Apolitical Art (3)

I suppose if fish swimming together are a metaphor for Communism then this is a little political...

Apolitical Art (2)

Gained in Translation (2): Fake Mart Noodle Restaurant Ad

Is it bad to eat things besides money? Is it "money" in the colloquial sense of "excellent!" such that it is a lazily-punctuated warning that to eat in general is bad? Is it, rather than a sentence containing a recommendation ("It is not good to eat not money"), a descriptive phrase ("[thing being described is] not-good-to-eat not-money"), i.e. an advertisement saying "Here we have got some not-money which is rather not-good-to-eat? The possibilities are endless, and beautiful.

Shanghai is... (10)

... revolutionary cosmetic products:

Apolitical Art

There are actually more figures in positive here than there are in negative, which is pretty mind-blowing when you're standing next to it trying to put it back together.

Rainy Season, Day 5

It's really not that bad.

Shanghai is... (9)

... this relaxed yet hypermodern skyline. I love it so much.

Shanghai is... (8)

... sometimes giving up.

Shanghai is... (7)

... different cultural connotations:

Shanghai is... (6)

... surprising and creative flavors that make you think critically about your palate:

Classic Great Taste Mexican Tomato Chicken Flavor

Cool & Refreshing Cucumber Flavor

Classic Great Taste Italian Red Meat Flavor

Authentic Crispy French Fries... in a bag.

Shanghai is... (5)

... Bait Shop life skills coming through, at IKEA:

Post-checkout wrapping station.

Shanghai is... (4)

... urinal mirrors.

Shanghai is... (3)

... this color car:

Note the skull-face decal above the plate.

SPECIAL! Beijing is...

... a Peking Duck restaurant with themed yet tasteful table settings:

SPECIAL! Beijing is...

... manufacturer error.

Rainy Season Day 3

Living in Shanghai means coming to terms with the fact that neither you nor anything you own will ever be dry again.

Umbrella not 100% effective in keeping me dry on my walk to work.

These are usually a much lighter grey.

It's customary in offices, malls, etc. to offer people entering the building a plastic bag of some kind for their umbrella, to keep some of the water off the floors.

This is apparently happening somewhere in Shanghai (not near me) right now. (Photo credit Shanghai Daily)

Did you know? Shanghai gets about 25% more rain than Seattle every year. It's also much warmer than Seattle. They're not really similar cities at all.

Gained in Translation

Introduction

I think there is something beautiful and mystifying about the linguistic liminality of Chinese ideas rendered in English vocabulary.

Some call this Engrish: a failure of East Asians to translate their language into intelligible English idiom. Presumably this results either from the attempt to translate some Chinese idiom directly (direct translation between languages generally fails no matter the case), or from an attempt by the author to realize an imagined idea of English idiom for marketing purposes (so-called “decorative English,” like the Chinese walking around with shirts that just say something absurd like “ACNE”—yes I really saw this on some girl's shirt). To a native English speaker like myself, it is often unclear from which cause Engrish originates. But I think identifying the cause is besides the point. What interests me is the result — which either due to its bringing together available English terms in the attempt to render a not-easily-translatable Chinese idea, or by demonstrating the faulty ideas that Chinese have about English idiom — strikes me as a kind of profound poetry in its evocation of ideas foreign to standard English.

Anecdotal experience suggests that Americans regard this phenomenon silly; they find that the resulting language does not conform to their expectations of what idiomatic English looks like, and then right it off. And in truth, my point here is that these translations or “misuses” do fall short of idiomatic English—but where other people see nonsense, I see an opportunity for new meaning. Rather than strain to guess what the Chinese author meant to express in their original language, or laugh at how poorly they grasp “proper” English, I look in the between-space, at the original ideas made possible by the innocent malapropisms and syntax.

We could reach for the intended Chinese meaning, and guess perhaps that it would be something like “indulge your imagination”; but I find that uninspiring. Enjoying my imagination to me denotes the act of finding real pleasure in my imagination, for instance in the interior fantasy life and commentary that is constantly running parallel to my actual lived experiences. What would allow me to best enjoy my imagination thus conceived? Perhaps the relaxation afforded by grand physical comfort, as depicted.

This is just a brand name for facial tissues and possibly not a true case of translation error, but I think it is worth playing with anyhow. There are so many possibilities here: does my mind act upon yours, and yours upon mine? Does it do this directly through argumentation, or subtly through subconscious cues? Alternatively, what if a mind acts upon itself, honing its own operations and creating new attitudes and mental outcomes in a recursive process?

Student Essays

I notice that essays by our younger students (not unlike their American counterparts) are peppered with vocabulary that is contextually wrong, largely I believe a result of students clicking the “synonyms” button in MS Word. Yet, I find these “mistakes” amusing and full of possibility. Example: one student was describing being in a music recording studio, and used the phrase “sealed in a hermetic room.” Although English idiom gives me to understand that this use of hermetic is almost certainly not what the student is actually trying to describe, I find the description nonetheless poetic. The image of this poor 14 year old locked in a NASA airtight chamber, forced to perform his music, is moving in its metaphoricity.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I feel as though encountering these “mistakes” brings me back to my childhood, where hearing something new put into my head an image that was incongruous yet, to a child, perfectly sensible.

Shanghai is... (2)

... no friends awake when I am.

Shanghai is...

... repeatedly burning your tongue because 生检 are so much hotter on the inside.

生检 (sheng1jian1) are pan-fried steamed buns with a soupy meat filling. These are a local Shanghai specialty, eaten at all meals, especially breakfast. Think New York pizza level of ubiquity, and quality, and affordability (the 4 pieces pictured cost 6¥, just under $1).

Leaving for another planet

Earlier Mira remarked on how, in these remaining few days before I leave, we are both engrossed in reading SciFi novels set in space. I had thought about this myself. In Red Mars, the characters are on a one-way trip to Mars to establish the first human settlement. The characters struggle with loneliness, homesickness, and claustrophobia as they are trapped in their project. The similarities with my own upcoming journey are not lost on me; I expect that I will often feel alone despite being surrounded with people all the time. Yet, whereas for the Martian colonists there is no reasonable expectation of ever returning home, I am not going so far that I will never return home. It is this connection, home, that gives me strength to leave in the first place. It awes me, in fact, to think that my own ancestors emigrated from Italy, into an unknown certainly more harsh than Shanghai will be for me, presumably with no expectation of ever going back. They didn't have iMessage!