Oh my good god!!

I have just spent the entire day editing a particularly dire Chinglish article. On the plus side, the topic - China's energy policy - was quite interesting. On the minus side, I had to rewrite it so heavily that it took me nearly twice as long as normal for a piece of this length.

Ah, but there was one further consolation.

I learned something new today; something new, and rather revealing. I learned that amongst the incentives the Chinese government has been offering businesses to meet energy conservation targets is...... exemption from quality inspections.

Now, I don't suppose that China is the only country in the world that offers such a performance-enhancing carrot to its corporations. And I can see that, with highly ethical corporations, being exempted from busy-body external inspections might produce useful cost savings without any necessary decline in safety or standards. But, really, do you think that's likely to be the case in China? Er, NO.

And here's the kicker. This was actually listed among the negative incentives. Such quality inspection exemptions are the norm, and withdrawing this privilege can be used a punishment. Wow!

Not reassured

I caught a glimpse of Ben Bernanke on TV the other day, trying his best to be bullish about the economy - in his usual, measured way.

The gist of his message seemed to be: "if" the wheels don't come off anything else now, and "if" the stimulus package takes hold, then we "might" see the beginnings of an upturn by the end of year.

Hemmed around with all of those qualifications, it didn't seem like a very encouraging speech at all. And, to my mind, he didn't look or sound as if he believed a word of it anyway.

But then, of course, I am firmly on the side of the doomsayers about this one. Away with your sham optimism, Mr B!

The weekly haiku

Inspiration drought.
Worn down by haiku fatigue?
Blank screen, no words come.

Have I been doing this too long? Or have I just not been getting enough sleep this week?

How to be a fenqing

忿青 fen qing * - "angry youth" - is the term given to Chinese Netizens of a self-righteous and aggressively nationalist tendency. They are mostly young males with nothing better to do with their time than hang out online. They infest the blogs and bulletin boards of the Chinese Internet. And some of the ones with slightly better foreign language skills stalk the foreign China blogs, looking to pick a fight whenever somebody dares to make an observation that appears to be "critical" of China, or challenges the 'orthodox view' on hot topics such as - well, you know, "The Three T's". If you visit The Peking Duck, one of the most popular laowai China blogs, you will often find its comment threads overrun with these dingbats.

I often refer to the fenqing phenomenon as the Chinese Communist Party's 'blowback' from the years of propagandizing it subjects its children to during their schooling. The government occasionally seeks to exploit their hot-headed and xenophobic impulses by whipping up their indignation against a particular country to make a diplomatic point (in an exceedingly undiplomatic way!): the French have been on the receiving end of this a lot over the past year. However, this kind of sentiment is hard to direct and control, and it is more often an embarrassment or an inconvenience to the government than a help; indeed, it could potentially become a threat to the government. The Telegraph recently had a story about the government here suppressing online discussion of a supposedly rather unstatesmanlike outburst by Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping during his visit to Mexico. I can't see that the remark as reported here is actually all that extreme, but apparently it does come across as quite blunt and even a little testy in Chinese. The problem was that the fenqing went nutso over it, celebrating such uncharacteristic straight-talking in international discourse and hoping that it heralded a new direction in foreign policy, an era of telling other nations to just shut the f*** up. And so the story was pulled from the domestic media, and online comments about it were deleted.

However, there may be some hope. This article by thinkweird - a rare Chinese blogger writing in English - claims that he himself was once a fenqing, but has "moved on"; and he suggests that the eventual conversion of fenqing is almost inevitable, as they are progressively exposed to more diverse sources of information (largely over the Internet) and gain a fuller picture of the world.

Last week, while searching for some film of the Tibetan 'Shoe Jintao' game on YouTube, I came upon this slideshow presenting a typical fenqing view of the Tibet issue. It is extremely unpleasant and disturbing - but also unintentionally hilarious. [Unfortunately, YouTube clips and searches involving 'Tibet' are being heavily filtered this week - I wonder why? - so I am not able to embed this at the moment. Please follow the link. Oh, the irony - Chinese censorship inadvertently blocks pro-CCP propaganda!]

In that dumb, nasty presentation you find all the classic characteristics of fenqing. The frequent resort to SHOUTY capitals and exclamation marks. The even more frequent resort to foul-mouthed invective. A staggering naivety and an atrophy of the capacity for analytical thought (this guy seems to believe that he can 'prove' the political status of Tibet at different points in history by showing us Chinese high school wallmaps!). Dodgy spelling, faulty logic, and even an ineptitude in arithmetic (he begins by asserting that China's 'ownership' of Tibet has a history going back "thousands of years", but then bases this claim on Tibet's having been part of Kublai Khan's empire just over 700 years ago; he still brags that this is longer than the combined histories of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - er, no, if you put those four together, I think you do get rather more than 1,000 years; and so it goes on.....).

As I said, it is pretty unpleasant and objectionable stuff, but horribly fascinating - and very entertaining. Approach with caution. Or avoid, if you're easily offended. But I think it's useful to know your enemy.

