There is a site in Japan called China Intelligence Bureau (Searchina) dedicated to Chinese current events and they recently started a column called “Today’s Blog“. This column features interesting Chinese blog posts translated into Japanese.

The blog translations are under a category called “Today’s Blogs” . There is a page that describes the Chinese blogosphere and why they think that blogs are worth following. (in Japanese)

Here is a translation from a Chinese blog post about rising divorce rate in China. The original Chinese blogger is credited at the bottom.

I was hiding from the heat in Nanchang last week and took to channel surfing. Landed up on CCTV 6, they were showing this popular movie from last year dubbed in Chinese.

Some people in China like such bollywood movies mainly for the song and dance.

Here is a VCD I found in Kunming last year in a pirate video shop near the Yunnan University campus.

Who watches bollywood movies in China? Guys don’t seem to be much interested. The girls seem to like fashion. Infact most of the indophiles I have met in China tend to be women.

In a Chengdu lane this shop selling trinkets from Nepal and India had some bollywood posters enticing the shoppers to try out fashion from South Asia.

Another Chengdu shop selling trinkets.

There used to lots of cybercafes in China but these days they are getting harder to spot. Stricter govt. regulations have forced most of these place to close down. The ones that are running are licensed establishments. They are usually referred to as Internet Bars – wang ba (网 å�§). The character wang means a web or network and the character ba is I suppose just a phonetic near to bar. Most Chinese people use them for games, watching videos and messaging and they are very adept at multitasking using many of these things at the same time.

The last two characters wang ba means internet bar.

You pay an advance at the counter usually 10 RMB and they will give you this slip or a card with your login and password. Sometimes it is only a login, you can leave the password blank if it is not printed. In this example 00292145 is the login and 123 is the password. After you have finished your session they will return your change.

The cybercafe might not have msn or yahoo. QQ is the most popular chat client in China. You can use a web based messaging service meebo to log on to msn, yahoo and aol.

The computer is usually newer and has USB ports so it is very easy to transfer your files. I found Chinese cybercafes more reluctant if you want to use your own laptop and connect to their LAN cable. The Thais are more open to this.

At one of the smaller airports in China, this girls was selling a GPRS internet service. Whenever she was not answering customer questions she would be chatting with friends.

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骄傲_proud, originally uploaded by issacphoto.

Issacphoto posted some great images from our Chengdu.

chengdu

Meet my Daruma doll. Daruma is the Japanese name of the Indian monk Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma travelled from India to China (where he is known as Damo) around AD 500 and founded Chan (or Zen) school of Buddhism.

Daruma dolls are sold at temple festivals (matsuri). The eyes of the dolls are not filled in. Around new year people buy these dolls. They make a resolution and fill in one of the eyes. If they are able to successfully complete the task then they will come back and paint the remaining eye. At the end of the year the dolls are taken to a temple and burnt.

Daruma dolls are popular with Japanese politicians. They paint one eye before the elections and if they win then they paint the other one.

I bought my Daruma doll at a bookshop. As a convenience these bookshop dolls came with one eye already colored in. The other eye was provided in the form of a sticker saving you the hassle of messing with paint. The character ç¦� you see painted in front is fuku in Japanese or fu in Chinese. It means good luck. This doll also doubles up as a piggy-bank – there is a slot at the top to drop in coins.

Technorati Tags: buddhism, damo, daruma, india