User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Tea Tasting

@miantiao, paulinurus

现代诗人的比赛

miantiao 一; paulinurus 零

可是我觉得你是有一点粗糙 。 面条，当然你斗不过他。  下次比赛什么时候？ 

请问一下， underdog 中文怎么说？

Posted on: Buying a House

Someone bought a place on the floor below us in a 7 story apartment block and they sytematically stripped every fixture, fitting, wall covering and floor, picked, scraped and jack-hammered away.  Rubble was carted out in baskets for weeks.  They even removed an internal wall which concerned me most until they chocked it up.  From my observation this is common - when you buy a place you start with a bare shell.  I remember many TV ads for floating timber floors. 

This is part of the culture I don't really understand - why do you want to start with a bare shell?  Is it related to the observation above about people not liking to rent? If you don't like to live with the remnants and residue of another occupant you won't like to rent; if you buy a place you can go ahead and strip it.  (The 'harsh landlord' is also a good explanation for the preference for owning over renting.)  A related observation is a preference in China for new over second-hand (cars, houses, even clothes.)  This explains the relatively short-life of an apartment building, and the rapid price depreciation in old stock.  (This is quite different to how housing markets operate in Australia if not other Western countries.)  Even whole residential districts being razed are not that old from our perspective.  Low wages is a factor but this pattern is not fully explained by building economics.

Posted on: Buying a House

@pete

In Australia baseball is something that is played by cricketers in Winter, and I haven't bunted a ball and hoped for the best since primary school.  Would you mind explaining 'born on third base' (what is wrong with that? - you're nearly home!) and 'thought he hit a triple' (I guess that's good - is that getting 1st 2nd and 3rd all home? Or three home runs.)  My knowledge of baseball amounts to 'who's on first base', Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham and awful lot of spitting.  Is it still a really big game in the US - how does it compare to gridiron and basketball?

Posted on: Tea Tasting

@sebire

the optimum tea-making temperature depends on the kind of tea! (I have a lot to say for a non-expert.)  Generally people making tea at home use water that is far too hot (specially for green tea) so if you drink a tea that takes milk, and make it from a tea bag, it's not a bad idea to put the milk in first.  It will help lower the temperature of the water so that it won't burn the tea leaves too much.  I read that all on the side of a packet of tea, so it must be true. :-)

Posted on: Tea Tasting

@miantiao

你是真的中国通， 可是大概看来你话里还有些文章还是文章里的部分我也看不懂。 麻烦你。。 我当然乱说了。

Posted on: Tea Tasting

Drinking black tea in China 

The room is quiet and smells sweetly of wood.  There is a large polished wooden table about four meters long and 15 centimeters thick; the timber is from Thailand, just over the Yunnan border.  We spend the afternoon here as guests (no pressure to buy), sitting with friends, drinking black tea.  The shop only sells two types of 普洱茶 (pu'er tea), a black tea - no green tea at all.  We chat for hours and I wish that it could go longer.  The tea leaves are cut or chipped from blocks of tea - at this shop the blocks are sold in discs in a variety of sizes.  (Imagine for example the discus used in athletics.)  The disks are said to be convenient for ‘carrying'.  The big oval-shaped leaves come from tall old trees in Yunnan.  The leaves scraped from a disc are kept in a caddy and they go from here into a pot.  The first lot of hot water from the pot is poured over a ceramic toad that sits on the tea set base.  The toad has three feet.  One foot is attached to its tail and projects out behind the toad.  This emphasises the fact that the toad is mystical, not real.  Then fresh hot water is reapplied to the leaves and after about 30 seconds it is poured into a decanter.  This process can be repeated eight to ten times with the same leaves.  The tea is served from the decanter into tiny glass cups.  The cups come in two shapes, one for each tea.  One tea is a dark colour, and the other is light; the tastes are quite distinct.  You sit and sip the tea from one cup and then the other, while somebody constantly refills your cups from the decanters.  Conversation is slow and the atmosphere relaxing.  Not too fast for my brain.  Quiet, measured and inclusive.  In sweet contrast to meal time which is 热闹 (hot and noisy.) 

@pinkjeans and others

'the best teas have tightly rolled leaves'.  I'm not an expert either, but the price you pay for 龙井茶 depends on the time of year that it is picked, and how it is processed.  The most expensive tea is picked right at the start of the season, and the the young leaves are lightly roasted by hand in an over-size wok.

Posted on: Tea Tasting

@pete, paulinurus

I'm going to go with paulinurus on the word 'bug' (I must have learnt to speak from Oscar Wilde too!) even if it is not exclusively American.  In Australia we do understand what you mean but only because we are inundated with American culture (hence the sensitivity!).  The more common usage is 'insect'.  We are more likely to use 'bug' as a colloquialism meaning 'micro-organism', something that gives you a cold or 拉肚子. Or as in 'bug rake' (a comb). Damn! I gave myself away there.

Posted on: Funny Rice

If the Chinese love word play, why don't they have crosswords? 

Posted on: Thinking of my Brothers by Moonlight -- 月夜忆舍兄

@xuchen, pete

I don't see the connection between nationalism and not being able to speak out against the Govt.; it's not something that can be forced on people. It may have a link to not *wishing* to speak out becuase of deeply held pride, or not being able to speak out because of mass brainwashing - that education system may be worse than ours. 

But there is plenty of schizo behaviour around 'keeping to the Party line.'  For example I was talking to a group one day, strangers, when one man in particular wanted to tell me, at great length, his concerns about Chinese 领导。 I actually thought he was talking about John Howard, because otherwise why tell me!?  (Errr, that's our previous Aussie PM.  These days they all want to tell you how great Lu Kewen is, or was.)  I agreed that Aussie politicians are a bad lot and then realised I was off topic when I got a blank look.  When I said 听不清楚 he proceeded to write me an 'essay' about his greivances which I have kept (for research purposes.)  This can be dismissed as letting off steam (like the petition process, the 'speakers' corner down near the lake near where I lived, and the protests by people losing their jobs, losing their land without proper compensation.)  The point is that this was all done in a public park with an (increasingly large) audience.  It's still kind of interesting that these safety-valves exist; some might suggest that they are encouraged.  No one confiscated my essay.  The country is rich in contradictions.

Posted on: Xinjiang Delicacies

@matt

no need to worry about the meat; it is usually washed thoroughly before use.  :-) BTW good work again.

新疆 food may be the most 'franchised' product in China - it is reliably available 'everywhere' (but sadly I cannot speak for 新疆 itself.)  Like MacDonalds only much better.  My experience has always favoured the cheapest and smallest 新疆 restaurants - as the great Kongzi might have said: the shorter the distance from the kitchen the better. Often the restaurant is a 'hole in the wall' with the kitchen on the footpath. 

A favourite 新疆 restaurant in Sydney has kazakh instruments hanging on the wall and 少数民族 tunes on the CD player.

大盘鸡 (also comes as 小盘鸡 and 中盘鸡) ie. large, small and medium.  It is a whole meal in one dish.  The large might serve five people, medium 3 or 4, and small two people.  Not wise to order if you are on your own unless you are feeling greedy.  The dish has limited but very tasty ingredients - chunks of chicken and potatoes, spices, capsicum and sometimes a few other vegetables. AND cold noodles.  In Sydney I have had English style dumplings served with 大盘鸡 instead of cold noodles。  The cold noodles are sometimes served with the chicken but I think it is more traditional to have it brought out when most of the potato has gone (no extra cost).   

Usually these restaurants are 'dry' (often the owners are Muslim) but they don't mind if you bring your own beer. 

I'd be interested to know whether these observations hold for Xinjiang itself!]