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Second the two previous answers, and add: shotguns, as referenced above, can be (and often were) shortened. Rifles had much harder steel barrels, and casual sawing would leave burrs and defects that made the weapon dangerous to the shooter. So the proffered explanation is very plausible. Another alternative is a weapon popular in China at the time, but too elaborate a choice without being specifically referenced in the description: Obviously not a good idea to ask older boys about their toys... TBZ

Interesting question, answer seems correct, caption of what it looks like here: https://item.btime.com/35qmt5b01fc8qvaks2u53nc0q6o Seems to specifically mean carrying the gun on the chest with it looped over the shoulder and neck. So one bandit has a bigger gun located on his back, the other a shorter gun located on his front.

I might be able to help with this. Think about a 挎包, a purse or bag slung over one shoulder instead of carried in the hand. I think his gun is probably a short-barreled shotgun, not a rifle, pistol or revolver, and it has a sling (attached to it at the butt and at the end of the wooden forearm.) I think he is carrying it slung over one shoulder, 挎着, Sicilian bandit style. Not in a shoulder holster. These short shotguns are called "lupara" in Italian and were popularized in the Godfather movies (when Michael was in exile in Sicily.) Something like this, with much shorter barrels, usually double-barreled. Sometimes the stock has been shortened, too. It's not very difficult to conceal (helpful if you're a bandit.)

I'm translating a novel. The story takes place in Southern China, around 1920, although I suspect that's not actually important for my question. Two bandits show up: 一个背着长枪，一个挎着短枪. My question: what does 挎 mean here? How is the man actually holding the gun? Does he hold it in his hand, is it in a shoulder holster? Many thanks for anyone who knows! I think the answer must be simple, except I don't know it.

Congratulations! This is absolutely awesome! I really admire your ability. Please excuse so much curiosity, but may I ask what your nationality is? How long have you ñived in China and how long have you been learning Chinese?

@vellocet That’s weird. It could be something’s wrong with your built-in file manager or similar because I was able to import files of any type on my iOS device by tapping Add user > Add existing > External Files.

I downloaded the .pqb file but it doesn't show up when adding to Pleco with Add User/Existing. There are a lot of files in that directory but only the .mp3 and .jpg files are displayed. I selected "show hidden files". Pleco pops up a screen about "Force Legacy File Chooser in Settings/Miscellaneous" but I don't see such an option. I have the paid version.

querido do you realise you have just invented Artificial Imron....??? I need your clothes, your boooots, and your flashcards

The quote doesn't reject the idea of spaced repetition, but only opines that it can be done well enough naturally, and I hope that's true. Since it was proclaimed by the immortal imron, I have faith. But I wouldn't mind if somebody or something could handle all of that automatically and transparently, and continually correct me, and could remember every word that I've forgotten that I've forgotten, and work them into conversation for freshening. Wouldn't mind. But just "take my money" because I'm not going to do it.

I suppose that you could do all that... but to quote your own signature "Consumption of native content is a natural repetition system..." -imron That aside, it can write some amount of code, but you'll still need to know something to get it working right... and if my experience asking it to adapt "little red riding hood" for the stage is anything to go by, then it'll take to just as much time and effort revising it to your liking as it would have taken to write it yourself.

For Chinese learning it needs a persistent (permanent) database for each person, and behind the scenes segmentation, flashcarding algorithm, etc. (and later text to speech and speech to text). Then I can imagine it serving as a teacher who remembers the status of every word you've ever not known, and smoothly serving these up in otherwise casual interaction, or in any interaction you have with it. Could be close to transparent and very natural. Somebody do it and make a lot of money please. Is it true that you can even ask it to write the code to implement the above?

Well, then how about a rural village? 😄

Way ahead of you, been in one since I got here. I didn't know foreigners were ever unusual in Beijing.

