Comments on: 加油中国！ China Needs a New Cheer

By: anon

anon — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:04:30 +0000

Sure hope the Spanish crowd didn’t do that dumb ’slant eye’ gesture while cheering.

By: Jeremy Yeh

Jeremy Yeh — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:30:38 +0000

well,definitely ‘jia you’ is dominant, but in sichuan,chongqing and probably guizhou as well,ppl prefer ‘雄起(xiong2 qi3)’, which means to cheer up.

By: Benjamin Ross

Benjamin Ross — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:12:31 +0000

@Keith

Not sure if this counts or not, but during the Argentina vs. Brazil soccer game there was quite a large contingent of Chinese fans cheering “Kobe, Kobe” when Kobe Bryant came into the stands. This continued periodically throughout the entire match.

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:22:55 +0000

There is are slivers of hope. Over the last several days, my friends and I have been inspiring the Chinese to perform some slightly different chants. In addition to getting crowds to chant athlete names and countries in place of zhong guo, I’ve had some success getting them to shout names and countries on alternate beats, for instance “Ti-Na, Mei-Guo” or what have you. It’s still to the jai-oh beat, but it’s progress.

The best foreigner leading Chinese chanting I’ve seen was a Mexican all decked out with his country’s flag, coordinated wig, and patriotic outfit. He was using a whistle, grand gestures, and hopping along a walkway to excite the crowd to shout the Chinese translation of Mexico. Once he got them started with his own shouting, they would continue just by his use of the whistle.

I still haven’t seen a Chinese crowd convinced to shout U-S-A, though, despite their easy inclination to shout the same thing in Chinese.

By: Benjamin Ross

Benjamin Ross — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:47:05 +0000

@Paul

Interesting information about Sichuan and their variation on the cheer. Ironically, most of my time living in China was spent living in Fujian, arguably the most linguistically diverse province in China, and I still never heard anything other than the putonghua 加油. I’ll have to ask some old friends how to say it in Fuzhou hua, and if it is ever (or was ever) used.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:33:40 +0000

Hey – great post – had the same experience myself while watching the Spanish womens team take on China in the women’s tennis doubles semi-final, a small but very vocal group of Spanish supporters competed with the “Zhonggou Jiayou” that 95% of the supporters were shouting – the thing is, the Spaniards had the Chinese beat because of the variety of their chants/songs etc. However, i would add one thing, “jia you” is the official “putonghua” chant – i know for a fact that at Sichuan and Chongqing sporting matches people shout 勇气 yongqi, and given the richness of the Chinese language (you should see how many different ways they have to say scissors, paper rock), i’m sure there are a lot of other regional variations on the over-used Jia you.

By: More than just adding oil

More than just adding oil — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:19:39 +0000

[...] China Daily also examined how China might need new cheers and compared China’s cheering to the organized South Korean effort. Is the simple 加油 really that boring? [...]

By: cerebus

cerebus — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:05:06 +0000

the song is getting permanently etched into my internal ipod, is all. and i have a t-shirt that says “wo bu shi meiguoren”, clearly meant for people like you.

By: ja

ja — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:40:52 +0000

maybe cerebus should get a one-way plane ticket back to the states if beijing is getting under his skin. Meiguo huanying ni!

By: cerebus

cerebus — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:54:32 +0000

jia you! to you on this post. i’m sick of it too, but there’s one other thing in beijing that makes me want to stab myself in the ears with a pair of kuaizi:

beijing… huanying… ni…