This post is actually a sort of a supplement to a post made by a friend of mine, Dan Johnson, on his great website, Chinese: Beyond the Textbook. Dan has probably implemented the pinyin hover tool as well as anyone I’ve seen. Or I should say, he takes useful chinese text or dialogues, and annotates it with pinyin in order to produce interesting texts for Chinese study. One of the problems that many foreigners face when studying Chinese – or at least, it’s a problem I faced – is that the dialogues and sample texts that you study are really goddamned boring.

I mean, every text seems to have a Mary (Mali) and a John (Yuehan), and there’s probably an Ali somewhere in there also. And most likely the craziest situation those three are likely to have is Mary running a fever, and the boys bringing her to the campus clinic for some Chinese over-the-counter goodness. Maybe if Mary put out more, it’d make for better dialogues… ?????

Anyway, to combat this kind of mind-numbing fuckery, Dan has posted tons of somewhat more unconventional texts, one of which was from the movie Gimme Kudos/???????. This is the wittiest thing I’ve ever seen in my short time flirting with the Chinese language:

???????? – What is happiness?
?????? – Happiness?
????????? – Mmm, in your opinion.
????……???……??? – Happiness . . . is . . . if I’m hungry . . .
?????????? – and I see someone holding a meat bun . . .
???????? – then he is happier than me.
??? – I’m cold . . .
?????????? – and I see someone wearing a thick coat . . .
?????? - he’s happier than me.
????? - I need the toilet . . .
???? – but there’s only one . . .
???? – and you’re squatting there . . .
?????? – then you’re happier than me.

(some girls behind him snigger)

?????? – what’s so funny?
?????? – you’ve never been to the toilet?

Watch Video or Listen to mp3

So why write about “What is Happiness?” on my Chinese Blog?

Well, 2 reasons really. The first being, this Chinese blog is, as I’ve stated an experiment. I’m interested in learning about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in China. I’ve targeted one of the most common searches on Baidu, and I’m gonna see if it results in some traffic. I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m relatively new to making websites, and I’m experimenting to see what works. I’ve put all the keywords in the title, I’ve put the keywords in heading and meta tags as well. I’m curious to see if any hits come back, based on search engine results alone. I’m also experimenting with having Chinese characters in the url. And that’s something that may or may not work in my favor. It remains to be seen.

The second reason I wrote this post, is essentially the whole reason why I keep a Chinese Blog to begin – and that’s simply to try to improve my Chinese. And what better way to do so that to choose a topic that I like, and one that can be of some value to readers as well — that being, the eternal search for happiness.

Does the Search for Happiness End at Baidu?

With any luck the search for happiness on baidu will bring a few Chinese people to my post. Now what was my answer to “What is happiness?” Well, while I absolutely love this little speech from gimme kudos, I think it does shed some light on one inherent characteristic of Chinese culture. And that’s the all-too-common instinct to compare yourself with others. Chinese people are often very concerned with rankings. Number 1 in population, number 3 is geographical size, third country on the moon, blah blah blah… David Letterman would have a field day if he brought the top ten list over the wall.

What’s My suggestion for attaining happiness?

Stop comparing yourself to others. Because no matter how much you have, there’s always gonna be someone else with more.

And that goes for everyone. Not just China.

This was one of my first efforts at writing a Chinese post on this blog. It’s great practice for my Chinese, and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. I chose money management as a topic, because I definitely see a lot of the new upper-middle class spending money in ways that just don’t make no sense…

I don’t mean to focus on money, but it’s tricky to avoid this topic if you’re a Canadian/American in China. When I meet someone on the street, and I tell them I’m Canadian, the most common reply is “Canada, eh? Canada’s really rich, right?”

Now, being from Canada’s poorest province, Newfoundland, I often feel the need to explain that not everywhere in Canada is rich. But instead I usually just play a game I like to call “Count the Audi’s.” Despite the fact that China is still a country in development, man oh man, does it ever have a shit-load of luxury cars! In my province, I might see a couple of Audi’s in a week. Here’s I can hit the same total in about ten seconds.

Now is it necessary to own such a car? Or is it that having such a car projects the image that you want to show others in society?

Compensating for anything?

I guess it happens everywhere in the world, but I think when you get a strata of society new to money, as some in China are, you’re likely to find this phenomenon.

Another point I raised in this post was the fact that second-hand clothing doesn’t really seem to be popular here in China. At least not that I can see — with the possible exception of army surplus stores. By the way, check out Chinese Rock Star, He Yong (left), not being afraid to buy a second-hand Navy shirt. Good for you, buddy!

Most other countries have tiny stores where you can go and get old retro, dirty cheap clothes, for about the same price as regular clothes in China. There’s a scary thought hey? If Chinese textiles can be made for so cheap, maybe the second hand stuff is priced so low it’s not worth selling…

More likely it’s the fact that Chinese people in general are more concerned about the possible image they might portray by wearing someone else’s used clothes? Maybe the knock off Ralph Lauren with the leather man-purse is a better option?

Anyway the underlying truth of the matter, in my opinion, is that appearing to have money in China seems to be almost as good as being rich for real.

What I’ve tried to say in my Chinese post – and I tried to do it in a relatively sensitive way without being negative – was that it doesn’t matter what impression you project for others to see. Expensive cars, clothes, cell phones — they’re just a mask.

The opinion others have of you means nothing in the end. The most important thing is the opinion you have of yourself.