* I hope I got the right characters here. I don't entirely trust the MandarinTools online dictionary search. Weeble??

Update 1: I was indeed mistaken about the first character up there. Please see the comments below from my friend The Weeble. I didn't want to change it because I think this is an interesting side discussion in itself. The character I mistakenly selected, 忿, apparently means something like 'vehement' - which seems to me almost more appropriate than 'angry'.

Update 2: Jeremiah, being of an academic bent, felt inspired by my frippery here to write a much fuller and more considered piece on the fenqing phenomenon. Please go and take a look, if you haven't already.

Update 3: Please also take at look at my (equally frivolous, but - I hope - commendably even-handed) follow-up on How to be a fenwai.

Update 4: Now, how did that happen? This post has just been linked to by the celebrated political pundit and pioneer journo-blogger Andrew Sullivan on his blog over at The Atlantic. Since this guy sometimes gets one million visitors a week, I am waiting with some trepidation to see what his recommendation may do to my traffic.

[Disclosure: Andrew and I are lao tongxue - "old classmates" - in that we were contemporaries at Oxford. I was briefly on nodding terms with him back then, but he wouldn't remember now. And even if he had been aware of this tenuous bond of fraternity, I'm sure he wouldn't have let it influence his judgement.]

Miscommunication

Some years ago, I was - very nearly - dating a rather elegant and sexy Frenchwoman.

Well, for our first date we were going to meet on Tiananmen Square and then go for a meal and a concert.

I had suggested meeting at the north-east corner, on the steps of the History Museum. She was - predictably - running a little late. Then she called me to say we should meet instead by "the migdonal". I was a little bemused, but grunted an affirmation. The call cut out.

Now, this lady was an artist and photographer and very highly educated and involved with various Sino-French cultural programmes. It seemed to me entirely possible that she had exposed a rare gap in my English vocabulary. This did sound like a vaguely familiar word, but I couldn't place it. Perhaps it was a technical term in architecture. That seemed very plausible. It seemed to me that that odd 'gd' combination did occasionally occur in Greek (although I couldn't - and can't - readily think of any examples), and Greek words do furnish a lot of such technical vocabulary. I racked my brains as to what a "migdonal" might be. I hadn't been to the Square often enough to become very familiar with its layout and the different architectural features on it. The Monument to the People's Martyrs is the largest of these features: perhaps that - or some part of it - is a "migdonal"?

I scanned the Square for a sign of my French lady but couldn't spot her.

A few minutes later, she called me back.

"I am in front of the migdonal now."

"The what?"

"The migdonal."

"Er, I'm sorry. I have no idea what that is."

"You don't know the migdonal?!"

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

"You don't know where the migdonal is??"

"No. I don't even know what it is."

Can you guess what it is yet?

Yes, the obscure architectural feature she was trying to lead me towards was the 'golden arches' of McDonald's.

I know the French often omit the possessive 's when speaking English. I know they often fail to voice other final consonants. But shifting the stress from the second syllable to the first, voicing the 'c' so strongly as a 'g', and the repeated intrusion of the definite article had completely thrown me. And my embarrassed assumption that she was using technical vocabulary that I perhaps ought to know but didn't just led me further off track with my guesswork. It took quite a while to sort this misunderstanding out. And it wasn't a very auspicious start to our relationship.

I do feel, though, that the word 'migdonal' ought to exist. Surely it could be used for something?

Chinese compliments, Chinese tact

My friend DD just complained that - yet again - a Chinese taxi driver had told her something along the lines of, "You must have been pretty when you were young."

She was particularly shocked this time because it was a female cabbie; although, after so long in China, she really shouldn't be surprised to find that a woman can be just as insensitive as a man in commenting adversely - and very bluntly - on personal appearance, age, etc. And DD does rather invite this sort of vexation by goading taxi drivers to guess how old she is. She is in fact still in her mid-30s, wearing well, and a very attractive woman. Chinese taxi drivers almost invariably seem to estimate that she is at least 10 if not 20 years older than that. Perhaps they're just not very good at judging the age of laowai. Or maybe they're not very good at judging age at all. Or maybe there's some kind of cultural quirk here that they think it's more respectful, actually some weird kind of compliment, to overestimate someone's age. But they certainly don't seem to have any sense that they might hurt someone's feelings by telling them that they are "old", or "very old", or "too old" (or "too fat", and so on). Perhaps what the culture here is missing is a sense that it might be wrong to hurt someone's feelings in this way. I'm sure they must be aware that it can be hurtful: I once went shopping with a Chinese friend who was reduced to tears after a third successive stallholder had told her that she was "too fat" to wear a skirt she liked the look of.

I have suffered the same indignity as DD myself - the exact same insult, but in English rather than Chinese. Some years ago, I was approached by a young Chinese girl at a networking party. She pretty much kicked off the conversation with: "You must have been very handsome when you were younger." That attempted seduction ended right there: Mr Old & Ugly went off in search of a more appreciative audience.

