User Comments - barryb
barryb
Posted on: Dubai
June 11, 2009, 10:27 AMShenyajin, please, please be careful. Please read this:
It claims Dubai is a microcosm of the world, with all its gross injustices. Bliss if you're on the right side of the divide, hell if you're not.
(I've never been to Dubai, so I don't know how accurate this is. But it's worth some thought.)
Posted on: The Perfect Sandwich
December 15, 2008, 02:07 AMHere's a report from the Arizona Spam-carving contest. (There have been others.) Of course, the winner was "Spamalot" - a castle complete with drawbridge.
Seems to me a much better use for 午餐肉 than eating it.
BTW this was held in 1997, long before the Broadway Spamalot musical.
Posted on: 世界经济危机
December 10, 2008, 01:12 AMIn his first interview since the world financial crisis, Gao Xiqing, the man who oversees $200 billion of China’s $2 trillion in dollar holdings, explains why he’s betting against the dollar, praises American pragmatism, and wonders about enormous Wall Street paychecks. And he has a friendly piece of advice:“Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money.”
Link to fascinating interview with Gao Xiqing
"I have great admiration of American people. Creative, hard-working, trusting, and freedom-loving. But you have to have someone to tell you the truth. And then, start realizing it. And if you do it, just like what you did in the Second World War, then you’ll be great again!"
Americans, please read. This is as nice as it gets.
(I've thought hard about posting this link on Chinesepod. I'll understand if moderators remove it. It has nothing to do with language, but I think it highlights a huge cultural rift.)
Posted on: Farm Animals
September 24, 2008, 11:11 AMGreat, now I can be even more childish in Chinese!
Other tone mnemonics: 鸡-ji1-chicken flying high up in the sky; 猪-zhu1-pig "pigs might fly", too; 牛-niu2-cows and 羊-yang2-sheep have 2 horns that stick up a bit like tone2s.
I love going into the hills and watching a shepherd with a team of dogs round up hundreds of sheep from a vast mountainside. Very skilful. Dogs are certainly farm animals. There was a even a prim(e)-time British TV show, "One Man and His Dog", featuring time-trials between shepherds getting all the sheep into a pen. We know how to have fun in the UK.
Posted on: Cosmetic Surgery and Mooncakes
September 21, 2008, 12:06 PMThanks for the article on mooncake futures, Tvan. Perhaps mooncakes will replace the USDollar as the world's reserve currency.
Posted on: F1 in China
September 20, 2008, 12:03 AMAmerican, or not, I want to see racing cars driving upside-down!
(See Auntie68's post, above.)
Should be possible - build a track with a camber that gets steeper and steeper then carries on turning through 180 degrees (then turns another 180, hopefully, otherwise it wastes cars and drivers).
What's Chinese for upside-down? (Sorry, I can't find it in zhongwen.com...)
Posted on: Street Food Buffet
September 19, 2008, 11:16 PMI've found some nice words that use the 凉 - liang2 in 凉皮 - liang2pi2 - cold noodles:
凉菜 - liang2cai4 - salad
凉鞋 - liang2xie2 - sandals ("cold shoes" - I love that!)
Are those words common?
(And the phonetic part of liang2 seems to be the 京 - jing1 in 北京 - bei3jing1.)
Posted on: Street Food Buffet
September 19, 2008, 10:40 PMGreat! With the music and the editing and the street-life and the people, you make these clips fun to watch again and again.
1) 麻花 - ma2hua1 - dough-twist is interesting - literally hemp flower? Is there a slight resemblance? Same 麻 ma2 as 麻烦 - ma2fan2 - trouble (with hemp?!).
2) 锅贴 - guo1tie1 - pot-sticker is new to me. Zhongwen.com translates it as fried-dumpling. "Pot-sticker" seems to be a literal translation from Chinese. Is that what you call them in N America? I like the character 锅 - guo1 - pot, pan: the metal radical plus a little man being boiled alive in a big pot.
3) I'm a bit confused about 饼 - bing3. The Transcript lists 饼 - bing3 as pancake. Zhongwen.com says 饼 - bing3 is "biscuit". - is this U.S. "cookie"? (BTW, in UK: cookie - softer, loose-textured, larger; biscuit - sweet, harder, very brittle, usually smaller.)
I know biscuit as 饼干 - bing3gan1 (that's what Chinese friends call them when telling their kids they can't have another).
Posted on: Dubai
June 14, 2009, 03:03 PMThanks for the gas_prices link, Bababardwan (the Bloop one's interesting, too).
Pornopulent.
It must be really hard work living like that. I'm tired just looking at that vast palace. Like reading the telephone directory.
And the rest of the money?
"The United Arab Emirates is the developing world’s leading arms buyer from 1996-2003, with purchases totalling $15.7 billion. China comes second with purchases of $13.7 billion." (My italics.)
With just 5m people, the UAE has about 0.4% of China's population.
Source: http://news.indiamart.com/news-analysis/uae-no-1-arms-purcha-7291.html