Articles About the Chinese Language

Free Pirated Music?

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China is the land of pirated software, and imitation goods. We don't pay for music here, we download it for free from the Chinese version of "google" known as 百度  (bai3)(du4). It literally means "one hundred degrees" 百 means 100，like 一百 one hundred (yi1)(bai3) and 度 means degrees, either mathematical or temperature or in 程度(cheng2)(du4) which means degree, as in "to some degree, i like pirated software." FYI pirated anything is called 盗版 （dao4）（ban3）which means "pirated" "edition" ; since the 海盗 (hai3)(dao4) is literally an "ocean pirate" and 版本 （ban3）（ben3）means an "edition" of something, like a book, or the newest edition of windows 8.0 (also available in pirated version).

So without installing anything on your computer, you can just go and download tons of free music from http://mp3.baidu.com/

The only thing is that they don't have all songs, although mainstream music will all be there.

 To compete with them, google now offers free music in china too, on their site http://www.google.cn/music/homepage

but, the google site is blocked to users in america, and you thought only the communists knew how to censor free information?

you should be ashamed, very ashamed.

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One of my favorite signs visible all over the place, on college campuses or put on residence buildings by the government, is the "glory-shame list" or "荣辱观" (rong2)(ru3)(guan1).

荣(rong2)means glory, as in 光(guang1)荣(rong2); the second word 辱(ru3) means shame or shameful as seen in 耻（chi3）辱(ru3) and finally the word for "outlook" or "idea" i.e. way of looking at things, 观(guan1) is part of the word for idea: 观念 (guan1)(nian4).So the 荣辱观 (rong2)(ru3)(guan1) is basically a guideline that tells you what constitutes failure and shame and what consititues glory. Of course, loving your contry, working hard and obeying the law are all glorious. But more importantly, it is shameful to be lawless, to benefit oneself at the expense of others (yeah, right), and to be extravagant and wasteful.

An extension of the traditional 8 glories and 8 shames, sometimes you can see in student cafeterias the "wasting food is shameful" sign, always a favorite. "以浪费为耻" 浪(lang4)费(fei4)=waste.

Let's Make Some Money

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As you may have guessed, this is the first in a series of attempts to commercialize chineselanguageblog. I would therefore like to introduce the chiense "summer sleeping mat" which i took the liberty of translating myself. Why? Because we don't have any in the US. But we should. It's called a 凉(liang2)席(xi2) and pretty much every household in southern china (more people than in all the USA) use them. Literally, 凉 means "cool" or “chilly" as seen in 凉快 （liang2kuai4) and 席 means "mat" as in 席子 （xi2zi). What it looks like is a greenish or brown/beige bamboo mat, flat and pretty thin, usually big enough to cover an entire bed. It's not hard to use, you just put it on there and lie down. It makes you considerably cooler in the summer, i'd say at least by 7 or 8 degrees, and gets rid of that summer heat sticky feeling. I know what you're thinking, "but they just use it because they can't afford air conditioning" Yes, that's true, but can you really afford air conditioning either? It's expensive. And the sleeping mat runs from a basic one for about 5 bucks (us dollars) to a top of the line model for like 20 or 25 bucks. Ok who wants one?? I'll ship it for you and only take 1 dollar commission, since i can live on that one dollar for like ten days.