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BadAstronaut posted:Anyone use a Pivos Xios or similar media centre/streaming device? What sort of streaming is available in China on these set to devices? Or is everything just done primarily with torrents? Don't count on any non-chinese streaming service working consistently without VPNs (and don't count on VPNs working consistently). It's either blocked, region-limited on the other end, or may have intermittently (or consistently) lovely speeds. Basically yes, torrents. edit: The school I work for was dumb enough to use an online flash-based curriculum for half its classes. All the material is hosted in the US, and about 1 out of 3 classes there will be some kind of problem accessing it. So basically all lessons have to be planned with the assumption that you may have to proceed without what amounts to your textbook. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Aug 10, 2013 |
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Aug 10, 2013 12:27
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BadAstronaut posted:I'm getting mixed reports from blockedinchina.net... can anyone tell me if https://www.audible.co.uk works OK for them in China? Or does it actually depend where you are? Dude, just get a VPN. It sounds like you're addicted to foreign content sites, at least one of the ones you want is blocked at any given time, guaranteed. It changes all the time, because a lot of the blocking isn't list-based, it's automated based on packet inspection, links to explicitly blocked sites, and who knows what else. You don't know from day to day what's going to be blocked or have its service degraded. Apart from noting which things are ALWAYS blocked or ALWAYS available, it's pointless to ask. The only nitpicky question you should be asking about internet service in China is what VPN is most reliable...and that can also change at any moment.
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Aug 13, 2013 12:20
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MeramJert posted:Haha, I wonder how they're determining the price of "local cheese" in Zhuhai That comparison is less bullshit than most, but international cost of living comparisons are almost invariably written for rich xenophobes who would die if they stepped one foot outside of their Western comfort zone.
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Aug 14, 2013 11:47
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:cheese - taobao or supermarket if it's cheaper (rarely) If you're looking for extra sharp cheddar, it's always cheaper in the supermarket...if they have it.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:07
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Smeef posted:Just picked up my visa. It only has an enter-before date and lists the duration as 000 and single entry. Is this standard and I just change it once I register in Chengdu? Yes.
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Aug 16, 2013 04:37
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As a general rule, US airlines suck. They may not be the worst in the world, but there ain't a one worth taking over a good Asian airline.
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Aug 21, 2013 04:12
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MeramJert posted:A former coworker always flies United because he was in Tokyo when the tsunami hit a couple years back and they let him fly first class back to LA for free. That's pretty good. Oh, he must have been traumatized! Did his coffee get spilled? (I was in Tokyo during the quake, too. It wasn't that bad.)
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Aug 21, 2013 04:20
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people still care about in flight entertainment?
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Aug 21, 2013 04:23
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:I survive those long flights by not sleeping the night before, showing up half dead and then falling asleep on the plane. Then waking up, getting hammered on free booze and passing out until the drat thing lands. Oh, and obviously, never flying any american airline ever. Also, choose flights where you'll be arriving in the morning so that you can more or less take care of jet lag by pursuing this strategy.
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Aug 22, 2013 02:55
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Bloodnose posted:This is unacceptable and the primary reason I never eat at Cafe de Coral/Fairwood/Maxim. I'll never understand the Chinese way of stuffing a whole bony piece of meat in your mouth, sucking all the good stuff off and spitting the bone back out like a cartoon character. Why not just slice the meat off beforehand?
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Aug 26, 2013 16:20
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxB-H6f3crY
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Aug 27, 2013 01:54
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Jack London. He's gone over pretty well with my students that age. You might need to rewrite some of his archaic phrasing out though.
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Aug 29, 2013 13:21
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Get a big list from TBB, then run it by this or the LAN thread to see what people think would go over best with the Chinese kids, I think.Magna Kaser posted:I really like Neil Gaiman but for some reason his stuff seems to fly over ESL learners. Cultural references and a different set of tropes than non-western audiences are used to I'm guessing.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:08
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MeramJert posted:I gave one of my former interns a Terry Pratchett book a couple years back. She claims she understood it perfectly but I really doubt she did. If I watch Squidbillies I understand it enough to think it's funny, but not being from Georgia, I'll never understand it perfectly.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:35
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Sogol posted:Has anyone experimented with graphic novels? This could be a way of using Gaiman and 'what is going on in this frame' to help with discussion and understanding. It's been a long time since I taught ESL. For my own Chinese language learning I loved to use comic books. I'm not sure Sandman is a good choice for ESL, if that's what you're thinking, because any of the problems with his children's fiction for that purpose are gonna be a lot worse there.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:57
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JimBobDole posted:United's midnight ice cream makes life better. Maybe, but the baseline that you're getting better from is "flying United."
