Speaking is the most important skill of communication. To be able to speak Chinese or English more fluently, we have to practice it as much as possible. So why not make an appointment with your friends on pyngo and do an audio or video chat with each other online? Pyngo IM allows you to do this easily. Don't be shy and let's talk!

It is extremely helpful to introduce ourselves in our profile page. We see that a lot of members give vivid information about themselves but some of the introductions are written only in Chinese. You know, there are many members of Pyngo are still learning Chinese and could not understand all the Chinese characters you are using. So it would be great if we can introduce ourselves both in Chinese and English. The more people knows you, the more chances you can make friends with them. In addition, this is also a good way to practice your writing, right? :)

When we learn a foreign language, we will have many questions from time to time. The questions could be about translation, grammar, slang, idiom, culture knowledge and etc. When I was learning an language I was thinking it would be great if I have some friends who are native speakers of my learning language and can help me with my questions. In pyngo, you have these friends who can help you. So do not be shy, and ask anything you want to know and get answers from native speakers. 

In classroom, your teacher could be overwhelmed by too many questions.

In pyngo, your friends would love to help you with any questions you have. 

 

It could be not easy for us to start a conversation with another member. One of the reasons is that members do not know which topic they should begin with. Why do not say hi to each other? If that member is interested in talking with you then he or she could write back to you. Of cause, in order to let people be interested in you, you may present as much as possible in your profile page. Adding more pictures, more introduction about yourself will definitly help the other side find out a topic and start a conversation.

 

I think people in this website having different cultures and preferences and they have different social customs. In order to better communicate with them, a couple of things are very important and need to pay attention to. For example, people may not  be comfortable with talking something private. So asking too many questions about private life will disturb people and they are not willing to talk again. In addition, being patient could be important.  People are learning Chinese or English because they are not their native language and we should be patient and tolarent to talk with them in their learning language. 

 

by David Moser
University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies

The first question any thoughtful person might ask when reading the title of this essay is, "Hard for whom?" A reasonable question. After all, Chinese people seem to learn it just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the "terrible twos", it's Chinese they use to drive their parents crazy, and in a few years the same kids are actually using those impossibly complicated Chinese characters to scribble love notes and shopping lists. So what do I mean by "hard"? Since I know at the outset that the whole tone of this document is going to involve a lot of whining and complaining, I may as well come right out and say exactly what I mean. I mean hard for me, a native English speaker trying to learn Chinese as an adult, going through the whole process with the textbooks, the tapes, the conversation partners, etc., the whole torturous rigmarole. I mean hard for me -- and, of course, for the many other Westerners who have spent years of their lives bashing their heads against the Great Wall of Chinese.

If this were as far as I went, my statement would be a pretty empty one. Of course Chinese is hard for me. After all, any foreign language is hard for a non-native, right? Well, sort of. Not all foreign languages are equally difficult for any learner. It depends on which language you're coming from. A French person can usually learn Italian faster than an American, and an average American could probably master German a lot faster than an average Japanese, and so on. So part of what I'm contending is that Chinese is hard compared to ... well, compared to almost any other language you might care to tackle. What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for Chinese people.1

If you don't believe this, just ask a Chinese person. Most Chinese people will cheerfully acknowledge that their language is hard, maybe the hardest on earth. (Many are even proud of this, in the same way some New Yorkers are actually proud of living in the most unlivable city in America.) Maybe all Chinese people deserve a medal just for being born Chinese. At any rate, they generally become aware at some point of the Everest-like status of their native language, as they, from their privileged vantage point on the summit, observe foolhardy foreigners huffing and puffing up the steep slopes.

Everyone's heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom "It's Greek to me" and search for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression "C'est du chinois", "It's Chinese", i.e., "It's incomprehensible". Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find Gēn tiānshū yíyàng 跟天书一样 meaning "It's like heavenly script."

There is truth in this linguistic yarn; Chinese does deserve its reputation for heartbreaking difficulty. Those who undertake to study the language for any other reason than the sheer joy of it will always be frustrated by the abysmal ratio of effort to effect. Those who are actually attracted to the language precisely because of its daunting complexity and difficulty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves "Why in the world am I doing this?" Those who can still remember their original goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say "I've come this far -- I can't stop now" will have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.

Okay, having explained a bit of what I mean by the word, I return to my original question: Why is Chinese so damn hard?

1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.

Beautiful, complex, mysterious -- but ridiculous. I, like many students of Chinese, was first attracted to Chinese because of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world. The more you learn about Chinese characters the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of Chinese characters can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.

The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but as the Chinese people began to realize the importance of universal literacy, it became clear that these ideograms were sort of like bound feet -- some fetishists may have liked the way they looked, but they weren't too practical for daily use.

For one thing, it is simply unreasonably hard to learn enough characters to become functionally literate. Again, someone may ask "Hard in comparison to what?" And the answer is easy: Hard in comparison to Spanish, Greek, Russian, Hindi, or any other sane, "normal" language that requires at most a few dozen symbols to write anything in the language. John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, reports that his Chinese colleagues estimate it takes seven to eight years for a Mandarin speaker to learn to read and write three thousand characters, whereas his French and Spanish colleagues estimate that students in their respective countries achieve comparable levels in half that time.2 Naturally, this estimate is rather crude and impressionistic (it's unclear what "comparable levels" means here), but the overall implications are obvious: the Chinese writing system is harder to learn, in absolute terms, than an alphabetic writing system.3 Even Chinese kids, whose minds are at their peak absorptive power, have more trouble with Chinese characters than their little counterparts in other countries have with their respective scripts. Just imagine the difficulties experienced by relatively sluggish post-pubescent foreign learners such as myself.

Everyone has heard that Chinese is hard because of the huge number of characters one has to learn, and this is absolutely true. There are a lot of popular books and articles that downplay this difficulty, saying things like "Despite the fact that Chinese has [10,000, 25,000, 50,000, take your pick] separate characters you really only need 2,000 or so to read a newspaper". Poppycock. I couldn't comfortably read a newspaper when I had 2,000 characters under my belt. I often had to look up several characters per line, and even after that I had trouble pulling the meaning out of the article. (I take it as a given that what is meant by "read" in this context is "read and basically comprehend the text without having to look up dozens of characters"; otherwise the claim is rather empty.)

This fairy tale is promulgated because of the fact that, when you look at the character frequencies, over 95% of the characters in any newspaper are easily among the first 2,000 most common ones.4 But what such accounts don't tell you is that there will still be plenty of unfamiliar words made up of those familiar characters. (To illustrate this problem, note that in English, knowing the words "up" and "tight" doesn't mean you know the word "uptight".) Plus, as anyone who has studied any language knows, you can often be familiar with every single word in a text and still not be able to grasp the meaning. Reading comprehension is not simply a matter of knowing a lot of words; one has to get a feeling for how those words combine with other words in a multitude of different contexts.5 In addition, there is the obvious fact that even though you may know 95% of the characters in a given text, the remaining 5% are often the very characters that are crucial for understanding the main point of the text. A non-native speaker of English reading an article with the headline "JACUZZIS FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS" is not going to get very far if they don't know the words "jacuzzi" or "phlebitis".

The problem of reading is often a touchy one for those in the China field. How many of us would dare stand up in front of a group of colleagues and read a randomly-selected passage out loud? Yet inferiority complexes or fear of losing face causes many teachers and students to become unwitting cooperators in a kind of conspiracy of silence wherein everyone pretends that after four years of Chinese the diligent student should be whizzing through anything from Confucius to Lu Xun, pausing only occasionally to look up some pesky low-frequency character (in their Chinese-Chinese dictionary, of course). Others, of course, are more honest about the difficulties. The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming).

A teacher of mine once told me of a game he and a colleague would sometimes play: The contest involved pulling a book at random from the shelves of the Chinese section of the Asia Library and then seeing who could be the first to figure out what the book was about. Anyone who has spent time working in an East Asia collection can verify that this can indeed be a difficult enough task -- never mind reading the book in question. This state of affairs is very disheartening for the student who is impatient to begin feasting on the vast riches of Chinese literature, but must subsist on a bland diet of canned handouts, textbook examples, and carefully edited appetizers for the first few years.

