There are some translations for this weird word. For instance, here are some from Xinhua News:

Do not toss
No dithering
Do not flip flop
Don't mess around
Do not sway back and forth
Do not bugger about pointlessly
Do not do much ado about nothing
Do not do something over and over again, and to little effect

I guess you get the idea.

Well, I just want to say a very "Zhe Teng" (Bu in Chinese means no) thing I encounted recently.

I was planning a trip to China with my girlfriend this summer. She is American, so she needs a visa. Here is the policy for Americans [1].

Ⅱ.How to apply
1.You may submit the application to the Visa Office of the Embassy or Consulate -General which holds consular jurisdiction over the state where you reside;
2.If you cannot come in person, you may entrust someone else or a travel/visa agent to drop off your application at the visa office of the Embassy or Consulate -General which holds consular jurisdiction over the state where you reside;
▲No appointment is required.
▲Mailed applications are not acceptable and will be returned.
▲Mail back service is available (make sure you read INSTRUCTIONS FOR APPLICATION MAIL SERVICE) .

And the obnoxious table [2]:

Ⅳ.Visa fees
1.Please pay by Visa, MasterCard, Money Order, Cashier's Check, Company Check or Cash.Personal checks are not acceptable.
2.Please make the check or money order payable to the Chinese Embassy or Chinese Consulate-General.
3.Fee list:

Number of Entry	American	Citizens of other countries
Single Entry	$130	$30
Double Entry	$130	$45
Multiple Entry for 6 Months	$130	$60
Multiple Entry for 12 Months	$130	$90
Multiple Entry for 24 Months	$130	$90

My girlfriend was really frustrated because for her, she never has to go to the embassy to get the visa. She has been to several countries, and China is the only one that needs "in person" visa application.  Also, she asked me, were there any differences between U.S. citizens and the citizens of other countries? Why American needed to pay $130 and they only needed to pay $30 for a single entry?

I told my girlfriend that China does not welcome you, and she told me that "your government is messing around". What an excellent translation of "Bu Zhe Teng"!

[1,2]: http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/hzqz/zgqz/t84246.htm

Note: This table is only applicable for using foreign currency/people living out of China. If you are currently living in China or you can speak Chinese, please use Google or other search engines to locate your local red cross agencies. Junyu from Google also wrote a post on that (in Chinese). You can either donate some money or contribute in other forms.

As I only collect the information from web according to the best of my knowledge, please verify any information you get from the web twice before donation, especially the destination bank account number and swift code.

Update by Aw: You may also want to donate via Google.com.

Quick tips:

If you want to donate via credit card: Go to method 3, 5, 6, 7

If you want to donate via check, go to method 1, 10

If you can do wire transfer quickly, go to method 2, 3, 4

If you want to donate to some NGO that you can trust, go to method 8, 9, 10

If you want to donate via paypal, go to method 8, 9, 10

If you can read Chinese or if you are in HK, go to method 5, 6

If you are in United States and near New York, you can use Method 1.

If you've head of some NGO/Forums like bullog or mitbbs, go to their corresponding web pages. Method 8 and 9 provides the quick link.

Official Agencies:

Method 1

Organization: Chinese Consulate General in New York
Write a Check to Chinese Consulate General in New York.

Pay to the order of: "Chinese Consulate General in New York"

For "Earthquake Relief Donation"

Mail to "Liu Lei,520 12th Ave, New York, NY 10036"

Please leave your name, addr and zip code/tel so that we can connect you with receipts

Phone number: 212-244-9392 ext. 1000.

Website(In Chinese): http://www.nyconsulate.prchina.org/chn/ttxw/t434163.htm

Method 2.

Organization: Chinese Red Cross

Wiring transfer to

Bank Info: CHINA CITI BANK H.O.IN BEIJING, SWIFT:CIBKCNBJ

Account Number: 7112-1114-8260-0000-209

Website http://redcross.org.cn (In Chinese)

Tel 011-86-10-65139999, 64027620

Method 3.

Organization: Chinese Red Cross FOUNDATION

Bank Info: BANK OF CHINA, BEIJING BR., SWIFT:BKCHCNBJ110

Account Number: 8001-0008-6608-0910-14
Website: www.crcf.org.cn

You can also use IE browser to access
http://www.crcf.org.cn/gb/jianjie/jkindex.asp

via your credit card.
You can get the information about your donation at
http://www.crcf.org.cn/gb/jianjie/jkindex.asp

Method 4

Organization: China Charity

Bank Info: BANK OF CHINA,H.O.IN BEIJING, SWIFT:BKCHCNBJ

Account Number 0010-0914-9080-9101-4

Website: http://www.chinacharity.cn/wzdefaultservlet (Chinese)

Method 5

Organization: Red Cross In HK

Online donation Website: www.redcross.org.hk

Method 6

Oxfam HK

Online donation website

https://www.oxfam.org.hk/public/donate/donate?donate_id=45

Other Organizations:

Method 7

MercyCorps China Earth Quake relief.

