User Comments - wenjong

Posted on: Rainbow

I'm in Canada, and we learned Roy G. Biv

:)

Posted on: Stealing a Nose

I agree that I would be interested to know Chinese games (and I think another lesson did talk about the children found in a garbage can... eee!) but all this "one has to come from the dark ages to know this nose game"??? Personally I have a 5 yr old, and he and I do this to each other, and he thinks it is hilarious. And my father and mom do this to him too, as have various uncles. Yes we are all in Canada, but I can still use this on a daily basis to practice Chinese with my son. Like I integrate the "zhao pengyou" song lyrics into hide and seek with him to put some chinese into action games (vs just books and sitting down for language lessons).

So for some of us, this is a lesson we can put to use immediately, and in the form given directly in this lesson. I will have fun teasing my son, and having him steal my nose tonight and practicing these things. And I can do the same with the kids while waiting to get into his 5-yr-olds Saturday chinese class tomorrow. Thanks

Posted on: The Various Guises of "Until"

Again, I just don't get the complaints. I am not a linguistics major, I am an illustrator, and a mom to a kid adopted from China. I speak with other people who are Chinese here in Montreal. I found this lesson to be very pertinent, and before I came to the comments, was thinking of all the times I could use these expressions in practical situations (much like those given in the Qing Wen) with real life people. Hardly grammatical nitpicking at all, nor esoteric. I don't need lessons on business deals or love affairs, but I don't listen to them and then complain in the comments that they weren't pertinent to me. I go to the lessons that are most useful in my needs for Chinese communication, and skim over the ones that aren't. And frankly "QW is basically example sentences..." well, dang, isn't that the whole point.

Posted on: The Various Guises of "Until"

here, here. There are tons of lessons that don't appeal to me, and I just skip them. BTW, have huibert and nd70 added to the knowledge bank of this lesson, here in the comments, or just wasted our time with tons of chatty conversation about their personal personality preferences, when the rest of us are here to learn Chinese? I learned valuable new phrasing from the lesson, and now have wasted tons of time looking through the comments to read just complaining.

Posted on: The Various Guises of "Until"

My gosh, do you talk this way to all your college professors? "Mary is 5 stars, Bob is 4 and Mr. Smith is 1 star"...

Frankly I have been using Chinesepod since 2007 and I am here because there is laughter, and chattiness, which means it is Chinese I will remember and use. There are SO MANY serious dry resources in books, tapes, dvds, online, why if you don't want laughter with your Chinese would you ever in a million years come here?

I started out as a complete newbie, adopting a child from China, and now am a solid elementary only through self-study, and now when I take my son to Saturday Chinese Kindergarten, the native-speaking Chinese moms wonder how I could have learned so much Chinese, how I use expressions correctly, how I don't sound like a grammar lesson book but can actually say "normal" conversational things... and I say I listen to Chinesepod. (and yes, I do have grammar books and lots of nice dry Chinese learning materials too)

But really, why insult the teachers, and put down the whole slant of Chinesepod? We've had gangsters cutting off fingers, silly jokes with little kids, whatnot, and it is great. There is variation in the different lessons in terms of usability for each student, or depth of addressing an particular issue, but that is fine. It means each will find something they need.

I personally learned a lot from this lesson, it wasn't "too much" and I will be able to use these constructs immediately in my everyday speech. Thanks Qing Wen team. The lessons were great, are great and continue to be great.

Posted on: Switching Seats on a Plane

with square windows and chairbacks lower than your shoulderblades? Definitely not business class! And what YEAR is that?? They don't make popcorn that small now, and the fashion is slightly off..... :D

Posted on: First Snow of the Winter

Interesting... I thought that a unique title too... til I put it into Amazon.com... must be an Australian expression: "on the smell of an oily rag", as there are more than a handful of books with that in the title! who knew! Unfortunately the one mentioned here is unavailable/out of print.

Posted on: Playing Ice Hockey

Hey, as a Canadian (admittedly one who has no love of the game) stuck here in Montreal in winter, I am quite happy to learn a wee bit of vocab about ice hockey. And HEY! There are MANDARIN SPEAKERS in Canada! In fact my son has a native mandarin speaker in his preschool class, I've run across whole families of them in Parc Lafontaine, on the street, and even in the public library in Saskatoon Saskatchewan (where winter lasts a long time, and anyone with a pair of skates takes to the indoor or outdoor rinks to play hockey)...

Anyways, I have yet to see people from age 4 to 70 playing cricket, handball, squash, golf, billiards or ballroom dancing out in public ... they may be professional sports, or ones enjoyed by a certain group of privileged adults, but they are hardly as egalitarian and widely played as hockey (which can be played by any two kids with sticks and a cheap puck on the street... and even without skates!)

So thanks for the lesson!

Posted on: Blind Massage

..interestingly the orphanage my son came from has been rebuilt as a brand new building, very nice, lots of brouhaha when it was opened. But they spent so much they now cannot afford to furnish and heat it, so the children (mostly disabled) are having to sleep on the floor all in one room which they are trying to heat, and asking for donations of disposable diapers as the cloth ones they have won't dry in the unheated (lovely new) rooms...

Not sure about handicapped access, but I do know the Australian volunteers do a lot of work educating the ayis that the disabled kids should be interacted with, and have "rescued" many of them to their family-mimicking foster rooms, where suddenly these kids who stare at walls, not moving from their beds, rocking all day, not interacting, start talking, smiling, playing. It seems a lot of the kids, whether CP, blind, deaf, are just not interacted with as if those conditions = hopeless, pointless, brainless. Some of the older ones are getting sent to schools (for deaf, braille, regular school with physical aid for CP kids etc) now.

And I do know of physically different (not even disabled, but for instance operated cleft lip, missing fingers etc) kids adopted from China who hide from asian people as they have constantly been pointed out when they were in China as defective, or having bad karma from being an evil person in the past... my own son has cleft lip and palate, and people often intimated it was bad luck when we were there. :(

Though I cannot say that everyone in North America is nicer... they are perhaps just less superstitious.??

Posted on: Walking the Bird

egads, gotta change my icon... that young child will be 5 yrs old in two weeks!