Back but still more

Now I am back in UAE and AUS started which is keeping me busy.

Interestingly I am daydreaming a lot about China. I am imagining every single day and moment that I passed through. It is just so spectacular how exposure to things, people and places affects our lives. The first day I landed in China it felt so strange and new that I though I would never get attached to it by any means. Just before leaving China, it felt so familiar that until now I remember everything, especially Yantai, street by street and building by building. I remember all the people whom I met, but of course not all their names! And now back in UAE I can actually voluntarily visualize myself walking wherever I have been in China.

It has been long since I have published a post. I still have a few more things to share and will try my best to post them as soon as I can. Beijing was incredible especially that my family joined me there as well as Saeed. I want to also write about Beijing, about FOOOD and some other minor posts then end the blog with a conclusive final post about the overall outcome of going to China.

Let's see how long will AUS keep me on hold!
Best wishes!

My Presentation

I gave my presentation few days ago, last Monday 22nd August. It went really well and I enjoyed it especially because I was speaking of both Lebanon and UAE as they both are major in my life.

Lebanon and UAE - Youssef in China 2011

(click to download the presentation directly - 12.3MB)

Four new members joined my team which makes us 10 (including myself). My team members are relatively younger (21-28 years) than Saeed's teammates and their curiosity in asking questions was clearly different.  My teammates asked more about touristic places and costs of visiting Burj Khalifa or Burj al Arab and so forth. When I told them it would cost around 400 Dhs (approx. 700Yuans) to get into Burj Khalifa they had wide-open eyes and said "Youssef give us this presentation and it is more than enough to enjoy looking at the pictures!!" This is because 700 Yuans in China is a big deal of money. We actually as foreign interns earn 1860Yuans a month, and the entree level Chinese employees earn about 3000-4000 Yuan. So you could imagine their response. They loved the nature of Lebanon and that we can go around the whole country in less than 5 hours! They also asked questions like:

• Shouldn't women also cover their face in UAE?
• How can we live in the extremely grilling weather!

When I was presenting, the electricity in the room got cut off and the charger of my laptop stopped working. Luckily we are in China; the next day we went with Saeed's team, who are always helping us in everything especially Ms. Li, and I got the same charger for 40Yuans (around 22 Dhs)!! Of course its Chinese and of low quality but it would serve for some time! Getting 10 of these chargers is still cheaper than getting an original one for more than 200 Dhs.

Saeed did not have the chance to present his powerpoint presentation because the projector was not working so he got the chance of improvising on the whiteboard! It was really good and the team was so big and so interested that they asked for more than an hour.

Saeed's team asked more serious questions like:

• Are men and women paid equally
• How are weddings celebrated
• What is the average income in UAE
• What ages do couples get married

Overall, although we had to show most of the presentation on the laptop screen since the electricity in the room was getting cut, giving the presentation was delightful and was a perfect chance for practicing in front of a distinct new audience.

Personal Automobiles

The traffic and transportation system in China is worth sharing. I will talk about: 

• Kinds of personal automobiles (this post) 
• Modes of public transport 
• Traffic rules 

Here in China, there are kinds of personal automobiles that I have never saw before, or probably have just heard of. There are different ranges of automobiles around China which show how China tries to offer all ranges of options for the different classes of society according to their financial affording power. Let's see,

The Hybrid Bike: it is between an electric motorbike and a bicycle. It has a rechargeable battery as well as pedals. If it runs low on battery you can start pedaling to recharge it, or simply start using it as a bicycle. The average price of a new one is around 3000 to 3500 Yuans (approx. 500 US$). It is slow, it cannot go above 60km/hr probably but so it is convenient and economical in commuting for short distances as well as environmentally friendly and gives an extra cause for doing exercise.  So popular.

The Wheeled Generator: The ‘ weirdest’ invention of a vehicle form. It is actually a mere generator..with wheels attached to it :S !!! And it has a stick to steer the wheels and a small truck attached behind. Farmers love it. Maybe it also serves them as a generator when needed! 

The 3-Wheelers: I though it is only exclusive to Mr. Bean's show. Maybe it is but the Chinese ‘copied’ it! There are 3-wheeler cars and 3-wheeler mini-trucks. They are actually more like tweaked motorcycles, not cars. They use motorcycle engines and most of them have the motorcycle front body with morotcycle steering handle, but the rest is installed separately to form the car or truck. They are very noisy, very slow, very polluting. I wonder why they are used but probably because they are cheap and do not consume much petrol. It just feels that they would fall when taking a turn or if you push them from the side.

German cars: Here German cars are the most popular, especially VolksWagen and Audi. China does not like Japanese cars because of economical/political competitions; still people acknowledge that Japanese cars are superb. So, they tend to lean to German cars as a substitute. Another reason behind the popularity of German cars is the major role Germany had in recent Chinese history as it was controlling some land and had formed some colonies, along with other European countries like France and the UK. The huge number of Audi’s and VW’s we saw here made us at some point view them as low-class cars! But everybody knows German cars along with the Japanese are the best of all. 

Chinese Cars: well, even the Chinese hate them. They know they cannot trust their own cars! Chinese cars are much less popular than German or any other car brand. Still they are an available option for lower-income people. The most popular Chinese car company is 'Chery'

Bicycles and Tricycles: they are so common and almost all Chinese have one. The weather is appropriate for riding bikes, and the cities are prepared for that with separate lanes for bikers, parking places in public and traffic light signals. Most importantly, people like using them and do not nag and pamper themselves with a bus or a car ride when they can reach easily by a bike with some exercise. Tricycles are preferred for work issues and loading stuff not for every-person use.

Shades for bikers at a traffic light - Hangzhou, China

Chinglish

“Wet floor, slip carefully!!!” This is what you see at restaurants when they are wiping the floor instead of “Wet floor, be careful not to slip!” This is just one of the hundreds of mistranslations from Chinese to English that you would see anywhere around China. It is referred to as ‘Chinglish’, a language between Chinese and English! Sometimes you really cannot understand any tiny bit of what the signs are trying to say. Sometimes it is really funny and we crack laughing in public. It is really fun! As if they are just using Google Translator randomly.

'Passengers no entry'. And where are the flowers!

Get out through the tunnel!

Understand anything?

Bear is a famous drink in China!

This actually shows how the Chinese try their best to reach foreigners and welcome them in their country. Although China tries its best to protect its language, the globalization of English has been able to penetrate. Tourists coming to China need some guidance and China does not want to lose its tourists just because of protecting the Chinese language. Also, without creating Pinyin (Latinization of the Chinese language) China wouldn’t have been able to cope with technology and science. Actually China is coping with internationalism by opening up to foreigners. We as ‘rare’ foreign trainees are one example.

These are just a few that I remembered to take pictures of, you can go to 'Google Images' search and type Chinglish and you won’t stop laughing for hours!!

Qingdao (5th Trip)

After staying 2 consecutive weeks in Yantai, we needed a new trip. It's my 5^th trip in China which was during the weekend of 30^th-31^st of July. We went to Qingdao in Shandong Provice which is 3 hours by bus from Yantai. Qingdao is Shandong’s most famous city. Qingdao was a colony of Germany and there is still a big deal of German touch to it. VolksWagen is popular there as Toyota is in UAE. Qingdao is famous for:

• Zhan Pier
• The biggest beer producer in China (Tsingtao Beer) which was built by Germans
• The widest sand beaches in China
• The 2008 Olympics Sailing Center
• The longest sea-bridge in the world
• Laohu Shan (The Cherries Mountain I went to on the 1^st trip)
• Parks, aquariums and museums

Zhan Pier

Kid fishing at Zhan Pier

Well, the good side of the trip was that it is the only trip in which all the 5 of us (foreigners) went together.Although Qingdao seems to be the busiest city in Shandong Province with flight and cruise connection to all of China, it is not a special place for real distinctive tourism. It is quite hot and things are far apart from each other with no real unique aspect. For us it was actually as we say in Arabic, “smell but don’t taste”. This phrase actually sounds weird when I try to explain it to others here! We actually knew all the locations of places to visit but being 5 people, it was hard to settle on common grounds. At some points we reached locations and just looked from outside. Time was also limited during our weekend and traffic was jammed.

On the rockside of the sea

Church in Qingdao. They were photo-shooting there

We had a main mission to accomplish in this trip; to reach and have lunch at Diner 22, a famous Western style restaurant that was a little far from the center of the city. The food there was a relief, we never had such American style food since months!

At Diner 22

The second day we went to the best beach in Qingdao. The water was cold but still deserved a refreshing swim! The beach was so long, still not as fascinating as Jumeirah’s Beach or Sour’s Beach in Lebanon.

Gymnasium at the beach!

Olympics Sailing Center

Run Run Run!! Around China there are infinite statues of anything you would think of

After getting back from Qingdao and looking at the pictures we took, I realized that what we actually really accomplished is taking pictures of a lot of food, especially all the weird kinds of seafood and scorpions and insects on sticks! 

Food Market

Since there are a lot of food pictures, some really delicious-looking and some really disgusting, there will be separate posts about them and other food related issues.

Mandarin Chinese - Part 3 - Numbers

Aside Pinyin and Tone, Numbers are easy and are the 1^st to be studied when learning a new language, especially that there are no alphabets in the Chinese language to start with. 
                                                                

Chinese Numbers

The 7 looks like an up-side-down English 7, the 8 looks like an Arabic 8. Also you can spot an English 4 and 5 in the corresponding Chinese 4 and 5. This is how I managed to learn them! 

Chinese numerals are similar to Roman numerals when it comes to expressing tens and hundreds.

• Roman:       37 is XXXVII (3 tens, and a 7)    
• Chinese:  三十七 (3 tens, and a 7 said as sān shí qī)

After learning this logic in numbers I realized that English numbers might be an evolved form of the same root – thirty seven might actually be like ‘three tens and a seven’, where ‘three tens’ evolved to be ‘thirty’ and so).

The hand gestures shown in the picture are used commonly in China to express prices and numbers – so handy to know. 

Saying a decimal number like 4.5 is similar to English. ‘diǎn’ or ‘点’replaces ‘point’.

Hundred is "bai" (百） and thousand is "qian" （千）

1.2    one point two                 一点二          yī diǎn èr

13      ten and three                 十三              shí sān

31   three tens and one            三十一        sān shí yī

800   eight hundreds                八百               jǐ bǎi

So the most complex that sums it all would be:
    

                 1345.8                one thousand three hundred four tens and five point eight    

      一千三百四十五点八     yī     qian      sān      bǎi       sì    shí         wǔ   diǎn   jǐ

This is a basic demonstration of Chinese numbers which helps in understanding and saying numbers. It needs good practice to get used to pronunciation as it is the trickiest part. Actually, when we learned the numbers, we were able to understand what the cashiers are saying by filtering out the numbers we hear. 

The good news is that people in China use English numbers when writing or on tickets. They do not use the Chinese characters. If communicating numbers is not working, you can easily escape the misunderstanding by writing the numbers in English on a piece of paper – everybody understands.

The Thinkers

We often use quotes pertaining to wisdom in social networking statuses but probably never ask about their source. It is inspiring how most popular quotations like “never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself” and “it does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop” were actually said by philosophers and thinkers more than 2000 years ago. The following historical legends are considered the pioneers of philosophy. Some people actually perceive them as prophets, as higher level humans. Some other people would not acknowledge the importance of their contribution to humanity. But eventually, the fact that we still use their quotes to inspire ourselves is the best proof of their everlasting essence. And the fact that they overlap in many common ideologies might be a remarkable clue that there exists some sort of guidance to the meaning and purpose of life.

Confucius:  Chinese       Master Kong        1st Chinese Teacher              (551 BC - 479 BC)

Gautama Buddha:     Indian             Founder of Buddism                         (563 BC - 483 BC)

Socrates:                   Greek             Teacher of Plato                               (469 BC - 399 BC)

Plato:                         Greek             Teacher of Aristotle                  (424/423 BC - 348/347 BC)

Aristotle:                   Greek             Teacher of Alexander                      (384 BC - 322 BC)

Alexander the great: Greek            Expanded Greece to its largest         (356 BC - 323 BC)

This list shows the basic information for comparison. Notice their life span. Confucius and Buddha's teachings are still implemented nowadays in the east. Notice also how the Greek philosophers form a series and how, or seems to be, Alexander the Great have used all this knowledge to expand the Greek Empire to its greatest  time in all history. To know more about the philosophers click their names.

Confucius Statue in his Temple. In Qufu, Shandong Province, China

Confucius Tomb in the Confucian Forest Cementary. In Qufu also.

The 3 Wise Monkeys - See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil, and the last one...I don't bother! (actually its do no evil). An ideology originated by many philosophers including Confucius

Confucius Quotes:

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart" 

“Real Knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance"

“He who would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools"

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves"

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand"

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”

"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself”
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do"
"He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good"

“The superior man is aware of righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage"
“He who learns but does not thing, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn, is in great danger"
"When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves"

“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?"

Buddha Quotes:

"The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit;

And habit hardens into character;

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings…

As the shadow follows the body,

As we think, so we become"

Socrates Quotations:

"Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live"

Plato Quotes:

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something"

"He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden"

Aristotle Quotes:

"Well begun is half done"

"We make war that we may live in peace"

"A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility"

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit"

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"

"It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it"

"I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of law"

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire"

Yin & Yang symbol of Taoism. The interconnection of the opposites.

These are best of their quotes. To read more quotes click on the links of each 'philosopher quotes'.

Longest Sea Bridge in the World

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, located in Qingdao city, Shandong province, China (3 hours by bus from Yantai).

We went last week for a trip to Qingdao where the longest sea bridge in the world is located (opened in 2011). It is 45.2 kilometers longs of which 25.5 kilometers run across the sea. We saw it from land, at night and in the morning, but we did not have the chance to take a ride along it L. At night it would be dazzling with its endless lights across the sea, but we couldn't reach a good spot to capture a photo with the bridge along the sea at night. We were able to get the pictures below.

Though it does not have any cultural or historical significance, it has an economical aspect showing the potential of modern development in China.

As you can see in the ‘List of Longest Bridges in the World’ China reserves many spots at the top of the list.

    

Longest Sea Bridge as it appears on Google Earth
(click the "location" below the post title to be directed to a clearer google map and zoom enough to see it)

Longest Sea Bridge in the World - Night - Qingdao

At Night

Longest Sea Bridge in the World in the morning

60th Day in China

Monday August 8^th 2011. The 60^th day of my 3 months in China. I cannot believe how quick 2 months have passed. Knowing it is two months here, I was triggered by a flashback of everything that happened from the day I left UAE to the moment I reached my room, to when I went to the first day of work and all other incidents. I like how the journey changed from being a totally distinct part of the world, and how now I got accustomed to life here and things seem to be familiar and easy. Communication is not yet easy thought!

Today and yesterday we had a rainy storm. Although it is inconvenience, it's just fun to have rain in summer!

Two days ago, 6^th of August, my brother Ali had his master’s degree ceremony in Illinois, USA. My family and I were supposed to be there celebrating altogether a big leap in our life as a family. But no, visas to the US are something sacred and cannot be given to everyone. Although I got my visa to the US after waiting 5 months, my family did not until now receive any reply. I remember when we applied for the visas they put me on a separate file and all my family on a different file. The interviewer at the counter asked me what is your major? So I said Chemical Engineering. He showed a surprised face expression, with his eyebrows reaching his hair along with a loud and long “hmmm!” which is still stuck in my head, then he added “what are your plans for the future?” I just told him I am interested in renewable energy and recycling. Nothing that has to do with nuclear issues..so not a big deal. At that point I thought that I was put on a separate file because they kind of rejected my visa in advance and would accept my family’s visas. It worked the other way. But still, I wasn’t to go without them, so I continued my stay in China.

Last week the summer semester ended at AUS. It is my first summer that I do not take courses. It is relieving. But still, we felt the ever-lasting stress on everybody!

Six weeks ago on the 30^th of June, Saeed, a colleague from college for whoever doesn’t know, joined me in the same company for internship. Although he got with him a breeze of heat from UAE, he also got with him a feel of home. I was here away from anybody I know and away from any news related to the other side of the world, and as soon as he came I synchronized all the updates going around in UAE. We sat and set plans of how to get use of our time. We actually started seriously learning Chinese by then. Gladly we turned out to be in the same office so we hang around when we are bored. And I think that if I would have stayed alone I would have missed fasting many days of Ramadan. One single person to second you on such issues is more than enough. We are having Iftar at Chief Abdo’s place mostly. It is an Islamic restaurant and the food is so similar to our Arabic home-made food. So fulfilling.

Around five weeks ago I created this blog to stay in touch and connect with family and friends and share the priceless experience of China. Skype and Facebook are great, yet the blog is way better in conveying details and saving memories. I am really glad to hear that the content is of worth. I would also like to hear more if anybody would want to know specifics so I would share. Comment on the blog not on facebook! It would be nice to collect everything related together here.

Next week I will be giving a presentation about myself and my country. I will be talking about both UAE and Lebanon because both are major in my life. Saeed already did his presentation 2 weeks ago and our Chinese colleagues were extremely interested in knowing more about other countries and cultures. Saeed presented for 10 minutes and the attendees asked for around one and a half whole hours! I feel that they want to know more not because of jealousy of others being better than them, but because they want to compare with what they have and know where they stand in life and how to progress. Sometime I might post separately about things that they like to compare since it is a long list.

Now, my family is preparing their documents and visas to come to China, visas can be obtained in 1 day. I hope they make it. We would still be incomplete since Ali cannot make it because of the short period left. Hopefully we’ll meet up all together in Lebanon before we start our universities.

Now, although I am starting to have the feeling of getting back, I can say that I got used to China, it is a nice place to live in even for long, and I would definitely want to return in the future for a visit. We have more things to do, a couple of more trips to go. The internship is now moving steadily and my team is depending more on my work. Yet there is no expected great progress and the job is starting to feel like a routine daily 8-hours job. Still I am trying my best to get involved and do more.

So, there is around a month more to go, almost a third of the stay but it seems so close!

Chinese Valentine's Day

Today August 6th 2011, and the 7th day of the 7th month in the Chinese calendar is the Chinese Valentine's Day. It is also known as the Double Seven Day. (Click to read the legendary story behind it).

The God of Marriage who lives on the Moon and grants wishes

It is nice how the Chinese still have and stick to their distinct traditional celebrations. We went with Saeed's team on a trip around Yantai to its most luxurious district, Laishan. Almost everyone of who accompanied us came with their fiancés. They said that at 21-22 years of age almost all Chinese would have a life partner, but they do not marry until around 27-30 years when they have assured owning a home and a car, and secured a long-term full-time career. It is nice how, even for this long time of preparing for marriage, they stick to their commitment because they know that they would not have chosen to be in a serious relation if they were not meant to be for each other.

More than 3 couples in our teams are having their weddings in September. The company hosts a collective wedding to ease it on new brides and grooms. The company also hosts an annual party only for who do not have partners aiming to create possible opportunities.

Here, even for this kind of serious relationship in which we would refer to the partners as fiancés, they still refer to each other as girl-friend & boy-friend. Maybe because they could not find a better translation in English. And having a girlfriend is an issue here, it is one of the 3 major questions they ask... From where are you? What is your name? Do you have a girlfriend...would you want a Chinese! For the Chinese having a life partner is essential, they do not believe in 'enjoying life and changing partners every other day' or 'not getting married because the divorce rate is high and it will not work with us' or 'trying as many to know who is best.' They do seek stability in life and get satisfied by what they have, and by forming a family they fulfill the collective  nature of the Chinese society.

Locking their Hearts together

Also, a wedding tradition is that the guests gift the bride and groom a sack of cash money, not materialistic presents. They believe that this is a better rewarding present which will actually assist the new couple in starting their life by using the money for a real benefit rather than receiving costly flowers or gifts that they would stack and not use. Generally, a colleague would gift around 300-500 Yuans and a close friend or relative would gift around 500-1000 Yuan. It seems much more practical especially for the relatively low income people get in China.

The Love Tree and Swing

Tai'an, Qufu and Jinan (4th Trip)

Youssef’s 4^th trip and my 1^st in China (9^th to 12^th July); a four-day-long journey through 3 different cities in Shandong province that are an hour away from each other, and around 8 hours (by train) and 4 hours (by bus) away from Yantai . The cities are:

• Tai’an (Saturday-Sunday): where China’s most popular mountain is located (TaiShan). Height: 1545m
• Qufu (Sunday-Monday): hometown of Confucius, one of mankind’s famous teachers and philosophers in history as Aristotle and Socrates
• Jinan (Tuesday): the capital of Shandong, and where the 1000 Buddha Mountain is located.

At Taishan

As Dorothee, Youssef and I left for Tai’an to climb Taishan, we were determined to make it to the summit. We were of course met by disconcerting comments from our colleagues about how excruciatingly difficult the 1545m climb would be. But that did not dwindle down our high morale. We even refused to give in to the discomforting words in the Lonely Planet…”Be ready for strenuous Stairmasters work out.”

We left for Tai’an at around eight in the morning using China’s rail transportation system. Yes, we were consumed by sheer excitement at the notion of travelling in the train, like petty twelve year olds who were going for their first roller coaster ride. For Youssef it was the 1^st time by train. Not that I had not traveled by train before. In India, intercity travelling is largely done by the railways and I have my relatives scattered all over the vast country. Actually, it was the idea of travelling in China; a self sustained world within a world. Our journey was around eight long hours through the vast stretches of wheat and paddy rice fields and countless tiny towns towards the deep west region of the Shandong province. Most of the journey went with us slumbering on our berths because we had to muster and save all the strength for the climb. But there were occasional times when I got down to the nearest window and looked out at passing cities, wondering how quickly this country has developed.

Along the Railway

We reached Tai’an at around 6pm and walked towards Youth International Hostel. On our way, we dropped by a Chinese fast food restaurant. I don’t recall its name. As a tourist, you can never recall names of Chinese restaurant, probably because you don’t know how to decipher Chinese characters. But the food we were served was truly delectable. It’s exciting how, though seldom, Chinese cuisine can surprise you! Maybe we were too hungry then. But that meal was one of the best meals we had on our trip. It was

Mandarin Chinese - Part 2 - Pinyin & Tone

As mentioned earlier, the following 3 are the basic elements of the Chinese language:

• Characters (Described in the previous post, not needed for speaking and listening, only needed for reading and writing)
• Pinyin
• Tones

Pinyin: It is a form of “Latinizing” the Chinese language by writing the language in Latin letters. This is what I have been using to give examples of how to pronounce Chinese words. We do the same in Arabic by writing "keefak” and so. The difference is that Pinyin is an official part of the Chinese language. It was developed in the 1950’s to make the Chinese language compatible with the modern “English-based” technology and globalized media and industry.

When I came to China I thought that keyboards will be all in Chinese but no, it is all in English – there are no Chinese keyboards. To write Chinese you type in pinyin and the computer will give you options of corresponding Chinese characters to input. When you enable the Chinese language on your computer, you can add the Mandarin Chinese (PRC) keyboard and you will be able to type Chinese. Google’s pinyin program is better for typing Chinese.

Tone: There are 4 main tones in Chinese. The same word with different tones has different meanings. It looks like the Arabic diacritics (harakat/حركات) but it is a totally different concept. In Chinese tone is literally a musical tone.

tā        Flat tone     (as the sound the doctor asks you to do when inspecting your throat)

ní       Ascending    (same as tone of asking a question…as saying WHAT?)

nì       Descending  (same as tone of saying an answer….as saying YES in an affirmative tone)

nǐ       Descending then Ascending like a parabola

There are also words with ‘no tone’ that will sound as if you are just saying it neutrally in English, and there is a tone that is represented by ‘double dots’ which is not widely considered a major tone (it sounds like saying ‘eww’ when you are discusted from something).

A complication in relating Pinyin to Characters is that in Chinese, the same Pinyin word can have different Characters with different meanings. The first word ‘tā’ can mean he/she/it. Although the pinyin word and tone are the same, the characters representing each of he/she/it are different.

tā       he     他

tā    she    她

tā     it        它

Fortunately when speaking and listening to other, you need to only know “tā” which will be understood due to the context of the speech.

To listen and speak Chinese, Pinyin and tone are enough – no need for Characters. If you know Pinyin and Tone you can start learning Chinese. That is what we are doing; we started with Pinyin and Tone then with forming basic sentences. By knowing Pinyin you can still type on the computer with any Pinyin input program.

Saeed found the following YouTube lessons which are extremely helpful. The lady is teaching what is supposed to be taught to who do not know any Chinese at all. This was our starting point of learning Chinese.

YouTube Video Links (click on the Lessons #’s below to view, or search for ‘7 Days Mandarin Lesson’ in YouTube):

7 Days Mandarin Chinese – Lesson 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Fake IKEA and Apple Store in China!

Well I always asked myself, since the Chinese fake all products, would I see a WHOLE fake factory of HP or Intel?

Well …  here they are! A fake IKEA and many fake Apple stores!

Fake Apple store in China

Fake IKEA in China

 (Click to be directed to the referred sources)

I did not visit them. They are too far in the mid-South of China. They are in Kunming city, Yunnan province.

In China you can find imitations of everything; food products, brand names, fashion, music and even architecture!

Mandarin Chinese - Part 1 - Intro & Characters

(If your computer does not view the Chinese characters written between these brackets [你好嗎] you can enable Chinese from Control Panel > Language Options > Languages > Tick the “east asian languages” box > Click OK…I will be using some Chinese characters as demonstrations in this and later posts)

The Chinese language has many dialects. These dialects are sometimes considered different languages because of the great difference among them. The main two Chinese languages spoken are:

• Mandarin Chinese: spoken by more than 90% of Chinese, spoken in Taiwan and Singapore
• Cantonese Chinese: spoken mainly in Hong Kong and Macau

Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more than a billion people. This makes around 1/6 of the world population.  It is the most-spoken language by population. Yet English is still the most spread and is the language of globalization and technology. Hindi, Arabic and Spanish often join Mandarin Chinese and English on the lists of top 5 spoken languages. Mandarin Chinese is what we are learning and is what I will be posting about.

Along with Japanese and similar languages, Chinese is so different than other common languages because it is not alphabetical based. There is no fixed 26 or 27 letters that can form different words. It is based on pictorial characters which have corresponding sounds associated with them. For example, a cross sign “十” means “ten” and is pronounced as “shí”. The cross sign is the evolved form of what the Chinese thousands of years back used as sign to mark the number 10. The following picture shows the evolution of some Chinese characters with time. This part of the language is the toughest yet the most interesting since it relates things to pictorial characters. It is the toughest because there are thousands of different characters, and the meaning of a combination of characters does not necessarily have to do with either of the characters standing alone.

Evolution of Chinese Characters. Notice how pictorial they were initially

Characters are based on number of “strokes.” Some characters are a mix between more than one simpler character.Chinese dictionaries are arranged either according to number of strokes in the characters or according to the ‘alphabetical’ pronunciation of the word (referred to as Pinyin).

The core of Chinese language is composed of 3 basic elements that form its infrastructure:

• Pinyin
• Tone
• Characters (described above)

The bad news is that in Chinese, ‘listening and speaking’ is totally different from ‘writing and reading’. It is as if you have to learn 2 languages to speak Chinese. This is because of its non-alphabetical base.

The good news is that you do not need to know the ‘characters’ to listen and speak Chinese.

Characters are only needed to read and write.

Characters are described above, and I will post about Pinyin and Tone separately which are the base of listening and speaking Chinese.