Catching up with our Canadian businessman, he's finally getting in his groove. Today, we listen in (actually eavesdrop) as he gets a quote. In this podcast, learn how to ask for a price and talk terms when ordering from a supplier in China, using Mandarin Chinese.
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Some difficult words in the podcast: 各种各样 (gèzhǒnggèyàng) all sorts 数量 (shùliàng) amount 标准 (biāozhǔn) standard 运到 (yùndào) transport to 岸上 (ànshang) riverside; on the coast 行业 (hángyè) trade; profession 术语 (shùyǔ) technical term 外贸 (wàimào) foreign trade
Lesson header: 报价 bàojià (quoted price) 报 bào (report, tell, announce) 价 jià (price, value)
Hi, everybody!!! Cool lesson today!! By the way, speaking of business, what's the Chinese name of Bill Gates? Someday, he might be my boss! :) L.L. ChinesePod! visit > jennybobblehead.blogspot.com :)
Hi ChinesePod! Thank you for a useful lesson. Peter came all the way from Canada to buy hammers, which is not so appealing. Why not have him buy more sophisticated goods, such as Lenovo laptop PCs or Haier fridges next time. By the way, if my memory serves me right, a 20ft container can carry more than 20 metric tons of commodities. That means the weight of every hammer should be about 10 kgs including a package. It's super heavy. I don't think there are lots of people who can use it in Canada.
Hey all, I think these work-related intermediate lessons are great! However, I have an idea for you guys. Why don't you design some kind of interesting storyline around Peter instead of having him involved in seemingly disconnected incidents. I notice that I get a lot more out of the Zhang Liang and Lili incidents since I am already so engaged by the story. It would be easy to create a storyline with a foreign coworker. You could go through all the stages of being hired, on-boarding & training, project work and best of all...workplace conflict. You could have a lot of interesting characters, such as the inane boss, the hot coworker, the brilliant manager, and the competitive peer. The possibilities are endless! If you need any more ideas, let me know :P Keep up the good work! - Rajat in Waterloo (Ontario, Canada)
Hello 金平 Tsin_Ping, The Chinese name for Bill Gates is: 比尔 盖茨 Bǐěr Gàicí :) ~amber
These work lessons are great! Anything having to do with real business, working with factories, IT/consulting work, etc etc is greatly appreciated. As a consultant in China, improving this type of vocabulary is critical and there is surprisingly little useful material available.
In the Expansion you have the sentence: 这棵数有几尺高. Shouldn't it be 这棵树有几尺高?
Very useful lesson, but if you prefer to use email. How would you write the following? Dear ..... Please could you provide a quote, including price, availability and lead time to produce the parts shown in the attached drawings. Best Regards, ..............
Another stupid Grammar question (sorry for those!)... In the sentence from the Dialogue: 但考虑到你是第一次定 [...] I would have blindly applied the 是。。。的-construction: 但考虑到你是第一次定的 [...] Would that have been correct? And why not? ;)
谢谢, Amber! :) I want to meet 比尔盖茨 someday... :) (Is it normal for foreigners to have 4 letter-word Chinese?) L.L. ChinesePod
Maybe we can do a cross-over where Peter meets Lili and falls for her.
Jenny thats exactly what i was thinking.. Great minds. Hell you work late!
Hey isn't it that 'An Dong Ni' (The name above my comment) is the Chinese counterpart for 'Anthony'? :) Hi, Jenny! How come your name is not linked in ChinesePod.com while the other crews' names are linked in ChinesePod? :) L.L. ChinesePod!!!
I doubt Jenny would still be at Cpod at 10pm. ;)
No Way! Really??? Wow... Take care, Jenny!!! Anyway, tomorrow's episode is in iTunes already, and it's all about Ping Pong! :) L.L. ChinesePod
Yeah An dong ni is for Anthony...love it!
Oh... So, what are the words again? :) L.L. ChinesePod :)
John, When we export back to USA, the word for container we always use is 集装箱 (jízhuāngxiāng). Is huogui simply an alternative or the correct approach in business for goods container?
比尔盖茨 has gotta so much money he can have names as long as he wants, better than 皇帝 :-))
John, Our shanghai broker just resonsed to my e-mail and that jízhuāngxiāng is what he would use in daily business but Huogui is an option. So I guess as with most Chinese words I should be happy that there are only 2 options (and not 10!!)
Hello Henning, Thanks for pointing out that typo, I'm having it fixed now. In the sentence you mentioned from the dialogue: 但考虑到你是第一次定 […] (Dàn kǎolǜ dào nǐ shì dì-yī cì dìng […]) You cannot use the 是...的 (shì...de) construction here because the 是...的 (shì...de) structure is used to emphasize the time, place, method, purpose or target of a completed action. This sentence is not emphasizing any of these things. Bazza, Here is your potential letter: ____ 经理（先生）： (_____ Jīnglǐ （or Xiānsheng）： 我需要你们提供一份设计图中部件的详细报价，其中要包括：产品的价格，是否有货， 生产产品所需的前置时间。 (Wǒ xūyào nǐmen tígōng yī fèn shèjìtú zhōng bùjiàn de xiángxì bàojià, qízhōng yào bāokuò: chǎnpǐn de jiàgé, shì-fǒu yǒu huò, shēngchǎn chǎnpǐn suǒxū de qiánzhì shíjiān. 此致敬礼， _____ Cǐzhì jìnglǐ, __________) 金平 Tsin_Ping, Some Chinese names of famous people are a transliteration of the English (or other language) name, thus the four characters, or more, to make the pronunciation similar to their real name. Hi Pat, 集装箱 (jízhuāngxiāng) and 货柜 (huòguì) are two words that both mean shipping container. You can use either! ~amber :)
Thanks Amber. :)
Hi, can anyone out there please provide a translation for all the incoterms? Thanks
Thanks a lot Amber! Grammar is still a weak point of mine...as soon as the grammar guide comes up, I will hopefully become less annoying ;). Regarding the typo: I hope I did not came across as nitpicking. I was actually clueless regarding the meaning of the sentence until I saw in the translation that it is about a tree. I guess it is a disadvantage of the Chinese character system that even a small and otherwise forgivable typo can have such a huge impact.
