Teaching Chinese may have been Xiao Wang's first love, but diversifying into English just made business sense. Not only were there a lot more English learners than foreigners in Beijing, but the students she picked up seemed more appreciative of her talents and receptive to her teaching methods. Sure, every now and then someone would come along who thought they knew better, but had they lived in London for four months?

Learning Chinese? In this show, the second time our Chinese tutor has surfaced, we cover some essential classroom vocabulary you may have missed: words and phrases like "say it again" and "what fresh hell is this". So if you can't yet understand Chinese spoken at natural speed but are getting there, give this show a listen and let us know what you think in the comments section.
 said on
March 31, 2014
Re: Brendan's comment on Starbucks,

I blame the stores for trying to be trendy. In Chengdu, Starbucks patrons speak mostly the local dialect, except where transliteration (拿铁、卡布奇诺、摩卡、提拉米苏、帕尼尼) is built into the menu.

Sometimes the desire to be 洋气 is annoying. I was in an ice cream store recently where nearly everything was transliterated. Some of the names (like 华夫控 for waffle cone) were well done, but relabeling 20+ ice cream flavors? That seems like overkill. Even common flavors like 香草, 饼干 or 猕猴桃 were replaced with 云呢拿, 曲奇 and 奇异. I had to look up all three :(
 said on
April 3, 2014
haha - reminds me of this http://youtu.be/4eXULHZv8pc
 said on
April 3, 2014
ahhhhh...听写,跟我读等等 - brings back memories of 北大
 said on
April 5, 2014
But I really want to know how to say, "What fresh hell is this?".

You mentioned it in the preamble, but it wasn't in the podcast (pinyin please!).

 said on
April 5, 2014
I was wondering that too!
 said on
April 8, 2014
@mapodofu, murrayjames,

Honestly, I don't think there is a counterpart of "What fresh hell is this" in Chinese, but in the similar context, Chinese people usually use "哎呀,我去ai5ya5, wo3qu4" "我真晕wo3 zhen1 yun1" "不是吧 bu4 shi4 ba5" “不会吧 bu4 hui4 ba5” “行不行啊 xing2 bu4 xing2 a5” these phrases to express their emotions.
 said on
October 4, 2016
Interesting that for the sentence "toast means bread", it's written as 透司特是面包的意思 instead of 透司特的意思是面包. The latter is what I would have instinctively said.