User Comments - changbiyuan

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changbiyuan

Posted on: What Would You Say You Do Here?
July 28, 2009, 03:22 PM

Thanks, changye. Interesting pronunciation history tidbit too.

I meant to comment as well that the "lyrics" for this lesson are missing the pinyin, in case anyone is reading who would care to correct that.

Posted on: Broken, Busted, and Smashed
July 24, 2009, 03:31 PM

谢谢Connie! I think I honestly wrote the extra 是 by accident! (When I was practicing the line out loud before writing, it wasn't there.) Thanks for catching and correcting it.

Posted on: What Would You Say You Do Here?
July 24, 2009, 03:28 PM

还可以说“你是大夫吗?”吗?Can I use 大夫(dài fu) instead of 医生 when talking about a person's profession? Are there some subtle (or other) differences?

Posted on: Hot and Cool 热, 烫 , 凉 , 冷
July 22, 2009, 04:56 PM

I recall the coke chicken wings being pretty tasty when a friend brought them over once.

Pete, about the diarrhea from cold drinks, I've heard this stated in the inverse sense, i.e. that 热水对肚子好.My theory (relating to what you said about being careful with ice cubes) is that since tap water is typically unclean, it's generally safer to drink things that have been heated: some Chinese have just made this association at a more fundamental level, perhaps.

Posted on: Broken, Busted, and Smashed
July 22, 2009, 04:48 PM

最近我的太阳镜坏了,可是镜片没碎.是框是断了!(Not sure if I used the right word for "frame" there—biān kuàng.)

So is 破 the right word for shoes that are getting ratty? 我的鞋破了,水总是进去.(That second half is probably all manner of wrong.)

Posted on: Dog Meat and Animal Rights
April 09, 2009, 05:49 AM

bababardwan, what parallel have I managed to give away? The low sex drive? The poor eating? Or the adorability? I'll leave it to the reader to decide how many are true.

"Eats, Shoots & Leaves" is a great (really!) book I have on punctuation.

davidkaneda, yeah, they seem to put a lot of weight on feedback, which is hardly something to criticize, in general, but can go a bit overboard, I suppose when it becomes a matter of the "loudest voice". (For fear of being accused again of trying to have that loudest, or at least "longest" voice, I shall leave my two cents at this!)

Posted on: Dog Meat and Animal Rights
April 08, 2009, 04:41 PM

Thanks for the thoughts, bababardwan!

I know it's a tangent (and one that I started), but:

I agree the Panda has a lot of appeal because of the cuddly cuteness factor,but more to the point I believe it is an endangered species due to habitat loss.

No doubt habitat loss is a factor but from the little I know it really seems the panda is doing its best to resist survival. I mean, fertile for four days a year? Only eating something as nutritionally useless as bamboo (and only 10-30 of the 1200 species of it)? Come on now!

Posted on: Dog Meat and Animal Rights
April 08, 2009, 02:28 PM

I've no friends to lose here so I may as well voice my +1 to the views such as davidkaneda's and jackie234's.

Unless you're vegan or hunt for yourself everything you eat, you have no leg to stand on to criticize any meat industry, dog or otherwise.

Furthermore on the dog bias, this is akin to the phenomenon of putting effort toward "saving" certain animals because they're cute (pandas) or places because they're romanticized (Tibet) when there are far more worthy causes in the world.

Most of all, as a latecomer to this lesson, I'm dismayed to see that the picture and intro of this lesson were apparently modified from all this ridiculous pressure. rjberki is right about the censorship and lack of integrity this indicates.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Inner Mongolia
February 28, 2009, 02:04 AM

马奶酒 in English is "kumis." A friend of mine brought over a bottle of it once when I lived in Hohhot:

 

马奶酒

It wasn't anything special but it definitely beat 白酒!

Posted on: Swimming Pools and the Beijing Accent
January 30, 2009, 06:15 PM

Quite so. And they wanted to charge about fifty kuai to buy one. I think the lines repeated that day were 他没有头发! and 你们疯了!