User Comments - cleaver
cleaver
Posted on: Have you eaten?
May 11, 2009 at 3:00 AMYes, I've heard people say: "你吃了吗？".
I didn't know there were other ways to say it.
Posted on: How Long?
March 22, 2009 at 10:12 PM"Sifu" is the Cantonese version.
Posted on: How Long?
March 22, 2009 at 7:16 PMRegarding 师傅 (shi1 fu4), this isn't exactly how you should refer to your kung fu instructor. The martial arts (or perhaps other esoteric study) master is 师父. Luckily, it is exactly the same pronunciation (shi1 fu4).
I believe this pays respect to the "father" relationship to your teacher. (In the past, at least, students would have almost the same devotion to the shifu as to their parents.) Perhaps others know this in more detail?
Posted on: Pleco, Anki and Activity Streams! Plus, Fishing!
March 22, 2009 at 6:36 PM"the application is still in the infancy"
LOL!
Posted on: The Broken Chair
January 17, 2009 at 4:13 AMThis one cracks me up.
The first time I sat down with someone to formally learn Chinese, I learned a few common words: 我(wo) 你(ni) 好(hao) a few others and of course 椅子(yizi). After giving me some sample sentences, my teacher asked me to create my own. The only thing that came to mind was"
你的椅子不太好 (ni de yizi bu tai hao), or roughly "your chair is not very good".
Now ChinesePod has basically the same idea. :-)
Posted on: All the Things You Can Hit: 打 (dǎ)
January 4, 2009 at 11:44 PMYou can 打太极拳 (da taijiquan) or "do tai chi"...
我喜欢打太极拳.
(Sometimes when we 打太极拳, we 打人!)
Posted on: Food Oddities and Eye Exercises
January 4, 2009 at 9:06 PMIn North America, we use every part of the animal too. With cattle for example, we take all the steaks and things like liver, etc. All the other parts are known as "hot dogs". ;-)
Some foods that I think are cruel are birds nest... when they take the nest from the cave, the swallows have to cough up more saliva and sometimes spit blood. With sharks fins, most often they just catch the shark, cut off the fins and throw the shark back in the water to die.
Also, I avoid eating things that might eat me... just a little mutual respect among predators. :-)
I don't think boiling shrimp or lobster is unecessarily cruel, since it is quick. Dunking them in alcohol first is rather cruel, however. Shimps don't seem to like it when you do that, if I can judge by their reaction.
Posted on: Food Oddities and Eye Exercises
January 4, 2009 at 12:36 AMI will eat almost anything, but I tend to avoid the ones that are unecessarily cruel. I'm far from being a vegetarian, but I do like my food to be dispatched efficiently. I'd include sharks fin, birds nest and the choked shrimp as foods I'd try to avoid.
On the other hand choudofu-臭豆腐 (stinky bean curd)... I love that stuff. Taiwan is the best--I've had three or four different kinds of 臭豆腐.
Posted on: Taxi Culture in China
December 30, 2008 at 11:00 PMMostly the Shanghai taxi drivers I've met are good, but I did have one bad experience. We went out for dinner and it started to rain, so at about 9:30pm on a rainy Friday night, I had to get back home. We were with my friend's elderly parents, so we couldn't walk very far. I tried combing the surrounding blocks to see if there was a good spot to flag a taxi, but everone else leaving the restaurants had the same idea.
It took about 30-40 minutes to find a cab. I think it must have been one of the dark cabs, since he didn't want to run a meter and was going to charge 50RMB minimum. The resulting ride was probably not much more expensive than a Toronto taxi, but I didn't like the idea of being ripped off.
I never had a problem in Beijing. Almost all the drivers there seem to be older, 'salt of the earth', Lao Beijing types. Even the illegal taxi I took from the airport by mistake my first time didn't rip us off *too* bad.
We got to know one private chauffeur in Beijing who worked for a business colleague. He took us around to see some of the sights and lesser known areas of Beijing. He seemed to have the inside story on everything. We even got to visit his house which was on an old Hutong. Unfortunately, his house was scheduled to be demolished to give a better view of Houhai for Beijing Olympic visitors :-(
The biggest taxi adventure was hiring a taxi to take us through the hills from Lishui to Longquan in Zhejiang province. But that is another story...
Posted on: Xinjiang Delicacies
May 30, 2009 at 5:41 AMI love the 串 and I like the character--probably the easiest to remember. I have had the 大盘鸡 and thought it was really good. Can't wait for 丁丁炒面!
@Pete - sorry to rake you over the coals on this, but those puns really got my goat.