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Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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Today was a good day in British China.

In the morning, we set off by taking the clean, quick and quiet metro from my home near Hong Kong's airport to Hong Kong Island itself. Except for the grandpa yelling into his phone a few doors down in our carriage, the only noise came from station announcements. Including time waiting for the train, it took about twenty minutes to traverse the sixteen kilometres from my residential area to "downtown" Hong Kong. We then used a series of escalators to pass through the station to the shopping malls above, and pedestrian bridges to cross from the station area near the coastline to ... the old coastline. Coastline erodes, right? So if we fill in some of the waterfront, it's like we're claiming back land that was taken over millennia by the sea! We'll call it ... reclamation!



This has resulted in the coastline getting further and further away from where it was in the 1800's when the Qing ceded Hong Kong to Britain. One of the main roads, Des Voeux Road Central, is relatively far from the water today but was right next to it in the 1880's. Basically, if you follow the tram route, you're on the original coast.



Taking the iconic double-decker electric trams westwards, you'll pass all sorts of dried seafood shops.



Literally "Salted Fish Street". A bit out of place today but it made perfect sense when the shops were literally across the street from piers and jetties. The problem nowadays, of course, is that during the weekdays the streets are so crowded with traffic congestion that it's actually faster to walk than drive down the road. So, one green group has taken it upon themselves to campaign for the pedestrianisation of Des Voeux Road Central, and today was the day for their big experiment.



I don't know how they managed to swing it, but the group got the road closed to all vehicular traffic except the trams. The road, usually full of bumper-to-bumper traffic of cars going nowhere, was now filled with all kinds of cultural activities. One group had rolled miniputt carpeting onto their section of the road so we could imagine a "greening" of central Hong Kong, which could somewhat alleviate the pollution and the heat island effect. One group was giving demonstrations on what it's like for kids with ADHD or dyslexia to learn in Hong Kong's pressure-cooker education system by clipping those blood pressure finger clips on your fingers and telling you to write, while sitting on a cushion with hard objects inside to make you squirm, while trying to pay attention to the "teacher". Some groups were putting on musical performances. There were lots of families and people just plain enjoying themselves. Hong Kong has a few other pedestrianised streets, such as Sai Yeung Choi Street in the Mong Kok district of Kowloon, and they are huge draws for locals and tourists alike so I hope the scheme goes through for DVRC as well.

After enjoying some of the events, it was time to head to Sun Yat-Sen Park.



The park itself is built on reclaimed land, and is full of little bits of info on the guy who formulated a lot of his revolutionary ideas while studying and living in Hong Kong. His picture is in most schools in Good China as well as in their legislature, and his portrait very rarely replaces Mao's in Tiananmen Square for some equally rare special events.



The park has a central lawn, which is a rarity in Hong Kong, and Dr. Sun's statue is in the middle. His name is written as "Mr. Sun Zhongshan". Ironically, the name he is usually known by in China is based off of the Japanese alias "Nakayama" that he used while studying in Japan in order to avoid being noticed by Qing assassins. Yat-sen is the name he was given in Hong Kong by a local Protestant church leader.

So that was my day in British China.

EDIT: The pedestrianisation experiment made its way into the news. Turns out it was initially proposed sixteen years ago.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/09/25/in-pictures-how-a-car-free-central-became-a-brief-reality-16-years-after-it-was-first-proposed/

Imperialist Dog fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Sep 25, 2016

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Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Blacktoll posted:

British China looks like a nice and clean place. Anyway, earlier I posted an article about Goldman Sachs removing 30 percent of their investment banking division from Asia, with a large portion from Hong Kong.

To me, this seems like a huge sign that the economy there is finally being viewed in the west as being not as strong as China would present it.

It could simply be returning to previous levels as investors realise that hot money flowing out of corrupt cadres through Hong Kong carries inherent risk, and with Xi continuing on his merry crackdown that flow is not going to last forever.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Today is the second anniversary of the beginning of Occupy Central!

