-china

http://www.zhongnanhaiblog.com/?p=475

thanks to ilxor rent - a good summary of the differences between HK and China on the ground

I think the idea of serial killers in China scares the shit out of me because there would be no police to protect you

http://www.economist.com/node/21541716

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/01/18/iconic_good_samaritan_case_in_china.php

:O :O :O

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/TKoY3j6yyyM/?resourceId=0_06_02_99

I like the way shanghaiinese sounds!

http://badcanto.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/mainland-scholar-many-hongkonger-are-dogs/

so uh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2uINfAKOxc

fucking A

he actually calls hongkongers 'running dogs'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_dog

www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/world/asia/china-leadership-transition/index.html

习近平 surprise.gif

Errr

xi jinping, sorry

rolling buried alive in china 2012 btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02UMJESbwJg

Xi
May be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
Xi
May be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day

Hu are you
Hu Hu
Hu Hu

anyone have any recommendations for books on chinese history? i know there's thousands upon thousands of years of material, and i'm not quite sure where to start

interested in a certain period?

i only have a vague notion of it right now. i guess i'd like to start with qin, han, and three kingdoms, and work my way through ming. i'm interested in the culture and civilization aspect, and always found china pretty damn fascinating.

my focus is late imperial/modern china so i'm sure someone else can recommend better books on deep historical china but i'll throw out three

china's golden age: everyday life in the tang dynasty by charles benn. because the tang is the golden age and you need to read about the grandeur and supreme cultural development of yangzhou and xi'an during the tang.
the confusions of pleasure: commerce and culture in ming china by timothy brook-- absolutely 100% best book on ming china. divided by season, each season covering roughly a century. he charts the movement from agrarian society into advanced government/commercial powerhouse. i think this is a pretty common chinese history 101 book and everyone's read about the brick-- he uses the inscriptions on a brick to trace it back to a certain kiln, explains the system of paying taxes with labour, shows how the canal systems worked. lots of non-elite perspectives, but also talks about the ming tribute system, international relations. and check out the troubled empire by brook, which deals with the mongol invasion of china, the creation of the yuan dynasty, song dynasty loyalists, the cultural influence of the yuan on the song.
if you're going to be reading about the ming, i guess i like return to dragon mountain: memories of a late ming man by jonathan spence, a history of the ming through the eyes of a literatus, lots of poetry and courtesans and bureaucracy.
the imperial capitals of china by arthur cotterell does a good job at overview, by skipping through the various capitals of chinese dynastic regimes, goes from the semi-mythical shang to qing dynasty beijing.

these are all recent, too.

if you only read one: confusions of pleasure

these books sound pretty cool, thanks. i love reading about what everyday life was like through history

chinese ambassador on tv here notes that the graphic of china behind him is incomplete: no taiwan

Quite an interesting piece on the Chinese economy and how it has been changing

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n05/nathan-sperber/the-mayor-economy

it was good. i liked too this nathan sperber piece on macro control: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/02/macro-control-making-sense-of-a-central-concept-in-chinese-economic-policy/.

dylan is hefei worth visiting?