User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Interesting Architecture

I don't like to see anyone ignored.. :)

This is one of those things that foreign men in suits and other China experts get very excited about. And Chinese bureaucrats fiddle with the levers to try and keep things cool. There are of course white elephants, and investment brought forward by the financial stimulus, and investments that will go bad because someone over-extended themselves, but the truth is more complicated than most people who want to sell a story let on. I work in one of the two Chinese cities bandied around the Internet （呈贡县）as famously vacant. So if the bubble starts to deflate it may happen right here first - I will let you know immediately. In the meantime, new skyscrapers seem to appear on a weekly basis, and the first metro line to the vacant city is set to open in eight months time. Which will certainly make getting to work more comfortable.

Posted on: Understanding China's Geography

See http://chinesepod.com/lessons/%E5%B0%91%E6%95%B0%E6%B0%91%E6%97%8F.

Posted on: Get Down to Business, Fancy Drinks, and Monkey Kings

Linkedin has lots of people who aren't very busy, like me. :) Or so busy, they have personal assistants who put them on Linkedin. They haven't actually been on Linkedin themselves. 

It's a good target group for ChinesePod; the people there should have lots of time to devote to learning Chinese. 

Posted on: Understanding China's Geography

Another aside to this question of cities and how they are run: The 'mayor' mentioned above is generally one rank below the Party Secretary; this is where the real power lies. Kunming* was recently gifted a Party Secretary from the east and he was sent here to straighten the locals out. He has really shaken the place up. This idea of bringing in outsiders to improve management is not uncommon in China.

*Kunming is listed as the 16th largest city in China (around 6.5 million people, 2009) and has the 7th busiest airport.

Posted on: Understanding China's Geography

Great program - as for cinnamonfern this topic is near and dear to me. Love it. For those of us in China it helps us better understand the world we live in.

Looking forward to Episode 2. 

Here's a suggestion: you could focus on Yunnan, a province with such an interesting physical and human geography.  I am a frequent complainer that 'the rest' of China is forgotten by ChinesePod - here's an opportunity to shut me up.  :)  

Posted on: Understanding China's Geography

Big cities in China are generally 地级市 dìjí shì ('prefecture-level' cities). They differ from what we might be used to in the West in that they have their boundaries drawn to include a large hinterland. In my discussion below about Kunming, Kunming includes another city Anning within it's boundaries; Anning is too small to qualify as a prefecture level city.

From Wikipaedia:

Administrative chiefs (mayors) of prefecture-level cities generally have the same rank as a division chief (simplified Chinese: 司长) of a national ministry. Since the 1980s, most former prefectures have been renamed into prefecture-level cities. A prefecture-level city is not a "city" in the usual sense of the term (i.e. a large continuous urban settlement), but instead an administrative unit comprising, typically, a main central urban area (a city in the usual sense, usually with the same name as the prefecture-level city), and its much larger surrounding rural area containing many smaller cities, towns and villages. The larger prefecture-level cities can be over 100 km across in size. Prefecture-level cities nearly always contain multiple counties, county-level cities, and other such sub-divisions. This results from the fact that the formerly predominant prefectures, which prefecture-level cities have mostly replaced, were themselves large administrative units containing cities, smaller towns, and rural areas. To distinguish a prefecture-level city from its actual urban area (city in the strict sense), the term 市区 shìqū ("urban area"), is used.

Posted on: Understanding China's Geography

嘿上海人，那里可能有其他星球！（哦，不好意思如果你们不明白这有什么好笑的。）

我现在住在云南省昆明市五华区。这是北方的还是南方的？两个回答都不对。

昆明有十四个管理的分区：四个城市的，十个乡村的，可是两个乡村的是城市的，这居然还很有奇怪。 昆明市有四个主要城市的分区，安宁市，呈贡县（可是呈贡是城市的环境 - 大概有时政府要换呈贡的名字）还有八个乡村的。

三个县是自治的，民族 自治的，比如石林彝族 自治县。

Posted on: Dialing a Nonlocal Phone Number

Hi chris

Tried this myself, good idea. :)

Must say you have a very good ear to pick up that 的, it is, let's say, almost not there, but I agree that it must have the 的 to make sense - 'the number, or telephone, that you called, is busy..' (could mean either).

I often have trouble with formal notices and this is no exception. I think the words are: nin hao, nin boda de dianhua zhengzai tonghua zhong, qing shaohou zai bo. (Slight re-ordering of what you have.)

Posted on: 蚁族

现在的电影叫《观音山》是关于蚁族的故事。。有些动人的情景。 

Posted on: 5000 Years of History

'I feel like China is going to become the next America, start driving SUVs'

Hi BigUniverse - don't know if you are being entirely serious but it would make interesting reading to compare the number of SUVs sold in the last 12 months in US versus China.

When did America start driving SUVs..? (I am really out of touch with cars). Is it a term that is say 10 or 12 years old? 15 years old? Surely not much more.