The day after posting a link to the great laowai debate, I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker. It was the kind of thing I would probably not have paid much attention to were the matter not already on my mind.
My co-worker is in her late twenties and comes from Sichuan. She has been living in Shanghai for the past five years or so.
I was having a conversation with my co-worker about foreigner teachers. When she got …
eBay currently has an ad playing on the flatscreen displays of the Shanghai subway system. It shows a series of short Chinese phrases, each followed by a brief illustrative video clip. The phrases are:
These images are followed by the phrase “…
Since this week I haven’t had to go to work, I’ve used it to buckle down and finish learning the material on Modern Chinese that I need to know for the exam this month. I have to display understanding of this material in order to be admitted for graduate school.
I haven’t finished it yet (working mainly on 现代汉语, a 560 page extremely dry Chinese textbook), but I’m getting there.
One thing I’ve discovered is that putting in about five …
One of the first phrases a student of a foreign language learns is “thank you,” followed closely by “you’re welcome.” Every culture has etiquette, and these two phrases are about as basic as etiquette can get. It’s best to keep things simple for a new learner. One-to-one vocabulary correspondences are easiest to accept for memorization.
When I learned Spanish, it was gracias and de nada. When I learned Japanese it was arigatou gozaimasu and dou …
I want to add more Chinese study material to Sinosplice, and the latest is a vocabulary list. Of Western alcohol. You won’t find any form of baijiu on the list, but if you ever wanted to know how to say “Guinness” or “Jim Beam” or “Sex on the Beach” in Chinese, this is for you.
It’s noteworthy that many of these names do not have a standard name (especially mixed drinks), so many variations are possible, but the names in …
I rarely watch Chinese TV (because it’s dumb and boring), but I watched it last night. I was rewarded for my bravery.
Last night I happened to catch part of CCTV 2′s Televised Model Competition (模特电视大赛). Like I said, I rarely watch Chinese TV, but if I do happen to go for a flip through the channels, if there’s anything that’s going to catch my attention, it’s a whole bunch of hot women. So this competition did the trick. I’m …
I was pretty sleepy in Chinese class today. I didn’t get enough sleep last night, and the teacher’s explanations of the subtle differences between 4 different Chinese words somehow wasn’t jolting me into the desired state of consciousness. I desperately wanted to yawn, but that would be really rude to the teacher if she saw it, so I kept trying to sneak one in when she’d turn to the board to write, but then she would always turn around just …
I didn’t have my usual Intensive Reading Chinese class today. Yesterday in class someone from the administration came and passed out special letters of invitation to the “First China Zhejiang Academic Festival” (首届中国浙江学术节). We were told if we went our taxi fares would be reimbursed, and we’d get a free lunch. We all decided to go.
Last week I was walking near West Lake with Russell and we passed a huge lavish meeting hall-type building. We weren’t sure …
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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