Chinese language contains many four-character idioms. One is 人山人海 (rén shān rén hǎi), meaning “people mountain people sea.” It refers to huge crowds of people, like we experienced last week at the zoo-park:
Almost every year, we travel to this park to see the crowds taking photos of the cherry blossoms:
We’ve posted photos like this before, but here is another chance to find Susan in the crowd (or me in the first pic):
You can click on the pictures to expand them (hint: she’s in the back, waving). In addition to cherry blossoms, we were also able to watch a puppet drama (click Puppets to watch):
Later, we sat on a rock to eat our snack and saw this boy take his little brother to the toilet:
The monkey exhibit is always interesting, largely because people toss food (and other things) to the residents (click to watch Monkey catch):
This year, it looks like the cat population among the monkeys is increasing:
In spite of recent efforts to eliminate chinglish, we still see signs that could benefit from some grammatical assistance. Based on this sign, we assume that it is OK to climb the healthy trees:
Speaking of grammar, this year, I have been asked to teach “Business English” to a group of students from Thailand. Yesterday, we played a simple business game and discussed English words about bargaining (click to watch Thai Bargaining):
While some things don’t change (like crowds at the zoo), we are still amazed at the other changes that come our way (like an American teaching English to Thai students in a Chinese university).
The boys are laughing hysterically at the boy peeing.