Saturday, March 31, 2012

Have you ever seen a Puke bar in China?

At one of my Chinese class, one student told me a funny story.
When she was traveling in Hangzhou(杭州),  She saw a very funny sign at the front door of a bar: Puke bar.

"Does that sign means everybody get very drunk and puke in that bar? "
She went into it and asked the staff works there. It turned out that there are different poker cards for customers to play when they have some drink in that bar.
 

She asked me why?
Hehe... I guess you already figured it out. The Chinese word for poker is 扑克,and the pinyin for 扑克 is Pūkè, without the tone symbol, the spelling of which looks exactly like the English word puke. :D

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

2012—the Year of Dragon


Based on the theory of Chinese astrology, the year of 2012 is a year of water dragon.  It began on January 23, 2012 and will end on February 9, 2013. Among the Five Elements, the color of water is black. So the water dragon is also called as Black dragon. A black dragon can dive deeply into the ocean or lake to hide and wait. Your mind will be filled with all kinds of horrific, cunning, and mystery ideas when you think about it. So it is said that something unexpected may happen in this year. For someone it will be a big successful year, while for some others may be a very bad year.
Chinese people love dragon, because dragon is the symbol of being powerful, intelligent, and noble. Dragon patterns are used to decorate the emperor’s clothing, baby is named as Long ((lóng), the Chinese character for dragon) if the baby is a boy. Such as, the Chinese name of the famous action movie star Bruce Lee is ()(xiǎo)(lóng); and Jackie Chan’s Chinese name is (chéng)(lóng).
There are 12 animal icons in Chinese zodiac; dragon is the only one being alive in human’s imagination. Dragons can swim in the water, crawl on the land, and fly in the sky.  Some dragons are the kings in the sky or under the deep ocean. Some fall down to the ground and become snakes. That is why snake is just behind dragon in the sequence of the 12 zodiac icons.  Since most of the time the dragons fly in the clouds or swim in the wave, nobody can really see them very well. A person whose zodiac symbol is dragon will be considered as very independent and hard to understand or the “deep one”.
The following video shows you how to write this dragon in Chinese.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Sunday, March 4, 2012

A culinary tour in Chengdu

Happened to watch this funny and delicious TV program on travel channel today. I have lived in Chengdu rather long time. This film just reminded me lots of things and made me feel foodsick(just made this word based on homesick, hehe !) I really miss some of my friends in Chengdu and those delicious spicy food now


A culinary tour in chengdu

Some pictures about Chengdu

Home cooked meal

Andrew won't eat walnuts