A thorough tour through Yokohama’s Chinatown:
“Like most Chinatowns, the entrance to Yokohama’s Chinatown is marked off by a large 牌坊 (pai2 fang1), with the characters 中华街 (zhong1 hua2 jie1), one of the various translations of ‘Chinatown,’ written on it. Behind the gate is a tangled web of streets and alleys, swamped by mobs of people. The streets are jammed with stores selling Chinese spices and trinkets, restaurants with names such as ‘Shanxi Family Chinese Restaurant,’ and street vendors galore. By far, the most common items were smoked chestnuts (板栗) and baozi (包子).”

Commentary on China’s ubiquitous cheer, ‘Jia You’:

“Jia You is not a bad cheer. It’s simple, catchy, and easily customizable to any team, country, or individual. The literal meaning of jia you is ‘add oil.’ It doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, but then again most good cheers don’t. It works like this. The leader shouts out the name of the team, for example ‘China’ and then the others shout ‘jia you.’ The leader then shouts ‘jia you’ and the others reply with ‘China.’ My beef with jia you is that it is the only cheer in China, and is cheered on auto-pilot at virtually every event where China is competing. In fact China has added so much oil this Olympics that it makes one wonder whether it is the impetus behind China’s rapidly rising gas prices.”