If you’ve gotten your paws on an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you’ve likely added lots of useful apps to it. You might, however, have overlooked the fact that there are lots of apps – many by Chinese developers – that you can use daily to help find your way around, speak the language, or get information.
I’ve chosen 10 China-relevant apps, most of which are free
I know, everyone always comments on Chinese toilets – they are on the floor, big deal. Well, most of those people who write about the Chinese facilities are men, and let’s face it, when it comes to bathrooms, men have it easy. So here is what really goes on behind the 女 door.
Are Chinese bathrooms dirty? Yes! But Chinese people have clean hands.
There is a difference in the cultural ideas of cleanliness here.
In the west, we like to have clean restroom facilities because they look nice enough to touch and diminish the fear of festering bacteria. We also have the social responsibility to wash our hands with the facility provided soap and running water or use our convenient little hand sanitizer bottles.
I’m going to be honest. I don’t really know how to write an introduction for this. You all know the story by now. H1N1 is going around and it is either a media creation or a harbinger of the apocalypse. So I would like to apologize in advance if I am further flooding the blogosphere with this topic. So I would like to warn you in advance. This is a post about the H1N1 vaccine. If you are tired of the topic please turn elsewhere. I won’t be offended.
Recently the Centre for Disease Control decided to offer the vaccine, which is in limited supply, to the graduating classes and teachers of local and private schools. As a teacher at an international school I was offered the choice to get vaccinated or not. On Wednesday I decided to get the shot for a number of reasons.
As an English teacher at a 6,000-strong middle school in the northwest of Hunan province, I come into contact with several hundred students a day. My course load puts me in front of roughly 850 students a week. In a school as cramped as mine, the students and staff are constantly breathing each other’s germs. As such, when I started to get a deep-lung cough and run a mild fever, I should have known it was only a matter of time before the surgical-mask brigade descended on our school.
Tuesday, October 26th, after about a week of classrooms full of hacking, coughing, sniffling teenagers, I walked into my first period to find 40% of my class wearing surgical masks. The next day, the school closed down for a week due to the diagnosis of swine flu in several students and one teacher. That’s right: we got the piggy.
H1N1 has become a pandemic, so much so that it’s now considered to be “the dominant flu strain in the world today,” according to an article at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The article gives a good overview of the implications and complications of swine flu and the panic surrounding it. The US government’s website about the flu provides statistical evidence that backs up the RFE/RL article. The World Health Organization has an FAQ about the pandemic.
“For we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Before I came to China I was asked a series of questions which seemed normal at the time but now seem completely laughable. They included “Is there a curfew?”, “Are there police everywhere?”, and “You’ll be careful, right?”. Clearly my friends and family had seen the tanks in Tienanmen, and heard Richard Gere’s thoughts about Tibet. So I don’t blame them for their concern, it is touching. But it is also on the complete opposite end of how my experiences in China have been so far.
Last night I was watching the season premiere of 30 Rock. In the episode Jack says that their television show has lost touch with “Real America” to which Liz responds “all of America is real” . This comment is of course ignored as most of the rest of the episode is spending trying to reconnect with the heartland of America, including a part where Jenna signs a country song for NBC’s Tennis coverage that says “Kiss my ass New York, it’s tennis night”.
Sure their shirking of major cities in favour of a rural demographic was mostly done in jest, but it really rings true to how we treat China. How many people do you hear refer to Shanghai or Tianjing as not “REAL China”, or mention some small town in Anhui or Hunan as a great example of “REAL China”?
In my short time here I have really gotten confused as to what exactly in this country is real, and what is fake. I think that I used to know what constituted “real China” but the more layers I peel off in my search to learn more about this place the more confused I am.
Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and more: all blocked in China
Bad news: that’s getting worse, and this time there’s no identifiable reason.
Today is a special day in Northern North America, Canadian Thanksgiving. While it is (not surprisingly) less of a big deal for us than it will be in about six weeks for our neighbours to the south, it is still an important day on the calendar. While I won’t be heading to mom’s for a big feast, it doesn’t mean that I’m not thankful for several things. And since this is a blog centred around life in China, I thought that I would take a minute or two to make a list of things that I would like to thank China for. I would love to here what any of you out there in Comment Land have to add to this list.
So in no particular order, I would like to give Chin a big thanks for….
The Chinese government notoriously dislikes any organisation, particularly a foreign one, communicating directly to its people – so it’s little wonder that the story of Google in China has been one of jumping through fiery hoops.
This week Google has been under attack in China over internet pornography, especially with regards its ’search suggestions’ drop-down box, [...]
I spent all of last weekend in Shanghai with my girlfriend, with two main purposes: to do some shopping for summer clothes; and to visit Shanghai Zoo, as my girlfriend has never seen any wild animals in the flesh, despite being quite expert on them from being addicted to CCTV-10’s nature shows and BBC natural [...]
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