Pirate China - timezone madness

APRIL 25, 2007: Avast! People around here be speakin' with an "accent" that i gotta be tellin ye a tall story about. It's China's answer to the pirate accent!

Almost all words that are supposed to end with an "-en" sound, around here they are pronounced with a flourishing "-arrr". For example, the apartment complex we live in is called (i'll spell it phonetically), "Fay-yu jin-loon hua-yuen".

Now, the "hua-yuen" means garden, or gardens, and when said properly seems to be quite an appropriate word for the concept - it's quite a pretty word...try saying it, you'll know what i mean: "hua-yuen". But round these parts, the garrrden-word be soundin' worse than a rusty rullock! The folks round here always be sayin' "hua-yuarrr". (I be joinin' in like any scurvy dogg from over the seas, o'course.) "Hua-yuen". "Hua-yuarrr".

Similarly, waitresses and waiters are "fu-wu-yuen", but you won't sit in a Songyuan restaurant for more than 2 minutes without hearing "fu-wu-yAARRRRGH!" roared from a private booth to summon the waitress, to which she very appropriately will reply with a shrill, "aiiiy!" to indicate she has heard. Swashbuckling, me hearties, what a land, eh. Maybe the best thing about it. The Bristol of China!

Other notably funny words (to me) are "gong-yuarrr" (public square), "bijiberrr" (notebook) and "mei-sherrr" (which should be pronounced, "may shunnmuh"). Funnily enough, Songyuan ("Song-yuen") is usually pronounced properly. Fuck knows why. Some actually do make it "Song-yuarr". Including me, of course. In fact, i've been phasing in emphasising the pirate accent as much as i can. I've even tried to start phasing in "Zai-jiarrr!" for Zai-jian (goodbye) more and more among the local population (even they pronounce zai-jian properly). Leave the marrk of me presence among these hornswagglers and their scurvy tongues...

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Being in the far-eastern part of China, the sun rises ridiculously early here - before 4am now. I don't mind, now that i'm learning some kung-fu in mornings from about 530am, it makes it easier to get up.But owing to China's one-time-zone policy, at different times of year the far west of China can be 3 hours behind. So one place has sunrise at 6am while another is dark until nearly 9am. A government-sanctioned tour-guide company says in the far west, "Almost all local minorities use Xinjiang Time (unofficial, 2 hours behind) instead of Beijing time".What they mean, it would seem, is that all the serious money-making is done by Han Chinese (majority) on Beijing time, and minorities (Muslims) are not part of that.And in other, even more irrelevant news, there are cigarettes here that taste just like Winfields for RMB2.50 (40c) a pack. Meanwhile, all types of purportedly 'quality' ones for 10 times the price taste rank.And just to make it a little less relevant, if anyone still has trouble getting the first smoke out of a soft pack, if haven't seen it before, you can make a bunch just rise up out of the pack if you just open a corner as usual, then karate-chop the middle of the pack...you probably knew that.