User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hangzhou
February 16, 2009 at 12:11 AMHi bababardwan
Here is a Wiki article on Jingjing and Chacha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingjing_and_Chacha
Posted on: Interesting or Boring?
February 15, 2009 at 11:57 PMHi xemrac
他很无聊。He is boring.
他是一个很无聊的人。He is a boring person.
他觉得很无聊。He is bored.
他觉得自己是一个很无聊的人。He thinks he's a boring person.
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hangzhou
February 15, 2009 at 12:42 PMHi bababardwan
How did you come across the official mascots of Chinese Internet Police? Initially I thought it was a bad joke when I saw those uncool characters for the first time a few years ago.
Posted on: Simple Electrical Stuff
February 15, 2009 at 9:19 AMHi chiefmadapple
You can use the 白 (in vain, for nothing) in combination with a lot of verbs, of course, including 看 and 听 as you expected. You can even say 白死 (die for nothing), haha. I sometimes hear local people say 白来了, 白去一趟 and 白瞎了 (bai2 xia1, just wasted! 浪费了). Maybe 白瞎 is a dialect word.
Please be noted that 白 is also used in the sense of "free of charge, for no pay", which usually connotes a bit negatively, just like corrupt officials often 白吃 and 白喝. The phrase 白给 is also often used in everyday conversaion, and in this case it seems that the 白 can have both connotations "for nothing" and "free of charge".
Posted on: Interesting or Boring?
February 15, 2009 at 7:31 AMHi suxiaoya
Dictionary-wise, 有意思 doesn't carry a sarcastic connotation, but in fact you can use the word sarcastically (or a bit reproachingly) in a given context or situation, like 你这个人真有意思！(unreasonable, strange, weird, etc.), at least in northeast China (东北).
Posted on: Illegal taxis
February 15, 2009 at 2:38 AMHi pete and ruyide
I suppose this grammatical mistake has been mainly caused by the increased use of PC in the past decade. It's possible that you mistakenly type 的 instead of 地, since both have the same pinyins, di and de.
Fortunately for 得, this character doesn't have the sound "di", which I think is a reason why 得 still manages to keep its ground. That said, you can find a lot of mistyped phrases, such as 跑的快/学的快, on the Internet.
Foreign learners have no reason to follow this 约定俗成, at least if they have a plan to take the HSK exam, haha. I personally think 的/地 distinction is important (and not difficult to understand) even for elementary learners.
P/S. I even suspect that 你说的好 is also originally a mistype of 你说得好. Yeah, I know they are grammatically different from each other. The former is 你说的（话）好 and the latter is 你说得好, however maybe natives usually don't care about such trivial things.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 14, 2009 at 12:37 PMHi zhenlijiang
Don't worry. Your remark didn't hurt my feeling at all. On the contrary, in a sense, that line was kind of "praise" for me, which I enjoyed and appreciated very much. I'm not kidding. 我向毛主席保证！
As for your question, the topic I hate most is Japanese anime. So please refrain from posting any comment related to, for instance, Astroboy, Speed Racer, Yamato, Gundam, Sailor Moon and Haruhi.....hehe.
Joking aside, I usually don't join discussions about hardware/software. To tell you the truth, I still don't even know what RSS is and how it works. I only know that modern technologies seem to be much more advanced than I think.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 13, 2009 at 1:18 PMHi zhenlijiang
I basically welcome any kind of topic (digression included), unless it's nasty or too difficult for me to follow/understand. And, I myself believe (or feel?) that I always try to be politically "correct", at least, based on my own moral standards, haha.
By the way, I should have used the word "patriotism" in my previous post, instead of "nationalism". I think that a lack of patriotism is as dangerous as excessive one. Patriotism deficiency ends up being indifference to both positive and negative histories of your country.
More importantly, such apathy would consequently produce a lot of "peace-addicted" guys who don't know much about neighbouring countries, including both their sufferings in the past and political propagandas, exaggerations, and security threats of today.
"Blissfull igonorance" doesn't come cheap.
Posted on: You First
February 13, 2009 at 12:13 PMHi bababardwan
先生 carries a respectful connotation.
Yeah, and this is the reason 先生 is used to address a waiter, as calkins explained, which I think is a more polite way than just shouting out "服务员！".That said, I feel that calling a waiter "先生" at a small shabby eatery might sound a bit out of place.
As you expected, the word 先生 literally (and originally) means "first born", which naturally indicated your seniors (长辈). And this word was also used when referring to "a teacher" or "intelligentsia" in the past, but not so often nowadays.
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hangzhou
February 16, 2009 at 1:58 AMHi zhenlijiang
I enjoyed a wonderful Chinese tea ceremony here in China a few years ago. Japanese tea ceremony (茶道, sado) is kind of a "spiritual" art (and rather costly), but Chinese one is a lot more entertaining! Here is a video of 中国茶道, where foreign guys are enjoying a tea ceremony with a nice Chinese female performer who explains a tea manner in English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxXgY50FPy8