User Comments - bendidelaowai

Posted on: The Dragonfly Experience

This one was impressive:) I was just mapping Dragon Fly locations on a map for a magazine:)) How about leaving the mentioned vocabulary on the discussion board for our newbies and elementary learners?

thanks, this time it was interesting! Keep going! 

Posted on: 年轻人的生育观

哇！！！我们CPod所有的女老师发言了！ （不是所有的，还差几个！）。

我的教育和想法蛮传统的 - 如果是结婚就要生孩子。 不一定已结婚就生，但是只有孩子才是完整的家庭。

两个人的世界？ 那不是像当于两个和尚的协会？有点无聊了。 第二个，你死亡以后你所创作的事转给谁？没有孩子就只可以给税金局。。。

Posted on: Introducing Catherine

Welcome, Cathrine!

:)  Great to see you here:)

Posted on: Dinner with Friends

@bodawei.

Welcome to butt in. 

Okay. slowly about your thoughts, pretty cool ones I have to say.

To the readers - I am reporting facts. Please, do not get offended dear Chinese friends. Unfortunately the state of eateries is as is. You can flip your local newspapers to find some reports. some of these facts were reported by Your Government. i really hope that this will improve and wish you so. 

a) I lived for three years in a small community on the outskirts of Hangzhou city, where except elderly people nobody cooked, and people literally called the restaurants 3 times a day to get it delivered. They didn't earn a lot by Chinese standards. The most Chinese I meet are not able cook. And these people are the future of this nation.

b) Doubt about restaurants. 

I am spoiled with home cooking, home baking, home food preserving, making jams and other sweets, pickled goods and even including making own noodles. Yes, I learned all that at home from parents and extended family. Including farming own vegetables supply. That might main reason of my doubts in restaurants. My cousins have a bar and a restaurant - I know the backdoor side too, I won't elaborate, you might not go to a bar ever again. 

To foreign chains (as you mentioned):

- Food in most of the lower and middle range restaurant is pre-made (might be frozen and then warmed up before it gets on your table). in the East and in the West. Have you ever seen "Pizza Hut"/McDonalds/KFC delivery? check out. Often the food is not fresh. When subway chain opened in Hangzhou the left over bread was not used on the next day - now it is (I live near a Subway restaurant).

- Please google out "E. coli outbreaks" - I am not going to eat a pre-made hamburger anymore after reading the information. Neither in the East, nor in the West. 

To local restaurants:

- Through a long experience of living in China and seeing backdoors of the restaurants - I often am concerned. Yes, the products are fresh, but...the way they're handled especially at tiny venues is scary. Tiny venues don't have kitchen space, vegetables are washed outside.The same is to very popular Lanzhou/Xinjiang restaurants. Killing and cleaning the poultry on a sidewalk of busy road is a little bit too much for me. These things are forbidden by both Polish and Russian sanitation standards.  

- Melamine scandal and recent scandal in Russia (summer 2009). Chinese were farming in Russia using pesticides which were forbidden even in the times of Soviet Union!!!  And the products were absolutely unsafe.  

- Food from the eateries in Hangzhou if put in a fridge lasts 1 day. Home made food put in a fridge lasts up to 7 days. Real home-made preserved foods can last years (using only salt/sugar/vinegar as the preserving component and pasteurization process).

- There is no clear food labeling. I do not know if the item is genetically engineered or not. I meet organic labels, but not all of them seem to be real (tried out on egg brands, some organic ones, weren't tasting like eggs, again my granny lives in a Russian village, so I got to taste real food).

This does concern me. I do eat out sometimes, because I have to - but I really try to get fully boiled items. I was once very sick from food eaten in a restaurant in China and that's my other reason to be careful.

I love Chinese food - but home made. I just am not a frequent eater-out.

About so-called village markets. If it is in the middle of Sichuan - I feel safe. the farmers won't even have money to buy the killing pesticides. But! I lived on the edge of city and the village. People will use every scratch of land to farm, no matter if in the nearby flowing creek there was a floating stain of motor oil. I saw that on my own eyes.

That's why I doubt. 

c) To extend the question to Jenny:

How would we ask in Chinese:

- Where is your hygiene certificate?

- Do you have organic grown food?

- Is the food pre-frozen? 

Posted on: Finding a Seat at the Movies

@ matt_c

I had an open-air cinema in one of the communities I lived for a while! Fun, if the weather is warm:) But the movies were just ok.

Posted on: Finding a Seat at the Movies

I have never went to a cinema in China. Maybe it's time?　Ｉ　have　a question...are the movies shown in the movie theaters real copyrighted copies?

Posted on: A Phone Call to the Moving Company

@Bill and @sinophilia

Thanks a lot for pointing the things out. As English issue sprang up before too, I want to add my 2 cents. I know that Chinese are trying to learn every single existing American English idiom and use at any time. After a year of learning on CPod my American English idiom and slang vocabulary list extended enormously. But, I am not a native speaker and I was taught British English first. A few times I couldn't understand lesson introductions - there were too many idioms in them! I agree - since Pete left it's a little bit worse, especially for a non-native speaker. You can say, it's my problem if my English is too poor, but I have some experience in international translations between 4 to 6 languages. And, honestly I learned that in foreign language and in your native you should use standard vocabulary. It can be advanced, but slang, honestly is very hard to understand. 

Anyway, dear CPod teachers - don't take this personally, but please consider it. Translation is an art with the main purpose to deliver the meaning of one sentence to the other language - clearly! And translation is hard.

Posted on: Executive Plan, Newbie Changes, and More

Thank you for the referral program! Feels good.

Posted on: Dinner with Friends

@jennyzhu

I know that Chinesｅ people can live not cooking at all. Either by eating out or calling 外卖 （wai mai） 3 times a day. I know, that some of my classmates don't even know how to make a cup of tea (yes, that's what they say, real quotation from 3 people). At home in Poland or Russia we barely go out to eat, it's expensive and not popular at all. Home made food is the best！ How do you feel about the fact that cooking skills disappear in China？ And aren't you afraid of the food quality? I doubt most of the restaurants, including foreign chains.

Posted on: 郎咸平谈中美股市

终于！ 这个多媒体课程非常好！ 有挑战性。 我还得研究研究它，但是听了以后我的感觉是这次很值得听。

对股票来说我觉得最多可以用自己收入的百分之十投资到股票。我的感觉是投资股票有比较大的风险。