There’s a scene in the great 1980s baseball film Major League (I realize that the majority of you readers are unlikely to be baseball fans, but bear with me) in which Pedro Cerrano, a newly acquired slugger, takes batting practice in spring training. At first, he hits each pitch way out of the ballpark for …Read More
I absolutely love the simplicity and practicality of the Chinese language. This means that I can read medical journals in Chinese that I can’t even understand in English. Chinese pretty much puts complicated vocabulary into layman’s terms. For example the Coccyx is the 尾臀骨 [wÄ›i tún gÇ”] or the “tail butt bone,†and Hepatopathy is …Read More
Chinese is a really difficult and frustrating language to learn, but it always helps to laugh at yourself to get you through the process. My confessions 我的自白: Injuries I have, in frustration, banged my head against my Chinese textbooks. I’m pretty sure I’ve ruined my eyesight by staring at Chinese characters for too long. I …Read More
With half the country in holiday mode today, and the other half grumbling from the office that they didn’t get to start their weekend yesterday (who’ll be grumbling on Sunday?), there’s perhaps no better time to have a laugh. So, allow me to draw your attention to a great site full of China-themed comics: MandMX. …Read More
In my time in China I’ve come across several people who have wondered whether studying Chinese in Kunming–where I live–was really worth the effort. After all, the locals speak Kunming-hua to each other, not Mandarin. When they do speak Mandarin, they do so with a local accent that differed greatly from the kind heard on …Read More
Since I moved to China eight months or so ago, I’ve came across a large amount of challenges. They have ranged from communication breakdowns, to awkward stares, to being witness to things that you just can’t unsmell. However, the question that I have been asked the most by my friends and family back home have …Read More
A:Ni hao. (ä½ å¥½) B: Ni hao ma? (ä½ å¥½å—?) A: Wo hen hao. (我很好) The above dialogue, or something like it, is usually the fist snippets of Chinese that anyone studying the language will learn. Ni Hao, the rosy cheeked beginner student will be told, is the term Chinese use to greet each other. Hmm… Well, …Read More
Last Saturday, while negotiating a steep mountainous downhill on my bike, my front tire suddenly fell into a rut. Suddenly, I toppled over my bike and landed hard on my right arm, causing severe pains to my forearm, wrist, and elbow. The ensuing soreness-which a doctor reassuringly said was not a bone fracture- has severely …Read More
Greetings from drizzly Shenzhen, where I find myself this fine morning sitting in a Starbucks and experiencing culture shock. If the purpose of a chain cafe is to produce the same atmosphere in any unit in the whole world, Starbucks has succeeded; this one here in the Shekou district could be airlifted and dropped in …Read More
This week I was heckled for my lazy pronunciation of shui3jiao3, “boiled dumplingâ€, which apparently sounded more like shui4jiao4, “to sleepâ€, making the restaurant name Grandma’s Dumplings, sound something like Grandma is sleeping. This mistake is another example (as if anyone needed more) of the importance of tones in Mandarin. For non-native speakers, Chinese can …Read More
“Generation gap” (代沟) , “supermarket” (超级市场), “honeymoon” (蜜月) and “breakdance” (霹雳舞). These words are all newcomers in the Chinese language. In fact, all of them have appeared after China started unfreezing its relations to the rest of the world with the Reform and Opening policy, embarked upon by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. In a fascinating …Read More
In a previous a blog post I complained about how Chinese textbooks aimed at foreigners seem to have a rather incorrect idea about the life of the foreign students. In these books, Ai Mi, Bi De and Da Wei are constantly discussing school, Chinese food and tourist sights. Typical foreign students’ activities such as getting …Read More
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