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Aug 30, 2013 16:11
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Does Ningbo suck? I'm staring at a job listing there that looks like it was written for me.
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Aug 31, 2013 16:43
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Chinese TV Sausage-Making, or The Hardest 40 Kuai I Ever Made My wife and her sister dragged me along to a taping of some Chinese talk show I probably have seen but never bothered to remember. 天生一对 I was told it would be about 4 hours, and we'd get lunch and 40 kuai. My wife either didn't know or didn't want to tell me what the show was so I wouldn't refuse outright. We get off the bus at the appointed stop, and there are a bunch of people already waiting to be escorted to the studio. Being the only forager there, naturally there were people who wanted to strike up conversation. First was this middle aged woman who had lived in San Diego. She was pleasant enough, so that's all I'll say about her. Next was this pudgy 20 something dude with a buzz cut and a red and white striped polo shirt, who was a lot more pushy and insistent. He spoke extremely broken English with supreme confidence, while claiming to be a some-time translator for the mayor of Beijing (I think?). After the standard “where are you from” and comments about the weather there, he goes into the next standard casual foreigner on the street topic, Obama. And there's where things get interesting. After I registered my lack of enthusiasm for and grudging acceptance of Obama, the guy comes back with this: “Obama is friend of the family. In America many people not like friend of the family.” Well, can't really say that isn't true. “Uh, it's a little more complicated than that,” I say. Things continue to decline from there, with a seriously asymmetrical assessment of the situation, as I get more and more uncomfortable and he keeps trying to get closer and closer to me, and interrupting me as I try to talk to my wife. “I too can speak German,” he says. “Heil Hitler!” He does a Nazi salute. I stare at him slack-jawed. “What the gently caress is wrong with you?” I ask. He takes no notice, and San Diego lady doesn't seem to notice either. He says “I speak a little Arabic” followed by something I'm sure is equally offensive. He starts going on about how he knows people who are making films and how he wants me to be in it. My wife and her sister come to the rescue, as we three head down the street to get something to eat while we wait for the rest of the people to arrive. The Amazing Chinese Racist doesn't follow more than a few steps, and I get a brief respite. We head back just in time to be herded to a studio in the 798 area. My lady friends and I head to our seats, and the annoying dude follows me, making sure to sit next to me. That's when things get unacceptable. The stage director, a fairly attractive woman maybe 35 years old with very long hair and very short shorts, comes out onto the stage to sort things out before they begin. The annoying dude says “She is sexy lady. I want sleep her.” I cringe. Then he tugs on my arm hair. “Dude! What the gently caress!” I yell, jerk my arm away, and scoot about a foot down the bench. He calmly says “you have many hair,” as though he's done nothing wrong or even unusual. Bear in mind this is a guy in his 20s who claims to have lived in the US; not a 4-year-old who's never left town. After a few minutes of him jabbering nothing particularly memorable, and my wife telling me to keep calm, he gets my attention long enough to say “You are OCD. I think you are OCD. Do you know what is OCD?” “I don't think that you know what OCD is,” I reply. edit: I forgot the most perplexing part. He touches my knee (I was wearing shorts) and laughs and says "tortoise!" He keeps saying "tortoise!" over and over again. At this point the other Chinese guys around us start telling him to knock it off, as it's gotten really obvious to everyone but him that he's pissing me off. I trade seats with the guy next to me to put some distance between us, and then the show starts to come together. Have you ever watched one of those Chinese talk shows? All the way through? (Liar, no you haven't.) How about one that was 2 to 4 hours long because it hasn't been edited? Why did I give a range rather than a single time? Because we sat through 3 of them. But first, we all did our part. The cameras were turned on the audience (about 100 people on this rickety carpeted bleacher), and we were expected to stand and cheer on cue. This was done 4 or five times. Apart from a couple times where certain audience members were singled out to interact with the guests (I was ruled out once they determined that my Chinese wasn't very good and I had no idea who the guests were) this was the only time the cameras were pointed at the audience. There's nothing more worth presenting in narrative format, so I'll give you the highlights. The guests were: Some elderly singer and his two youngish students; an attractive young lady in a blue dress, and a dude with long hair and cowboy boots; a paralyzed former gymnast and her fiancee; and a couple of elderly comedians. The elderly singer gave some singing tips to the hostess, and I guess they were talking about their respective careers and training...my chinese sucks. The gymnast talked about her injury, her life as a paraplegic, and she and her fiancee talked about their plans together. The elderly couple talked about their careers. The sound effects on these shows are NOT added after recording, they are done in the