User Comments - sushan
sushan
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Halal
April 10, 2009 at 3:09 PMWhat I mean are the 清真 places that, besides serving the specialty of the house, usually have a menu section where you can get regular Sichuan style 家常菜 jiachang cai or 快餐 kuaican, which is full of pork - 回锅肉、 hui guo rou, 渔香肉丝yuxiangrousi, 盐煎肉 yanjian rou, etc, etc. Locals tell me these dishes are offered for business' sake but the staff doesn't eat them. (Weird, but not like I've never heard a stranger story here before.)
My understanding of 清真, culinarily speaking, refers to food in the style of areas where many Muslims live, not food that is strictly halal. Some also call it 回民 food.
The strict halal places (have only noticed a few of thse and eaten in one) have some kind of arabic writing on the outside.
Another translation of halal from baidu baike, which is a transliteration.
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Halal
April 10, 2009 at 8:43 AMHave had kind of the opposite experience so far in China (Sichuan) - have walked into many 清真 restaurants and been suprised to see all manner of pork dishes and alcohol available. Only have been in one such place that does not.
Posted on: Video Series Just Around the Corner!
April 8, 2009 at 4:39 AMHmmm, doesn't everyone do this? : )
Menus are particularly useful outside China where they have a parallel Chinese/local language menu. The challenge is that most of those are based on Cantonese food and traditional characters.
I expect to learn some new strategies for snagging them from upscale places!
Posted on: Toilet Types
April 8, 2009 at 4:14 AMHad this vocab drilled into me when apartment hunting (in Sichuan). A sitting toilet was 马桶 and the hole in the ground was 蹲 bian. I have no idea for the character for bian.
(I also found the terms for describing an a apartment and the features quite a bit different than those presented in Cpod lessons.)
Local Sichuanese tell me that eating hot pot and having an episode of 拉肚子 (diarrhea) the next day is a desirable, cleansing, healthy thing.
Posted on: Grass 草
April 4, 2009 at 3:59 AMThe translation of 'The Tyger' I found kind of flat (though I'm reading it with the English in my head.) I am not sure how 'symmetry' turns into 威武堂堂. I don't really understand the last sentence of your blurb though; do you mean that the idea of symmetry as beauty is a common concept of the writing of the 18th century romantics or that Blake is usng this idea to satirize them?
Posted on: Letting go with 放
April 3, 2009 at 3:38 PMJust ran into another very cool 放、 on the subtitles of the latest CSI Miami:
放马来吧!
Bring it on!
Posted on: Letting go with 放
March 22, 2009 at 3:42 PM干的 好, great lesson. Made quite a few things I've heard before 'click'.
tho, I guessed what your first example would be as soon as I saw the title..
Posted on: Dog Meat and Animal Rights
March 19, 2009 at 3:09 PMFree range chicken - at a market in Chengdu I would ask for 土鸡 tŭjī, free range pork is 土猪 tŭzhū. Food terms in China tend to be quite regional so it might be different in other areas.
Posted on: Munich
March 6, 2009 at 4:32 PM
Accidentally learned 手风琴 (shou3 feng1 qin2, accordion) this week, so excited to hear it in the lesson. Hope those are the right chars. There is an older Chinese guy I've seen around town a couple of times, in a kilt playing the accordion front of European restaurants or at hotel events.
I like making sauerkraut dishes when cooking for Chinese friends; they totally get it.
Posted on: Guilin Mifen
April 15, 2009 at 4:08 AMThis was a very interesting lesson; I'd never heard of 桂林米粉 before. Quick dianping survey finds 300+ establishments in Shanghai and 100+ in Beijing but very few in other cities.
As for chinese food blogs, here is mine. It's a few months old. Chengdu and occasionally other Sichuan food.