User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

Do you happen to know that title in Chinese?

I have been asking for Despicable Me lately - no idea of how it translates and have been going in asking for 自己非常不好, it's beginning to get embarrassing, maybe they think I am confessing something.

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

First visit was in 2004, with my daughter. She dumped me in a cheap red taxi one night (wanting to party on with her mates), said something unintelligible to the driver, and I was driven back to my hostel. Damn, I thought, I've got to learn this language.

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

Oh wow, running from Shangri-la to Kunming by foot .. how did I miss that? Do you actually see Kunming?

I just caught up with the remake of Karate Kid with Will Smith's son, I thought it was pretty good but I know nothing about gong fu. It had all the ingredients including pretty cinematography and Jackie Chan as a flawed immortal.

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

Was David Carradine in that one? Is that who you are now? It is a bit elongated - you look like David Carradine with a touch of Spock. :)

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

RJ

I have never been an electronic (or even a cardboard) flashcard person, and my question here for you will show. Can you explain in words of not too many syllables how they work? Or, rather, what do I do to make them a learning tool? How do they test my knowledge? Maybe I'm missing something simple but vital.

With hard-copy flashcards you might have the character on one side and the 'answer' (pin yin) on the other - I get that. I can skip through them testing whether I can read/pronounce a character correctly.

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

Hi toianw

I think you are right - the shape probably dominates colour in London's case. They are pretty distinctive. I wonder if there are other cases where shape dominates colour. In most cities the taxi is a very common make and model.

The bowler hat requirement - I didn't know that. Is that kind of you know apocryphal? I mean, ladies of the period would have had space requirements as well - hats, and voluminous dresses.

And BTW I take your point about taxis in BJ - as I wrote it I was aware that things have changed. But there was a time when they were all red.

It's funny how taxis, like department stores, have a city-based culture. In Australia the taxi culture varies markedly from city to city. In Melbourne it is virtually impossible to hail a taxi kerb-side; in Sydney it is almost all kerb-side business. Hong Kong is the most regulated system I have ever seen.

Posted on: An Introduction to Chengyu

小题大做

I'm happy to spend say the next six months practicing the 成语 given to us today before being hit with any more.  At the moment I'd like more lessons on prisons, TV stations and the Chinese young person's struggle for identity.  But I may be in a minority.  :)

Posted on: 春节采访

家乡　I'm dyslexic in Chinese. :)

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

Yeh, I'm not so sure that what goes on in China is strictly speaking hitchhiking, not like I did as a boy. And not like Baba reports seeing in Ireland. (I did it in Ireland for the same reason as its done here in China - in some places there simply isn't a convenient bus service.)

I have done it twice that I can remember in China - once flagged down a bus on a highway, and once a little old truck on a remote mountain road - on both occasions we had to pay.

Posted on: 春节采访

Zhenlijiang

You have a way of finding interesting lessons! Thanks for alerting me to this - I really like the length. Like feeling a thick book - promises so much. I also like the style here, it's very cool.

I am 'interviewing' three students every class I give - I try to make it educational but it is as much for my benefit as theirs (collecting information about China, learning Chinese). I always start with 'so, tell me about your 乡家', to get them relaxed, and finish with an 'on-topic' question.