Going to China Part 3: Alright, alright, I'm going already!

So, I've packed. I'm actually leaving the land. The next time I write on this blog I will be on the other side of the world! I even had a little leaving breakfast with my friends, hence the photos. Well, it was meant to be a breakfast, it turned into a lunch/brunch thing by the time about half the people had arrived [you know who you are -.-] and then turned into an all day thing, seriously eating into my packing time.



But I've packed now - with the considerable help of my cousin and mother [who's desperate to get rid of me now] the whole process took only 5 hours, even after we found out I was allowed a MAXIMUM of 20kg on the flight. No worries though, the rest of my belongings [one full suitcase] will be with me in a matter of days, possibly arriving in China at the same time as myself.

It's just the last minute things now - informing the bank I need to withdraw a horrendous amount of money to pay my tuition fees, finishing my novel so I only have to carry the sequel with me and attending Nando's for my last supper [who know's when I'll see one again?]. I actually start lessons almost as soon as I get there [on the 5th I have some tests apparently] as well as havin to do a b*tch load of admin work during my first few days. As well as registering at the police station [to avoid "Illegal stay as an alien"] I have to register with the school, pay the tuition fees and visit IKEA. I know - they don't have Facebook, but they have IKEA. Apparently it's not that far from the house, but I tend to balk at doing any more than I physically have to.

There's not really much else to say here, except whining about the fact that it's going to take me a whole day to get there. I guess I'll do that then. Did you know it's going to take me a whole day to get there?!
1 hour from house to airport, where I'll then have to wait 2 hours before my 10 hour flight to Beijing, then wait  5 hours for my 2 hour connecting flight to Dalian Zhoushuizi airport. For those who are bad at maths, that's 20 hours - unsurprisingly I'm not impressed with the distance having to be travelled here, nor the amount of time it's going to take. There'd better be some frickin' good films showing on that flight.

Anywho, I'm sure you'll be hearing from me again soon, avid a reader as you are! As Eva would say: "This isn't goodbye...but

再见!                  :S xx

Going to China Part 2: A list of things

When I'm not languidly watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, "practicing" my "listening skills"  whilst doing my hair, I occasionally give thought to the fact that I'm going to China in about 4 days and need to prepare accordingly. Well the end part's taken care of, thanks to a few connections....;) So, when I get to China I will have a house waiting for me. WOOOOOOOO.
This is the benefit of having friends who are more proactive than you are, got to China first, did some studying then got a flat for you to live in. I don't care if they're better than me at Chinese [the way I see it, everyone is], I just wanted the house. Thanks Holly and Serrena!
The real issue then is knowing what I need to take, putting it into a bag and leaving this inexorably rainy land to hit the 'beach' - Dalian is a 海边城市 [haibian chengshi: seaside city] if you didn't know.

My friend Sophie asked how I was going to pack an entire year into 2 suitcases. "With ease." I replied, laughing raucously [not really, I just wanted to use that word. Who laughs raucously besides Ganondorf?]. If you're an ethnic minority, you'll understand what I mean when I say I come from the type of family who laughs in the face of  20kg baggage allowances and have the type of mother who could pack a mattress into her hand luggage. Don't mess. My mum taught me everything she knows - of course I'm still an apprentice in comparison, but she'll be there to help - and so the problem is not the packing.

Now being a female [a mixed race, crazy-haired female at that], there are certain things that are gonna be necessary for me to take, if you catch my drift. Now, I'll save you the rant about my hair, noone's interested in what hair products will  be lacking in China, but I do have have a small complaint to file. Did you know that they don't sell tampons in China. Yeah, TAMPONS, I know right? I mean, seriously wtf?! aloihfolfblagvfbloewbgow. What exactly do you expect me to DO for 5 days each month?! HHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMM?!! Well, I'll tell ya know, there's gonna be a lot of buying in bulk and overseas shipping there. What is that, some sort of Communist thing?! Well screw you! Hrumph.

