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Category Archives: taxi

Only those you trust can bleed you dry

Listen to the whole show with this file:
Audio: [Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Or take it section by section and grab popcorn at the intermissions.
Part 1: Introductions, Perfunctories
Or, how a Zhonglish speaker works to break the Beijing record in nèige-to-content ratio.
Audio: [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

1
SYZ
Nín hǎo! Nín zhīdào nèige zuìhòu [...]

Posted 25 March 2010 † syz § ‡ Comments (11) °

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 § unexpected érhuàyīn ‡ Comments (19) °

Silkworm husbandry

On conversation topic universals

Spend too long with Beijing cabbies and you might think they were all…

Posted 08 June 2009 † syz § EXMARaLDA transcriptions § běijīnghuà ‡ Comments (10) °

Have you been abroad?

On the pointlessness of leaving Beijing (or at least China, at any rate); the BJSLBC™
April 2009, a taxi somewhere across central Beijing…

Posted 05 May 2009 † syz § Beijinger Checklist / BJSLBC™ § consonant elision ‡ Comments (9) °

1.3 billion people speak WHAT as a mother tongue?!

On Mandarin learning challenges, the definition of language, and the best taxi-driver critique of hànzì ever recorded.

You’ll be forgiven if you missed the pins-and-needles press conference of foreign minister (wàijiāobùzhǎng, 外交部长) Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪 a couple of weeks ago (hat tip to Joel Martinsen at Danwei).

Posted 30 March 2008 † syz § DeFrancis § MFL § linguistics ‡ Comments (12) °

Taxi palavering and the great taxi fraud

The average Beijing taxi driver is licking his chops to get a foreigner into the back seat so he can drive him three times around the third ring before delivering him to the overpriced Shangri-la on the premise of having confused it for the Hilton.Right?
That’s the going logic. And there’s no shortage of scams [...]

Posted 28 October 2007 † syz § fraud § society ‡ Comments (7) °