I’m sitting in a very nice waiting room in Qinhuangdao waiting for the bus to take me back to the Great Wall.
As you might have noticed, there has not been that much activity on this site lately and the map has not been updated while I have been out walking. This is because the main keyboard on my mobile phone has gone 250 as they say in China – meaning it is faulty. There has also been a technical problem on the web site. That problem is resolved, so from now on you should be able to follow my progress on the Great Wall Route page day by day.
The last day in Zunhua, I went to a China Mobile shop looking at mobiles with a full keyboard. They cost quite a lot of money. I got talking to one of the salespersons there and told her a bit about the walk. The day after I returned, having decided to get the phone. I was very surprised and grateful when the woman showed me a phone much superior
to the one I was planning to buy, and gave it to me!! Her husband had used the phone a short while but didn’t need it any longer. I was so surprised and offered to pay for it, but she would hear nothing of it.
So – a very big thankyou to Lily in one of the many China Mobile shops in Zunhua! You are a very generous person 🙂
This message is written on the Nokia E71 which her husband donated.
I’m a firm believer in the saying “what goes around, comes around”. Your a good person who’s getting what you deserve 🙂
Go Robert!!
250 is a bit of putonghua slang. Fay explained it to me as being overly dramatic and intense. i.e. being a drama-queen, screaming and shouting, acting weird.
Not working is not being 250. Bursting into flames and exploding is 250.
The dictionary disagrees, saying Er-bai-wu means stupid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/250_%28number%29
As a Mandarin slang term, 250 (二百五 pinyin èrbǎiwǔ) is an insult meaning “stupid person” or “simpleton”. The expression is based on bàndiàozi (半弔子 or 半吊子). In ancient China, copper coins were grouped by stringing them together through the square holes in the center; originally 1000 was a unit of currency called a diao. Ban diao zi literally means half a diao (500 coins), which is a slang term referring to a person who is inadequate in skills or mental abilities. Since modest Chinese scholars may call themselves ban diao zi to humbly deprecate their own expertise, ban diao zi is not necessarily a pejorative term. On the other hand, Er bai wu (250) is half of a ban diao zi and it is an insult.