Shh! Please don’t tell anyone, but in Chineseyou don’t say“shhhh” at all. Unpleasant mutterings in the cinema, chattering fellow students on the back bench, mewling cultural philistines in the art exhibition – in China these are followed by an energetic “Xxxu! – spoken with a strong grating sound like the German “(i)ch” and with a […]
Do vegetarians have to be very strong now? Immediately the all-clear: no. Because this article is not really about the courageous bite into a raw, bloody steak, but rather about “gnawing” on hard-to-digest spiritual food. Because 生肉 shēngròu – literally “raw meat” – is the term used in China’s net community to describe foreign films, […]
Soon it will be the beginning of summer. Makes you think of sun, holidays and – of course – ice sleeves! At least in China. Because there, as is generally known, fair skin that is as protected as possible from the sun is considered the ideal of beauty. The Chinese are correspondingly inventive when it […]
Living in the suburban villa you just bought in the countryside is really overrated, so quiet and lonely. If only they had bought the penthouse apartment in the city centre! For subliminal boasts like this, China’s net community has come up with a new catch-all term. “Versailles” or “playing Versailles” – Chinese 凡尔赛 fán’ěrsài – […]
Plastic waste, plastic bans, microplasticsin the sea – the material plastic has a rather bad image in everyday language thesedays. The term “plastic Chinese” therefore does not bode well. And indeed: the new trendy word, which is composed of the Chinese words for “plastic” (塑料 sùliào) and “high/standard language” (普通话 pǔtōnghuà), is the unflattering name […]
Does anyone else remember fidget spinners? Those little spinning tops with ball bearings that are spun between your fingers? As of 2017, the addictive handheld toy was gyrating its way through retail and online shopping assortments worldwide. In Europe, you could get it on every street corner at the time. Some schools in Germany were […]
How many glass noodles actually follow you on Twitter? In our part of the world, followers are the most important thing in influencer circles. In China, on the other hand, people collect 粉丝 fěnsī – literally “glass noodles”. Since the character combo sounds almost exactly like the English word “fans,” it was unceremoniously turned into […]
Start of the week, my ass! In China, today’s Monday is more or less officially a Saturday. This is due to the work culture of the “rest day change” – China’s equivalent to our bridge day. 调休 tiáoxiū is the name of this phenomenon in Chinese – quite literally translated “to adjust the break” (from […]
What gives the deepest insights into the soul of a nation? Exactly – entertainment television. And anyone who turns it on in China will surely rub their eyes in bewilderment after a while and doubt their visual acuity. Because in Chinese lifestyle, entertainment and reality formats, things have been getting blurry with increasing frequency lately. […]
“I’m just hitting the soy sauce here!” Now that would be an original counter to confidently get off the hook when dealing with unpleasant matters. In China, the term “beating soy sauce” (打酱油 dǎ jiàngyóu) has come to be synonymous with attending a matter only as a bystander or casual observer. But what the hell […]