To be fair, Zhang Yimou's script for the sequel to House of Flying Daggers was simple enough: following Xiao Mei's near fatal stabbing at the climax of the first film, the beautiful dancer is nursed back to health by a handsome Chinese doctor with whom she then falls in love. Their story of romance and traditional Chinese medicine is told in flashback form by their son, who calls home at the end of the film in a touching family reunion.

That said, it went without saying that the entire emotional payoff of the film rested on the delivery of that final telephone call. And while most directors might have sloughed it off given the grueling production schedule, Zhang Yimou wasn't considered the best director in China for nothing! Which was why the fearsome perfectionist had forced his cast to practice their delivery over and over again until even he was satisfied it marked the perfect conclusion to an otherwise perfect film.
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 12, 2010
听这种父爱和母爱的表情, 好动人啊! 像往常一样张艺谋给我们露一手了.
orbital
 said on
October 12, 2010
lol. Excellent comment Xiao Hu. I wholeheartedly agree.
richard
 said on
October 12, 2010
@xiaohu, would you mind adding pinyin/translation in absolute beginner /elementary lessons so we can all learn?
danlamsin_ck
 said on
October 12, 2010
ni hao
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Richard

Sure, no problem.

听这种父爱和母爱的表情, 好动人啊! 像往常一样张艺谋给我们露一手了.

tīng zhè zhǒng fù ài hé mǔ ài de biǎo qíng, hǎo dòng rén a! xiàng wǎng cháng yī yàng, zhāng yì mǒu gěi wǒ men lòu yì shǒu le.

Sometimes I just try to experiment and see what happens, if Echo 老师 corrects me then I know how to correct my mistakes for next time, but if she doesn't correct me, that usually means what I wrote is intelligable enough that it doesn't need correction.

Basically what I was saying is, "hearing this expression of a father and mother's love is quite moving! As usual, Zhang Yi Mou is showing off for us."

Xiao Hu
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Orbital,

谢谢! 过奖过奖. 听到你同意我的看法我很高兴.
Echo
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Xiao Hu,

Ok, here Echo 老师(lao3shi1 - teacher) comes～～ Haha.

You'd better say "露了一手（lou4 le5 yi1 shou3 - to show off)" because of the past tense.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Xiao Hu
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Echo,

谢谢你的纠正啊！我想问一下，除了，“露一手”这种说法之外，还有没有别的词组可以表达“showing off for us”这个意思？
Echo
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Xiao Hu,

你这么一问，我一时还真想不到有什么别的，如果想到了，我再告诉你吧。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Echo,

呵呵，我给学生上课时有时候我也是，突然一下想不起来了，心里很紧张，还好我是厚脸皮老师，我的“扑克脸”很厉害！可是我不知道的是为什么我的学生都管我叫“冷笑话老师”？
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 13, 2010
@Echo,

Being that this is Absolute Beginners, I'd better provide a translation to the above post,

呵呵，我给学生上课时有时候我也是，突然一下想不起来了，心里很紧张，还好我是厚脸皮老师，我的“扑克脸”很厉害！可是我不知道的是为什么我的学生都管我叫“冷笑话老师”？

hē hē, wǒ gěi xué shēng shàng kè shí, yǒu shí hòu wǒ yě shì, tū rán yī xià xiǎng bù qǐ lái le, xīn lǐ hěn jǐn zhāng, hái hǎo wǒ shì hòu liǎn pí lǎo shī, wǒ de "pū kè liǎn" hěn lì hài! kě shì, wǒ bù zhī dào de shì wèi shén me wǒ de xué shēng dōu guǎn wǒ jiào "lěng xiào huà lǎo shī"?

heh, heh, when I have class with students the same thing happens to me, I suddenly draw a blank and feel very nervous, it's a good thing that I'm "The Thick Skinned Teacher". I have an amazing "Poker Face", but the thing I don't understand is, why do students always call me "The Bad Joke Teacher"?

(Hhhmmm, seemed funnier in Chinese...)
Echo
 said on
October 14, 2010
@Xiao Hu,

Hahaha...because you are "很幽默" (hen3 you1mo4 - very humourous).

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 14, 2010
@Echo,

是吗？那为什么自己的笑话老是冻死人家啊？

shì ma? nà wèi shén me zì jǐ de xiào huà lǎo shì dòng sǐ rén jiā a?

