Have we mentioned that we love San Mao? A precocious child who read Dream of the Red Chamber at age five, San Mao grew into one of the best and most widely-traveled writers of her generation, attending university in Germany, living for a long time in the Western Sahara with her Spanish husband, and eventually traveling as far as Chile while publishing travel journals, autobiographical essays and reflective letters which remain some of the most charming pieces of writing produced by anyone in her generation.And this selection? What we have for you today is an excerpt from the book 背影, a collection of reminisces in which San Mao looks back at her experiences as a child in Nanjing. This particular essay concerns a run-in she had with a teacher in China's traditional education system....
murrayjames
said on March 5, 2014
Ooooh... I love me some short stories!How difficult is this reading? My Chinese isn't advanced (almost upper-intermediate, I'd guess?) but I understood most of this without consulting the transcript. Maybe that's because it's a first-person account, and has less low-frequency vocab than something more literary in style?Or maybe my Chinese is getting crazy good.ヾ(*´∀｀*)ﾉ
mdubes13
said on March 6, 2014
So THAT is how bad my chinese really is! :D I should probably stop skiving popup chinese during term times...
heliumspark
said on January 16, 2015
她很少给我们下课Does this mean "She rarely lets us out of class"?
orbital
said on January 17, 2015
heliumspark - exactly. Could also be 她很少让我们下课.
Grace Qi
said on January 18, 2015
@heliumspark她很少给我们下课 Yeah- She rarely gives us breaks.
heliumspark
said on January 21, 2015
应该尽量写得有理想才好。What does "cai2 hao3" mean in this sentence? To me it looks like "You should try your hardest to write in an idealistic style, that's what counts." ???
trevelyan
said on January 21, 2015
@heliumspark,It means "only then will be it fine/acceptable." The first part of the sentence (writing with idealism) is the condition that has to be met.Best,--david
heliumspark
said on January 23, 2015
Is 垃圾 la1 ji1 or le4 se4? Or both?
trevelyan
said on January 25, 2015
@heliumspark,Standard pronunciation is la1ji1.--david
heliumspark
said on January 25, 2015
Good morning!Today all my characters look like this: "ˆä¹ 惯性的骂人。"Is this a problem on my end? My PC usually doesn't do this. And it's only happening on this site.Thanks!
timmorello
said on January 25, 2015
got the same issue :(
trevelyan
said on January 25, 2015
So every now and then we just break the site to see if anyone is paying attention....More honestly, this was and is totally my fault. I was changing some database encoding settings to see if we could solve the problem some I.E. users seem to be having with the click-to-add features on the site.I've reverted the changes, so everything should be back to normal. Sorry about the trouble with this, but thanks everyone for pinging and highlighting the problem.
timmorello
said on January 26, 2015
Thanks for the quick fix ;) Edit:sorry to bother, but flashcards still show these (ä¹ æƒ¯æ€§çš„) characters :/
Joey
said on January 26, 2015
This couple hours of broken Popup Chinese made me realize how addicted I am! Great work, please keep it up!Joey
czakon
said on June 6, 2015
Yes, we all love Echo :-)
fictionmyheart
said on November 20, 2016
Does“一面。。。一面”have the same usage as "一邊。。。一邊？”
trevelyan
said on November 21, 2016
@fictionmyheart -- yes, they're interchangeable.
893371906
said on January 6, 2017
Your thought is almost correct，but as for native chinese speaker ，there is a extremely little different between them.一边...一边...多用在两动作同时发生.一边吃饭一边思考.一边说话一边跑.然而两个动作可以全然不相关,甚至可以略有冲突,一边洗衣服一边做饭.一般来说,一边...一边...有一点分心二用的意思.一面...一面...用在两个相关的动作同时发生的时候.一面看书一面思考.通常在两件事情有点关联,可以同时做的时候使用.两组连接词没有严格的区分界限,多还是语言习惯,或者语言环境来决定用哪组词更顺口一些.比如：小王一面吃饭，一面玩手机。ps：初学者不用分的太过细致。
893371906
said on January 6, 2017
垃圾 的注音就是 la1 ji1le4 se4是90年代从东南沿海省份流传出来的俚语。
Justheguy4u
said on January 20, 2018
Absolutely lovely stories! The length and content of the stories are very convenient. I hope you continue to develop more stories! Keep up the good work.
