User Comments - zhenlijiang
zhenlijiang
Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups
January 31, 2010 at 4:15 AMBaba I would be happy to chip in, only I'm working on a transcript of the Obama Visits China lesson now myself (also I haven't seen Avatar). Hope others join you; should be fun. If you can produce a transcript it would help make the Media lesson a bit more accessible for more people who may really have wanted a lesson on the topic. 加油啊！
Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin
January 30, 2010 at 3:04 AM速く読む--I think!
Posted on: The Left-handed Child
January 28, 2010 at 2:02 AMJust want to add that the people I met were highly educated, well-off (many of them Catholic) professionals from the most developed cities of India.
Posted on: The Left-handed Child
January 27, 2010 at 3:45 PMHi ji_li, that's 少 shao3, "less" "fewer"--"If we did that, we would have way fewer visitors from abroad coming to China".
Posted on: The Left-handed Child
January 27, 2010 at 8:28 AMThanks for explaining that dashcalls! The experience I described is only from 5 years ago (and also my impression was supported by books I've read), but I guess you can't let a couple of dozen people fully represent a diverse population of over 1 billion.
Posted on: The Left-handed Child
January 27, 2010 at 3:02 AMTo elaborate re India, as far as I know you have no option of raising your kids left-handed, that's the rule in the society there. If Baby appears to be a natural lefty mom and dad don't discuss what to do, they simply correct him to use the right hand. I'm left-handed. When I met a group of Indian people (in Japan) with whom I would be working and sharing meals for two weeks, I guess within a couple of hours they had noticed I was writing and using chopsticks with the left hand. Nobody said anything though, until finally the following day they could no longer bear it and one of them, obviously very 不好意思 at calling attention to a personal matter and a terrible flaw, had to ask me, \"Are you ... left-handed?\". I said yes. Then, \"Is that ... normal?\" So I explained that many more of us are right-handed, but that it isn't particularly rare these days. I felt bad at making them uncomfortable, not that they seemed offended, just not at all used to left-handedness. I did everything I possibly could with my right hand for the following two weeks, esp. accepting objects handed to me, handing objects to them, tasting the sweets and snacks they had brought and wanted to share with me, eating things that didn't require use of chopsticks.
Anyway, India is one Asian country in which the society accepts left-handedness far less than most, far less than even China.
Posted on: The Left-handed Child
January 26, 2010 at 3:42 AM"It's no longer a rare sight." I meant.
And I'm sorry, my tone here came off quite a bit more flip than I intended. I should have taken a little more time to write this than be so eager to grab the 沙发 ...
Posted on: The Left-handed Child
January 26, 2010 at 3:10 AM嗨嗨，你们差点忘掉了吗，印度人也是外国朋友吧。在‘左撇子’这个话题上来说，他们的社会肯定比中国的严重得多，对吧。
那我国日本呢？以前（到30年左右以前为止，我觉得。说实话，因为我从幼儿园到高中一直上国际学校，我不是亲眼看到过日本的学校怎样做），像中国一样，用左手的小朋友总是被逼改过来的。现在，能看到更多用左手的人。现在不算是稀罕的事。
啊，时间没有了。我还没说完这个话题哦。一会儿再见！
(rough translation)
Hey you guys aren't forgetting are you--? Our friends in India are "外国朋友" too! This left-handedness issue is surely much graver in their society than in China.
As for my country, Japan--in the past (which I would say is up to around 30 years ago. Actually, having attended international school from kindergarten through high school I don't have first-hand knowledge as to how exactly Japanese schools were dealing with this), like in China, left-handed kids would always be corrected into right-handedness. Today, we see many more lefties. It's no longer a rare sighting.
Oops, out of time now. But I'm not done talking about this yet. More later!
* apologies for my not-to-be-emulated Chinese.
Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups
January 31, 2010 at 5:33 AM... there is never any obligation for you to do so. It was a general suggestion open to anyone.
yeah I know Baba; didn't mean to be pushy here
（＾ｖ＾）