User Comments - johnrash
johnrash
Posted on: Aric and more Aric!
November 11, 2007 at 6:44 PMThat sould be SMZB by the way. http://myspace.com/smzb They have a song called "No Solution" that sounds a lot like some really fast early 1990's USA hardcore bands. Love it!
Posted on: Jenny and Learning 2007 conference
November 11, 2007 at 6:39 PMAs far as music is concerned, I think it can be a bit difficult to find / hear Chinese bands outside the expected pop genre if you're living in the West. However, Myspace, You Tube, and friends in China have been valuable resources for me. Myspace allows you to search music by location, so simply searching their music pages with a filter selection of China can revel some really amazing bands, who may even be off the radar of your friends living IN China. A few bands I found this way include: Lonely China Day (similar to Radiohead in some ways), SMBZ (fast punk rock from Wuhan with an amazing woman drummer), ReTROS (indie-rock with a Joy Division feel from Beijing), and Yu Fei Men (China's Portishead as far as I'm concerned). We all love Wang Fei (or at least we should), but being turned on to these underground bands who are making waves in China today is much more exciting! My question is, how do I bring my band, or my freind's bands over to China for touring? Is it possible and is there a network of organizers who can make this kind of thing possible for underground or up-and-coming bands from the west?
Posted on: Aric and more Aric!
November 11, 2007 at 6:39 PMAs far as music is concerned, I think it can be a bit difficult to find / hear Chinese bands outside the expected pop genre if you're living in the West. However, Myspace, You Tube, and friends in China have been valuable resources for me. Myspace allows you to search music by location, so simply searching their music pages with a filter selection of China can revel some really amazing bands, who may even be off the radar of your friends living IN China. A few bands I found this way include: Lonely China Day (similar to Radiohead in some ways), SMBZ (fast punk rock from Wuhan with an amazing woman drummer), ReTROS (indie-rock with a Joy Division feel from Beijing), and Yu Fei Men (China's Portishead as far as I'm concerned). We all love Wang Fei (or at least we should), but being turned on to these underground bands who are making waves in China today is much more exciting! My question is, how do I bring my band, or my freind's bands over to China for touring? Is it possible and is there a network of organizers who can make this kind of thing possible for underground or up-and-coming bands from the west?
Posted on: Li Yan's Diary: More and More
November 7, 2007 at 6:57 PMMysticpic Maybe you could start here: http://chinesepod.com/learnchinese/condoms
Posted on: Li Yan's Diary: More and More
November 7, 2007 at 6:53 PMAmber / Scotty B Isn't the 以前 unnecessary here? Is there any reason you couldn't just say 我没吃过这个东西
Posted on: Godzilla in Shanghai
September 25, 2007 at 11:35 AMA question about Chinese humor vs. western humor. Jenny mentions in the lesson that 庞大 might be used to describe an open space or some really huge location. It seems us western folk like to use exaggeration to get a laugh and might say that something is HUGE, if it really would only fall in the the "large" category. Does this form of exaggeration for the sake of humor exist in Chinese as well, or does it tend to be more literal where words like 庞大 are ONLY used for things that are truly huge, and would only sound confusing and wrong when applied to things like a person who just happens to be tall (sorry John) or a big belly.
Posted on: Cycling
September 23, 2007 at 1:40 AMKelseyjobrien You should have your husband look at the other Olympic sports lessons. They almost all follow the same formula, listing the technical terms for an individual sport (swimming strokes for example) one after another. I think seeing the format of all of these lessons as a whole might help his comprehension of this and future lessons. Also, I find that the great thing about podcast based learning is that you have the ability to listen as many times as necessary to understand not only the new vocab but also the sentences in context. One thing I would like to see is a bit more crossover in terms of reinforcement of the more complex or tricky high frequency terms from Elementary to Intermediate. Seeing the same character or phrase through different examples and situations would really help reinforce and build understanding. For example, I was having a bit of trouble fulling understanding 除了 from an elementary lesson earlier this week, however seeing it again in a Intermediate lesson a few days later might have helped drive the term into my mind just by means of exposure. Sorry, maybe this should be another thread, but your comment on what is a elementary lesson and what is not starts to open up some really interesting question and ideas....
Posted on: Cycling
September 22, 2007 at 9:09 PMKelseyjobrien Actually I would say this is a perfect lower Elementary lesson. The sentence structure is really simple, only using some very specific vocabulary. I tend to look at Elementary lessons as a place to pick up a handful of new vocab terms and the Intermediate lessons as stepping toward fluency and complex sentence structure (if not very cultural or alternative uses of terms I may have already picked up from the Newbie and Elementary levels). I'm not sure how the CPOD team approaches this divide, but I know one of my major struggles with the language at this point is making the leap from having a good deal of basic vocab in my mind and building "real chinese" sentences, if not fluent conversation.
Posted on: Cycling
September 22, 2007 at 2:26 PMBazza The Saturday lesson came through the home page for me as soon as it was released.
Posted on: Jenny and Learning 2007 conference
November 11, 2007 at 6:44 PMThat sould be SMZB by the way. http://myspace.com/smzb They have a song called "No Solution" that sounds a lot like some really fast early 1990's USA hardcore bands. Love it!