User Comments - amygao

Posted on: Getting Off the Metro

Strangely, I have found women in general to be more obstinate than men in "holding their ground" refusing to yield for a person wishing to depart, mandating that they move in order for you to be able to depart.

Posted on: Juiced!

Out of respect for others who may come to within a half-a-mile of you, I think Durian should be outlawed. I have never had the misfortune of smelling anything so foul in my life. :-)

Tom (my wife's U/N-Amy)

Posted on: Why are You Studying Chinese?

My wife is Chinese, Shanghainese to be more exact, and I spent 14 months there in China between 2005 and 2006, and just got back to America from another one month trip a couple of days ago.

The problems we are having with my Mandarin studies are two-fold. One, my wife wants to improve her English so we speak English almost exclusively in our communications. Secondly, in our visits to China, being that her family is in Shanghai, that is where we spend the majority of our time while there, and good luck in trying to communicate in Mandarin on the streets in Shanghai. In our family gatherings, although still on the basic learning level of Mandarin, being that my comprehension of Mandarin is vastly superior to that of Shanghainese, I ask the family to PLEASE speak in Mandarin as to give me a better chance of understanding. This usually lasts for between a minute or two at the most before they all slip back into their more comfortable native tongue. For those that are still unfamiliar with just how much different the dialects are from each other, many consider them different languages, not dialects. Shanghainese sounds absolutely nothing at all like Mandarin.

You want to study Mandarin while visiting China? My suggestion would be to spend most of your time in Beijing, not Shanghai or Guangzhou. :-)