In fact, I've heard this kind of thing so often that I wonder if it is an established Chinese idiom, perhaps something akin to "You must have been a beautiful baby". (Weeble, can you help us on this?) I wonder if it isn't prompted by the contorted sense of 'humility' in Chinese culture, which makes people feel uncomfortable if complimented directly.

There is still so much about this strange country I do not begin to understand.

Money to burn

I read a few years ago of an upscale 'country club' which was being set up in Changping, just to the north of Beijing. The man behind this project claimed that he had set the joining fee at some unimaginably high level (I think it might well have been half a million yuan!) to establish his club's exclusivity, to keep out the riff-raff. And he boasted that he was still turning people away because he had so many prospective members clamouring to enrol at that exorbitant price.

I was a bit sceptical about this story, because it wasn't apparent that this chap was actually providing any kind of service or facility that might be remotely worth this sort of money, Changping is a deeply unlovely suburb, and I think even Chinese multi-millionaires might baulk at dropping that kind of money for nothing.

But it got me thinking......

You know, maybe some people in this country really do have more money than they know what to do with, maybe they really would welcome any opportunity to get rid of some of it. Money to burn.

And, as we know, the Chinese love gambling.

And thus I came up with an idea for an exclusive little club of my own (well, not that we'd necessarily need our own premises, but it would add to the ambience and the ritual, I think). I was thinking I might call it The 111 Club.

The idea is eminently straightforward. Fat cats pay me 111,000 RMB for their entertainment.

I divide the money and put it into three identical velvet sacks: 100,000 in one, 10,000 in another, and 1,000 in the last. The sacks are shuffled behind a screen, so we no longer know which sack is which. Each sack is given a mark of some kind, a number, letter, or character. And then lots are drawn to decide the fates of these three money bags.

The punter has one of the bags returned to him.

I get to keep one bag.

And one bag we set fire to.

Beautifully simple.

And I think I could ensure that I always got the bag with the 100,000 in it.... while the poor punter was happily (or not so happily) convinced that his 100,000 had gone up in smoke.

What larks! I can see some people would be coming back to 'play' every night.

Of course, I'd need a little start-up capital for something like this. Security, I fear, would be quite a big expense. Anybody interested in joining me?

Chinese people LOVE me! (25)

"Chinese people love me because.... I am so 'strong'."

By which they mean that I am surprisingly hardy when it comes to enduring cold weather.

I think of it more as not being a complete wuss.

Yes, I went out to do my weekly shopping today wearing just jeans and a t-shirt. And every single Chinese person I passed on the street gawped at me in open-mouthed dismay. Most of them were still wearing their winter coats.

We are finally on the cusp of spring here. The last of the ice on the lakes has melted in the past couple of days. Yesterday, the temperature by the middle of the afternoon was pushing up towards 70°F. Today was admittedly much nippier, especially by late afternoon when I went on my shopping trip, and with occasional sharp gusts of breeze out of the north-east; but it was still in the high 50's or low 60's, I would say - perfectly tolerable shirtsleeve weather.

The Chinese, however, like many peoples who are used to very hot summers (the Greeks, anyway, are much the same), are extremely nervous of "catching a cold" and will continue to wear jackets and sweaters until the temperature is consistently hitting 75° or 80°F.

So, for the next month or so I will continue to astound and amaze my Chinese neighbours by going out so under-dressed.

A multilingual bon mot for the week

滴水穿石

(di shui chuan shi - "Dripping water wears through a stone." Chinese proverb)

Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo.

("A waterdrop hollows out a stone, not by force but by repeated dripping." Latin proverb)

I suspect many other languages have a similar expression. Would anyone care to contribute others?

Possible outcomes

Time for a bit of Wilfred Owen again, I thought to myself.

The Chances

I mind as 'ow the night afore that show
Us five got talkin', - we was in the know.
"Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for it.
First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that's tore it!"
"Ah well," says Jimmy, - an' 'e's seen some scrappin' -
"There ain't no more nor five things as can 'appen:
Ye get knocked out; else wounded - bad or cushy;
Scuppered; or nowt except yer feelin' mushy."


One of us got the knock-out, blown to chops.
T'other was 'urt, like, losin' both 'is props.
An' one, to use the word of 'ypocrites,
'Ad the misfortoon to be took be Fritz.
Now me, I wasn't scratched, praise God Almighty
(Though next time, please, I'll thank 'im for a blighty).
But poor young Jim, 'e's livin' an' 'e's not;
'E reckoned 'e'd five chances, an' 'e 'ad;
'E's wounded, killed, and pris'ner, all the lot,
The bloody lot all rolled in one. Jim's mad.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

And this in turn set me to pondering on how this global financial crisis is going to go. I am something of a pessimist on this; all the more so since attending a rather eye-opening panel discussion on the topic with some leading economists and business analysts a few weeks back. After that, I was even more inclined to concur with Paul Denlinger's analogy in this recent opinion piece on The China Vortex: "Taking all the bad leveraging out of the system and replacing it with cash and credit liquidity is like trying to rebuild the engines of an aircraft in flight. It cannot be done. This means that there can only be a crash."

