Street of Virtuous Migrant Gentlemen

Amsterdam has its own Chinatown. You'll know it when you get there because the street names are given in Dutch and Chinese. If you've noticed the signs you might wonder how the Chinese names were derived, are they a translation, or a transliteration?

A mixture, as it turns out.

Nieumarkt for example is a direct translation - 新廣場 (xin1 guang2 chang3) means "new square".

Stormsteeg - 順風里 (shun4 feng1 li3) means "smooth wind alley", it seems the Dutch 'storm' has been turned into something much milder, with auspicious overtones.

Zeedijk - 善德街 (shan4 de2 jie1) means good/kind virtue street - Zeedijk would have been a dyke against the sea (surprised?), but that was several hundred years ago, long before there were Chinese in Amsterdam so this is pure transliteration.

Binnen Bantammerstraat - 百達内街 (bai3 da2 nei4 jie1) means "hundred prosper within street" (or hundred reach within street) - this one is probably part transliteration and part translation. Since "binnen" means inner.

My personal favourite is Geldersekade - 僑德仕街 (qiao2 de2 shi4 jie1) - this one is probably transliteration, but what a clever choice of characters: 僑 (qiao2) may be short for 僑民 (qiao2 min2 - migrants), 德 (de2 - virtue), 仕 (shi4 - short for shen1 shi4 紳仕 - gentry) giving a meaning of Street of virtuous migrant gentlemen.

In the current political climate I'm delighted to see that there has been a secret advertisement for migrants, right in the middle of Amsterdam all this time.

Many thanks to Marsbar (you know who you are) for the translations and explanations, and to Shilgia for the photos and the inspiration.

Chewing gum. Why does anyone chew it?

Normally we chew things to make them small enough to swallow, but chewing gum doesn't have any nutritional value. As a child I was told not to swallow it and dire warnings were added "it'll get stuck in your appendix and you'll land in hospital". So it can't be that.

Some things we chew taste good. The minty freshness of gum can be pleasant but it loses its flavour after a few minutes, so it can't be that.

Chewing or sucking something can re-adjust the pressure in your ears on take-off or landing. Mostly we're not on an aeroplane, so it definately can't be that.

Next time you visit a farm, take a close look at a cow. That's what you look like when you chew gum.

Then there's the problem of what happens to the chewing gum after you've finished. Spitting it out is gross, in fact the more forceful the spit the grosser the effect. Someone in Iceland thinks it's art. Not much to do up there I guess.

Those Unfunny Cartoons

A Dutch politician published the cartoons on his website. He had 40 death threats after he did it.

Now which ever side of the argument you're on philosophically this was a predictable outcome.

So logically he's prepared to die for the right of a newspaper he never reads to publish cartoons about a faith he doesn't follow, in a language he doesn't understand.