studio as it is going on, and played through the speakers to the audience. Though there is a studio audience, nearly all of the audience reaction sounds are either canned applause and laughter done live in the studio or added later. The only exceptions are the out-of-time clapping over the music (which was actually perfectly in time during one song, it was amazing!) and applause. Laughter, gasps, anything else, fake, if you couldn't already tell. Like I suggested before, any audience reaction shots are canned, they aren't actually in response to anything on stage. They shot three shows back-to-back. In the few shots of the audience that were actually done during the filming of each show, you might notice, were you masochistic enough to watch all three shows on TV, the same audience members over and over again. You also might notice a lot of them looking mighty tired during one of those shows, and that would be the one that was shot last. They had a house band, but most of the music isn't played by them. Sometimes that bass line you hear would be live, sometimes recorded. The band were actually pretty drat good. The highlight of the evening for me. The audience members are all paid, 40 kuai each, plus dinner; which in our case consisted of a plastic box of rice, and a plastic box of stir-fried shredded potatoes, served outside the studio. There weren't enough seats, so I made a stool and table by stacking bricks that had been piled up after being dug out of the ground at what looked like an ancient train platform, where they had dug a trench to lay a sewer pipe. We got fed after the 2nd show, but didn't get paid until after all 3. Before the 3rd show, a couple of audience members got up on stage and sang. One of them, of course, was the guy who had been bugging me earlier. After the show, everyone went outside and lined up to get paid. We were separated into groups of five. Each group was handed 2 100 kuai bills and expected to sort it out among themselves. (WTF) We managed to make change, my wife got my 40 kuai, and I got 10 hour experience I will long struggle to forget. Anyhow...I think I will never watch Chinese TV again, not that I was in the habit. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 16:49
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This is the show: http://so.letv.com/variety/90204.html It SUUUUUUUUCKS
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Sep 3, 2013 05:28
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Grand Fromage posted:So white people. I'd like to learn some characters for a baseline if I move to somewhere that uses them. I'm not sure where though. China, HK, or Japan are all possible. So is it easier to learn traditional and figure out simplified or vice versa? I know the answer is learn the one for where you are going but I don't know. Also, I can learn hanja while I keep up with Korean studies here, those are traditional characters. I'm leaning that way since I need to keep working on Korean and that was I can do both, but looking for input from people who actually know things. I went Japanese first, with some traditional/Korean later, then simplified, and then seeing traditional all over the place in Hong Kong. It's mostly pretty easy to figure out what you're looking at from one to the other. Sometimes simplified can be pretty counterintuitive, and not every radical or other component gets simplified the same way every time (especially if you're comparing rare vs. common characters), which is what makes simplified less simple than it seems like it should be. But context usually solves those problems. I'd say it's probably easier to go from simplified to traditional...IF you've got some exposure to traditional first. That is...you have seen enough traditional to know how they're supposed to look, but you never really studied them; while you DID study simplified. If you don't, I dunno, probably not. I have known mainlanders who couldn't figure out traditional characters that I recognized. Hanja are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese. I'd say just go with that, if you're studying Korean anyway. Going between Chinese character sets any way is easier than picking them up to begin with.
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Sep 3, 2013 07:20
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Rabelais D posted:This is purely anecdotal but in my experience mainland students get the hang of traditional quicker than HK students get the hang of simplified. Probably has something to do with past exposure though. But traditional will be closer to the language of GLORIOUS NIPPON if he wants to go jack himself into oblivion.
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Sep 3, 2013 08:01
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Grand Fromage posted:Basically my idea was I can keep working on Korean vocab since I live here and it is thus useful, but if I learn hanja too then I can at least understand in writing and have a leg up if I move elsewhere. So I suppose I will stick to that plan. Hanja will help you understand the Korean vocab better, too. I did well in my Korean classes with less work than my classmates because my Japanese let me (once I noticed the patterns in correlations between pronunciations) group words together by their hanja rather than just their pronunciation. I think I was driving some of my teachers a little nuts with always asking for the Hanja. Two of them hardly knew any, due to being of the generation where they weren't taught in school. (Two others used to teach Japanese, so they could Hanja circles around me.)