Really? Then why are my jokes always freezing people to death?

richard
 said on
October 14, 2010
@xiaohu, echo

the banter was a lesson in itself and the pinyin/translation made it easier to retain a few new and chunk of words.

particularly a use of 'lihai' which always confused me. any other examples?

and 'dong si ren jia a' is this a variation of 'si le' after an adj.?

an explanation if possible.
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 15, 2010
@Richard,

Glad that it helped you! I always like this kind of teaching/learning style, it makes learning very natural and you can see first hand how to put language together, and putting things into different contexts, not only aids in understanding, but also gives you the ability to see what different contexts phrases can be placed into. Like "lì hài"for example. In many cases it's a kind of all purpose compliment, equating to our, "amazing", "awesome", something like that.

It's also an all-purpose superlative, so it can be used to modify the degree of positive and negative adverbs and adjectives.

The "Dong si ren jia" is a variation of the "si le" structure, once again it's a kind of superlative, indicating that "dong"is in the EXTREME degree of freezing.

Echo
 said on
October 16, 2010
@Xiao Hu,

因为那些笑话太冷啦～

Because those jokes are too cold ~~~

Yin1wei4 na4 xie1 xiao4hua5 tai4 leng3 la5~~~

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Xiao Hu
 said on
October 19, 2010
@Echo,

对啊! 我发现我讲笑话时马上就下雪了. 我本来以为天气发生了什么意外的事, 但当我在学校里面给学生讲笑话的时候而连在教室里都下雪, 我恍然大悟, 突然下雪的例外可能是跟小虎有关的. 你觉得呢?

duì a! wǒ fā xiàn wǒ jiǎng xiào huà shí mǎ shàng jiù xià xuě le. wǒ běn lái yǐ wéi tiān qì fā shēng le shén me yì wài de shì, dàn dāng wǒ zài xué xiào lǐ miàn gěi xué shēng jiǎng xiào huà de shí hòu ér lián zài jiào shì lǐ dōu xià xuě, wǒ huǎng rán dà wù, tū rán xià xuě de lì wài ké néng gēn xiǎo hǔ yǒu guān de. nǐ jué de ne?

Right! I've found that when I tell jokes, it immediately starts snowing. Originally I thought it must be some kind of strange occurence, but when I was in school and told a joke for the class and it even started snowing in the classroom, that's when I came to the sudden realization that, maybe, just maybe it has something to do with me. What do you think?
FuXiansheng
 said on
April 3, 2011
You gloss 喂 ("hello" on a phone) as both wei2 and wei4 within the same transcript. I'm assuming it's wei2, right?
trevelyan
 said on
April 4, 2011
@FuXiansheng,

It's technically fourth tone, but is pronounced second tone by almost everyone when answering the phone. We try to go with standard pronunciation, but in cases like this (where general usage is consistently against it) we try to annotate as the language is spoken and include a note in the popup explaining the difference.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I'll update the transcript now. :)

--dave

Absolute Beginners
 said on
April 4, 2011
@FuXiansheng,

Ahh... looks like we already had one. If you're not seeing them already you might want to tweak your account to enable the notes field in your popups. The controls are here:

http://popupchinese.com/account/customize

Tucking them away here is probably not the best solution, but it's where we've put these sorts of explanations to date. Not many at the Absolute Beginner level, but they'll start showing up more frequently once you push through to the the intermediate/advanced podcasts and short stories.

Cheers,

--dave
FuXiansheng
 said on
April 4, 2011
Ahhh .... You're talking about the section under the "Vocabulary" tab (above). I had not even seen that option until right now. My eye has always been drawn to the sidebar (with the large icons) and I had assumed that was where all the action was.
trevelyan
 said on
April 5, 2011
Yes. That's the vocab list -- the bit I mentioned is the "text" section actually. If you put your mouse over any of the characters you should get a *contextual* definition and pinyin gloss.

There's occasionally a fifth field with notes which is not enabled by default, but that can be enabled on the account customization page. We use it heavily with the short stories, especially things like Dream of the Red Chamber where there's a need for a lot of additional commentary to explain references or allusions. This is where we also tend to put notes about multiple pronunciations, etc. It is a bit of a makeshift solution so suggestions on better ways to handle this are welcome.
FuXiansheng
 said on
April 5, 2011
Well, suggestion 一号 ... move it to the side bar. You have tiny text competing with slick icons for attention. I can't be the only one who missed that option. ;)