On the Webb: Critic loses face...

...or should that be, "Face loses critic?" 

“Face” is the name of the latest restaurant that was unlucky enough to be reviewed by yours truly. Like many restaurants in Beijing, the food is average and overpriced.

A website that I review(ed) for, however, will tell you a different story.

In its bid to “monetize,” BestFoodinChina crudely cuts out negative comments on reviews of restaurants that are potential buyers of advertising. This is how I summed up Face:

“Average-to-good Thai food in an environment that is comfortable enough to justify the large bill. Perhaps this could be called “Face value”.”

The following paragraph was also given short shrift:

“If I were hungrier - it was only a little past midday – I might have been a bit more positive about what came next, a platter of Thai appetizers. This dish reminded me of something you might buy in the frozen section of a western supermarket - it would be part of a range called something like “Taste of the Orient”. There was plenty of the obvious - spring rolls, fish cakes, prawn cakes – but what should have been delicate and flavoursome, was crude and oily.”

In addition to deleting the above, dozens of negative words were pulled and several incorrect corrections were made to my grammar and style. I wouldn’t recommend you do, but you can read the edited article here. As requested, the editor removed my name.

On the Webb: Syndicate Podcast

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According to the hosts - DJ Blackie and Co. - this is "A Monthlyish podcast that includes the biggest Drum and Bass tracks doing the damage on the scene in Beijing." 

Download the latest version here:

http://mixes.jing-dnb.com/syndicate-podcast-12_jing-dnb.com.mp3

A perfect blog post

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Note that a nail has not been used where the diagonal strut meets the straining post, made possible by chiseling a neat(ish) hole, inside which fits a strut that has been cut to the correct angle so it lies flush with the post. Nails are a totally uncool way of constructing strainer assemblies like the one in the picture, they look ugly and cause the wood to split, which brings on rot.

I have not updated my blog for such a long time, partly because I have been in England, and partly because The Peking Order, along with all other Blogspot pages, Facebook and Twitter, is now unavailable in China. I am using a proxy server to write this; If you are in China, you are using a proxy to read this.

Now that I work for a trendy PR firm, I feel the need to upgrade my "new media" credentials. Check The Peking Order regularly, which I will update when possible, and look out for me on Twitter, which I am told is good. 

On the Webb: Parkour in Beijing

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This is just one of the parkour videos posted on 56minus1.com. This mediocre montage was filmed in Beijing, however, home-grown free-runners appear to be doing their thing across China.

I was less than impressed with all of the videos. Personally, I was much more interested in the Chinese translation of parkour - 跑酷. Sounding similar to the original French word, the pinyin for these two characters is "pao ku." The word could be directly translated back into English as "run cool."

Beij 3: Perfume girl kicks up a stink

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Perfume Girl (香水女生) will return to school next week, reported The Beijing News on Friday. This is the mundane conclusion of a story that involves Wang Tingting (王亭亭), a fourth-year German language student at Beijing Foreign Language Studies University (BFSU), and her criticism of China’s compulsory foreign language education.

"Buff Tingting"

On March 16th, Wang wrote that because of comments on her blog, which included criticism of China’s Ministry of Education (MOE), she had been forced by the university to quit her studies. While some have backed her criticism of the MOE and BFSU, many netizens have accused the girl of being interested purely in self-promotion - they smelled a rat, rather than perfume, and questioned why she would post so many photographs of herself on a blog entry about being kicked out of school.

The Peking Order, which takes an interest in both Chinese education and girls that look good in pink velour tracksuits, translated some of her blog to see if there is anything to her claims:

Zhao Benshan for Education Minister

In her first critical blog entry, Wang likened China’s Minister of Education to an “executioner with a stranglehold on human talent.” “Exam-based education, compulsory foreign language classes from elementary school, an inflexible college entrance exam system, and universities that do not allow transfer between departments,” she wrote, “are suppressing and destroying human talent.”

Wang went on to recommend Zhao Benshan (赵本山), a well-known Dongbei comedian, for the position of Education Minister. Unlike Zhao, who successfully popularised Dongbei dialect within 10 years, “the Ministry of Education is unable even to fully popularise Mandarin."

When Chinese people think of foreign languages, claimed Perfume Girl, the first thing people think of is not pleasure or fascination, it is “destroyed childhoods and the extreme study pressures of youth.”

Foreign languages depriving Chinese of the right to education

The next blog entry went on to complain that “foreign language study is depriving Chinese people of their right to education.” “Regardless of your interests or which direction you want to head in, whether it is history, Chinese, Chinese medicine, archaeology, foreign languages are a hellish gate that the you must pass through.” However talented someone might be at his or her own subject, she wrote, the talent will be choked out by an inadequate grasp of foreign languages.

