北北京京欢欢迎迎你你：The Games Are Coming

Last night, I picked up my first 2008 Olympics-themed geegaws—a set of pins depicting the Fuwa (nee Friendlies)* cavorting in front of the letters C-O-K-E and an old-fashioned 可口可乐 (Coca-Cola) bottle. (Note that the hanzi used in the title to spell out the “Beijing welcomes you”message don’t match up with those used in the mascots’ names; click here for an explanation of the discrepancy.) Since New Year’s, the wind-up to the Olympics (which had been strong when I arrived in 2006, but had since cooled down some) has again ratcheted up a notch.

On most of the buses I take, the same Olympics "good-will" advertisement has been repeating again and again. It shows a series of vignettes in which one Chinese person does a good deed for another, while a third Chinese person watches on with a beatific expression. Such good deeds include someone holding the elevator for another person, someone stopping (in accordance with the law) to let someone else use a cross-walk, and a gallant gentleman deciding to exert a bit of effort and pull a woman out of the way before she is crushed by some falling boxes. I guess this is intended to encourage Chinese toward what many here would consider going far out of their way for others, or toward what we would call basic civility back home.

A few ads are missing as far as I'm concerned, starting with the ad (to be played in buses) encouraging people not to pick their noses and wipe the resulting mess on the buses' handrails and leading up to the ad encouraging people not to let their babies urinate or defecate while on the bus. Yes, that last is a real problem: I recently saw one of my first diapers in China, on a baby, and was quite impressed. Quite impressed, that is, until the baby's grandmother removed his diaper--not in order to change the diaper, but in order to remove it before holding the baby over the bus trash can to use the toilet. Once the child was done relieving himself, she carefully refastened the diaper. Perhaps a proper-diaper-usage ad might be in order.

In order to really prepare for Olympics tourists, though, the biggest thing China should be doing is figuring out a way to advise visitors of some of the quirks of the language. Notably, a pamphlet on the phrase 哪个--usually used to indicate someone is thinking--should be handed out on incoming flights. Though "na ge" is a common pronunciation of this phrase, the pronunciation "nei ge," which sounds quite similar to an English racial slur, is just as common, and first time dark-skinned visitors to China often get steaming mad when they hear some benign local searching for a word: 哪个，哪个，哪个.

My own suggestion for making foreigners feel at home hasn't been acted on yet. (Originally posted: 07:39, 2007-10-09--I have actually devised a cost-effective method for the Chinese government to improve public image come Olympics time. All they need to do is require every registered car-owner to fix a sticker to their car bumper reading (in various languages), "Honk if you're happy to see our foreign friends!" Given the frequency (and usually unclear motivation) with which Chinese drivers honk their horns, tourists will be sure to return home talking about how friendly and open Chinese are.)

*For the basics on the Fuwa, see http://en.beijing2008.cn/80/05/article211990580.shtml.

For the Chinglish reasons behind the name-change from Friendlies to Fuwa, see
http://www.newsgd.com/news/china1/200610170031.htm.

For a more in-depth analysis of the names (and an explanation for why the hanzi used in my title don't match those on the mascots), see http://pinyin.info/news/2005/bei-bei-jing-jing-wel-wel-comes-comes-you-you/. The last is a great read.