Chinese vocabulary notes (May 2022)

This edition could be called “escape from Shanghai”. Bear with me for some more zero-covid refugee talk.

The Chinese government insists that their zero-covid policy is “bringing Covid-19 under control at the minimum social cost in the shortest time possible.” Well, I don’t know about that. My personal observation is that this virus can’t be contained on the long term – not by wearing masks, lockdowns or mass vaccination programs. At this point, it’s hardly more than a common cold for the great majority of people. So why on earth is Shanghai sacrificing its economy to “control” what can’t be controlled?

Anyway, it’s just so frustrating to see governments adopting such destructive policies and it’s no surprise that people want to leave… And that’s what this edition of Chinese vocabulary notes is all about!

By the way, I’d like to recommend this article “Should you learn Mandarin despite China’s zero covid policy?” by Jaap Grolleman, who has been in China since 2018 and currently lives and works in Shanghai. I’ve also been struggling with this question. What’s the point of learning Mandarin if you can’t freely enter the country with most Chinese speakers? I’ll quote the conclusion here:

But most importantly, a career in China may still work depending on your timeline. China will open up, eventually. It’s unlikely to do so before 2024, but even if you put the timeline to 2026, that still gives you four years. The zero covid policy is driven by a lot of things, but not out of hate for foreigners. So if you spend four years learning Mandarin, you may be in a really great position to move to China once it opens up. China will be needing foreign talent and if you can speak Mandarin your life will be much easier here. Also, fewer Chinese students are choosing to study abroad and this may hurt overall English language performance — on top of tutor crackdowns for primary schools. It’s just a matter of whether you can keep up learning motivation if you cannot enter China, and whether you can create an immersive environment for yourself despite not learning in China. But if fewer people choose to learn Mandarin, that may actually work in your favor.

Should you learn Mandarin despite China’s zero covid policy?

And now to this month’s vocabulary notes:

“I escaped from Shanghai”

This guy escaped the madness, because he couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know why he needs to swear every third sentence, but apart from that he gives a down-to-earth, no-nonsense view on the situation as he experienced it. I like his metaphor of the frog that’s slowly being cooked without ever noticing. Only when he arrived in Europe, he realized how mad things actually were. (I’m not saying that things in Europe are “normal”, although definitely more relaxed than in China – it’s all relative). He also expresses his frustration about the passiveness of Shanghai citizens.

“阿福已经润了？有些细节值得关注” (Afu escaped too)

Some gossip from our German Charles Manson look-a-like 老雷! Hadn’t checked on him in a long time, but this video was one of the first that popped up about the fact that his fellow German YouTuber Afu escaped Shanghai, (阿福润了, the character 润 is a pun on “run” in English). The main reason for his 15-minutes rambling seems to be that Afu somehow is a pawn in the hands of the CCP, but not a very reliable one, for now that things got nasty, he left everything behind, including his wife, and boarded an airplane back to Germany. That’s at least his long-distance interpretation.

I couldn’t help listening to his ramblings some more in a second video about Afu. Probably because we’re from the same language area, he’s much easier to follow for me than the guy in the first video for example. I picked up some useful expressions like 按照我的理解 and X有什么样. It seems – judging from his channel – that although he left China years ago, linguistically “he’s still there”, almost as if he never went away. That’s impressive.

One thing he’s right about though is that Afu’s videos in contrast to his own are heavily edited. 老雷 has a special talent for long, uncut monologues. I’ve never seen Afu doing that. When you watch his videos closely, they’re usually cut sentence by sentence, which – together with the music – creates the upbeat tempo and feeling.

Afu: 疫情期间，离开上海有多难？

Now we’ve heard 老雷‘s account of Afu’s story, it’s about time to turn over to the man himself and let him tell what’s there to tell. How did he escape from Shanghai and leave everything behind?

That’s it for this month. See you in June!