About Jamie Coates

Jamie Coates is an anthropologist who works on migration and media flows between Japan and China. He has a PhD from the Australian National University, and is currently a visiting fellow at Sophia University.

Posts by Jamie Coates:

Learning to Love Chinese Christmas

Jamie Coates December 12, 2016

There is nothing like Christmas to show you the Chinese love of getting rènào 热闹. The potential to make a festival ‘hot’ (rè热) and ‘noisy’ (nào闹) is a key reason so many non-Chinese festivals are popular with young Chinese people today. Anglo-European festivals, like Christmas, have been very earnestly translated. Christmas, or Shèngdàn jié 圣诞节, literally means birth (dàn 诞) of the saint (shèng 圣). It can also mean birth of the ‘sacred‘ because of the Chinese language’s delightful ability to be interchangeable and ambiguous. Read More