The crisis in sub-prime mortgages and the concomitant collapse of the housing market is, I gather, after all comparatively small potatoes. The failure of so many mortgage-backed derivatives was merely the first domino in what threatens to be an endless chain reaction. The crazy, untenable level of debt leveraging built up in the world financial system during the Noughties has been exposed - credit default swaps totalling over US$ 60 trillion, and still growing - but no-one seems to have any idea what to do about it. All the vaunted "stimulus packages", throwing money into the world's economies to try to counteract the drastic shrinking of credit and confidence in the money markets, is, at best, treating the symptoms and not the cause (and probably not even treating the symptoms very effectively).

Every month or two AIG will threaten to go under; every month or two the US government will give it another bailout that's not enough to keep it afloat for good. Governments around the world are underwriting financial institutions to an unprecedented extent, but - unless something pretty radical is done soon to try to unravel the skein of bad debt in which the banking system has enmeshed itself - some of those institutions are surely still going to fail. What happens when people start to lose their trust in treasury bonds? What happens when even the governments of the wealthiest nations simply can't raise any more money? I rather think we may see in the coming few years not just the collapse of more commercial banks, but the collapse of central banks, governments, countries - a descent into anarchy. (Apparently, over 90% of these 'credit swaps' are entirely inter-bank affairs, and so should to a large extent cancel each other out..... if only the banks could agree on a programme of settlement; but that is unlikely to happen because the situation is so complicated; because no-one is willing to contemplate writing off 'assets' on that kind of scale; and because, while some banks might survive and grow stronger as a result, many more would be destroyed by the exercise.)

It bothers me that people are still maintaining a hollow optimism about this situation - underplaying the crisis as merely "one of the worst in history" or "the worst in living memory" or "almost as bad as the 1930s". To me, it looks as if it is already quite definitively the worst financial crisis in history; and it has the potential to get much, much worse. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to more than a decade of worldwide recession and precipitated a world war. And, make no mistake about it, this crisis is worse.

So, the 'chances' we really ought to be considering are:

5-10 years of severe economic downturn, with all of the attendant social distress

Partial or complete collapse of the world banking system (but most governments able to continue - with difficulty - to function??)

Collapse of central banks and/or governments in many countries

Small regional wars over natural resources

Major conflict between (no longer so 'super') superpowers

These are all, I fear, very real possibilities for the decade ahead of us. I hope that the ones further down the list are fairly remote possibilities, possibilities that can be averted by prudent leadership. But the "all rolled into one" option of 'madness' - the collapse of society as we know it, global anarchy - is not as remote as one would wish. It could happen, unless we are careful; and unless we are lucky. By comparison with that, 10 years of recession really ain't so bad.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Yulia Tymoshenko

Now, I don't really know that much about Ms Tymoshenko (although she has a nice website), and so am in no position to endorse - or condemn - her politics. One rather suspects that anyone who prospers to that extent in politics (and business) - especially in Eastern European politics and business! - must have a closet full of skeletons as well as designer clothes. However, she does seem to be uncommonly intelligent, and also rather brave in attempting to take on the "oligarchs" of the energy business. And of course, she is quite startlingly beautiful (and retaining those looks most impressively - I was rather shocked to discover she's just turned 48). It's enough to make a fellow wish there were a gas pipeline dispute every month....

I have to say, though, that 'trademark' braided hairdo leaves me cold; I much prefer this less severe look (just about the only braid-free picture I could find).

And oh my god, she can ride a motorcycle as well?! This woman is like a real life Emma Peel!

War on Chinglish (2)

Last but not the least....

Closely related to my complaint the other day about the horrible overuse of "in a word"..... Just as every summary in Chinglish begins with "in a word", so the the final item in any list is introduced by "Last but not the least..."

The Chinese language relies so heavily on the use of stock phrases that people here seem to have no concept of the tedium or irritation - or just clunkiness - which this habit produces in English; they seem to have no concept of the overuse of a cliché; in fact, they seem to have no recognition even of the concept of a cliché.

And it wouldn't be quite so bad if they could at least get the phrase right: 'last but not least.....' That superfluous article really grates on me.

But really, people, it's just much better not to use this phrase at all. It is another of the unmistakable markers of Chinglish.

A new low

I have complained before, more than once, about the vexation I endure in some of my technical editing jobs here. The Chinese seem to be extremely lax not only in matters of spelling and punctuation but also in attention to details of even the most fundamental importance - getting names, dates, and facts correct; giving citations accurately.

The foreign policy thinktank I work for is the worst. Most of the stuff they send me to edit is about the level of a mediocre high school essay. They've usually read no more than a dozen or so articles on their chosen subject, often in translation only; and much of the time they have clearly achieved no more than a partial understanding of this material. They simply churn out muddled and superficial summaries of other people's work, completely devoid of any original research or analysis.

It's so intellectually feeble that it can be pretty hilarious to read. Well, it would be hilarious, but for the fact that these guys report directly to the government and their facile waffling might actually be helping to shape policy. That reflection tends to make it seem less hilarious and more downright scary. (Although it is also foremost amongst the reasons why I am sceptical that China can become a truly great power any time soon.)

