User Comments - macdurian

Posted on: Thinking of my Brothers by Moonlight -- 月夜忆舍兄

June 03, 2009, 05:15 PM

Brilliant! This is an excellent help. 感谢！！

Posted on: Thinking of my Brothers by Moonlight -- 月夜忆舍兄

May 31, 2009, 03:05 AM

Hi, Pete!

I really enjoy your poetic selections and 'break-downs'. Keep it up! It would be a great help if you would include the HanZi/PinYin/English in the podcast versions - as the other Chinesepod podcasts do.

Cheers!

-aleksei

Posted on: Scams and Bus Culture

January 28, 2008, 08:37 PM

hehe! One of my colleagues fell for this scam in the winter of 2006 at some tea-place in the Forbidden City (紫禁城 - Zǐjinchéng). In this version, the 'innocent' student-couple who invited him to have tea and then did not have the money to pay the exorbitant cheque followed him to his hotel - so he could pay them somthing like 200 USD!! I admit to not following the logic of that as well and I suspect that more than tea may have been drunk... I have been to China and traveled on my own several times per year (all with the help of ChinesePod podcasts!!!) and have never yet had any problem. In fact, the problem is usually my initial & 'New York' suspicious attitude of friendly (Chinese) overtures. The oddest one I experienced was when a English teacher approached me to ask me to help his student (also with him) practice for an examination by asking some 20 English questions written on a piece of paper. I was instantly suspicious, but relaxed when I was not ushered off the street and helped the student. I spent about 30 minutes talking with them both and the student's English was pretty good, but poor on speaking-practice, just as his teacher had indicated. Nothing else untoward occurred and perhaps I had bollixed some attempt at a scam? Has this also happened to anyone with any ill-effect? Overwhelmingly, though, ANYwhere I go in china there are all-day, free language lessons! People everywhere are so delighted to speak with me (in my rather poor mandarin)!! The least I can do is return the generous favour by permitting some folks to practice their English or other non-Mandarin languages.