Chinese Culture


Yesterday was the last year of the year of the dragon. Today is the first day of the year of the snake – according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

An impression about the new years celebrations on youtube (Shanghai 2013). Crazy fireworks and noise all day long.

And here 2 videos taken in Beijing in 2008

and part 2 on

Microsoft is about to launch its search engine bing soon: http://www.bing.com/ComingSoon

I wonder why the first word which comes into my mind is “disease”. Probably it has something to do with the Chinese character for disease, “病” which is pronounced “bing”.

Of course there are more than one characters with the pronunciation “bing” in Chinese language, but I really wonder what a Chinese native speaker thinks about it.
Whatever, I am sure, “病” will be a great success story in China.

I just checked a few blogs of people I met in Beijing when I did business there and found a few nice posts:

Save your time: http://paztal.com/?p=211

More important from the same author Thai noodle soup in 5 minutes: http://paztal.com/?p=224

Yesterday, the movie about John Rabe started in China. Apparently you can already get illegal copies on the streets. I did not watch the movie yet but chatted about it with a Chinese friend who watched the movie already. He really wondered why John Rabe was not shown as hero, in his opinion, the movie always emphasized the few negative aspects of John Rabe (he was member of the NSDAP for example). The movie is not available in Korea yet. The director is a German, the movie is about a “good” German in the World War II, so I guess the movie will be full of political correctness. Its just a prejudice, I will keep it until I watched the movie myself.

I am curious about the reaction in Japan. I used to live together with a Japanese when I was studying in China 10 years ago. According to him, the massacre in Nanjing happened. But the Japanese army had no choice than shooting civilians because Chinese resistance was disguised as civilians. And Chinese exaggerate the number of the people killed there because Nanjing even did not have 300.000 inhabitants.

Well, after a while I really stopped discussing topics like this with him. But in Japanese history, the Nanjing massacre does not play a big role, its sometimes not even mentioned in schoolbooks. Japanese counted their own dead but somehow forgot to count the dead of the Chinese army and civilians during the war. Before they left they also destroyed lots of evidence.

Chinese New Year – Part II.

 

Beijing really gone crazy – unbelievable

 

Beijing welcomes the Year of the Rat! Enjoy this video taken in Beijng.

Today at lunch I learned very interesting thing from my chinese officemate. I heard that while having tea in China you should never put the kettel on a table in a way that the spout is pointing towards someone.

In chinese tradition it is considered as very impolite behaviour, espacially by the elderly people. Although the younger generation seems not to care about this custom any longer.

http://ks.cn.yahoo.com/question/1307020706027.html

Normally, I do not take historical sensitivities of other countries so seriously, if they have nothing to do with events related to my country and if things happened ….lets say a few hundred years ago.

Since a few years, there has been a quarrel now between China and Korea. China claimed, that a few Koran kingdoms were under Chinese control. For example according to the Chinese, theKoguryo Kingdom started as Chinese minority. Also Japan is somehow “victim” the Chinese believe, that somehow they are the origin of all culture in Asia – Japanese civilization was founded by 1000 men and women sailing to Japan in order to find the pill of immortality.

The Center of China’s Borderland history was founded to examine Chinese border regions and to clarify their historical roots and historical affiliation – which actually means to prove, that this borderland once belonged to China or was under Chinese control.

The most recent cause of rage in Korea is the fact, that this “Center of China’s Borderland History now started to examine the Qing-Dynasty after this research center reached very China-frienldy results in previous research.
Okay, I knew those facts – no problem so far.

But I was very suprised, when a friend of mine was recently mentioned in Korean television news during prime time. Prof. Cheng Chongde (http://www.iqh.net.cn/xrfc_show.asp?column_id=3174), from Renmin University and one of the most renowned experts on the Qing-Dynasty and part of the project to research Korean and Chinese history during the Qing-Dynasty.

I guess, I don’t have to mention, that this report in the Korean television station KBS was not … very complimentary for my friend.

Website of the Center of China’s Borderland history: http://chinaborderland.cass.cn/

Today is the latern feast in China, this means 15 days after Chinese New year another night with firecracker, noisy alarm systems of cars which go of.

I hope, nobody offers me yuanxiao this time, some rice balls with sweet fillings – last year, I just got too many.