User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Away on Business

@bastienmw

'Ni bu zai Beijing?'  I think in this context it is a statement rather than a question (despite the ? at the end.)  The other person has already said, or at least implied, that they are not in BJ.  The bit that is then implied is 'dui bu dui?'  The other person answers 'dui'.  This reflects the tendency for Chinese speakers to repeat the obvious.  Kind of nice, really?

Posted on: Express Train or High-speed Train?

@ptsmith

The white super-fast trains are not available everywhere yet - you will have to be patient.  It is not just a matter of rolling-stock (the carriages) - there is a huge investment required 'below rail'.  The track in particular needs to be built to a very high standard to support fast trains. 

Asking for kuai che would generally get you the next fastest option.  in my experience the dong che tickets are bought in a different location (so there is little scope for confusion), and the waiting lounges are also separate.  I don't know how general this is.  

Actually if you only travelled dong che you would miss some of the excitement and colour of travelling by train in China.

Posted on: Clean Energy in China with Dennis Bracy

@jenny

I did some attitudinal surveys in 2007 about choice of personal transport and those results are consistent with your view that a 'sexy look' influences those choices. But i think we have lost the battle here in China re. bicyles - e-scooters outnumber bicycles now where I live.  What is worse, the city planning decisions pretty much preclude bicycles -- we are building the cities for motor cars.  Even the Kunming road network is starting to look like that of Los Angeles.  This is one of the most unfortunate artifacts China has borrowed from the West - it is already becoming an expensive mistake.  Yes, I love the old-style Chinese city (designed for walking) with about 25% - 30% less road surface area than an Australian city.  Combine that with a metro system and you would have a great solution for 21st century China.

Posted on: Express Train or High-speed Train?

@tommy2tone

aah, I get it.  The politicians are re-announcing the fast train ... happens all the time in Australia.  A skilled PR machine can re-announce a big investment several times.

Posted on: Express Train or High-speed Train?

@tommy2tone

I'm a little confused - the white 动车 from Shanghai to Hangzhou has been running since 2006 (when i lived there). What am I missing now?  A new, updated, 动车?  A red one perhaps (Hangzhou has RED buses tthat are supposed to go twice as fast as the conventional ones - no..I'm sorry, it doesn't work - the  colour didn't make them go any faster because they still had to use the same roads as the other buses.)  

Posted on: Clean Energy in China with Dennis Bracy

@tage

'Opening up' is a complex social as well as economic phenomenon (forgive me for getting serious).  I am sure that it is all that you say (eg. fascinating), specially as you experienced China when it was relatively 'closed'.  I just resist getting unequivocally warm inside at the notion of 'opening up', even at the economic level, because a market economy produces many 'bads' along with the 'goods'.  China has its share of 'bads', the most obvious being environmental pollution.  The drive for economic growth and status has spurned other industries that harm the culture and even destroy the lives of innocent people.  Unfortunately this all gets counted as Gross Domestic Product, so the proud headline GDP figures conceal some nasty and damaging activity (as it does in the West.)  

As for the other matter - the adoption of Western ideas and symbols (eg. the dance craze you mention) I am an agnostic - I don't really have a strong view.  Mainly because it just that, symbolic - it hardly reaches to the deeply held values in Chinese culture.  I would be personally disturbed if there was a serious loss of local culture, but I don't think that there is much risk of Chinese culture being damaged by a few dance halls.  What I was saying above is that it would appear that the 'opening up' in respect of things like dancing to Western music (apart from the 'ballroom dancing' phenomenon which I think has now been almost completely Sinofied) is very marginal.  I think Chinese values are fairly safe from Western influence.  The influence running in the other direction may well be stronger, since 'opening up'.

Posted on: Clean Energy in China with Dennis Bracy

@tage

your 'scenes in Chengdu late 1984' is evocative, but I wonder what it all means.  (It actually brought to my mind Red Dust.)  

Scenes in Chengdu (substitute pretty much any sizeable city outside Shanghai) 25 years later.  Not much different really - a few people dressing up and displaying some of the artifacts of Western culture.  I don't know that they really were 老百姓 in those days but I do know that 老百姓 these days are not dancing in the cafes.  

Mind you I am not arguing that failure to adopt Western culture is a bad thing (rather the reverse.)  I am just asking, what does 'opening up' mean, then and now?  

Here's my point: .. in 2009 a band playing American 'pop tunes' in a Chinese city of five million plus is likely to attract a crowd of maybe a hundred people (I'm being generous). Most of them foreigners.  

Interesting?    

Posted on: The Final Show

@matt

actually my tongue was firmly in my cheek - I have no wish to segregate poddies, rather the reverse.  My obscure purpose was to make fun of the divisive comments in order to diminish then. Then even my wife doesn't understand (or maybe that is appreciate) my humour. 

I didn't know that I could get Dear Amber - must try that as a search. 

I don't get time to actually do many lessons at present but I use CP from time to time to check on different subjects.  (I was disappointed that there was nothing NOTHING useful on the game of tennis.)  Where's your sporting genes?  And I have been using Skritter to help me review characters.   

Keep up the good work!  

Posted on: The Final Show

Tvan's comment about the Shang Dynasty made me wonder if we need a marker on ChinesePod that honours Amber, as in Before Amber (BA) and After Amber (AA). Like BC and AD.  Poddies like myself who came along after Amber could be known as AAs.  BAs would of course be older and more respected. Poddies who continue to revere Amber might like the idea of a permanent memorial to her name.  Those who don't will just have to live with it, rather like agnostics tolerate living in 2009 AD.   

Posted on: Two Tough Ladies

The English translations (when you hang the cursor over a character) are skewiff in this lesson - I posted only recently on a similar problem.  In just one line of dialogue there is 对不起 (an unhelpful literal rather than non-literal translation) and 长 (long?? - the sense here is, I think, something like 'haven't you 'grown' any eyes?')  

Hey guys, it's like a machine translation! 

I have an image of everyone going home early and leaving it to HAL.  Okay, we just turn this switch and everything will be cool, right?  That is what HAL told me anyway...  [fade to eerie music]...