User Comments - chris
chris
Posted on: A Creepy Guy
August 7, 2012 at 7:40 AMbaba, it's a joint on the bund, been around forever and frankly is a bit passé these days. it attracts mainly tourists or expats on short stints of a year or so, generally the younger crowd. Relatively expensive by SH standards, but in line with Bund prices.
Posted on: The London Olympics
August 7, 2012 at 7:30 AMthe setting for Breaking Bad unless I'm mistaken
Posted on: The London Olympics
August 7, 2012 at 1:06 AMWatch out US and China, there's a new kid on the block! It ain't gonna be the Russians or the Aussies pushing you this time around.
Posted on: A Private Money Changer
August 7, 2012 at 12:52 AMNow that's a currency that seriously tests my mental arithmetic whenever I visit!
Posted on: A Private Money Changer
August 6, 2012 at 5:54 AMBanks will always give you very unfavourable exchange rate - look at the spread on their buy and sell rates. ATMs are even worse since the maximum you can take out is RMB2000 each time and you are again hit with a very unfavourable exchange rate, and to rub salt in the wound, ATMs will also often hit you with additional fees. Consequently, if you need RMB and you can find someone with RMB but who needs your home currency (e.g. a compatriot in China, paid in RMB, but who needs home currency back home, maybe for mortgage payments) then it will be favourable for both of you if you take the average buy and sell rates of the banks and split it in half. RMB20,000 sounds like a lot but people often carry around much more than that in cash in China - I anecdotally know of someone that bought a flat in BJ with cash, two suitcase of it (my client was in the property developer's office at the time). If you have your monthly rent to pay, it can take a very long time to take it out one withdrawal at a time from an ATM and the savings you can make on the buy/sell exchange rate can be quite substantial if you're talking about a largish amount.
Posted on: A Private Money Changer
August 6, 2012 at 2:11 AMI've not listened to the lesson yet, but my reading of the PDF is that it is a foreigner that is changing the money, i.e. from their home currency to RMB. It certainly can be a hassle and queues, at least in the local big 4 banks, can be horrendous and slow. If you're working in China but paid in your home currency, it can be a real hassle.
Posted on: Petty Chicken Idioms
August 5, 2012 at 12:17 PMHi team, good QW. Just a quick follow up on a technical matter - is the new PDF format here to stay now or are you still working on the initial glitch that caused it? There were some posts on this about 2-3 weeks back. Not a huge deal either way, but for the record my preference was the old style.
Posted on: Noisy Eater
August 5, 2012 at 7:14 AMLesson transcript being worked on here:-
http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/13008
As ever, feel free to come along and participate or watch from the side lines.
Posted on: Noisy Eater
August 5, 2012 at 5:11 AMJohn's following comment is so spot-on:-
"Yeah, you see that’s the kind of thing that would be hard to come up with as a native speaker of English".
This is absolutely the thing I am most struggling with right at the moment. I know the necessary Chinese grammar, I know the necessary vocabulary, but in the heat of the linguistic conversational moment my mouth reverts back to some bastardised form of Chinglish that, whilst understood by my interlocutor, is nowhere near as elegant or natural as it could be.
Any insights from more advanced poddies as to how to get over this particular wall - other than substitution drills which just drive me insane.
Posted on: The London Olympics
August 7, 2012 at 7:44 AMI try not to watch too much telly myself, but will try to catch the more critically acclaimed series. Breaking Bad was one such show and I can confirm it was a cracking program.