May 2003

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Lately, every media has been more or less buzzing about SARS. To all those who remain a critic of the Chinese government, here's a joke that has been circulating in Chinese, and it's titled "10 ways to die from SARS."

1. Preventative therapy -> medicine overdose causing death
2. Fuming vinegar causing fire -> burnt to death
3. Wearing a mask for too long -> suffocated to death
4. A colleague contracting SARS -> scared to death
5. Ignoring travel advisories, upon return -> chopped to death
6. Spreading rumors online -> cursed to death
7. Sneezing and coughing in public -> beaten to death
8. Fearful of transit, walking to work daily -> exhausted to death
9. Self-suspecting of contracting SARS -> paranoia causing death
10. Really contracting SARS causing death

Hope you now kind of see what China is really trying to prevent.

And in case SARS is of no interest to you, here's something I think everyone can enjoy. Unfortunately I didn't have any interesting stories of my own to tell for these past months, but I did find a very good one in Chinese, and have attempted to translate it into English.

And here comes the disclaimer: the original was so good I couldn't possibly have recaptured all the magic in English. A quarter of the way through, I was already running out of expressions to translate the myriad of ways to describe "crying" in Chinese. Anyway, instead of me chattering on, I leave you with "I Cried For My Brother Six Times."