Comments on: will speak chinese for food

By: Goodbye flashcards – 四海为家

Goodbye flashcards – 四海为家 — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:53:30 +0000

[...] and here), and from a pure cost-benefit perspective, the pay-off is questionable (see here and here for more on that). (To be fair, learning English is difficult for Chinese students as [...]

By: Gerald

Gerald — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:57:03 +0000

Actually, somebody was not nerdy enough, so here’s to the rescue: As ethnography is (usually) a descriptive approach, an anthropologist wouldn’t tell you about ethnographic ramifications of that broken pipe, but just describe what people are doing and thinking about it (or not) and how this relates to social (or other) dynamics and interactions at work there. Unless of course if you get people who do political or applied anthropology.
Gosh, isn’t nitpicking fun?
I finally feel like I’ve learnt some hard skills from all those lessons on ethnography and the postmodern/literary turn in anthropology.

By: Tourist trapping – 四海为家

Tourist trapping – 四海为家 — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:47:53 +0000

[...] directed against foreigners who don’t speak Chinese. I suspect that on the whole, the return on investment in the job market for learning Chinese is not huge (despite insistence to the contrary of neighbors and mothers “back home”). But here in [...]

By: Maria

Maria — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:17:32 +0000

I feel like people want me to say that I’m learning Chinese to make lots of money, it makes them feel proud that Chinese is the new English, and they seem disappointed when I tell them I’m pretty sure learning Chinese will have no impact whatsoever on my ability to find a job when I leave China. But really, of course, the reason I came was to impart post-modernist analysis of contemporary issues. I’m sure there’s a need for it somewhere . 　