sth about SARS
yeah, i didn’t know that sth was an abbreviation for something, either — until i moved to china. it’s just one of the many bits of “english” that chinese students use for years thinking it sounds perfectly natural until a native speaker stops them with “what?” the problem is that most of their english teachers are chinese. and those teachers learned from other chinese english teachers and so on and so on. it’s an insular english community, one that assumes all americans sign e-mails with the salutation “wish you happy every day.” really, my students were perplexed when i told them stuff like that, while cute, doesn’t cut it in the english-speaking world. “we were actually taught that,” one of my students gasped.
anyway, i’ve gotten off topic. i just wanted to share a SARS-related e-mail i received from one of my students. it refers to some stuff i mentioned in my 4.29 blog entitled don’t sneeze at others.
05.22.2003, 11:49 PM · Observations, Politics, School · Comments (3)
Who the f - - k is Deslee?
And other thoughts about dive bars
NOTE: A version of this story appears in that’s Shanghai magazine’s bar guide, due out later this month.
by DAN WASHBURN
meet the winners in the dives,
where the people are the real stars,
all the rest of their lives.
— Neil Young, “Sail Away”
It was one of those bar bathrooms where you make sure to breathe through your mouth. I didn’t want to find out if it smelled as bad as it looked. The entire night was a game of bladder roulette: Can I hold it until I get home? The answer was no — 10 kuai beers tend to go right through me. And after they all did, I went to wash my hands, but quickly thought better of it. The puke in the sink was piled too high. (It made me feel better about the beer I would spill later in the night.). As I walked to where I could breath through my nose again, I came upon a well-dressed man sitting on the floor, using the wall as a pillow. He was mumbling something, but I couldn’t understand him. Not sure if he was speaking Chinese or Chivas Regal.
05.22.2003, 11:03 PM · Stories
