User Comments - bodawei
bodawei
Posted on: Addressing Women
July 14, 2012 at 11:44 AM'What should I call strangers who are around my age or a bit younger?'
If they are perfect strangers they are probably doing something for you? If so what you call them is determined by what they are doing.
BTW you should be honoured that they are calling you 姐姐 .. you are approaching the age at which people will start calling you 阿姨! :)
Posted on: Addressing Women
July 14, 2012 at 7:33 AMHey Mike, I think that, to be fair, they explicitly refer to 女士 as a term for women above 25. This is my term of choice for most women I speak to - it is still widely used, and practical. It is respectful and you don't need to know whether or not they are married.
PS. I also feel a bit of the ageism at times but on this occasion they are definitely in the clear. :)
Posted on: Learning about Levels
July 10, 2012 at 9:33 PMWei Xiaoyan 你不是一名学生，对吧？你是一个中国人，母语的人,所以这个问题是无关紧要的.
Posted on: Handling Rambunctious Children
July 7, 2012 at 6:58 PMYoh Tal, you're back! I'm late to the celebration. Good to see you again. The main change in my situation is that I've moved to Sichuan - still (I think) in the region of what RJ likes to refer to as bizzaro China.
Posted on: Chinese Rock Music
July 4, 2012 at 3:27 PMLast night I listened to this BST and, immediately after, I listened to a recent This American Life podcast called 'Americans in China'. The first of two parts told the story of Kaiser Guo, including interesting material about his involvement as lead singer of 唐朝 Táng Cháo (Tang Dynasty).
Nice coincidence, and supplementary material for those wanting more on rock music in China. One for the oldies perhaps, given this was a 90s band. Kaiser Guo split with the band in 1999 and the circumstances are crucial to his story.
He is now the public face of Baidu ... that story is interesting as well.
If anybody wants to follow up the This American Life google it, or Chicago Public Radio. The podcast is a good listen - lively interviews and stories with a number of old-timers.
Footnotes to the CPR podcast:- (1) They all but say outright that Kaiser Guo took rock music to China - they certainly give that impression, saying before Kaiser Guo you could only listen to traditional Chinese music - nonesense and careless journalism, but I'll forgive them because I love This American Life; (2) the story told by a journalist continues a myth about the impact of Google's withdraw from China. I'll say it again: Using the servers in Hong Kong makes absolutely no difference to residents of China - the same censorship applies inside China, regardless of which servers they use.
Posted on: Asking About Prices
July 3, 2012 at 2:27 PMThe Big Mac Index is pretty famous - it has been published by The Economist for about 25 years. I wish I had an index named after me: the Bodawei Index. I just have to dream up what it would measure .. the real welfare gap between residents of Kunming and Shanghai?
The Big Mac Index could be seen as naive in the wrong hands (mine for example.) I think that it has a fair bit of credibility amongst policy makers, and in the economics profession of course - it has got people thinking about how exchange rates work. On price comparisons alone it looks like the Big Mac in the US is double the price of a Big Mac in China. But if you look at the wages that must be earned to buy one the ranking is reversed - Japan and the US have the cheapest Big Macs in the world. Because of low wages, it is actually quite a high priced item in China. The latter is probably a better measure. So .. we can conclude that Americans have a really high standard of living because Big Macs are so cheap. They are so 'cheap' (perhaps 'affordable' is a better word) because you can earn enough by working for 10 - 12 minutes to buy one. This idea of 'affordable' might be surprising; they are affordable because your general wages are much higher than in China. It is surprising because MacDonalds workers are paid low wages - so they are not so affordable for MacDonalds workers.
Posted on: Asking About Prices
June 30, 2012 at 8:34 PMAah - that price got you in. I was just checking the price of a Big Mac and a preferred measurement (average person's time spent working to earn enough money to buy a Big Mac) hands the 1st prize to the US - the cheapest Big Mac in the world. Well, after Tokyo. It's way more expensive in China using this measure.
Posted on: Using Excel
June 29, 2012 at 9:27 PMHi he2xu4
Google Pinyin IME (谷歌拼音输入法; Pinyin: Gǔgē Pīnyīn Shūrùfǎ) is an input method developed by Google China Labs. The tool was made publicly available on April 4, 2007.
Until you asked this I could not be sure what method I am using - I have been through a few of them. I think that they are all pretty good these days. I'm using the Microsoft one now it seems.
Posted on: Asking About Prices
June 29, 2012 at 8:32 PMSteven
You'e hit the nail on the head. If you have paid for a service it is not usual to say 'thank you'. If you do there are no big problems but the person will invariably say 不用谢 bú yòng xiè (no need to thank me.)
In circumstances where someone does you a favour or helps you in some way (including where you are dealing with someone who is selling you something) it is fine to say 'thank you', and Chinese people do thank each other in these circumstances.
Posted on: Addressing Women
July 14, 2012 at 2:21 PM'how perfect can a stranger be?'
Ha ha - good one, I was thinking of a mathematical answer to that, but then I saw that I was trumped by hiewhongliang's answer. Yeah, some strangers are just perfect. The less you know about them the better. :)