D is sitting at the kitchen table right now, practicing his 普通话 using flash cards. He (ideally) recognizes the character and then practices saying the word a few times. When he says a word that uses the third tone, though, it sometimes sounds like he's burping. I'm trying not to laugh.
Learning Mandarin Chinese isn't easy, but it definitely could be a lot harder. Many of the sounds are easy for English speakers to make -- only a few are very hard to pronounce. The morphology and grammar are relatively simple compared to English. What makes learning this language hard is a) the fact that the written language consists of thousands of tiny, very abstract drawings, and b) the abundance of homonyms.
Regarding the abstractness of the characters, my Chinese character workbook tells me that this is a picture of a pig under a roof: 家
Oh, a pig! Of course! Now I see it. (In case you wondered, this character means "home." Home is where the pig is, as we all know.)
(Somewhat relatedly, D and I recently tried to teach one of our Chinese friends the meaning of the word "sarcasm.")
This is a picture of a bird flying:飞
And this is a picture of a sick person lying in bed: 疒
I never knew that a flying bird and a sick person lying in bed could look so similar. I do know, however, that if someone who died three thousand years ago invites me to play Pictionary with him, I should just say "no thanks."
And regarding the homonyms, there are 39 characters pronounced "yi" with the fourth tone. Their meanings are hardly similar; they range from friendship to epidemic disease to legendary archer. Needless to say, understanding spoken Chinese is sometimes difficult. We're still optimistic, though -- just don't ask our tutor about her level of optimism for us!
Monday, September 04, 2006
A trip to downtown Dalian
Last Saturday (Sept 2), C and I decided to visit downtown Dalian. I had been there once for some bar hopping last week, and then we both saw it in a blur during our medical examination the following week. But we never really got to walk around and experience the heart of the city.
We took the 502 minibus, which costs 2 kuai (about 23 cents) from the nearest bus stop all the way downtown to Zhongshan Square, which is considered the heart of the city. After about only 2 or 3 stops we managed to get a seat, which is practically unheard. Given that the ride downtown is at least 30 minutes, you definitely want a seat! The Chinese buses and trams are insane in terms of the number of people getting on and off, but Saturday's bus trip was comparatively mild.
When we got to Zhongshan Square, I took a brief movie with our camera, which I will share below:
And here are some pictures of Zhongshan Square:
From the Square, we decided to go looking for a Chinese antique store we heard about that was supposed to be on Tianjin Jie (Jie=Street). We walked the length of Tianjin Jie and we never found the place (addresses in China are very difficult to track down when you're not a native). That was fine though because we saw so many different markets. There were people selling vases and woodwork and bubble tea and meat-on-a-stick and a thousand kinds of fish. On Tianjin Jie you could find the perfect bra or bargain for sea cucumber. The street markets have an energy that you don't feel shopping at your local department store. It was a neat experience to see all the wares. And of course everyone tried to get our attention by yelling "HELLO!!!!" at the top of their lungs.
Here's a picture of a long line of food vendors:
Something you don't see in China very often - an orderly queue:
We also saw a Starbucks during our meandering. I promise we didn't go in. I hear a cup of coffee is 30 kuai, which is ridiculous.
After wandering around for awhile, we decided to get some food. We had a Korean restaurant in mind on Qiyi Jie, but yet again we were thwarted. We wandered up and down Qiyi Jie but never found the place. Not to worry however, becuase on the bus on the way into the downtown area we saw two western restaurants that looked interesting. One is called the I-55 Coffee Shop and the other was the Bavarian Brew House. Believe it or not, we do eat Chinese food all the time during the week. I swear we don't eat Western cuisine all the time!
In the end we opted for the brewhouse. The allure of the Paulaner Weissbier was too good to pass up (apologies to my german relatives for not using the eszett in Weiss!). We both had some sausages, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes. We were magically transported to the Fatherland by our English speaking Chinese waiters. The food was pretty good. I am not sure it compares to the real Bavaria but it was certainly a treat for our noodled out taste buds. C had some ice cream for dessert, while I opted for another wheat beer. From here we headed back to our humble abode via taxi. It was a good first experience downtown.
We took the 502 minibus, which costs 2 kuai (about 23 cents) from the nearest bus stop all the way downtown to Zhongshan Square, which is considered the heart of the city. After about only 2 or 3 stops we managed to get a seat, which is practically unheard. Given that the ride downtown is at least 30 minutes, you definitely want a seat! The Chinese buses and trams are insane in terms of the number of people getting on and off, but Saturday's bus trip was comparatively mild.
When we got to Zhongshan Square, I took a brief movie with our camera, which I will share below:
And here are some pictures of Zhongshan Square:
From the Square, we decided to go looking for a Chinese antique store we heard about that was supposed to be on Tianjin Jie (Jie=Street). We walked the length of Tianjin Jie and we never found the place (addresses in China are very difficult to track down when you're not a native). That was fine though because we saw so many different markets. There were people selling vases and woodwork and bubble tea and meat-on-a-stick and a thousand kinds of fish. On Tianjin Jie you could find the perfect bra or bargain for sea cucumber. The street markets have an energy that you don't feel shopping at your local department store. It was a neat experience to see all the wares. And of course everyone tried to get our attention by yelling "HELLO!!!!" at the top of their lungs.
Here's a picture of a long line of food vendors:
Something you don't see in China very often - an orderly queue:
We also saw a Starbucks during our meandering. I promise we didn't go in. I hear a cup of coffee is 30 kuai, which is ridiculous.
After wandering around for awhile, we decided to get some food. We had a Korean restaurant in mind on Qiyi Jie, but yet again we were thwarted. We wandered up and down Qiyi Jie but never found the place. Not to worry however, becuase on the bus on the way into the downtown area we saw two western restaurants that looked interesting. One is called the I-55 Coffee Shop and the other was the Bavarian Brew House. Believe it or not, we do eat Chinese food all the time during the week. I swear we don't eat Western cuisine all the time!
In the end we opted for the brewhouse. The allure of the Paulaner Weissbier was too good to pass up (apologies to my german relatives for not using the eszett in Weiss!). We both had some sausages, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes. We were magically transported to the Fatherland by our English speaking Chinese waiters. The food was pretty good. I am not sure it compares to the real Bavaria but it was certainly a treat for our noodled out taste buds. C had some ice cream for dessert, while I opted for another wheat beer. From here we headed back to our humble abode via taxi. It was a good first experience downtown.
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