User Comments - pearltowerpete

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan

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Posted on: Seeing Somebody to the Door

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Posted on: 盛唐风气

Hi changye

Thanks for the nifty background info.

My favorite gory use of the 月 meat radical is in 祭 , "sacrifices", which shows a piece of meat 月 being placed on an altar 示 by a right hand 又.

In premodern times, the best ways to show respect were with gifts of meat and alcohol (which explains the origins of 尊敬的尊）. These days people use fruit. I don't know what the gods think of that.

Posted on: Outrageous Power Bill

Hi miantiao

Got it. This is definitely going in my arsenal of insults.

Posted on: Seeing Somebody to the Door

Hi patmetheny

Your wife should do it even more on frozen nights! The amount of face the host gives is directly proportional to how inconvenient it is to see the guest off.

Posted on: Outrageous Power Bill

Hi miantiao

Thanks for a great Sichuanese lesson! Just one question, is it 瓜娃子 or 瓜袜子？ I'm wondering if it's melon baby, or melon sock? Both are hilarious.

Posted on: Food Oddities and Eye Exercises

Hi Joachim

Thanks for digging up this quote. I agree with your quibble with the translation. I'd suggest translating  不仁 not as "ruthless" but rather as "indifferent" or "not necessarily compassionate."

In Confucian thinking, people are essentially good and the universe is a warmer, cozier place. Laozi (and Gray) make a strong argument that this is an unfounded assumption that leads us humans to overstate our own importance.

Posted on: Karaoke

Hi zhangdawei

You've never been to KTV with my buddies! They've been known to run around the room with an upside-down popcorn bucket on their head, leaping from sofa to table with the greatest of ease. And that's before they start on the Chivas-and-green-tea.

Like banquets (which are about so much more than eating), KTV serves social functions far beyond screeching  singing.

• On holidays, it can be fun for the whole family, grandparents through newborns.
  
• It's an essential dating forum for naive teens and college students.
  
• Most important, it's valuable in building and reinforcing social ties. I think the closest parallel in the West might be playing golf with your boss or an important client. "Face" is such a huge factor that the game per se might not be much fun. But there's no doubt that it makes the relationship stronger. 

But I agree that it can be agonizing to sit through an evening (or five minutes) of an over-marketed bubble-gum band, rendered by an over-eager drunkard.

Posted on: Karaoke

Hi ewong,

Good question. You cannot use 点 as a generic word to mean "to buy."

It might help to remember that 点 literally means "point," so it is used in situations where you would be pointing at a menu, as in a restaurant, or at a list of songs, as in a KTV parlor (or at a list of names, when calling attendance 点名.)

And hotels have 标准房，双人房，and so on, but no 包厢 -- unless, of course, you are lucky enough to have a hotel with private KTV rooms ;-)

Posted on: Outrageous Power Bill

Hi changye 大哥

Thanks once more for the sweeping erudition and spirit of inquiry you bring to our discussions.

It's hard to imagine CPod without you.