User Comments - bodawei
bodawei
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 18, 2009 at 1:05 AM@tvan
Hey, thanks for that insight and experience.
I can sympathise - I once said 'gou3pi2!!' and my target smiled at me and said 'that means the skin of the dog'. Grrrrr. Gotta get the tones right..
Posted on: Business Card Gone Wrong
April 18, 2009 at 12:43 AM@mikeinewshot
Ha ha. And then someone says to you 什么 shi?
And you say shibushi de shi..
And they say ah.. 失！ And you say 不是！
施？ 不是!
识？ 不是！
拾？ 不是！
使？ 不是！ 不是！ 不是！
是非的是， 是否的是。
Aaaah. 是的。
Posted on: Business Card Gone Wrong
April 17, 2009 at 2:17 PM@barbs, calkins - 'the more homophones..'
It helps that most Chinese characters don't occur in isolation; I'm that 70% of words are formed by two characters, and then there are the words with three, four, etc. And 是, is third on 'A Frequency Table of Chinese Characters' - the 'problem' is less with almost all other characters. 时 is 21st on the table. (Getting deep into trivia here.) What I mean is that shi is the worst example (after yi) given their frequency.
And so you don't go to bed worrying about the number of characters, the Selected Works of Mao Zedong altogether contain only 3,136 characters. I hope that is comforting ...
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 17, 2009 at 7:49 AMHi Pete
I was wondering if there is any chance of getting a CP lesson on 国骂 or commonly used swear words. This would be SO USEFUL. I'd like to know HOW I am being sworn at when I'm sworn at. I guess from your comment about keeping a sterile environment the answer may be no. It seems uncommonly difficult to get proper instruction on this subject - a teacher at a language sclool I know was disciplined for 'helping' their foreign students this way - maybe I just move in the wrong circles. :-)
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 17, 2009 at 4:18 AMGreat lesson thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing Lao Wang at the new 'tribunal' for unfair dismissal.
狗屁！ 你做白日梦！ 词句很方便！ 可以给我们国骂的课吗？ 这是重要的地方，对吧？ 我没有教科书，可是问题不少。
Posted on: Rise and Shine!
April 16, 2009 at 12:11 PM早起床 = early start
He probably is not looking forward to zaofan - maybe a bowl of watery rice porridge to prepare the stomach for an array of salty pickled vegetables, fried peanuts, some mianbao and then boiled eggs.
Posted on: Guilin Mifen
April 16, 2009 at 4:16 AMHi Pete
Thanks for the tips.. trouble with cooking at home is I know I'm missing out on something.
The weird thing is that 'vegetarian' restaurants have loads of gluten (well they say that the Buddhists 'invented' gluten as an ingredient), so I steer clear of them.
I steer clear of everything made of wheat flour and try not to think about it. :-(
Although I'm told Chinese people do not suffer from coeliac disease, different gene set, it is possible to have a conversation with a cook or fuwuyuan about mianjin (gluten), perhaps because of the Buddhist influence.
I was really stuck at one place and the only thing they had that I could eat was chicken so i said, ok.. chicken. They cooked up a whole chicken, roughly chopped, with spices - sort of dapanji without potato and noodles. A grotesquely large plate of chicken that I felt obliged to eat - they had gone to so much trouble for me. That was enough protein for a while..
Posted on: 谋杀案
April 15, 2009 at 1:26 PM@all
I don't like Chen Yao's chances - the defendants in China are hardly ever successful - perhaps someone has the figures but I believe it is less than 5% on average. But at least she won't have to worry about a pesky jury.
The point here is that sometimes (eg. TV 'cop' shows) fact is less interesting than fiction!
Posted on: Guilin Mifen
April 15, 2009 at 12:29 PM @Sushan
Thanks very much for sharing your blog. I have written a number of food stories but they need some more colour before they are properly revealed to the world.
On a number of trips in China there has been my wife who does not eat chilli, our daughter who does not eat meat and me. I do not eat gluten. ‘No meat, no chilli, no gluten'. As you know, it's hard to convince anyone of vegetarianism in China unless you wear yellow (translates for many people as ‘less meat'), chilli is required for taste and gluten free diets are yet to make an impact. Surprisingly, of the three we have the least trouble getting through about gluten. 'No meat' and 'no chilli' people are treated like social outcasts. Our daughter would summarise the situation as follows: ‘I don't eat meat, they do; she doesn't eat chilli, we do; he doesn't eat wheat but we do'. Simple. Then she would stare down the stunned look of kitchen staff. One restaurant owner disappeared out back calling out ‘Aiyah! Aiyah! Aiyah!'. It seems a hopeless case but we almost always ate well even if we ate at three separate restaurants.
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 18, 2009 at 1:16 AM@barbs
I saw a great documentary about a year ago showing Courts in session in the countryside - did you catch that? Table and chairs just set up in the open. Taking justice to the people was the message. I can't say for sure about the language but from memory I think the proceedings were in 普通话。 I guess they would have interpreters if someone involved did not speak the lingua franca.
On my last visit to China I had a meal with someone just starting a new job as a 'judge's associate'. I really wish I had had some of this vocab! Anyway the conversation was all one sided - I got a lecture about the weaknesses of the jury system used in the West.