Government offices in Admiralty already have barriers up.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Up until 1997 in Hong Kong, there was regular poppy selling in November; small paper (plastic felt in Canada) flowers that you'd affix to your lapel or breast pocket. Money goes to the Royal British Legion, which (supposedly) takes care of retired vets Hong Kong. The Battle of Hong Kong took place here when Japan simultaneously invaded Pearl Harbour, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore, and it was an absolute slaughter. Indian Army troops held off the Japanese while Scottish commanders committed suicide when they realised their drunken troops had let the Japanese waltz all over them, and Canadians were used as cannon fodder when the Japanese poured across Victoria Harbour and fought their way through the middle of Hong Kong Island proper. Hong Kong Chinese volunteers were pretty much murdered on the spot. If you walk around with a metal detector high in the hills you still find a poo poo ton of bullets, ordnance and sometimes unexploded grenades and bombs.

Anyway, every year I help out in poppy selling, and since I work at a school I usually run an education campaign in concordance with the fund raising. I recommend the picture book "Three Years and Eight Months" by Icy Smith, who you can tell is from HK due to her name. I'm at a new school this year, so I made the usual pitch; I'll conduct information campaigns, oversee the fundraising, put up posters, monitor everything, you guys don't have to do a thing.

Well today the principal comes by and tells me she heard how enthusiastic i was for the fund raising (literally a box where kids can put in a five dollar coin and grab a paper flower), but we just can't do it because ...

... because it hadn't been done before.

I get away with a lot of stuff at the school because I ignore protocol and just do what I think it's right for the students, because this if you go through official channels you'll get the Automatic No.

I just wish it weren't so predictable.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Outrail posted:

Do it anyway, when they ask why you're doing it just ignore them. Or change the subject. Or tell them it's your culture and they wouldn't understand.

If it were mainland maybe but that poo poo doesn't fly in Hong Kong.

I'll still do some small-scale stuff, but nowhere near where I had in mind.

In further studies, an interesting thing happened! I'm trying to teach the kids the difference between fact and opinion, like how facts can be checked and in some cases you can run an experiment to see for yourself if something is true or not, while opinions usually have words like "think", "feel" and use comparatives/superlatives (better/best). I used "Hong Kong is part of China" vs "Hong Kong should be its own country" as a sentence example.

Because the school is quite Chinese, the students are streamed by academic ability. The A class gets the top kids, B the middlings, and C the troublemakers. Interestingly, the A and B classes thought HK independence was desirable (although that was not the point of the exercise because the gov has made it a crime for teachers to promote HK independence), while C, with the lowest academic ability, overwhelmingly voted no.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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My old school was in a rural HK village (it means it was a whole 15 minute walk to the KCR station), but mostly served middle class parents. Someone put a giant banner across from the school advertising London properties as investment so parents would see it when they left the school.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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caberham posted:

Nobody calls it the KCR anymore you hipster

Shut up you know I'm stuck in 1985

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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I'm in a Hong Kong supermarket and I just want a beer, but everyone's getting off work so the line is really long. As in, the express line is looping around the aisles and I'm currently passing through the dairy section. People behind me are lined up into Meats.

I swear we're just doing it to spite mainlanders though.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Haier posted:

Are there 40+ registers and only 3 open at the most busiest time? The Mainlanders think this is normal, so they won't be spited.

Nope, all cashes open. Non peak hours have about half to a third open.

God save British China

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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So I was browsing through my local library (Hong Kong libraries have a decent English section), and found a book called POW! by Mo Yan, who went on to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. I got through about 75 pages before I couldn't read any more. It's not bad, or boring per se; I can't go on because it is this thread and every China anecdote in novel form, and at least GBS-China threads have comedic value.

The protagonist lives in a village that prospers by selling fake meat, and beats up any inspectors who try to prove it. The men are chain-smokers who preach about Chinese cultural superiority while having multiple affairs, and money is a major theme. In one early scene, in order to cause the protagonist's father to lose face, the village head throws his payment on the ground in front of him while he is squat-smoking. The village head then pisses a mighty river, so much that all the renminbi notes are now floating in a puddle of urine. The father nonchalantly picks them out and wipes them in his trousers, in order to teach his son that money is money and acquiring it is good, no matter where it has been.