Hi Henning, Don't worry, you're not nitpicky sounding or annoying at all! We're glad to know if something's wrong so we can fix it all the sooner. And we love questions, because we can all learn more that way! ~amber :D
Changye writes: > By the way, if my memory serves me right, a 20ft container > can carry more than 20 metric tons of commodities. That means > the weight of every hammer should be about 10 kgs including a package. I think 锤子 (lángtou) was mistranslated; rather than "hammer", it should be translated as "super heavy sledge hammers" :-)
I'm curious as to guy's voice. Is he a actor a foreigner or a Chinese speaking with a foreign accent, or do I just find his voice strange?
Hello, I am one of the newbies, and really appreciate the business modules. Rajat is right, if you had a story, a continuation of a business story, this would be really fun to learn. For example the canadian (Peter) could be booking airfare, hotel and train tickets for a trade show in Shanghai, a business sales meeting in Guangzhou and the confirmation of an order to be shipped by container. The story brings the businessman to meetings with politicians, and then spends the weekend in Macau. Anyway, I am just contributing ideas, you really do an fantastic job, keep it up Jenny and the Team. One day I will visit. Conrad Melanson, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
Hi, I found the following incoterms in Chinese: 工厂交货 Gōngchăng jiāohuò ExWorks 装运港船边交货 Zhuāngyùn găng chuánbiān jiāohuò FAS – Free alongside ship 货交承运人 Huòjiāo chéngyùnrén FCA - Free Carrier 装运港船上交货 Zhuāngyùn găng chuánshàng jiāohuò FOB – Free on Board 成本加运费 Chéngběn jiā yùnfèi CFR – Cost & Freight 成本, 保险费加运费 Chéngběn, băoxiănfèi jiā yùnfèi CIF – Cost, Insurance, Freight 运费付至目的地 Yùnfèi fù zhù mùdìdì CPT – Carriage paid to 运费和保险费付至目的地 Yùnfèi hé băoxiănfèi fù zhì mùdìdì CIP – Carriage and Insurance paid to 边境交货 Biānjìng jiāohuò DAF – Delivered at Frontier 目的港船上交货 Mùdì găng chuánshàng jiāohuò DES – Delivered ex ship 目的港码头交货 Mùdì găng mătou jiāohuò DEQ – Delivered ex quay 未完税交货 Wèiwánshuì jiāohuò DDU – Delivered duty unpaid 完税后交货 Wánshuì hòu jiāohuò DDP – delivered duty paid Sorry, they are a bit chaotic, I copied them from a table I had written them in. For exports from China, I think FOB and CIF are the most commonly used options, so this lesson was really usefull. By the way, FOB is free on board, not freight on board. Also, the incoterms I found do not include 到岸. As CIF is a very common parity for deliveries from China, is this a short form for the much more 麻烦 "成本, 保险费加运费"??? To be honest, I would always write to our supplier like: 请提供CIF汉堡报价. If possible, could anybody tell me how to say in Chinese: "Please make sure that the size of the boxes is fit to be stacked on Europallets, 120x80, so that they fully fill the palett but do not protrude" Would be great, I have no idea how to really make that clear in Chinese. Cheers, Christian, Munich.
Absurdian, I don't know if it's humanly possible to make this sentence clear, but I am trying my best:'请确认盒子能装进120乘80的欧洲垫板，不会戳出来。/qing3 que4 ren4 he2zi neng2 zhuang1jin4 120cheng2 80 de ou1 zhou1 dian4 ban3,bu2 hui4 chuo1 chu1 lai2.
TAXI FINANCE 101 - Can our Canadian business man chat with the taxi driver about stocks. And in another episode can he try to get a exclusive license for distribution to say...California. I'll give you all 3%. :)
dinghuo, to order goods. One end of my dictionary has it as 定货，as you do, the other end as 订货。What's going on here, a spelling mistake halfway to become an accepted usage, or some nuance in meaning?
Hi Matt Whyndham, Both 定货 and 订货 are acceptable and used interchangeably for "dìnghuò". ~amber :)
FOB I think actually means (Freight on board) not free on board
Hi cttse. I think that "Free On Board" and "Freight On Board" are both acceptable long forms for the incoterm FOB.
But I'm not qualified to confirm whether this would still be the case if "FOB" is not being used as an incoterm, but rather, as convenient shorthand for one of those quaint North American shipping terms. Potayto, potahto.... HTH.
Hi auntie68,
According to the latest revision of Incoterm, FOB stands for Free Online Boke (博客，播客). For your information, CIF is Chinese Instructed Free of charge.
!!!! That was so witty. You just made my day, thanks!
I too wondered about Peter's pronunciation--intentional 洋腔洋調 by fluent speaker (for sake of realism) or not? Maybe it's just the fact that it is being read (or recited from memory) that makes it sound 'fishy'. Either way, I found it much harder to understand Peter than the 經理.
this is taxing...i've listened to 80 pod casts and am trying to catch up on the user dialogues! wow, it's nine a.m. in china. time to make some purchase orders! :0)
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