The jing

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-12 09:38

Supergirl rides Panda Express

The jing

This year's Supergirl winner Jiang Yingrong has been pushed aside in favor of another supergirl Jane Zhang who is now singing the theme track of the new movie Panda Express.

Zhang is now also singing a music segment of movie Panda Express Loving You with her special dolphin-sounding vocals. According to industry insiders, the recording process went very smooth and it only took Jane two hours to wrap it up.

Zhang rose to prominence after her third-place performance in the 2005 season of the Super Girl contest. Throughout the competition, she sang in English, Spanish and Cantonese in addition to Mandarin. She is known for her high-pitched range.

Chinese water torture

Water is the most basic beverage on the planet, but one group of Beijing visitors told The Jing they always have such a hard time ordering the stuff at a restaurant. They know ping is bottle and shui is water and can say: "Wo yao ping shui (I want bottle water)."

Then someone adds a bing (cold) to the ping, and all these bing ping, bing ping sounds like a pinball machine. But the waiter hasn't got a clue. "We don't have "ping shui", he says.

The thirsty diners, who can see bottles of water on many tables, are baffled and start pointing. Another frustrated member of the party leaps from the table, rushes to the nearby fridge, opens the glass door, grabs a bottle of water and passes it to the waiter. "Ping shui," he says holding up his hand indicating five waters. "You, you (we have, we have)," says the waiter. "This happens every time at every restaurant I go to ... why can't I order water?" our friend says. There is a solution. The problem lies in the use of the word ping, the measure word for bottle. Saying ping on its own means nothing unless a number precedes this measure word and saying bing ping, (and probably using all the wrong tones) sounds plain silly. If the group had said, "wo men yao wu ping shui (we want 5 bottles of water), the waiter would have immediately understood and there would be peace on the land. Saying ping shui on its own just doesn't cut it. It's like going into clothes store in an English-speaking country and asking for a "pear sack", rather than one pair of socks.

Love match for Peng fans

At baseball games, American fans eat hotdogs, and at rugby games Australian fans eat meat pies.

So it was not surprising to see the home crowd at the China Open tucking into their instant noodles, before reaching for the ice cream.

The red carpet was rolled out, the sun was shining and Beijing tennis fans were dressed in their best gear to lap up some marvelous tennis at the China Open 2009 over the weekend.

And of course, The Jing was there to check out the best players in the world, in particular our favorite Peng Shuai.

On Friday, we cheered on Peng hoping for big things after she previously knocked out three-time Grand Slam winner, Russian Maria Sharapova in straight sets 6-2, 6-4 at the Olympic tennis venue.

Peng was on fire and forced Sharapova to make 21 unforced errors and we were hoping she went all the way.

Alas, Nadia Petrova beat Peng and her dream run ended.

However it was wonderful to see her comeback yesterday in the doubles and team up with Hsieh Su-Wei to beat famous women's doubles players Alla Kudryavtseva and Ekaterina Makarova from Russia. Xie xie linesmen, xie xie ballboys.

Bank visit from hell

Although many banks, and other Chinese institutions now have English-speaking staff, most do not speak English and the paperwork must be 100 percent correct.

One fellow shared his frustrations with The Jing because after five attempts to fill out a money transfer order he still had failed to correctly fill out the Western Union form despite the fact it was in his native language.

He was forced to send back $7,000 - the maximum transfer amount Western Union allows - to pay a pressing overseas debt but his problem was becoming bigger than his bill:

1), he didn't use capital letters throughout,

(2) he didn't include his father's middle name,

(3), he didn't write down his middle name,

(4) he kept writing outside the little boxes,

and (5) he forgot what five was for.

His Chinese friend could have filled out the form better than me in her second language.

After completing the sixth form, the all-important paperwork was passed under the bulletproof glass to the teller and the money was sent home.

Tasks that take about 15 minutes back home, often take more than an hour in China.

"Thank goodness for our Chinese friends who help me weave my way through the maze of banking bureaucracy, and other areas of daily life in the Middle Kingdom.

Sometimes I like being self-sufficient but there is a price to pay when dealing with a mountain of paper work," he told the Jing.

Peace flowers for world leaders

US President Barack Obama may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but let's not forget about the world leaders who won recognition at the 7th China Flower Expo over the weekend.

Flora experts voted for the Kim Il Sung flower and Kim Jong Il flower as the best examples at the colorful show. Kim Il Sung was the former leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and his son Kim Jong-Il is the current leader.

The Shunyi flower plant base has planted 50,000 Kim Jong-Il flowers.

The temperature needed to keep the Kim Jong-Il flower healthy is very strict, and must not rise any higher than 28 C, and fall below 18 C at night.

The 10-day flower exhibition attracted more than 180,000 and added more than 100 million yuan to Shunyi tourist industry.