It is an excellent allegory for Chinese society, but for me I just felt "I can experience this just by crossing the border, why am I reading about it?" Seriously, if you took out the "retelling the story to a monk in an abandoned temple" part, you could easily place it in the nonfiction section as an autobiography. So check it out if you ever doubt the tales told in these threads.

Oh and a mainlander let their kid piss all over the floor of the train carriage on Friday. The usual pants down, I'll hold your legs for you stance.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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If you host a goon meet over the border should I bring my bagpipes?

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Ceciltron posted:

I would love to see the mass confusion playing bagpipes would cause.

The chanter (the part with the holes that you hold with your hand to produce the melody) is basically a suona and the fingering is similar so I could just do something like this instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i5_I_adjqU&t=19s

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Fauxtool posted:


Is there any chinese celebrity who constantly says/does stupid things but is still beloved by people who only know him from his artistic contribution?


i can only think of jackie chan, but its more like he's a party mouthpiece and not an idiot all on his own.

There was the Crazy English guy for a while.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Away all Goats posted:

why even pretend anyone is actually doing any real work in the pacific other than America. china ain't backing down from the UK fleet lol

We sailed up the river to Canton once and we can bloody well do it again.

Edit: possibly on Japanese ships. The Second Anglo-Japanese Alliance stands firm against expansion by the Celestial Empire!

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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On a whim I decided to check out Australian Olympic swimmer Mack Horton's Facebook page.

He still has hundreds of angry Chinese people leaving hate messages. That's down from tens of thousands so it's an improvement I guess?

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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See if the job offers one of those huge expat packages like free apartment, housing allowance etc. And, and, and, this is important, WHAT WILL THEY DO ABOUT SCHOOL FOR YOUR KIDS. Getting into an International School in Hong Kong is loving insane in terms of both cost and placement. Legally your kids have to go to school but expect cutthroat competition for places, and you're hosed if you have to relocate in the middle of the term. I cannot stress this enough. It is the number one headache for expat families and the number one thing companies neglect to mention.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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I've been waiting in line in the bank for half a loving hour because some mainlander is asking the clerk a million questions about transferring money from China or something.

Edit: she's finally been taken aside to a desk. Now the clerk is explaining to the next one, who apparently got all her deposit information wrong.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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ElGroucho posted:

What a weird rear end fetish

"I really want to hang out with some sad sack tonight"

Goons were unavailable

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Depending on the time of day, the McDonald's in HK are filled with old people. When school finishes it then gets packed with young people. This being Hong Kong though, both sides are as loud as possible.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Speaking of cultural appropriation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEA0zSxVN5Q

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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caberham posted:

Please go on and tell us how much more cumification you need

:tutbutt:

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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That Starbucks is in Hong Kong. We had particularly intense rain and flooding in hilly areas, particularly Island East.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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From what I can make out and understand, they are advertising 6 tins of milk formula for $30.

The electronic sign repeats the deal, and says they will send your purchase to any part of the country. Country in this case being China.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Falun Bong Refugee posted:

You guys honestly don't see Chinese people as equal humans to yourself.

holy poo poo we've become Mao

when you stare too long into the abyss ...

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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OK as I'm stuck at school open day, which nobody is attending because there was a typhoon yesterday so everyone is still enjoying their long weekend, here's a long effort post on the nightmare that is getting your kid into the Hong Kong education system.

There are basically three tiers of Hong Kong schools: Aided (getting money from the government, usually) or "local" schools which are free, DSS (direct subsidy scheme, where schools can charge tuition but get government support and have to follow the Education Bureau's requirements), and private. Secondary schools traditionally got more attention than primary schools so the quality of early childhood education has had to make some strides in the past few decades. I work in the primary school system so this post will reflect that.

