Comments on: Interview with expatinterviews.com

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:01:40 +0000

Great interview! absolutely loved reading all of the answers to the questions! Thanks.

By: cinderella

cinderella — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 03:33:27 +0000

i am a teacher of English in a small town in henan province,can u give me some tips on how to write an essay of about 1,000 words on the topic of
Context and Culture in Language Teaching?

By: danjo

danjo — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:01:28 +0000

Tim – come to think of it, out of nowhere a local supermarket has started stocking almost every brand of foreign liquor I can think of. I may start taking your advice. Otherwise it’s actually quite difficult to spend money where I live. I could always buy a motorbike or something silly like that.

I agree completely with what Ben says about Chinese being more logical than English, and easier to learn once you get past the beginner’s stage. I love learning new words in Chinese actually, it’s quite different than my Spanish learning experiences in high school. I wrote something about this called “learning chinese doesn’t make you crazy” in my blog but at this internet cafe I have no intention of going through the hoopla of linking to blogspot.com.

If anyone reading this is interested in teaching English in China and is looking for more of a small-town, adventurous experience, I wholeheartedly recommend the group I went through, called OWDC (www.owdc.org). Basically just a New Zealand woman and her family who live in China and check out schools for you, and really care about what they are doing.

By: JL

JL — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:30:48 +0000

You can get a tourist visa that will last a year, if you’re accompanying someone with a work visa. But you might find it a bit boring.

By: Benjamin Ross

Benjamin Ross — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:01:32 +0000

I think there has been a little bit of confusion in regards to the visa issue. I am not suggesting people work on a tourist or student visa. Rather, I am suggesting going to China on a tourist visa, and then looking for a job which will give you a Z visa. You likely will have to go to Hong Kong to process the new visa, but it’s really not that big of a price to pay. Working on a tourist visa has a bad idea for 2 reasons. First, it’s illegal. Secondly tourist visas only last 30 days if you’re American (I believe Canadians get 90, not sure about the British or Ausies), so you’ll have to get a new visa every month. Any job which will not give you a Z visa should be avoided, because that means they are not legally allowed to employ foreigners.

By: JL

JL — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:22:33 +0000

RE: visas.
I 100% agree with Chris. I live in a small town in southern Sichuan (and the Sichuanese also have a reputation for being lazy and not complying with rules made in Beijing). I almost got deported for planning to teach for 3 days on a student visa. The police heard about it somehow, and told me that they had deported two guys for doing exactly that earlier this year. In my opinion, it’s not really the police that care, but other schools that try to fuck over their competition by getting their teachers sent home. I think you could search for a job with an L visa, but now I wouldn’t think of teaching even one period, anywhere in China, unless I had both a work visa and a foreign experts certificate.

RE: Chinese versus English
The English word telephone might be harder for learners than dianhua, because the components ‘dian’ and ‘hua’ are so common. But remember that both ‘tele’ and ‘phone’ come back to help learners later on when they encounter words like ‘headphones’, ‘phonetics’, ‘telecommunications’. So I think for people whose goal is to master a large vocabulary, there isn’t much difference.

By: Jiang

Jiang — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:12:21 +0000

In most cases, each Chinese character has many meanings. Without context, sometimes a sentence has many meanings too. As to the example他背着总经理和副经理去银行存钱。Just read this sentence, my first instinction was “he made a bank deposit without acknowledging the general manager and the deputy.” But if you put it into a certain context, then maybe it will have another meaning. As to热带鱼, I think generally the meaning is “tropical fish”. If I want to say “hot ribbon fish”, I will say 热的带鱼. And “heat the ribbon fish” is 过热一下带鱼 or 热一下带鱼. So we had better no 断章取义.

By: Handan

Handan — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:12:39 +0000

Ben, on Chinese being more bounded in logic than English, I’d have to disagree with you.

At the word construction level, the examples you gave did showsase the simplicity of vocab expansion in learning Chinese in that multi-syllable words make immediate sense if you already know the single syllable characters, except when the characters form idioms. Yet you overlooked one important fact, that most single syllable characters are stand alone units of meaning, while most of the two or more syllable words should be classified as compound words, the equivalent of “property agent”, “wide-eyed”, “web-based”, rather than “mosquito”, “palace” and so on. The bottom line, you were comparing oranges and apples.

Beyond the word construction realm, the lack of tenses and nouns forms and clear syntax only mean much room for ambiguity. Good news for poetry, but bad for logic.

Two examples.

1.热带鱼（re4 dai4 yu2, the numbers correspond to tones) could mean three things, tropical fish, hot ribbon fish, or heat the ribbon fish.

2. 他背着总经理和副经理去银行存钱。There are fours ways of interpretation for this one. a) He, carrying the general manager on his back, made/is making/has made a bank deposit along with the deputy. b) Carrying both the general and deputy managers, he made/is making/has made a bank deposit. c) he made/is making/has made a bank deposit without acknowledging the general manager or the deputy. d) He and the deputy made/are making/have made a bank deposit
without acknowledging the general manager.

I know these are a bit to the extreme, but not totally atypical.

To me, being easier to learn and being more bound in logic are two different things, if not almost opposite.

About German, it’s another language that is known for a very rough start and an easier ride once you make it to the other side of the first big hump. I wouldn’t say that German shares this learning curve because of its linguistic similarity to Chinese, though.

By: The Humanaught

The Humanaught — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:43:04 +0000

Tim = Funny as hell.

@Ben:
I agree with you and what you’re saying about Chinese word constructs. Chris, your point – though true – is made invalid by the fact that understanding English’s prefix-root-suffix construction in any meaningful way requires an understanding of all those languages you listed. If that isn’t the antithesis of practicality and the exact opposite of what Ben was trying to convey, I don’t know what is.

I do absolutely agree with you on the visa issue though. It’s a situation whereby 80-90% of the time you’ll be fine, but that 10-20% that you get screwed… it’s not a little screw.

Oh, and as Expat Interviews seems bent on interviewing every last one of us, I say we start a little competition on who’s had the most number of reads at their site. And I swear it’s not just because mine’s in the lead (yes, I am a sad little man).

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:55:36 +0000

Danjo! Have you not yet sampled the vices of China!? If it turns out that you are unable to return more than a third of your salary every month back into circulation might I suggest trying some of your province’s fine cigarettes, beer and baijiu? Those Li Ning sneaks in the window next to the noodle stand haven’t caught your eye? A hundred kuai for an hour long massage isn’t tempting enough?

As westerners we have the global obligation to help the Chinese learn the principles of a market economy! The more that people see other people spending, the more those people feel the need to spend as well! This mentality is essential for foreign firms’ survival in China as well as for China’s economy to generate some internal revenues for once! Please help the cause and I promise we will all thank you later!!!