Dialogue

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Start speaking Chinese in minutes and grasp the language, culture and customs in just minutes more with Chinese survival phrases, a completely new way to master the basics of Chinese. To get more Chinese lessons and for free, go to chineseclass101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account. Signing up takes less than a minute and you will find more great lessons just like this one. To get more free Chinese lessons, go to chineseclass101.com
Hey guys, today we are talking about survival tips in China. We are talking about medicine today. How to get medicine, how to deal with health problems you may have in China. We are going to start today with where is the pharmacy. If you want to buy some medicine in China, the first thing you have to do is you have to find a pharmacy. Now medicine in China is divided into western medicine and eastern medicine or Chinese medicine. In pharmacies, there are generally two sections where you can buy medicine. There is one section for western medicine and one section for Chinese medicine. Often times, the Chinese medicine section is much larger than the western medicine section. Well I am not going to say you should not take Chinese medicine. You might want to go with medicine you are more familiar with but at least you will know how to take it. Chinese medicine has lots of complicated methods of taking things and lots of special circumstances under which it’s supposed to work. I am not going to comment on the effectiveness of Chinese medicine. I will just say that sometimes I’ve seen it work and sometimes it’s worked on me. So I don’t know and I am going to stay away from this subject. The way you say pharmacy in Chinese is very straightforward. You say 药店(yào diàn). The word for medicine in Chinese is 药(yào), fourth tone, falling tone, 药(yào), 药店(yào diàn). 店(diàn) means store, it’s also fourth tone, the falling tone. So literally it’s medicine store, 药店(yào diàn), one last time, 药店(yào diàn). So if you want to find out where the pharmacy is, you would say the sentence 药店在哪儿(Yàodiàn zàinǎr?) We’ve gone over this before, this phrase 在哪儿(zài nǎr), it means at where, 在哪儿(zài nǎr), fourth tone and then third tone, 在哪儿(zài nǎr). Remember there is an R at the end of this 哪儿(zài nǎr), so make sure you are getting that, 哪儿(nǎr), 在哪儿(zài nǎr). So 药店在哪儿(Yàodiàn zàinǎr?) Where is the pharmacy, 药店在哪儿(Yàodiàn zàinǎr?) Once you find the pharmacy, you will get in and like I said, it will be split up into two sections, one for western medicine and one for Chinese medicine. Most likely there will be two different counters. Now you can ask them, where is the western medicine? It’s just like where is the pharmacy. You use 在哪儿(zàinǎr), where is, 在哪儿(zàinǎr). This time, you replace pharmacy with another noun, western medicine. In Chinese, the way you say western medicine is 西药(xī yào), the tones for this are first tone and then fourth tone, 西药(xī yào). Literally this means west medicine, 西(xī) means west and 药(yào) means medicine like we’ve said before. So 西药(xī yào). Now if you come in and you want western medicine, you can come in and you can ask them, where is the western medicine, 西药在哪儿(Xī yào zàinǎr?) 大药房(Dà yàofáng) is the name of a very famous chain of pharmacies in China. 大药房(Dà yàofáng), this is fourth tone, fourth tone again and then second tone, 大(dà) fourth tone 药(yào) fourth tone 房(fáng) second tone, 大药房(Dà yàofáng). Literally, 大(dà) means big, 药(yào) means medicine like we said before and 房(fáng) means building, building or house. So 大药房(Dà yàofáng) means big medicine building. Now this story is famous. It’s claimed a fame is that 100% of the medicine in the store is guaranteed to be real medicine. This seems like an odd thing to claim but in China, there is such a huge market and it’s so hard to police it all that there is a lot of shady medicine out there. In 大药房(Dà yàofáng) at least it’s guaranteed to be real. All right guys, now let’s try using that phrase 在哪儿(zàinǎr) with 大药房(Dà yàofáng), so the phrase together would be 大药房在哪儿(Dà yàofáng zàinǎr?) One more time, 大药房在哪儿(Dà yàofáng zàinǎr?)
All right, to close our today’s lesson, we’d like you to practice what we’ve just learned. I will provide you with the English equivalent of a phrase and you are responsible for shouting it out loud. You will have a few seconds before I give you the answer. So 加油(Jiā yóu!) Pharmacy 药店(yào diàn), where is the pharmacy, 药店在哪儿(Yàodiàn zàinǎr?) Where is the western medicine, 西药在哪儿(Xī yào zàinǎr?)
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