User Comments - sebire

Posted on: Prescription Drugs and Overseas Chinese

Haha, Auntie68, you would have thought the name would have tipped them off!

Posted on: Street Argument

Missworldtraveler, I always think 无聊 (wu2liao2) means "boring" and 有意思 (you3yi4si) means "interesting".

jonsnow, shenme is a "question word", so you don't need a "ma" to make it into a question. Shenme is used in the same was as "what" is in English.

e.g. ni3 yao4 shen2me？ (你要什么？）What do you want?

Posted on: Prescription Drugs and Overseas Chinese

Aww, Henning, that's tough for you son. Hopefully he won't be on the receiving end of much abuse. I only suffered the occasional insult, which merely highlighted the shocking grasp of geography held by some members of my class. I remember having a screaming match with some kid when I was about 6 because he was going on about Chinese Chopsticks, and I think I responded with something about "English Knives and Forks" which has to go down in history as one of the crappest combacks ever!

Posted on: Best Friends

Tsingtao is not a good beer, even if it did only cost 3 kuai (or perhaps that is why). The best one I had was the local brew in Datong.

Posted on: Prescription Drugs and Overseas Chinese

Henning, I didn't get the feeling people saw me as 华侨. Maybe I don't look particularly Chinese, but I showed a picture of my mum to some people and they got excited and were pointing at the picture and saying "华人!" at each other in shock. I think they quite liked it, but if I just told them she was Chinese and from Singapore, it's like it didn't register. Maybe my Chinese was bad or something, but it didn't seem to click until I showed them a picture. I would say in general I was treated as a 外国人. Usually people thought I was American/Spanish/Israeli, and only one person said I looked a bit South-East Asian.

The weirdest thing about going to China (and listening to DA) was just realising that I was actually more Chinese than I thought. When I go back to Singapore, it's like home-from-home, but I didn't realise to what extent the differences from British culture stemmed from actual Chinese culture rather than South-East Asian culture until I went to China. It's so hard to identify what exactly seemed so familiar or recognisable. Before, I just assumed I was a bit weird, but I think I recognise part of my inner weirdo (as seen by a Brit) as Chinese culture that has been passed down, but at a really deep, almost unconscious level. It's really quite surprising.

Posted on: The Pretty Podcast

I was talking to some people on the train in China, and I showed the a picture of my parents, and these two guys who were in their 20s said my dad was really 帅. I was surprised because he's more than twice their age and was wearing a silly hat. Is it normal for guys to talk about older men like that in China? I thought it was kind of weird.

Posted on: Prescription Drugs and Overseas Chinese

Yeah, a Western-born Chinese person will have a very different experience to an Asian-born Chinese person.

A bunch of girls asked me (in English) if I was Chinese or part-Chinese or something, and I told them that my mum was Chinese. They asked which city she was from, and I told them Singapore, and they just burst out laughing! I couldn't work out what was so hilarious. It was if it didn't count!

Posted on: At the Hair Salon

Flyboeing, I'm surprised, I didn't have any problem with the vocab, except I thought "blow-dry" was "hairdryer" until I noticed it was a verb. I already knew some of them though, so maybe that helped.

I quite like it as a tool, because I'm so disorganised when it comes to vocab, and I like the way you get lots of vocab to do with a topic, which you don't necessarily get in the podcasts.

Posted on: At the Hair Salon

Hahaha, funny. My friend had her hair cut in China and she said that during the hair-washing thing in the chair (this was down in Yangshuo, so not just a Shanghai thing) they practically scraped her scalp away - she wasn't sure if it was meant to be some kind of horror massage or not!

How do you say "I want a side fringe" and "choppy layers"? Plus do they do that chemical hair straightening thing in China, or do they not bother because everyone has straight hair?

Posted on: Chinese Birthdays and Local Hospitals

Rjberki, "bum" means "bottom" in Britain.