Understanding China via Bridge Blogs
| 14:33 UK time, Monday, 22 February 2010
Chinasmack is an example of the growing trend for Chinese 'bridge blogs': sites run by people who trawl Chinese-language blogs and forums and then translate interesting posts and stories into English for a wider audience -- they even translate some of the comment sections too. It really does shine a light on a nation everyone is watching.
Subjects range from celebrity indiscretions to the privileged lives of China's study abroad students to harrowing photos from China's history. Here, a poster on a forum (tianya.cn), writes about the Chinese characters for "woman" and is complaining about what they perceive as the sexist nature of some of them:
These 16 characters, contain a certain derogatory meaning, which make children during the course of their studies, and normal people during the process of writing and reading, perceive these 16 characters to have fundamental connections to the female gender; unknowingly lowering their opinions of women.
Incidentally, if you read the full post linked above you will also learn that the Chinese equivalent of "needle in a haystack" is "millet in the sea". Don't forget, starting on March 8th we will be airing -- in 3 different languages -- short TV and radio slots featuring some of the bloggers who appear on this site. Do get in touch if you want to participate and record a webcam piece for us.
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