This week’s photo series is “CELEBRATE WOMEN” — directed by Nicole Chan, with support from other talented photographers. Women respond to the question “What empowers you?” in these raw, minimalist portraits.
“After my spinal surgery, I relied on a cane to walk. It’s been two years now, during which I diligently practiced using my own strength to walk. This empowers me because I am now cane free!”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Zhibo is a weekly column in which Beijing-based American Taylor Hartwell documents his journey down the rabbit hole of Chinese livestreaming app YingKe. If you know nothing about the livestreaming (直播; “zhibo”) phenomenon in China,start here.
Survey Topic: What do you say when someone sneezes?
Exciting, I know. But bear with me.
See, I’ve noticed a common point of confusion among foreigners who studied Chinese before actually living in China. When you ask a Chinese teacher – at least, any Chinese teacher I’ve ever had, foreign or Chinese – what the equivalent of “bless you” or “gesundheit” is, they always say the same thing: 一百岁, or yi bai sui. This literally means “one hundred years,” and I always just kind of assumed it was yet another language’s way of expressing “oh, you just sneezed, I do hope that means you aren’t coming down with some deadly illness and I would like to wish you the best in health and longevity but in a single convenient syllable because let’s be honest I’ve got my own problems, you know?”
But the thing is, I’ve never heard anyone say “一百岁” after someone sneezes. Like, never. So I started asking other people who studied Chinese before coming to China and they all had the same experience – their teachers all told them that “yi bai sui” was the closest equivalent to “bless you” and they all have never heard it in China. Then I started asking Chinese people and pretty much no one had any idea what I was talking about.
So this week’s survey was simple: What – if anything – do you say when someone sneezes?
Option 1: Yi Bai Sui (一百岁), one hundred years
Option 2: Nothing
Option 3: Something else (please specify)
The overwhelming majority of responses were 2 (50+) and 3 (probably 75+). The 3s were largely split between two standard answers: “有人想你,” or you ren xiang ni, which literally means “some people miss you,” and simply asking “do you have a cold?”
I forgot – in China, everything is the sign of a cold. This includes, but is not limited to sneezing, drinking cold water, wearing a t-shirt in a perfectly climate-controlled office, sniffing, eating the wrong kind of food, and – god help you – not having an umbrella when it’s raining.
I’d argue that actually covering your mouth when coughing and/or sneezing might be the first step towards reducing colds, but that just shows what I know.
Video of the Week: This seemingly standard kung fu video that took a brilliant turn.
All you need to know is that “li hai” means “talented,” “awesome,” or “skilled.”
Really Strange Stereotype of the Week: American are shaved secret hair.
So first off, mysterious commenter, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you probably don’t have enough of a data set to prove anything about anyone’s “secret hair.” Secondly, that’s the kind of adorable stereotyping that really just makes me worry about your critical thinking skills.
Thirdly, that sentence is more of a mess than the forbidden forest you’re implying you’ve got.
But more importantly, the term “secret hair” sent me down a bit of an etymology rabbit hole. Yeah, I know how sad that sounds. Let’s move on.
Pro tip: do NOT open the Wikipedia page on pubic hair in the company of others
So, in case this ISN’T something you’ve put much thought into before, “pubic” comes from “puberty,” which appears to come from a combination of Latin and French words meaning maturity, adulthood, youthfulness, stuff about flowering, etc. Sensible enough. The German word for it, however, is schamhaare, or “shame hair,” because of course it is. And in Chinese, the two top dictionary results are 耻毛 (shame/disgrace hair) and 阴毛, or yinmao. That yin has quite a few different meanings, but you might recognize it as part of this doodad:
Yes, yin is part of the famous (and famously-mispronounced) yinyang (think “in-jahng”) and represents the moon/cloudy/shady/feminine/secretive half of the cosmic balancing act that makes up the foundation of most Chinese philosophy.
Thus, “secret hair.”
People are weird.
Really Shockingly Nice Comment of the Week: We will always accompany you, we will always love you!
You might choose to go glass half empty and point out that this is bordering on a creepy stalker vibe. I choose to go glass half full and say that you gotta take validation where you can find it.
Unintentional Philosophical Chinglish of the Week: You don’t get excited, want to have a common heart!
