Anyone who has done any sort of direct translation knows how difficult it is. You may understand the article, story, whatever that is written in your second language, but portraying the ideas accurately in English is pretty difficult. This becomes doubly hard if you are translating from English into your second language (essentially impossible for me).
Phrasing matters. Sometimes even individual word choice is even more important. I was reminded of this when reading about the recent incidents in Tibet (my site is blocked in china anyway...). When reporting in English, the Chinese government talks about the "Dalai clique" that supposedly fueled the riots. However, in Chinese, the government talks about the "达赖集团." The second word, ji tuan, in most cases I would translate as "group." It doesn't have the negative (or 12 year old girl) connotation that clique has. Why translate it as clique? The CCP does a good job of portraying the Dalai Lama in a negative light within its borders, but I personally think that's a lost cause on the international stage. Most who read English reports already think DL is a pretty good guy, and condescending words by the Chinese government are the last things that are going to change such opinions. (Zi suggested that a clique sounds smaller - and more ridiculous. this definitely could have been the reason behind the word choice, but i still think it's a bad idea).
Furthermore, the Chinese government has a history of shooting itself in the foot with bad word choice. The word 宣传 can mean a lot of different things depending upon the context - publicity, public relations, or propaganda. For some reason, for many years, this was always translated as "propaganda." So China had a Propaganda Department (or ministry or something - i'm not sure of the full name). And most Chinese would not realize that the word "propaganda" has a bad connotation. It's nothing like shooting yourself in the foot before you start...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
中国的交通经历 Transportation in China
You know, it really doesn't feel like i'm riding the subway in Beijing unless i am literally packed liked sardines against lots of Chinese people to the point where I can't lift my hand up to the read the newspaper its holding let alone grab a handlebar. Otherwise I could be in, you know, a city with a few million less people. But actually, I've grown accustomed to rush hour traffic on the subway, as I commute literally across the city at rush hour twice a week if not more. And it's great to have a cheap, convenient, if not luxurious public transportation system that can take me anywhere I want to go. Chinese people don't believe me when I tell them that the public transportation system in the US sucks. And it does.
The point of this entry is actually to tell you my transportation stories from my travels. Traveling around the country is also cheap (minus the two plane tickets) and convenient, though definitely not luxurious either. I'm just thankful that I left Beijing and Hunan before unusually cold, snowy, and icy weather left hundreds of thousands stranded, waiting for trains (800,000 alone in Guangzhou). Camille and I did miss out on going to two places due to icy roads - Shaoshan, Mao's hometown (we found out that every long distance highway out of Changsha was iced over and not passable in the cab ride *back* from the bus station. we really should have guessed beforehand as every road near her house was in a similar state) and the Dragon Bone Rice Terraces in Guangxi. Otherwise we were pretty lucky.
Our first leg was an uneventful though freezing overnight train from Changsha to Guilin with two of my students . We were just thankful not to sleep through our stop, which came at 4am. Around Guilin, we took a number of buses, which were supposedly "fast" and "direct" but ended up stopping every 2 minutes or so along the way to pick up people on the side of the road until there was not a single place to stand, let alone sit, on the bus. After a bus ride to Nanning, we took our most interesting train ride, to Ningming, a small random town near the Vietnam border that we assumed would be warm (cuz, you know, it was south of everywhere else we had been to) but ended up being just as cold. There were no seats left when we bought tickets, and it was only a 3-4 hour ride so we bought standing room tickets. Apparently half the train is standing room, and there are cars with a long bench lining each side of the car. If you get there early, you get a seat. Otherwise you stand with a hundred other people. We found a relatively nice standing spot in a small space in between cars that looked like it might have been someone's office until passengers had taken a part the desk to sit on the drawers. And we actually ended up with seats on the desk after a PLA soldier came in and efficiently organized the space. It actually ended up being a nice ride, as we talked to a high school student and a university student who ended up helping us find a hotel when we arrived in Ningming.
