What's in a name?

In my job I see and hear quite a lot of names; names of colleagues, names of teachers, names of students and prospective students etc… It’s a whirlwind of names on a daily basis and it’s kind of par for the course that a lot of names I come across here in China are very foreign. I don’t tend to bat an eyelid at the Chinese names in fact, but what does make my eyes pop out of my head are the English names Chinese people give themselves.

How people acquire these names is beyond me. Do they have a book they choose crazy names from? Do they have mean English teachers who assign bizarre names or, even worse, mean friends who are having a laugh at their expense? Are Chinese people all striving to be mad? Or do they just not fully understand the meaning of their chosen name?

Point in case… A few days ago I was looking at yet another list of prospective students and one of the students was called Mono. I kid you not. Would that be as in mononucleosis? I had visions of the dreaded ‘kissing disease’ many students succumb to when they are first at university (am not included in this statistic, I might add). Then I thought that maybe they meant mono-tone, mono-brow, mono-sodium glutamate… But who really knows?! The mind boggles.

My first week in China I was served by an appropriately named waitress called Snail; she was very slow. I’ve also seen an entire fruit basket of people - from Apple to Melon to Berry and Cherry, the duo I met at a party not so long ago. I’ve seen Wood. I’ve seen a Shotgun. I’ve seen a Dragon. I’ve seen it all!

Am now going to run a competition for most random English name given to a Chinese person. Not sure what the prize will be yet, but am thinking a new name. Feel free to add your suggestions to the comments section below…

My Chinese lesson of the day is: 名 míng – which means name.

We may not be Chinese, but...

Shanghai, like most other big cities with a glut of multinational companies, has its fair share of ex-pats. When you live very far away from your home, from all your friends and family and normality as you know it, it is inevitable that you are drawn to people in the same situation as yourself. It therefore comes as no surprise that I have established a bit of an urban family here for myself; a good group of friends consisting predominantly of fellow ex-pats.

Many people look down on ‘ex-pats’ and everything that it implies to be one. Crikey, the term even sends some kind of shudders down my spine, but I think there are varying levels of ex-pat-i-ness and I have nipped my cultural snob thoughts in the bud, accepted the fact that I am an ex-pat and just hope that my friends and I are of the less obnoxious variety. In any case we all seem to enjoy being here, we don’t live too far removed from the locals, want to learn the language, adopt [some] Chinese habits and make Chinese friends despite the very obvious cultural barriers and totally different way of being.

Some of my friends have been here equally as long as I have and we experience culture shock first hand at pretty much the same pace, others have been here a bit longer and I look up to them for advice and deeper insight into this craziness. Maybe even one day I’ll have friends who will look up to me for advice on things China – it’s the way things work in my world.

One of my friends here is called Gustav. He is Swedish, works for EF where he drinks copious amounts of coffee with me, is married to my friend Nina and has been in China for a few months more than I have. Respect. He started learning Chinese before I did and gives me something to aspire to, although admittedly I am also super competitive and instinctively want to catch up. It was in fact Gustav who taught me the ‘one, two, three’ from my first blog entry.

Yesterday was Gustav’s 30th birthday and he celebrated in style with a party. It was a great evening with all the right ingredients for success thrown in: good company, good food and drink, good music, good conversation, birthday cake and singing. In that there were many nationalities represented at the party we sang Happy Birthday in English. We also gave a nod to Gustav’s nationality and sang in Swedish. Most importantly though, and despite the relatively few Chinese present, we sang Happy Birthday in Chinese. Another lesson thrown my way thanks to big G.

You can probably guess, therefore, that my Chinese lesson of the day is: 生日快乐 shēng rì kuài lè – which of course means Happy Birthday.

Bang, bang, weeeee, whizz, bang!

When I told people I would be staying in town for the Chinese New Year, many were surprised. To me it made total sense to want to be in China and witness a Chinese New Year first hand, and Shanghai still seems to be the place where all the action is. My Chinese friends and colleagues, however, were appalled at this thought, as were my western friends. The general response was “but, it’ll be so noisy and you won’t be able to sleep for all the fireworks.”

You can imagine, therefore, that I started to get a bit nervous about all the fireworks and was expecting non-stop banging 24/7 for an entire week and to be driven up the walls with despair. I prepared for the worst and went as far as to look out ear-plugs…

The reality though was quite different. Yes there was a lot of noise, yes there were fireworks and firecrackers set off at crazy times, yes the city was covered with perhaps not the healthiest blanket of smoke from all the fireworks… but… it was amazing! The Chinese do fireworks very well and I think it is great that they celebrate with such aplomb. I loved every single minute of it!

In this case, a video speaks louder than words so I’ve uploaded one for you to look at. Imagine this for hours and hours on end. Even I was awed to some kind of state of silence...

My Chinese lesson of the day is: 煙花 yān huā – which means… yup, you guessed it… fireworks.