Foreign languages holding Chinese people to ransom

In her final diatribe before claiming to be kicked out of university, Perfume Girl called on people to “abolish compulsory foreign language education.” This article describes how “foreign languages holding the lives of Chinese people to ransom,” how languages are emphasised at every stage of a young person’s development: from aged three, where “tiny souls are bewildered by foreign languages;” through to graduation where “spoken English, business English and all sorts of foreign language certification, are enough to stress anyone out.”

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Apart from a few nicely-written slogans and the amusing Zhao Benshan analogy, there is nothing special about these comments. Miss Wang’s blog entries are hardly objective criticisms, and like a lot of the Chinese articles I read, they lack logical reasoning and are not backed up with evidence. Her arguments could be summarised into two points: foreign language requirements might hold back those who would otherwise succeed in other subjects; and that many resent studying foreign languages in China.

Both might be acceptable evils if the current system was improving the level of English in China. However, if China's schools are making many unhappy and are stifling talent, then considering my experience of the English levels despite compulsory study, The Peking Order thinks that these complaints are legitimate and that it maybe about time for a drastic rethink of China's education system.

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According to a recent entry on Perfume Girl's blog, hackers have deleted all offending entries. Luckily, others have posted full copies of what she wrote:

Zhao Benshan for Education Minister (Chinese)
Foreign languages depriving Chinese of right to education (Chinese)
Foreign languages holding Chinese people to ransom (Chinese)

Films & TV: Mad about English

Mad about English is an excellent documentary about the frenzied rush to learn English in Beijing before the Olympic Games. This film, which I watched last week, features lots of Chinese people struggling to speak English and lots of awkward foreigners struggling to understand them. Another highlight is the story of a Beijing taxi driver, which throws some light on the pre-Olympic "all taxi drivers will be sacked if they can't speak English" rumour.

I would like to see a follow-up documentary, which asks the stars of Mad about English if they thought it was all worth it. "Did they actually have any decent conversations?" "Are foreigners actually worth speaking to?" ...

On the Webb: Dog woman gives birth

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"Freak of nature" to some, to others she is a "miracle," but to her tiny new-born babies, China's incredible dogwoman will be now known simply as "Mummy."

On the Webb: Jing Podcast No.10

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I love it when Beijing D&B promoters The Syndicate release their semi-regular mix-up. Music and mirth aside, posting a link to it on The Peking Order - a blog whose articles are getting longer but less frequent - buys me time while I think of something else to write.

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Download it here.

More words on the street…

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…or should that be more words used badly on the Chinese streets?

The amount of English words that should be “mastered” as preparation for China’s college entrance English exam will “continue to increase steadily,” reads an article in yesterday's Beijing News.

The story quotes the recently released “2009 Examination Handbook” - essential reading for almost every 17-18 year-old Chinese high-school student, who sits the annual exam as a prerequisite for all undergraduate study in China. When the measure comes into effect, the students should prepare an extra 101 English words, raising the number of officially recommended words to 3500.

The Peking Order was unable to obtain a copy of the 2009 document. However, unofficial lists are likely to become available online as students upload transcribed copies of the vocab. To get an idea of the type of words on the 2009 list, I looked at the 2008 words, which can be viewed on various web forums. “Arbitrary,” “vacuum,” “undergo,” and “expenditure,” are a few of the harder words that I found.

Many who have used English to speak to certain Chinese people will doubt the ability of this measure to improve English literacy. I believe China’s education system, criticized for its emphasis on bleary-eyed rote learning, is partly to blame for the relatively poor English in China. Although following the examiner’s recent advice may aid comprehension of written English, I believe it will encourage memorising a greater number of more difficult words. This will come at the expense of time spent studying basic words, and, therefore, will do nothing to improve standards of written and spoken English communication in China.

In my opinion, it would be best to reduce the words on this list, and encourage studying the flexible usage of verbs like “to go” and “to be.” Due to differences between English and Chinese, namely a lack of verb conjugation in the latter, native Chinese speakers are not used to changing verb forms according the tense, subject, etc. Only after these basic words - and their conjugations - are correctly understood, should a student move on to more difficult words.

Considering that I have trouble using some of the words on the recommended list, for many Chinese high-school students under the current education system, there is not a hope in hell of being able to reproduce such difficult words accurately. An increase in recommended vocabulary is not, therefore, good news for China’s English. On the contrary, I suspect it will result in more words being used incorrectly, increased frustrations of foreign English teachers, and more misunderstandings between Chinese students of English and anyone who has genuinely mastered the English language.