After two years of doing this work, I was beginning to think I'd seen everything, that no new species of ineptitude could now be contrived to amuse or depress me.

Of course, I was wrong. In the most recent piece I've dealt with, the author included a number of extended quotations from American academics. But he hadn't sourced these quotations from the original articles. No. He'd quoted them from the Chinese translations he'd been working from. And then his assistant/translator had rendered them into Chinglish.

I had to explain to my Chinese chief editor that this was not a problem I could fix.

A momentary anxiety

We were without YouTube in China yesterday..... and we began to fear that the Kafka Boys were gearing up for another blanket censorship effort (as we suffered this time last year) in anticipation of the likelihood of renewed violence in Tibet.

But today things seem to be back to normal again, so perhaps it was just a glitch after all. (Curious thing: I wasn't in fact cut off from YouTube yesterday; I have two or three browser windows permanently open for the site, and they still seemed to be working fine. Only embedded video links seemed to be blocked. A similar thing happened a year or so ago when Blogger was briefly blocked; I found that so long as I kept my original browser window open I could still connect to the site and post to my blogs. I think this tends to argue against the suggestion that yesterday's blackout might have been down to a problem with YouTube itself. This sort of interruption of service does reek of cack-handed censorship.)

Or maybe the powers-that-be thought better of it; maybe they're finally starting to heed my advice.


Unfortunately, I very much doubt that. I fear the censorship regime will be ratcheted up again very shortly.

So..... let us make hay while the sun shines.

Here's a new game that's proven popular with young Tibetans during their recent New Year celebrations (a few weeks later than the Chinese one) - they call it 'Shoe Jintao'. [Hat tip to Stuart of Found In China for alerting me to this.]

The weekly haiku

Lying in bed late,
Cosy under the duvet,
Listening to the wind.

War on Chinglish (1)

In a word...... NO!!!

I'm not sure when the last time I used the phrase "in a word" was. See if you can find it anywhere on my blogs. I doubt it. I think I can get by from one year to the next without saying it, and I really don't think I've ever written it.

But in China it is ubiquitous. You will never - NEVER - read a piece of English (more than a few sentences long) written by a native Chinese speaker that does not include "in a word" at least once.

It's part of the wider vice of being addicted to conjunctions. The Chinese seem to be taught that every sentence should begin with a conjunction, and so they grope around desperately for one, regardless of how inappropriate or unnecessary it may be (another of my pet peeves is the use of adversatives where no contrast or inconsistency is in fact present). And "in a word", they have been told, is a fine way - the best, the only, the indispensable way - to introduce a summary or conclusion. No matter how long.

Now, I don't pedantically insist that you should only use "in a word" when you are going to sum up your view in a single word; although I do rather favour that approach (if you're going to use the dratted phrase at all). However, I do think you should limit yourself to no more than one very pithy phrase. Long sentences hanging on "in a word" just don't seem right. Whole paragraphs - definitely not.

It would be far better to drop this irritating tag altogether. Native speakers very rarely use it. Littering your writing with "in a word"s is definitively Chinglish.

Why does Chinglish matter? people often ask me. Some linguists suggest that we should tolerate and even respect and cherish such national idiosyncracies in the use of English.

And I acknowledge that most of the errors I aim to catalogue in this new series of mine, the quirks of language that are characteristically Chinglish, are relatively trivial and do not usually obscure one's intended meaning.

However, Chinglish errors are, I think, far more numerous and more hardwired than most of the 'first language interference' problems exhibited by non-native English speakers from other countries. And it's not only 'first language interference'. A lot of it is down to bad teaching (and decades of isolationism, and a nationalist arrogance that insists China can produce all its own English teaching materials and dictionaries rather than have to purchase them overseas).

These errors matter, I feel, because they are so frequent (and often so downright weird) that they are constantly distracting to other English speakers you may be trying to communicate with, constantly reminding them that you are not a native speaker, constantly breaking their concentration, constantly undermining their confidence in your communicative ability. The psychological impact of Chinglish, I fear, in diminishing respect and confidence, is far greater than its practical impact in compromising clarity or intelligibility.

In a word, DON'T.

The TV Listings (3)

I seem to have been posting quite a lot of YouTube recently, and it is now six months since I last did a 'TV listings' roundup, so I think we're about due again. More than due! This threatens to become a bit cumbersome. I think I'd better aim to update every three months from now on.

The Comedy/Movie Channel

Once Upon A Time In The West - a clip from the celebrated opening sequence, rounding off my list of the 'Greatest Film Openings'.

Total Perspective Vortex - an animated tour of the Universe, highlighting the amazing 'Deep Field' photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Brother of the more famous.... - remembering the great J.R. Hartley.

Ultimate Daily Llama - the Monty Pythons give a lecture on llamas in Spanish (also, A Man With A Tape Recorder Up His Nose).

Farewell to Barry - the beginning and end of the last-ever 'Film 98' review programme with Barry Norman, the end of an era (also, a superb performance of the theme song by Nina Simone - see below).