The comparison with learning the usual western languages is striking. After about a year of studying French, I was able to read a lot. I went through the usual kinds of novels -- La nausée by Sartre, Voltaire's Candide, L'étranger by Camus -- plus countless newspapers, magazines, comic books, etc. It was a lot of work but fairly painless; all I really needed was a good dictionary and a battered French grammar book I got at a garage sale.

This kind of "sink or swim" approach just doesn't work in Chinese. At the end of three years of learning Chinese, I hadn't yet read a single complete novel. I found it just too hard, impossibly slow, and unrewarding. Newspapers, too, were still too daunting. I couldn't read an article without looking up about every tenth character, and it was not uncommon for me to scan the front page of the People's Daily and not be able to completely decipher a single headline. Someone at that time suggested I read The Dream of the Red Chamber and gave me a nice three-volume edition. I just have to laugh. It still sits on my shelf like a fat, smug Buddha, only the first twenty or so pages filled with scribbled definitions and question marks, the rest crisp and virgin. After six years of studying Chinese, I'm still not at a level where I can actually read it without an English translation to consult. (By "read it", I mean, of course, "read it for pleasure". I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and a dictionary in my hand, I could get through it.) Simply diving into the vast pool of Chinese in the beginning is not only foolhardy, it can even be counterproductive. As George Kennedy writes, "The difficulty of memorizing a Chinese ideograph as compared with the difficulty of learning a new word in a European language, is such that a rigid economy of mental effort is imperative."6 This is, if anything, an understatement. With the risk of drowning so great, the student is better advised to spend more time in the shallow end treading water before heading toward the deep end.

As if all this weren't bad enough, another ridiculous aspect of the Chinese writing system is that there are two (mercifully overlapping) sets of characters: the traditional characters still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the simplified characters adopted by the People's Republic of China in the late 1950's and early 60's. Any foreign student of Chinese is more or less forced to become familiar with both sets, since they are routinely exposed to textbooks and materials from both Chinas. This linguistic camel's-back-breaking straw puts an absurd burden on the already absurdly burdened student of Chinese, who at this point would gladly trade places with Sisyphus. But since Chinese people themselves are never equally proficient in both simplified and complex characters, there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in eventually concentrating on one set to the partial exclusion the other. In fact, there is absolutely no shame in giving up Chinese altogether, when you come right down to it.

2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet.

To further explain why the Chinese writing system is so hard in this respect, it might be a good idea to spell out (no pun intended) why that of English is so easy. Imagine the kind of task faced by the average Chinese adult who decides to study English. What skills are needed to master the writing system? That's easy: 26 letters. (In upper and lower case, of course, plus script and a few variant forms. And throw in some quote marks, apostrophes, dashes, parentheses, etc. -- all things the Chinese use in their own writing system.) And how are these letters written? From left to right, horizontally, across the page, with spaces to indicate word boundaries. Forgetting for a moment the problem of spelling and actually making words out of these letters, how long does it take this Chinese learner of English to master the various components of the English writing system? Maybe a day or two.

Now consider the American undergraduate who decides to study Chinese. What does it take for this person to master the Chinese writing system? There is nothing that corresponds to an alphabet, though there are recurring components that make up the characters. How many such components are there? Don't ask. As with all such questions about Chinese, the answer is very messy and unsatisfying. It depends on how you define "component" (strokes? radicals?), plus a lot of other tedious details. Suffice it to say, the number is quite large, vastly more than the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. And how are these components combined to form characters? Well, you name it -- components to the left of other components, to the right of other components, on top of other components, surrounding other components, inside of other components -- almost anything is possible. And in the process of making these spatial accommodations, these components get flattened, stretched, squashed, shortened, and distorted in order to fit in the uniform square space that all characters are supposed to fit into. In other words, the components of Chinese characters are arrayed in two dimensions, rather than in the neat one-dimensional rows of alphabetic writing.

Okay, so ignoring for the moment the question of elegance, how long does it take a Westerner to learn the Chinese writing system so that when confronted with any new character they at least know how to move the pen around in order to produce a reasonable facsimile of that character? Again, hard to say, but I would estimate that it takes the average learner several months of hard work to get the basics down. Maybe a year or more if they're a klutz who was never very good in art class. Meanwhile, their Chinese counterpart learning English has zoomed ahead to learn cursive script, with time left over to read Moby Dick, or at least Strunk & White.

This is not exactly big news, I know; the alphabet really is a breeze to learn. Chinese people I know who have studied English for a few years can usually write with a handwriting style that is almost indistinguishable from that of the average American. Very few Americans, on the other hand, ever learn to produce a natural calligraphic hand in Chinese that resembles anything but that of an awkward Chinese third-grader. If there were nothing else hard about Chinese, the task of learning to write characters alone would put it in the rogues' gallery of hard-to-learn languages.

3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic.

So much for the physical process of writing the characters themselves. What about the sheer task of memorizing so many characters? Again, a comparison of English and Chinese is instructive. Suppose a Chinese person has just the previous day learned the English word "president", and now wants to write it from memory. How to start? Anyone with a year or two of English experience is going to have a host of clues and spelling rules-of-thumb, albeit imperfect ones, to help them along. The word really couldn't start with anything but "pr", and after that a little guesswork aided by visual memory ("Could a 'z' be in there? That's an unusual letter, I would have noticed it, I think. Must be an 's'...") should produce something close to the target. Not every foreigner (or native speaker for that matter) has noted or internalized the various flawed spelling heuristics of English, of course, but they are at least there to be utilized.

Now imagine that you, a learner of Chinese, have just the previous day encountered the Chinese word for "president" (总统 zǒngtǒng ) and want to write it. What processes do you go through in retrieving the word? Well, very often you just totally forget, with a forgetting that is both absolute and perfect in a way few things in this life are. You can repeat the word as often as you like; the sound won't give you a clue as to how the character is to be written. After you learn a few more characters and get hip to a few more phonetic components, you can do a bit better. ("Zǒng 总 is a phonetic component in some other character, right?...Song? Zeng? Oh yeah, cong 总 as in cōngmíng 聪明.") Of course, the phonetic aspect of some characters is more obvious than that of others, but many characters, including some of the most high-frequency ones, give no clue at all as to their pronunciation.

All of this is to say that Chinese is just not very phonetic when compared to English. (English, in turn, is less phonetic than a language like German or Spanish, but Chinese isn't even in the same ballpark.) It is not true, as some people outside the field tend to think, that Chinese is not phonetic at all, though a perfectly intelligent beginning student could go several months without noticing this fact. Just how phonetic the language is a very complex issue. Educated opinions range from 25% (Zhao Yuanren)7 to around 66% (DeFrancis),8 though the latter estimate assumes more knowledge of phonetic components than most learners are likely to have. One could say that Chinese is phonetic in the way that sex is aerobic: technically so, but in practical use not the most salient thing about it. Furthermore, this phonetic aspect of the language doesn't really become very useful until you've learned a few hundred characters, and even when you've learned two thousand, the feeble phoneticity of Chinese will never provide you with the constant memory prod that the phonetic quality of English does.

Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. Period. If there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character, you're just sunk. And you're sunk whether your native language is Chinese or not; contrary to popular myth, Chinese people are not born with the ability to memorize arbitrary squiggles. In fact, one of the most gratifying experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker come up a complete blank when called upon to write the characters for some relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.

This is such a gratifying experience, in fact, that I have actually kept a list of characters that I have observed Chinese people forget how to write. (A sick, obsessive activity, I know.) I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger", "cushion", "firecracker", and so on. And when I say "forget", I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you imagine a well-educated native English speaker totally forgetting how to write a word like "knee" or "tin can"? Or even a rarely-seen word like "scabbard" or "ragamuffin"? I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 "to sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word "sneeze"?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China. English is simply orders of magnitude easier to write and remember. No matter how low-frequency the word is, or how unorthodox the spelling, the English speaker can always come up with something, simply because there has to be some correspondence between sound and spelling. One might forget whether "abracadabra" is hyphenated or not, or get the last few letters wrong on "rhinoceros", but even the poorest of spellers can make a reasonable stab at almost anything. By contrast, often even the most well-educated Chinese have no recourse but to throw up their hands and ask someone else in the room how to write some particularly elusive character.

