Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Why there are no 4th floors in China

So in the buildings in China, there are no 4th floors. Well the floors exist, but it will be numbered 5 instead of floor. So in an elevator you will read, 1,2,3,5,and every floor containing the number 4 is skipped as such. The reason, Mandarin language has 4 tones for every word. The word for 4, is “Si” in the 4th tone, but the word “Si” pronounced in the 3rd tone is the word for “death” in Mandarin. So no one wants to live on the floor that is you know the “death” floor. Just a little info on PCR. And no I’m not making any comments on Tibet. Here are some interesting articles though

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199902/tibet-china (love that, let’s build casinos)

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=dw-olygamble040708&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Now the yahoo article isn’t nearly as even as the atlantic one. I mean if I was the Chinese government I would say something along the lines of this.
http://debateman.com/blog/2008/04/xenophobia-olympic-style/ or this
http://jmchow.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/letter-of-reply-to-dan-wetzels-post-on-yahoo-sports/

My opinion, the Wetzel article is pretty crude way to look at things. There’s too many potshots about culture in there, toilets? We’re talking about toilets? Come on. That’s insulting. However, he does make salient points on the poor treatment of migrant construction workers. But that is not a problem just in china. Look at the buildings put up in Dubai, the pyramids, Brooklyn bridge….However, I am not agreeing or disagreeing with the Chinese government's actions in Tibet. I'm staying neutral mofos. Just wanted to point out two versions of articles that are out there. A even one and an uneven one.

The protests against CNN and Carrefour (a French version of walmart which is well established in China) have been mounting, but in Shanghai I have not seen anything close to this, http://shanghaiist.com/2008/04/22/attack_on_an_american_volunteer.php#more that’s pretty crazy, but you have to understand, this is nationalism, it fuels lots of irrationality. Europeans and Americans know this quite well. It’s the same everywhere.

I mean Shanghai things are business as normal. No animosity, no violence, at least none that I have noticed, I also live somewhat in a bubble at times. Hope it’s been informational, but I must say this whole Tibet thing, is a bit tiresome. let's talk about something else next time.

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