Thought this might be useful for any beginner Cangjie learners. I usually type on my own computer, but recently have had to use a work computer a lot, which means im stuck with the annoying, error-ridden 'MS Changjie' IME. I made a list of these as a cheat sheet for myself - here it is typed up: Component decomposition differences are: 冫 = 卜 (not 戈一. This is used even in characters like 习 (尸卜 rather than 尸戈一) 丬 = 卜中 (not 中一. For the same reason as 冫) 𭕄 = 戈月 (not 火, eg. 学: 戈月弓木 not 火月弓木. Note that 龸 is still treated as 火月 in MS Changjie) 讠 = 戈弓 (not 戈女) 产 = 卜廿 (not 卜竹) 业 = 廿一 (not 廿金) Wider errors are: Any character with 钅will randomly only accept 金 rather than 人心 as its code (eg. 钱 = 金戈一 not 人心戈十) Any character with 发 on the right hand side is given the code 女戈水 (not 戈女水) despite the fact that MS Changjie actually uses 戈女大水 for 发 itself There are other errors, but these are mostly for very rare characters. There are some common characters which have two codes assigned, one the original error, and one the later correction. As you might have spotted, the key difference in the systems is how MS Changjie treats dots (ie it treats them wrongly...)

I am only here for a few months, so I wasn't too picky. I joined some facebook groups (taipei rent, 臺北租房 should give you several active groups), and then just messaged a few people and it was fairly painless If you are going to be here for more than a few months, I'd definitely suggest just getting accommodation for the first week and scrolling through these facebook groups to get an idea of the renting landscape before you arrive. maybe even arrange some inspections, if you have an idea of where you want to live (its a big city) Alternatively you can of course use 591, a good option if you have a rough idea of what you are looking for. I was having easy success on facebook so I never turned to it. sidenote: facebook is pretty damn popular here.

How about moving to a 2nd or 3rd tier city then?

My post on Reddit got a number of people interested so I though I’d share again here. I find Pleco to be the best companion tool for learning Chinese. However, I don’t really like how Pleco has a separated tab for individual characters in a word. So, I created a user dictionary for Pleco that does exactly that so you can view the definitions for each character right on the main page. Even more so, CD-Dict is now updated with radicals, stroke counts, HSK levels, General Standard#, and frequency ranks for 9,933 characters right in one place. For download links you can visit this Github page where I’ll be updating new versions of existing dictionaries and adding new ones as well: https://github.com/meap158/Pleco-Collection Aside from CD-Dict above, there’s another dictionary on there called ML-Dict which is a Multilingual Dictionary. Basically, I took the same set of data with 238,925 headwords and used Google Translate to translate them all into multiple languages: English, Japanese, Vietnamese, French, Russian, Spanish, and Korean. So while you’re learning Chinese, you can reinforce and perhaps learn some words in these other languages as well. It’s a great way to learn multiple languages at once! Since they share the same headwords, I recommend using both of these dictionaries at the same time. This way, you will always have them together when searching for words without one showing up and the other not. Anyhow, as a longtime lurker and first-time poster, I wish you all happy learning! Credits: Data are sourced from HanziDB, OVDP, Unihan, and Google Translate.

Very cool. I am going to / moving to Taipei in June - interested to hear how you get on with apartment-hunting.

I came through personally unscathed as I work from home and our villages (we moved about a kilometre to the next one last year after our lease ran out) only had the one full lockdown but the schooling breaks were bad for the kids. Not so good for the wife either, who is a market trader and obviously that wasn't happening, so she was bored and it put a dint in the family income. I was in Beijing during SARS way back and similarly sailed through that while there was a bit of a panic on and foreigners passing through having pulled out of provincial jobs. Hard to say anything about the affect on numbers, it's gone up exponentially here as another European bloke has moved into the next village but only heard about it from neighbours, never seen him about. There's an Italian and a Gambian in the township too, but they've been here ages too, though I may have missed some non visible foreigners.

