Dating a fashion designer, or just want your shirt starched? Consider yourself in luck: our lesson for today takes place in a dry cleaning store and goes over all the vocab you'll need to start scintillating conversations about pants with anyone who will listen. Designed for early elementary students, this podcast will teach you how to get your dry cleaning done in mandarin, and share a critical trick you can use to avoid being given someone else's clothing.
 said on
May 2, 2009
Although this was a little too difficult for me to handle, I thought it was well done.

Since I had difficulty keeping up with the dialog and the explanation(s), it would be useful if we could go back and listen to the cast without having to start all over again.

Give us a slide to use.
 said on
May 2, 2009
I heard that now days people don't use xia jie as Miss, but now it kind of takes on a different meaning.

Kind of means prostitute or night club lady is what I'm told.
 said on
May 3, 2009
@yoclarry - thanks and welcome to Popup Chinese. :)

You should be able to jump back in the recording by clicking your cursor on the blue area that has already loaded. The controls aren't tremendously fine-grained (we should add a slider), but it's possible to ballpark it.
 said on
May 3, 2009
I think in this case it's fine. The word is also slang for prostitute, but in my experience it's not offensive to call someone Miss in this kind of situation. Just don't use it for random women on the street.
 said on
May 3, 2009
@sseamon,

some times it's true, but mostly not.

All the Chinese young girls are glad to be called 小姐 actually.

and 小姐 does mean night club ladies, some times.

if you come to Beijing 10 years ago, you shouldn't call young girls 小姐。But now things changed, when you order food in a restaurant, you can call 服务员 as 小姐。 and when you 问路 in the street, you can call any young girls as 小姐 now. that's common here.and that call means respect instead of insult...

believe me.

 said on
May 6, 2009
Per Yoclarry's comment - if you invoke the pause button, you will render unusable the slider bar on the embedded media file. If however, you refrain from using the pause button, you can click and slide the dialogue. Reload the page to re-activate the pause button. Else download the mp3 and play offline - which is nice because the frenetic pace of the comments-in-chinese can be slowed down to help pick up words and phrases otherwise easy to miss.

Helpful I hope

Rizzo
 said on
June 6, 2009
who is the girl picking up her clothes? interesting voice...speaks well but doesnt sound chinese? really good foreigner or chinese with unique voice?
 said on
June 6, 2009
@nadasax - native speaker and friend of Apple's. Originally from Xi'an and studying TV broadcasting at the Cental Broadcasting Uni here. Her voice sounds pretty standard to me, although it's definitely a lot brighter than any of the other girls weve had on. Echo? Gail?

will get those two recordings added btw - thx for the notice on that front too.
 said on
June 3, 2010
hey everyone,

i am trying to click on the play button and it says loading error..

then i tried clicking download and it hangs midway.

is it my connection?

i badly need to know how to say:

please hang the clothes and then press the clothes...

thanks!
 said on
June 3, 2010
Works perfectly over here, sounds like a net connection issue.
 said on
February 24, 2014
She says, "Are "these" my clothes." Why don't you need to use "Zhexie" instead of simply "Zhe"
 said on
February 24, 2014
@fargo, she's referring to the pile of clothes rather than the plural collective of individual articles. She could say "zhexie" and it would be fine too.
 said on
April 5, 2016
That male voice at the end killed me! XD hahaha
 said on
October 5, 2016
Please please please add a slider for the audio!

Also, it would be great if you added information on how to write characters including their components--radical and sound components--and some phrases as well. This would make your website a much more complete one.
 said on
October 6, 2016
lauracdaniell,

You should be able to adjust the audio backwards and forwards using the built-in slider on the audio player. For us (Firefox on Mac) it appears as the triangular part of the player that displays the time. Just click and drag left-and-right and it should buffer the audio and then keep playing from its new position.