User Comments - changbiyuan
changbiyuan
Posted on: Buying a Pet and Food Poisoning
November 28, 2008 at 7:55 PMtvan, about "food poisoning" seeming an overly dramatic term, it might be applied a bit too easily but when you really have it I don't think any term is too dramatic! The diarrhea though is just annoying but something that is almost a constant for some people.
On the "seafood sitting out" mentioned near the end of this episode: I always got a kick out of the guy who sold raw shrimp on the side of a road near my place in Hohhot (about as inland as you can get)—it seemed pretty close to the most sketchy thing you could choose to include in a meal.
Posted on: Choosing a Chinese Name and Safety
November 27, 2008 at 6:40 PMGreat show!
Interesting that you refer to 煎饼 (jiān bǐng) as a breakfast food... I guess I did see them being made when I was on morning bike rides. But to the few foreigners around where I was, they were, along with 肉加莫 (ròu jiā mò), more of a candidate for drunken late night snacks. There was a guy with a cart on the street corner near my apartment, making both those delicacies until 2 or 3 am. When talking about him we'd call him Roger Moore, based on that being what a friend of mine would say through his early China days in order to get a 肉加莫.
As for names, I'll probably have to change my name to something less silly than this one if I ever go back to China... I just wanted to get away from the (albeit accurately transliterated) 欧文 that I went by at first.
Posted on: Year of the Rat and Minimum Wage
November 26, 2008 at 6:50 PMAbout what rjberki said regarding mouse and rats, couldn't we just as easily say that this is the year of the kangaroo? (Or mole, squirrel, marmot, etc etc...)
Arg, vaguities in language are the bane of my existence!
Posted on: Most Frequently Asked Question in China
November 26, 2008 at 6:16 PMI could be remembering these incorrectly but I think in a couple of cities I heard slightly different phrasings 你是从哪个国家的？ (and 你是从哪里的？ ( though being the North it was 哪儿 ( rather than 哪里. Do these sound okay or am I out to lunch?
As for British Columbia, I don't know if this is any more or less correct than the 英属哥伦比亚 that Clay gave, but in the one Chinese course I did here it was taught as 卑诗省 (
Posted on: Getting Stuff Made & Meeting People
November 26, 2008 at 5:54 PMLadies! "Barter" 和 "bargain" 的意思不一样！
Posted on: Driver's Licenses and Business
November 23, 2008 at 8:51 AMtvan, I was talking about the pronunciation of the last letter of the alphabet. All English speakers outside the US say "zed," while they bastardized it just to make the end of the alphabet song rhyme.
It came up in this episode because getting a license in China apparently requires a residence permit or a Z (work) visa.
Interesting you say that about the reluctance to speed... When it comes to taxi drivers (which are of course something of an exception in any driving culture), in my experience they love to crank it open once they get out on the highway—to make up for the miserably slow traffic they're used to, I guess. (The only time I saw a driver put his seatbelt on there was when he was about to get on the freeway.
Posted on: Beyond Or: Another Use of 还是 (háishi)
November 23, 2008 at 8:41 AM...and of course "尹" is the wrong character there.
Posted on: Beyond Or: Another Use of 还是 (háishi)
November 23, 2008 at 12:38 AMI agree with Ken that this usage of 还是 isn't really a huge departure from its regular use as "or." I find its use as "still" (like in http://chinesepod.com/lessons/hobbies-music/discussion: 我还是有兴趣听尹乐。) is a bigger discrepancy and I was surprised that that alternate use wasn't mentioned.
Don't get me wrong: I was glad to hear this lesson! It's a great use of the word that I wasn't aware of before.
Posted on: Driver's Licenses and Business
November 22, 2008 at 11:38 PMUh oh Amber... Your "I'm a Canadian" cover is blown! I heard you say "zee visa" and no one who's not American ever lets that pronunciation of Z escape their lips!
I never drove in China but I knew a guy in Hohhot who had a license. He got to take a translator with him for the written test, so he made sure to get her to study the guide before they went in.
Posted on: Chinese New Year!
November 28, 2008 at 8:06 PMContrary to what Jenny says at one point I found that fireworks could almost be a daily event in China. Certainly not to the extent that they come out at Spring Festival, but definitely enough to make me find fireworks to be more an annoyance than a sign of celebration.