topum: (Default)
One of our new volunteers flew in from China and brought us these ginger jars as a present for our community centre here. How cool is that?

They still have some sticky tape on them that needs to be cleaned off.



Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] zirnis and [livejournal.com profile] linguaphiles here is the translation:

長命百歲 — May you live a hundred years.
富貴萬年 — Be rich and noble for ten thousand years.

I like how self contradictory they are. Live just to a hundred years but be rich and noble for ten thousand years.

And [livejournal.com profile] muckefuck from [livejournal.com profile] linguaphiles explains:

That's totally typical of these sorts of couplets, though. They want to maintain parallel structure without repeating any characters. (Note how even the word for "year" is different: 歲 on the first vase and 年 on the second.) Cf. the honorific expression 千秋萬歲 ("thousand autumns, ten thousand years") meaning "to live a long life".

Spaced out

Jun. 17th, 2016 05:33 pm
topum: (Default)
I wonder if this will ever make it to the Olympics. I guess the scope for doping here is huge.

South Korea’s annual “space out” competition, an annual challenge recognizing those with a superior ability to do nothing at all.

The event began in 2014 as a piece of performance art. Artists in Seoul conceived of the contest as an antidote to South Korea’s occasionally unhealthy relationship with screens. The country has the world’s highest rate of internet and smartphone use, with 88% of the population in possession of a smartphone.

Contest rules require entrants to sit and do absolutely nothing for 90 minutes: no talking, sleeping, eating, screen-checking, watch-looking, or fidgeting. The person able to undergo all this inactivity with the most stable heart rate wins.

The appeal of spacing out caught on quickly. A similar contest took place in Beijing last year. Organizers received more than 1,500 entry applications for this year’s event in Seoul on May 22. In the end some 60 participants sat in a local park for the chance to be the best at nothing. Local rapper Shin Hyo-Seob, better known by the stage name Crush, walked away with this year’s top honors. He was, fittingly, rather relaxed about it.

“I did not know I was going to win,” the singer said, according to the Korea Times. “I was just spacing out without thinking of anything. It was a great time to rest my mind and body.”

From here: http://qz.com/709389/in-south-korea-spacing-out-is-now-a-championship-sport/
topum: (Default)
I spend a lot of my time in Asia and have met quite a few fu er dai turned "modern art collectors". The ones I met were a very sad sight. And the feeding frenzy around them was very often nauseating.

I have always thought Olafur Eliasson was Danish / Icelandic (born in Copenhagen to Icelandic parents) not Swedish as BBC states. I still remember his sun installation at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, it was awesome.

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160527-children-of-the-chinese-super-rich-arent-all-burning-money
topum: (Default)
While Donald Trump pumps out tough rhetoric towards China, the Chinese are already in full swing making money on Trump.





Source

Profile

topum: (Default)
topum

January 2017

S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 67
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031    

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 1st, 2025 02:18 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios