I'm a Chinese girl, I speak Cantonese pretty well. But that's not enough Chinese for me. I want some Mandarin, and any local dialect you can throw at me.
Born and educated in the UK. I'm about 23 years old. And now I find myself returned to the Mother Country only to discover that my language and appearance count against me. I am not forgiven for being a foreigner, instead I have to muddle my way through in broken Mandarin with an earthy local dialect to cope with too. Still, for what it's worth, here a few notes of my adventures.
Join me as I study Chinese, go shopping, travel around town, experience the century's second biggest natural disaster and embark on missions of randomness. If these blogs don't make you laugh, you will cry at my weak sense of humour.
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Shopping
Wednesday 20th February 2008
I was shopping in Carrefour, when a shop assistant came and said something to me (I don't know what...maybe she was seeing if I needed help or trying to sell a product). I replied in my best Mandarin possible, "Duibuqi, wo bu mingbai...wo shi Yinguo lai de...wo bu hui jiang putonghua..." After a moment or two of looking confused, she replied,...
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Language Study
Thursday 13th March 2008
In our reading and writing class today, there were some oral exercises, and the teacher asked one student to read both parts A and B, and I asked Erin who was sitting next to me, 'How do you say schizophrenic in Chinese?', which made her crack up and the teacher looked over and said her name... but then I started laughing too, and when Erin tried to explain...
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Travelling Round
Friday 14th March 2008
In a taxi with Grace, Koko and Fiona on the way home from Tam's gig at a coffee shop. Koko asked if any of us could drive, and it turned out that none of us could. Shortly after this, we came to a red traffic light, when, without warning, the taxi driver opened the door and got out of the car. He walked to the front of the taxi and looked at it, then did the...
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Earthquake and Olympics
Sometime during the aftermath of the earthquake May 2008
So I'm walking through the thousands of tents that have sprung up on campus in the aftermath of the earthquake. There's some high quality gear that looks like you could go camp in the Arctic, and some that's somewhat more erm...spontaneous, which looks like a leaf falling on it would knock it down (ok, maybe that's a slight e...
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Weather
Wednesday 24th September 2008
I'd barely slept a couple of hours when I was woken by an enormous crash. I opened my eyes. A brilliant white light flooded the room, but in less than a second the darkness returned. Somewhere in the distance a low rumbling broke into the stillness of the dark night. It wasn't yet 1am. Another flash of light penetrated the drawn curtains, briefly illum...