Maintaining one's 'essence' - a discussion of the sexual practices of Chairman Mao reminds me of General Jack D. Ripper's views on "precious bodily fluids" in Dr Strangelove.

Full of Eastern Promise - a classic 1970s TV ad for Fry's Turkish Delight (prompted by The Barstool reaching its 1,001st post!).

Beijing firework mayhem - some clips of the celebrations on this year's Chinese New Year's Eve.

A Christmas treat - the classic 'André Preview' skit from The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show where Eric tries to play Grieg's Piano Concerto (with possibly the best punchline in history).

Guy Ritchie interview - one of the great Adam & Joe skits featuring stuffed toy animals.

More Adam & Joe highlights - links to classic spoofs of Saving Private Ryan, Trainspotting, The Crystal Maze, and The Jerry Springer Show (embedding disabled, unfortunately).

Return of The Shat - William Shatner gives an idiosyncratic rendition of Elton John's Rocket Man (I think I have to file this under 'Comedy' rather than 'Music'!).

The birth of a nation - a Chinese propaganda film from the 1960s re-enacting Mao's proclamation of the People's Republic from Tiananmen Gate on October 1st 1949.

Thunderbirds are GO! - the launch of the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft.

Fingerlickin' good! - "Redneck Art": a rather fine finger-painting of a deer... executed on the tablecloth of a diner with rib sauce.

The Music Channel

Nighthawks at the Diner - Tom Waits sings Eggs and Sausage (in a diner!).

Ride On - a tribute to the late Bon Scott of AC/DC, featuring this great slow blues tune.

His Father Never Liked Me Anyway - Eleanor McEvoy sings a gender-inverted version of Gerry Rafferty's great breakup song on an Irish radio show.

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free - Nina Simone rips it up at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival.

Happy Birthday, Bob - I commemorate Bob Marley's birthday on February 6th with live performance videos of Stir It Up and Redemption Song.

See What The Boys In The Backroom Will Have - Marlene Dietrich as the archetypal Western saloon singer 'Frenchy' in Destry Rides Again.

It's Only A Paper Moon - no Ella, alas, but Natalie Cole does a decent enough job of it.

Messin' with my head - one night, all the music in the Pool Bar had speeded-up lyrics: it sounded like this (Bohemian Rhapsody "on helium").

Bright College Days - recent reminiscences about my student days prompt me to post this Tom Lehrer classic.

I Wish I knew How It would Feel To Be Free - pianist Billy Taylor plays his own composition, famous as the theme music to the BBC's long-running 'Film' review series (see also the storming performance of this song by Nina Simone, above).

Heart of Glass - my 'Fantasy Girlfriend' of the month is Debbie Harry, so of course I have to include her classic hit.

The best of bah-humbuggery - a Tom Lehrer double-header: A Christmas Carol and Hanukkah in Santa Monica.

Getting soppy at Christmas - Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl (the original video; also links to a recent TV performance with Katie Melua, and a 20th anniversary concert in Dublin with Sinead O'Connor); how could I resist?

You Made Me Love You - Helen Forrest with the Harry James Orchestra (also, links to other Harry James classics: I've Heard That Song Before, It's Been A Long, Long Time, and Trumpet Blues & Cantabile).

What Happened To You? - the great theme song from 70s sitcom Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? (the leading character Terry Collier being the latest of my 'Unsuitable Role Models'). [This post was subsequently reprinted here, in Froogville's Review of the Year series.]

I Ain't Drunk (I'm Just Drinking) - Beijing's beloved laowai blues crew Black Cat Bone in action (marking the launch of their first CD, Drinkin' Alone).

Jamming on a rooftop - American folkster Abby Washburn and her Sparrow Quartet interviewed on a hutong roof terrace during their Beijing visit a few years ago, and playing some tunes with local Mongolian band Hanggai.

Baby, Can I Hold You? - the wonderful Tracy Chapman.

Happy Birthday To Me! - Who's The Lucky Birthday Boy? by John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett, and Happy Birthday, Mr President by Marilyn Monroe.

Highway To Hell - the ultimate drunken singalong number from AC/DC.

Wo Men Ai Ni, Avril! - since Avril Lavigne is playing a gig in Beijing, I post a link to her singing her hit Girlfriend with Chinese lyrics.

That's what Brian Boitano'd do! - What Would Brian Boitano Do? from the South Park movie; a link to the video of the song by Matt and Trey's band, DVDA; and, best of all, a live video of a DVDA performance intercut with footage of Boitano skating.

Friday I'm In Love - possibly my favourite song by The Cure.

Belle of Belfast City - the irresistibly catchy Northern Irish nursery rhyme performed by Kirsty MacColl (no video, unfortunately); also a great but incomplete rendition by The Clancy Brothers, and a link to a version by The Dubliners.

Am I just an 'Inbetweenie'?? - Inbetweenies, performed by The Goodies, accompanied by a montage of mini-clips of Graeme Garden, the 'boffin' member of the trio in the classic 1970s BBC comedy show.

