Of the many websites dealing with contemporary Chinese language and culture, chinaSMACK is one of the best. So eye-popping is chinaSMACK's content that I could very easily spend nearly all of my time immersed in it.
One chinaSMACK feature that undoubtedly will be of considerable interest to Language Log readers is this glossary of terms frequently encountered on the Chinese internet.
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In recent years, this has been one of the most common modifiers and exclamations in Chinese. You can say just "niu" by itself, where "niu" actually means niú 牛 ("cow"), but that's an elision of "niuB" or "niubi", which in turn means "cow pussy". Although "niu(B/bi)" is used so frequently, in mixed company, on packaging, and so forth that it has lost much of its original shock value, it now means not much more than "awesome". Nonetheless, I would recommend scrupulously avoiding it in situations where you are expected to be polite and formal.
Although "niu(B/bi)" may amount to "awesome", it is far more colorful and crude. The origin of this usage is quite vulgar; for explanations, see here, here (with links to other posts in which the term is treated), also here and here.
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When Tom Mazanec came home from Fudan University in Shanghai a few nights ago, he found this leaflet in a baggie hanging on his door:
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