Laowai Chinese 老外中文Since this is my first year working in business in China, I was introduced to a new tradition this week. Everyone (well, almost everyone) came back to work on Monday after being home with family for the Spring Festival holiday. I was told by the CFO that we need to do 开门利事 kāi mén lì […]
I was greatly encouraged to read in the news this morning that some Chinese reporter made the ol’ 2-syllable-mix-up mistake that’s been my Achilles heel these past 10+ years of speaking Mandarin. I get bizarre looks when I ask a store clerk if they sell any “honeybees” (mì fēng 蜜蜂) when I really mean “honey” (fēng mì 蜂蜜), but […]
(Now that my coughing fit has stopped after blowing the dust off this blog, I think I’m ready to write something.) After 10 years of teaching English at universities in China, I have made a career change (gǎiháng le 改行了) and jumped into the exciting world of business! This is the introduction to a new […]
(I… can’t… quite… remember how to use my blog… Oh yes. It’s coming back to me now. I type here, right?) I saw this fun article “The world’s languages, in 7 maps and charts” from the Washington Post today and wanted to mention it. Notice where Chinese shows up in each graphic, for example: It was also fun […]
It appears that every 7 years or so (that often?!), I update my blog’s appearance. This new layout, while feeling a bit… umm… “thick” to me, actually works much better for mobile devices so all my readers with smart phones (aka me and my mom) can enjoy all the non-stop action of this blog while […]
Yesterday a friend showed me Waygo, an app that uses your camera to read hanzi off menus in restaurants, etc. (By the way, that feature is called an OCR = Optical Character Recognizer.) What impressed was that it’s free! Here’s the catch: you get “10 daily translations” with an optional paid upgrade to “unlimited translations for […]
As I mentioned before, on July 17 Yangyang and I did a live broadcast answering viewers’ questions about learning Chinese. We had a GREAT time (and I hope the viewers did too). Just so you know how the technology works: viewers type in their questions, and then other viewers can vote for the questions they like […]
Yesternight, I was on the bus and saw this fairly typical sign: I’ve taken this same bus lots of times, but never really paid attention to this sign. I found I could read every character except the one I’ve circled in blue. I also couldn’t use my usual trick of guessing from the context (because this […]
I’m currently back in the USA for a short trip and Yangyang from Yoyo Chinese has invited me to do a live Google Hangout with her tomorrow. I’ve never done this before, but from what I understand she and I will sit in front of the camera and anyone who “tunes in” (how THAT works, I […]
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