Aided schools work on a lottery system based on geographical area. So, if you live in Area A, you can go to School A1, School A2, etc., though the chance of you getting into the school you want depends on the lottery. These schools are all run by different organisations. School A1 may be run by the government, School A2 by the Anglican church, and A3 by a hospital. This gets traced back to the British "hands off" policy where they did the bare minimum, so if schooling could be farmed out to the Chinese hospital board then why not. Since they're run by different organisations, they all have different styles and reputation, although they'll probably use the same textbooks. In general, their English is terrible because it's studied like a foreign language; lots of grammar and writing and not much communication. They do have the Native English Teacher (NET) scheme, which basically brings white people over to act as English teachers, but they get stuck teaching the government's official literacy programme. The NET at my local school sees each class once a week, and has the class's English teacher plus two teaching assistants helping him out.

DSS schools are basically private schools for the middle class. They are rather free to create their own school-based curriculum as they see fit, as long as they stay within the Education Bureau's limits. If they step outside the boundaries, they lose government funding and shut down. They can range from relatively cheap tuition to a little bit expensive. They hire overseas English teachers, who are actually expected to do their job, although of course they feature as eye candy for prospective parents. DSS schools are more innovative than aided schools and generally have to compete to get students to fill their classrooms, and more students means more money for the school. However, because the quality is generally better, or perceived to be better than the aided schools, they usually have no problem doing this. To apply for a DSS school, your child has to go through an interview where they will be tested on general aptitude with English, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Maths and interpersonal behaviour.

Finally, there are the private schools, ranging from "local" private schools to the international schools. They charge a hell of a lot and are not obligated to follow the Education Bureau's diktat, so they can ignore tests like the Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA, to measure how well schools perform) or the HKAT (Hong Kong Attainment Test, to see what kind of secondary school you're going to).

So, since I've got children, I have to decide what school to send them to. I opted for a DSS school, as I want a school with good English (which precludes almost all local schools) while my wife wants a school with good Chinese (which eliminates quite more schools than you'd think; the standard of Chinese in Hong Kong is actually not that good for various historical reasons), and my income level means there's no way in hell I can afford even the cheapest international school. So, time to apply for DSS schools!

In applying for a DSS school, you have to print out and mail in the application form plus processing fee. On the application form you'll be expected to give a picture of your child so they can make sure that the correct kid shows up for the interview, plus copies of the birth certificate, and depending on the school's organising body, your marriage certificate as well as baptismal certificate. At most schools you are expected to put down your child's religion. Since there is zero guarantee that you'll actually get into the school because for every open spot you have a hundred applicants, many parents apply to several schools. I would advise you to apply to three schools at least, with ten at the absolute maximum. We've applied to seven, which I grumble about but my wife insists is necessary. See, our 5-year-old is, amazingly, shy around people he doesn't know and tends to clam up, which is a bit of a disadvantage during the interview process. So we're worried that he won't get into a school, not because he's not good enough, but because he won't say anything.

You should expect to start researching schools you want to apply for and attending open days two years in advance. This causes a lot of stress at home because you lose a lot of your free time and you get to argue with your spouse as to whether a school is worth applying to or not. A lot of parents in Hong Kong, ourselves included, are stressed out with worry because of this system, but the head of the Education Bureau educates his kids overseas so no change will come from above. Parents are starting to protest the system; last year protesting parents successfully stopped the TSA examination for Grade 3 students. In the meantime, however, expect to travel from one end of Hong Kong to another (HK is metropolis-sized so you CAN spend two to three hours getting somewhere depending on bus routes, with kids in tow) on your weekends.

So, you've received your interview date! Great! Oh, too bad, seems two of the schools you applied for have their interviews at the same time on the same day. Tough break, parents! Better choose which one you want to attend and hope your kid progresses to the second interview round. This means that if you choose wrong, you can agonise over whether you should have sent your kid to the other school for their interview ...

