Internet access in Shanghai remains really bad. I am able to access Sinosplice and ChinesePod only really late at night, and they’re still slow. A lot of sites are still pretty much inaccessible.
I noticed this article tonight:
Verizon Business, part of the No2 US phone carrier, announced this month plans to build an undersea cable with five Asian partners. It will directly link China with the United States and is due for completion by the third quarter
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There was recently an earthquake in Taiwan which destroyed the key nodes in China’s trans-Pacific internet connection. As a result, most traffic between China and the US on the internet has slowed to a near-impossible crawl. Fortunately Google (and Gmail) still work.
This means I won’t be updating this blog much until it’s fixed. It means ChinesePod has quite a headache (our servers are in the US). It means it’s going to be a lot harder to get good…
My friend Jamie Doom is planning his return to China. But he’s not exactly sure which part he wants to live in:
Hangzhou and Shanghai are also interesting options. Many of my best friends living in China live in those two places. I have already lived in Hangzhou. Shanghai is a big convenient city. Neither town would make me get out of my comfort zone that much.
So I have been thinking of going somewhere new. But where? I
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OK, I’ll admit it. I like some Christmas songs. Not so much “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as some of the more traditional ones. So I get a kick out of hearing these songs sung in Chinese. Thinking that some of you may feel the same way (you all seemed to really enjoy the Hakka Jingle Bells song), I decided to put together an album of Chinese Christmas music.
This album contains secular kids’ classics like “Jingle Bells” as well…
There’s a hilarious entry on a blog called Long Legged Fly about playing soccer in China. An excerpt:
But the best part of this whole experience is that you cannot play soccer on this field without getting hurt. The ground is too hard. The ground is too slippery. The ground has too many divets and weird ditch like things that zigzag across it. Plus, the Chinese players are very grab-happy and kick-your-shins-happy. So essentially what the Chinese have
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Tonight my “wife” and I will attend part three of an 8-week marriage preparation course. The Catholic Church requires all couples that wish to be married with the blessing of the Church to undergo this course. The purpose is not really to educate couples about Catholicism, but rather to ensure that the couples have closely examined the big questions before they officially tie the knot (and by “officially” I mean “in the Church”). One unexpected thing about the…
From time to time I search for random things using Baidu’s MP3 search. Sometimes I find interesting things, such as Buddhist songs. My most recent interesting find has been Bible stories in Chinese.
One of the Bible stories turned up in a search. I listened to it and rather enjoyed it, and noticed that the filename used a simple numerical progression. I fired up my download manager, and a little while later I had downloaded all 150 Old…
I mentioned last week that David Lancashire of AdsoTrans came to Shanghai on a visit. The “big secret” was that he was here on a mission. He was checking out ChinesePod HQ before considering a job offer. But all that is old news; as David has already revealed on his blog, he will be working for ChinesePod starting in January.
This is cool for many reasons. David has done a lot of amazing work on AdsoTrans (and…
The other day at work we discussed what I will call “windows of deliciousness” over lunch. A window of deliciousness is the period of time during which a certain kind of food is at its most delicious. Most hot foods start out at peak deliciousness, but once they cool down to a certain extent, they are no longer what could be termed “delicious.” The window of deliciousness for many types of food, from “straight out of the kitchen” to “too…
I recently got an e-mail from Albert Wolfe, the guy behind Laowai Chinese. In the blog Albert shares his experiences learning the Chinese language. He has lots of great observations that I recommend any beginner take a look at.
What especially caught my attention was a recent post on tones. This is because Albert has employed some of the same tone mnemonics that I myself devised and relied on once upon a time.
Albert writes:
Once you
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John has lived in China for
10.1
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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