Sometimes, explanations of Chinese characters remind me an IQ test. Lets look at 身 for example. Here is it again, larger: 身 According to one book, you should be able to see a human profile here, according to another, it is a body with stomach and leg walking. Do you see them yet? No? How …
Category Archives: personal-life
Colors of digits
0 is white 1 is black 2 is yellowish, paper-colored 3 and 8 are green 4 is orange 5 is red 6 and 9 are pink 7 is blue Do digits also have colors for you?
Freundschaft
Früher habe ich gedacht, dass meine Freunde möglichst ähnlich wie ich sein sollen: sich für IT interessieren, romantische Filme verachten und Sport nur im Fernsehen mit erleben. Wir werden gemeinsame Interessen haben und einander nicht nerven. Und unsere Freundschaft hält lange. Dann… dann habe ich mich verändert.
Speak One Word
[audio:http://fridental.de/hungry_lucy-apparitions-goodbye_.mp3|titles=Goodbye|artists=Hungry Lucy]
Chinese New Year Wishes
February 14 is the first day of the new Chinese year, so this Saturday all Chinese (and also many non-Chinese) in the world will get together with their families to celebrate Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival, 春节). In this post, I’ve gathered some traditional (and untraditional) spring festival wishes. By clicking on the links, you can …
Geopolitics
Some time ago, I’ve added “When China Rules the World” by Martin Jacques into my Amazon wishlist. I was attracted by the provocative title and believed it should be a small book containing sarcastic passages about prejudices about both world and the chinese culture, witty anecdotes and such. Something like “User’s Guide to <put your country …
Culture variability
The more I learn about different cultures, the more I find cases when same thing has different meaning in different cultures. The most well-known example is, probably, the white color, in european tradition meaning purity and innosence, but in Japan related to death. My favorite is what you should do with birthday presents. One line …
Developing country rant
Today’s rant is motivated by the announcement that Google is going to stop censoring in China. This is exactly the kind of things happening in the so-called developing countries, and it is a part of the reason of me leaving Russia. The life in a developing country is… pretty much possible. A development country is not …
2009 Summary
In 2009, life gave me mostly lemons. But: So I have made plenty of lemonade out of them. Hope you’ve enjoyed it, but for me, it was actually too much soda. I’d like to switch to the healthy Jasmine tee this year.
Chinese Characters for Image Frame
I’ve got an electronic image frame on this Xmas. What photos should I put on it? It looks like this typical frame people usually have on their tables in the office. But I have neither children nor wife, and I see my parents almost every day in person anyway. For some reason, I don’t have a …