Your guess is as good as mine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
This week’s photo theme is: Director’s Seat. Last month, well-known (male) Chinese film director Ding Taisheng made a controversial statement on Sina Weibo to the effect that “women can be great producers, but rarely directors.” (That’s a paraphrase from memory — his Weibo account, which had over 140,000 followers, has since been deleted.) In response, this week we’ll take a look behind the camera at the work of a few exemplary female filmmakers in China, past and present.
Today’s selection is a still from Girls Always Happy (柔情史), Beijing director Yang Mingming’s debut feature, which recently premiered in Berlin. An early review on film site Another Gaze explores the film’s core theme:
Girls Always Happy offers a searing and unapologetic look into how women are habitually positioned into mutually contradictory roles, and how their resultant emotional, material, and even existential dependence on men –acutely felt in modern China – place them in constant competition amongst other women in a way that can engender pettiness, smallness, and jealousy. We witness the paradoxical set-up of a social system that tells women to value male approval above all else and then calls them greedy, evil and jealous for trying to succeed in a world that does not allow any additional routes to greatness; “the ruling caste”, Simone de Beauvoir notes in 1949 in her landmark The Second Sex, has a tendency to “base its argument [about the inferiority of others] on the state of affairs it created itself.”
This week’s photo theme is: Director’s Seat. Last month, well-known (male) Chinese film director Ding Taisheng made a controversial statement on Sina Weibo to the effect that “women can be great producers, but rarely directors.” (That’s a paraphrase from memory — his Weibo account, which had over 140,000 followers, has since been deleted.) In response, this week we’ll take a look behind the camera at the work of a few exemplary female filmmakers in China, past and present.
Ann Hui is a filmmaker based in Hong Kong. Born to a Chinese father and a Japanese mother in 1947, she has put out a diverse range of works via both film and television. Her unique exploration of individual “common people” living in the forgotten places of Hong Kong is often hauntingly touching, especially in later works such as A Simple Life (2012) and The Way We Are (2008).
Just ahead of International Women’s Day, American toy company Mattel has released a new line of Barbie Role Models featuring a diverse lineup of artists, athletes, activists, and entrepreneurs from around the world.
The new dolls came after Mattel, maker of Barbie, conducted a survey of 8,000 mothers around the globe and found that 86% are worried about the kind of role models their daughters are exposed to.
“Girls have always been able to play out different roles and careers with Barbie and we are thrilled to shine a light on real life role models to remind them that they can be anything,” wrote Lisa McKnight, senior vice president and general manager of Barbie, in a news release.
With 86% of US moms worried about the type of role models their daughters are exposed to, we are committed to shining a light on empowering female role models in an effort to inspire more girls.
Of the 19 role models, 3 are from China: Olympic gold medalist Hui Ruoqi, actress and environmental activist Guan Xiaotong, and Yuanyuan Tan, prima ballerina of the San Francisco Ballet.
Learn a bit more about each in the screenshots below, and explore the rest fo the Role Models over at Barbie’s post on the new line.
This week’s photo theme is: Director’s Seat. Last month, well-known (male) Chinese film director Ding Taisheng made a controversial statement on Sina Weibo to the effect that “women can be great producers, but rarely directors.” (That’s a paraphrase from memory — his Weibo account, which had over 140,000 followers, has since been deleted.) In response, this week we’ll take a look behind the camera at the work of a few exemplary female filmmakers in China, past and present.
Today we highlight a recent classic of Chinese independent cinema: Liu Jiayin’s 2005 debut, Oxhide(牛皮). Only 23 years old at the time she made this film, Oxhide captures the life of Liu’s working class Beijing family at a time when the city was ramping up for primetime on the international stage.
dGenerate Films, the US-based distributor of Oxhide and many other choice cuts from the Chinese indie circuit (including Female Directors), provides a synopsis:
Boldly transforming documentary into fiction, Liu Jiayin cast her parents and herself as fictionalized versions of themselves. Her father, Liu Zaiping, sells leather bags but is slowly going bankrupt. He argues with his wife, Jia Huifen, and his daughter over methods to boost business in the shop. A cloud of anxiety follows them into sleepless nights shared in the same bed. But through the thousand daily travails of city life, a genuine and deeply moving picture of Chinese familial solidarity emerges from the screen.