The Sports Channel

"Coast to coast" - George Weah's famous end-to-end goal for AC Milan against Verona.

Beijing Marathon - I am overcome with guilt at having failed to get in shape to take part in this year's race, so I post a brief clip of it.

Tom Waits heaven

This is so important, I had to cross-post it from The Barstool.



There is a lot of Tom Waits posted on YouTube, but in digging out that version of Eggs and Sausage (a wonderful unacompanied rap, rasped out at the counter of a near-deserted diner) I posted last week, I happened upon the truly wonderful kittykittylamb. She (?) has posted dozens of extended Tom Waits clips, including the whole of the TV concert programme, Soundstage, for which the Eggs and Sausage performance was just an introduction: 40 or 50 minutes of great music (in five segments) from Waits in his mid-70s husky balladeer phase. And there's much, much more besides. Do go and check out kitty's profile page for the full list.

This discovery could keep me happily occupied for weeks.

New Picks of the Month

In these meltdowny circumstances, it seems appropriate to revisit a favourite China joke that I first posted on Froogville back in the summer of '07.

On The Barstool, following on from last month's pick In defence of my 'love life', I think I'd better cite the related post from January '07, In defence of bars.

Bring it on!

Mr Bacon v. Monsieur Tofu

It's amazing the things they have on Amazon, isn't it? Why didn't they have action figures like this when I was a boy??

Calculation

On Saturday afternoon I received this text message:

"We need you to dub one sentence. How much?"

I could immediately foresee that this was not a negotiation I was readily going to be able to conduct by means of SMS. I could also foresee that it was not really a negotiation there was any point in getting involved in at all.

Oh, I might have said: "Well, how long is the sentence? Does it have any difficult words in it? Is it a tongue-twister?"

Or: "Do I have to do this in character? Do I have to try to match this to someone else's voice? Do I have to try and sync it with a film? Do I have to try and sync it with an actor in a film?"

Or: "Which studio are you going to use? Are you going to pay my taxi fares?"

Or, more pointedly: "How soon is your deadline? How wealthy is your client?"

But I really didn't see any point in asking any of that. This was almost certainly going to be a straightforward voice-only gig, and if these guys had any sense at all, they would have contacted one of the regular studios to ask when I could fit it in alongside other work, and then I probably would have done it for FREE. But when they start trying to phone people over the weekend, and asking them to quote a fee..... well, it's obvious that these people are complete idiots; the sort of people who won't be prepared to offer any kind of reasonable price; and probably couldn't be relied upon even to pay what they'd promised (if it was a film job, I wouldn't have touched it with a bargepole anyway; the Chinese film industry has an appalling reputation on payment for peripheral services).

I could have tried saying all that; but I couldn't see the point. I simply replied: 500 RMB. That's pretty much a rock-bottom rate for an hour of solo work; and it's really "not worth getting out of bed" for anything less than an hour's worth.

They never got back to me. Quelle surprise!

Now, given my current financial distress, it could be argued that I was somewhat rash not to offer them a more enticing bid. I like to think - I try to persuade myself - that I can always obtain at least 500 RMB per hour for just about any work that I do, but in practice, alas, it just isn't so. I may occasionally be lucky enough to make 1,000 RMB per hour, or better; but most of the time I'm forced to accept only 300-400.

Fixing that figure of 500 RMB per hour in my head, though, does make it easier for me to turn down work - especially work like this, that I don't really like the sound of anyway. My justification for such choosiness would ostensibly be the opportunity cost of other jobs missed; why should I accept an hour's graft at less than 500 per hour when I have so many chances to earn 500 or more per hour, and might have to pass up one of those. But, as I said, particularly just at the moment, those well-paid jobs are very few and far between.

It would be truer to say that this is the minimum value I set on myself, this is what I feel my time is worth to me. I'd rather do nothing than work for less than 500 RMB per hour. I'd rather endure poverty than sacrifice my leisure for such paltry sums.

So, there you have it. Any offers of work above the 500 RMB per hour threshold will be most gratefully considered.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for February

Another fairly busy month, any slight downturn in output being attributable to the month being 10% shorter than most others rather than to any curtailing of my verbal incontinence. Must try harder to cut down, must try harder to cut down.

On Froogville there were 48 posts and nearly 17,000 words.

On Barstool Blues there were 38 posts and around 7,500 words.

The Statcounter traffic analysis can be horribly, tantalisingly absorbing. Froogville has apparently attracted its first visitors from Brazil and Belgium this past month, while The Barstool has seen somebody stop by from Egypt! Even more intriguingly, The Barstool now supposedly has as many readers in the Philippines as in the UK (welcome, my Pinoy friends; please leave a comment sometime).

And in what I think must have been a new daily record, the Monday spike on Froogville last week was 60 'unique visitors' - still tiny in the grand scheme of bloggery, but about 55 more than I ever really expected to achieve. I think I may have started to attract a bit more attention within China recently because over Christmas (in an idle, drunken moment that I subsequently pretty much forgot about) I enrolled on Chinalyst. I may live to regret that.....

