User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Changing a Plane Ticket

The new fast trains will really change the calculation.  Wuhan - Guangzhou.  About 1,000 km by the new line.  There's a train every 30 minutes.  Second class costs 490 RMB.  Trip takes 3 hours and 5 minutes. Train stations are more conveniently located than airports.  Why would you fly?  

 Anyone know the name of these new trains: 和谐号 héxié hào?  Is that right? 

Posted on: Changing a Plane Ticket

Connie

This sounds colloquial & I am always up for learning a cool way of expressing something, but does this work when you do not actually have a 'ticket' as such? I don't think I have ever flown in China with a paper ticket - in English we would say 'I want to/need to change my flight'. Can I use the same expression?

Posted on: Which tone was that again?

I was having a conversation with a taxi driver yesterday who seemed to think my Chinese is better than it is.  It was a long trip and I was exhausted at the end.  It goes like this (3 phases):

Phase 1: [After short discussion] 'Wow, your Chinese is really good!' [yawn - they say this to just about Westerner.]  

Phase 2: [After more extended discussion]. 'You know I have had Westerners in my taxi who have no idea - 听不懂!'  [Big hearty laugh - we are bonding on the subject of foreigners who have no idea.]   Interestingly, when a Chinese person says this they are usually referring to themselves, not the foreigner.  That is, they are very impressed if they can understand what you are saying; they care little whether you can understand them.  

Then Phase 3: [the part I don't enjoy - they slip into local dialect, at which point I can really 听不懂! They want to teach me something because I have passed the first two steps (in this case how to respond to 'thankyou').  I tell him I am struggling with Standard Chinese so I can't learn another dialect.  I get a long treatise on the differences between the dialects.  

Now - the point of this post; I learnt that 昆明话 has 'almost no tones'; compared to 普通话， 没有声调 .. But it doesn't make the Chinese easier to understand - if anything it makes it harder.  I learn to appreciate what the tones bring to the language. 

Maybe this will come up for discussion when you get around to lessons on the Kunming dialect.  

Responding to 'thank you'?  A guttural and explosive 不!客!气! all fourth tone.  Yes, I know he said 'no tones' - this country is full of contradictions.    

Posted on: Suffixes for Describing People

Oh, 我明白了。 多谢你们。

Changye - thanks for your English explanation - definitely helps on this occasion. I have celebrated 端午节 three nights in a row and my head is a bit fuzzy. (All Australian wine of course.)

Posted on: Suffixes for Describing People

我姓柏，‘免贵姓王’是什么意思？

Posted on: Football and Dragon Boats

Hey Barbs, you handled this whole thing beautifully.

About the qipao I have a story: the other night discussion in a group somehow got around to qipao and I asked a young woman (an ex-student) did she have one and I got a genuine look of horror & no answer. One of her male friends lent over and said to me, sotto voce, 'around here, only old ladies wear qipao... or worse, fuwuyuan (at the door of the restaurant)' I had inadvertently insulted the young woman. :) I'm sure Jenny is neither (!) but I think some woman may occasionally 'dress up'/hire one for a photo.

Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds

Hi nderrett

'I'm fixin' to go to the store' - course I've heard it; I watched The Beverley Hillbillies as a kid. :) Oh, now I'm not sure - is that what it was called?

I don't know the statistics but my guess is that 1 in 3 taxi drivers in Sydney is Chinese. In my experience, about 7 in 10 Sydney newsagents come from China. I can think of maybe ten shops in walking distance from my Sydney home run by Chinese, and I am nowhere near Chinatown. Plenty of opportunity to practice your Chinese. I have a few I used to go to specifically to chat (and buy something of course) - the post office, a corner store and a newsagent. Everytime I went to the corner store the guy would tell me yet another obscure measure word. He would sit at his counter reading a Chinese literary magazine, no kidding.

Wow - do American women go for Aussie accents? I never knew that? Errr, just out of interest, do they go for Queensland accents? :)

Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds

Re Shakespeare

Ok, this is just speculation on my part (nothing has changed there) but it seems to me that we (or at least my generation) spent a lot more of our youth reading and studying Shakespeare than the Chinese. Of course that is not surprising, it's in English or at least an earlier form of English. The Chinese commonly admire Shakespeare but their appreciation of Western literature is often reduced to what we would call 'Readers Digest' versions, or even less. I hope I am not offending anyone here - the Chinese, or fans of Readers Digest. As a consequence, saying some Shakespeare in Chinese, even a few of the most famous quotes, is likely to fall on deaf ears here on the mainland. What I am saying is, your efforts in fact have lots of appeal, and I would love to spend some time there, but I am still struggling with the basics.

The last two evenings I spent a few hours with a maintenance man (definitely not a plumber - he baulked when I suggested calling a plumber and said money was no problem), fixing a tricky leak from the hot water system. Enjoyed myself and learnt a little bit more about life in China - this is where I am at. But I do sneak a glance at your Shakespeare every now and again.

Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds

Don't you think that there is an interesting gap between the oh so serious official position (look at the coachs' faces) and the fact that lots of ordinary people just want the little guy to win. Seeing the underdog get up is really the only thing that I find attractive about any sport. (That is, except for my Rugby League team, the Canberra Raiders, which I barrack for every week; I always want them to win even when they win the premiership. Oh, and the Canetoads in the State of Origin because I was born a Queenslander.)

PS. Love your Shakespeare but I am sure that none of my Chinese acquaintances would either understand or see the point! What say you Desdemona? (I couldn't find any forms of Jenny from Shakespeare.)

Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds

hkboy

See my (admittedly rather dark) photo above - there are informal TVs set up around our city too, with groups watching. (I don't mean the 'big screens' you have in Chinese cities.) I find this fascinating - it is such a social activity. They all have their TVs at home but they are watching in public places for fun. Also, of course, there are TVs in the workplace - if you want to buy something you have to yell out '...老板!' to get them away from the soccer.