Challenge! Your! Chinese!

[feihong]

Given that I failed to get the answers right even after using a search engine, I recommend you remove the "Don't use search engines" restriction. You can still leave it as a recommendation if you like.

[jkhsu]

@feihong: Per your recommendation, I've removed it. However, I never said you can't go to a Chinese restaurant. Well, it depends on where you live I guess. Where I am at (San Francisco Bay Area, California), I can get all of those wontons within a 3 mile radius.

Once you finish the quiz, I'm curious to see your process and reasoning though.

[feihong]

My approach was to just type in the city name and a bunch of wonton-related characters into a search engine and see if I come up with any hits. This was pretty tedious and didn't work 100%. You would think image searches would be useful but they didn't help at all, since the the pictures I found usually didn't show you the filling (and anyway, can you tell the difference between pork and shrimp fillings in a small picture?).

On the very last attempt, I decided to be a little more thorough and check the Baike page for 馄饨. This helped a bit, but that page doesn't list every wonton you referenced in the challenge, so in the end it was still a guessing game.

[jkhsu]

Thanks for the input. There were definitely some "wonton knowledge" assumptions I made while creating this quiz such that it would be difficult / if not almost impossible to figure out if you didn't regularly try these wontons and looked at Chinese menus. To make these more accessible to everyone, I would have to have pictures that show the exact fillings for each of them I guess. However, when I was searching for pictures to create this quiz, I thought it would be so easy to figure out if people did image searches, etc. But I guess I was wrong. The quiz maker is the worst user tester!

[feihong]

@jkhsu: I definitely appreciate the effort you put in to make the challenge more accommodating for us. There isn't really a good rule of thumb for knowing if something is too hard, other than to let people try out your challenge. One thing that I do is to make a challenge, then sit on it for several weeks. When I revisit it much later, I can view it with fresh eyes. A lot of my challenges have been edited quite a few times. The most common type of edit is to make it easier.

Now that you know the answers, do you feel the clues I added were enough? What would you have done to make this quiz better?

I didn't like the combined picture so much. I would've preferred separate pictures, with the clues next to each picture. Or maybe put the clues inside the picture (but that seems like more of a hassle).

The 红油抄手 was what I thought would throw most people off especially when I added 辣酱馄饨 as the final left over characters.

With the difficulty already so high, I think leaving in the extra characters was a little overkill. That's the main reason why I wasn't completely confident of my answers on my last attempt.

But in any case, I'm glad you gave it another shot, and I hope you had fun making the challenge.

[jbradfor]

I liked the quiz. It was a challenge, and part of the point of these (I assume) is to learn new stuff via being challenged. I did think it's pretty much impossible to get them all correct if you don't already know them (without a LARGE amount of looking), but I think it was instructional to get a handle on wonton names and types if you don't worry about not getting them all correct.

[feihong]

The latest challenge is a special one for me. It's the very first one I wrote, more than a year ago, way before the blog even existed. I originally wrote it for the members of my Chinese study group. I didn't publish it until now because it's a relatively hard one, and I wanted to work up to it (the Character Components 7句话 was an attempt to lay some groundwork).

[jkhsu]

My thoughts on your latest challenge #31: For just getting the characters correctly, I thought the difficulty level was reasonable because part 2 pretty much tells you if you got the characters right or wrong. However, getting the phrase correctly without looking it up was not easy and I missed that one.

[feihong]

@jkhsu: I wasn't really expecting anyone to correctly guess the meaning of the phrase. I just wanted people to think about it a bit before looking it up.

[feihong]

Regarding #32：Music Video Comprehension, I'm having trouble with the Sina music video -- I have no control over the playback. It just keeps playing, without giving me the ability to jump forward or back. Also, the subtitles really are tough to read on that one. I looked around but couldn't find any better quality versions of that video that also have Chinese subtitles.

I gave the bonus questions a shot but I didn't get very far. I'm not sure if it's because it's too hard or if it's because the translation in the concert video is too rough. I feel like some of the lines don't make sense. They definitely don't seem to match the subtitles from the music video.

UPDATE: I reloaded the Sina music video in my browser and it seems fine now. Not sure what happened.

[feihong]

But I will say that I really liked the idea of using a Korean music video. Since I don't know Korean, I'm forced to read the subtitles, and I have to do it before they disappear off the screen. So there is a bit of a speed reading element to it.

[jkhsu]

Regarding #32：Music Video Comprehension, I'm having trouble with the Sina music video -- I have no control over the playback.

I forgot to mention that issue in the post. You can't rewind or fast forward, you have to pause and play. I chose this video from Sina not because I wanted to make the challenge that much harder; I chose it because the text is actually readable in that video. The other ones, as you mentioned, had blurry text.

But I will say that I really liked the idea of using a Korean music video.

Thanks. I figured there are so many non-Chinese TV shows / music with Chinese subs that the ability to just read subs is an important skill.

I gave the bonus questions a shot but I didn't get very far. I'm not sure if it's because it's too hard or if it's because the translation in the concert video is too rough.

You actually did fine with the bonus questions. I specifically tried to make the questions more about overall comprehension and open-ended instead of focusing on particular words from the lines (as in the questions for the first video). Well, at least it was an attempt. This will be something I will focus on more in future 挑战's.

BTW, it was a great learning experience making this 挑战. I literally transcribed the videos, studied the lines and translated the video to come up with the questions. It was fun!

[jkhsu]

I liked 挑战#33: Introduction to Situation Puzzles better than #20 (the 21 questions one) because I felt the description of the situation allowed me to ask a variety of questions. I don't get to practice much writing in Chinese and this type of 挑战 helps with that. I think even including additional details that are unrelated to the answer is fine as long as it gets people to write and ask more questions.

[feihong]

@jkhsu: I have a lot more situation puzzles! The upcoming ones are much, much tougher, so you'll get plenty of question-writing practice.

[jkhsu]

I'm wondering what others' think of these challenges in general? Do people think they're too easy, too hard? What would make you participate? Suggestions?

[feihong]

I've told all my friends who know/study Chinese about the blog. They've all seen it, but they don't post answers. I'm not sure how many of the challenges they actually try to solve (I'll ask about that next time I see each of them). I guess only certain types of people like doing these challenges, and there aren't all that many of them.

Personally, I'm more concerned that there aren't many contributors. After I run out of challenges, that might be the end.

[jkhsu]

Personally, I'm more concerned that there aren't many contributors. After I run out of challenges, that might be the end.

Good point. One thing you can do is assign a different person to post a challenge a week. In between, anyone can post additional challenges. I'd be up for that.

[feihong]

What do you mean by assign? As it is now, anyone can post a challenge, all they have to do is send me a message or ask for editor permissions for the blog.

[jkhsu]

What do you mean by assign?

Let's say there are 3 regular contributors who have agreed to this process. Everyone gets assigned to create a challenge for a particular week. For example, you get this week, I get next week, etc. That way no one is overwhelmed and the contributors feel a duty to keep this thing going. At the same time, anyone can post challenges at any time as well, but the contributors who have signed up for this process are still obligated to post one for the week assigned to them. If someone misses a week, it's not a big deal. This is all voluntary anyway. The idea is to prevent one person from burning out. This is just a thought since you brought up the concern.

[feihong]

I don't really want to tell people what to do. I'd rather they post a challenge if they're compelled to do so. However, I'm willing to help people out if they have an idea for a challenge but aren't sure how to execute it. Or if they want to do a challenge but need some ideas.

I'll quit long before I burn out, I think. I only plan on doing a finite number of challenges. When I hit that goal, I'm done. It's just that I would prefer to hand over the reins to someone else rather than just let the blog sit idle.