Reading Chinese characters...

My parents made my sister and I go to Chinese Saturday/Sunday school for many years. It was useful but kinda useless at the same time. I went for 10 years between the ages of 6-16. I learnt many many characters but do not remember them because I never use Chinese on a daily basis.

It is said that you need to know approximately 3000 characters to read a Chinese newspaper. This is a fact I've known for a long time. Knowing this - I doubt I'll ever be able to read a newspaper! (unless I study like crazy and my brain explodes because I can't learn so much and remember so much at my ripe ol' age of 30 ;) ).

If I make an educated guess I think I can read about 500 characters. To put this into perspective, I cannot even read a child's book. I cannot read every word in a book made for a 5-6 year old. How sad is that?

Listening -
I can understand between 50-90% of a Chinese Mandarin conversation or a movie. If it's just two people on the street talking I can understand about 90%. If it's a news report, only about 50% because it depends largely on the topic they are talking about and the words they use.

Speaking -
I can speak Mandarin OK, that is, I can get by without any major problems. But since my English vocabulary is quite good (I think?) and I probably do know a few thousand words, it can become extremely frustrating when the word I want to say in Chinese doesn't come out. I just don't know what it is and I have to use many other words to describe that thing, feeling, whatever.

Reading -
My reading has improved greatly since coming to Shanghai. I've always noticed this when I would visit my relatives in Taiwan. If you are exposed to the characters on a daily basis you are more likely to remember them! I think I've learnt a handful of new characters I didn't know before just from seeing them time and time again (street names are a good one). However, I still long for the day I can read a newspaper, book or magazine. I am trying to learn to read signs and magazines, and amazingly can make out sentences even if I can only read about 30-80% of the characters in each sentence.

Writing-
This is the hardest one of all since it requires a really good memory. Not only do you need to know how to write the character you have to do it in the correct stroke order. Yes, Chinese calligraphy is an art. It is also very useful to know the stroke order, otherwise you can't use a Chinese dictionary!

I am a very fast reader (in English). I skim read everything and can get the meaning by reading every 2nd line or every 4th word. I don't need to read every single word to get the meaning. Sometimes this gets me into trouble because I skip important words but on the whole I think I read faster than most people. I cannot look at a sign or whatever in English and not read it. I see it, I read it. However, in Chinese I can see characters and even if I know them, I don't necessarily read them. I have to actually stop and try to read it. It's weird. I asked my father who is Chinese and moved to Australia in his 30s if this was true of him but the other way around and he said it was.

He sees Chinese text and reads it and although his English is pretty good for a migrant he actually has to make an effort to read English. Although he could read something like the newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald it would take him a really long time to read one page whereas it would take me only a few minutes. He has been living in Australia for about 25 years. Just goes to show you no matter how hard to try to learn a 2nd language it's always easier going back to your first! (although technically Chinese was my first, haha).

Another aspect of this reading Chinese characters thing is that my parents are from Taiwan and I went to a Chinese school learning from Taiwanese-style textbooks. The characters we learnt were the traditional characters, ones that were 'invented' thousands of years ago.

Over the past few decades, complicated words were gradually simplified to make them easier to learn, write and remember. This is good but is also bad in that the original meaning of the word is lost (since Chinese is a pictorial language).

Taiwan and Hong Kong still use traditional characters whereas China and Singapore use the simplified characters. Luckily I learnt traditional first so it's easier to learn simplified. I learnt Simplified one time in Chinese school when I was 12 (when they taught a different method) and also when I was in university too.

I just found this interesting article

UN to drop traditional Chinese characters: report
The other day at the meeting Zhou Youguang spoke at, a PRC official announced that beginning in 2008 the United Nations will cease issuing any material in traditional Chinese characters. Only versions in “simplified” characters will be released, he said.

Illiteracy

On another note, not being able to read gives me an idea of of what it would be like to be illiterate. I think it would suck. :( In Chinese if you can't read the character you can't read the word. In Europe I felt illiterate too, but at least I could read the signs (even if I didn't know what they meant!)

Our ayi (housekeeper, cleaner, cook, 'domestic slave' ;) ) is illiterate. It hasn't stopped her getting a job I guess! It doesn't seem to affect her much either. I guess if it's something you never had (the ability to read/write in this case) then you don't really miss it.

Although I can read those measly 500 characters I still feel quite illiterate a lot of the time, and it sux. It sux because I look like a local, people think I'm a local but I'm not a local. So when I desperately need to read something (like a menu) I have to explain to them that I'm a foreigner and grew up in Australia and that's why I can't read Chinese..yadda yadda yadda... I wish I didn't have to give the whole long spiel, but I do! Hmm...

Darn diddly arn darn crap!

Aahh it had to happen sooner or later. China has banned blogger/blogspot right now so I cannot even view my own blog. Luckily I was already prepared for this and found out I can use pkblogs.com to view and edit my site. It's a bit of a hassle but better than nothing!