Also, I got a message from Holly [one of my flatmates in China] telling me that English Tea [you know, PG Tips and shi'] were nowhere to be found. I'm sorry, is China not one of the two lands that falls into the category "Land where Tea began"? [The other, of course, being India.] I'm pretty sure the pic on one tea brand is  of an Asian lady picking tea leaves!  Another thing to buy.

Oh, and apparently Deodorant's about as easy to find as Col Gaddafi , so more shipping and buying in bulk. Honestly, for country that's soon to become one of, if not THE, world's biggest economy, they've still got a lot of home market breaking to do. Deodorant. Really, guys? Really? Next I'm gonna get there and they're gonna say "Duibuqi, we don't sell body lotion." at which point I'll be outta there, cos a year without moisturiser's a joke.

Needless to say I'm taking my own make-up products, thank you very much!
Well that's  enough ranting and raving for now. Let me actually go and do some of this fabled packing I keep talking about!

Comments & Questions :P               xx

Going to China Part 1: Visa, Insurance, Health and Money!

If you have the fortune of studying Chinese at a higher education facility [yeah, I do mean uni] you will probably be jetting off to China at some point. If you are even more fortunately studying at the beautiful University of Edinburgh, then you will probably be carted off to the even more beautiful Dalian University of Technology [大连理工大学] in your third year, unless you've got it into your head that you want to go somewhere more exciting, like Shanghai or Beijing, in which case good luck to ya. After doing much reading and looking at many photos of the site, I've decided that I'm probably going to have a really nice time there, struggling in my usual manner and hastily explaining to people who've never seen a brown or black person that "no, you can't touch my hair, not even my mother touches my hair" and "no...sorry, I don't speak Chinese."

 Looks nice right! Just some pics from the website - check it out if you're interested http://www.dlut.edu.cn/en/brief.htm

But no, wait, it's not that easy! There's a process involved. A long, complex and expensive process, one which I have yet to reap the benefits of [I'll get back to you on that one].
I had little to no direction in what to do - don't get me wrong the uni gave me all the information [fill out this form, get this visa] it's the CHINESE I blame. The medical form makes very little sense and I couldn't really decipher what they wanted most of the time. Thank god their visa office was organised [if you've ever been to the Nigerian Embassy to get a visa, you will soooo know what I mean]. But if you need to go through the motions, at least you have my words of wisdom to guide you [BE GRATEFUL!!]. 
So, the things you'll need: Visa, Medical forms, Insurance. Shall we?


The Visa part is relatively straight forward - at least, if you live in London. If you don't live in London you may have a completely different experience with some extremely rude Asian civil servants, but I had quite an easy time of it. If you're applying for an X [student] Visa, it's as simple as:
- Downloading all the forms from the Chinese embassy site [follow links for general visa forms]
- Getting the JW202 form from your place of study [they'll know what it is and should send it to you]
- Bringing £66 with you [you don't have to pay till you get the Visa, and I totally forgot about it and when the lady said "that'll be 66 pounds please" I was like wwwaaaaahhhhhhhhhh?]


Do I use enough brackets btw? Sheesh.


So then you hand in the forms, having booked your appointment in advance, otherwise be prepared for a lengthy wait, and come back 4 days later ready to receive your impeccably neat visa stamp.
So that's the easy part.


The difficult part, which took me three trips to my GP, 1 expensive trip to a private hospital and a long, intrepid journey to my local blood clinic [it was during the London riots] was the medical form. The form is not clear. That is it. What do they want from you? Well, what they actually want is a HIV and Syphillis test [you should be able to get that free on the NHS, ask your GP for a referal], a full medical check up [your GP should be able to do that for you, just show them the form and smile vaguely] as well as your blood group, a chest X-ray and an ECG [I had to do it privately, it cost about £250 in total and you need a referal again from your GP].


If you got the form first time 'round, good on ya. I totally did not understand I will not blame you for not doing so either. Apparently you can do it in China, but being me I like to get these things out of the way - no need to make the Chinese more suspicious of you than necessary...