As one mundane example of the advantages of a phonetic writing system, here is one kind of linguistic situation I encountered constantly while I was in France. (Again I use French as my canonical example of an "easy" foreign language.) I wake up one morning in Paris and turn on the radio. An ad comes on, and I hear the word "amortisseur" several times. "What's an amortisseur?" I think to myself, but as I am in a hurry to make an appointment, I forget to look the word up in my haste to leave the apartment. A few hours later I'm walking down the street, and I read, on a sign, the word "AMORTISSEUR" -- the word I heard earlier this morning. Beneath the word on the sign is a picture of a shock absorber. Aha! So "amortisseur" means "shock absorber". And voila! I've learned a new word, quickly and painlessly, all because the sound I construct when reading the word is the same as the sound in my head from the radio this morning -- one reinforces the other. Throughout the next week I see the word again several times, and each time I can reconstruct the sound by simply reading the word phonetically -- "a-mor-tis-seur". Before long I can retrieve the word easily, use it in conversation, or write it in a letter to a friend. And the process of learning a foreign language begins to seem less daunting.

When I first went to Taiwan for a few months, the situation was quite different. I was awash in a sea of characters that were all visually interesting but phonetically mute. I carried around a little dictionary to look up unfamiliar characters in, but it's almost impossible to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary while walking along a crowded street (more on dictionary look-up later), and so I didn't get nearly as much phonetic reinforcement as I got in France. In Taiwan I could pass a shop with a sign advertising shock absorbers and never know how to pronounce any of the characters unless I first look them up. And even then, the next time I pass the shop I might have to look the characters up again. And again, and again. The reinforcement does not come naturally and easily.

4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates.

I remember when I had been studying Chinese very hard for about three years, I had an interesting experience. One day I happened to find a Spanish-language newspaper sitting on a seat next to me. I picked it up out of curiosity. "Hmm," I thought to myself. "I've never studied Spanish in my life. I wonder how much of this I can understand." At random I picked a short article about an airplane crash and started to read. I found I could basically glean, with some guesswork, most of the information from the article. The crash took place near Los Angeles. 186 people were killed. There were no survivors. The plane crashed just one minute after take-off. There was nothing on the flight recorder to indicate a critical situation, and the tower was unaware of any emergency. The plane had just been serviced three days before and no mechanical problems had been found. And so on. After finishing the article I had a sudden discouraging realization: Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

What was going on here? Why was this "foreign" language so transparent? The reason was obvious: cognates -- those helpful words that are just English words with a little foreign make-up.9 I could read the article because most of the operative words were basically English: aeropuerto, problema mechanico, un minuto, situacion critica, emergencia, etc. Recognizing these words as just English words in disguise is about as difficult as noticing that Superman is really Clark Kent without his glasses. That these quasi-English words are easier to learn than Chinese characters (which might as well be quasi-Martian) goes without saying.

Imagine you are a diabetic, and you find yourself in Spain about to go into insulin shock. You can rush into a doctor's office, and, with a minimum of Spanish and a couple of pieces of guesswork ("diabetes" is just "diabetes" and "insulin" is "insulina", it turns out), you're saved. In China you'd be a goner for sure, unless you happen to have a dictionary with you, and even then you would probably pass out while frantically looking for the first character in the word for insulin. Which brings me to the next reason why Chinese is so hard.

5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated.

One of the most unreasonably difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a word in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school. When I was in Taiwan, I heard that they sometimes held dictionary look-up contests in the junior high schools. Imagine a language where simply looking a word up in the dictionary is considered a skill like debate or volleyball! Chinese is not exactly what you would call a user-friendly language, but a Chinese dictionary is positively user-hostile.

Figuring out all the radicals and their variants, plus dealing with the ambiguous characters with no obvious radical at all is a stupid, time-consuming chore that slows the learning process down by a factor of ten as compared to other languages with a sensible alphabet or the equivalent. I'd say it took me a good year before I could reliably find in the dictionary any character I might encounter. And to this day, I will very occasionally stumble onto a character that I simply can't find at all, even after ten minutes of searching. At such times I raise my hands to the sky, Job-like, and consider going into telemarketing.

Chinese must also be one of the most dictionary-intensive languages on earth. I currently have more than twenty Chinese dictionaries of various kinds on my desk, and they all have a specific and distinct use. There are dictionaries with simplified characters used on the mainland, dictionaries with the traditional characters used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and dictionaries with both. There are dictionaries that use the Wade-Giles romanization, dictionaries that use pinyin, and dictionaries that use other more surrealistic romanization methods. There are dictionaries of classical Chinese particles, dictionaries of Beijing dialect, dictionaries of chéngyǔ (four-character idioms), dictionaries of xiēhòuyǔ (special allegorical two-part sayings), dictionaries of yànyǔ (proverbs), dictionaries of Chinese communist terms, dictionaries of Buddhist terms, reverse dictionaries... on and on. An exhaustive hunt for some elusive or problematic lexical item can leave one's desk "strewn with dictionaries as numerous as dead soldiers on a battlefield."10

For looking up unfamiliar characters there is another method called the four-corner system. This method is very fast -- rumored to be, in principle, about as fast as alphabetic look-up (though I haven't met anyone yet who can hit the winning number each time on the first try). Unfortunately, learning this method takes about as much time and practice as learning the Dewey decimal system. Plus you are then at the mercy of the few dictionaries that are arranged according to the numbering scheme of the four-corner system. Those who have mastered this system usually swear by it. The rest of us just swear.

Another problem with looking up words in the dictionary has to do with the nature of written Chinese. In most languages it's pretty obvious where the word boundaries lie -- there are spaces between the words. If you don't know the word in question, it's usually fairly clear what you should look up. (What actually constitutes a word is a very subtle issue, of course, but for my purposes here, what I'm saying is basically correct.) In Chinese there are spaces between characters, but it takes quite a lot of knowledge of the language and often some genuine sleuth work to tell where word boundaries lie; thus it's often trial and error to look up a word. It would be as if English were written thus:

Imagine how this difference would compound the dictionary look-up difficulties of a non-native speaker of English. The passage is pretty trivial for us to understand, but then we already know English. For them it would often be hard to tell where the word boundaries were supposed to be. So it is, too, with someone trying to learn Chinese.

6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen).

Forget it. Way too difficult. If you think that after three or four years of study you'll be breezing through Confucius and Mencius in the way third-year French students at a comparable level are reading Diderot and Voltaire, you're sadly mistaken. There are some westerners who can comfortably read classical Chinese, but most of them have a lot of gray hair or at least tenure.

Unfortunately, classical Chinese pops up everywhere, especially in Chinese paintings and character scrolls, and most people will assume anyone literate in Chinese can read it. It's truly embarrassing to be out at a Chinese restaurant, and someone asks you to translate some characters on a wall hanging.

"Hey, you speak Chinese. What does this scroll say?" You look up and see that the characters are written in wenyan, and in incomprehensible "grass-style" calligraphy to boot. It might as well be an EKG readout of a dying heart patient.

"Uh, I can make out one or two of the characters, but I couldn't tell you what it says," you stammer. "I think it's about a phoenix or something."

"Oh, I thought you knew Chinese," says your friend, returning to their menu. Never mind that an honest-to-goodness Chinese person would also just scratch their head and shrug; the face that is lost is yours.

Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway. An uninitiated westerner can no more be expected to understand such writing than Confucius himself, if transported to the present, could understand the entries in the "personal" section of the classified ads that say things like: "Hndsm. SWGM, 24, 160, sks BGM or WGM for gentle S&M, mod. bndg., some lthr., twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please."

In fairness, it should be said that classical Chinese gets easier the more you attempt it. But then so does hitting a hole in one, or swimming the English channel in a straitjacket.

7. Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck.

Well, perhaps that's too harsh. But it is true that there are too many of them, and most of them were designed either by committee or by linguists, or -- even worse -- by a committee of linguists. It is, of course, a very tricky task to devise a romanization method; some are better than others, but all involve plenty of counterintuitive spellings.11 And if you're serious about a career in Chinese, you'll have to grapple with at least four or five of them, not including the bopomofu phonetic symbols used in Taiwan. There are probably a dozen or more romanization schemes out there somewhere, most of them mercifully obscure and rightfully ignored. There is a standing joke among sinologists that one of the first signs of senility in a China scholar is the compulsion to come up with a new romanization method.

8. Because tonal languages are weird.

Okay, that's very Anglo-centric, I know it. But I have to mention this problem because it's one of the most common complaints about learning Chinese, and it's one of the aspects of the language that westerners are notoriously bad at. Every person who tackles Chinese at first has a little trouble believing this aspect of the language. How is it possible that shùxué means "mathematics" while shūxuě means "blood transfusion", or that guòjiǎng means "you flatter me" while guǒjiàng means "fruit paste"?

By itself, this property of Chinese would be hard enough; it means that, for us non-native speakers, there is this extra, seemingly irrelevant aspect of the sound of a word that you must memorize along with the vowels and consonants. But where the real difficulty comes in is when you start to really use Chinese to express yourself. You suddenly find yourself straitjacketed -- when you say the sentence with the intonation that feels natural, the tones come out all wrong. For example, if you wish say something like "Hey, that's my water glass you're drinking out of!", and you follow your intonational instincts -- that is, to put a distinct falling tone on the first character of the word for "my" -- you will have said a kind of gibberish that may or may not be understood.

Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature. With non-tonal languages you can basically import, mutatis mutandis, your habitual ways of emphasizing, negating, stressing, and questioning. The results may be somewhat non-native but usually understandable. Not so with Chinese, where your intonational contours must always obey the tonal constraints of the specific words you've chosen. Chinese speakers, of course, can express all of the intonational subtleties available in non-tonal languages -- it's just that they do it in a way that is somewhat alien to us speakers of non-tonal languages. When you first begin using your Chinese to talk about subjects that actually matter to you, you find that it feels somewhat like trying to have a passionate argument with your hands tied behind your back -- you are suddenly robbed of some vital expressive tools you hadn't even been aware of having.

9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met.

Language and culture cannot be separated, of course, and one of the main reasons Chinese is so difficult for Americans is that our two cultures have been isolated for so long. The reason reading French sentences like "Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne," is about as hard as deciphering pig Latin is not just because of the deep Indo-European family resemblance, but also because the core concepts and cultural assumptions in such utterances stem from the same source. We share the same art history, the same music history, the same history history -- which means that in the head of a French person there is basically the same set of archetypes and the same cultural cast of characters that's in an American's head. We are as familiar with Rimbaud as they are with Rambo. In fact, compared to the difference between China and the U.S., American culture and and French culture seem about as different as Peter Pan and Skippy peanut butter.

Speaking with a Chinese person is usually a different matter. You just can't drop Dickens, Tarzan, Jack the Ripper, Goethe, or the Beatles into a conversation and always expect to be understood. I once had a Chinese friend who had read the first translations of Kafka into Chinese, yet didn't know who Santa Claus was. China has had extensive contact with the West in the last few decades, but there is still a vast sea of knowledge and ideas that is not shared by both cultures.

Similarly, how many Americans other than sinophiles have even a rough idea of the chronology of China's dynasties? Has the average history major here ever heard of Qin Shi Huangdi and his contribution to Chinese culture? How many American music majors have ever heard a note of Peking Opera, or would recognize a pipa if they tripped over one? How many otherwise literate Americans have heard of Lu Xun, Ba Jin, or even Mozi?

What this means is that when Americans and Chinese get together, there is often not just a language barrier, but an immense cultural barrier as well. Of course, this is one of the reasons the study of Chinese is so interesting. It is also one of the reasons it is so damn hard.

Conclusion

I could go on and on, but I figure if the reader has bothered to read this far, I'm preaching to the converted, anyway. Those who have tackled other difficult languages have their own litany of horror stories, I'm sure. But I still feel reasonably confident in asserting that, for an average American, Chinese is significantly harder to learn than any of the other thirty or so major world languages that are usually studied formally at the university level (though Japanese in many ways comes close). Not too interesting for linguists, maybe, but something to consider if you've decided to better yourself by learning a foreign language, and you're thinking "Gee, Chinese looks kinda neat."

It's pretty hard to quantify a process as complex and multi-faceted as language-learning, but one simple metric is to simply estimate the time it takes to master the requisite language-learning skills. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is "learning to learn" Chinese.

How much harder is Chinese? Again, I'll use French as my canonical "easy language". This is a very rough and intuitive estimate, but I would say that it takes about three times as long to reach a level of comfortable fluency in speaking, reading, and writing Chinese as it takes to reach a comparable level in French. An average American could probably become reasonably fluent in two Romance languages in the time it would take them to reach the same level in Chinese.

One could perhaps view learning languages as being similar to learning musical instruments. Despite the esoteric glories of the harmonica literature, it's probably safe to say that the piano is a lot harder and more time-consuming to learn. To extend the analogy, there is also the fact that we are all virtuosos on at least one "instrument" (namely, our native language), and learning instruments from the same family is easier than embarking on a completely different instrument. A Spanish person learning Portuguese is comparable to a violinist taking up the viola, whereas an American learning Chinese is more like a rock guitarist trying to learn to play an elaborate 30-stop three-manual pipe organ.

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

There is still the awe-inspiring fact that Chinese people manage to learn their own language very well. Perhaps they are like the gradeschool kids that Baroque performance groups recruit to sing Bach cantatas. The story goes that someone in the audience, amazed at hearing such youthful cherubs flawlessly singing Bach's uncompromisingly difficult vocal music, asks the choir director, "But how are they able to perform such difficult music?"

"Shh -- not so loud!" says the director, "If you don't tell them it's difficult, they never know."

Bibliography

(A longer version of this paper is available through CRCC, Indiana University, 510 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN, 47408.)

Chen, Heqin, (1928)"Yutiwen yingyong zihui" [Characters used in vernacular literature], Shanghai.

DeFrancis, John (1966) "Why Johnny Can't Read Chinese", Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb. 1966, pp. 1-20.

DeFrancis, John (1984) The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

DeFrancis, John (1989) Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Kennedy, George (1964) "A Minimum Vocabulary in Modern Chinese", in Selected Works of George Kennedy, Tien-yi Li (ed.), New Haven: Far Eastern Publications.

Mair, Victor (1986) "The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects", Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 1, February, 1986 (Dept. of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania).

Zhao, Yuanren, (1972) Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Notes

抛砖引玉

Pao1 Zhuan1 Yin3 Yu4  

 

Explanation: A metaphor that means one might offer some rough idea or essay first, in order to draw out other people's better or more mature ideas.

Tone: Positive

The Story: In the Tang Dynasty, there was a poet named Zhao Gu--he was very intelligent. One year, he went to Su Zhou, where a local poet Chang Jian was always admiring his literary talent. In order to get Zhao Gu's attention, Chan Jian wrote 2 stanzas on the wall of the Lingyan Temple. When Zhao Gu visited the temple and saw the unfinished poem, he completed it by adding another 2 stanzas, as expected.

As Zhao Gu's part was better than Chang Jian's, later people described this kind of action as 'throwing a brick to attract jade'.

In modern life, you can easily find many ways to use this idiom!

This article may save you from certain embarrassment and possibly even outright humiliation one day. It gives you ten important tips on what not to do if you really want to win friends and make a good impression with your Chinese acquaintances. Take these tips to heart.

