User Comments - tysond

Posted on: Upgrading to Business Class

Or cheaper still just get a strap on fake pregnant tummy, popular in China for getting a seat on the bus.

Posted on: Hiccups

My understanding is that 总是 is a general term, like I have always worked at Walmart, while 老是 indicates a negative meaning, like you always fight with your wife, or you always leave the toilet seat up.

Basically if you use "always" in anger, that's 老是

If this is not correct please let me know

Posted on: The Dead Continue to Love

What a great song. Now I really want to go to karaoke.

Posted on: Put Back the Weights

Lack of maintenance is common in much of Asia. The only place I have seen it done well was Singapore, where even the government housing is repainted every five years or so, and new facilities are installed (elevators, pools), etc.

When selecting an apartment, I make a big point of inspecting the gym. If the apartment complex's gym is in good repair after 4-5 years, it means the management is serious about their jobs and likely lots of other stuff is also being fixed. If the residents aren't owners I doubt their complaints are taken seriously.

Posted on: Supplier Problems

批准 is used in the transcript, but actually 审批 is spoken.

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

I guess I feel these beliefs have such a critical mass in China that they self-reinforce. There's no necessity to look for a basis of the belief - the basis of the belief is that everyone else believes it too.

If you ignore this and concentrate on what is a right and a wrong belief, you ignore the reality that is culture. There is a whole field of study called Health Belief Models which try to account for people's beliefs when designing healthcare.

Consider this article which tries to understand whether beliefs lead to a higher cancer incidence in Chinese American women: http://www.wuys.com/news/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=7361

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

I think soy milk is fine, and with some caveats I think avoiding seafood while pregnant and low-fat diets are ideas with merit if not taken too far.

I don't personally value any of the other ideas and i am outright against some of them. I think you are right that I gravitated to a lot of stuff I find either borderline, weird or dangerous.

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

Yes I have deliberately placed beliefs of varying degrees of scientific credibility beside each other to highlight the fact that millions of people in the west believe in health concepts regardless of proof. For each one of those items I am pretty sure there are a million or more believers.

It's the fact that they are widely believed that's important - not whether they are right or wrong in some kind of absolute sense.

I'm noticing that the health concepts that are part of Chinese culture seem to be quite uniformly believed, and that scientific proof is not important compared to the cultural importance of the concepts and of being seen to follow them.

I try to keep that in mind when people give me advice/disapproval on what I eat/do in China.

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

Westerners have all this kind of belief in medical and health practices too.  Super-foods, not eating seafood while pregnant, low-fat diets, being cold will make you catch a cold, soy milk is healthy, eat right for your blood type, drinking from plastic bottles will kill you, immunizations are dangerous, coffee causes dehydration, homeopathy, crystals, meditation, past lives, magnetic therapy, people are meant to be vegetarian, weight training cause women to have big arms, etc, etc.  Some westerners even believe in TCM and acupuncture (and cupping and candling and more).

I notice that China's beliefs seem to be more universally believed and followed.  Most western culture is still arguing over all of these concepts amongst themselves. 

Maybe that's why we don't seem to have any credibility when we argue against the Chinese notions? :-)

Posted on: Ordering a Fruit Salad

I've heard both in the same Subway store in Beijing (officially their menu uses 沙拉, I order using 沙拉, but often get 色拉 as a response).