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Sep 3, 2013 11:35
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Grand Fromage posted:My kingdom for a consonant. And you wanna learn Chinese?
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Sep 3, 2013 14:45
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Throatwarbler posted:So I'm in Guangzhou for the first time. How much is the subway there? 2 kuai in Beijing, for comparison, if you weren't aware.
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Sep 6, 2013 11:25
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What Beijing OUGHT to do is require proof of someplace to park your drat car like Japan does, but that would be corruptioned away right quick. Alternately, they could confiscate and crush every car caught parked in a bike lane or on a sidewalk. That would eventually cut down on the number of cars on the road, and it would reduce the congestion caused by shitheads parking their cars in lanes of traffic, people walking in the middle of four or even six lane roads because the sidewalks are too full of cars, bikes dodging between cars because there are two rows of cars parked in the bike lane, and people taking forever to exit the road because the intersection is full of parked cars. These are all things I saw in the last 30 minutes, BTW. edit: I don't want to live here anymore. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 13:48
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MeramJert posted:You should key all these cars when they've got someone in them, and they're within reach, I often slap them really hard on the trunk or rear quarter. But if I see a Miata driven by a foreigner, I'm gonna put my U-lock through the window. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 00:46
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Throatwarbler posted:If parking bothers you you should try living in an area where the only access is through a 2 lane road in front of a huge junior high school. Beijing isn't even that bad! I do, actually. (Well, I can cut through the hutong across from my gate, but that's not much better, particularly if some dumbshit decides to drive down it.)
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Sep 7, 2013 03:46
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I use those things for dips, pull-ups and sit ups. Don't even know what they're SUPPOSED to be for.
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Sep 8, 2013 01:22
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Atlas Hugged posted:I've been teaching in Taiwan for four years and now might need to change jobs. I'm really not sure where to start looking though. Taiwan has websites like tealit.com that have tons of job postings. How would I even start searching for work in China? Zhaopin.com
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Sep 11, 2013 04:29
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The Kajillionaire Cash Money Imperial King Estate Mansions Buy now and get complimentary maid-beating service for one year.
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Sep 12, 2013 08:37
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caberham posted:
That's some Stand Alone Complex poo poo right there.
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Sep 12, 2013 11:38
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Throatwarbler posted:Not pretty because it didn't get off the ground, maybe. If it happened now, the targets would be a lot more obvious. (The domestic ones, I mean. Most of us foragers aren't any more hosed than we would have been the first time around.
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Sep 12, 2013 14:43
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JimBobDole posted:Going to be in the boonies of Beijing for the weekend. BJGoons, is there a method of public transport into downtown that doesn't include taxi? For reference, I'm going to be staying at the Yosemite near The international school of Beijing. By "boonies" how far out do you mean? Anywhere near the 5th ring road, the bus system is still pretty thick. I know it goes out to the 6th in spots but there are some routes that can take 2 hours to get from there to the 3rd ring road during rush hour. (Unlike a taxi, the buses pretty much HAVE to go through the most congested areas.) Okay, I THINK I found it. You're about 3 km east of the airport, and about 1.5 km from subway line 15, China International Exhibition Center station. Getting off of line 15 can be one of the nastier transfers during rush hour. But it could be way worse. 国展-地铁站 That's your subway station. http://www.bjbus.com/map/index.php?....1875,14&hb=0,1 Looks like you've got poo poo for buses to the station...have to double back and transfer. It'd probably be faster to walk. Or it'll be a cheap cab ride.
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Sep 13, 2013 02:40
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:I hear there's an invention called maps now. According to the wife it's just a bunch of lines and stuff that she doesn't understand, but surely there must be some sort of practical use for them. If you're stumped, ask bad day, I hear that's how he found that zoo and the ponies within. Dunno if I'd trust him though, unless you share similar interests. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in China who can read one. Then I remember that most of the people I went to Basic Training with couldn't read a map either, and I sneer at the Chinese a little less.
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Sep 13, 2013 03:56
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blinkyzero posted:Pretty sure the airport express is always a flat 25 RMB. That's the airport express, he's near line 15. I live on line 13, and ...the train is fine, I guess. It's the transfers that suck. All of them.
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Sep 13, 2013 07:05
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Throatwarbler posted:The problem is that you can't actually get a cab in Beijing, ever. You have to put yourself in the cabbie's shoes. Think about where they're most likely to be and why, make sure you're waiting someplace where they can actually stop, be on the right side of the right road. If you're out someplace past the 6th ring road or something, sure you can probably forget it. In town, it's only hard if you assume that the taxi drivers actually give a poo poo about you and your needs.
