师傅,醒醒,醒醒!
shīfu , xǐngxing , xǐngxing !
Driver, wake up, wake up!
Stephen looked at his cab driver with newfound respect. Although traffic on the second ring road was
otherwise touch-and-go, here at last was a man attempting to change it. Hunched over the steering wheel
with his eyes on the road, the driver pushed forward at a slow but steady pace, sometimes lagging behind
and sometimes nearly hitting the vehicle in front but never actually stopping. It was traffic smoothing
applied as expertly as Stephen had ever seen done, as if this one man were trying to wrest Beijing
congestion into shape through force of will alone.
Learning Chinese? Even if you don't speak any Chinese, this lesson should be at your level of difficulty.
What we'll learn is how to double-up a number of high-frequency verbs in order to make suggestions.
There's a simple trick here that's impossible to forget once you've learned it and using it will help you
sound a lot more fluent than people who are learning from regular textbooks. So if you're working towards
learning Chinese take a listen and see what you think. And if you have any questions, let us know in the
discussion section below.
shīfu , xǐngxing , xǐngxing !
Driver, wake up, wake up!
dào le , dào le 。 shí kuài , shí kuài . . . .
We're here, we're here.... That'll be ten kuai.
nǐ gāngcái shuìzháo le 。
You were just sleeping.
méiyǒu , méiyǒu a , wǒmen qù nǎr ?
No I wasn't.... Where are we going?
shīfu
driver
noundào le
to have arrived
verbshí kuài
10 kuai
phrasegāngcái
just now
adverbxǐngxing
wake up
phrasekànkan
take a look
phrasetīngting
take a listen
phrasechángchang
taste it
phraseshìshi
try it out
phrase