User Comments - light487

Posted on: Stinky Feet

hehe.. I always just make a joke of it 我的脚是太臭了 wǒde jiǎo shì tàichòule and get a laugh.. at least then they are warned the awkward moment is covered with a bit of humour that both sides can deal with in whatever way is needed to save face for both sides. :)

Posted on: Guilin Mifen

This was released when I was still in China and now that it has been released, I'm sure there's no problem in admitting that I saw this before it was released during my visit to the Praxis Language offices :) hehe.. For those reasons, plus the fact that I've been busy.. hehe, I haven't commented.

I have to admit that I did often take the opportunity to read menus when I had the ability to ask a Chinese person for clarification. When I was staying in the hostels for instance, it was easy enough to grab one of their menus and then drill them for the translations, get corrections and general assistance on reading the characters found on the menu.

Even the people who seemed to be a little busy, or maybe even impatient (and there weren't all that many to be honest), always made time to help me learn a little bit more Chinese even if it was just a word here and there. So I definitely recommend being a little more bold on your next visit to a Chinese restaurant and ask them how to say things from the menu.

By the time I got to Xi'an (about 2 weeks into my trip) I found ordering food from street vendors simple and easy because you can simply point to things that you can see cooking and ask what meat it has and things like that..very easy. However, I ventured into a proper restaurant, by myself, for the first time in Xi'an and discovered to my horror that I didn't have any proper restaurant vocab. Luckily this restaurant had a menu with pictures so pointing and saying 那个 nèigè and 这个 zhèigè worked out ok for the first part but of course then I had to choose how I wanted the dishes cooked.

For example, with a basic dish of Baby BukChoi (not sure what the proper Chinese is for that) you can have it at least 3 different ways: boiled, fried, or with chili added. So the waiter that was serving me kept turning to the back of the menu and asking me something I didn't understand. The back of the menu was all in Chinese with no pictures, so at that time I didn't understand what he was asking me for. It wasn't till a week or so later that I found out about the different ways to cook things.

So it is very important to have a good restaurant vocabulary if you are planning on dining out in China. I hope these videos keep coming and in more frequency now that the first one has been done and the logistics have been worked out.

Random Comment:
I noticed at the start of the video that you actually wiped the seat before you sat on it.. do you often do that in those little noodle snack shops?? :) I found it to be quite odd how many people put down dirty old newspapers or bits of cardboard before sitting down on things in China. I have always just sat down on something, even in Sydney where things are just as dirty, and not worried about it too much because your clothes protect you from the dirt.. anyway.. it's just curious to me, that's all. :)

Posted on: How Far Away are You From Understanding 离？

Here is a PDF of the same thing Pete just posted, for those of us who have trouble with Chinese characters on our computers and printers. For me, I can't view them at work. :)

QingWen - Understanding 离.pdf

Posted on: How Far Away are You From Understanding 离？

This is definitely a QingWen I'm going to have to listen to a bunch of times until I really get all of the usages down. :) Such a tiny little word seems to be so useful.. :)

Posted on: Napkins

While we're on the subject of bathroom and toilet paper/towel usage.. one really interesting (though possibly odd to someone in western country) thing I found while I was in China, is that you don't flush the toilet paper down the toilet. Instead you put it in a little bin besides the toilet, which is emptied frequently by someone else. I've been told that this is due to the lack of water pressure in many places and that flushing your toilet paper can cause blockages in the localised sewage systems..

Yup, this is the kind of stuff that they don't mention on the tourist brochures! haha :)

Posted on: Picking Up 拿

@calkins: 拿铁咖啡 was the first "new" word I learnt when I arrived in mainland China. :) I used it throughout my stay in China on a daily basis, usually in the morning of course.. hehe.. :) Another word I picked up early on that I used constantly through my stay was 烟灰缸 yān (cigarette/tobacco) huī (ash) gāng (jar).. ashtray! :)

拿来 - can be used in a bar/cafe to ask the waitress to bring another of the same drink over.. context is king! :)

我吃饱了/我吃好了 - is very useful when you have already eaten (or simply not hungry) and street vendors are hounding you to sample their street-food.. :) Say it nice and loud so that a few of them hear you and you will be left alone for a little while...until the next grouping of street vendors.. haha.. :)

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

I've been told that a common insult is to call someone a pig: 你猪! or just 猪! Maybe we could have a QingWen about insults and not-so-nice expressions without going too far into the really offensive (and often vulgar) swear words? :)

Posted on: Napkins

Hehe.. I didn't know the word for napkin when I was in China, so I just used hand gestures and the word 片 piān :) A little wrong and always got a laugh.. but I also always got a napkin.. :) A good tip is to always grab more than one napkin and store the other 2 or 3 napkins in your pocket for the inevitable trip to the 厕所 cèsuǒ (toilet) later on.. it's cause and effect afterall and all toilets in China, with very rare exceptions, are lacking toilet paper. Would that be 厕所纸 cèsuǒ zhǐ?

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

Thanks for explaining that.. it does make a difference where in CHina you are talking about.. :)

I definitely saw some people who could be labelled as laowai in the negative sense.. hehe.. there were some pretty stupid laowai's staying at the hostel in Shanghai.. they hadn't even bothered to learn the words for the numbers.. or even the word for the unit of currency (yuan)!! Some were downright rude and in those cases I heard "other words" used to describe them :) hehe..

I guess it all depends in what context you are being called a laowai and whether it is a show of disrespect/disgust or just another word for foreigner.. :)

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

Even when I was in Wuhan, where I did not bump into a single foreigner for the 3 days I was there (except at the hostel of course but even there it was mainly Chinese tourists), nor in Leshan, Chengdu, Xi'an, Beijing.. no where else did the word come up. I've spoken with a few people about this and the only reason they can think of is that it has gone "out of fashion" to some degree..

I've been called a laowai more times in Sydney, Australia...