Never accept a compliment graciously

You may find yourself at a loss for words when you compliment a Chinese host on a wonderful meal, and you get in response, "No, no, the food was really horrible." You hear the same thing when you tell a Chinese parent how smart or handsome his son is — he meets the compliment with a rebuff of "No, he's really stupid" or "He's not good looking at all." These people aren't being nasty . . . just humble and polite. Moral of the story here: Feign humility, even if it kills you! A little less boasting and fewer self-congratulatory remarks go a long way towards scoring cultural sensitivity points with the Chinese.

Never make someone lose face

The worst thing you can possibly do to Chinese acquaintances is publicly humiliate or otherwise embarrass them. Doing so makes them lose face. Don't point out a mistake in front of others or yell at someone.

The good news is that you can actually help someone gain face by complimenting them and giving credit where credit is due. Do this whenever the opportunity arises. Your graciousness is much appreciated.

Never get angry in public

Public displays of anger are frowned upon by the Chinese and are most uncomfortable for them to deal with — especially if the people getting angry are foreign tourists, for example. This goes right along with making someone (usually the Chinese host) lose face, which you should avoid at all costs. The Chinese place a premium on group harmony, so foreigners should try to swallow hard, be polite, and cope privately.

Never address people by their first names first

Chinese people have first and last names like everyone else. However, in China, the last name always comes first. The family (and the collective in general) always takes precedence over the individual. Joe Smith in Minnesota is known as Smith Joe (or the equivalent) in Shanghai. If a man is introduced to you as Lî Míng, you can safely refer to him as Mr. Lî (not Mr. Míng).

Unlike people in the West, the Chinese don't feel very comfortable calling each other by their first names. Only family members and a few close friends ever refer to the man above, for example, as simply "Míng." They may, however, add the prefix lâo (laow; old) or xiâo (shyaow; young) before the family name to show familiarity and closeness. Lâo Lî (Old Lî) may refer to his younger friend as Xiâo Chén (Young Chén).

Never take food with the wrong end of your chopsticks

The next time you gather around a dinner table with a Chinese host, you may discover that serving spoons for the many communal dishes are non-existent. This is because everyone serves themselves (or others) by turning their chopsticks upside down to take food from the main dishes before putting the food on the individual plates.

Never drink alcohol without first offering a toast

Chinese banquets include eight to ten courses of food and plenty of alcohol. Sometimes you drink rice wine, and sometimes you drink industrial strength Máo Tái, known to put a foreigner or two under the table in no time. One way to slow the drinking is to observe Chinese etiquette by always offering a toast to the host or someone else at the table before taking a sip yourself. This not only prevents you from drinking too much too quickly, but also shows your gratitude toward the host and your regard for the other guests. If someone toasts you with a "gân bçi," (gahn bay) however, watch out.

Gân bçi means "bottoms up," and you may be expected to drink the whole drink rather quickly. Don't worry. You can always say "shuí yì" (shway ee; as you wish) in return and take just a little sip instead.

Never let someone else pay the bill without fighting for it

Most Westerners are stunned the first time they witness the many fairly chaotic, noisy scenes at the end of a Chinese restaurant meal. The time to pay the bill has come and everyone is simply doing what they're expected to do — fight to be the one to pay it. The Chinese consider it good manners to vociferously and strenuously attempt to wrest the bill out of the very hands of whoever happens to have it. This may go on, back and forth, for a good few minutes, until someone "wins" and pays the bill. The gesture of being eager and willing to pay is always appreciated.

Never show up empty handed

Gifts are exchanged frequently between the Chinese, and not just on special occasions. If you have dinner in someone's house to meet a prospective business partner or for any other pre-arranged meeting, both parties commonly exchange gifts as small tokens of friendship and good will. Westerners are often surprised at the number of gifts the Chinese hosts give. The general rule of thumb is to bring many little (gender non-specific) gifts when you travel to China. You never know when you'll meet someone who wants to present you with a special memento, so you should arrive with your own as well.

Never accept food, drinks, or gifts without first refusing a few times

No self-respecting guests immediately accept whatever may be offered to them in someone's home. No matter how much they may be eager to accept the food, drink, or gift, proper Chinese etiquette prevents them from doing anything that makes them appear greedy or eager to receive it, so be sure to politely refuse a couple of times.

Never take the first "No, thank you" literally

Chinese people automatically refuse food or drinks several times — even if they really feel hungry or thirsty. Never take the first "No, thank you" literally. Even if they say it once or twice, offer it again. A good guest is supposed to refuse at least once, but a good host is also supposed to make the offer at least twice.

 

source: http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/Ten-Things-Never-to-Do-in-China.id-3236.html 

There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousands. Here are the coverage rates of the most frequently used Chinese characters:

Most frequently used 1,000 characters: ~90% (Coverage rate)
Most frequently used 2,500 characters: 98.0% (Coverage rate)
Most frequently used 3,500 characters: 99.5% (Coverage rate)

 

For an English word, the Chinese translation (or the Chinese 'word') often consists of two or more Chinese characters. You should use them together and read them from left to right. If you want to arrange them vertically, the one on the leftmost should go to the top. See an example for the word 'English' below:

As you can see, there are two Chinese characters for English (the language), which are ying1 yu3 in Pinyin. Pinyin is the international standard romanization scheme for Chinese characters, which is useful for learning the phonetics of Mandarin. There are four tones in Pinyin and we use the numbers here, i.e., 1, 2, 3, and 4, to depict the four tones. If you want to learn Mandarin (or Pu3 Tong1 Hua4), you have to master the four tones of the language. However, one pinyin usually represents many Chinese characters. For example, han4 can depict the Chinese characters for sweet, drought, brave, Chinese, etc. Thus you have to learn the Chinese characters to master the language.

Chinese is not alphabetic so the writing is not related to its phonetics. We don't translate the Western alphabet since the letters have no meaning, and we do use the letters in writings, especially in scientific writings.

There are many styles of Chinese writing. Some of the styles are more ancient than others. In general, there are large differences among the styles, even though some of the styles are quite close. Different styles of Chinese characters are naturally used according to the purposes of the writing, such as Xiaozhuan mainly used for seal carving now. Besides the different styles, there are also two forms of Chinese characters, the simplified and the traditional. The simplified is the standard writing form employed in the mainland of China and the traditional form is mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are total 2,235 simplified characters contained in the 'Simplified Character Table' published in 1964 by the Chinese government, so the majority of the Chinese characters are the same in the two forms, though the count of commonly-used Chinese characters is only about 3,500.

All the Chinese characters on our site are Kaiti (the standard style) in the simplified form.

Japanese Kanji are originally from China so most of them are the same as their corresponding Chinese characters, but Japanese kanji only contain a small collection of Chinese characters. There are a lot more Chinese characters not included in Japanese Kanji. Kanji are used less and less now in Japan. You don't see a lot of Kanji in a modern Japanese book anymore.

 

 With less than 200 days left before the "smoke-free Beijing Olympics" open. A Beijing official recently announced that "the provisions to ban smoking in public places in Beijing" will go into effect in Beijing office spaces, restaurants, and hotels.

The new smoking ban will affect at least 4 million smokers in Beijing. In China, there are approximately 350 million smokers; and more than 100,000 people die each year from second hand smoke.

Compared with the smoking ban introduced in 1996, this new ban is more stringent and based on solicited public views. The new provisions expand the scope of non-smoking, public areas. The first provision bans smoking inside and outside of gyms, health clubs, social units, and open public places. And for the first time, a smoking ban has been placed inside restaurants, hotels, hostels, training centers, resorts and other public places.

Meanwhile, restaurants and hotels will set up clearly-marked and well-ventilated indoor smoking areas or smoking rooms. At least 70% of rooms will be smoke-free.

Based on the new requirements, smoking will be banned in offices, meeting places, cafeterias, bathrooms, hallways, and elevators in Beijing authorities, organizations, enterprises and institutions.

