User Comments - pearltowerpete
pearltowerpete
Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs
August 31, 2009 at 8:33 AMHi mbromley
Great, except that 都 should be 多, implying "more than is necessary, more than one should."
Posted on: Hotels, Hostels and Restaurants
August 31, 2009 at 6:00 AMHi xiaophil and rich,
Jiaojie and Connie helped me reply to your questions. Regarding school cafeterias，it seems more elegant if you write "餐厅” than if you write ‘食堂。”But in regular speech, people generally say 食堂.
Here's a common dialogue:
Where are you going?
I'm going to the 食堂（cafeteria) to eat.
Chinese has a lot of ways for depicting "place"--馆，院，场，所，......
But there aren't really clear usage rules. There are just set usages which you have to remember.
宾馆bīnguǎn
旅馆lǚguǎn
领事馆lǐngshìguǎn
博物馆bówùguǎn
图书馆túshūguǎn
体育馆tǐyùguǎn
医院yīyuàn
电影院diànyǐngyuàn
法院fǎyuàn
Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs
August 31, 2009 at 5:55 AMHi tal,
Any mention of "rats" and "love" in the same sentence brings to mind that Karaoke classic from a few years back, 老鼠爱大米.
Anyone not getting enough saccharine from Coke Zero, you might want to give that song a listen.
Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs
August 31, 2009 at 5:10 AMHi li4wei3, orangina, tal and texinchina,
Thanks for sharing all the colorful rat-related incidents.
Tal, Chinese frustratingly does not make a clear distinction between rats and mice, let alone among the different kinds of rats and mice (sewer rats, field mice,etc.)
Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs
August 31, 2009 at 5:02 AMHi pchenery,
The phrase you're thinking of is 狗拿耗子，多管闲事. A dog catching a rat-- getting involved in others' business. This is a 歇后语 xie1hou4yu3, kind of like a chengyu. It involves something like a setup, followed by a punchline.
Please note that 耗子 is an alternative word for mouse. It's also related to 消耗 to consume or use up, which comes from the way rats would consume grain in a storehouse.
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team
August 31, 2009 at 2:52 AMHi dunderklumpen,
Thanks for helping out ;-0
Hi user15210
Good question. 让 can do a variety of things (to allow, to make smbdy do sthg, etc). 送 means to deliver or to send off, and would not be appropriate in this sentence. It would imply that the manager was seeing him off on his mission.
Incidentally, in big organizations, people will use the verb 派 pai4 for sending someone abroad or away.
Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs
August 31, 2009 at 1:40 AMHi all:
Informal poll: how many poddies, in China or otherwise, have had a mouse in your house?
My g/f and I did in our old apartment. The neighbors, a bunch of erratic Shanghainese retirees, were satisfied to wallow in their own filth.
The new place is much better in that regard.
Posted on: Hotels, Hostels and Restaurants
August 29, 2009 at 4:43 AMHi xiaophil,
The word 餐厅 does appear in a variety of contexts. It is both used for expensive places as well as cafeterias. But in generally, the more common word for cafeterias or dining halls is 食堂.
This, by the way, was also the word used for the disastrous dining halls of the Great Leap Forward 大跃进. Everyone ate like a king, for free, from September 1958 till the winter. And then they starved. The problem was doubly bad because many people, knowing that their crops and livestock were going to be confiscated, slaughtered them and gorged themselves right before the policy took effect. Three years and thirty-some million deaths later, the policies were gradually reversed.
Posted on: It's My Birthday!
August 27, 2009 at 7:39 AMHi stevemisch,
That's great to hear. It does our hearts good. You're never too old to start (re)learning Chinese!
Posted on: Love Tangle 2: A Lover Returns
September 1, 2009 at 1:34 AMHi bababardwan,
The title refers to "A Suspicious Text Message." In that episode, the seeds of doubt and mistrust were planted, and now they are starting to sprout...