User Comments - tianfeng
tianfeng
Posted on: Post-Graduation Plans
August 15, 2007 at 1:04 PMI was just wondering how common it is for Chinese people to refer to themselves in 3rd person? In the lesson the uncle says "叔叔告诉你，现在讲的事。。。“ how common is this in Chinese？ It is one of my PP's in English so I think I picked it up right away.
Posted on: 同性恋亚文化
August 6, 2007 at 1:51 PM海南岛有一个很有趣的饭店。那个饭店的老板是一个同性恋得意大利人。 每一个服务员也是同性恋。 我第一次去那个地方我不知道为什么我有一个奇怪的感觉，但是看他们的杂志都是“Gay Times" 我就知道。 我常常用同志叫我朋友。 我第一次用他们就拨正我说“那个自由同性恋的意思” 我回答说“我知道，但是我是一个外国人，他们会明白我错误，然而，他们就像你是同性恋。“
Posted on: Buddhism and Taoism
August 5, 2007 at 11:26 PMJohn, your chin hair is dwarfed by the Chinese scholar.
Posted on: 古怪食物
July 29, 2007 at 3:23 PMI have never had a problem downloading anything. I use firefox though.
Posted on: Arriving in China on Business
July 28, 2007 at 9:25 PMI really didn't find the voices sounded alike at all. The Canadian need to relax his tones. I know he was trying to be exact but it really sounded forced and robotic. I actually emailed Da Shan about a question for one of my presentations and he wrote back in a few hours. I used to not think to high of him but my opinion changed greatly. I was about a rumor that he was giving up his Canadian citizenship to be Chinese. The truth is he never tried to become Chinese, it is was just foreigners with nothing better to talk about making stuff up. Before 白求恩 there was one even more famous Canadian that has been forgotten. The personal body guard of 孙中山 named two gun Cohen. Morris Cohen was born in Poland but at 16 was sent to Canada. He grew up on the parries and became a friend to the Chinese who had worked on the railways. He got involved with the 同盟会 and that is how he met 孙中山. I read his Chinese name was Ma Kun (马昆？). It would be interesting to search through the Chinese sources and see what has been written about him. If the Canadian film board makes a movie I want a part.
Posted on: Studying Japanese
June 27, 2007 at 1:10 AMYou are right. I agree 100% with what you are saying about the government using it for a propaganda piece but what you have to realize is that those feelings of hatred for most Chinese are there to be called upon. Many are still alive that lived through the Japanese occupation. Although their views might have been skewed by the communist control and the years of indoctrination, to me, the empirical evidence collaborates with many current feelings of contempt and even hatred for the Japanese. To understand why they feel this why why look at government control when the answer is staring you right in the face; it is what the Japanese did in China that caused it. I think it is Naive to think that the Chinese People don't have enough free will to think about these events on there own. I was in Guang Zhou for the riots and protests about Textbooks and the G8 security council and I was in Sanlituan when, after the Chinese soccer team lost to the Japanese, the Chinese fans rioted. I think it would be to easy to pass it off as just a systematic government policy of hatred used to further their own goals and solidify power. I, however, see it more as a stirring of the pot to bring up anti-Japanese feelings that exist in hopes to shift focus off of internal problems. The government was and is however, quick to cap these protests. It stems from the fear that a mass of Chinese citizens voicing their opinions might lead to a finding of common ground about other domestic problems. On the topic of generalizations I believe that If you choose to avoid all generalizations, how can you expect to have a discussion about the "Chinese Mind" or the "Western Mind"? Scholars much greater than us, such as lin yutang(林语堂), Lu Xun (鲁迅）and even Pearl S. Buck, have written volumes of, in my mind, monumental work promoting understanding of their own cultures and the relations between China and the West. Their elegant writing was, in and of itself, a series generalizations which would form the basis for their hypothesis about China and the West. Without their ability to generalize they would just be left spewing mindless babel, over clarifying every detail to the point that it isn't worth reading anymore. I think that as an educated reader when reading a generalization it should be inherently understood that this is not an absolute. A statement like " all Chinese hate Japanese" is flawed, but to say "Chinese, in general, do not like Japanese” has to be understood by the reader that there are exceptions. A statement, or general statements like this, need to be made if you ever want to have a discussion on the topic of Japanese and Chinese relations.
Posted on: Studying Japanese
June 26, 2007 at 10:48 AMI did my undergrad thesis on Japanese Chinese relations. My advisor was a graduate of Columbia and a very respected scholar in the field. He is Chinese born on the mainland who grew up in Taiwan and is literate in Japanese. He can actually remember the Japanese invasion. In my thesis I used some first hand date to support claims. I focused on the current opinions of foreign students studying at my university to see how their opinions different from the norm of an everyday person from their country. It was interesting to find that although many had Japanese or Chinese friends they still resented the other country as a whole. They would see their friends as an exception to the norm and totally avoided talking about the issue with people from the other country in hopes of avoiding conflict. Only those who had really opened up and asked questions about the issues and problems really had a different, more open opinions about the other country. Members of the Chinese students Association at my university actually told other Chinese people to stay away fro me because I hung around with Japanese people and spoke Japanese. Oh and for anyone who is up on the issues, rather than just taking the English writers word for it with the help of one of my friends, I looked at a Japanese high school textbook and its section on ww2. The section spanned a whopping 3 pages. It did refer to the invasion of Manchuria as a liberation and than an advance into China not an invasion. Nanjing was mentioned only to say that numbers are still under dispute so it will not be discussed. Lorean, you don't even need to resort to anecdotal evidence. Read a Chinese middle school history book and you will see what is being taught. It is very obvious that hating Japanese people is the norm, especially as you head more to the west and away from the major cities. Most people have never seen a Japanese person but they know they don't like them. Some people might say that the attitudes are changing and that this hatred of Japanese is relegated to the older generation but that is a common misconception that people from the major cities make. They figure that since they have changed then the rest of the country has as well. It is true of people from big cities everywhere. We see the difference between upper canadians in Toronto as opposed to us maritimers. I know what the Japanese have done in China and I understand the hatred. I think though young Chinese need to understand that the youth of japan did not attack china. Some of them are very interested in Chinese and Chinese culture. Generalizations are fine as long as one understands that there are exceptions and makes decisions knowing that no generalizations are 100%. With out any form of generalization than you get into Post Modernist BS and you will never be able to come to a conclusion about anything or even have a discussion.
Posted on: Studying Japanese
June 23, 2007 at 1:03 PMOk I just read it again and I want to say that the views expressed are the authors alone and not mine. Just read it as sarcasm and not too seriously.
Posted on: Studying Japanese
June 23, 2007 at 12:51 PMI once compared Japanese Kana to an alphabet and my Korean history teacher snapped at me. He speaks like 6 languages and is an officially licensed translator for French, English, Spanish and Korean. He stated that the Korean Hangul is an alphabet because it contains consonants and vowels whereas Japanese is a system of 46 basic Kana that represent a phonetic sound containing a vowel and an consonant and thus not a real alphabet. It seems picky but that is what linguists do. They break down languages to their bare bones and than divide and classify them. For any other Japanese learners out there this is old but really funny and so true; especially about the people in the class. http://pepper.idge.net/japanese/
Posted on: Post-Graduation Plans
August 15, 2007 at 1:14 PM据我所知， 名牌大学是： 一）清华 二）北大 三）浙大 四）复旦 但是，我觉得上海人一定要换第三和第四。