User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Medicine Doses

Hi Helen. This is such an interesting post I Googled the subject for further enlightenment. :-) Whereas black tea (红茶） is highly acidic (the opposite of alkaline) herbal teas are indeed alkaline; green tea (绿茶）falls between the two, but on the alkaline side.

I am also interested in your comment about blood circulation. In Western terms, black tea (and possibly green tea as well?) dilates the blood vessels (strengthens blood circulation?) while coffee constricts blood vessels.

Posted on: 经济适用男

A few years ago I got to know a young Chinese man who urged me to buy a Honda Civic as 'economically suitable' - a 经济适用车！ I believe he advised me out of real concern for my welfare; he was thinking about how I would be perceived by my friends and family.  I was staggered that a 21 year old could even think this way.  

He himself drove a new Audi (which I was allowed to drive, once only). :-)  

Posted on: Electronic Dogs and Radar Detectors

@jamesf

I don't know where you live, and I am hardly ever in a car either.  Despite very few trips, in the last couple of months I have twice been in a car 'pulled' over by police.  First for a roadworthy check and the second was a 'breathalyser'. He seemed to do an informal check that the driver was sober by asking a few questions (there was no machine produced to blow into or speak into.)   

Posted on: Electronic Dogs and Radar Detectors

ha ha 在我的在小区门口店有很多有用的东西，我很喜欢。 最近的时候我买了一个熊猫的灯。如果把熊猫的头打了，他叫几点钟了！

Posted on: Getting Taller (Not Fatter)

@Xiaophil

True, you both referred to right and wrong. I was responding to Pauley's. Your example is, I think, a little more problematic.  Morality is about right and wrong, in any culture.  In China, deciding what is right calls on a different set of values to ours, including the obligation to help your 'inner circle' as I like to call it. [Heaven help you if you are outside that circle.  :-)]  

Not everyone in China hold the same values; some people disagree with traditional values.  There is a debate about values here just as there is in the West.  The issue about 'helping' your friend do a test should be straightforward - I imagine that there is a university rule or by-law against doing someone else's test.  

But .. (I may have posted this before and if I have I apologise) .. it still highlights a difference in values. A guy in my wife's class actually emailed her and TOLD her that a friend would take his test because he was out of town!  The friend duly turned up and responded to his friend's name.  My wife says.. that's funny, I have someone else in my class with exactly the same name.  :-)  

Posted on: Getting Taller (Not Fatter)

PaulyI appreciate your point of view - did you say at one stage that you are a teacher? Nevertheless, the bond between members of the family in China is incredibly strong. I know one of your 'neglected' children well - forced into all the activities, bundled off to Australia to do the last two years of high school, then university. She lived with us for a year and I would say that she spoke to her parents EVERY day, discussing everything (well, nearly everything) going on in her life. I'm afraid I don't agree with you about it being a matter of RIGHT or WRONG. (My cultural relativism is showing.) We have different cultures and really there is no way to assert that your way is superior. Is there? Big call. Remember too that we are talking 'averages' here - there are plenty of exceptions to the rule in both cultures.

Posted on: Getting Taller (Not Fatter)

@xiaophil

What topic? Matters discussed in the essays include nationalism, past humiliations by Western governments, globalization, law and order, postmodernism, nihilism, skepticism, moral bankruptcy, altruism (lack of), feminism, personality (! - okay, that essay wasn't too good), humanism, bullying (you know which country was being discussed there), media criticisms, trade disputes, human rights, education, political systems and (I really didn't anticipate this one) architecture!  I'm guessing not many of us Westerners would be aware that some Chinese people take offence at our architecture, but there it is.  

The standard approach or categorization (dealt with in a number of Chinese references) is that the conservatives demonize Western values (and stir up the resentment); they argue that depraved behaviour is crowding out traditional Chinese culture.  [My question is: where is the evidence of this happening beyond the superficial - CocaCola, McDonalds, Christmas, etc.]  The pro-Westerners suggest that China has to get on board Western values, and the compromise position, where most Chinese people sit.  Many quote Lu Xun as an advocate of picking the best out of Western culture and discarding the rest.   

The gap between our cultures is often glossed over. 

Posted on: Getting Taller (Not Fatter)

@barbs

This might be a bit serious for ChinesePod but the 'conservative' Chinese critics of Western values refer (amongst other things) to the different attitudes to children and the family.  They say that in the West we 'abandon' our children too early, asking them early to stand on their own two feet (because we subscribe to 'individualism').  We offer them privacy and independence from a young age, knocking at the bedroom door before entering, etc.  In China there is, by comparison, filial piety (an enduring relationship compared to family bonds in the West?) and a saying that parents look after their children for the first thirty years and then children look after parents for the next thirty years (I'm paraphrasing.)  

I've just marked 90 essays on Chinese resentment of Western values. What has this got to do with economics you might ask?  Ask away.  :-) Economists try to construct models of human behaviour; to do this you need to delve into underlying values.  

Posted on: Getting Taller (Not Fatter)

Kids say what they hear their parents and extended families say.  We never said this, so our kids never referred to themselves in the third person.  In fact we studiously avoided any 'baby talk' and always spoke to our children as if we were talking to another adult. We believed that this showed children proper 'respect'.  Ah, such was the fashion in the seventies and eighties! Now, living in China I have come to learn that the roots of this philosophy we espoused lie in individualism.  

I realise that child rearing is re-invented every generation; I look back with horror what we visited upon our kids! Eg. our clumsy attempts to avoid gender bias.  

Posted on: Getting Taller (Not Fatter)

一年没见 (haven't seen you for a year) 

好久不见 (haven't seen you for a long time) 

Is this a case where either 没 or 不 are okay?

I must say this tendency for 豆豆 to use the Third Person is alarming - I thought that was the predictable outcome of not being able to cope with fame. (In Australia sports stars and film stars when first achieving success seem to switch to using the Third Person when talking about themselves.)