Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

I came across these at Slope Day today, where they were doing airbrushed tattoos. My girlfriend tells me they’re nowhere close to correct:

This is just perfect for hanzismatter!

My girlfriend mentions that I probably have a certain blood type whenever I exhibit an irritating behavior, but I’d never heard of the idea that blood type is a good predictor of personality before. The Asia Pages have a good short article about blood types, which you may find interesting.

Tom Vamvanij asks an important language question, at least for us Americans:

Waiguoren v.s. Laowai

It’s full of all kinds of interesting etymological tidbits–to summarize:

… “laowai”, which you say is supposed to be “the most polite word the Chinese have for foreigners” (p. 119, 7th edition). Under no circumstances is that true — not even in theory.