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1,000 on a new be-whiskered friend, the free, furry embrace is well worth the trip. This is the perfect introductory Chinese wet market for tourists — it still has the guts and gore, but with foreigner-friendly vendors and a linear layout that makes it impossible to lose your way. Sanyuanli is split into sections, much like a typical supermarket. Fruit vendors selling everything from grapes and oranges to dragonfruit and custard apples line both sides of the aisle at the market’s entrance, offering free samples and slices to hesitant potential customers. Your nose will know the meat section is next even before you see it. The raw smell of hanging cuts of lamb and naked chickens hits you hard. Step further into the market for the briny, salty scent of the seafood section. Here, live crabs crawl out of green mesh bags and a woman wielding a large knife effortlessly scales fresh fish. Pick up a pound of shrimp and the attendant will peel them for you, just make sure to step around the blue plastic bag that’s still flopping at your feet. The market finishes off at the vegetable section, with stalls lined with 5-yuan sandwich bags of aromatic herbs and piled up with royal purple eggplant and
Photo by IC
Sanyuanli Market
The New Guanyuan pet market is a menagerie of birds, cats, lizards and chinchillas
round, ripe tomatoes. Munch on a roubing, a fried meat pastry sold at a mid-market booth, while the vendor at stand 98 croons about his impressive selection of mushrooms and rare truffles.
real chinese
nǎo
naodong Imagination
In August, The Three-Body Problem author Liu Cixin became the first Asian writer to win science fiction’s highest honor, the Hugo Award. Ever since, more and more people have gravitated toward the book, which media have described as “naodong dakai,” meaning “showing vivid imagination.” “Nao” means “brain” and “dong” means “hole,” making naodong itself an imaginative word which likens one’s imagination to a hole in the brain in which one fills whatever one has conceptualized. Naodong dakai (“open the brain hole wide”), describes someone with a powerful, creative imagination, such as author Liu Cixin. Naodong actually originated from another new term, “naobu,” with “bu” meaning
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“to supplement,” It is used when someone makes up imaginary plot lines for a story or a picture that add on to, or supplement, the image’s original content. For example, when looking at a picture of a girl crying on the side of the road, different people might naobu different explanations behind why she’s crying, such as a difficult breakup, failing a final or even time-traveling to the wrong century. If the supplementary “plot” is so vivid that it extends beyond the average realm of imagination, that story line “naodong dakai.” In many cases, naodong is closely related to creativity, as people believe that a creative person definitely has “boundless imagination.” The term naodong often appears in job
dòng
descriptions for designers who need to have a high capacity for innovation, or in advertisements for what is being promoted as a fresh, novel product. For example, a well-known Chinese game developer recently launched a new smart phone game called Naodong Three Kingdoms, playing off the legendary wars of the Three Kingdoms (220-280). By introducing many modern and even fictitious weapons into the game, the developer shows that “naodong” is one of their major selling points. Similar to many other online terms, naodong can have a negative connotation, too, used mostly when flights of fancy have caused people to delude themselves into denying reality. Some people even use the term naodong dakai to describe a symptom of delusional disorders. NEWSCHINA I November 2015