Chinglish, renting white people and what's amusing about China.

I love reading news about China. There’s a lot of it out there (duh). And lately I’ve discovered some good stuff, especially a WSJ blogging site devoted to China. And while most of the time the media coverage is covering important things – like currency reform, meetings with Chinese officials, etc – there are a few gems out there that really get me laughing and thinking “Is this really news?”

My brother and I were hanging out the other day when he got an email message from a friend. This guy was sending him and some of their friends a funny news story about China. He read the headline out loud: “Chinese companies rent white foreigners,” he said laughingly. He kind of had a shocked look on his face like. So I asked, “Have you not heard of this before?” This is a point that I’ve mentioned on my blog before, thinking it was pretty much common knowledge in China.

Surprisingly, he hadn’t heard of this. So I told him a few stories from friends in Nanjing and how they’d been rented out. I couldn’t believe this. He’s lived all over China and in smaller cities where this type of thing happens a lot. He said that while this was the first he’d heard of this, he didn’t find it surprising.

Yet if you google “China rents white people” there are all kinds of news stories. The CNN article was really a hit and other publications are reporting and commenting on this as well. I was certainly not the first to write about this, and I was really surprised that is was reported on in the US.

And Chinglish. The past few months I’ve seen a ton of Chinglish (Chinese to English mistranslations) articles and photo slideshows on reputable news sources. Even the usually informative China Real Time Report has been posting recently on Chinglish. Just to put things into perspective – Chinglish has been joked about and was considered “over done” back when I was here in 2007. Chinglish? Really? There has to be better things to write about than Chinglish.

Mostly I think “Hey, I can write this garbage.” Honestly, it's not news. Maybe it’s entertaining, maybe it’s just another reason to do the eye roll about China. But I’m interested to hear what you all, the few who read my blog, think about these articles! So in an attempt to get some commenters, I ask you all to tell me what you think. Thanks for posting!