After interviewing, you can now bite your nails for a few weeks until the results come out. We already got notice from two of the seven schools we applied for that our son won't be coming back for a second interview. Fortunately, they weren't our top choices, but we do have friends who were not accepted to these schools even though they WERE a top choice ... and other friends whose kids DID get accepted but won't go because they're holding out for a better school. If you actually make it through all the interviews, you might get two or three guaranteed spots at a school ... so you choose the one you like best, and the other two spots go to other waiting parents who now suddenly find out maybe they can go to the school of their choice after all, so they cancel the acceptance of the school their kid got into, which frees up a spot for another parents, etc etc. So even though you have hundreds of applicants for one spot in a Grade 1 classroom, very few will actually have that school as their top choice; think of it more like insurance.

While your kid is doing the interview, you don't get to relax, of course! It's time for YOUR interview! Yes, the schools will interview the parents to see whether they are sane or not. The school that my son has a second interview at has kindly told parents in advance what they will be asking so we can prepare. Questions include:

1) Which schools have you applied for other than this one?
2) What attracted you to apply for this school?
3) What is your opinion on the Hong Kong education system?
4) What are your child's strengths and weaknesses?
5) What is the most important component in educating a child?
6) What do you think about the current culture of complaining in Hong Kong whenever problems arise?
7) What do you have in mind for your child's future career?

That's right folks, the school wants to see whether I've started making preparations for my 5-year-old son's future vocation. And also whether I'm a complainer. So how about the kids, eh? What kind of stuff do they have to prepare for in the interview? Again, it depends on the school. For Chinese, character recognition seems to be big, while in English, activities include putting sentences together, e.g. circus / let's / at / fun / have / the. Oh, and general knowledge, like "sort these animals into vertebrates and invertebrates" (I am not kidding; that was the base of an interview question at a private school we applied to as "insurance").

In conclusion, education in Hong Kong is great if you're rich!

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Murray Mantoinette posted:

Thanks but I was really more interested in the 'circle jerk' part. Anyone else?

That's just during goonmeets

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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E_P posted:

I agree all countries should remain homogeneous. Race mixing is a crime. Also this is the 1920s correct?

I'm from the 1880s and if a chap wants to marry his habibi it helps create a comprador class of Anglo-Orientals so I do not see a downside

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Are you white? Is she Asian (no, it doesn't matter if she's not Vietnamese)? Then yes.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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So I was searching to see if there are any abandoned school sites in Hong Kong (there's one by my place that has excellent transport connections but it was taken over by a church) and found this link from seven years ago. I'm posting it here because it's topical AND I know the guys who run this school. I've edited it to explain a bit for those who don't live here (e.g. most) and added commentary.

http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/forums/living-in-or-moving-to-hong-kong/threads/132986/school-needs-to-ban-children-from-playing/

quote:

Expatriate children at an international primary school in Pui O (a rural beach village) on Lantau Island (where Hong Kong International Airport is; the airport and the Tung Chung New Town are in the north while this Pui O place is beyond the mountains, in the south). are in no doubt about what the locals think of their school. "NO NOISY SCHOOL" 30-centimetre-high letters scream on a six-metre banner strapped to a roadside railing across the street.

Local villagers who erected the banner have complained to the Environmental Protection Department about the noise made by the 70 pupils, aged seven to 11, during recess at Lantau International School. The department has issued it with a noise abatement notice, failure to comply with which could cost the school a HK$200,000 fine plus HK$20,000 for every day the order is disregarded. The EPD found the level of noise from the school to be above the permitted 60 decibels. Staff of the school who also measured the noise said it varied between 62 and 65 decibels, slightly over the limit (the school is on the main road through the village and has buses and other traffic going by which would be around 80 db).

Pui O residents say they do not see the need for an expensive school with an expatriate teaching staff and a body of mainly expatriate pupils in their small village, where there is already a free public school. Eddie Tam and his wife, Jenny, who live next to the international school - which occupies three village houses in a residential area - said its facilities were inadequate. This school is charging fees close to that of private schools where children have much better facilities, they said (yeah if you want to travel two or three hours from the countryside to Hong Kong Island where most international schools are). Fees are HK$5,450 a month (this is cheap for an international school, but inflation has probably done a number on it), and tuition is in English and follows the Basic English Curriculum.

