chinglish

In roommate news: it's been... pretty splendid, actually. We haven't had any spats at all since the one detailed in my last post.

And actually, thanks to her, I'm been able to refocus my image of the migrant community in Kunming. I never really thought about how many migrants might be here. But they are right next to where I live - tearing down old stands, I think even running most of the stands, and to get to the police station cafeteria I walk through a small street where they live. Here they have rows of "factories" where sewing machines are working on embroidery, as well as the usual market stuff.

I wonder how I might be able to explore this community a little more. I don't want to make friends with someone just so that I can see their house. Last time, when I was in Shaxi (the village I'm planning to be based in), I was able to eventually track down a girl left to work at one of those large grocery/department stores in Kunming. But not many of them come to Kunming - it's actually a rather long commute.

So where are the migrants in Kunming mostly from? And should I go to those rural areas to do my research instead?

Until then, I'm still planning on leaving here in a month to go to Dali prefecture, where I will then commute to my original research site. My advisor gave me a couple of books - one on the Bai minority, and one on Dali's economic development history. I started translating - VERY painstakingly - the first page on the latter. This is when I began to realize that Chinese and English are two MAJORLY different languages. No wonder Chinglish is usually so hilarious to read. Here is one of the paragraphs I translated, pre-editing (although how I will edit this I have no idea):

The important point in our research on economic history should be production power development history. The important point of politics and economics history should be the research of production in relation to the history of change. Therefore, we have decided the title “Dali Economic Development History” is a draft of exploration and reflects Dali prefecture’s history of changing manufacturing development situation. Dali prefecture’s economic development history itself should be discontinuous.

So there you have it. I have created Chinglish.