User Comments - Grambers
Grambers
Posted on: Adopting a Chinese Child
November 24, 2011 at 1:49 PMSorry - this relates to an expansion question rather than anything from the diaolgue itself (which raises a question: 我想知道，衰退会不会减少领养申请率?)
Posted on: Adopting a Chinese Child
November 24, 2011 at 1:45 PMCan I ask the different uses of 衰退 vs. 不景气. Is the former more formal, and the latter more conversational. In English, the word 'recession' probably began life as a fairly formal, dry, economic term, but - certainly in the last three years - has seeped into pretty common usage.
Posted on: Shopping for the Husband
November 24, 2011 at 1:21 PMSeconded. The explanations of 嘛 and 啊 were really interesting, and very helpful.
Posted on: Shopping for the Husband
November 24, 2011 at 1:18 PM普通朋友的话，你包个五百块意思一下就行了
!?! I don't wanna get all 'class conscious' on yo ass, but Britain's FT newspaper was today reporting that the average factory worker's wage in Guangdong (China's richest province still) was 1,500 RMB per month. Perhaps I am 太小气 but I probably would consider a third of a month's wages a bit more than a 小意思, no?
Posted on: Shopping for the Husband
November 24, 2011 at 1:06 PMCan I propose a parallel sentence for the expansion:
上海女人嘛，美丽优雅性感，就是买菜做饭什么都不会。
What's that I can hear? Uh-oh....INCOMING!
Posted on: Adopting a Chinese Child
November 24, 2011 at 12:10 PMCan remember my first day ever in China - January 2002 - wandering around Shamian Dao in Guangzhou, and being quite perplexed by the legion of soon-to-be adoptees (adopters?). Anyone know if that is still a locus for US families seeking their permission papers?
Posted on: Shopping for the Husband
November 24, 2011 at 11:34 AMI have heard no better argument against Chinese exceptionalism that the shopping list of items deemed suitable for the average man in this dialogue: tie, belt, wallat, jeans (and the odd electrical item). This basically provides an exhaustive description of every present I have received since turning 21.
We are all the same. One World, One Dream.
Anyone know the best Mandarin translation for 'Chinese exceptionalism'?
Posted on: How to Eat a Hairy Crab
November 24, 2011 at 9:39 AMYou don't. I fully, totally and completely understand:)
Posted on: Teaching Japanese Go
November 22, 2011 at 3:19 PMI see. The 专一 did make me think the sentence was about single-mindedness, or focus. In which case, "easily infatuated" seems like an inappropriate choice of English translation. The connections firing in my brain suggest a man who is 'easily infatuated' to be one who falls in love with one love object after another. 'Loyal' would surely be a better word for a man who dedicates himself to one only, right?
Posted on: Shopping for the Husband
November 25, 2011 at 11:21 AMMornin'/Afternoon/Evening Bodawei,
I was only half joking. My main point - refuting the relentless attempts by the CCP and its minions to define China as exceptional (ie. as a way of insisting that the laws which apply to the Barbarian nations beyond the border do not hold sway in China because China has a Heaven-stamped manifestdestiny and exists on a different plane) - stands. The 'exceptionalism' doctrine seems to me to be a condition of national politics in China (and the US, for that matter) and has been used for millennia by the nation's leaders for expressly politically purposes. Problems arise when denizens of those nations are actually start actually believing this nonsense, as many clearly do. We ARE all the same. Cultures are different, and cultures are powerful, but, as any geneologist will tell you, we are only fractionally different from chimpanzees at a fundamental, systemic level. The idea that homosapiens from China and, say, Panama, are cut from completely different cloth is completely and utterly wrong. We are, basically, the same. We really are.