User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Visiting a Friend at the Hospital
November 5, 2009 at 7:43 AMHi matt
You can use “祝福/祝愿” instead of "祝", but the latter is more commonly used in conversation.
Posted on: Visiting a Friend at the Hospital
November 5, 2009 at 7:01 AM祝你早日康复出院！ (I wish/hope ～)
祝 is used for something (hopefully) happens in the future
祝贺你康复出院！(Congratulations on ～)
祝贺 is used for something already happened.
Posted on: Visiting a Friend at the Hospital
November 5, 2009 at 6:34 AM我家楼下女主人亲姐姐的丈夫的弟弟前天开车的时候被火车被撞了，听说正在在生死线上徘徊。加油！
Posted on: Which Time Zone?
November 5, 2009 at 6:13 AMHi redguard
Please just google "pinyin converter".You'll find a lot of pinyin tools available on the net.
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/converter-pinyin-unicode.html
Posted on: City Stats
November 5, 2009 at 3:20 AMHonestly, I also just learned the word "卧城" today. Judging from lujiaojie's comment, looks like it's not so commonly used in China.
百度百科 "卧城"
http://baike.baidu.com/view/554649.html?fromTaglist
Posted on: City Stats
November 4, 2009 at 11:07 PMDormitory town/bedroom town 卧城 (wo4 cheng2)
College town 学城，大学城
Posted on: Which Time Zone?
November 4, 2009 at 11:51 AMHi liac_counselor
When I was in elementary school, China had summer time.
It's just surprising. The people in western China had to get up very early, when the sky is still very dark.
P/S. DST was first instituted in the RPC in 1986 and ended in 1991.
Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!
November 4, 2009 at 6:44 AMHi stevemisch
Just hilarious, but I can't laugh because there're also tons of "funny English" used in my country, Japan, hehe. We Asian lerners of English are very good at finding an unexpected usage (for you native guys) of an English word in a dictionary. One of my English/Japanese dictionaries says, "flatus; 放屁 (break wind), 肠内气体 (gas in the intestine)，and 一阵风 (a gust of wind)". I guess the guy who wrote the warning has a large dictionary.
Posted on: Which Time Zone?
November 4, 2009 at 3:33 AMSurprisingly, the PRC, such a large country, only has one time zone (时区, shi2qu1), which is the largest spanning time zone in the world. That said, in reality, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (新疆维吾尔自治区), the most western province in the PRC, has their own time zone mainly used by ethnic minorities, and it's two hours behind Bejing standrad time. Public offices and Han people usually use Beijing time.
Posted on: Visiting a Friend at the Hospital
November 5, 2009 at 11:35 AMHo bodawei
Using a formal word/phrase doesn't automatically mean the whole conversation is formal, especially the phrase is a kind of fixed-phrase/greeting.
I think the degree of formality should be as follows,
一路平安！
祝你一路平安！
祝福你一路平安！
As is often the case, the shorter phrases are, the less formal (and easier to say) they are, and consequently more commonly used in conversation.