The government-approved prohibition of smoking in public places is expected to begin after February of this year. The regulations are considered to be an effective support for the "Smoke-free Olympics;" and in the future to become a new starting point for tobacco control legislation in Beijing and China's public places.

http://www.ash.org.uk

The history of Chinese Astrology is very interesting! It is said that Buddha invited all of the animals in the world to join him for the New Year celebrations, but only 12 animals bothered to turn up. As a great reward, Buddha named a year after each one of them and they actually run in the order that the animals arrived to celebrate with Buddha, starting with the rat and ending with the last guest, the pig.

 

 

What year were you born in the Chinese zodiac calendar?

Browse the calendar to find your birth year and more about your Chinese zodiac sign :

It is believed that those born during a year of a particular animal would inherit some of the good and bad personality traits of that animal.

 
Also, each year is influenced by whatever animal it falls in. The Year of The Rat begins on February 7th 2008.

 
Let’s take a look at each animal, their major personality traits and what the prospects are for 2008, the Year of the Rat.

 

The Rat

Rats are charming, elegant and clever. They can be a bit gossipy and prone to being distracted. They’re also thrifty and very good with handling money. Family and close friends are exceptionally important to them. The Rat is charming beyond words and throughout his undoubtedly long life he will always be popular and will have many friends.

 

Forecast for 2008 In their own year, Rats need to make future plans, remain persistant, vigilant and above all, enjoy a brightening of prospects all around. In their work situation, excellent opportunities should arrive with an accompanying rise in salary. If, however, the Rat feels stuck, bored and unable to progress, he needs to follow through his ideas in order to move onwards and upwards – action will be a keyword this year for all Rats – it’s no time to sit idly by, waiting for good things to happen. There will be celebrations, social events and travel to also look forward to in 2008. Also, hobbies or interests that may have been put to one side, should be looked at with fresh eyes as they could prove both beneficial and lucrative to the Rat this year. All in all, this will be an enjoyable and prosperous year for those Rats who pursue their dreams. May and August will be particularly auspicious times for making new and close friends and alliances.

 

The Ox

Sturdy, earthy, no-nonsense – that’s the Ox. Affectionate and easy-going, the Ox can show a fierce temper when agitated. He is neat, tidy, quiet and studious, with a great love of his home. Music can be a great love. Family life and a loving partner are high on the Ox’s priorities. A wonderful loyal friend.

 

Forecast for 2008 The Ox could be quite tired after a hectic last couple of months in 2007. During 2008 the focus on work continues, with excellent prospects for promotion, moving to a better position and also taking up new skills. It will be important for the Ox to take time out for recreational and social pursuits in order to relax and remember to enjoy himself. 2008 will also be a lucky year for Ox’s with possible monetary gain or unexpected gifts arriving during the year. Friends will also play an important role in the year, providing support, camaraderie and fun times. The Ox is not the most social animal in the Zodiac and it’s important for him not to neglect his existing circle of friends this year. His well-considered and honest advice will be sought a few times over 2008. March to August will be a terrific time for work advancements.

 

The Tiger

Magnetic, passionate and grand! When the Tiger does anything, it’s noticed! Indecisiveness and stubbornness can mar the sparkle of the Tiger personality. On the one hand generous, on the other hand a little mean, it’s sometimes hard to know where one stands with the Tiger. Flexible, honest and truly entertaining, one has a friend for life with a Tiger.

 

Forecast for 2008 The final months of 2007 could prove frustrating to the Tiger if he has taken on too many projects or ideas. It’s important for him to tread carefully and purposefully at the start of the Year of the Rat in order to set a firm, strong foundation for the year. Otherwise, disappointment and frustration may follow. Many Tigers are extremely creative and imaginative and this is the year to use their talents. For those Tigers who are unfulfilled in their career, they may find it difficult to move. However, an unexpected and lucky opportunity will arise during the year for all Tigers – but beware – blink and you’ll miss it! The Tiger’s impulsiveness needs to reined in quite a bit during 2008 and if this is done, the year could prove highly enjoyable, lucky and satisfying. July to October will be the best time for new and exciting romantic opportunities.

 

The Rabbit

Cuddly, warm and affectionate are the attributes of the Rabbit. Mysterious and a great party-giver and host, the Rabbit enjoys being the centre of attention once in a while. The Rabbit is occasionally over cautious and can be a bit boring. He is also one of the luckiest signs in the Chinese Astrology chart.

 

Forecast for 2008 During the final couple of months of 2007, the Rabbit will need to keep a close eye on his finances in order to avoid hardship during the Year of the Rat. 2008 will prove to be a very social and fun year, with a highlight on romance and special get-togethers with friends. For the unattached Rabbit, this could well be the year to meet their soul mate. It will be important for Rabbits to be careful and avoid risk-taking during the Year of the Rat. Also, he needs to be aware that gossip and rumours may abound during the middle months of the year and that joining in with the whispers should be avoided – it could ultimately damage the Rabbit’s reputation. Home and hearth will be especially important this year – providing a safe and cosy sanctuary from a busy and eventful year. April and October will provide particular opportunities to travel and socialise.

 

The Dragon

Assertive, energetic and talented are all words to describe the Dragon personality. On the other hand, the Dragon has a tendency to be condescending and tactless without realising it. They generally enjoy robust health and tend to be very successful in anything they turn their hand to.

 

Highlights for 2008 This is the year for all Dragons to follow their dreams and carpe diem! It will be a happy and busy year for most Dragons with their bubbly and ebullient personality in great demand. Travel is well aspected but comes with a small warning - check that all travel documents are in order and that every detail is as it should be. Forward planning is a key phrase for the Year of the Rat! Career-wise, the Dragon who is seeking to change jobs will have an interesting proposition presented to them, making them feel valued and confident. On the home front, the Dragon loves his domesticity and this year it will be particularly important to him. Family activities and time spent at home will re-energise and relax the Dragon immensely. Carefully budgeting with money and wise investments will make the Year of the Rat extremely satisfying and happy. March to May will be well starred for promotion and career changes.

 

The Snake

Intelligent and highly intuitive are two of the Snake’s many fine qualities. He makes an amusing and romantic friend with a definite flirtatious streak. When challenged or criticised he can be a sore loser. The Snake is very lucky with money and is fond of the odd bet or two. He is quick-witted and enjoys reading, music and occasionally the paranormal side of life.

 

Forecast for 2008 The last couple of months of 2007 could have seen a real upswing in social activities for the Snake, leaving him feeling drained and just a little out of sorts. But all Snakes should take heart for the Year of the Rat will prove a very rewarding and creative year for them – providing they think things through and take note of all possible opportunities that come along. In 2008 the Snake should take extra care in financial matters. Although very prudent and careful with money normally, this year the Snake needs to be extra vigilant. Regarding their career, a degree of flexibility will need to be shown, if looking to advance their career or change direction. This will come to the notice of those in a position to help. Many happy times will happen at home this year for Snakes, with both family and friend providing much joy. July to November will be fantastic for socialising.

 

The Horse

Fun, charming and attractive sums up the Horse’s traits perfectly. They love parties and crowds and being the centre of attention. They can also be egotistical, hotheaded and impatient. The Horse is a considerate and protective friend and partner and when in his company, there will always be excitement around the next corner.

 

Forecast for 2008 2007 will have ended on a happy and social note for the Horse and he can look forward to more of the same for the Year of the Rat. However, this will be a hectic and demanding year overall for the Horse, which could make him feel unnerved and anxious. It is important for all Horses to remember this year that all challenges are learning experiences and his tenacity and inner strength will see him through all situations. Planning and thinking about the year ahead will prove extremely beneficial to the Horse, providing him with a sense of control and direction. It is also important to make a concerted effort to listen to and get along with work colleagues and friends as ultimately they will be may be able to smooth out any rough patches for the Horse in 2008. March and August are super times for travelling and exciting adventures.

 

The Goat

Graceful and optimistic, kind and easy going, would describe a Goat personality. They can also be petulant and discontented, likely to throw the towel in at the beginning of a problem. They can be charming without revealing their true feelings. The Goat is very talented and imaginative and can turn his hand to most creative pursuits.

