Character-Based Tweeting

My last post was about tweeting in Chinese. Apologies to my English-speaking followers… But it’s so easy, really. The 140 characters that Twitter allows is an essay in Chinese.

That is not an exaggeration. I applied for a job in Beijing last year, and the application had a <100 character personal essay requirement.

It makes me want to tear my hair out that there aren’t more Chinese tweets out there. I never come close to using all 140 characters… the unfathomable opportunities for character-based tweeting are not being tapped into, and something should be done about it.

So I am trying.

I’m really hoping to get some kind of following among Chinese speakers of any nationality on Twitter, though, so I’ll be keeping up with the annoying Chinese tweets until I run out of things to say. Now, if only I had a phone that supported Chinese characters...!

...And in case you're interested:

If you speak Chinese and follow me on Twitter, I'm doing an un-translatable, sarcastic, and satiric series on how to get a Chinese boyfriend. Just some lessons I've learned along the way (all these tweets start out with "找中国男朋友，第几课.")

If you speak English, you lose out because A) the concepts are way too "Chinese" to explain, B) I guess I could explain them, but not in under 140 characters, but C) wouldn't be good enough to blog in English about.

You can try to translate them, but then you're not allowed to judge me on the awful translation and the fact that you still don't understand.