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Translation Fails: WeChat Edition

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Language is one of the most interesting, beautifully complicated things that everyone in the world has the opportunity to experience.  Culture, language, understanding of self, and time are inextricably connected, and in order to really learn another language one basically has to completely change the way he thinks about himself, others, and the world. But languages are hard to learn (unless you've got some kind of crazy language-learning gift, which I'm totally not jealous of except I am), and usually it's just easier to go to a dictionary or the internet for a quick, direct translation from some other random language to your own.  They're handy, they're quick, and they're not usually very accurate, which can result in anything from frustrating communication breakdown to mass hilarity. Today's post is hopefully the latter. Most people already know how hilariously inaccurate Google Translate is sometimes (check out Malinda Kathleen Reese's YouTube
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Zhangjiajie Adventures

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Hey, guys! My work is just finishing up our Spring Break (one of the many perks of working at a school), and a couple of coworkers and I spent most of our break time at one of the most scenic locations in China: the Floating Mountains of Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is located in Hunan province, about five hours away from Changsha by high speed bus and hard seat train.  It's a city of about 1.5 million people up in some of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen.  We spent our time specifically in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, hiking through the Yangjiajie, Tianzi Mountain, and Gold Whip Stream areas.  Fun fact: James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar got the inspiration for its floating mountains from the "Floating Mountains" in this park (found specifically in the Tianzi Mountain section), and there's even a mountain in Yangjiajie called Avatar Mountain (or the Hallelujah Mountain) after the movie.   I found out about these "Floating Mountain
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Video: "19 Things You Should NEVER Do With Chopsticks!"

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Happy Weekend, guys! As you can see, the blog's got a very different look to it than before.  Blogger released some new themes not that long ago, so I decided to take one for a spin to see if it'll work better than the previous theme.  You'll likely see the blog going through a few changes here and there with layouts and colors, but never fear!  That's just my Marketing self never being fully content with keeping one design for long periods of time But that's not the main reason why we're here today.  Today's post is basically like reliving my favorite days when I was in school: video day! Below is a really awesome video about the 19 things you should never, ever do with chopsticks, made by the equally awesome guys at The Chen Dynasty.  They're two Chinese American guys whose channel is devoted to explaining Asian cultures (especially Chinese culture) to the world, and I know I've learned a lot from watching their videos.  You may have also hea
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The Chinglish Gallery

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There are so many things I love about China: food, culture, history, landscape, cityscapes.  But so far I've been only posting about serious things, so today (like everyday, honestly) is a wonderful day to talk about the one thing in China that never fails to make me smile (and snort sometimes). In English, we call it "Chinglish."  Maybe there's a Chinese word for it - I don't know - but it basically just means that someone shoved some Chinese characters into Bing Translate and didn't bother to check if the English that came out actually made sense. Sometimes it's just unfortunate spelling errors. Sometimes you can figure out what they most likely were trying to say. Sometimes you got nothin'. Either way, it's super fun to see how two languages (Chinese and English, in this case) are so different that direct translation results in nothing less than pure shenanigans.  This post contains some of my absolute favorite examples of Chinglish th
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