User Comments - chalky858207053
chalky858207053
Posted on: Haggle For A Good Deal
May 24, 2015 at 4:04 PMAnother useful phrase I have found is 我可不认为！ Wǒ kěbù rènwéi! (I don't think so!)
Say this immediately after the first price quoted with as much astonishment and disbelief as you can muster. This lets the 老板 know straight away that you are not just looking for a cheap price but are actually well aware of just how much the item is REALLY worth.
It's worked for me a couple of times.
Of course, you can't win them all so if the 老板 won't budge you can save face by walking away throwing the same utterance over your shoulder but this time with a scornful laugh as if to say "Hey, I'm not that stupid!"
Posted on: Do I Need to Remove my Shoes
January 15, 2015 at 6:00 PMMy dear late wife (a Chinese woman - please, not "Chinawoman") never allowed people to wear outdoor shoes inside our home; even though we lived mostly in the UK.
This is common practice in China. A rule, almost. I can't remember ever wearing outdoor shoes in any family home that we visited in China.
All our UK friends knew they had to take their shoes off when visiting our home; I often used to joke with them about whether their socks were any cleaner than their shoes! No one was ever offended and some even got into the habit of bring their own indoor slippers when they visited us.
Posted on: Does This Come with a Warranty?
August 10, 2015 at 5:20 PM"I really cannot agree with this. I asked my wife, who is from mainland China, about "baogu" and she had absolutely no idea what I was on about. I do not think that all these Taiwan specific words will be understood in the Mainland. The best hope if they may guess at what is meant from context, but we don't need to be put in that position. I didn't sign up to Chinesepod to learn Taiwanese. I certainly don't want a random and unidentified sprinkling of Taiwan specific words, or any dialect specific words or phrases, interspersed amongst the rest, so never sure which dialect a word belongs to. I would like equivalent of Queens English for Chinese. This may not be what everyone actually speaks, but it will be more widely understood. As usual, there is no response from Chinesepod themselves."
Wow, I can't agree more with cmkchina
Apart from a few Taiwan-centric subscribers, my guess is that the vast majority of subscribers to ChinesePod (hey, the clue is in the name) are, like me, struggling to learn Putonghua - the language of the Chinese mainland. The Chinese language of business, politics, culture and nights-out-on-the-town.
I signed up to ChinesePod when it was based on the mainland and had the wonderful Jenny and John as the main tutors and anchormen. I signed up because I wanted to learn CHINESE. (Again, the clue is in the name). Would I have signed up to a site called ShanghainesePod? Or GuangdonghuaPod? Or Shangdong-speaktPod? NO! And I certainly wouldn't have signed up to a site called TaiwanesePod!
Why would I want to sign up to learn how to live and communicate on an increasingly insignificant island province 176 miles away in the South China Sea? The now inappropriately-named "ChinesePod.com" is going downhill rapidly. I am now looking for reasons why I should continue my subscription. Move back to the mainland. Get a grip on reality. Stop pandering to the desires of those members of your staff (Fiona?) who obviously want to live in Taiwan and don't give a 5h1t about the rest of us; and instead start pandering to the very real-world needs of your subscribers. Or risk losing more of them.