Eddie Tam said that when they objected to planning permission he collected 250 signatures of people who lived in Pui O and did not want the school. Police estimate the population of Pui O to be about 1,000. No data is available on how many of these are expatriates. Principal Berthier said the EPD was discriminating against expatriates. "There are locally owned holiday homes in Pui O that are very noisy, often through the night. Yet these are never served with such notices", he said. Senior Teacher Vujnovac said Pui O Public School staff used hand-held loudhailers and roof-mounted loudspeakers to address the pupils, yet they had never received a noise abatement notice.

Tam and his wife lead the objectors, but they said three village heads were backing them. (Here's how you know it's about money!) He did not deny that the teaching staff were qualified but said the children have no playground; there is less than a metre of ground they can use for leisure breaks. He added that down the road is a public school with plenty of space and a large playground, and also with fully qualified staff. Expatriates are misguided if they think their children cannot be educated in Cantonese (except of course local schools often straight-up tell non-Chinese parents not to enroll because 'your kid doesn't speak Cantonese').

The whole things seems like NIMBYism until you get to the village heads part. The school is in what was an abandoned hotel across the road from the beach, and the village heads liked making quick bucks by selling it to developers who realised that you can't run a hotel in this area and then it could be bought again at rock-bottom prices. They thought the same thing would happen ... until the new owner leased it to a guy who wanted to open a school.

The school is still in operation and expanding, but dealing with Hong Kong's indigenous villagers is a giant headache.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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She's 33 and has a kid.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Let us English posted:

This seems to be a pan-Asian thing, but I actually think it's better in China than Korea or Japan. At least where I live, people assume I speak Chinese and speak to me in Chinese first. In Japan that almost never happened unless I spoke first.

Life in Japan/China/Korea.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt5qSm9U80

I like this video because it has happened to me.

Also, 尊皇攘夷

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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Atlas Hugged posted:

台灣第一名

I am so glad I never lived in the mainland and I don't feel that any of my Mandarin learning in Taiwan was a waste. It was super useful and I got to know the locals way better than I would have if I had stuck with English during my time there. Even in the south where Mandarin is not most people's native language, everyone still spoke it and I could communicate effectively. English is not really common at all once you get out of the major cities.

台湾は日本帝国の植民地だったから現在第一

One fun anecdote from the "Why China will Never Rule the World" book is that you have to remember that Japan was a first-world industrial economy BEFORE the war. Think shopping malls and subways and what have you. Taipei as a Japanese colony had them too. Now imagine a bunch of peasant KMT soldiers showing up and gawking because they've never seen an escalator before.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

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I would advise learning what you have to and what interests you. If you have interest, you have motivation, which is an edge in learning your target language.

I was really into Japan when I was young and stupider, so I learned Japanese pretty quickly. When I was in Japan I quickly became disillusioned and thought that I should have learned Mandarin instead because China had a Growing Economy. I ended up moving to Hong Kong and found I liked Cantonese instead. I still wish my Mandarin was better but literally the only use I have for it is communicating with my in-laws.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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Boiled Water posted:

One of the observations from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China was that bosses spoke Cantonese, while lowly workers spoke mandarin. As I'm writing this it's made clearer by my browsers dictionary, in which Cantonese is capitalized while mandarin is not.

A mandarin can also mean an official. I think it's actually from the Malay word for official.

One thing that bugs me is the push to call Mandarin Putonghua. We don't say that we study français or Deutsche or GLORIOUS NIPPONGO (may the Emperor reign forever), so why use the Chinese word in English?

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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Jimmy Little Balls posted:

I have the opposite problem, my Chinese is terrible yet everyone seems to believe I'm fluent so will spit out a novel at me at 5000 words per minute whilst I just nod and look confused. Even people who know me and can speak English will generally only speak to me in Chinese.

Are you ethnically East Asian? That could account for it.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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English is supposed to be phonetic but it's not taught that way in school (something I try to remedy). Vowel patterns should be taught as a block so you can mentally sort them into a sound category.

