Chinese Ratings

Inspired by the Book of Ratings, and in desperate need of new material besides short stories and photos to post, I present...

The China Book of Ratings

Fengyoujing
I must confess that I don't know what exactly it is, but I suspected it involves concentrated menthol. It's green, it's cheap, it comes in oddly shaped bottles, it's Chinese traditional medicine. It acts as mosquito repellent, headache cure, and an agent to awaken the user. Apply on temporal lobes, forehead, and underneath your nose. If you're lucky, a little bit will get in your eye and it won't exactly hurt, but you'll be more alert than your last cappuccinos. Bottom line: I like smelling a little minty when I'm not feeling so fresh. A-

Baijiu:
Chinese grain alcohol. Imagine the worst qualities of gin and Everclear mixed together. Imagine this being the national drink of China. Imagine it being so powerful and foul that you can still taste it in a cup that's been washed. The mere smell of it puts this college veteran out of service. You see businessmen tearing it up during lunch for sport. Bottom line: National drink? Try again. F


Chinese Wine:
Great Wall, my preferred brand, is about on par with your typical $7 bottle back home. Except that it costs 32 RMB / $4. I've tried spending a little bit more for aged Cabernet, but it was hideous. For about 60RMB / $7 you can find an excellent bottle of cheap French wine. I've found that if you drink it out of a dixie cup instead of a wine glass, expectations drop drastically enough that you begin tasting the delicate fragrance of strawberry and perhaps a dab of lavender. Bottom line: there's no reason not to find a bottle of French wine. C-

The Chinese Language:
"Car water horse dragon." Is this a sentence to you? No? It is for 1.2 billion people. It means that there are so many cars on the road that it looks like a horse trying to cross a river that is shaped like a dragon. No, you're not going insane. There were no verbs. There was no subject, no object. Just four nouns. Add to this that it is a tonal language. The word "ma" means five different things, it's all in how you say it. You could be asking a question, talking about your mother or even marijuana. The written part is worse. It's non-phonetic. Every single character represents a syllable. Every one. There are 5000 plus characters. It's even worse in HK and Taiwan. A curious idea, sure, but you know what would be really handy with the most precise oral language ever devised? Cues on how to speak it by looking at the word. Bottom line: Mao was on the right page when he thought about replacing characters with pinyin. "A" for creativity, "F" for sticking with it for 4000 years. F

Tags: Treyopia China Chinese ratings book of ratings baijiu wine Fengyoujing traditional medicine language characters