User Comments - tingyun

Posted on: CCP Political Slogans

Completely incorrect, particularly on the attempt to equate soviet style with Maoist socialism, and the failure to understand what communism actually means. See my full reply below, in response to your second post within this lesson.

Posted on: CCP Political Slogans

Bohan,

You seem to be having fun on your soapbox, but for someone who posted as the top comment of this lesson that one "must understand marxism" you display a surprising ignorance of the subject.

China has, to my knowledge, never claimed to be a communist country (though during the Great Leap Forward they claimed they were only a few years away from it). At least since Lenin, Communism refers to the ultimate end where the state withers away and people naturally go on taking according to their need and so on, while Socialism refers to the intermediate phase with a strong state that lays the foundation for this. I don't imagine you would argue China's central government has withered away leaving happy, self governing communes in its wake, so China is most certainly not a communist country - it is formally a special form of socialism run by a communist party (ie a party that states it is trying to reach communism, as an eventual end goal).

So you are wrong when we use the language in the formal, correct manner.

Perhaps you will object that people commonly use communism in a more offhand, general way. Ignoring for a second it was you who cried out for more attention to understanding communist theory, you remain wrong under this interpretation as well. For functional purposes the China of today is NOTHING like what is commonly depicted when people think of 'communism' in everyday conversation. Those perceptions are reflective of soviet style communism of many decades ago, and would have remained at least somewhat accurate to China of the 1960s, but there have been huge, huge changes since then. The fact that today's China is not a liberal democracy in the vein of the United States does not erase the basic reality that it has changed a great deal and that the private market has grown enormously and China is no longer the insular, closed society it once was.

At this point. I also have to object to the other part of your first post at the top of this lesson - you say to understand China one should study 'soviet style communism'. Even 50 years ago this would only be correct in terms of understanding what China was NOT - there is a sharp divide between Soviet style socialism and Maoist socialism. The Russian Revolution was the baby of the urban worker class, and its party was beholden to them. Thus, the Soviet Union was able to implement a program of sacrificing the agricultural sectors (rough starvation and massacre even) to fuel rapid advancement of industry with policies favoring urban areas. This is the basis of Soviet style socialism, which they tried to convince the Chinese to do. But the Chinese never adopted it, and could not, because the Chinese revolution was the product of rural farmers, not the urban workers, and thus their base of support was totally different. Hence we had Maoist socialism and its dramatically different economic policies. There are of course other differences between Maoist and soviet brands of socialism, but there is naturally no way you could argue soviet style was reflective of China, seeing as it is a term created largely to distinguish it from Maoist policies. Honestly, it seems in this thread you were just trolling for a reaction, and using 'soviet style' as a synonym for 'bad', with no real knowledge of what it means.

Basically the only way you are correct is if we ignore the academic usage of the words, ignore the everyday usage of the words, and go straight to the talk-radio 'America has become communist' usage that equates any state interference with the market as communism.

Though I suspect this particular rant is based more on you looking for any excuse to attack China. I've been gone awhile, but sure enough my first visit back is similar to the kinds of blindly negative posts you were making before. 你不觉得累吗?

I imagine you will make a reply, but I will leave further debate to others.

Posted on: Heat Stroke

I think I really miss those 'cliques'.....

Posted on: Heat Stroke

This is my first visit in a couple of months, so perhaps I'm not the most qualified to contribute to this debate, but some of these comments seem very unfair to Right-Wingnut. He makes very useful contributions to the community (always seems to be helping with compiling transcripts, and also sometimes answering questions for beginners). Perhaps he also gets into debates often, but the Cpod boards seem to be approaching a ghosttown compared to the activity of years before - doesn't seem to be much harm to inciting even somewhat off-topic discussions (one's learning experience is not so badly harmed by simply ignoring posts you don't agree with or find distasteful).

And as an American, I completely agree with his observation here - Cpod employees seem to have a habit of visiting this board in the Chinese AM (there always seems to be a rush of comments around then, as far as I remember, and not much at any other time), and I do think it is unlikely to expect response from them during US business hours. I imagine most subscribers wouldn't want to see their subscription prices rise by the cost of employing a full time tech support guy in America to monitor the forums awaiting potential complaints.

