Name Brands 名牌

I admit. I am not a name brand type of guy. 我承認,我不瞭解名牌 To me, my type of name brand is the equivalent of (for American readers) Payless Shoes and 99 Cent store. I just don’t see the point of them. Especially in fashion, name brands are exactly the same as some lesser known brand. My wife disagrees.

Asian cultures tend to be name brand conscious for public products that are shown to each other. As the economy of Mainland China has improved, it has jumped right into the name brand fashion craze. In this spirit, my wife was recently researching the best name brand eyeglass frames 太太研究了名牌眼鏡框, which I could not help her with since I did not even know there were name brand eyeglass frames.

My daughter’s ballet school has a group of fairly affluent Chinese housewives who are nice people and interesting to watch interact as a group. My wife was listening as they were discussing expensive name brand purses they had bought and what a good investment they were. “They can only go up in value,” one young woman chirpily said. “I’ve bought several.” 女兒芭蕾舞的班家庭主婦講說了人家應該把名牌皮包當作
投資來看 My wife asked her a question about which name brand eyeglasses were best and received a patient explanation of the kind a child might receive when asking the first time about table manners.

(Like Chevy Nova or "no go" in Mexico, the name brand in the photo needs a little more careful thought if they're going to market cross-culturally.)

Air Pollution 空氣污染

We’ve been enjoying good old-fashioned sooty air pollution on both sides of the Pacific this year. Living in Beijing, we get day after day of air pollution that is common in a big city in a valley surrounded by mountains in a developing economy. Sounds similar to Southern California, doesn’t it? Actually, it isn’t too bad, a lot better than capital cities of some nations, but it could be improved. Some days are a little gray, but I have even seen beautiful blue sky 北京有時候也有藍藍的天空 on occasion as when we were at 潘家园 the wholesale tea marketplace. They are worried about pollution affecting the Olympics in 2008會影響奧運 and so have moved a lot of heavy industry out of the city, but the pollution comes mainly from automobiles at this point. …another similarity to Southern California which I’ll talk about in coming weeks so stick around.

Southern California is now also enjoying major air pollution because of an especially serious round of brush fires 火災. There are fires all around the LA basin, Orange County and especially serious in San Diego….our cell group at church has been praying for the people who have lost their homes. And now that the worst of the fires have died down, I can see in the media that finger-pointing season has begun 責備的時間到了.

Grandfather’s 80th Birthday 爺爺80歲的生日

I’m getting caught up, well not really caught up but better than I was. This took place earlier in October.

My father seems as healthy as ever 還是很健康, having also had a child later in life than most in his generation so he now is enjoying grandchildren later in life than most in his generation. Our little son especially likes him 小兒子很喜歡他, making sure he sits by grandfather’s side while watching television.

The meal turned out quite well this year despite some initial worry about whether we could get the right type of lobster. Among other things, we had a large lobster and lots of raw sea urchin and steamed clams (龍蝦, 蛤蜊, 生海膽..大飽口福!).
It’s always frustrating when people make stupid expressions, especially when I am that person. In the one photo, I made a stupid expression 古怪的表情. In the other photo I took, my father (the birthday boy) was out of focus 在另外一張, 爺爺不清楚. So, instead of admitting my mistake for posterity I am cutting the two photos in half to show you.

Time and Children 時間與孩子

Our children want to talk to us and come to us for advice about relationships with friends. Ah, the joys of home schooling 家庭學校的喜樂! Lots of people wish they would be a source of advice and influence for their children. The problem for most parents is time 父母沒有時間陪孩子. Their time with their children is miniscule compared to the time their children are at school with their classmates exactly the same age. I see so many people who are busy, busy building careers which means that there is only a couple minutes of “quality time” at best each day with children 幾分鐘所謂的‘品質時間’不夠. Gradually the only social influence that matters is from peers exactly the same age (and tv, internet, etc.). Those older and younger are invisible.

Is Chinese culture different? On the one hand, grandparents have a bigger impact on children’s lives since they spend time with them. Also, family businesses 家庭企業 lend themselves to the whole family working together. On the other hand, as a developing economy, much time is spent on improving lives economically.

