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Monthly Archives January 2010

The elusive IF

It turns out to have been a trap. In the course of reminiscing about the cheap and delicious radish peel deals Beijing street vendors used to offer, YU started her soliloquy like this:

Guòqù Běijīng a, jiù jiùshi nèige, jiùshi, wǒ, wǒ shì mài luóbo de,
过去北京啊，就就是那个，就是，我，我是卖萝卜的
In the past in Beijing, uh, well, I, if I was [...]

Posted 11 January 2010 † syz § Chao Yuen Ren 赵元任 Zhào Yuánrèn § Grammar of spoken Mandarin ‡ Comments (21) °

Hang the wall on the gun

Scene: A towering glass and granite building located in Shangdi, suburban Beijing, the Silicon Valley of the capital city, not far from the comparatively puny corporate campuses of Google, Baidu, IBM, etc. The building top’s massive, fengshui-correct sculpture is only slightly obfuscated by the awkward bulk of the Beijing Sounds Studios name rendered in two [...]

Posted 06 January 2010 † syz § beijing-r § běijīnghuà § consonant elision § taxi § unexpected érhuàyīn ‡ Comments (19) °