Too overwhelmed to get sucked into a debate here (at the end of a long intensive japanese study summer, 2 weeks to go), so I won't be able to respond to any replies or critiques of my post, but I hope everyone's Chinese study is going well,

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

I think we've taken the debating of logical problems far enough, but your list was of western beliefs, not Chinese - so I'm not following how your argument is intended to rehabilitate it. At any rate, fun discussing with you,

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

People in the West don't believe in such things "regardless of proof", and neither do people in China. They claim to have proof, and can happily bring up all sorts of anecdotes, authority/experts, complicated/beutiful/bogus theoriitical structures (chinese medicine loves these), studies that fail to follow basic scientific requirements (like account for the placebo effect), and other bits of claimed evidence.

The problem lies in mistaken understandings of what should constitute proof. Your grouping combines beliefs with valid basis with those without any, not useful.

As for your 'widely believed' being the relevant criteria, fine, let's add in 'gravity' and 'evolution' with 'scientology' and 'creationism'...or perhaps you would want only health concepts? 'HIV causes AIDS' 'Sneezing can spread germs' with 'antibiotics cure colds' and 'jumping up and down after sex is effective birth control". All widely believed (especially by your criteria - 1 million or more adherents, which is like a 10th of a percentage point of the population at issue here). These make useful groupings for discussion? Of course not - and your list exhibits the same error. 'Widely believed' considered alone does not generate a good grouping for discussion, given our topic here.

Beyond merely being not useful, you have in fact reversed matters - the relevant issue here is the basis for beliefs, and the means by which they have attained wide acceptance, while you have looked to the result, some level of popular acceptance. Using such a grouping would ensure one approaches this analysis from the wrong end, thus pretty much ensuring all the issues get confused.

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

Magnetic therapy, eating based on blood type, many others on the list - complete absurdity.

Others such as those cited in my above post - true though naturally with some qualifications.

Your argument seems to assume most everything on the list is part of the second catagory. Were that the case, it might be a useful grouping for discussion. But it's about 50-50 either way, mixing absolute supersistion with largely true statements. Very unclean grouping, not useful.

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

I don't think your grouping of 'beliefs' is very useful for discussion - you have shoved superstition in with science in your listof examples. for example, some kinds of seafood contain mercury, so avoiding those kinds in pregnancy is a good idea, low fat diets are one of several proven methods to weight-loss, coffee does cause dehydration if consumed in large quantities (a few starbucks sized 'cups' a day will reach those levels), lifting weights in a moderate repetion range certainly has the potential to cause a women's arms to grow (dependant on her own genetic potential, her individual testosterone levels (which vary greatly for women), etc). And I'm not sure what you mean by 'meant to be vegeterian', but it can certainly be a very healthy and athletic lifestyle. And soy milk can certainly be a healthy food, just as cow's milk can.

Unless your goal is to reject the scientific method itself, or the knowledge of human physiology it has brought us, there seems to be no reason to lump such scientifically supported beliefs in with the superstition occupying the rest of your list.

Posted on: Where Do You Live?

But be on the lookout for exceptions to rightwing-nut's rule - for example, in 痒痒yang3yang0 (itch), jie3jie0 姐姐 (older sister, and basically all family terms), 小子 xiao3zi0 (boy) the first charecter retains its original 3rd tone. The same is true in most charecters followed by a neutral 子, such as 李子, 本子, all retain the third tone on the first charecter. But then in 法子 (plan), the usual reading is fa2zi0.

The third tone also often behaves funny right before a neutralized character of any tone. 主意 (idea) is generally pronounced zhu2yi0 or zhu2yi4, rather than zhu3. Most people also like to say 骨头gu2tou0 (bone) rather than gu3, though that is not completely universal.

Posted on: Ordering a Fruit Salad

Saying something is "common courtesy" implies that those not doing so are being impolite, no? Eh, no use debating subtle differences in english implications, perhaps we just have a different understanding of these words.

I don't think my comment was hostile, but I do have a rather direct style that sometimes comes off that way - rest assured I have no hostility or illwill towards you or anyone else here. :)

On your other point, I don't think answering someone's question subjects one to any sort of additional requirements - I still think we just set our own terms and people can take the help or leave it. Hence, my replies to people often get quite off topic and end up in long-winded academic musings...