User Comments - brianhz

Posted on: What does she look like?

with regard to how someone or something looks, in this lesson we have 她长得怎么样。Can you also say 他看起来怎么样 or is 看起来 never used to ask or describe how people look?

Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi

Hangzhou has shift change from 4 to 5 pm. They stop to ask where you are going and if you are going in the same direction as they go to their base they will take you. Otherwise 打不到车。

Don't forget this if you come to Hangzhou and want to get somewhere like the train station by 5pm.

打车 takes on a literal meaning here. You need to sprint to the taxi and slap your hand on the roof to claim it before someone else does.

Posted on: A Stroll through the Hutongs

Jenny, MTGG has a good question. Should it be 怎么没打电话给我"Zénme méi dǎdiànhuà gěi wǒ“ or can 不 be used in this case even though it is refering to a past occurrance?

Posted on: Wrong Way on the Subway

bodawei is correct. SH metro line one goes through 上海火车站 and 上海南火车站。 Not long after I got here I was getting the train from SH to Hangzhou and got out of the metro at SH站 only to be told I needed to be at SH南站. Back into the metro and counting the minutes as I rode the approx 10 stations to south station I was thinking I wasn't going to make it. Getting out of the metro and finding the platform in the south staion would not have been possible in the 5 minutes I had remaining without some help from a couple of SH people who could speak a bit of English. It was the last train of the day so I was lucky to make it. Always know which station you need to be at.

Posted on: Adjusting the Temperature

I have one more on my air con

左右扫风 zuǒ yòu sǎo fēng left right sweeping wind

Posted on: Going on a Picnic

chinese don't drink much wine. wine (wine that is not chinese and you can acually drink) is expensive an most people only drink beer or 白酒 baijiu with food. In Hangzhou there are some nice parks where you can sit on the grass and people have picnics but most people will still sit inside a restaurant and eat....with beer not wine

Posted on: Smelly Cheese

The only Chinese cheese i have had was in Langmusi in Gansu. It was dried crumbled stuff and had to be soaked in hot water before eating. After a few soakings it was still quite chewy but I had bought it from a local guy so was going to eat it. It didn't have much taste and the taste that it did have wasn't very good. I couldn't eat it all. I had a bottle of not so good Chinese wine to go with it.

i buy australian and new zealand cheese at carrefour in Hangzhou. It's the only good tasty cheese i can get. No soft cheeses here though. I get good parmesan brought here by people coming to visit.

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

I and some other Australians I know have a vitamin D deficiency after living in China a couple of years. In summer in Hangzhou it is too hot to go out in the sun even if I wanted to and at other times of the year the sun is not very bright most of the time. I think vitamin D deficiency must be common for Chinese people but don't know for sure.

i heard recently that if you put mushrooms in the sum for half an hour before eating them they soak up a lot of vitamin D. I havn't tried it yet.

Posted on: Beards Are for Old Men

um. The 了is quite clear to me. i got a couple of chinese people at work to listen and they got 脏 zāng straight away and said it sometimes sound like zao. Just part of the challenge of listening to spoken chinese i guess.

Posted on: Beards Are for Old Men

in the expansion sentence

你的房间太脏了。it sounds to me more like 你的房间太糟了。 am i just not hearing it correctly or is it something like that being said?