Let's hope the big bad censors hurry up and go away and find better things to worry about than someone's blog. It's a bit unfair to censor a whole blog site (with thousands of blogs on it) just because of a few worrying ones, don't you think? :(

The Medical Test

Yes, it's such a big deal it has capital letters :)

Without the medical test you can't get a long-term visa to stay in the country, and without that visa, well... you'd better get packing!

On the morning of Monday 14th May Mike and I set off to do our big medical. My mother also came along to help us with any translations. We had to bring our passports and 2 passport-sized photos with us.

The center is located on Jinbang Rd, near Hami Rd, in the Gubei area, which wasn't too far for us, only a quick taxi ride (although it took longer than usual being peak hour).

We were met by a young lady who were there to help us translate/interpret.

It was our 8th day in Shanghai and I had never seen so many non-Chinese people in the one place! And those that were Chinese looking (like myself) were born/bred elsewhere.







We filled in a form (and had to get my mother to write our address for us - how embarrassing. Not only did we not know it because we hadn't lived there for 24 hours yet, we couldn't write all the characters).

Then we sat around for a while before being called in to do our many and varied tests.

First we had to get all our details (from the form) recorded into the computer. They also took our photo which was stored in the computer and used to make sure we were the same person each time we did each test, so the results would be accurate and never mixed up with someone else's.

Then, we had to get changed into a one size fits all robe (which meant it was about 6 sizes too big for me!) and booties to fit over our shoes. The chinese are anal about not wearing dirty shoes inside a house, or anywhere that should be clean.

From memory there was:
* an eye test (simple eye test where you read the rows of letters, and a colour blindness test)
* height and weight recorded
* blood pressure recorded, and pulse rate
* listening to our lungs with stethoscope
* a full chest x-ray
* ultrasound of our internal organs - liver, pancreas?? not sure what exactly.
* blood tests testing for AIDS, syphilis and just a general check up.
* weird test where we had to be naked from the stomach up and they pressed on parts of our body and check our knees?? what the-?
* there may have been a temperature check but I can't remember now.

There were all these separate little rooms and it ran like clockwork. You had a piece of paper with you and they ticked each one off as you went, and then you were instructed to go into the next room. The order didn't matter.

After we finished, we had to pay around 700-750 RMB each for doing the exam. It seems like a lot of money but for all those things it's a bargain compared to Australia!

I was so glad when it was all over though. It was a particularly bad day for me to be doing it given the night before I had a mild fever and was sweating hot/cold, my pulse was beating very fast (as it turned out - 93 bpm) and I just generally felt very very unwell. I had to admit I lied and didn't tell them I had asthma - shhh!

We got our results back on Wednesday 6th June, 1 month to the day we arrived. It was a very comprehensive medical report - I've never seen anything like it before. We were both normal and healthy thank God and therefore passed the test, and could stay in the country!

Banking in China

This post, like pretty much all my other posts should be backdated.. but.. meh.

We arrived in Shanghai on the evening of 6th May. 2 days later, on Thurs 8th May we went to the bank to open an account. During the first week of May in China there is a week long public holiday. Because of this, the banks would be very very crowded and the queues would be very long when we tried to go.

Fortunately, my mother's relative had a special 'gold' or premium account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. So Mike and I went with him to his bank. He also had to go anyway. We thought we could get served quickly but after waiting almost an hour, this was still considered 'fast' service. I'm sure the other people there would have been waiting many many hours. And that was when it first hit me, there are soooo many more people here. We're talking 18 million in ONE CITY compared to 20.7 million for the entire COUNTRY of Australia. Wow.

A few weeks later, after we got the internet connected, it occured to me.. that we should set up internet banking. However, I was scared. I was now very very scared of the Chinese people. The woman who served us at the bank was possibly one of the most unhelpful people I had come across in China, and not a good first impression. She has scared me from ever going back to the bank - ever!

On 30th May I decided I wanted to set up internet banking but got scared that I may have to call the bank or go into the bank. I know some Mandarin but my Chinese is not that great (I have the vocab of a 5-6 year old) and since I didn't have any money in there anyway I just kind of forgot about it.

Then, a few nights ago, Mike decided to have a go doing it himself. In Australia there is a series of security measures you have to do before setting up internet banking. For eg, when I set it up at Commonwealth (the biggest bank in Australia) I had to fill out a form at the bank and give them THREE passwords. A few weeks later they rang me up on the phone to confirm these three passwords - by which time I'd practically forgotten them. I got 2 pretty easily but had trouble with the third. The lady was kind enough to hint and I finally got it.

So with this in mind I assumed it would a similar thing here, but nope. It was actually easier!! Mike did it all himself without a single phone call or anything.

He went to the website (linked above) and filled in the details from our keycard, our password, and voila. We made an online account. And it was so easy because it was all in English - hallelujah!!

I changed the language!

I can't believe it was under my nose the whole time. I was speaking to a friend on MSN about how I couldn't figure out how to get the comments etc links to be in English instead of Chinese.. then I started playing around and found the section where I could do it. It was a real 'slap forehead' moment, where I felt so stupid that I didn't even bother to look for it for weeks, and just assumed it was like that because I registered this blog in China?!