Hao ting

Chinese popular music is, for the most part, as equally catchy as it is ridiculous. This song [click on the link in the title] is my newest favorite... and it's actually in Mongolian, so I understand the same amount of it you do. I heard this song Saturday night when I was shopping for DVDs, got the MP3 (or as Chinese people say: "M-P-san," which I think is real funny) from a friend Sunday and have had it stuck in my head since. It's called 吉祥三宝, in pinyin: Ji Xiang San Bao, which translates to "Three Lucky Treasures." As my Chinglish-speaking friends would say, have a listen!

I'm fond of telling taxi drivers when a song I like comes on, "hao ting," which literally means good listen or sound, but translates to: I like this music, turn it up, friend! Which they then do. Actually, Three Lucky Treasures is a bad example of Chinese pop music, because it has that "traditional" sort of sound. Most pop music here is like pop music in the States, times ten: really cheesy and is just plain not good, like the song which says: Like the mouse loves the big rice, I love you; we call it "Mice Love Rice." There's the band S.H.E. with the hit song Super Star, whose chorus suddenly says in English, Wo zhi ai ni (I really love you), "You are my super star." When they're not playing Western classics such as John Denver's "Country Roads," Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic, or the Eagles' "Hotel California," it's some crazy Chinese pop song played on an endless loop blaring in and from every store down every street. And I swear they've all got the same 5-track CD.

Hao thing, indeed.