User Comments - RJ

Posted on: Regional Variations on Helpfulness

You will never hear anyone tell you "no" in China, unless you listen very carefully.

Posted on: Chinese Graded Readers and ACTFL

I dont understand the fascination with reading on a tiny hand held. I bought one on amazon and can read it in the amazon cloud immediately on the pc.

My complaint is that if I encounter a character I dont know, there is no way to easily look it up. I have to draw it into pleco. John has put footnotes on some of the words (ironically I know most of those) but if you click on the footnote there is no button I can find to take you back exactly where you were in the story. One has to guess using the sliding scale at the bottom. I can get the jist of the story but I also want to learn those characters I dont know, or have forgotten. No rollover dictionary will work as far as I can tell. I searched for a Kindle roll-over but could not find anything and you cant cut and paste into anything else allowing use of any standard roll-over dictionaries.

Perhaps pretzel is right - we need the pinyin and english at the end so it can be referenced at least. And I dont want to hear that crutch argument again. You either know a character (or word) or you dont. No amount of staring at it will cause the meaning and pronunciation to just pop into your head. Otherwise a great idea.

Posted on: Chinese Graded Readers and ACTFL

babs

I dont have a kindle, will this still work on a PC? (the amazon download)?

Posted on: The Trouble with Marrying a Foreigner

I am still using itunes 10 and ios 5 something on my itouch. I can still see the text using podcast as a download format. Well, with a good pair of reading glasses that is. This is why hate to update these things.

Posted on: Classical Chinese vs. Modern Chinese

Always enjoy your posts Tingyun, but as Mike pointed out, truth is not at the top of the food chain in China. If you are hoping they fix this don't refrain from breathing in the interim. My prediction is they will now go completely mute (correct spelling in this case) on the issue, and nothing will change. Sometimes its frustrating to be right in China. Hell, sometimes its frustrating to be right anywhere. The way I see it their concession to you that there was some "debate" on this issue was their way of saying you were right without saying they were wrong. They no doubt are scratching their heads wondering why that was not enough for you. No wonder they call us laowai. We just dont get it. :-)

Posted on: No Change for the Bus Fare

John,

别忘了 a set phrase? Isnt the le due to the fact that you are talking about the future? Dont forget - it is something that would be a future change and I forgot is always in the past.

Posted on: CCP Political Slogans

Understood. A movie? I wonder if you are correct. The whole thing was actually more pathetic than intriguing. Like Kissinger said.....power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Who knows, you might just see that movie one day.

Posted on: CCP Political Slogans

Hi Zhen, yes, thank you for the clarification.

Posted on: CCP Political Slogans

I dont think they have crossed any lines here, just stating historical fact, not debating it. Now if they hold an open discussion of the Bo Xilai trial then I would say something has changed. Although the govt has been pretty open about it as I have followed it to its conclusion. Defended himself, and did a great job, but not good enough.

Posted on: CCP Political Slogans

China is what it is. I dont like the phrase communist China because it smacks of cold war propaganda. Today it is 中国特色社会主义