The air in Beijing is so laden with particulates that it reflects light; a lot of my pictures came out weirdly overexposed like this. I still LOVE to capture that moment where everyone looks up from their game of courtyard mah-jongg (or whatever) and notices me.
The proprietor of this street stall was nowhere in sight. I would probably give up and head home too if it was 5:00pm and I was down to my last two cancerous lymph nodes floating in black bile.
If anyone is literate in Chinese and has the motivation to provide a translation for this billboard I would be much obliged. (Edit: thanks,
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
foreverxfu: it says, "Beautiful sofa, real cows.") (Second Edit: Intrigue! According to yeelongson, the "Real cow" characters can also mean "So great.")
Travel tip: when checking in at your hotel, always grab a business card from the front desk and stick it in your wallet. Then you can go out and get lost as much as you want and just give the business card to a taxi or rickshaw driver when you're ready to go back. Another tip: in big cities, hotel lobbies are an excellent place to find not-quite-public bathrooms when you need them. Stride in confidently and no one will give you any shit.
When I came back to Hong Kong for my Big Job this June, I stayed in a touristy hotel (courtesy of the client) during the shoot. At the hotel breakfast one morning, I noticed a Chinese woman stabbing a mini-croissant between a fork and a knife in either hand and awkwardly lifting the whole apparatus up to her mouth (ie, uncomfortable with non-chopstick eating). Horrifyingly, the woman looked up and saw me right as I emitted an uncontrollable snort of laughter. I finally atoned for this sin of dissin' in Beijing, when I tried to eat at this banquet-type restaurant and commited all sorts of errors of etiquette.
In Western restaurants, you order the broiled fish, your dining partner orders the steak, and you eat from your plate with a fork and knife while jealously looking across the table going, "Damn, I should have ordered the steak." In China, you order family-style, then everyone gets a little bowl of rice and you use chopsticks to pick morsels of food out of the common plates, transfer them onto your bowl of rice, and thence onward to your mouth (as grains of rice stick to every morsel, thereby carbohydratifying each bite). The Chinese method is vastly superior unless you're an idiot like me trying to dine out alone, in which case you end up at a huge table with a trough-sized bowl of Ma Po Tofu sitting in front of you, a searing-hot ceramic bowl of rice which you try to pick up and drop with a clatter back down on to the table, then the waitress tries to rush to your aid and doesn't realize that you're trying to upend the bowl of rice on to your tiny plate, then you have to go up and walk to the refrigerator at the back of the restaurant to point at the drink you want and all they have is beer (no), chocolate milk (no), and cardboard cartons of strawberry cordial (well, OK, I guess), then you're transferring pieces of tofu and rice to this plate and that bowl and the tablecloth and your lap, and swilling cordial and turning pages of your book and sending text messages and taking photographs while all around you families are trying to enjoy a nice banquet and looking over at you like who the hell is this provincial idiot who doesn't know basic table manners?
On the plus side, this restaurant made their own tofu in-house. Ohh, divine curdy firmness, how I love thee in thy Ma Po sauce. #1 Chinese dish, hands down.
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July 25 2007, 15:42:41 UTC 4 years ago
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Anonymous
July 25 2007, 15:44:09 UTC 4 years ago
China?
So..uhhdid you enjoy your trip in Beijing?
it sounds like it is hard for a foreigner to understand the Chinese style of eating, travelling..
do you like Hong Kong?
July 25 2007, 15:56:25 UTC 4 years ago
Re: China?
I LOVED IT. My favorite thing about China is that there's a Chinese style of doing everything, from eating dinner to communicating with one another to, say, giving hand signals for different numbers; every day is an opportunity for me to learn something new.And Hong Kong? There is nothing not to like (except yue dan)!
