Monthly Archives: October 2008

Pondering about housing.......

Posted on by
9

Time went fast and things changed a lot especially in the last 30 years from 1978 to 2008.  I can see the progresses of our country, the reformed China, when I recall my housing and compared the old one with the new one now!

I lived in a courtyard house for my childhood for 16 years. That was a traditional Chinese designed house with rooms in each 4 directions and a nice squared courtyard in the middle. It was located in a narrow alley and there were 4 houses on each side of this alley. 

We children of the 8 homes got along and lived joyously, as we could meet each other easily after class. When we came back home from school, we normally threw the bags on bed and shouted to mom or the maid: "We will have a rest and back soon". Then we sisters and brother as well as other children would run out to the playground of the Military district and had a great time there. However, that kind of house was really an old fashion one where we even had no toilet at home but had to go out for 10 minutes to use the public one in the big military courtyard.

After I got married in 1978, I have moved 3 times so far and each time the latter house would be better than the former. I enjoy the advanced facilities of the flat but I still remember the old courtyard house. Why?  From the flat building, I can't meet people as easily as we did in the courtyard house. People are now isolated in a well decorated house but hardly go to visit other's home just for chat. And the young generation currently is often busy with their lessons and has no time to run out for a good time as we did....

The first year anniversary of ifgogo.com

Posted on by
22

As a team blog from China, we've been blogging for one year since our first post on October 16th. Thanks to all our great readers and authors, now we have 121 posts and 1,357 comments altogether. The very original idea of this blog was inspired in 2005, by a Flash developer from German who came across to my personal Chinese blog and asked me to update some stories in English. Then I blogged some posts in English but at last I stopped.

Blogging in English is very interesting but really hard for me. Anyway, English is not my mother language. Even weird, writing English posts in my personal blog also makes some my Chinese readers feel strange. (I proudly got some daily traffic in 2005)

However, as the internationalization(i18n) was introduced to more and more people over the world, I think it would be rather interesting to share our ideas about China, Chinese with people from all over the world who might be interested in such stories. In the late summer of 2007, I asked some of my friends: You, Lisa, Cat and many other friends about the idea. Many of them were interested and then we started up this team blog in October, named "ifgogo.com", just make it easy to remember.

I know it's really a hard task and it's a long way to go. Anyway, just enjoy blogging.

11 Super funny "shanzhai" pictures refined

Posted on by
4

As we had introduced before, "shanzhai" is already a very common used phrase in China. At first, it represents the copycats of big brands, then it can even somehow represent some "weird creativity".

Here I got a lot of funny pictures refined from some local forums in China (mostly from this site):

FYI, it's JUST FOR FUN!

  1. Nokia (NOKLA):
  2. Sony (SQNY):
  3. KFC (KFG)
  4. Adidas and Nike
  5. Adidas (dasad)
  6. SKII(SK-D)
  7. Adidas(Adidos)
  8. Adidas(avivas)
  9. Nike(HIKE)
  10. Nike(IVIKE)
  11. Starbucks(Starbox)

The 2008 Blog Action Day

Posted on by
4

Today is the Blog Action Day of 2008, on Poverty.

Poverty is a big trouble in China. We have a population of more than 1300 millions (1,321,851,888 on July 2007 est). but most of the people are from rural areas or small cities. Though the economy of our country is improving at a very high-speed, the gap between rich and poor is still rather big. And this causes many problems. The more I love my motherland, the more I have to admit this.

In early years, I lived in a big city named Wuhan in Hubei province. Chinese families were not likely to move around frequently, so the voices from the poverty could hardly be heard, especially the real living situation of those people. I still remember the first time to visit my grand father's village in 1994, I was so shocked! There's no TV and telephone. Many of them even didn't know what those things were. They could only "receive" information via radio and could never tell the outsiders how's their daily life like.

Fortunately, internet and blog do change our life! Not only for those who can blog about their real life, but also for us who can share our knowledge and information about this.

Blogging is not only a "talkshow" but also gave the details on how to help the poverty and refugee in the terrible 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. In that case, You did a very great job and that post was hit for thousands of times. I am proudly sure there must be someone donating their money via our information.

Thanks again for the great idea of Blog Action Day, we are not blogging lonely and our ideas could spread all over the world!

Fresh water Hairy Crab in the golden fall

Posted on by
9


There is an old fairy tale about  hairy crab called "Legend of the white snake". This story tells a young scholar named Xu Xian falls in love with a beautiful white snake Bai Xuzhen who has taken on human form. Their love is true and pure; however, their love is forbidden by the laws of heaven.  A sorcerer called Fa hai tricked Xu Xian to be a hostage in Lei Feng Pagoda. Xu Xian and Bai Xuzhen's love moves the heaven. The God sends his man to catch Fa Hai. Fahai sneaks underneath hairy crab's carapace. Since then, Fa Hai's soul is hidden within the crab. So, the more you hate the evil monk, the more crabs you should have. (kidding)

As the autumn wind blows,  the chrysanthemum turns yellow. It's a sign for Chinese mitten crab's time. In ancient times, Eating hairy crabs in the fall is regarded as a high taste, accompanied with watching chrysanthemums and composing poems. Chinese mitten crab is also well-known as "big biding crab" or "Hairy crab". A lot of foreigners were mistaken by Shanghainese liars' saying" Hairy crab is  Shanghai's delicacy". That's totally bullshit. Once on a flight from Vancouver to Shanghai, an editor wrote that Elsewhere except Shanghai's hairy crab is the genuine one. His words pissed me off. I have to clarify this on behalf of Suzhou citizens. Fresh water hairy crab belongs to Suzhou. There are two kinds of Fresh water hairy crabs, one is Taihu Lake hairy crab, the other is Yangchen Lake hairy crab. Fresh water hairy crab's yolk and oil are very rich and tasty; therefore, they are welcome by lots of Chinese people. For most westerners, hairy crab' crust is hard and they don't know how to get started. A traditional way of cooking is steamed hairy crab. Old people say crab has a cooling effect on human body. Don't forget to  prepare minced ginger and spring onion sauce, which  is indispensable. For westerners, an experienced cook will take out the crab meat and roe and cook them with other ingredients. Here, I got three tips for those of you who doesn't know how to eat this dish.

  1. Don't get started with the claws or legs. If you pull the claws and legs off first, the crab meat will come off with the claws and legs. First of all, you take out crab's belly. Female crab's belly is round while male crab's is pointed.
  2. Secondly, you open the  carapace of the crab (casing of the crab)
  3. Use leg's sharp part as a tool to pick out the crab meat.
  4. Dip the crab meat or roe into the sauce.
  5. After you are finished, wash your hands with tea water in order to remove the special odor and smell.
  6. Don't drink tea, cold water or eat persimmons after taking crabs, or you will get stomachache.
  7. There is an old saying:" September Female Crab, October Male Crab". September is the ninth month in the Chinese lunar calendar.

Nowadays it' hard to tell which is the genuine Yangchen lake hairy crab, which is not. But I can tell you if Yangchen Lake's the best, the lotus Island in Yangchen lake town, Xiangchen District is the best of the best. The genuine fresh water Yangchen Lake hairy crab's meat is a little bit sweat. Now the price for each hairy crab (200g) is 100 yuan. It's fair and inexpensive. If you are interested, take a tour to yangchen lake town. Enjoy this dish in the golden fall.