Quick tip - It takes all sorts

(note: if you are reading this in an RSS reader, you probably won't be able to see the pinyin tooltips, in which case you should click on the link to the original post.)

Sticking with the bird theme, here's a comment I received recently on my Chinese blog - 英国人在上海 - in response to an article about David Blaine's recent tomfoolery in the human goldfish bowl:

林子大了, 什么样的鸟都有。

Literally translated this means "the forest is big, and has all kinds of different birds." It's pretty close to the English expression "it takes all sorts (to make a world)", although this also implies that you should be accepting of all people, no matter how strange. I don't think the Chinese expression carries this implication, it's merely an observation that the world is full of freaks like Blaine!

Tags: chinese, mandarin, CSL, language