User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: You First
February 12, 2009 at 6:01 AMHi bababardwan
One of my dictionaries (published in 1992) gives you an answer. "先生" is mainly used when you address a man, especially a foreign man, in modern Chinese, just like 王先生，你好 (hello, Mr. Wang) or 克林顿先生，中国欢迎您？ (Mr. Clinton, welcome to China), or 先生！ (Mister!)
As you know, native guys usually use "老" or "小", like 老王 (lao3 wang2) or 小李 (xiao3 li3), when they address their Chinese friends or collegues, however it's not so natural to use 老/小 for foreign names since they are usually two-character or three-character names.
For example, 老 + 铃木 （a Japanese family name）= 老铃木 （lao3 ling2 mu4） sounds unnatural or a bit weird. On the other hand, 铃木先生 is "not so bad". I guess this is one of the reasons Chinese people use 先生 mainly for foreign people. Of course, 先生 carries a respectful connotation.
Incidentally, my Chinese friends don't call me 先生。 They just call my family name. The word 先生 is a bit too formal to use among close friends.
Lastly, 先生 is also used when referring to a husband, like 你先生最近怎么样？(How is your husband doing?) or 我家先生出差去了。 (My husband is out of town on business)
Posted on: Drinking Alone Under the Moon 月下独酌
February 12, 2009 at 1:07 AMHi sevire
Tang poetry commonly employs 五言 (five characters) and 七言 (seven characters) styles. And their structures are 〇〇/〇〇〇 (花间/一壶酒) and 〇〇/〇〇/〇〇〇 (离别/家乡/岁月多) respectively, probably because you can recite them rhythmically with these patterns.
There are other styles such as 四言，六言，and a mixed stye in classical poetry, which are mainly seen in ancient poems that are older than Tang poems. For example, the poems in 诗经, edited more thant two thousand years ago, are basically written in 四言 style.
Posted on: Simple Electrical Stuff
February 11, 2009 at 1:48 PMThey say there are seven types of sockets used in China, and three types are relatively commonly used now. Why are there so many types of sockets in China?
There is a long history behind that. When China was invaded by powerful countries in the past, those invaders brought in their countries' sockets to China.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 11, 2009 at 1:30 PM"Japanese nationalism rearing its ugly head"
Haha, I just wish what BBS worries about were true! Japanese "nationalism" is just nothing compared to those in China and North/South Korea. Honestly, my biggest concern is peace-addicted Japanese people.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 11, 2009 at 12:33 PMHi zhenlijiang,
In the latest BBC survey, 41% Japanese people have positive views of Japan, and the percentage has incresed by 5 percent from the previous year. In contrast, nagative views have decreased by 4 percent this year. It seems that Japanese people have finally begun to "normalize", although Japan is still the only country in the survey that its self-evaluation is less favorable than third-party countries'. I don't think highly of this kind of "modesty".
When I read the report for the first time, I had an impression that Japan is at least "harmless", good or bad. In other words, being "a good boy" just means that Japan doesn't have a presence or enough (or heavy-handed) diplomacy, or doesn't speak loudly, in the international arena. I sometimes think that Japan might also need to associate with some "evil" countries to secure supplies of natural resources at the expense of reputations. Just a joke.
Incidentally, this year Australian people's positive views towards Japan have slightly dropped from 70% to 65%, which might be in part due to the whaling issue. Actually it's a rather provocative issue (at least for western guys), but there is no need to worry about that. Of course, I myself have no intention of stopping eating whale. As everybody knows, fight against terrorist groups, Sea Shepherd included, is of great importance in the 21st century, haha.
Posted on: Illegal taxis
February 11, 2009 at 12:05 PMHi bababardwan
You can also say 打车 (da3 che1, take a taxi), just like 我们打车去吧！(Let's go by taxi)
Posted on: Health Check
February 11, 2009 at 9:27 AMHi pete
Is that your translation policy for the vocab section? Do you really think the logic you explained can justify the inconsistency between a dialogue and a vocab section? I'd like to recommend you just show two translations "item" and "project". Is this too much for intermediate learners? I don't think so.
Posted on: Drinking Alone Under the Moon 月下独酌
February 11, 2009 at 5:38 AMHi pete
As you said, the character "青" once had another form "靑", probably more than two thousand years ago. The bottom of 靑 was actually very similar to the shape of 丹 in those days. Why does 靑 (blue) have 丹 (cinnabar) in it?
There are several different etymologies of 青. Some say the bottom part is 丹 (and even say 丹 was also a kind of blue color in ancient times), and others say it's not 丹, but 丼 (井 = a water well), which connotes clear blue water.
My favorite one is that the very original meaning of 青 is not "blue", but "clear, limpid, serene", and this is the reason that 青 is used as a part of characters such as 静，晴，精，靖. Anyway, there seems to be no accepted etymology of 青.
Posted on: Drinking Alone Under the Moon 月下独酌
February 11, 2009 at 2:57 AMHi laodie
汉 (漢) is an etymologically very intriguing Chinese character. It consists of 三点水 (氵) and a phonetic part 菫 (qin2/jin3), and the former means "river, water" and the latter "dried up". 菫 is the original character of 熯 (han4, dried-up).
In short, structurally speaking, 汉(漢) means "dried-up river", and therefore some scholars say the very original meaning of 汉 is "the Milky Way", which is a river that has no water. Personally I like this etymology best.
On the one hand, in ancient China, 汉 primarily indicated 汉江, the largest tributary of Yangtze river (长江), which is the reason that modern dictionaries of classical Chinese show the definition "汉江" first in their explanations of 汉.
The name of Han dynasties (西汉/东汉) is originated in 汉江, since the river was a cradle of the ancient dynasty. And this is also the reason the Chinese language is called "汉语", Chinese characters "汉字", and the largest Chinese ethnic group "汉族".
Anyway, the character "汉" is closely-linked to a river, regardless of whether it's celestial or worldly. For the record, the characters "河" and "江" exclusively indicated "黄河" and "长江" respectively in ancient times.
Posted on: 学术抄袭
February 12, 2009 at 6:44 AM抄袭 is prevailing on the Internet in Chinese. I often come across the same texts in many question-and-answer websites. In short, they are all originated in one answer uploaded in a famous site such as 百度百科. It's easy and pragmatic, but I don't like that.
Another "official" 抄袭 are seen in Chinese newspaper. A lot of news sites run the same story and the title word for word, which were allowed to report by the censorship authorities. Please take a look at the following Google page. It's just hilarious.
Don't forget to click on the links to the second and third pages.
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&q=%E6%B8%A9%E5%AE%B6%E5%AE%9D%E5%9C%A8%E5%89%91%E6%A1%A5%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6%E5%8F%91%E8%A1%A8%E6%B7%B1%E6%83%85%E6%BC%94%E8%AE%B2&start=0&sa=N