I'd like to have my user suspended as well as my username made into something random. Thanks.

Somehow the most leftist/liberal/"anti-racist" people I know are just delighted to say all sorts of hateful stuff about China and Chinese people (just look at r/China on reddit) the non-political people just don't get into it... then you go all the way to the GOP side of the equation... and I gotta be honest I don't know many of these people, but they do a lot of hating on China too, but I don't get the feeling they hate on Chinese people (we're talking in the American context, your country may vary ) I actually missed that initial fun cuz we took a trip abroad for Chinese new year, and just barely made it back in under the buzzer. But I share with you the derision for the US government. They treat the US as a shopping mall, and Americans like economic units not citizens. Kinda got this same feeling when I see people on Youtube who have become diehard anti-China shills like that SerpentZA guy... If it's really so bad then good for you for leaving, but why should I care? Know a guy who left before COVID (he didn't have a degree and it was getting hard to get a job) and he's finally finding his way back in for the fall semester. Not sure what time period you're referring to, but the current geo-political situation might make your wish come true. I think before covid the number of Chinese learners in university was at an all time high, but over the last three years it has dropped off a cliff and something like only 60,000 people are enrolled in Chinese programs in American universities. As we all can guess that 60,000 people will be half overseas Chinese and then of tthe 30,000 only a small portion will ever decide to spend time in China and/or become proficient in Chinese. Just pulling numbers out of my butt, but I'd be surprised if any more than 300 of the 30,000 non-Chinese students actually ever achieves proficiency, the real number may be closer to 30...

this comment makes way more sense than the former to me and I want to reply the questions one by one. in fact , yes ,I spoke with my doctor at a time , but not comprehensive in detail. I think for this question , they might consult to my parents opinion. if my parents aggree, then it seems OK ,but this is my personal idea because when I proposed this at a time, my doctor did not say yes or no,I remember she asked me some questions but do not remember well. I aggree to you that I should discuss this with my doctor (a pschiatrist ,a doctor who is specialized in psychiatry) simply no. But if you want details. I think I know the time when I can cause any risk. meanwhile, the mentioned risk here is ,I think, same or lower than the risk for normal persons. To prove this ,Thanks to Allah ,I can say that I have never found myself in any law issue and police never arrested me or no investigation has been done for me until now. This is yes, one of the potentially biggest question. yeah yes. I think to make a better reply , I need some other questions' reply. Like this : will I be able to make my personal decision to leave China whenever I feel myself discomforted ? (Notion: here the discomfort is not alike any random discomfort: it should go on at least 3 weeks or longer to my opinion.) and yes, the air tickets are really expensive from here to China. I think that collecting some money in my pocket or in bank would help. I do not know the answer to this question but I can ask to my doctor. I do not know but with high potentiality NO. I do not know the answer for this question too. But I remember at a time from our social service in hospital the staff was saying something like this: "inv this is your right to take your medication at everywhere all around the world. " The first question is important to me. I also see you tried to reason your opinion for the question. well, I may not answer this question as just one reason. There are many reasons for imagining to be in China. But First reason is,of course learning Chinese in its natural environment. I do not think that it would be same studying at my home alone. Experience of living in another country with a different culture is also a reason but not just one reason and surely not the core reason,too. to make embodiment as more apparent or transparent answer for the first part of your question: one of these areas I may consider ,or one of these is potential: * cyber security * computer programming *computer engineering * linguistics * language programs * cryptography *dentistry (but not medicine) I already have a BSc degree but for some reasons ,I do not prefer to give further details. Many thanks. sincerely inv

