User Comments - lostinasia
lostinasia
Posted on: Mainland & Taiwan Lingo: Electronics
December 29, 2007 at 3:25 AMIn Taiwan people always talk about "3C" (sān-C) for electronics stores: is this used on the mainland as well? What does it even mean?! (It's one of those phrases I've been using for a long time without being too clear about it.) Amber, you may not want to hear this, but in the past year most of the convenience stores in Taiwan have installed espresso machines--so you can get an Americano for around 35NT, or a latte for around 50NT. MUCH better value than Starbucks, if you're just looking for a take-out coffee.
Posted on: #1
December 27, 2007 at 6:43 AMMy RSS feed in NetVibes took me here when I was looking for "The Dice Game" comments. Now I'm merely posting because I'm curious about what will happen.
Posted on: 中国八大菜系
December 9, 2007 at 10:48 AMBe careful about equating chengyu with idioms/ aphorisms in English... they're used A LOT more in Chinese. True, we often don't need them for making ourselves understood, but several friends of mine with very good Chinese have said that chengyu are the main hurdle when understanding spoken Chinese at a more-than-conversational but less-than-literary level. They need to show up in an Advanced Chinese course--at issue I suppose is if ChinesePod should have a course at that level. Personally, I think they should; the lack of English translations, and the addition of chengyu, seem to be the main difference between Upper Intermediate and Advanced. (Sort of off-topic: is there a list somewhere of what functions ChinesePod includes at each level? E.g. grammar, vocab, sentence patterns, etc.?) Plus, don't forget that most vocabulary can be fairly easily learned from a dictionary or a mouseover (now available, yay!); chengyu need more explanation. That being said, chengyu are bl**dy hard!
Posted on: Chinese Breakfast
December 2, 2007 at 3:41 PMAre 漢堡 (hànbǎo) big for breakfast over on the mainland? They're always served at the same places as danbing (蛋餅) here in Taipei. I'm never sure how to translate 漢堡 into English. The Taiwanese of course want to call them hamburgers, because often 漢堡 means hamburger, but these breakfast things... aren't hamburgers. A dinner-roll sized piece of very white bread, slathered with mayonnaise, and inside is a fried egg and perhaps some sauce or mystery meat or bacon or small chicken 排. Danbing (蛋餅) are sometimes translated as "egg pancake", but that seems silly to me and I think they should just be called danbing. A tortilla-ish thin piece of bread, fried with egg and other filling, then rolled up, sliced, and served with sauce. Adorsk, could that be what you were eating? Students in Taiwan definitely eat far more 蛋餅 or 漢堡 than they do 油條, although they sure love their soy milk. Oddly, they think they're eating western breakfasts.
Posted on: Sydney, Australia
November 23, 2007 at 2:33 AMI can't get a traditional version of the html file--just simplified. And, as goulniky said above a few days ago, the vocab on the html doesn't have pinyin, and the lesson number at the top had disappeared--there's just a "C" indicating the level. The traditional PDF is fine. I like how it's just opening for me in a tab in Safari, and no longer downloading to my desktop. I'm not sure if this is a ChinesePod change or a Safari 3 change. (Things get confused when two big parts of your online life get updated at the same time...)
Posted on: Romance in the Beauty Pageant
November 13, 2007 at 12:08 PMI've seen the Simpsons here in Taiwan with traditional-character subtitles, but not with dubbing. Heck, I've bought the DVDs with traditional subtitles. They do (or did?) dub South Park here, apparently taking major liberties with re-writing to suit current political situations. I've tried to show the Simpsons to my (university) students--the Halloween episodes are nicely structured where you can use a ten minute story for a class--but they don't like the show at all. Apparently they can't get past the ugliness of the characters.
Posted on: Opinions on Poetry
October 19, 2007 at 12:28 PMA BBC show called "In Our Time" dealt with the Needham question a year or so ago... basically the question of "Why was it the UK who took Hong Kong, and not the Chinese who took, uh, Jersey?" The show gives you an interesting 45 minutes on a pretty complex issue. Hopefully the link is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20061019.shtml It's listen online only unfortunately, no (easy) download. They've got other Chinese-related shows in the archive... the Warring States period, the Han Synthesis.
Posted on: Treating and Foreigners on TV
October 8, 2007 at 12:52 AMRSS feed question: am I missing some way to get the Extra comments/ conversations in my RSS feed? I know I can't get the podcasts, but I'd like to get the comments - I always get those through RSS readers, and just today discovered that I'm missing out on all the Dear Amber stuff.
Posted on: 八卦周刊：巩俐疑似怀孕
September 25, 2007 at 7:39 AMhtml transcript issue: when I look at the traditional html, there's no pinyin - just the characters. I'm working on the jump to advanced, but not having the pinyin makes things even harder! Please ChinesePod have a look into this. (The pinyin is there for the simplified html transcript, but not the traditional.) Thanks!
Posted on: Turn on the Light, Turn off the Light
December 29, 2007 at 3:34 AMThere's a scary-arm meme going on at ChinesePod... the dorm sleeping-in picture looked like a dead guy, and now at first glance the arm for this picture isn't attached to anything...