Our train rides back and forth from Beihai were, in comparison, pretty luxurious (real seats!). As was our flight to Kunming. In Yunnan, however, you have to travel by bus because there are no trains due to the mountainous terrain. Our many bus trips included 3 sleeper buses, which is an experience in itself. Sleeping on a train is not so bad, but on a bus? Our trip from Dali to Xishuangbanna was not on the worst paved roads in Yunnan. However, that is only evident once you take other bus trips in Xishuangbanna or hear about others' experiences. There are some pretty bad roads in Yunnan, and trying to sleep while you are constantly jolted back and forth and up and down is an interesting experience. For a while, I gripped the side of my bed in an attempt to keep my body from going airborne to little avail. At least on that trip we had our own beds (for the most part). On the trip from Kunming to Lijiang, even though our tickets said otherwise, our group of three (Zi, Camille, and I) was shepherded to the back of the bus where there were 5 beds with no separation between them. A Chinese family (mom, dad, little kid) was occupying two of them, and we were given the other three. It's nothing like sleeping with complete strangers, especially when said little kid decides that 4:30am is a great time to have a conversation.
My flight back to Beijing from Kunming was also a nice change. I had actually hoped to buy train tickets, but nearly all trains out of Kunming for the next ten days (they begin selling tickets 10 days in advance) were sold out (Kunming is the end of the rail line so there aren't many trains leaving or going there, and it takes at least one day to get anywhere near the east coast of china from yunnan by train) - the one downside of China's convenient transport system is that it is often extremely difficult to get tickets during the Spring Festival season.
The point of this entry is actually to tell you my transportation stories from my travels. Traveling around the country is also cheap (minus the two plane tickets) and convenient, though definitely not luxurious either. I'm just thankful that I left Beijing and Hunan before unusually cold, snowy, and icy weather left hundreds of thousands stranded, waiting for trains (800,000 alone in Guangzhou). Camille and I did miss out on going to two places due to icy roads - Shaoshan, Mao's hometown (we found out that every long distance highway out of Changsha was iced over and not passable in the cab ride *back* from the bus station. we really should have guessed beforehand as every road near her house was in a similar state) and the Dragon Bone Rice Terraces in Guangxi. Otherwise we were pretty lucky.
Our first leg was an uneventful though freezing overnight train from Changsha to Guilin with two of my students . We were just thankful not to sleep through our stop, which came at 4am. Around Guilin, we took a number of buses, which were supposedly "fast" and "direct" but ended up stopping every 2 minutes or so along the way to pick up people on the side of the road until there was not a single place to stand, let alone sit, on the bus. After a bus ride to Nanning, we took our most interesting train ride, to Ningming, a small random town near the Vietnam border that we assumed would be warm (cuz, you know, it was south of everywhere else we had been to) but ended up being just as cold. There were no seats left when we bought tickets, and it was only a 3-4 hour ride so we bought standing room tickets. Apparently half the train is standing room, and there are cars with a long bench lining each side of the car. If you get there early, you get a seat. Otherwise you stand with a hundred other people. We found a relatively nice standing spot in a small space in between cars that looked like it might have been someone's office until passengers had taken a part the desk to sit on the drawers. And we actually ended up with seats on the desk after a PLA soldier came in and efficiently organized the space. It actually ended up being a nice ride, as we talked to a high school student and a university student who ended up helping us find a hotel when we arrived in Ningming.
Our train rides back and forth from Beihai were, in comparison, pretty luxurious (real seats!). As was our flight to Kunming. In Yunnan, however, you have to travel by bus because there are no trains due to the mountainous terrain. Our many bus trips included 3 sleeper buses, which is an experience in itself. Sleeping on a train is not so bad, but on a bus? Our trip from Dali to Xishuangbanna was not on the worst paved roads in Yunnan. However, that is only evident once you take other bus trips in Xishuangbanna or hear about others' experiences. There are some pretty bad roads in Yunnan, and trying to sleep while you are constantly jolted back and forth and up and down is an interesting experience. For a while, I gripped the side of my bed in an attempt to keep my body from going airborne to little avail. At least on that trip we had our own beds (for the most part). On the trip from Kunming to Lijiang, even though our tickets said otherwise, our group of three (Zi, Camille, and I) was shepherded to the back of the bus where there were 5 beds with no separation between them. A Chinese family (mom, dad, little kid) was occupying two of them, and we were given the other three. It's nothing like sleeping with complete strangers, especially when said little kid decides that 4:30am is a great time to have a conversation.
