User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Giving Instructions to the Ayi

RJ

Hee hee - got me there. No worries, if ever I have any spare you are the first person I will think of. ;)

Posted on: Giving Instructions to the Ayi

Hi chanelle

Thanks very much for 'spelling out' your experience with ayis - that is very interesting. I think your suggestion that 'many' mothers move with their student children a bit of a challenge, on a number of levels. I'd like to see some statistics before I was convinced about that - I can imagine it happening in the odd case but my experience here in China suggests that it would not be the norm. ('Many' has connotations of being a large proportion of cases.)

But no, I won't be getting an ayi - until I change my mind. :)

For me, it has connotations of a colonial social structure that I feel somewhat repelled by. Again, as I have said several times here, it is not the commercial arrangements that worry me, it is not the money. It is the behaviour (on both sides to the relationship.) I find the expat attitude 'good help is so cheap in china' particularly offensive because it demeans the employed person. And I have spoken elsewhere about the common attitudes toward the lower classes in China - it is one thing I don't like about China. Not least the attitude '.. who cares? make a mess.. an ayi or some other person will clean up'. People lose any sense of personal responsibility, even for such basic things as disposing of their rubbish, or using the toilet. And it reveals an arrogance that is only possible if the perpetrator feels that they are so superior to the underling. All in all I don't like it.

Posted on: Renting an Apartment through an Agent 3

oh, made an error in the pinyin, for anyone interested & I can't edit it now:-

床垫 chuángdiàn

Hope I don't lead anyone astray.

Hi lujiaojie - thanks for that confirmation. :)

I was also interested in how my friend pronounces 褥子rùzi - for the first time in my life I think I have a manageable rù!

& as he has lived in some many places I wonder how Chinese people view his accent. I wonder if he has a 'transcontinental' Chinese accent (rather like in English we talk about a trans-Atlantic accent). I believe his speech also changes with the company - last night I listened while he spoke with some locals and (to me) he just sounded like a Kunmingren. When he speaks to his parents he uses Shangdonghua, when he talks with me he speaks putonghua. With his Beijing mates it is beijinghua. Pretty clever.

Posted on: Your First Mooncake

I'm wondering if Shanghairen would appreciate Yunnan moon cakes. It's a regional thing. :) And they think that we are either dirt poor or get around in fancy dress.

PS. They also think that we are too short. ;)

Posted on: Your First Mooncake

I've been trying to off-load moon cakes to some people and it hasn't been going too well.  They chose two out of the 50 odd we offered them, and then somehow the moon cakes were still on the table after they left.  :)

Still wondering if I should run after them with the moon cakes, there was a knock on the door (the lady had left her bag.)  I leapt up with the moon cakes ['oh, you also forgot these!'] and there was a moment of embarrassment all round.  

She graciously accepted the moon cakes (perhaps because I had already slipped them into her bag) - but the look on her face led me to add (a bit foolishly and more so redundantly): 'it's okay, you can dump them on the way home if you like'.  

Posted on: Giving Instructions to the Ayi

Hi thinkbuddha

That sounds entirely reasonable; up to a certain level you would be more interested in getting a feed or something over your head than wondering how you are going relative to people around you. But once the basic needs are met the idea of relative income kicks in.

However the poddies above have been intimating that the life of an ayi can't be too bad (happy even) if they are sending their kids to good schools etc. I am pointing to research that says that at this level (we are not talking poverty if you are a Chinese ayi) money has not that much to do with happiness, and even less to do with entrenched behaviours.

Posted on: Various Speech Acts and 向 (xiang)

Yeh, well that's 'cause Chengdu has crap weather. Flights delayed for a day, par for the course. But don't tell anyone. :)

Posted on: Renting an Apartment through an Agent 3

Hi John

Interesting, I checked with my mate here;he says you can call it a 垫 but a better word is 褥子 rùzi (he has lived all over, born way out west, parents from the east, several years here in the south & several years in the north, Beijing - I forgot to ask whether the term is specific to one or more of those regions)

You go:

床垫 chuángbèi - the hard mattress

褥子rùzi - the wool or cotton padded pad that euphonies posted about - generally you sleep on it, but you could also sleep under it

被子bèizi - your doona :) - you sleep under it

Posted on: Wrong Way on the Subway

xiaopaul

Both terms are used for bus lines, 线, 路 and even 线路 (putting the characters together). But 路 is most commonly used in spoken Chinese.

Posted on: Giving Instructions to the Ayi

People like me on a Chinese salary love this stuff. :)

Well, we are talking averages of course, so I can't speak for a few stupid rich people. Research (from the US of course) indicates that we are no happier now than we were 50 years ago, while average real incomes are 30 times greater. Ok, that is off the top of my head, I would have to check my notes but I am on holidays. The rationale is something referred to as 'relative' income - unfortunately as we get richer everyone else does too. And apparently we only get happier when we see ourselves getting ahead of the pack, increasing our relative income.

Of course rich people are generally healthier than poor people, and they live longer. Which should make rich people happy. But health and perceived happiness depends more on our perception of control than actual money income. And it turns out that there is a whole list of things that make us happy apart from money; often they cannot be easily bought. Good health can be bought, but things like 'hanging out with your mates' (if that makes you happy) rely on a lot of things other than money.

But about half of our happiness 'levels' can be accounted for by our genes - so any amount of money won't change your condition, at least until we get further into genetic engineering.

Ref (for example): Ross Gittins (2010), 'The Happy Economist: happiness for the hard-headed', Allen&Unwin.