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July 25 2007, 15:45:41 UTC 4 years ago
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July 25 2007, 15:51:10 UTC 4 years ago
July 25 2007, 15:56:44 UTC 4 years ago
billboard message
the billboard is selling furniture (sofa seat) and the cow's meaning So Great ! 真牛 is meaning So Great ! i think you don't suppose it is selling furniture , right ?here got their blog : you can take a look -
http://blog.focus.cn/group/blogforum_de
Anonymous
July 25 2007, 16:08:48 UTC 4 years ago
Re: billboard message
Oh, haha! Thanks for the explanation. The literal meaning of 真牛 is "real cow" and being an ignorant Hong Kong bumpkin I had no idea about this meaning.4 years ago
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July 25 2007, 16:04:15 UTC 4 years ago
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July 25 2007, 15:58:01 UTC 4 years ago
Happy cows come from China"
i couldn't resist
July 25 2007, 15:59:02 UTC 4 years ago
About Jasmine Vitasoy
Can you give me any courage in trying this new taste Vitasoy milk... i can never imagine the taste mixed with milk and jasmine...July 25 2007, 16:00:43 UTC 4 years ago
Re: About Jasmine Vitasoy
It's great- it tastes like milky jasmine tea. Just make sure the 7-11 you're buying from has a really cold refrigerator; if it doesn't, take it home to your own fridge before you drink it to make sure it's really cold.4 years ago
Anonymous
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July 25 2007, 16:01:17 UTC 4 years ago
"beautiful sofa,
real cows"
July 25 2007, 16:02:42 UTC 4 years ago
btw, i wanna push/hit down those damn tall camera men while i was tried to find a best view to watch the show as they are so damn tall! n they didn't move at all! next time i better go to the side way, i think thats much more better n u can see me too! HAHAHA
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the rickshaw picture makes me automatically
want to travel there,oh such wanderlust!
those white nodes appear to be soy drenched eggs, eeuuucchh.
July 25 2007, 16:25:05 UTC 4 years ago
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July 25 2007, 16:45:13 UTC 4 years ago
Fatal photo attraction
Yet more Chinese inexplicably escaped the famed Sewellian stalk 'n' kill instinct. You must be slipping in your old age.That payphone fits right in with the ending of your last video clip, or was the designer trying to evoke the warm, welcoming feeling of giant juggz? Whether ass or juggz, nobody likes them to be orange, which is bad news for Jay Manuel's dating life.
The furniture advertised on that billboard sounds sofa king great. Hey, better that than my first impression, "I'm fucking a [future] sofa. Check out my O face." And to think such humor usually doesn't translate.
What an interesting selection of beverages that restaurant had. Beer for the men, milk for the children, and cordial for the ladies. I can't imagine which sex is supposed to get drunk first with that arrangement.
July 25 2007, 16:54:10 UTC 4 years ago
(rather rare that i attend the banquets.)
July 25 2007, 16:56:55 UTC 4 years ago
regarding the billboard translation
the literally meaning is "beautiful sofa, real cow" but what it really means should be "THE NAME OF THE BRAND" (1st two characters SOFA (3rd and the 4th character), REAL LEATHER . " The meaning of COW in the statement should mean leather. Make more sense right?July 25 2007, 17:04:35 UTC 4 years ago
Re: regarding the billboard translation
But do you know about the Mandarin slang where (apparently) cow = great? Check out the above commenters.Chinese writing is so nuanced! I can't wait to read more commenters' thoughts about the exact meaning of this billboard.
Anonymous
July 25 2007, 17:16:18 UTC 4 years ago
tofu
luv ma por tofu 2.did u manage to finish the whole dish? any take-away?
July 25 2007, 17:33:06 UTC 4 years ago
Anonymous
July 25 2007, 21:00:12 UTC 4 years ago
July 25 2007, 17:34:39 UTC 4 years ago
(Reminds me of the Drew Carey show, now that I think about it)
July 25 2007, 17:37:58 UTC 4 years ago
July 25 2007, 18:21:35 UTC 4 years ago
doesn't it suck when the locals don't speak english?
I'd thought that you had been in HK long enough to pick up a little Chinese, but who am I to talk; I've lived in Russia for almost a year and can barely ask for the bathroom in Russian. It's much easier to live in Western Europe, where the signs are in a normal alphabet and you can force the locals out of their comfort zone to speak English, instead of the other way around. Yay obnoxious expats!July 26 2007, 06:23:58 UTC 4 years ago
Re: doesn't it suck when the locals don't speak english?
Kongers and Beijingers speak two mutually-incomprehensible languages.Anonymous
July 25 2007, 18:29:49 UTC 4 years ago
MAPO
Mapo tofu is the best ever!!!! I really miss it, you can only buy it sometimes at asian shops of here in Germany.← Ctrl← Alt
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