And finally...... thanks once again to JES for giving me a Superior Scribbler Award. (I almost said 'us' - not a royal 'we', but thinking and speaking with the dual persona of my two blogs! That way schizophrenia lies!!)

Bon mot for the week

"I cling to my youthful idealism because it's about all of my youth that I have left."

Froog

Of course, like my hair, it's starting to wear a little thin these days - but at least I'm not in comb-over territory yet. Is there some kind of Minoxidil for the ideals, do you suppose?

Boy, this metaphor got out of hand quickly, didn't it?

The rule of threes

One of my oldest friends here has recently become ensnared by a particularly domineering girlfriend: she moved in with him only days after their relationship had been consummated, immediately imposed a complete veto on his former social life, and started demanding marriage. It is the Chinese way, I gather. The slight problem here is that he still has a wife back in the UK, and - rather like the protagonist in Ha Jin's novel Waiting - he has been trying (half-heartedly) and failing to go through with a divorce for quite some time now.

I have suggested to him that the better policy would be to find an additional girlfriend. The logic of my advice is summed up in this famous limerick.

There once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at one time.
When asked, "Why the third?"
He replied, "One's absurd!
And bigamy, sir, is a crime."

William Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901)

A noble lineage

I have never been much of a one for adopting a sense of institutional identity or institutional pride. My magnificent indifference to the competitive fortunes of my 'house' inspired a spiteful incomprehension in my housemaster throughout my school years. And although I mostly enjoyed my time at school and am grateful for the education I got there, I never felt the remotest sentimental attachment to the place: I have scarcely given it a second thought since I left, and I find the obsessive nostalgia of "old boys" associations quite baffling.

However, the devil is in the exceptions, as they say.

I do feel rather different about my old Oxford college, Corpus Christi. I don't have any love for it as an academic institution: I didn't like my tutors, was bored out of my wits by the work they gave me, and did almost nothing to advance my education while I was there - in that regard, it was four years of utmost misery. I never felt any sense of connectedness to the centuries of scholarship that had preceded me: some people get all dewy-eyed and mystically inspired about that sort of thing, but not me.

No, my sentiment for Corpus derives from the people I knew there, and the sense of 'home' that grew up around it. Far more than any of the other colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, I think, Corpus has a real feeling of community, even of 'family' about it. It's still one of the smallest colleges, if not the smallest. It's expanded quite a bit in the last couple of decades, but back in my day I think there were fewer than 200 undergraduates altogether, and about two-thirds of them lived in the main college buildings. So, everybody knew everybody. And I mean everybody. It was a little too claustrophobic for me, to be honest; most of my social activities were based on other colleges or university-wide organisations. But most of the friends I made elsewhere were people I'd met through friends in Corpus. And just about all of my very closest friends were from Corpus. It could scarcely be otherwise.

There was a 'band of brothers' bonding process in coming through those fraught few years together; so much shared suffering, and shared joy (all those parties!); going through the business of growing up together, emotionally as much as intellectually. The friends I made then are especially close to my heart, and I am still in regular touch with most of them twenty years on; they are about the only people whose doors are always open to me when I make my occasional trips back to the UK.

And so, I think, it is not so much with Corpus that I identify as with Corpuscles (as we quaintly term ourselves). Though my more distant predecessors are, for me, lost in a fog of historical irrelevance, the generations immediately before me, and those that have come after, I do feel a certain sense of kinship with, a recognition that we have shared a really exceptional, perhaps unique experience of university life.

I was therefore very gratified to learn earlier this week that my alma mater had just won the annual grand final of the long-running TV quiz show University Challenge. Coincidentally enough, the screening of their victory over Manchester University (and hence the public confirmation of their title as champions) happened on the very same day as my own recent bout of quiz recidivism. It seems to have been a particularly hard-fought encounter. We were behind for most of the match, at times quite badly behind; but we relentlessly reeled Manchester in, finally overhauled them near the end, and finished with quite a comfortable lead - having scored over 100 points on the bounce in the last five minutes or so. Jia you, Corpus!

The decisive factor in our victory, I gather, was our captain, a young lady called Gail Trimble - like me, a Classicist, although a considerably more earnest one, I think. It is being suggested that she is one of the most formidable competitors ever to appear on the show (in recent years, at least....): she consistently contributed at least twice as many points as her three team mates combined in each of the five rounds of the competition, and was extremely quick-on-the-draw for the crucial buzzer questions. Under that kind of pressure, almost anyone will have their mind go completely blank once in a while, or will at least occasionally pause or stumble over an answer (hesitations which, on the buzzer questions, can be ruthlessly penalised by the intimidating quizmaster, Jeremy Paxman); but in all the clips I've watched this week, Ms Trimble never seems to miss a beat - quite remarkable.

I am, of course, filled with a renewed sense of my own inadequacy in competitions of this sort, and am doubting whether I will ever dare to take part in a quiz again. Quizzers everywhere - British quizzers, anyway - are probably feeling the same.