My flight back to Beijing from Kunming was also a nice change. I had actually hoped to buy train tickets, but nearly all trains out of Kunming for the next ten days (they begin selling tickets 10 days in advance) were sold out (Kunming is the end of the rail line so there aren't many trains leaving or going there, and it takes at least one day to get anywhere near the east coast of china from yunnan by train) - the one downside of China's convenient transport system is that it is often extremely difficult to get tickets during the Spring Festival season.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Beijing bicycle
In terms of many factors, I liked many of the cities I visited more than Beijing. Nanning was clean and easy to navigate around. Kunming had beautiful weather and a laid back feel, while Dali and Lijiang had clear skies and beautiful scenery. Jinghong was an interesting blend of SE Asia and China, with warm temperatures and roads lined with palm trees. Yet, I'm glad to be back in Beijing, with its familiar Mandarin (see last entry), familiar bus and subway system, familiar streets, and familiar atmosphere.
I finally did something very "Beijing" yesterday and rented a bicycle. Camille and I had rented bikes in Dali (where I ended up with a sore bottom) and in Jinghong. The latter experience was particularly entertaining, as Camille sat on the back of my bike in Chinese fashion, and I learned to balance correctly (actually not as hard as it looks). I'm sure we looked ridiculous.
Beijing may no longer be the bike capital of the world - its easy and cheap to buy a car, at least compared to Shanghai, which accounts for some of the pollution and much of the traffic. But the apeall of whizzing down the city's long avenues and tiny hutong streets has not lost its appeal. I didn't do much of the latter due to distance, but I did bike most of the way to Tiananmen Square, a long round-about way, stopping in Ritan park. I now know where the North Korean embassy is (you know, in case i ever need to go there), as well as the Russian section of town, whre signs are in cyrillic script and i saw a few guys that if they weren't in the Russian mafia or at least the smuggling business than they should have been.
I'm, again, considering buying a bike. I had thought about it when I first arrived, but the problem is (other than the high likelihood of it being stolen) that most places I go to on a daily or weekly basis are within walking distance (2 grocery stores, the one campus of my school) or too far to bike to(my school's other campus, Zi's apartment). Maybe its nostalgia for Stanford, but I still dream of seeing the city and navigating rush hour traffic on two wheels.
I finally did something very "Beijing" yesterday and rented a bicycle. Camille and I had rented bikes in Dali (where I ended up with a sore bottom) and in Jinghong. The latter experience was particularly entertaining, as Camille sat on the back of my bike in Chinese fashion, and I learned to balance correctly (actually not as hard as it looks). I'm sure we looked ridiculous.
Beijing may no longer be the bike capital of the world - its easy and cheap to buy a car, at least compared to Shanghai, which accounts for some of the pollution and much of the traffic. But the apeall of whizzing down the city's long avenues and tiny hutong streets has not lost its appeal. I didn't do much of the latter due to distance, but I did bike most of the way to Tiananmen Square, a long round-about way, stopping in Ritan park. I now know where the North Korean embassy is (you know, in case i ever need to go there), as well as the Russian section of town, whre signs are in cyrillic script and i saw a few guys that if they weren't in the Russian mafia or at least the smuggling business than they should have been.
I'm, again, considering buying a bike. I had thought about it when I first arrived, but the problem is (other than the high likelihood of it being stolen) that most places I go to on a daily or weekly basis are within walking distance (2 grocery stores, the one campus of my school) or too far to bike to(my school's other campus, Zi's apartment). Maybe its nostalgia for Stanford, but I still dream of seeing the city and navigating rush hour traffic on two wheels.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)