本命年 （ben3ming4nian2）
year of fate
In ancient China, people believed that a person’s fate was a determined at birth, so the zodiac year of one’s birth would be one’s “year of fate.” To fend off the default “bad luck” in such a year, people tend to wear red underwear, read waistbands and red bracelets. According to the Chinese lunar calendar, this year is the “year of fate” for people who were born in the Year of the Dog.

做秀 (zuo4xiu4)
publicity stunt
The term means some exaggerated or unusual behaviors people do to draw public attention to promote themselves, products or anything else. East China Normal University reportedly questioned a housekeeping service company’s recent attempt to hire students as temporary ayis was a publicity stunt.

不感冒 （bu4gan3mao4）
uninterested, peeved
Having no flu (bu ganmao)? That’s good. But don’t take the Chinese term verbatim. In colloquial conservations, this term means that one is uninterested in or even peeved by something others said or did. So don’t talk about Tamiflu when there’s no flu threat in sight.

城乡结合部 （cheng2xiang1jie2he2bu4）
rural-urban fringe zone
Millions of migrants flowing into the city every year have turned the boundary zone outside the urban proper into bustling areas where the migrants can find affordable housing and relatively easy access to their work in downtown districts. Sometimes, however, the term has a pejorative intonation as it’s often deemed as a synonym of the hotbed for crimes and unlicensed shoddy products.

居家养老 （ju1jia1yang3lao3）
home-based care for the aged
To cope with a quickly-aging society and the sharp shortage of facilities for the elderly, Shanghai has been advocating the so-called jujia yanglao, or home-based care for the aged. The city has adopted a number of measures, such as improving the community-based services and introducing schemes of providing cared and emergency aid to senior citizens who are living alone by pairing them with other families.

电子标签 （dian4zi3biao1qian1）
RFID tags
Shanghai has planned to develop Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags during the 11th Five-Year Plan period（2006-2010）as one of its goals in boosting the fast-growing IT industry.