In terms of insurance, good old http://www.thirdyearabroad.com/ provide a decent coverage, which you can tailor to how long you're there for.

Now that I'm reading it over, it doesn't seem that complex...or long. But trust me, it was at the time!! Maybe you'll have an easier time of it if you ever have to go, but having to organise things when you're on holiday just seems like such a hassle at the time!
That's it really...All I can ramble about for now anyway!

Comments & Questions  ^_^    xx

Scaling the Great Wall of Chinese: Things I Couldn't do Without

So, if you're already a student of Chinese, you're no doubt familiar with the many 方法 (methods) of cramming the water-like Chinese language into your already quite full, sponge-like brain. Between writing and re-writing characters out until you're thoroughly sick of them and cornering some poor, fresh-eyed Chinese/Taiwanese student into being your best friend so you can repeat the six sentences of Chinese you know at them on a bi-weekly basis, there are few things you can do to improve or even maintain your level of Chinese early on. However, I've found a few things that I certainly couldn't do without.

First of all, my dictionaries. I have three. A little excessive I know, but in my opinion completely necessary. I've got a pocket one, a more extensive paper one and an electronic one. DO NOT make the mistake of thinking that because you're a beginner, you can make do with the dictionary at the back of your textbook, cos trust me that ain't gonna cut it. First of, learning to use a paper dictionary is a pain, so learn early and get some sort of guide to learning what radicals are [if you don't understand now, you soon will]. Also, get a paper one before getting an electronic one. They're all the rage [especially among the dreaded Asian rivals, but we'll get to that in a later post!] and extrodinarily useful. I insisted on getting one with bells and whistles [it's got Tetris - that's how you know it's awesome] and it is of course a BESTA - from what I've heard the only brand worth getting. They're relatively easy to get on the net, but they tend to be addictive, in the sense that you become too lazy to go through the arduous process of looking up a character in a paper dictionary. My paper one is just a Collins one, but i would always recommend Collins for any language.

Secondly, NPCR videos on youtube! If you're using New Practical Chinese Reader in lessons or personally, you'll be very familiar with the main characters Ma Dawei, Lin Na, Xiao Yun and, of course, Ding Libo, along with some other native Chinese characters. Well, apparently someone made a DVD of all the episodes, with passable enough actors, and someone else went through the trouble of uploading at least the first three volumes onto youtube! If you do use NPCR, you're probably crying with joy if you've just discovered this. If not, whether you're self-taught or not, i suggest checking these videos out. They give good examples of basic grammar - and while the vocab isn't extemely ranged it's quite practical. It's also a good way to hear people speaking Chinese at a decent speed, if you don't have this luxury in your everyday life.

Note: I recommend watching the videos by Chinese080808 (http://www.youtube.com/user/Chinese080808), as this seems to be the most extensive collection i can find.


Next is online resources. Mainly, my favourite online dictionary http://www.nciku.com/. It's genuinely great. You can draw the character you want to search for if you don't know the pronunciation, it gives multiple translations, word breakdowns and working examples! It even translates whole sentences. Honestly, my 2nd year would have been a complete fail without it! You can also post questions, as it's a resources for Chinese speakers as well. You can compose vocab lists and, if you're interested in perfection, look up the stroke order of characters to improve your own calligraphy! *breathes* - I'm a big fan. Just check it out for yourself :P.
I'm also a fan of chinesesavvy, as you can type in pinyin and have the characters come up to create sentences [it also has other resources]. But you can do this on googletranslate - just beware of the translations you're given!
For revision, check out http://www.chinese-course.com/ for flashcards and random conversations/lessons etc.

