User Comments - wotingyu

Posted on: Introducing Oneself to the Neighbors

I think it means, if this were a typical cultural situation, then this would be the cookie-cutter (or cake shaper) polite lexical formula that you would encounter/use (e.g. repetition of verbs).

But hey I know what you mean

Posted on: Phone Call from a Headhunter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_%28Saturday_Night_Live%29

Actually this lesson is extremely timely for me. I was just browsing the CPOD glossary for "marketing". Could be changing positions within my company to one more focused on marketing.

Posted on: Phone Call from a Headhunter

It's Pat

Posted on: Getting Married in China

I wrote Kenny and Jen...weird. I also forgot to mention that my friend and I wore suits and ties and everyone there was dressed very casually with the exception of the happy couple. This led to one of the guys in the groom's party to keep telling us to "relax". I felt a little awkward because I thought maybe we would be upstaging the groom by dressing as formally as him. We were told many times before the wedding by our friend that its "just like a western wedding" which certainly was not the case.

Posted on: Getting Married in China

The lesson is titled "Whatever" and includes some fine singing from Kenny and Jen.

Last line is 你到底想干什么？which is why they play the song clip.

Actually I am just remembering this lesson includes one of my favorite Jenny comments. Ken says "electric shadow" (literal translation of dian ying or movie) sounds like a rock band name and Jenny offers that it could be a "gene simmons contemporary".

I forgot to mention the morning of the wedding day there were some games we got to witness in the hotel. The groom was outside of the bride's room and had to pass a series of tests before he could go in. We gave him a tongue twister to say (She sells seashells down by the seashore) and there were a bunch of other things where he had to make a series of promises, describe how beautiful the bride was and other stuff that was over my head. Eventually he was let in. Then all of us sat on the beds in there...smoking Chungwas (didn't really want to, but thought I should be polite), eating some weird mixed nut type dish with the bride's parents. Keep in mind I really didn't know any of these people aside from the one man who wasn't even there at this point. Pretty surreal.

Posted on: Getting Married in China

I attended a Chinese wedding last May in Hangzhou. It was my friend's student's wife's sister's wedding (my friend tutored an older Chinese man and we would drink with him and play monopoly).

It was nothing short of epic. It began sort of like some sort of sports arena pre-game with the lights out save one big, fast moving spotlight while the music from pirates of the carribean played. Then came star wars and finally the bride came out to amazing grace. She switched between a red dress and a white one. There was an MC making jokes and moving us through a series of events. One of which saw the bride and groom both blindfolded as the groom used a red rope/sash to locate the bride and then kissed her as they meet. The MC made me sing at one point. Luckily, some old cpod ellie lesson featured a brief audio clip of "你到底爱不爱我？“ Otherwise, I would not have known what to do. I think people were somewhat impressed. The bride and groom toasted us all with red wine, not baijiu.

Later a smaller party went to KTV. It was the bride, her sister, the groom, the groom's best man, my friend and our chinese friend. It felt pretty ridiculous that I was in the KTV with the bridge and groom on their wedding night and had just met them the day before. The whole idea of going to a KTV on the wedding night was surprising to me as I am used to the American concept of jetting off in the just married car and  等等。 I have since heard of it again from other Chinese friends so I guess it is somewhat common. I guess this has to do with the fact that the bride and groom are actuallly already married before the ceromony.

Anway, sweet blog.

Posted on: Getting Married in China

I think you are correct....it is more the exception than the rule in reality. I did see a proposal go down in a Chili's restaurant (mediocre tex-mex chain). The guy got on one knee and the woman was crying. However, they quickly lost the spotlight to a plate of steaming, sizzling hot fajitas being brought through the room.

Posted on: Dining and Dropping

Also have always wondered this...given how beer here has formaldehyde in it and baijiu is distilled by people who are unfamiliar with the concept of taste. I think you just go with 昨晚喝多了 maybe followed by 不舒服， 头很痛。。。请杀死我

Posted on: Dining and Dropping

The expansion section kind of contradicts this alleged threshhold of "zui" and lack of varying degrees with the statement "我有点醉”。

Posted on: Old China Hand

btw nans on rice as a scotch chaser...richie and charlie like it neat. Macallan if available.