User Comments - fatgaz

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fatgaz

Posted on: Haircuts
February 13, 2009, 08:16 AM

I was wondering, how do you work out (from the outside) whether a haircut/hairwash shop is actually a haircut shop?

There are a lot of haircut shops around my place that seem to offer more!!

Posted on: Stop in the Name of the 法 (fǎ)
February 05, 2009, 07:01 AM

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I am very interested in huai_houzi 's good question about whether 法 can be added to any verb... which I can't see a reply to unless I've missed it somewhere.

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Comments anybody? I too am interested.

Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
February 05, 2009, 06:27 AM

For anyone interested, I just found a couple of books in my local bookstore that are titled 'Learn Chinese through Music' (ISBN 978-7-5062-9300-6/H.1031). www.wpcbl.com.cn

Have a CD and the words and explanations of the songs - some popular, and some local varieties (not CCTV style!!).

 

 

Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
January 31, 2009, 08:13 AM

Pete,

maybe not the place to mention it but maybe there is a poem you may know about that I heard many times and once had explained it to me by my friends...

I think it about 'the King of Wu', after being captured he is being dragged back to the North and he wrote a poem about his impending death.

It goes something like

'Moon passing West Tower

Shaded tree in the courtyard

Phoenix no longer resting in the tree' and I can't remember the rest.

 

It was spoken by an old man that lived in a one room hovel in my street in Suzhou, he was an early riser, sitting in the sun on the cold mornings! He would call out to me 'Hey, pang laowei' and he would say it nearly every day to me when I walked past - one time my friend told me the 'translation'. Everyone told me the old man was 'crazy' but it seemed like such a lovely poem when he said it. I am sorry to say, he too has passed on like the king in the poem - I would like to find it again, if you know it...maybe there is a lesson in it too.

Thanks

 

PS: You were talking about music and poems - I wonder if it is possible to talk about some of the regional forms of opera and storytelling such as the local Suzhou Kunqu or PingTang, seeing these are something like 30-day soap-operas in poetry and song!

I was also amazed by the story of the Chinese Cindarella - it was being told as a 'Spring Festival fair' with a large scale ViewMaster slide display - the children look through eye-pieces at painted images inside. Do you know it?