The photo, which has nothing to do with this rant, is of my wife after she bought this silk shawl, that our daughter is wearing, from these merchants who come to her workplace. They sell name brand clothing 名牌衣服,鞋子,絲襪,帽子, 等 for a really cheap price, often the equivalent of US $1. The 2nd photo is of my daughter’s toes as she was sleeping.

Today’s Qiao Household 目前的喬家大院

This is what the Qiao household looks like today. It is a really large household complex that looks somewhat like a maze 有一點像迷宮. There are also crowds of tourists there on most days so that it is easy to get lost in the crowds and that’s what happened. It was dry there and flat as land as well, not quite desert but close. Shanxi province is drier than Beijing 比較乾 and we could really feel that when we were there.

My wife wandered off to find the bathroom as we were getting to the bridal chamber 洞房 and it was a while before we found her again. After our tour, she did get a nice jade tea mug with the characters for Qiao Household carved into them 有’喬家’ 這兩個字刻在玉石的茶杯上. Our son had the easiest job as one of our fellow tourists pointed out. He was pushed up and around all the hallways in the stroller.

喬家大院 The Qiao Family Household

We are watching an interesting historical drama, fiction based on history, about a famous business family in Qing Dynasty 清朝 China about 170 years ago 差不多170 年以前. We were recently at their household in Shanxi Province in China 在山西省太原市附近, visiting from our residence in Beijing. Though the personal stories in the drama are those of modern China, it definitely gives the viewer a flavor of the times and places in which it takes place. I find it interesting to watch how Chinese family 家庭企業 businesses actually operated in those days and to some extent still do.

Loans between businesses and taking in shareholders were important in raising the funds necessary for business ventures. This drama also gives a view into a different world from the Chinese overseas family businesses 跟華僑家庭企業不一樣 those in the west are familiar with. The protagonist in the story Qiao Zhi Yong 喬致庸, though he was supposed to be a third generation is really the founder of the Qiao family as a major business.

You Can’t Say That! What we cannot say in Chinese / American culture 不可以這樣講!: 言論自由

A recent discussion about a person’s ‘offensive’ speech 得罪人的話 online got me thinking about things that can or cannot be discussed in Chinese and American cultures. In American culture, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discuss differences between groups of people. Due to the simple fact that there are many different types of people 因為有各種各樣的人所以提出不同的地方很難, real and perceived, it is very hard to make sensible public statements about observed differences between groups without someone making an issue of how “offended” he or she is. Don't even think about those CPA, doctor or economist jokes!

By contrast, in Chinese culture, differences between groups are discussed all the time 可以討論優點缺點和不同的地方. Maybe it is something cultural or maybe it is because there are not as many divisions among peoples. This is not to say that insults leveled at another group are ok, they aren’t and in fact people will go out of their way not to, but one it is my opinion that one is not as much at risk for an honest appraisal of differences as in the West. Now politics is another story, don’t talk about that. (Photo: Our son demonstrating his sleeping technique兒子在幫忙)

My Car is Bigger than Your Car 我的車子比你的大

….or “my trash truck is bigger than his fire truck.” “我的垃圾車比他的消防車大! We never really change. From the time we are little toddlers we frequently compare ourselves with others to make ourselves feel good, or maybe to make ourselves feel bad. As adults we just don’t talk about it out loud. Little children, on the other hand, will say whatever they are thinking.

We visited friends whose son is the same age as our younger son 差不多一樣大. They played together well, but when we got home our son was comparing toys. He let us know that he liked the fire engine (hint for Christmas present 聖誕節的禮物) but that at least his trash truck was as big or bigger.

We received a nice gift there. The wife, who is from Taiwan, planted a certain type of Taiwanese Concord grape 巨蜂葡萄 that is really good tasting. I remember we had a great cup of fresh grape juice made from these grapes on a hot humid, Keelung evening 回想到我們在基隆的路邊攤喝了新鮮巨蜂葡萄汁, 真好喝! For one reason or another they did not want the grapes they had so painstakingly grown, so we thankfully and gratefully provided them a good home.