Published by Swiss James on 30 May 2008 at 12:15 pm
Dragon Boat racing
Next weekend, Emma wants to take part in a Dragon boat Race.
A Dragon boat is a kind of ancient torture device where 20 or so people are forced to kneel in an unstable narrow canoe, sweat in the midday sun and paddle down a dirty river as blisters form on their hot damp hands.
Wikipedia
I’m not keen.
It’s not (entirely) a laziness thing. The race is organised by iMandarin, a company which, for some reason, believes that I went back to England 3 weeks ago, never to return to Shanghai.
Let me explain.
Until recently I was taking Chinese lessons twice a week. They were fun at first and I learnt a lot, iMandarin is a good company and I recommend them to anyone who wants to take lessons. However there came a time when I just seemed to spend at least an hour of every lesson saying the word “Juede” (”believe”) over and over again to get the pronunciation just so.
I was also frustrated that 12 months after starting to study, I was still using pinyin all of the time instead of the cool Chinese characters (studying Chinese characters is vital if I ever want to go back to England and make fun of people’s tattoos).
I decided it would make sense to quit and spend the study time in the gym (or drinking, whichever) and decide later on about whether to take more lessons.
Instead of hurting my teacher’s feelings, I did the brave thing and made up an elaborate story about going back to England to avenge the death of my Grandfather.
He seemed to accept the story and even gave me a rather nice ceremonial sword to slay my enemies with. Obviously this tissue of lies will be somewhat compromised if I turn up on Sunday in my ice-white Speedos carrying a Ploughman’s lunch and a 6 pack of Zima.
Sorry Emma, I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time on your own.
So ultimately you’re not going because you couldn’t be bothered to continue learning Chinese? How is that not *entirely* a laziness thing?
The tattoo thing works both ways. I know a few Chinese people in England who learn English so they can come back and make fun of people’s tee shirts here.
Oh those Chinese lessons, when am I ever going to need to talk to a Chinese person anyway? If I have a problem I just call Emma.
I’ll say it before someone else does: Jia you, James!
Yes good point well made. If they have anything important to say I’m sure they will learn English so they can say it in a way you’ll understand.
I was there when you started the Chinese lessons and i’m pretty sure i told you they were absolutely wrong about you not studying the Chinese characters along with the speaking part, but did you listen, did you buggery. I was also there when your teacher went on a completely unprovoked rant about how much she hated the Japanese and barely paused when you told her my girlfriend was one!
You should go - just turn up in heavy bandaging and a limp and tell them revenge is yours.
You don’t even need to study the Chinese so hard for tattoo interpretation as it’s not a deep subject, people choose the easy dumb ones for their tattoos, and they’re all the same five repeated over and over. “Winter” is a popular one, I can think of at least six heavy metal frontmen with it tattooed somewhere on their sleeves.
Dragon Boating is another euphamism for an excuse to get seriously wicked pissed at a party featuring complimentary or deeply discounted alcoholic beverages.
eg: What’s on tonite?
I dunno. Let’s go dragon boating.
The word ” Juede” doesnt mean “believe”, it means “think or feel” instead. Who the hell is your mandarin teacher? HEHE~~
Koo - Juede can mean believe, just not the same usage of believe as you think. Believe can mean to think or feel. It’s just like in French they have “penser” which means to think and “croire” meaning to think / feel / believe.
You learn something new every day.. even after 31 years of speaking Mandarin. My mother warned me not to use “Juede” while enjoying a rub down from those Xikang Lu massage girls.
Dragons won’t drag me to race on the Huangpu… much less swim in it. Go get them, Emma!
“wo juede shanghai hen hao wan!”
=
“I believe Shanghai is fun”
That’s the way I meant “believe” not as in “I believe in dragons”.
Learning new languages is seriously overrated, it’s like how I spent 10 years studying English in Scotland and than found out they do not speak the language anywhere else in the world! Good thing I can still communicate via writing on esoteric internet blogs.
Loosa, I couldn’t agree more, I’ve never had an interesting conversation with anyone who couldn’t speak english so what’s the point in learning if I’ll only get to speak to boring people.
juede 觉得 means think, feel, not believe. sorry man.