Some cultural observations
Today I met with my unofficial conversation partner Vivian. We met outside the Sculpting in Time cafe. While I was waiting for her both Roberto and Emlyn happened along, they be able to provide some observations as well later.
We had a good talk, I got her to help me with some Chinese phrases. One oddball phrase I was trying to decern was big calf muscles. Why you may ask? Well, um, it’s a fascinating phrase to use in Google. Yah that’s the ticket. Actually “calves” or “big calves” is a tough phrase for Google and other search engines. They can’t tell if you want pictures of baby cows or peoples legs. Try fooling around with it in Yahoo Image Search and you might be surprised. One feature of Yahoo Image Search I recently noticed is at the bottom where it says “Others who searched for big calves also searched for”. This can come as quite a shock sometimes.
My attempt to work out big calf muscles with the help of Babelfish was a bit of a failure. In addition to search engines automatic translation algorithms have trouble with a phrase like “big calves” that is why I changed it to “big calf muscles”. Vivian’s translation is �?腿肚很粗. I put it into Baidu as soon as I got home. I was disappointed, of course my minimal Chinese language skills also played a huge factor, but you don’t get any results from Baidu’s Image Search using this phrase.
However another topic that came up when discussing this is the dislike Chinese and Korean girls have for big calves. Aparently Korean women especially are prone to having large calves. I know I have come across blogs where women complain about the size of their calves. This phenomenom is not just reserved for Asian women either. And if you read that last link as I tried to tell Vivian who described big calf muscles as ugly, not everyone thinks that way.
Another part of this odd conversation was that Korean women, who are aparently famous for both having big calves and having plastic surgery, have taken to having calf reduction surgery. Since I’ve heard some men have had calf implants this is particularly odd after all the calf is a muscle, aparently the doctors shave off the muscle. It sounds pretty painful and harsh but is true none the less.
The other odd article that came up while researching this posting was this one about Chinese gymnastics. Gymnastics is often considered to be a girls sport but they do some barbaric things and not just in China. They litterally do exercises to stunt people’s growth. They also have to partially dislocate their shoulders to do some tricks. Also pound for pound gymnasts are really strong. They have really dense bones from all the training particularly the hard landings from doing the vault. I’m glad I only played rugby, football, and soccer as a kid. I don’t think I’m tough enough for gymnastics.
So I guess if any former gymnasts are out there reading this and were forced to quit the sport because of the onset of puberty or they grew too tall, but still have massively muscled calves, ah for the record I’m single. :-D
I also found this website while googling but I was scared to actully type gymnast fetish into Google, what the hell you only live once. If you type “gymnast fetish” into Google or likely any other major search engine you will not be disappointed, if that is your thing. The Japanese once again seem to be on the forefront of obscure fetishes. What is it with the Japanese and fetishes? I’m sure there is a PhD dissertation there, but not mine.
I took away the direct links to J-List and JMate, if you really want to see their wares, I’m sure you’re talented enough to do so. J-List is an interesting site, it sells t-shirts, bubblegum, and porn. Just like 7-11 come to think of it. Except the J-List specializes in all things Japanese, the guy who runs it is a pretty nice guy and of course he uses a Mac.
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 30th, 2005 at 9:54 am filed under: China, East Asia, Internet, Japan, Korea, Search Engines, 健美 and tagged: calves, Chinese, girl, Korean. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
