User Comments - Tal

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Inner Mongolia

Ha ha! I had a feeling it would! Cheers!

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Inner Mongolia

Regarding 成吉思汗 (Genghis Khan) I think it's rather interesting that it's not only Jenny who can claim him as an ancestor.

When I first came to China I was a little puzzled and surprised to find how emphatically and enthusiastically my teenage students claimed the Great Khan as a Chinese hero. When we learn about him in the west, we don't necessarily think of him as Chinese do we? (We also I think associate him with merciless cruelty in war, I vividly recall how in a recent BBC docu-drama he was shown laying siege to Beijing, afterwards leaving the streets 'slippery with blood for many days'.)

Anyway back then I would say to my kids: Why do you call him a Chinese hero? He was from Mongolia wasn't he?

'Oh, Mongolia is part of China,' they'd reply. I wasn't convinced at first, but these days I just go with the flow. Taiwan? Part of China. Tibet? Part of China. Err... that's it!

PS. I'd definitely try that fermented mare's milk, but I somehow doubt that it would remind me of Bailey's Irish Cream!

Posted on: Personal Ad

"why do families want chinese female to marry foreigners?"

Hmm... do they want that? Speaking solely from personal experience, it seems to me that a large proportion of Chinese people do not approve of mixed marriages. My (Chinese) wife and I do not live in a bustling (and perhaps relatively cosmopolitan) city like Shanghai or Beijing though. In fact we live in 'the sticks', by which I mean out in the provinces, and it seems to me that the prevailing mindset of local people is somewhat 老封建  and backward. As a caucasian foreigner, I really stand out of course. I work as a teacher, and when I first got married was quite open about having married a Chinese. But I am now so bored (and ever so slightly irritated) by the almost constant expression of amazement that I see on the faces of students when they learn this, that I tend these days to just not mention it, to just be 'matter-of-fact' about it.

Questions that I get asked many many times: How did you meet? (In one's home country, married to a person of one's own race, this would just be a simple social enquiry, yes? Yet now, to me, it almost always seems to be just another way of expressing amazement and occasionally disapproval.) How did you get your wife's family to accept you? (Actually I don't get this so often now that I am no longer 'up-front' about it.) And of course my favorite: How do you deal with the cultural differences? Where to even begin with that one? Endless reflections on the question's meaning(s) and the questioner's mindset and motivation will just come back to one again and again, usually when tossing and turning at 3 or 4 in the morning.

"why do they want to leave the country when foreigners want to live in China ?" There could be several reasonable answers to this. One is likely to be that marriage to a foreigner offers the chance to 'escape' to an exciting new land of greater affluence and better healthcare, the chance to be envied by one's peers, the feeling of having 'made it'. Many foreigners (I guess) enjoy living in China because it just is so very very different from what they're used to. The unfamiliarity, the feeling of 'dislocation', the constant challenge of language and culture is exciting and rejuvenating and delightfully strange. Of course the natives will not feel like this, to them it's just mundane and boring and lacking in excitement and color. Many Chinese girls (I guess again) would jump at the chance to leave all that lovely culture behind and exchange it for the heady delights of the west.

Another reason (again this comes solely from my own personal experience) is that in the west a mixed-race couple can walk down almost any street or around any supermarket without being stared at and/or openly commented on, wheras a mixed-race couple living in China must (perhaps) daily deal with their identity as a mixed-race couple, instead of simply being able to forget it and get on with life.

Posted on: Personal Ad

@bluealvarez

you're most welcome, so glad you appreciated it! I hasten to add by the way that I did not mean that large-eyed ladies are not attractive! A female face with genuine, real-looking large eyes is undeniably beautiful. It's just the standard manga (?) anime (?) style of ludicrous freaky looking large eyed cartoon girls that I really don't warm to. Every single female character in that genre looks the same to me, yet the impression I get from talking to Chinese boys about female beauty is that this look is the ideal!

Posted on: Personal Ad

Ha ha! That's sinfully interesting, (and undeniably amusing.)

Personally I can't believe her eyes really look like that, I would say she could add an adept hand with Photoshop to her list of personal qualities.

对了, what is it with the (Oriental) obsession with big eyed females. I will never never get it I'm afraid, (even though innumerable tongue-tied male students have tried to explain to me that big-eyed girls just look cute and are more attractive.)

Perhaps many people who post these kinds of ads are in fact just 'attention junkies'. There's an unmistakable trend perhaps in this era of rapid web interaction and online social networking for people to just get continually shallower and sillier.

Posted on: Personal Ad

On the  subject of gay China, I thought perhaps this interesting piece from yesterday's Guardian might be of interest.

那么多鱼在海域 - that's neat baba! (And I also dig the more native version Pete.) I'm going to learn both of these, I sometimes introduce students to English idioms by asking them to guess the meaning of: plenty more fish in the sea.

Changye, the tubby pooch in my pic is quite put out by your reaction and rather smitten by the face of your chubby! He tells me he's planning to compose a message of doggy adoration just as soon as he's feeling better!

Posted on: Personal Ad

I'm really enjoying this lesson, great work guys!

I'm still digesting the lesson, (must stop eating too much rice at lunchtime,) but right now have to say:

Changye! I've been wondering where your impressive knowledge of Chinese came from, and now I know it's your chubby dog all the time! Well perhaps the candidate in the image below might have a chance of satisfying your lonely hound!

Posted on: Taking it all off

I think you don't need a special verb for that, a person would just say 我化妆 (wǒ huà zhuāng). Correct me if I'm wrong, ladies!

Posted on: Taking it all off

Oh, I get it! 我真是个二百五！

Love the dog in the coat btw!

Cheers mate!

PS. And I love the Monkey Magic group too! I'm joining!

Posted on: Taking it all off

Hey bababardwan, you're a star! That's exactly what I meant, but that little chain icon is 'grayed out' and unusable in my Firefox browser, is that normal? I've often noticed this to be the case, sometimes it's usable, sometimes not. Hmm, I'll check it in IE.

PS. No, it's gray in IE too. 怎么办？