Finally, and a bit randomly, I recently procured as a present from a close friend "Usborne First Thousand Words in Chinese". Now, if you're a university student in any language, but especially in Chinese, you'll understand the frustration at the lack of nouns taught. Now, this may sound strange to the causal reader, but I kid you not, after a year and a half of learning chinese, I could talk about my new hair cut (useless, i never cut my hair) but I couldn't order food in a restaurant, name the furniture in my house or even all the limbs on my body. Hmmmmmm...priorities anyone? But this book (presumably aimed at children, now that I look at the pictures) is an associated learners dream come true. Its image upon image of nouns! Heaven! So if your concerned about your lack of vocabulary, check it out, I was not disappointed!

Comments & Questions ^.^                   xx

You're Studying Chinese? Why?!

A good question... A very good question, and one that I was sure I knew the answer to only two years ago. It's the same question everyone I meet asks me after finding out I'm at Uni.
"Oh, so where do you go? Edinburgh, that's good! So what do you study...?Chinese!! But...Why?"
Usually followed by any number of the following (and more besides): "Isn't that really hard? Doesn't it have like 3 alphabets? What made you do that?" Yes. No. I don't know. I used to know - or I used to think I did. Because I wanted to challenge myself - I'd always enjoyed languages (not French, I hate French. My mum's fluent and she never lets me live it down), because I was diligent at school, because it was different.
After my first year at uni, my reason changed to "Because I refuse to be defeated by this language!" and has now evolved into "Because I wish to master the Chinese language then use my knowledge to destroy China."


If you're currently half-heartedly considering doing Mandarin Chinese at University, I truly, from the bottom of my heart, suggest that you don't. Seriously. I'm not really used to giving out negative advice, but unless you're willing to work until your brain feels like it will fall out of your ears, or [if you're a crier] cry yourself to sleep because you just don't get it, then I suggest you don't even start.
On a less dire note, Chinese is hard. Really hard. Easily the hardest thing I've ever done and probably will ever do. Even those people who had lived in China with mummy and daddy for 8 years found second year Chinese really hard (the reading and writing at any rate). First year was a walk in the park so to speak - if you're focused and used to working almost constantly and enjoy doing work then you'll probably do really well; even those who relied on what little previous knowledge they had breezed through. You don't even have to be good at languages, anyone can do Chinese. But that's the thing - not EVERYONE can do Chinese. My best friend (very much used to breezing through languages whilst doing very little work, if any at all) dropped out of Chinese because she knew she would not cope. And she was probably right to do so. The only thing that stopped me from swapping over to my life-long love Japanese was pure stubborn determination. If this language thinks I'm giving up that easily, it is sooooo wrong.


But don't just take my word from it, hey, I've only been learning it for 2 years. I found an article by a guy who's been learning it for the better part of 6 years and still struggles (http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html#_ftnref11). Again - it's not the speaking that gets you down: you struggle with the tones at first [there are four and every word has them in different combinations] but everyone does unless their first language is tonal. It's the reading and writing, the constant battle to memorise and stuff as many characters into your head as possible and keep them there whilst trying to learn how to read and write more again. I constantly forget how to write 谢谢 (xiè xiè, thank you), which is like the most basic word and something you learn in oh....week two?


But if you have chosen to persevere anyway - congratulations! You're one of the chosen few and I sincerely wish you the best in your studies. Just be aware that studying Mandarin may come at a price (if you've been reading carefully so far, you may have guessed that mine was my sanity).


But it's too late for me now because next week my very-limited-knowledge-of-China-and-Chinese and myself are darting off to the beautiful coastal city of Dalian in Northeast China for my compulsory year abroad. People keep asking me if I'm 'afraid' or 'nervous' or 'excited', but the truth is I can't really muster any of those emotions. Maybe it's because I've know I was gonna go for so long or maybe it won't hit me till I get there, but I've never really been a very emotionally expressive person(?). I've never been to China before, so I guess I could say I'm interested....but I'm most definitely looking forward to it!


I'm not really sure how I'm meant to sign off one of these things...Just look out for my posts on things I used for studying, my preparation for China and [eventually] my Journey to the East!


TTFN...ta ta for now!(does that work? I think I'm gonna have to find something else....Oh! How about comments and question?) x