User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Introducing Kids to Each Other

Actually it is mentioned in the lesson that 知道 in this context means something like 'OK, got it'. Taxi drivers often say this after you give them directions - when I first did this and heard 知道 I thought 'is this guy trying to be smart? He obviously doesn't KNOW where I live'. This is how I learnt the other meaning of 知道.

Posted on: Shopping in China

I think I have finally made an impact on ChinesePod scriptwiriters. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I heard the phrase.. 'well, in Shanghai, I'm not sure about the rest of China' or words to that effect, four times in this edition of BST.  And on the one cultural behaviour that is truly national, shopping. tsk,tsk. 

Posted on: Shopping in China

Research says you are absolutely right - if you're interested in fashion you have, in reality, rather less choice than you imagine. Every season a few influential people in the industry (style, fabric, colour) decide what the world is going to wear. Of course you can choose 'no fashion'; maybe Baba puts himself in that category? :)

Some other studies show that we actually do not want to be too different - nor do we want to be exactly the same as everyone else. On average we want to be like about 68% of everyone else (okay, I made that figure up but an expensive peer reviewed study will prove that I am about right.) If we are exactly like everyone else we lose our identity, and if we are totally different we find it hard to make friends. Only very few people want to be totally different.

Posted on: Switching Seats on a Plane

If you check out that QW - the funniest thing is the post from a Chinese guy who says that he never understood the difference between 能 and 会 until listening to the podcast.

There are several verbs with overlapping or close meanings, 能，会， 可以，行 - only repeated use will sort them out for good. 能，会 are well differentiated in the QW, the former some innate ability the latter something you learn. Although I use 能 or in this case 不能吃 for saying that I can't eat something that I'm allergic to (I rationalise this along the lines of 'if I eat this I might die'.) 行 is the clearest case of 'permission' I think, in the sense of breaking or complying with a rule, a law of physics, even a moral or ethical rule. 可以 has also a sense of permission but where I live it is used much more broadly; it kind of signals agreement. (That's another thing; there are regional differences in how these verbs are used, particularly 可以.)

Posted on: Rowing a Boat

I just googled and apparently there are things called Oriental Magpies near where I live - have to keep an eye out.

Thanks for 渡船 - they look like they should have a much more romantic name than 'ferry'. And ferry usually implies a route between A and B - maybe this is an anachronism. These boats were no doubt used as ferries as some stage in the past.

Posted on: Detective Li 1: The Bath House Murder

Hi Baba

I saw this as a flaw myself but I have made new resolutions not to be so picky. :) There are a couple of other things that don't quite add up - we almost need a mud-map, and perhaps photos.

I have frequented a few bathhouses in China and I have never seen one that is self-serve. But you might recall some considerable debate here in the past about different bathhouses - we could not even agree on what to call them. So someone will put us straight and point to Shanghai establishments that allow sundry small business people and their non-gendered assistants to float around as if it was their own private domain. All I can say is that it is un-Chinese not to have at least several workers sitting around collecting money, cleaning the floors, checking the boilers, etc. Maybe they are all sitting next door having a late breakfast together, or catching a quick game of cards in the quiet time of the day (Chinese people prefer to wash in the early evening), aware that the obsessively clean but otherwise regular customers like 小老板 can be trusted to do their ablutions alone.

Posted on: 为 and 为了

个 is correct; 栋 is a classifier for apartment buildings each of which may have about 五十个房子. Each 小区 will have several apartment buildings, sometimes many. I visited an address recently at 八十三栋。。天啊！

Posted on: Rowing a Boat

'exact same species'

I doubt it; our magpies have an Australian accent.

Posted on: Rowing a Boat

My encyclopaedia says (in part) 民间传说听见它叫将有喜事来临，所以叫喜鹊。 (In folklore it is said that magpies appear around weddings, hence the name 喜鹊.) [Presumably a reference to the 喜.]

I have never seen a magpie in China (but that's not saying much); there are plenty of crows. I would like some magpies to occupy our gum tree forest out the back, for old times sake. I'll go out on a limb and say that there are definitely no kookaburras here, except maybe any that have been brought in illegally as 'pets', along with sulphur crested cockatoos, galahs, etc.

Posted on: Rowing a Boat

You & google images may well be right. I don't recall them being differently shaped, but certainly some are painted. Actually, I have been out in one similar to the one in your photo on 滇池 (in south-west China), with a guy propelling it along with a pole, but I cannot recall a special term here, just 船。