User Comments - standuke

Posted on: Food Regions of China

Hi all, 

There are certainly plenty of savvy food-o-philes here. It makes me a little sad seeing all those examples of great 四川food, though.  Basically I can't tolerate 红油 (red oil) even in small amounts...  spiciness I can handle, up to a point, but that red oil is a deal-breaker for me.  Of course, that eliminates vast amounts of great Chinese food from my diet.  As my wife says: 'Tragic.'   Good thing she's from Shandong, where they basically don't use the stuff.

Posted on: Moving House and Chinese Wineries

Great Dear Amber, for me at least...  My wife is from Yantai and it is the Chinese city I know best.  The inlaws live five minutes walk (if that) from the Chengyu winery museum, near the beach.  

During my first visit to Yantai I feared the worst, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of both the beer and wine.  Most recently, though, every wine I was served was between mediocre and bad.  I think the problem is that the concept of vintage has caught on with Chinese wine consumers, with the belief that the older the wine, the better.  The vintages I saw were ridiculously old, as in '98 and earlier.  I wish I had been served a counterfeit '98--it takes a pretty good wine to stand up to ten years of aging.  

I'm sure that the recent investments in the wine industry in China will result in better wines, but I was not able to drink any newer wine.  It would be quite ironic if the high demand (and prices) for older vintages now means that any halfway decent wine will be cellared until it is crap.  

Posted on: The Artistic Little Brother

Great story, but I'm kicking myself for not believing my ears when I heard 太阳， 小狗 & 小猫.  I had to read the text in order to 'get it'.   I pretty much understood the part that made sense... then the funny part, even though I picked out the words, my brain just rejected it... 

Even with the big fat hint at the beginning... Humor can be difficult.

As for the video, in general I'd like busier videos, textwise, at this level.   More like REALLY BIG subtitles, so I can give my character recognition a workout along with my listening recognition.  

I do think these videos are quite stylish, though.  They remind me a little of Lawrence Lessig presentations I've seen on YouTube.  

Posted on: Street Argument

@ bababardwan,

This is blind leading the blind, but I'll tell you something I've noticed.  If you ask Chinese people to tell you the pinyin for a word they typically have to stop and think.  Some can't really do it at all, because most Chinese naturally, intuitively learn how to say the character without regard to pinyin (or any other phonetic 'script').  In contrast, if you ask what tone the character is, most Chinese speakers can immediately say 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. So while pinyin is reserved for kids and school, I think tone numbers somehow occupy a more prominent place in the minds of native speakers. I think the tone and the number are in effect synonymous--yes you need to intuitively remember third tone but the name for that tone is third tone...  As nearly as I can tell tone numbers are a natural part of the Chinese vocabulary, while pinyin may as well be a foreign language.

FWIW I highly recommend the 'tones' newbie lessons where Ken, John and Jenny apply Chinese tones to English words. It makes a world of difference hearing tones with familiar words. When people who know nothing about Chinese ask me about tones I find it amusing to illustrate tones using the word 'Dude'...  Dude1, Dude2, Dude3, Dude4 (sounds a little like Dude, Dude?, Dude?!, Dude!)  Would this work with the Australian 'Mate' by any chance?

Posted on: Street Argument

@bababardwan:  I think these street fights coincided with economic liberalization and a flood of poor people from the countryside coming to cities to earn money.  Take financially strapped people, working illegally(often), no options for legal recourse, small amounts of money, little experience with capitalism and you get these arguments in the street.  (No, poor innocent Asians didn't need to learn to fight from us corrupt Westerners :>) )(sorry, had to say it... as you said yourself, 'this might be naive', and IMHO, having been there myself, I think it is a bit naive :>) )

I was 'lucky' enough to see one of these arguments come to blows the first time I visited China around ten years ago.  As Ken said, what was more remarkable was the crowd of people that gathered.  There was even a word for it, although I never learned the characters.  I think it was probably "围观“ (wei2guan1) although at first I thought it was "外观“ (wai4guan1), but it may even be something else. This is the word describing the throng that encircles people arguing on the street, not the argument itself.  Does someone out there know?

Posted on: Traffic

FWIW Why not some sort of participatory mashup with Google Maps or Google earth?  Video is just so sit-on-your-butt-and-consume old-school, I don't see how video alone advances social networking or participatory learning.  Since one of the objectives of the website is to foster participatory learning it seems that labeling/ annotating photos or even video footage might be best turned over to users and curated by CPod staff.  

