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sinaapp.co
It’s a mirror of google HK. I don’t know how exactly, but it is hosted on the Amazon cloud, so the only way for it to be blocked is if amazon.com is blocked.
Oh yeah. The cast was sketchy as hell since after a week, it started to fall apart due to absorbing too much sweat. I was only told to wear the cast for 3 to 4 weeks, with no appointment to get a new one if the one I had gets dirty and disgusting, and it did after 3 weeks.
And physical therapy was cheap too. For only 4 sessions of an hour each I just had to pay 200 rmb. Granted if I didn’t speak Chinese and I didn’t have a Chinese friend who is a physical therapist, I wouldn’t have ever found out about it.
I broke my arm a few months ago. In the end, the initial x-ray, CAT scan, and cast ended up costing just under 1,000 rmb. One thing I noticed when I started telling people the price is that all Americans (including me) thought that it was ridiculously cheap, while people from everywhere else in the world thought it was really expensive, especially Europeans and Canadians.
Yes, the Palace museum in Taipei is very different from the Forbidden City in Beijing. When 蒋介石 retreated from the mainland, he took the very best things of the imperial treasures.
I’ve only had good experiences with them; nothing bad or anything. The couple times I’ve flown in and out of China, I’ve always used them because they seemed to be the cheapest.
TV is probably the best listening practice; people can dumb down their speech for you, but TV doesn’t judge and just talks and talks and talks to you regardless of whether you understand. The fact that everything said is also subtitled in Chinese makes it way better study material.
But you still need to talk with people in Chinese, whether they are native-speakers or not.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it, but you can basically watch any Chinese show on sites like Youku, PTV, PPTV, Toudou, and if those fail, a simple search on Baidu with turn something up. Here is a good list of what to watch if you don’t know.
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/24097-tv-series-recommendations-and-index-thread/
Sure, there ain’t no Wire or Breaking Bad, but unless your Chinese is at a highly advanced level, I don’t think it matters since you are still trying to wrap your head around the language first before even getting to the story.
Learning Chinese is serious work and doing just a little once a week doesn’t cut it. It takes a large amount of time over a long period of time, and working at it consistently. Watching TV everyday, and looking up words you don’t know, for many months will get you places though.
A friend of mine who grew up in Tongzilin back in the 60’s and 70’s told me that back then it was just another poor part of the city in the outskirts, and the people who lived in the center didn’t even consider it to be a part of the city.
What I’d like to see is a map of Chengdu 100 years ago.
Yes you can, though everything must be arranged through a tour guide. Here[/url] is an excellent site for information (though it is blocked on the mainland). More custom itineraries generally cost much more money (I can’t say how much, but I don’t think taking the train is that custom; it’s not like you are biking there). If you are in Chengdu, I reccommend going to Holly Hostel for information as a lot of advertising is done there.
Is there actually a train from directly Chengdu to Lhasa (though such a feat would be a huge technological marvel)? I thought the train goes all the way through Qinghai.
The link doesn’t seem to work
You can, but everything has to arranged through a travel service. The Land of Snow (here[/url] is some recommendations from The Land of Snows, a blog blocked here on the mainland). Generally things that deviate from the standard tend to be more expensive. If you are here in Chengdu, a good place to go to is Holly Hostel as they have a lot of advertisements about traveling there and lots of pamphlets (at least, my Tibetan friend reccommended that I do that).
Is there a train that goes straight from Chengdu to Lhasa (such a feat would be a huge technical marvel)? I thought the train goes all through Qinghai.
My link doesn’t seem to work. So here is the link
http://www.thelandofsnows.com/travel-in-tibet/arranging-travel-to-tibet/
Most of my backpacking experience is in northern New Mexico and the Sierra Nevada in California. That is what I did, but it has never been in territory like this. I have been able to find some good information at 马蜂窝, but it is all in Chinese, so it is taking me a while to get through it.
You are probably right about the politics of the region. I didn’t even think about it. Most likely impossible to find anything like the National Geographic or Tom Harrison maps here. I personally like to explore on my own at my own pace. I am currently looking into the Chinese groups right now, but I probably should I have started planning much earlier.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2011/03/201139153815866372.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2010/05/201051863250462270.html
Two pieces about mental diseases in China, which I wouldn’t be surprised if the perpetrator of the act suffered from one.
What is interesting is that before recent years, both Taiwan and Hong Kong felt loyalty to “China”, but a different China, the old one.
With the rise of the Mainland as political and economic world power, it is increasingly making it that loyalty and love of “China”, be it the vast history and cultural legacy of the thousands of years of dynastic rule or not, also means loyalty to Beijing; Beijing, not Hong Kong or Taiwan, is the sole inheritor of the 5,000 years of cultural history, or in the historical perspective, the 天命。Because of the increasingly closer connection that is being viewed by the world between the two ideas, that is why more Taiwanese and Hong Kongers are refraining from identifying themselves as first Chinese (if they do at all), which wasn’t so in the past.
It isn’t hard to switch between the two character systems. If you have a high level, then after a couple of weeks it shouldn’t be a problem since you will be constantly exposed to them and thus forced to recall them far more often. I’m not having a problem learning them on my own here.
This Eddie Huang?
Taiwan uses the Bopomofo system, much closer to the the Japanese Kana system to teach pronunication. I’ve been told that it is much more accurate and pure then pinyin, but is still influenced by the Taiwan accent, which is far more clear then here on the mainland. As for all of the names, it is annoying because they use the Wades-Giles system. It shouldn’t be a problem if you know the characters though.
Since you will only stay for 6 months, go to Taiwan. I’ve been here in Chengdu for about a year, and it was hard to intergrated into the city at first.
Taiwan is China, but a different China. But just because it is historically and culturally China doesn’t mean they should give up their current sovereignty.
Is the action still going on? If so, “The owner of the compnay is in London selling his villa” would do. In this sentence, the owner is in London with the intent to sell his villa, thus the location of the action is implied to be in London. Since the example given is only one sentence long, the sentence “The owner of the company is selling his villa in London” is confused. If there was a context, it would be able to make the distinction between the location of the villa and the location of the sale in that the reader should already know the location of the villa before this sentence is reached.
The examples of the book and pencils sounds perfectly all-right to me as the meaning comes across clearly and isn’t confused at all.
It seems Chengdu gets a lot of Post-rock bands coming in. Guess only time before Godspeed You! Black Emperor is here.
