Odds and Ends

As you can see, I've been fiddling a bit with the layout of the blog, and I found a layout that uses the full screen width, which I like better than the narrower layout I was using, so, thanks to Google Bloggger, presto, a new look.

Another impressive part of Blogger is that it appears to be adapted to half of the languages known to man. When I was in China all of the instructions appeared as Chinese ideograms, and here in Hanoi they appear in Thai, luckily I've learned that if I hit the uppermost right hand corner it sends me back to post in our blog with English back as the primary language. Truly revolutionary I think, when people the world round can easily post their whims and ideas into a free market of thought. I wonder when they will get a Burmese version out...

Speaking of language, you haven't experienced language until you've read Chinglish, the literal translations that the Chinese use on signs all over China. Some examples:

"Beware of the landslide" - beneath a stick drawing of a man slipping on a wet floor (I mean, I know I'm a bit overweight, but a landslide?)

"Warm and Fragrant Hint" - the phrase frequently used before any behavioral request, like "Don't grind out your cigarette butts in the carpet"

"Baoshan Airport Chagning" - I think they met "changing", and were using it as we would use "exit". But this is pretty surprising considering that the freeway it was on was one of the most amazing feats of engineering I have ever seen, miles and miles of concrete cantilevered off of the side of near cliff faces, essentially bridges. Untold tens of millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions of Renmibi) to build the road and 50 cents for the sign translations.

"Genitl Emen" - signaling the way to a male toilet

Speaking of toilets... China may be booming and halfway to taking over the world, but they have to be close to dead last in toilet facilities. It is absolutely amazing how foul the average Chinese toilet manages to get over the course of time, say a day or so. I suppose it has something to do with their fondness for "night soil", i.e. fecal waste has been used a fertilizer in China for centuries. So they don't believe in pit latrines, your average rural Chinese toilet just rolls the waste out the back for easy collection by local farmers. And they still have a strong preference for squatting over sitting, so even modern sit down flush toilets tend to be disgusting because many of the people that preceded you squatted on the rim instead of sitting down.

I figured you would all want to know, remember, I wrote a page and half about Moroccan bathrooms in one of our Christmas letters a while back. It seems that toilets are something I keep track of. And you readers reap the benefits...