 

Forecast for 2008 The Year of the Rat will be a year of great accomplishments for the Goat, if he can go about things in an orderly, organised and detail manner. For the creative Goat, and there are many of these, wonderful ideas and exciting projects are sure to emerge in 2008. There will be quite a few wonderful social opportunities in this year with single Goats finding themselves in great demand! For those Goats seeking work or looking to change careers, having an implicit belief in themselves and showing enthusiasm will bring many interesting offers. Home life is also well starred with pregnancy and happy family events particularly highlighted. Financially, this is a good year, with a lump sum for a creative endeavour or a bequest coming to some Goats. Valued new friendships will made during July and August of 2008.

 

The Monkey

The Monkey is playful, lively, fun and a quick thinker. They get bored very easily and find it hard to settle down to doing any one thing. The Monkey can also be vain and offhand. They are ambitious and usually very good with investing money. With their quick wit and wonderful sense of humour, they are a great party guest. The Monkey’s life will never be dull and predictable!

 

Forecast for 2008 The Year of the Rat should be an excellent year for the Monkey with a renewed enthusiasm and determination showing itself early on. Many fine opportunities will present themselves to the Monkey during 2008 and provided he spots them, it can turn into a highly successful and lucrative year. Any inspired ideas or thoughts should be noted as they could garner the Monkey highly prized recognition at work, with financial benefits. It will be very important for him to discuss any concerns or worries he might have throughout the year regarding any matter, as keeping them to himself could result in anxiousness and bad choices. Any opportunities for studying or gaining new skills should be seized. By following cherished hopes and dreams in the Year of the Rat, this could be one of the most memorable years ever, with great good fortune and advancement. August, November and December will provide memorable social opportunities.

 

The Rooster

The Rooster is always popular, extravagant and creative. They can be brutally honest and generally like being showered with attention. They are wonderfully loyal friends and also give advice freely – whether they are asked for it or not! Family means the world to the Rooster and they are fiercely loyal to those they care about.

 

Forecast for 2008 The Year of the Rat will be a varied one for the Rooster, but if he sticks to what he knows and what he’s best at, it will go a lot more smoothly. This is not a year for any financial gambles and sensible spending and careful budgeting will avoid hardships. Keeping focussed and determined will help all Roosters who feel unfulfilled and unhappy in their jobs. While it won’t be easy to change jobs, there is a strong possibility they may come to the attention of someone influential who may be able to help. Socially, it will be a busy and entertaining year, although there is a note of caution. Gossiping and indiscretions need to be avoided at all costs, as they could be extremely damaging to the Rooster. With all of this going on in his life, home will provide a safe haven and every opportunity should be taken to spend quality time with loved ones and dear friends. April to August will prove particularly lucky, with a little effort from the Rooster.

 

The Dog

The Dog is wonderfully hard worker, a perfectionist and someone who loves the small details. He is also a bit anti-social, pessimistic and stubborn. They are one of the most honest and loyal signs of the Chinese zodiac and will always go to bat for a worthy cause. The Dog is a fantastic listener and his advice is usually very intuitive.

 

Forecast for 2008 The focus for 2008 will be on career advancement and positive financial aspects for the Dog. An unexpected job offer or change in direction will most certainly come up during the Year of the Rat and will greatly delight the Dog. With careful planning, their financial situation could greatly improve this year, providing security and a chance to make improvements or investments on the home front. Many Dogs will decide to get married or have a child this year, with love being wonderfully highlighted. As with some other Zodiac animals, fascinating opportunities need to be seized before they are gone – the Dog needs to remain alert and enthusiastic at all times in 2008. Friendship is important for the Dog this year and it may be in their best interest to get out and about to meet new friends – such as joining a club or association that would interest them. Only their efforts will make 2008 the memorable year it can be. June and October will be very happy times romantically.

 

The Story

 A love story for this day is about the 7th daughter of Emperor of Heaven and an orphaned cowherd. They were separated by the Emperor. The 7th daughter was forced to move to the star Vega and the cowherd moved to the star Altair. They are allowed to meet only once a year on the day of 7th day of 7th lunar month.

  

 The Stars

The star Vega (Weaving Maid) is the 5th brightest star in the sky. Therefore, it's very easy to find in the summer night. The size of Vega is 16 times bigger than the Sun. The temperature on its surface is more than 10,000 degrees. The brightness of Vega is 25 times brighter than the Sun. It's 25 light years away from the Earth.

The star Altair (Cowherd) is the 11th brightest star in the sky. Therefore, it's not difficult to find in the summer night. The size of Altair is 4 times bigger than the Sun. The temperature on its surface is about 8,000 degrees. The brightness of Altair is 11 times brighter than the Sun. It's 17 light years away from the Earth.

There are two stars, Alshain and Tarazed, next to the Altair. They said those two stars on Altair's each side are the Cowherd's two children in the story. The distance between the Vega and the Altair is 16 light years. They cannot meet in the sky, as they are too far apart. In the story, there was a magpie's bridge for Weaving Maid and Cowherd to meet. Do you know the length of that bridge?

The Festival

On the Chinese Valentine's Day, people in love like to go to the temple of Matchmaker and pray for their love and the possible marriage in China. People still single will do the same thing to ask their luck of love in the Matchmaker temple.

The Chinese Valentine's Day is also called The Daughter's Festival. Long ago, Chinese girls always wanted to train themselves having a good handcrafting skill like the Weaving Maid. The skill is essential for their future family. On that night, the unmarried girls may pray for the Weaving Maid star to let them become smarter. When the star Vega is high up in the sky, girls do a test, which is to put a needle on the water surface. If the needle doesn't sink, then girl is already smart enough and ready to find a husband. Girls may ask for any wish, but only one per year.

In some Chinese provinces, people believe that decorating the flowers on the ox's horn on the Chinese Valentine's Day enables to prevent from the disaster. On the night of Valentine's Day, women wash their hair to give it a fresh and shiny outlook. Children wash their face in the next morning of the Valentine's Day using the overnight water in their backyards to have a much more naturally beautiful appearance. Girls throw the five-color ropes,  on the roof for magpies. Magpies will carry ropes to build the bridge.

 

THE YEAR OF THE RAT, 2008

February 7, 2008 - January 25, 2009 (Earth)

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2008 is a Year of the Rat (Earth), which begins on February 7, 2008 and ends on January 25, 2009. First in the cycle of 12 Animal signs, Rat Year begins the sequence and recurs every twelfth year. It is a time of renewal in so many ways. From New Year to Valentine's Day, to the arrival of spring, may all the blessings and delights of the New Year be yours.

A Rat Year is a time of hard work, activity, and renewal. This is a good year to begin a new job, get married, launch a product or make a fresh start. Ventures begun now may not yield fast returns, but opportunities will come for people who are well prepared and resourceful. The best way for you to succeed is to be patient, let things develop slowly, and make the most of every opening you can find. People born in an Earth Rat are said to be logical realists, shrewd, charming, ambitious, and inventive. Of course, the entire horoscope must be considered when making any personality assessment.

In Chinese, the Rat is respected and considered a courageous, enterprising person. People born in the Year of Rat are clever and bright, sociable and family-minded. They have broad interests and strong ability in adapting to the environment and able to react adequately to any changes.

They are gifted in many ways and have an easy going manner. They are active and pleasant, tactful and fantastic, and are able to grasp opportunities. They seem to have interests in everything and hope to participate in doing it and usually do it very well.

Following are my Chinese brush paintings to celebrate the Year of the Rat. Please click the images for more information.

 

The Sign of the Rat

An opportunist with an eye for a bargain, Rats tend to collect and hoard, but are unwilling to pay too much for anything. They are devoted to their families, particularly their children. Quick-witted and passionate, they are capable of deep emotions despite their cool exteriors. Their nervous energy and ambition may lead them to attempt more tasks than they are able to complete successfully. Rats are blessed with one of the best intellects going.

The sign of the Rat is the first one in the cycle giving Rat people exude great leadership qualities and are good at taking the lead. They don't mind a lot of responsibility and they demonstrate a strong presence that other people respect. For those with the Rat nature, status and monetary satisfaction are the greatest motivation.

