Intermediate - Death by Ninja

Great!

C-pod:

After listening to all the lessons in this series multiple times, I've come to the conclusion that this last part of the series isn't appropriate as part of the "business terms" series.

Consider that this lesson contains absolutely no business related vocabulary whatsoever and in fact only teaches the learner one new word: 忍者, Ninja, which I would venture to say isn't the worlds most businessy term.

In the beginning this was one of my favorite lessons, but at the time I wasn't examining it from an educational standpoint, only looking at it from an entertainment standpoint. 

The thing is, with Peter's untimely end so ends our Chinesepod users education of valuable business related vocabulary, and yet OUR NEED TO LEARN MORE lives on.

Consider that business is one of the central reason why, over the last 25 years China has developed so quickly and doing business with China will be the single most important reason that Westerners want to learn Chinese over the foreseeable future. 

There is still a wealth of business left to do, and I'm afraid this series only scratches the surface. 只是蜻蜓点水而已.

I feel like those who had a hand in the creation of this series and the final episode were just plain getting tired of all the boring business terms and jargon and wanted to get onto something more entertaining, so why not kill of boring old Peter, which was in essence, killing off the the boring old business series.

Hey, I'm all for having fun, I love my entertainment way more than the next guy, but we need to balance things a with a little bit of practicality here.

My suggestion is to start a new series, one that will be ongoing.  One that won't end when a C-pod staff member leaves the company, or when someone decides that business related curriculum is stuffy and humdrum.  How about creating a new character and following his excursion into China, erecting his own company?

We can follow him from his first phone calls to the Chinese provincial officials inquiring about land and permits, to his plane ride over to survey many locations in China to his interaction with the locals, to dinners with locals as well as the officials who will give him the green light for his project. 

We can be there with him when he flirts with some cute Chinese girls and exchanges phone numbers. We can be a fly on the wall of the restaurant while he wines and dines some of his OTHER important prospects.

We will be a distinguished guest as he presents his plans to the local provincial officials, even when they reject his plans, and ask for everything to be redrafted.

We can see him through his process of renegotiation's in his quest to make his dreams of China fortunes a realty.

We can see him finally break ground in his new venture, and be there as new employees are hired, trained and supervised in their new positions. 

We can be filling our cups from the water cooler when the unruly ones in the company flit around, trash-talking their employer's lack of understanding how business gets done in China.  We can listen in to these gossip-mongers as they whisper back and forth about fellow employees.

We can see the bad seeds finally flushed out and new-hires, bright eyed and full of enthusiasm, determined to work their way up the Corporate ladder to a high position in this foreign-owned but fast-growing firm are hired, promoted and become successful executives.

We can feel the same growing pains as our beloved expat as the company begins to expand, but meets with many trials and challenges, and see how this stranger in a strange land problem-solves to keep his company on the right track, all the while greatly deepening his (and simultaneously our) knowledge of the business and culture of China and the Chinese people.

This series really could go on forever, giving us ample opportunities to learn a great variety of vocabulary and cultural insights, while all the while being anchored in the world of business.

Let me know what you think C-pod.

I have to say this lesson helped pull me through a bad day at the office. haha.  Especially since a co-worker and I were pitching an idea to the boss about a Pirates vs. Ninjas online multiplayer game recently. (Denied of course... wouldn't want to have a good game come from this company for once...*read with a great deal of spite*)

I also thought it was good to know that "teaching someone a lesson" could be so directly phrased...

Anyway, thanks for the laugh!

I tend to be philosophical about Peter's ninjastic demise. Afterall, he had suffered cruelly from chronic tone inflamation, which would have proven fatal sooner or later (sooner if I was 李經理 and had easy access to  ball-peen hammers).

倒是我认为Peter很有潜力, 可惜他很早去世了.

doezeedoats

I have to totally agree with you about Peter's chronic tone problems, not to mention pronunciation problems, when he said, 我才不怕你 the 才 was forth tone, and spoken very 不标准的. Consequently when I first heard it, I swear he said something else...a VERY bad word...

Yeah, I've heard that VERY bad word too.

I wonder how many of the people who are picking on Peter's occasional tone mistakes actually speak anywhere near as well as he did; he was certainly much better than Ken. (I hope that saying this doesn't get me the 忍着 customer service ;-) I, for one, can still learn a lot from him. In fact, he was sort of a role model for me. So I identified with him, and his fate feels almost as if it happened to me. 

I also found it disturbing at a level beyond the story (which aeflow brought up in a humorous way): One thing I really enjoy about CPod is that I normally feel it's fun for everyone involved. Apparently, Peter's speaker got fired abruptly, which pops my bubble.

I agree with huibert and xiaohu, and I would like to see a similar series at the intermediate level.