I like the idea of just going out and shooting video (or photos) on the street and labeling in Chinese, but Google already gives you the option of geotagging photos and attaching labels.  Why not map out and label the neighborhood around CPod (or Tiananmen square) and assign users the responsibility of attaching labels? Of course, I don't know how many users would get 'into' something like that (I wouldn't, but I don't live in China and my Chinese is marginal), but if CPod curates, edits, and provides a forum for discussing the project it might be possible to construct a wiki/photo/map/discussion mashup of Chinese 'thing-names'...

Just a random idea, FWIW...

Posted on: Traffic

I also liked the video, but color me a skeptic as far as this being an effective learning (or social network-building) tool.  It looks like a huge time sink to me, getting footage and editing, etc., all for basically one page of one of the little picture books my wife and I bought for our kids in China.  I like it, I think it has value as far as promoting the site and adding a little 'bling', but I think there's some lower-hanging fruit video-wise. (For instance the recent upper-intermediate on photo-editing; a few screenshots and you're done)

What I'd really like to see is simple slide-show type 'videos' that show the characters as they are being discussed.  Right now viewing the 'lyrics' on an iPod touch is cumbersome and they are tiny.  I'd love an mp4 of each lesson that contained nice big screen-filling characters as the lesson goes by.  It would be great for the gym.  Really this is the one feature I would like before any other 'video' feature, as I don't have time to review the pdfs as often as I would like.

Anyway, just my two cents... 

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

@cris,  I agree with guolniky, I think it will help if you start listening to all-Chinese  or mostly-Chinese podcasts... Upper Intermediate are great because you get English 'hints' from time to time.  I'm guessing you don't live in China.  Is it possible you are underestimating how much time it takes to 'turn the corner' on listening?  I listen to ~1 hour a day (driving to and from work) and I think that's pretty minimal exposure versus living in a Chinese-speaking country.  I keep about 40-50 lessons in the 'rotation' for each level--when I just can't stand listening to the advanced lessons I'll go back to the easier lessons for a while. Sometimes most of a lesson will go by in a blur but then I'll tune in for five minutes or so and pick out a few words and phrases...  Anyway, that's my approach...I think in some ways it approximates the experience of immersion but with the added bonus that you can listen over and over, and you can always check the transcripts.

@chiongzibide-- I'm not a native speaker, but this is how my native speaker wife explains it:  "your Chinese is very good" is standard Chinese politeness/flattery.  It would be rude not to say this after a foreigner makes the effort to speak a little Chinese.  If you manage the spit out the appropriate 那里？ or 差得远 (just learned that) you'll get a real compliment, unless, as in this case, it is obvious this guy really knows how to speak Chinese.  It works both ways, too... My wife tells me it is rude if I don't compliment English-speaking grandparents on their English.  The worse the English, the more important it is to give the compliment.  

I think "Chinese must be very hard for you" is an unfortunate linguistic phenomenon... Chinese are aware that Chinese is hard for foreigners to learn and they want to express concern/sympathy/interest when they make small talk.  It just never comes out right. 

Posted on: Fat Camp

我一点胖了，但是我太太的男同学都比我胖。真奇怪。。。

我太太按中国的标准一点胖了，但是在美国他是‘size 2’，在好多商店里面找不到这么小的衣服！

Cripes I still have no idea what I'm doing writing anything in Chinese...  I've noticed my wife gains weight in China and I gain weight in the US.  I lose since we live in the US.  

When I was familiarizing myself with Chinese food it took me a while to figure out what I was eating.  You can definitely get fat fast eating Chinese food like dumplings, since they are cooked in such a way as to retain all the fat.  It's not just the meat that's the 'condiment' in Chinese food, it's also the fat.  Witness 红烧肉， (hong2 shao1? rou4) which is basically bacon plus all of the fat.  If you just dig in and say 'hmmm, this is yummy' without thinking about what you are eating you will get fat.    

Posted on: 十月怀胎

FWIW for those who struggle to translate, remember you can use the 'html version' link in the pdf.  With html you can use Chinese pera-kun, adso, or other translation tools for quick and painless vocab lookup.

I kind of like the 'no English' thing, even though I struggle at this level.  It's like a Friday crossword... it's fun to try even if sometimes I can't finish.