The affect of the sign of the Rat is energetic, and demonstrates enough endurance to fight most any sickness. Yet, all Rats tend to be tense, full of nervous energy, and prone to stress. Yoga and meditation would benefit Rats by calming their aggressive natures and helping them manage stress.

Rats make good homemakers who are always willing to do household chores. Because this is a sign of acquisition, the Rat person's house is presumably bursting with various knick-knacks collected over the years. Most Rats are cheerful, domesticated individuals who find happiness at home with their family.

The Chinese say others should always listen to the advice of the Rat. Because of their intellect and observatory powers, Rat people possess prudence and perception. They can anticipate problems, and are always able to see the big picture. Status, money, title and recognition are important to the Rat. They have keen sense of observation that allow them to foresee upcoming business opportunities as well as potential occupational problems. The Rat makes a better boss than an employee. Rats work better in flexible situations where they can be freely creative.

Cunning and thrifty, Rats have a knack with money and are apt to save for rainy days. When capable, the Rat is a great money saver, and in strapped times he knows how to make something out of nothing or how to make things advantageous for himself.

Generally friendly and sociable, the Rat is one of the extroverts of the 12 Animal signs. They have a special gift for easing the minds of others. It is not surprising that Rats have a lot of friends. To the people they love, Rats can be amazingly charitable, popular and supportive. Although Rats like to be in the driver's seat, they do need partners who can keep up with their active lifestyles. Rat people are romantic, and are always happier to have someone to share with.

Famous Rat People

Alyssa Milano, Cameron Diaz, Charlotte Bronte, Daryl Hannah, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennie Garth, Kristen Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Lucrezia Borgia, Margaret Mitchell, Margot Kidder, Mata Hari, Nancy Wake, Olivia Newton-John, Sinead Cusack, Stevie Nicks, Toni Collette, and Tracy Pollan.

THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY

source: http://www.springsgreetingcards.com/catalogs/store.asp?pid=232024

Chinese New Year

The Year of the Rat

 

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. The Chinese year 4706 begins on Feb. 7, 2008.

Chinese months are reckoned by the lunar calendar, with each month beginning on the darkest day. New Year festivities traditionally start on the first day of the month and continue until the fifteenth, when the moon is brightest. In China, people may take weeks of holiday from work to prepare for and celebrate the New Year.

A Ratty Year

Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal's year would have some of that animal's personality. Those born in rat years tend to be leaders, pioneers, and conquerors. They are charming, passionate, charismatic, practical and hardworking. Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, William Shakespeare, and Mozard were all born in the year of the rat.

Fireworks and Family Feasts

At Chinese New Year celebrations people wear red clothes, decorate with poems on red paper, and give children "lucky money" in red envelopes. Red symbolizes fire, which according to legend can drive away bad luck. The fireworks that shower the festivities are rooted in a similar ancient custom. Long ago, people in China lit bamboo stalks, believing that the crackling flames would frighten evil spirits.

The Lantern Festival

In China, the New Year is a time of family reunion. Family members gather at each other's homes for visits and shared meals, most significantly a feast on New Year's Eve. In the United States, however, many early Chinese immigrants arrived without their families, and found a sense of community through neighborhood associations instead. Today, many Chinese-American neighborhood associations host banquets and other New Year events.

Chinese New Year ends with the lantern festival on the fifteenth day of the month. Some of the lanterns may be works of art, painted with birds, animals, flowers, zodiac signs, and scenes from legend and history. People hang glowing lanterns in temples, and carry lanterns to an evening parade under the light of the full moon.

In many areas the highlight of the lantern festival is the dragon dance. The dragon—which might stretch a hundred feet long—is typically made of silk, paper, and bamboo. Traditionally the dragon is held aloft by young men who dance as they guide the colorful beast through the streets. In the United States, where the New Year is celebrated with a shortened schedule, the dragon dance always takes place on a weekend. In addition, many Chinese-American communities have added American parade elements such as marching bands and floats.

source: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/chinesenewyear1.html

 

Unfortunately we are not referring to the popular Chinese book and TV series about learning spoken English.  We are talking about the many, many examples of incorrect English words and phrases printed around Beijing.  Before we go any further we must point out that these poor English examples get fewer by the day as the city makes an effort to improve the overall English level before the Olympics in 2008.  Anyway, until then, we hope the citizens of Beijing and China can learn to laugh along with us.  Also, for any Chinese people reading, the correct spellings are provided.

Ah yes,  Christmas has just passed, and we still see the evidence of the one time when that huge factory printed hundreds of thousands of "Merry Xams" garlands.  Should be "Merry Xmas" (Xmas being a short word for Christmas).

Then there's the coffee shop which has a "Food Mune".  Should be "Food Menu" maybe ?.  (ok, these are the easy ones to correct).

Certain restaurants not only cater for the Chinese audience, they also have a "WESTEW BREAIFAST" it seems.  Should be "WESTERN BREAKFAST" we think.

Now, what exactly is free here ?  "GOODS DESERVATION" ?  Is that delivery ? reservation ? or a combination of the two ?   We can also see here the disregard for the " " space concept with the words "FASTDELIVERY" jammed together.

If you start to include mistranslations and grammatical errors, things get even more interesting.  Take the photo above left.  Apparently, the clock runs the whole place ?!!  We think it should be "MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT" rather than "MAINTAINS THE DEPARTMENT".

Then we just get onto the fact that Chinese people think English writing is cool, no matter what it says.  Take the t-shirt above for example, which not only really exists, is very popular around Beijing at the time of writing.  For those of you who are not great at English, the words mean NOTHING ! in fact, less than nothing.  Or maybe its poetry ??

Finally we get to the category regarding letters in words which have for some reason been placed upside down thus changing the word completely.  Notice the label in the Cash Machine picture (above left) which should read "Insert card here".

There are many examples of crazy English around Beijing, if you experience any particularly amusing examples, by all means take a picture and send it in to us.  It might even be included here on this page one day.

The phrase "破釜沉舟" (pinyin: pò fǔ chén zhōu) literally means "break the woks and sink the boats." It was based on a historical account where General Xiang Yu ordered his troop to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" policy. The phrase is used when one succeeds by burning the bridge. This particular idiom cannot be used in a losing scenario because the story behind it does not describe a failure.

Chinese characters usually have one or more meanings and some of them are particularly loved by Chinese people. Here is the top ten list of the lucky ones. Please note Pinyin is also used here, which is the Chinese spelling system for the characters. For example, fu is the pinyin for good luck in Chinese. But fu is only the phonic part of the character and it also represents other Chinese characters that sound the same.

1.) Fu - Blessing, Good Fortune, Good Luck Fu is one of the most popular Chinese characters used in Chinese New Year. It is often posted upside down on the front door of a house or an apartment. The upside down fu means good luck came since the character for upsite down in Chinese sounds the same as the character for came.

2.) Lu - Prosperity It used to mean official's salary in feudal China. Fengshui is believed to be the Chinese way to health, wealth and happiness. If you are interested in Fengshui, you may check out the book 'The Feng Shui Kit.'

3.) Shou - Longevity Shou also means life, age or birthday.

4.) Xi - Happiness Double happiness is usually posted everywhere on Chinese weddings.

5.) Cai - wealth, money Chinese often say money can make a ghost turn a millstone. It is to say money really can do a lot of things.

6.) He - harmonious 'People harmony' is an important part of Chinese culture. When you have harmonious relations with others, things will be a lot easier for you.

7.) Ai - love, affection Don't need to say any more about this one. Just want to point out ai is often used with 'mianzi' together. Aimianzi means 'be concerned about one's face-saving.'

8.) Mei - beautiful, pretty The United States of American is called Mei Guo in the short form. Guo means country so Meiguo is a good name.

9.) Ji - lucky, auspicious, propitious Hope all is well.

10.) De - virtue, moral De means virtue, moral, heart, mind, and kindness, etc. It is also used in the name for Germany, i.e., De Guo.

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