Hotels, Bars, and Clubs, and Restaurants

[chapka]

I'm using a few different books, tapes, etc. to teach myself Mandarin, and sometimes they seem to disagree with each other. For example, the Pimsleur tapes translate "hotel" as "jiu3dian4". However, my dictionary says that this word means bar or pub. I remember seeing another word for hotel in one of my other books, too.

So, native speakers and the fluent, please help me out. How many words do you know for "hotel," "bar," "club" (i.e., a live music venue), and "restaurant"? What are the shades in meaning (for example, in English we have "hotel," "motel," "inn," and "bed and breakfast", and "bar," "club," "pub," and "lounge"). Which are most popular, and is there a difference between the way they're referred to on the mainland and in Taiwan?

Thanks for any help you can give!

[galitonwu]

In china , a hotel maybe include a bar, a bath, a sona

[roddy]

Hotels, in ascending order of expense (this is rough)

旅馆 (probably cheap dorm accomodation)

招待所 (usually formerly part of a work unit, now run as a business)

饭店 (standard hotel)

酒店 (as above)

The last two can also mean restaurant.

bar is usually 酒吧. 吧 is used for 'bar', you get 网吧‘s and 书吧's also, with the latter being a cafe with lots of books in.

Roddy

[Quest]

and 宾馆

[Ian_Lee]

Actually the term 酒店 is an imported term from Hong Kong.

20+ years ago, the most fancy in Guangzhou was called 東方宾馆. But after the more modern joint-venture 中国大酒店 was completed in early '80s in Guangzhou, the more fancy hotels that were constructed subsequently in every Chinese city switched to call themselves 酒店.

Why did Hong Kong translate hotel into 酒店 in the first place? I don't know.

[zackzhou]

旅社(probably the cheapest dormitory)

客栈 and 驿站 (archaism, rarely used in modern Chinese)