One of our ulterior motives with this entire podcasting business is getting famous and good-looking Chinese celebrities into our recording studios (yes, we take requests). Which is how we're able to bring you this recording starring one of the more recognizable celebrities you're likely to encounter in China. Although she may not be Cecilia Cheung, if you've been in China for a while we're pretty sure you'll recognize her....In this listening test your challenge is to listen to our recording once and then click through to our quiz section to gauge your comprehension of the story you've heard and the language it uses. If you run into any problems, we've prepared our regular annotated version of the text with mouseover popups.
bonita.delmonte
said on July 13, 2009
That girl is a dead-ringer for the China Mobile girl. Reminds me I need to recharge my phone too. Eerie coincidence (it is a coincidence, right?)....
trevelyan
said on July 13, 2009
@bonita - It is a coincidence, I promise....
The girl's name is Xiao Ying and we found her through the National Broadcasting University in Beijing - she's actually a friend of Tiansen's. They do a lot of contract work that gets arranged through the university, even including voice-overs for film promos and that sort of thing.
It's amazing to see them perform actually. If you're ever in Beijing we should have you over on a recording night to see for yourself. Old timer and all. :)
Cheers,
--dave
orbital
said on July 14, 2009
What used to confuse me about the telephone dial-in systems was when they referred to the pound sign as 井号 (jing3 hao4), as in "please press the pound key." I had no idea what they were talking about and no way to get through the system. Jing-what?You should do a lesson on that. It isn't a problem big enough to get upset about, but it is totally confusing No-one teaches that in a traditional classroom, but it's a hell of a lot more useful assuming one plans to use a phone and all.
mat
said on July 28, 2009
Heh does this bare any relation to the actual hotline? It's sounds so crazy that might just be true!
A bit of a break from the usual style too, such nicely paced pronunciation. Even the guy is a welcome respite from popup's patented Mat-incomprehensible male voice actor. :)
P.S. I just got my t-shirt and the lovely post card too - thank you! China Post can't be serious with that delivery time though can they? Was it sent by mule?
trevelyan
said on July 30, 2009
@met - glad that the shirt and card arrived, even if they showed up a bit late. And 飞驴子 would be a really cool name for a shipping service. I think we'd probably use it even if it was a lot slower. Just for the cache of the name.
The only thing I can think of with shipping speeds is that it makes a different which branch we send the packages from. We were surprised to find that the China Post branch closest to us doesn't actually accept international packages because... they don't know how to do it. Glad it got there eventually anyway.
Intermediate
said on July 30, 2009
@mat,
哈哈，在中国，如果我们想说什么东西很慢，我们一般说“老牛”。所以，你的T恤应该是老牛送来的 :)
--Echo
[email protected]
trevelyan
said on July 30, 2009
Hi Guys,This doesn't really fit anywhere else, but there's an interview with Echo up in The Examiner, an online newspaper. She's a bit too modest to post the link herself, so I will. :)http://www.examiner.com/x-15615-Asia-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m7d29-Studying-Mandarin-Pop-in-a-Putonghua-podcast
mat
said on August 2, 2009
非常好的面试！
Echo, 老牛, I like that. So 老牛邮政 then? :)
Oh yes I've had a lot of fun actually reading all the stuff on the package. Lots of good vocab there.
Posting stuff sounds like good subject for a podcast? I feel like I've said this already... 似曾相识吗？
Echo
said on August 2, 2009
@mat,
Haha, you should say 我觉得我好像已经说过了 :) 似曾相识 means you feel like you have seen something similar or you have known someone but you are not sure.
--Echo
[email protected]
ameristar888
said on August 5, 2009
one of the best intermediate lessons. The voice actor Xiao Ying is terrific in pronunciation and delivery I like hearing as opposed to the male voice. The female voice reminds me of the Mandarin voice recording inbetween stations on the line 10 subway. I would like to suggest a follow up lesson with vocab from typical recordings one hears at banks, buses, subways and airports.
mat
said on August 5, 2009
Hah, thanks for the correction Echo. That's literally "deja vu". Deja vu itself, however, implies the general feeling of this concept that could be used like I did but obviously not so the chinese equivalent. I'm glad I looked up up though, it's a great phase.
I wonder, can you drop the 好像 from that? It seems a shade redundant? I always get this stuff wrong though...
Ameristar, it's frighteningly clear isn't it! Although I absolutely adore (not a 老色鬼 way!) various other voices in the podcasts too. Invariably the female ones, I've always found them much easier to understand and not just here.