It's been a pain in the ass these last three years. No going home, no Christmas surrounded by the people you love back home, no more loading the suitcase up with your culture's special foods (ouch). Dealing with a lot of extra bullshit, like finding a testing center near you that's open, keeping your jiankangma up to date, getting denied entry into shopping centers because you had something come up and forgot to get tested. Or, what hurt me the most, your relatives not able to make an annual visit and hang out. Remember the early days? When foreigners were straight up freaking out? The general feeling was "I've got to get out of here! I'm going to die in China!" LOL. Anyone remember Flora, that lady in Wuhan? Classic. Remember when the US State Department sent a plane to evacuate its consular staff from Wuhan, and then was going to fly back half empty? And after an outcry, they reluctantly agreed to allow US citizens to board...at $2,000 a seat? Good times, good times. While countries like Russia and the Philippines sent planes for their people at no charge. You know, because they think they should care for their own citizens, unlike the US State Department which thinks we're all (non-Amcham that is) either criminals on the run from the law or tax evaders. But I'll not lie, it was kind of nice having China all to ourselves for a while. Nobody came in. There was a trickle, but a 28 day hotel stay at your own expense was a significant barrier to entry. I've been told that China has lost a lot of long-term foreigners and I should be upset about that. I don't quite understand. Why? My attitude has always been: you don't like it, get the heck out. For some reason this is really bad and people react very poorly to it. We recently had a long-termer (14 years) leave. There was some foofaraw with his school, and instead of looking for another job he just decided to exit. This was fine by me! He was the biggest complainer ever. Every time I met him, he wanted to pull me aside and explain how something had happened, that the Chinese were so stupid, and how he missed the good old days when he used to live in Taiwan. After a while I just couldn't listen to it any more and told him off to his face, just don't give me that negative crap any more! It brings me down, which I'm pretty sure was the intention. I have a great time in China, how dare I enjoy it while he hates it! Well, when it was time for him to go he was all broken up about it. I didn't get it, I thought you despise China and despise worse Chinese people? He didn't speak Mandarin, of course. How can you be sad about leaving a country and people that you detest, and your favorite topic of conversation is this fact? I saw this pattern repeated over and over online. It might be phrased as, "I'm leaving and you should be very dismayed and try to stop me - but I won't be stopped, you can't un-break a vase, and this is a really bad move on your part which will turn out badly for you." With our reduced numbers, I'm glad that the issue of foreigners can go on the back burner for a while. We were really attracting attention from the government, and now we're a lot fewer. Hopefully it will take a long time for our numbers to return to what they were, if they ever do. I was expecting a new crop of foreigners when the restrictions were relaxed in January and I haven't noticed a single one. The tourist visas will open in a few days and that will be the real test. Well, if those were planning on moving back to China and living full-time, they've got a big surprise coming. All the training centers are closed and that was a major source of work for them. Now, it's only public schools and they are regularly inspected for illegals. I hope we can go back to the good old days, when foreigners were rare and unusual. I don't say this because I have the "I'm the only laowai in China" disease, but because the foreign trash is all gone. It's also nice having a bit of leverage. Now, either they pay up or lose out. Nice to see the shoe is on the other foot for once. I've said this before in a Wechat group and got quite a number of upset responses. Evidently a lot of people like the foreign trash? Someone else put this way, "The way I understood it meant he that the inconvenience of the last three years got rid of all the people that come to China to fuck around because it’s easy to get some training centre job which requires minimum effort other than being a foreigner & spend all of their time getting drunk, sleeping around and giving china a bad impression of foreigners." Amen to that.

Hello everyone, I am a master's student who will be graduating in July. Recently, I applied for a Ph.D. Scholarship Program that is scheduled to begin in September. However, I am facing a problem regarding obtaining my master's degree certificate. To be eligible for the scholarship program, I need to submit my master's degree certificate in August. But I haven't passed the HSK 3 exam yet, which is required to obtain the certificate. My question is, can I still get my master's degree certificate without passing the HSK 3 exam so that I can complete it during my Ph.D. program? I would really appreciate any insights or suggestions regarding this matter. Thank you in advance for your help.

Thanks everyone for your attention. I just wanted to try a new kind of dating, but I'm going to take your opinion.