User Comments - frosty1

Posted on: Letting go with 放

pearltowerpete says
3 days ago:

He also notes that there is a saying in Chinese that "if you hold in a fart, you'll damage your heart. If you insist on farting when you don't need to, you'll give yourself a workout."

Chinese has all kinds of interesting, earthy phrases. In our sterilized, euphemized, censored world, they come as a blast of fresh air.

No pun intended, I presume.

Posted on: Dog Meat and Animal Rights

Actually, (dare I admit it?), I have eaten dog -- I must be the only one in this bunch -- it happened back when I was in Guangzhou roughly 20 yrs ago. Everyone told me it is good in the winter and a real treat to eat. I was ready to try anything back then, and thought why not -- give it a try.

They served it kind of like hot pot style with a dark, heavy sauce. Frankly, it wasn't all that special -- tasted like meat in a sauce that pretty much masked any original taste it might have had.

My ethical attitude is that you are killing something for food whatever you eat. Be it animal or vegetable. Just because the rutabaga doesn't have a mouth to scream with, doesn't mean it isn't getting slaughtered by the reaper and (supposedly) doesn't know the difference anyway.

We  get upset about animals because we think plants don't mind getting slaughtered -- an assumption that may very well be spurious -- plus the feeling that animals are more like us than plants so we have reasons to identify with their pain.

The way I see it, though, is that we are in a biological contract -- we kill other living things to survive -- taking the life of a plant or taking the life of an animal, in the final analysis we are still taking a life -- can't be helped -- must be done. But, then, after we are dead, we reenter the equation at the low end of the food chain, so we pay back for what we have taken. That's life.

Posted on: Recovering a Cell Phone Number

alexyze,

In my experience 多小 gets used instead of 什么 when the answer involves numbers.

Posted on: Considering a Credit Card

Credit card use has gotten really big over the last 10 years or so here in Taiwan. Before that, it was not surprising to see transactions being paid for with huge wads of bills. Sometimes you would see people walking out of banks with huge envelopes stuffed with cash. We used to joke about little old grandmothers walking down the street with shopping bags stuffed with 1000NT notes (though we never actually saw any).

The way people over here tend to use their credit cards, though, is to pay off the entire accumulated debt with each statement so they never have to pay any interest. They use it more like a (non-prepaid) cash card than what we would think of as a credit card. Having learned the habit from my wife, I use mine that way, too.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team

I've always used 隊長 for team leader or team captain (of a sports team).

Posted on: A Visit by the Police

Since this is my first post, I don't want to give too negative an impression of my ChinesePod experience -- in general I am quite pleased with what I have found here. These are some issues that I'm having problems with, however:

1. Very often I am not able to connect to your download server -- this is an off and on kind of thing -- sometimes this can happen several times in the same day.

2. The pdf file link on the ChinesePod lesson page is only for simplified characters. An additional link for a traditional pdf file would be nice. I know the tradional pdf comes via the RSS feed, but it would be more convenient if it could be downloaded from the lesson page, as well.

3. Also about traditional characters -- when you mouse over in the dialog and the characters display, the tradtional characters are too small to see clearly. Making them as large as the simplified ones would be helpful.

4. Finally, in the Exercises section, most of the simplified and traditional characters don't display. Only the pinyin shows up for the complete entry.

Apart from these technical problems, I have really enjoyed the helpful, interesting and practical choice of lessons you have put out, and the lively delivery, as well.

Keep the good content coming!

frosty1