Category > mandarin

Variations on a Theme: I Want Your Love

1950s Chinese actress, singer and superstar Grace Chang (葛兰 Ge Lan) really deserves a post that is devoted entirely to herself, but I’m going to start here with just one song. Recently, I spent a rather enjoyable morning watching Grace Chang clips on YouTube. My favourite is 我要你的爱 I Want Your Love. It’s a Chinese [...]

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我想谈说种种纯洁的事情 I wish to speak of all things pure

I keep receiving very kind comments on how much readers enjoyed this blog, so although I no longer live in Beijing, I’ll update it here and there with interesting things that I come across. As you can imagine, there is actually a huge backlog of things that I never posted on this blog. About a [...]

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Graffiti: Love is Lonely

Every day, I see this little message scribbled on the wall between the two elevators in my building. It is full of sage advice on love. Translation: 很多人 Many people 因为寂寞错爱了一个人 because they are lonely, love someone for the wrong reasons 但更多人 But even more people 因为错爱一个人 because they love the wrong person 而寂寞一生! are [...]

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The love child of English and Chinese

As seen in 帽儿胡同 Mao’er Hutong, near 南锣鼓巷 Nanluoguxiang. This sign for a bookstore/tea house represents what I like best about Beijing’s–and China as a whole–burgeoning interest in design and language, the way that it cleverly takes both Chinese characters and the English alphabet to create something new. In the Traditional character for book 書 [...]

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two chinese characters teach you how to say 加油!

While I was doing research for this post for CNReviews, I came across this rather funny video on how to say 加油, which is what all the cool kids say when they are cheering at the Olympics–and anywhere else that people need a little bit of encouragement.   For instance, I live opposite an elementary [...]

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