Feb 28, 2007
Top 10 Searches on Baidu: “What is Happiness?”
Some reflections on a Chinese language post from My Chinese Blog Experiment, called Top 10? on Baidu: ?????? You can also read about some of my other Chinese Language Posts here.
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?
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.
Hi there,
Thanks for this post. I relatively new in the SEO too… I’m trying to get/attract some viewers in China. I need to ask though, Is Baidu like a Chinese Search engine? I’ve tried to list my blog 2 weeks ago in Baidu but the chinese characters threw me off… But now tht I started a blog about the Olympics next year… it looks like I really need to give it another try. BTW, here’s my blog: http://www.olympicblogger.blogspot.com
Thanks
I wouldn’t worry about getting listed on baidu, especially if you’re running a blogspot blog.
Blogspot blogs are currently blocked in China, which – in effect – would render a baidu listing next to worthless.
Personally, they change their policy sometime soon.
But don’t hold your breath.
If you want a Chinese audience, try hosting on your own domain. Or at least on a service that isn’t blocked in China.
Nice site by the way.
I can view it from here by typing http://www.pkblogs.com/olympicblogger
(a neat workaround for circumventing censors)
Hi there again,
I had made improvements on my blog for the past few days. One of them is a widget that show the countries from which viewers of my site came from. I was surprised to see that I got 5 hits from China. I couldn’t mistake it for traffic from Hong Kong as Hong Kong is represented with a different flag and I got 12 hits from Hong Kong separately too. Digging in deeper I found out that the hits from China came from Google.
I always thought and agreed that blogspot is banned in China. But do you have any idea if things have changed recently about this issue? Any idea how Google searching in China might have landed people on my blog if it is indeed blocked in that country?
Thanks in advance!
Still blocked.
But we can intermittently get a peek sometimes.
The Chinese net-nanny is a tough bitch to figure out. :em41:
But could I say happiness is as simple as that stated in the following 2 essays of mine?
(Key: Ineffective happiness, optimal points, bio-entity,….)
Yi Kang
(??)
(Professor of chemistry, retired)
——-
Essay 1
Summary of 500 Essays
on Health-Happiness
Yi Kang
To be happy is easy if we know:
1. Happiness (including love, sense of beauty,…) is the feeling of things being better for our propagation and encouraging us to go further. (Except ineffective happiness, as smoking …)
2. Well-being is the ongoing feeling of things going better for our propagation.
3. Suffering is the feeling of things being harmful to our propagation and calling us for taking measure to prevent or rectify it.
4. The ultimate goal of life is to propagate forever. (The origin of all things in human world)
All the four above are instincts.
An instinct is ancestors’ successful experiences saved on our DNA.
Also, the following are instincts:
* * *
Babies, children …. eat, play(learn), ….
Being in love is the in the process of carefully matching of the couple’s instinct data and programs (intuition, feeling, soul,…) and their acquired data and programs (knowledge, statuses, accuracy,….) for their propagation.
A couple of spouses or lovers are one bio-entity integrated spiritually in order to propagate.
The old ….love grand-children.
* * *
Friends are the essential members of our symbiotic group.
Moral, conscience, justice,… are instincts for maintenance of our symbiotic group.
* * *
Everything has its own optimal point. Being not up to or going beyond the point is harmful.
For people, the optimal point is 10,000-years-ago norm in most cases.
* * *
The optimal point of wealth is not being rich but passably well-to-do. (e.g. Bill Gates after 2008)
* * *
Our health, beauty, and long life are based on 10,000-years-ago norm.
* * *
The 10,000-years-ago norm based on instincts.
The instincts run our thinking and body.
The thinking runs our body.
Right?
(from http://blog.sina.com.cn/happywellness)
P.S.
The balanced diet, essential exercise, best environmental standards and highest happiness index …all meet the norm. Ineffective happiness does not.
________
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— ???? —
Essay 2
Happiness?Effective or Not?
by Yi Kang
(1/500 Examples of 10,000=Years-Ago-Norm)
(Mini-Topic on Health No.0 (1st/86))
Keywords: Definition of happiness, mechanism of happiness, effective happiness, ineffective happiness, baton, self-reproduction, standards of 10,000 years ago, evolution.
1. Origin of Happiness
??According to the evolution knowledge learned in our high school, it is obvious that happiness is originated from biological evolution of human being. As all kinds of human activities need a director or “baton” to coordinate themselves to reach the best result?happiness was gradually formed during the long period of evolution. (1,3,4)
??
2. Definition of Happiness
??Happiness is a director or baton or feeling that confirms and encourages people for whatever they want to or are doing or have done is ultimately good for their propagation. (1)
3. Role of Happiness
??All activities of human being are for the ultimate goal of their propagation (keeping their DNA alive). To reach this goal in the most efficient way, there has to be a unified director in charge of all the kinds of human activities so as to avoid chaos or low efficiency that will eventually lead to the extinction of human being. This director is obviously the happiness, which directs all activities toward the right way as a traffic baton. (1)
??
4. Mechanism of Happiness
??To simplify the explanation, let us suppose that human brain worked just like a personal computer. Similarly, there were decision programs in the human brain computer, too. One of the programs was used to deal with the happiness. Using the data in the database of the human brain computer (instinct data on DNA saved by our ancestors), the program could recognize accurately whether a human activity is in favor of propagation or not. If it is, then the program making people feel happy runs for a short time. (1,3,4)
??
5. Effective Happiness
??The effective happiness is a kind of happiness that happens 10,000 years ago when a thing in favor of propagation is done by or to human.(2) For example, eating unprocessed fresh food and living in an environment same as those 10,000 years ago. All these activities are good for our propagation.?1?
6. Ineffective Happiness
??The ineffective happiness is such a kind of happiness that did not happen 10,000 years ago. For examples?the happiness people have during eating junk food, smoking tobacco, abusing drug, living in a luxurious house with various pollutants, …even economy booming. And all these activities are harmful to our propagation. (2 )
??
7. Harm of Ineffective Happiness
??
Facts show that almost all of ineffective happiness (including ineffective economy) is harmful to human survival on the earth. (2) It is overshooting.
References
??1. ?? ???????????????????, 2005, Jerry&Harry /He Co. ISBN 978-0-9771-8610-5. (To be published in English ( W. Ying, “Eat, Drink, Wear, Dwell, etc.: An Easy Rule for Happy Health” )) or http://www.geocities.com/happy_wellness/HappyWellness1stEdtion.pdf.
??2. ibid, p. 18-148.
??3. Paul Kwatz, “Conscious Robots”, 2005, Lulu, Inc., http://www.consciousrobots.co.uk/.
??4. Stevenson, J. 2006. “Man, the Digital Machine.” http://www.onelife.com/evolve/digman.html.
??
Last updated October 7, 2008
Copyright 2005-2008 Jerry He and Harry He All Rights Reserved.
(From http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bcbe5d1010007p7.html )
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??2. ???18-148??
??3. Paul Kwatz, “Conscious Robots” ?????????, 2005, Lulu, Inc., http://www.consciousrobots.co.uk/.
4. Stevenson, J. 2006. “Man, the Digital Machine.” http://www.onelife.com/evolve/digman.html
5. Sharpe. K., 1998, “The Sense pf Happiness: Biological Explanations and Ultimate Reality and Meaning”, Ultimate Reality and Meaning 21 (4) December 1998: 301-314. Or http://www.ksharpe.com/Word/EP20.htm
?????
Last updated October 3, 2008
Copyright 2005-2008 Jerry He and Harry He All Rights Reserved.
(? http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bcbe5d1010007p7.html )
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