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Sep 13, 2013 07:16
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ReindeerF posted:I'm glad to hear the map thing is a pan-Asian phenomenon. Cardinal directions are another personal favorite. Somehow people can know what a southern province is and what southern food is, but if you ask them which direction South is, totally lost. Hahaha, you think Chinese people navigate by landmarks.
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Sep 13, 2013 09:57
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Throatwarbler posted:If you put yourself in the cabbie's shoes you would quit driving taxis and go do something that actually makes money. Yeah, and that's just part of why they aren't going to want to take a fare that doesn't get in, get out, and leave them somewhere they'll immediately get another fare. The closer you are to that situation, the more likely you'll get a cab.
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Sep 13, 2013 10:01
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In China they navigate by guanxi. You know someone who knows the way and they meet you at the subway station or bus stop or some mutually-findable place and show you how to get there. Alternately you get in the vicinity of the address you're looking for. You ask people on the street and they point you in what they think is the right direction. Except half the time it's the wrong direction. This isn't just me speaking for my stupid foreigner experience, this happens to my wife, too.
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Sep 13, 2013 10:52
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YF19pilot posted:Hey, so I'm chatting with someone on the possibility of getting a job in China (I'm in the US). Had a few questions that I'm wasn't positive were answered by the OP. Less bullshit (unless you're buying Apple) and more options buying a phone in China, and prices are about the same...except that there are more cheap models that aren't available in the US. You don't have to buy a phone from the carrier in China, you just buy any phone that can work on their network (and if you aren't using 3G/4G, that's ANY phone with a SIM card slot) and get a SIM from the carrier. quote:What are the thoughts on OpenVPN? How easy is it to use? Can I install this onto my Windows 8 machine (which won't be going to China with me), or do I need a dedicated machine? Or should I just get a pay-for VPN? I suspect your personal VPN (I presume you're talking about using some non-chinese server to set this up yourself?) would be less of a target for blocking than any commercial service, so that's probably a better option than anything else if you don't mind the hassle. But if you're doing this, the SSH tunnel method that Pro-PRC mentioned earlier is probably better and would require similar resources. If I recall correctly, when Witopia got blocked (RIGHT AFTER I BOUGHT THE SERVICE!) it was the OpenVPN service that went away completely in China. I'm not sure if that says anything about it being more likely to be blocked, or if it just happened that way in this instance. edit: Set up both OpenVPN and SSH on your remote server if you can; always best to have more options if something doesn't work as you planned. quote:What's the best way for me to start learning how to read/speak Chinese? (I would like to be able to order food and count money in the very least when I get there). Chinese girlfriend with bad English. quote:How easy is it to ship things to myself once I'm in China? I know the OP said pretty much anything I can find here is over there, though some things might be more expensive. I have some folks that want to send stuff to me once in a while, what are some things to bear in mind? Big and tall clothes, and shoe sizes over 11. They can be had, but they're hard to find offline, and they're not in the quantity they are available in the US, and sizing charts are all WRONG if you buy online. Things sometimes go missing in the mail to and from China. quote:Otherwise, as an American who hasn't been to another country in some 26 years (I drove through Canada to get between Alaska and the lower 48 when I was 3) Hey, me too! And I don't remember a thing from Canada. Where in AK are you from? quote:what are some things I should keep in mind? I'm a pretty open minded guy and can hit the ground running in pretty much any kind of situation; I love to travel and meet new people, but I've never had to deal with a language barrier. (Okay, so I've dealt with Hispanic migrant workers before, but I know just enough Spanish and they knew just enough English that we could communicate with hand signs and pictures to fill in the gaps). You're going to get diarrhea, maybe worse. Traffic is insane, crossing streets seems suicidal at first, follow the crowds and you'll PROBABLY be fine, but use your head about it. Spoken Chinese is the simplest language I've ever studied. Whenever you think "no, that couldn't possibly be how to say it" it probably is. Sentence structure is similar to English, and usage of WAY more words than I'd have expected is basically identical; you just have to wrap your head around a few foreign grammatical concepts (particles being the big one that springs to mind) and you'll be sailing. Chinese had about a 90% pass rate when I was at the Defense Language Institute. My program, Korean, was at 40%; for comparison. Now READING is a different matter. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 06:12
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