Each East yeast beast lease (Ē)
Bread breast head dead (Ê)
Earth search learn (Ur)

All these words used to be pronounced similarly but over time the pronunciation shifted while spelling didn't. Like how Shakespearean and Tang dynasty poetry rhymed then but don't now. You can counteract it in the classroom by having learners recognise the pattern (hey this word has ea), apply it (most of the time I say ē) and be ready if it doesn't work (oh it's the ê sound? Ok category 2 then like "bread") instead of going "THIS LANGUAGE SUCKS BETTER JUST MEMORISE THE IPA" like most local teachers make their kids do.

Of course then you get read and lead ...

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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Atlas Hugged posted:

As far as comparing a phonetic script to Chinese, why would you do that? Chinese as a written language doesn't need any phonetic value. That was the whole loving point. It doesn't even really correspond with modern spoken Mandarin. Like you're never going to hear someone refer to a restaurant in conversation as 本店. You have to take the writing system for what it is, which is a method to represent each meaning individually so that speakers of diverse dialects can all understand the same document.

Because written Chinese is not an ideographic system. It is a crippled phonetic system. The vast majority of Chinese characters consist of a phonetic component to aid the reader in pronunciation and a semantic component tied to the meaning.

故居估菇蛄辜胡罟 etc etc are all pronounced gu because they have 古 in them. You have to remember that spoken language always comes first, and the written characters followed much later in different stages.

http://www.omniglot.com/chinese/types.htm

Most characters came about by someone saying "hey how do you write mushroom, which is pronounced gu because we don't have many syllables?" and another guy going "well mushroom sounds like 姑 so how about we show it's some kind of plant by adding the grass component 艹?" "Ok so 菇 it is then, thanks." In fact before Pinyin or even Gweoyuh Romatzi or however you spell it was developed Chinese dictionaries would show you a rhyming character so you'd know how to pronounce the obscure character you looked up.

As for the uniformity across dialects it was certainly a tool of administrative control as the Qin and then Han conquered their way through what we call China. All I really know is from Chinese propaganda blockbuster All Under Heaven where Qin Shi Huang murders anyone who writes Chinese different from the Qin and this is seen as a good thing. I certainly wouldn't doubt it as there is a big stigma against using nonstandard characters to write in Chinese, like every time I get told it's impossible to write Cantonese in Chinese script (we can and do, with the help of an extended character set). It's funny to see my in-laws try to read a "local" Hong Kong newspaper because it's full of characters they've never seen before and are only used in Cantonese.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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DON'T TRUST THE CCP

http://www.smh.com.au/world/operation-fox-hunt-melbourne-grandmother-zhou-shiqin-prosecuted-after-return-to-china-20161025-gsalul.html

quote:

A Melbourne grandmother who protested her innocence after being listed by Chinese authorities among its most-wanted international fugitives will be prosecuted on corruption charges, despite voluntarily returning to China in an attempt to clear her name.

Zhou Shiqin, 64, denies accusations she embezzled millions of yuan from the state-owned railway authority she worked at as an accountant more than a decade ago, before immigrating to Australia.

Her decision to volunteer herself to the whims of China's opaque judicial system by returning home in April stemmed from the psychological pressure of having her photo and Interpol red notice emblazoned across Chinese state media outlets, and her younger sister's assets being frozen in China in connection with her case.

When Chinese authorities were convincing Ms Zhou to return to answer her charges, they had appeared open to examining evidence she had compiled which she said proved her innocence. That tone, Mr Ma said, turned sour around July, when authorities began to implicitly threaten her relatives in mainland China, including her son, if she refused to cooperate and "confess".

In what appears to be a face-saving compromise, and a partial concession there were issues with her original charges, Ms Zhou is now likely to be pinned with lesser corruption-related crimes.

Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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I read the first part on my laptop during lunch and thought "wow this looks like a good long read it'll be perfect for my commute home". Work ends, turn laptop off, walk to bus stop, pull out phone aaaand ...

:(

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Imperialist Dog
Oct 21, 2008

"I think you could better spend your time on finishing your editing before the deadline today."
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Blistex that was a great read and I don't blame you for feeling regret over what could have been.

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