Donate on line via credit card.
Website: http://www.mercycorps.org/chinaearthquake/?source=1062

Method 8

Bullog, a famous right-wing web forum in China, founded by Yonghao Luo.

Donate via paypal.
Website: http://www.bullog.cn/blogs/liuyanban/archives/136782.aspx (In Chinese)

Method 9

MitBBS via paypal

Website: http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/sysop/31168784.html

Pay to: contactmitbbs@gmail.com
ATTN: Chinese earthquake relief.

For paypal. You don't need a bank account to operate, just use paypal (If you know what it is). Note that MITBBS/Bullog are both popular and high-ranked BBSs among Chinese community, they are doing everything they can do to help the victims in the earthquake, but keep in mind that they are not a non-profit/tax free agency. [If you want a tax-exempt receipt. this might not be a good choice]

Method 10

SVNT, a non-profit organization registered in California with IRS 501 (c)
(3) status. We will publish all transactions of donations online. All
donations will be 100% transferred to China Red Cross.
(Unverified by me, but many Chinese have donated through this)

Via Bank Transfer:

Bank name: Washington Mutual
Payee title: SVTN (special fund for earthquake relief)
Routing #: 322271627
Acct #: 3170415745

Address:
690 RIVER OAKS PKWY
SAN JOSE, CA 95134-1905

Or by check:

Pay to: SVTN
For: China Earthquake Relief

Mail to: P. O. Box 1295
Fremont, CA 94538-0129
USA

Or Paypal: tsinghua_foundation@yahoo.com
Pay to China Earthquake Relief.

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It can be translated as:

Our instructor asked as about our dreams, and I said: My dream is to be a citizen. "It's so easy," he replied. "Well, " I added, "my dreams is, to be a citizen who can browser the Internet freely (free as in freedom)"

You might be curious: why the freedom of accessing information is so critical? To me, it can be explained in twofold.

Human beings, as every living things in the world, have to get feedback from our environment anytime to adjust to it. It's for sure that insufficient knowledge to the surroundings will impair our justifications. Being ignorant to the outside world will eventually meet a brick wall in front. Moreover, insufficient information would be misleading too. I have a friend who helps high school students go abroad every year. He told me that, rather than lacking of money or ambition for a child to study abroad, the biggest problem why so few students can get the opportunity to study abroad came from the ignorance of the policy and the procedure of higher education systems abroad. Therefore, if you have such a dream, please try to get necessary information and don't let the environment confine you. Actually your environment will never be a restriction if you can get outside information constantly and thereby decreases the entropy of the environment.

This brings another question: what kind of information you need to get to achieve your goal? My answer is : be an independent thinker and get the key yourself. I can understand that one in the early 20s is eager to explore the unknown world and trying to syndicate all the useful information for him/herself. To my experience, two frequent questions used by them are "which book should I read" and "where can I find that information". My suggestion for them is almost, if not always, the same: "think about it twice, and you will get the answer". In my opinion (maybe sort of paranoid), if you haven't known what kind of information you should take to help make decision, you are not prepared for success. There might be someone in the world that can answer the question about "should I do..." or "how can I do.." for you perfectly, but you have to be the one that have a full sense of the outside world with respect to your own situation. In U.S., people usually say: "Do some homework first", which means you have to gather some necessary information yourself. Be brave, nobody can help you in figuring out what kind of information you need, even they can help you in making decision in when you are in labyrinth. So don't panic, dare to know the outside world, even it's painful.

Free accessing to information is important for self-development. Sadly, in China, mainland, this pre-requisite is not true. For some reason, some useful websites such as Wikipedia are not accessible. Moreover, the network infrastructure is not so developed. Nevertheless, those shortages have now been partly resolved via some not-so-hard techniques. Thus, I encourage my readers to explore the wonderful unknown world via your browser and search engines. Your future is on your hand.

Hi all,

I (aka. Eric) is a Ph.D. student of Washington University majored in computer science. I was born in Yangzhou and brought up by my grandparents in rural area. After enjoyed the beautiful scenery for 15 years, I attended Yangzhou Middle School in the city, which was kinda pity. Three years later, I entered the Nanjing University in pursuing a bachelor's degree in Mathematics. However, deeper interests on computer science gave be a very happy house arrest in the dusty and rusty corner of our library. The endless curiosity about knowledge later brought me four offers from Microsoft, Google China, Peking University and Washington University, respectively. Having been in a tough time to decide which way to go for a while, I chose United States because be a computer scientist/scholar was (and is) my dream. So, this is the whole story and it somehow explains why I am now here -- if you decide to follow your dream or go about doing something, don't panic, just go for it!

On this blog, as a contributor, I would like to share my own experiences with readers and take every question/comment as precious present. I by no means want to be a mentor or consultant. Nevertheless, I will do something that I can do currently, namely, writing posts about my thoughts, to let more people in China achieve their dreams. I am not a journalist My posts generally reflect my perspective towards the world and may not be objective, please proceed with caution.

[Caution #1: I am a liberal without a specific religion].