Discoveries

I keep a file of little discoveries about Chinese culture and language. Sometimes this file turns into a blog post, but most of the time it just sits there because the nuggets don't merit a full exegesis on this blog.

This list of observations has grown long enough that it's time to just collect them all and post them. Here goes:

• A person's blood type is indicative of a certain personality type. A boyfriend with blood-type B is very bad.
• Chinese lawyers will send a thank-you letter to a Chinese court in the event that they receive a favorable judgment, and will sometimes recommend the judgment for inclusion in the Gazette of the Supreme People's Court.
• To get around laws governing search and seizure local authorities will schedule a fire inspection and bring cops along.
• Bed sheets of a certain color may kill you. Red sheets are lucky, whereas yellow sheets will unequivocally lead to your death if you either own them or put them on your bed. Fu Dongdong, our language tutor, put it thus: "definitely, definitely, definitely!"
  
• When buying tickets at a Chinese movie theater, you reserve seats like you are going to a play. The line to buy tickets, however, is much like any other line in China: completely disorganized.
• I recently saw a local on the Beijing subway with a "white pride world wide" patch sewn on to his backpack. I guarantee you he had no idea what it meant.
• The Chinese word for "pimp" literally translates as "boss of hookers"
• The word for cheese is easy to remember because it sounds like "old milk," while yogurt is "sour milk" and butter is "yellow oil".
  

...and now I can clear out that file. Phew!

In other news, one of my colleagues from work recently published a piece in the Shanghai Daily about his encounter with some Olympic volunteers in Beijing.