Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

This is the three Gorges region in the People’s Republic of China. It’s extremely beautiful.

You definitely need to check out R Todd King’s set of Harbin 2007 photos, which feature shots of The Eighth Annual Harbin Ice and Snow World at night. The photos are breathtakingly gorgeous:

“An ice replica of the Korean palace Gyeongbokgung”

This is one of the many things in China I long to see before I die. Part of the attraction is that it is the sister city to the place where I was born, in Edmonton Alberta, Canada.

I found this question and answer on Ancestry By DNA’s website interesting:

I thought I was purely of Scandinavian origin, but my results show minor East Asian admixture. How is this result possible?

In our testing we’ve observed a number of samples from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe that exhibit some East Asian admixture. This is probably due to past migrations and is possibly telling us something about the interaction of various groups in those regions. In addition, cultures from these areas traveled to region of Asia and it does not seem unreasonable that children may have been produced from some of these travels introducing new genetic markers into the Scandinavian population.

Ancestry by DNA is a strange little company which will tell you, based on your DNA, what your “race” actually is. Or rather, what geography your people are from.

I was checking out the new site Overheard in Malaysia when I realized that I don’t understand it all, although it appears to be written in English. Check out this random post about … well, I’m not sure:

MrBf: Blah blah blah.. why you damn clown? Don’t know how to look where you’re going ah? *lecture lecture*
naeboo: *gives hard look*
MrBf: Why you give me one kind look? Not happy isit?? What look is it ar?
naeboo:YATT LOOK! One look! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.. *layan sendiri* I’m sucha smartass!
MrBf: -_______________-”

The Flesch-Kincaid grade level of this text is 4. The first thing currently on Overheardinnewyork scores a (still low) 7. Apparently there is a class-split around the use of English in the Malaysian educational system.

Oh wow there is now http://ditu.google.cn/ the Google Maps for native Chinese speakers.  Ditu (地图) in Chinese means “map” so the name is a perfectly valid literal translation.  Right now it looks like this:

Shanghai has nice high-resolution road maps:

This will come in very handy the next time I visit China, I am most sure.  Google maps is already my lifeline here in NYC.  Interestingly, their GIS data is being provided by a company called mapsabc.  If you know who they are, leave a comment!