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Category Archives: kid culture

Waiguo in a shoe

On knowing rub-a-dub-dub, Beijing style
Maintaining a solid barrier between dreamland and reality seems like the best way to avoid doing a Carl Jung. As Sara Corbett described his mental state in 1913:
Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. [...]

Posted 10 December 2009 † syz § EXMARaLDA transcriptions ‡ Comments (25) °

But stirring things up is kinda fun!

On the real meaning of zhēteng (折腾)

China VP Xí Jìnpíng (习近平) heated up the stinky tofu a bit the other day with some trash talk about foreigners who criticize China. Danwei has a video clip from Hong Kong, but the Beijing Sounds audio editors have been kind enough to pick out just a few pearls [...]

Posted 23 February 2009 † syz § ‡ Comments (11) °

Running unopposed

On the inability to write characters, maternal grandmothers, poop, pee

You spend most of your life cowering, trying to fit the whole, sloppy you into the veal crate of polite society, hiding the fact that your underwear is stained and you trim your nose hairs; ashamed to admit that your daughter crashed when you were teaching [...]

Posted 07 December 2008 † syz § ‡ Comments (18) °

The Humble-V says Veng Veng

On the V in Beijing Dialect and a new translation of River Snow

[ADVERTISEMENT: Don't forget the Zhonglish / Chinglish conference on Nov 17]
You probably remember hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time when he sang, “Scuze me, while I kiss this guy.”

Posted 25 October 2008 † syz § Chao Yuen Ren 赵元任 Zhào Yuánrèn § běijīnghuà ‡ Comments (29) °

Self-indulgence

Princess and Mrs. Beijing Sounds sent text as soon as the wheels touched ground at PEK last night. By 10:30, they’d entered the Beijing Sounds studios in Shàngdì (上地 in northwest Beijing) and managed to include your editor (who they’d left holed up in Minnesota) in most of the evening rituals: the book-reading, the talk [...]

Posted 27 July 2008 † syz § meta § personal ‡ Comments (9) °

Zrrr, Zrrr! What does your police car say?

More on the “sounds” front: a Beijing dialect vocalization.

Learning what animals say in languages other than your native one is always jolting. Consider, if you will, the utter silliness of Mandarin-speakers thinking dogs should say “wàng wàng” when everyone knows they say “woof woof”.
After a few illogical discussions of that sort, you eventually acknowledge that [...]

Posted 20 April 2008 † syz § beijing-r § society § érhuàyīn ‡ Comments (19) °

Nope, not firecrackers…

I figured it’d be cheap of Beijing Sounds to record the one sound that’s deafening the city tonight, so here’s one you probably haven’t heard this new year’s eve, unless, maybe, you have grade school children attending a Beijing elementary.Kid culture has always fascinated me — how stuff gets made up and passed on through [...]

Posted 06 February 2008 † syz § ‡ Comments (4) °