Wandering around Shanghai the other day, I stumbled upon this street food:
Yes, those are raw oysters. I’m hoping the thing behind them is for cooking them, but I didn’t find out exactly how they were supposed to be eaten.
Here they are being prepared:
I think it’s safe to say that my personal quest for “surest way to get food poisoning ever” has finally come to an end.…
Recently the Shanghai Daily ran a story about a new Absolut Ice Bar being constructed in Shanghai. Ice bars are fun, so I wanted more details. Unfortunately, the article didn’t tell either the opening date or the planned location.
Yesterday walking around Shanghai I sort of found the answers to my questions. Here’s how “open” it is:
And here’s the location:
It’s right next to 138 Huaihai Middle Road (淮海中路138号). Maybe it’ll be done by mid-summer?…
I’ve known for a while that for the highest perceived fluency, a foreigner should aim for a Beijing accent. That’s what Dashan did, and I’ve witnessed many times that a Beijing accent just impresses Chinese people more (especially outside of Beijing). It never had any appeal for me, though.
What I have noticed, though, is that as one’s accent improves, it can move through various levels of perceived fluency, seemingly imitating some of Greater China’s regional accents. I’ve actually heard …
Tonight I went out to pick up a few items. I wanted to get some drinks and a bug zapper light. (Summer is slowly seeping into Shanghai in all its steamy unpleasantness, and with it comes the skeeters.)
The grocery store was already closed, so I turned to one of the little hardware/general shops that line the road.
Me: 有杀蚊子的灯吗？ (Do you have lights that kills mosquitoes?)
Shopkeeper: 么哇某某灯？没有。 (Something-something light? Nope.)
Me: 叫什么？ (What’s it called?)
…
If you were one of the low-paid employees of a Chinese barber shop, would you go along with having to learn a dance routine and do it in public right in front of the shop? That’s apparently what I witnessed from my taxi yesterday:
Speaking of barber shops, Ben Ross has been working in a Chinese barber shop. No, it’s not some kind of weird role created just for a foreigner; he’s doing exactly the same work that any young …
This week in grad school class about Chinese grammar, we covered the topic of grammaticalization. Of interest to me was one paper in which the author made a case for the demonstrative pronoun 这 beginning to take on the role of definite article in Beijing dialect. In this usage, 这 is pronounced “zhe” (neutral tone). The author also examined 那, and the same thing is not happening.
This made me think of English. We have the demonstrative pronouns …
So I’ve already explained how I arrived in China with a decent foundation in grammar and characters, but some problems with my pronunciation. So what happened next?
Well, first I should explain my initial attitude. Two years previously I had had a great experience studying Japanese in Osaka. I enjoyed the process of learning a new language in a foreign society so much that doing it all over again had become central to my post-graduation plan. So when I arrived …
Is it my imagination, or has internet speed in Shanghai (for international websites) been extremely slow starting yesterday? Is it just Shanghai, or the rest of China too?
(Did I miss a news story?)
May 10 Update: It seems to be back to normal again.
May 10 Update #2: OK, just kidding. The internet here is crap again.…
Over the years I’ve gotten quite a few questions about this, so I thought I’d write a series of entries that explain everything. I’d like to stress from the beginning that the method I used is not going to work for everybody. It’s not “the right method.” It’s simply the method I used. This post will focus on my formal education in the States.
I decided to start learning Chinese while I was an exchange student in Japan. When I …
I was happy when the Zhongshan Park Carrefour opened. It’s right by my apartment, and while it may not have the cheapest prices in town, it has a nice mix of local goods and imported stuff. Not long after the opening, though, I noticed that anytime I went to Carrefour–mainly weeknights right after work, or on weekends–was exactly the same time that everyone else went to Carrefour. The checkout lines were horrific, stretching back into the aisles of food. And …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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