Chinese Revolution

Submitted by Mark White on January 2, 2008 – 12:50 pm 8 Comments

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Australian Guy: So Mao’s wife was married to Chiang Kai Shek’s wife?
American Guy: No.
Australian Guy: Mao’s wife and Chiang Kai-Shek’s wife were sisters.
American Guy: Chiang Kai-Shek’s wife and Mao’s wife were sisters.
Australian Guy: Right.
American Guy: And the females in that family were spread throughout both sides of that battle.
Australian Guy: Right ok.
American Guy: The females were on both sides. It is really interesting
Australian Guy: They came from the Shanghai area?
American Guy: Yeah.
Australian Guy: And Chiang Kai-Shek came from the Shanghai area?
American Guy: Yeah. So did Mao.
Australian Guy: Mao came…? Did he come from…?
American Guy: Oh yeah. His power base was Shanghai. Shanghai produced all the …Sun Yat-Sen ..When Sun Yat-Sen overthrew the emperor .. what was it…nineteen twelve or nineteen thirteen…whenever it was? He came from the same area.
Australian Guy: Nineteen nineteen was when they…
American Guy: Twelve or thirteen. Nineteen twelve. Nineteen thirteen. Something like that…
Australian Guy: Nineteen nineteen something happened.
American Guy: Yeah. But it all came from the same area.
Australian Guy: Shanghai is the real capital of China. Like in terms of…
American Guy: Oh yeah. Sun Yat-Sen. Sun Yat-Sen was related to Chiang Kai-Shek’s wife. That is where Chiang Kai-Shek…But Mao also married into the same family.
Australian Guy: Right.
American Guy: My feeling is that the history of the last hundred and something; hundred and twenty years of China, was on the female side. Nothing to do with the guys. Because they were so diverse. Sun Yat Sen, who was probably the most enlightened leader…
Australian Guy: Everybody loves him on both sides.
American Guy: Oh Yeah. He was a most enlightened leader.
Australian Guy: I do not know much about him but everybody loves him in China and Taiwan.
American Guy: Well he overthrew the imperial dynasty but…
Australian Guy: Sun Yi-Sen.
American Guy: He was a republican.

Tags: adjectives, cantonese-and-mandarin, Chiang-Kai-Shek, China, Chinese-Revolution, collaboration, contradicting, conversation, disagreeing, everybody, false-starts, family, family-relationships, generalizations, history, Mao, marriage, nothing, numbers, passive-voice, past-passive, past-simple-tense, politics, present-simple-tense, quantity-words, Real Conversations, relative-clauses, relative-pronouns, shanghai, something, Sun-Yat-Sen, Sun-Yi-Sen, time-and-dates, time-and-numbers, unfinished-sentences, who-clauses, years

8 Comments »

Jack says:

February 23, 2008 at 3:26 am

I think there is a big mistake in this lesson. Mao’s wife, Qing Jiang was not the sister of either Chiang Kai Shek’s wife Meiling Song or Sun Yi-Sen’s wife Qingling Song. But for the latter two, their wife were from same family. Please do not misunderstand it.
Jack

Reply to this comment »
sara Lee says:

October 2, 2008 at 2:12 am

I won’t complain for the mistake, it’s difficult for non-chinese speakers to tell the difference between those Chinese’s name,Qing Jiang, Qing ling, Mei ling….thus, people get confused.

Reply to this comment »
Mark White says:

October 2, 2008 at 2:54 am

Hi Sara,

Yeah it is hard to understand but I am still curious about what is going on. Can you clear it up by spelling the names in pinyin? What are the connections between the families of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Dze-dung and Sun Yat-sen? Are there any connections?

Of course from our point of view getting the language right is important but it would be nice to get the facts too

cheers Mark

Reply to this comment »
Jarvis Mcgowan says:

November 13, 2008 at 6:30 am

kaomi45pwvf1ob4v

Reply to this comment »
nowiri says:

November 7, 2009 at 7:57 pm

Song Qingling is Sun Yat-sen ’s wife.
Song Meiling is Chiang Kai-shek ’s wife.
Song Meiling is Song Qingling ’s sister.
She is bigger than Song Qingling.

Mao’s wife hadn’t any connections of those two sisters.

Reply to this comment »
- nowiri says:
  
  November 30, 2009 at 6:13 am
  
  Song meiling is smaller than Song Qingling.
  
  Reply to this comment »
Mark White says:

November 8, 2009 at 9:33 am

Hey Nowiri

Thanks for clearing that up. People come from different cultures and they misunderstand each other. They speak different languages and they misunderstand each other. It is good to clear up this misunderstanding.

Thanks a lot!

Reply to this comment »
Martha says:

February 2, 2010 at 12:04 am

There is a mistake since Sun Yat Sen’s wife and Chiang Kai-Shek’ s wife were sisters no Mao’s wife at all. That’s all.

Thanks for all, teachers and students from Belgium

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