Please help with proper names

[chapka]

I'm using the Pimsleur CD's to teach myself Mandarin. Since I also want to learn to read and write, I make flash cards in Microsoft Word for all of the characters and words used in the lessons and study them. Mostly this hasn't been too hard, with a good PinYin-based Chinese-English dictionary and a cheap English-Chinese dictionary for hints.

However, there are a few proper names in the lessons. Most of these I've been able to find, but there is one I can't. The lessons translate it as "Maxime's Restaurant," and the pronunciation sounds like "mei3 xing1 (or "xin1") fan4 dian4". I know the characters for 飯店, but I can't figure out "mei3 xing1". It's possible they just made it up, of course, but most of the place-names in Pimsleur are real places in either Beijing or Hong Kong, so I hoped someone would be able to help me out.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[geraldc]

美心

[jj]

my god, what a flash entrance. lol

[skylee]

Maxim's (美心 mei3 xin1) is a restaurant group in Hong Kong, which have many restaurants of chinese/other asian/western cuisine, cake shops, fast food shops. It is not related to the one in France.

Also note that 飯店 sometimes means hotel.

[pazu]

同埋美心好鬼難食! 我以前日日迫住食 (鬼咩, 我間學校個飯堂畀美心投左嚟做), 食到我暈低咁滯!

In a word, Maxim (restaurant) is really disgusting. Good to remember the name so you'll never visit them when you go to Hong Kong.

[skylee]

I think most of Maxim's restaurants are quite good. I don't eat at their fast food shops, though.

[pazu]

Oh yes I meant their fast food.

[chapka]

Thanks! I'd tried searching the web for restaurants with that name, but it turns out I was using the wrong English spelling.

[bjgodefr]

Actually there's a document called "Pimsleur Companion Mandarin I.pdf", which covers the entire first chapter (out of the 3 main chapters). It is very thoroughly with transcripts and introduction of new words for each lesson.

I think it is not an official pimsleur document and you can download it from kazaa.

(I haven't found anything of the like for the other chapters though)

[Lu]

In Leiden there's a 美心 also, but they spell it as Maxum. And I don't think it has anything to do with the Hongkong branch...

[chapka]

Since y'all were so helpful with the last restaurant, I wonder if you could help me with another proper name from the Pimsleur tapes (I'm now in Mandarin 2, so the PDF file won't help, sadly). It's another restaurant; it sounds to me something like "Qianjude" and the Pimsleur tapes say it's famous for its Peking Duck.

[geraldc]

全聚德

[chapka]

Thanks again! Watch this space; I'm sure I'll be back with more in time!