Life in China | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

German news site Spiegel Online cites Tongji professor Xie Weida, deputy director of the Railway Institute who says it’s “unlikely” that China will buy the Maglev technology.

An English article can be found at The Earth Times.

When I stumbled upon Coral Content Distribution Network I thought it might help to view blocked pages in China. It does. Not always, but the German Wikipedia - not the English one - can be found as well as this blog.

You just need to append .nyud.net at the end of the URL to load it via Coral. For this site it’s http://thisandmine.com.nyud.net.

Chinese test tomorrow morning, I’m learning hanzi. It’s impossible. I can mostly recognize and read them and if I see one I know how to write it. But if I shall write one with given pinyin or on my own I’m totally lost.

And I still can’t memorize the tones, not to mention that even if I know the right ones I’m unable to pronounce them. Instead of “two yuan” (liǎng kuài) I say “cold weather” (liáng kuài) and my noodles (miàntiáo) tend to become sanitary napkins (miántiáo).

See also: smart?

Here’s the scene without rain. I haven’t been at the noodle man’s since I found out about the oil. And I also haven’t seen him. Where did he go?

Spiegel Online helps the Germans to find out which one of the US presidential candidates they should vote for if only they were allowed. In my case it’s Barack Obama. Hm.