Stirring the Pot is a new A3 publication that we have designed to go direct to the Chinese market on the North Shore in Auckland. Stirring the Pot is a weekly, attention-grabbing publication in mostly Chinese and some English. 1000 copies will carry your ad every week to where there are Chinese businesses on the North Shore and where Chinese clientele like to go, such as restaurants. (We will tran
slate your ad into Mandarin if you wish.
搅事 棍
(Stirring the Pot)
Helping Aucklanders grow through the impact of cultural diversity…instead of bashing their heads against it. Here ares some of the tongue-in-cheek English we will be translating for our
Stirring the pot publication. Stirring the Pot has no equivalent idiom in Chinese. It means to cause mischief, or to stir up a sh*tstorm,
Stirring the Pot can also suggest bringing together into one stinky tofu flavour…different cultures as diverse as the Kiwi and the Chinese ….to read further you will need to know Chinese, ha ha …..
你觉得老外应该学中文吗？
Shouldn’t KIWIS learn Chinese? Let’s face it, the Chinese bring a lot of money into New Zealand. A lot of prosperity and employment. The housing market is booming largely because of the money Chinese bring in. Many of us are here on tourist visas or working to permanent residency. We get no government subsidies for our children to go to school or for our teenagers to go to university. For example, a degree at a university might cost about $7000 for a Kiwi, but it costs us about $35,000. We are obviously very good at making money and creating employment so now it is time for us to teach the kiwis more of our culture. Surely that should start with teaching them our own language, don’t you think? Imagine being able to go into the shops and the laowai can help you find that product you want by speaking in Mandarin, instead of not understanding you all the time! We don’t have to worry about him understanding our language so well that we cannot talk about him in front on him. As we speak Mandarin so fast he will still not get it. We can still say without him understanding that the laowai needs to improve his manners. Or that he is fat and ugly. Or we can say we can ask him for a discount but wait for tomorrow when he is more desperate to sell his goods at the fleamarket. He will never understand Mandarin that well! (For example, my student Rod Mackenzie, Da Shu, lived in China for seven years, who co-wrote this article with me, has an intermediate knowledge of Mandarin. He says if we speak Chinese fast he cannot understand us.)
