My computer won’t boot up except in safe mode. Apparently it has something to do with “Secondary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed.” Anyway, I’m working on it, but in the meantime, no new posts.
UPDATE: I bought a new power source and new IDE cables and installed them. No change (but I’m not sorry I did it… those upgrades were due). Then I got to work on Brad’s suggestion. I decided to do it by disconnecting and reconnecting …
I’m kind of surprised myself, but I successfully negotiated a new contract with my employer. I laid out my demands: half the hours, 2/3 the pay, and no more teaching kids. They capitulated.
This is good because I will not go crazy. I can continue to like Chinese children from a distance, keeping the good memories of the times I had teaching them, while the bad parts slowly fade. But I’ll make sure I don’t get roped into teaching kids …
You hear it every year from your Chinese friends at about this time: “Be careful with your wallet and your bag. It’s almost Chinese New Year, and the thieves are out in force so they can take home something extra for the holiday.”
I’ve only ever had one crappy cell phone stolen from me in China, but I’m extremely paranoid. The possibility of getting pickpocketed is on my mind constantly when I use public transportation or walk in crowds. I …
Shanghai is big and its streets are confusing, so finding an exact location can be quite an ordeal. I recently found a great new resource to help deal with that problem.
You may know of Wang Jianshuo’s online Shanghai map. I have found it quite useful in the past. Its special feature is the ability to mark any location on the map, which creates a unique URL you can send to someone so they can view the exact location. …
How do you spot a tiny Chinese real estate (房产) company? First, you should be on a street with lots of little shops. Then you just look for the shop with papers plastered all over the storefront window. That’s it. In Shanghai they are everywhere.
This is the way these little companies advertise their real estate, and the system seems pretty universal. Each paper is marked with either a 售 (for sale) or a 租 (for rent). …
I was reading Matt’s “Cheating and Chinese Students” entry on Metanoiac, and it made me reminisce about how I dealt with cheating students during my tenure at ZUCC in Hangzhou. My own experiences might be helpful to some teachers out there, so I thought I’d share.
Throughout my 7 semesters of teaching spoken English at ZUCC, my class format never stopped evolving. I just want to share some of the major evolutions here and the reasoning behind the …
According to Xinhua, Chinese linguists are finishing up a huge database of spoken Chinese, and they’re going to use it as a basis for a new dictionary and grammar book of modern Chinese. This is good news! Using actual spoken speech as the source should produce a much more useful dictionary.
I’m a little disappointed that all the spoken Mandarin Chinese samples come from Beijing, though. Yes, I know Beijing is the standard, but wouldn’t real linguists want to …
Google may be the search engine of the West, but in China it’s still trailing one called Baidu (百度). The name means “one hundred degrees.” I hear Baidu is so popular in China that the word 百度 is starting to be used as a verb in Chinese just like we now say “Google it” in English.
Baidu recently published its list of top 10 searches of 2004, and organized the data in such a way as to actually …
我想做个实验。我写这个blog的目的还是为了练习中文，但这次我想谈的是英文。
英语有一句俗语：a big fish in a small pond。我觉得它的意思很好理解。就像我以前住在杭州的时候一样：人家都说我的中文太棒了，我还经常上电视，做模特。之后搬到上海来了。但在这儿我没什么特别，因为“池”大了，“鱼”也多多了。因此我可以说在杭州I was a big fish in a small pond。
前不久一个朋友问我：big fish in a small pond用成语怎么说？我实在不知道，所以我查了成语词典。没查到。我用Google搜索了，但还是没找到。到现在为止我还是不知道中文有没有什么词语好表达这个意思。
所以我想问我的中国读者：big fish in a small pond用中文怎么说？…
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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