User Comments - fangaili

Posted on: 贴标签:Labelling People

"feminism" is misspelled in the vocab section.

Posted on: Phone Stolen Abroad

There is an odd lack of punctuation in the grammar pdf. 

Posted on: Game of Thrones

In the PDF: "intends to keep it's audience" -- should be "its"

Posted on: Leaving Europe: Brexit

In case anyone is interested, the audio actually says xīngqī in the first line, rather than lǐbài.

Posted on: You Should Watch Game of Thrones

Hopefully I don't come off sounding like a total newbie. I'm just getting back into studying Chinese. I am a fan of GoT and went right to this lesson! I have a few comments/questions:

1. Is there a reason the 的in "权利的游戏" comes and goes? Or is it just contracted out in ordinary speech?

2. The pinyin for lǐndōng needs to be corrected on the PDF.

3. ChinesePod may also want to remove all the "diǎn" pinyin from the bottom of page 1.

4. Could you help me break down 凡人终有一死? 凡人=ordinary people, mortals. 终=end. But 有一死? Could it be translated "All mortals have one end"?

Posted on: How to Start a Conversation with Chinese People

Thanks for the info, bodawei! I was taught to use "怎么样？" Is that used more than "你好吗?"

Posted on: Teaching English in China

The vocabulary review mp3 for this lesson is terrible. There are mispronunciations of both English and Chinese, plus  jarring noises in between chunks of vocab. I respectfully request a re-recording.

Posted on: English Teaching Jobs in China

Thanks for the great episode. Teaching English in China is definitely, as you say, an adventure. In the recent past my husband and I went to China. (We were planning on staying for years, but it didn't work out that way.) He worked as a teacher and I was learning Chinese. Every day was an adventure. Some days we liked it. Some days we were really tired of it. We do hope to go back someday, but when we do our approach will be different. If anyone wants to hear about it I'd be happy to email privately.

Re: getting information before you go-- definitely do that. But for us it was very hard to get solid information on anything. Even the consulates and other various governmental agencies were non-helpful. (They would tell us that--regarding whatever we were asking about--it depended on the local authorities, which we couldn't access because we weren't in China at the time.)

It can also be really hard to get all your questions answered before signing a contract because they might put a lot of pressure on you to hurry up and sign. Also if you require any changes to the contract, they might change the English version and leave the Chinese version as-is. Anyway, you have to be prepared to walk away at any time. Don't come to China unless you have a lot of money in savings, otherwise you might get stuck with something crappy and have no way out. Also, take way more cash with you than you really think is reasonable. You might think it won't take "that" long to access your bank account, but it will. Don't take too much stuff with you either. If you have to leave your job and apartment, you don't want to be lugging around a lot of stuff while you look for a new job.

I've written too much.. but to sum up.. you should have a large reserve of emotional/psychological energy, and money, before you go to China, or at least some really good pre-existing friends.

Posted on: How to Start a Conversation with Chinese People

Very early on in my Chinese study I was taught not to say 你好吗? as a greeting. HOWEVER my CPod teacher says it every time she calls me! I am confused. Guess I need to ask her about it.

Posted on: Inside the Baozi Business

I really liked this episode as well. I would like an interview of a waitress. In particular I'd like to hear about her hours. When my husband and I lived in China, we had a particular restaurant we'd go to often, and we thought the same workers were ALWAYS there. We wondered if they worked all day 7 days/week. (???) I know the Chinese idea of work and work times is different from that of the west and I'd like to learn more about it.