这个课程好棒，好用！

我还有一个跟“热”有关的问题。前几天我和我朋友吃饭。汤出来的时候我尝了尝，然后我告诉我朋友：“小心！汤很热！”

我知道我说错了，应该说“汤很烫”。那么为什么是

“热菜”而不是“烫菜”呢？还有“热水”，是吧？

Japanese Una-don is a little expensive for lunch, but it's very popular in Japan.

"特色菜"是一个地方或者一家饭店很有特色的菜。别的地方或者别的饭店可能没有，也可能是他们有很特别的做法。eg, 北京烤鸭当然是北京的特色菜。

"烫"是强调温度很高，让人有不舒服的感觉。手或者舌头碰到会很痛。所以经常会说 :"汤很烫。水很烫。喝的时候要小心。"

"热菜"，"热水"不会给人不舒服的感觉。

Thanks for letting me know. I have had the Una-don a few times and it is quite a treat.

I've never heard of him before today.

Yeah, exactly! Eating eel can make you "strong", hehe.

I'm curious about why Cpod is repeating much, if not all of the "The Jealous Friend", "Do you have a menu", "Ordering a Wine" and "Ordering a Steak" lessons in this particular lesson. There isn't anything really new in this lesson that hasn't already been repeated multiple times.

but seriously: i guess, because it is important to rehear vocab in different contexts. Just be happy if you can understand that lesson then and pick another.

maybe I should rephrase my question/comment to cpod to:

1. there are no new sentence patterns in this lesson that haven't already been taught with the others.

2. There is little to no new food or ordering vocabulary in the lesson that hasn't already been discussed in the other lessons.

3. how many more food lessons are in the queue if 100 food lessons aren't enough,

4. Can we have more focus onlessons on daily sights, activities or events like, construction cranes, sewer systems and other things that we see around big cities, that haven't already been discussed, or discussed seldomly?

5. If the argument for "reinforcing what we have already learned" is a valid one, then the other, less well attended topics deserve "reinforcement" as well. We need another at least 50 lessons around life in the village, another 50 lessons around construction, another 50 around suburban sprawl and related issues, and so on with other topics.

I tend to talk about other things beside food, and see other things around me here in Beijing (like 10 construction cranes in my neighborhood alone), so i'd like some lessons to describe them. The annoying thing was that I had a conversation last night at a networking dinner, and a dude from New York was noticing how different Beijing was from New York. He pointed out the constant construction around Beijing as a major difference, while New York is pretty much done.

Actually, we should have a McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks, QuanJuDe, KFC, Pepsi (not Coke!), Diet Pepsi, diet drinks in general, every mom-and-pop restaurant if necessary, if we're talking about spending time in places more often than a village. Now that I think about it, i've spent more time sleeping through my entire life than I have spent in a small Chinese village. But cpod has had 5 years to talk about these places and doesn't seem interested in giving us that content. But I suppose a language curriculum should not just be about things you spend time directly doing, shouldn't it?

I was really happy to have spent time in a village getting to know a family and their lives in a rural part of Gansu Province. It certainly does make me aware of the advantages of living in a big city. It also reinforced why I didn't like farming. It would be nice for the Cpod subscribers interested in spending time in rural places off the beaten path to hear more lessons around rural life.

Food - the essence of chinese culture ^_^ *just kidding*

We do plan what to talk about, but not every detail, and we certainly never script our conversations. That way the conversations really are natural.

I certainly agree about repetition, but if you're interested in repetition, then at least listenening to "Do you have a Menu", "Choosing a Wine", and "Ordering a Steak" 200 times each, instead of 100, should give plenty of repetition. Plus, you have the benefit of hearing them now, instead of waiting a few weeks for Cpod to create a lesson with the same content. Plus, with those three lessons, you get more variety in sentence patterns and words/phrases than you do with this single "Ordering Food for the Group".

But, isn't learning about acquiring new knowledge? and learning to use/master new content in different ways and in different contexts? Isn't learning also about creating brand new things that haven't already been created or addressed? Or filling in the gaps where existing knowledge doesn't go far enough?

Also, food and everything that comes with it is a very important (if not the most important) thing in China, so I believe you can't repeat enough vocabulary for that.

That's why I put up the lesson titles; so that people could be aware that they could get more information in other lessons if they're really interested in learning about food. Plus, there's a search function on this website as well. I would hope users knew they could use the search function to look for "food".

Further, I guess I would take issue with your statement anyway. My niece has food allergies, and I'm sure she would use the search function to see if there are lessons about this (there are). What about someone who's a vegan, or other people with different eating requirements?

Gee, i've heard the "repetition is good" argument multiple times. Is there anything else?

http://baike.baidu.com/view/80165.htm

还有就是，我想问一下，怎么你们都用英语交流啊，你们都是英语母语使用者？

In the grand scheme of things, I guess I didn't really expect a reply from Cpod. But remember, just because you like food lessons, doesn't mean that the content provided in this one isn't repetitive of other food lessons, or that Cpod could work harder to provide food content they haven't already provided.

While this dialog may share some key vocabulary with other food lessons (i.e. 点菜／来菜单) I don't know this can always be avoided! I can also assure you that the team tries its best to make sure old content is not repeated, and one of the key elements in dialog writing is presenting real life language in new and interesting contexts (while maintaining our emphasis on high frequency words and phrases).

As for the topics you mentioned above, we have the following lessons available on:

vegetarianism/veganism (Dear Amber has an interesting thread on being vegan in China):

Finding Vegetarian Food

Vegetarian Eating

And allergies: Allergies

Thanks, as always, for your input!

1)why does Cpod have more than 128 lessons on food when there are other reasonably high frequency topics that only have a few or no lessons. I've suggested a few, and apparently they didn't make the cut into becoming lessons as they were suggested months ago.

2 from your statement regarding the cultural and linquistic issues brought up in this lesson, are you saying that these same issues have never been brought up in other lessons,food or otherwise?

I can understand how you would feel frustrated if you think we're not listening to your suggestions, but I can assure you that we are. I looked back at the lesson suggestions post and noticed that the following lessons that you requested have already been published:

"manly arts" (cars): 4S Dealership, Buying Gas

Plumbing: Leaky Pipes and Faucets

Cheese and dairy products: Smelly Cheese

Comparing types of Opera: 中国戏剧

Fire: Fire in the Hallway

Procrastination: The Lazy Child

In addition we have a lesson coming out in late September about life in the countryside and the harvest. We generally publish lessons 2 weeks to 1 month before they come out, so new suggestions go to the end of a long queue. For this reason it might sometimes feel like we're not using your (and all of our other poddies' ideas) but we are. And one of the reasons we tend to talk about food a lot is because people ask us about food a lot! We recently went over all of our old lessons and realized we had never done one on mooncakes, so even though this will put us at 129 lessons about food, I (and the rest of the staff here) think it is important to cover this part of Chinese culture.

As for the second question you posed above, I simply meant that ordering food for other people (usually a large group of people) is something that people often find themselves having to do very often in China (and for a lot of foreigners, this is a new concept). While this has been mentioned in other food lessons before, we have never done a lesson that focused on this issue specifically (the sentence structures, the phrases and the social pressure surrounding it).

Not that i'm expecting much insight into how Cpod decides which topics merit lessons, but I suppose out of the many suggestions that I and others have made, it would be helpful to know. Clarity around lesson topic selection would certainly provide the cpod lesson suggestion community with a better idea of what to suggest for a lesson. Certainly I can understand if certain topics have sensitivities around them for various reasons, but some topics have no or few lessons around them at all.