User Comments - chinehao
chinehao
Posted on: 澳洲总理秀中文
May 3, 2008 at 6:25 PMHis accent is good for a foreigner and his choice of words is perfect, but I still detect non-Chinese accent or westerner accented 普通话, especially when he pronounces "我们". I think 大山is still the best westerner who speaks perfect 普通话.
Posted on: Overseas Chinese
May 3, 2008 at 7:02 AMwindwalker, I hear you. Culture is more important to self-id than anythingelse. However, one's view of the world is not how the world views one. Your case is assimilation, but for the others it is only adaptation. It all depends on how strongly one is influenced by a culture. That's why you see some Chinese who live in SE Asia countires like VN, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, etc.. for 4-5 generations but they never forget culturally that they are Chinese (probably why the Chinese civilization is the longest continuous civilization in human history, so far...). They simply adapt to their new countries without forgetting their own culture, and if they are numerous and influencial enough, they influence the culture of the host country to some extend. In the world of globalisation as of today, this scenario of adaptation is evermore likely to be, rather than the old assimilation scenario.
Posted on: 对症下药
May 2, 2008 at 5:53 AMIn China, especially in smaller cities like those in Fujian, I think when you go to Drugstore, the clerk, not even pharmacist, will give you advice on what medecine to buy for the conditions you describe, both western and chinese medecine.
Posted on: Overseas Chinese
May 1, 2008 at 10:42 PMThe Chinese ancestry people born in Vietnam, they call themselves Hua Qiao 华侨 or Tongyan 唐人even though they have no longer Chinese citizenship. Once these people go overseas and settled in a 3rd country like US, they are called Chinese-Vietnamese American. But they still call themselves Huaqiao or Tongyan, but also being called and start using Hua ren 华人 or 华裔 by other types of Chinese - 华人 by Taiwanese or 华裔 by mainlander. When these VN-Chinese American citizen go back to to visit their ancestral land in China, they are called 华裔 or 外地人 or sometimes just simply 外国人， even though these VN-Chinese-American speak Mandarin or their local Chinese dialect like 粤语 or 闽南话。The Self-identity of these people is complex and kind of confusing, because some of these people have had so many nationalities in their lifetime, e.g., the father (even though born in VN) has Republic of China ID card for overseas Chinese but later change to VNmese citizenship for business purpose，their children therfore get VNmese ID (w/apostrophe), then the family moved to France where they drop the VNmese ID and get the French citizenship. After several years, they again move and resettle in Canada where they get Canadian citizenship (and may or maynot keep their dual French citizenship). Haha, so in their heart they are always 华侨. And this is all happen in one generation.
Posted on: 澳洲总理秀中文
May 3, 2008 at 6:34 PMto apple 1234: I think Westerner speaking perfect Mandarin with Chengyu is so cool. Come to think of it, probably Marco Polo spoke Chinese before too :-). Anyhow, the same with Chinese who speaks perfect English, be it British accent or American accent, we have plenty of BBC/CBC/ABC who can do it.