User Comments - timlb

Posted on: Renting an Apartment through an Agent

calicartel has made the crucial point IMO: contemporary China is enacting regulations but implementation is spotty, hopefully it will get better. There are still too many places where a little money placed in the right hands gets you around regulations.

Posted on: Renting an Apartment through an Agent

I can't speak to non-smoking apartments, but in general I've been impressed by how many fewer smokers there are now compared to the 80s when I first went to China; pretty much every adult male smoked there and you couldn't go to a restaurant without sitting next to a smoker. Nowadays, though you will find many more smokers than in the US (for example), I've gone out to eat many times and not had a smoker in sight (or "in smell").

Posted on: Don't push me!

enthus, this is a very useful construction; think of it as meaning "a lot" or "a whole lot." Where I am living it's currently 103 degrees Fahrenheit, 热死了。 And I find it very annoying, 烦死了。Also, if in English we'd say "to death" you can use 死了, like "scared me to death" 吓死我了。And when I wrote that, I first wrote the wrong "xia" and wrote 虾 instead, which would mean something had "shrimped me to death" which made me laugh really hard, 笑死我了。

Posted on: How was your flight?

For me there is an obvious question hanging over this: what would two lovers talk about that's different from this dialogue? Maybe leave out the "thank you" -- that's understandable; but wouldn't a boyfriend also want to know about the experience of the trip and the flight back?

Posted on: Chinese Liquor

The tapping of the two fingers on the table for "thanks" -- how many times does one tap?

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

Can you give some more examples of when to use 配 and when to use something else like 复制？For example, if I have a CD of photos at a party I made myself (is that 配？）and want to make copies to give to friends, is that 配 or  复制 or something different? And how about if I go to a recording studio and record a CD there (is that 配？）and then send the Master CD off to a professional company who sends me 300 back to sell on the internet, is that 配 or  复制 or something different? I think in English in the first instance I'd say I "copied" or "made copies" of my photo CD to send to friends; in the second instance I'd say I sent the master somewhere "to make CDs", I probably wouldn't say "copy".

Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet

Clever use of the "little trumpet's" name 小郝 (Xiao Hao), as another term for trumpet is 小号 (also xiao hao). Lots of good food terms in here!

Posted on: Chinese Ethnic Minorities

Here is a link to an American folk group playing with a Mongolian duo, at about 3.00 there is a cool Mongolian folksong that morphs into the American tune "Wayfaring Stranger" (with a banjo improv by Bela Fleck over the Mongolian tune along the way).

Some won't be able to view this, sorry, but I think it worth posting anyway...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvgJ9Hg7T4Q

When you hear the duo by itself, you get closer to the real sound of Mongolian folk music, as compared to the recordings with Chinese orchestra you so often hear.

Posted on: Strong

Thanks so much for this lesson; I think the hardest parts of a foreign language are just these kinds, where my native language uses one term and the foreign one uses many.

Posted on: Manly Men and Womanly Women

Yes, please answer this for me too, I don't think it was clear in the lesson where the line is about male chauvinism, which I would assume is a negative thing, versus macho male, which isn't necessarily chauvinistic. Inquiring minds want to know...