Category Archive

This picture was taken at one of the many gardens we visited when in China in 2006.  Someone was feeding the fish some bread and it pretty quickly turned into a feeding frenzy with all the goldfish jostling for the soggy slices.  The fish were moving so fast that my camera couldnt catch them quick enough… but i kinda like the half blurred effect because it makes you think they’re all moving.

This is one of many interesting signs we came across when i went to china a few years ago.  This particualr one was in a supermarket in nanjing (i think..?).  Im going back to china (in less than two weeks …wow how time flies) and i was wondering if things have changed much with the silly sinage… what some people call it chinglish.  and in case you were wondering…  it wasnt really belly wash,  just orange juice and iced tea!!

When writing a reply to my chinese penfriend I had to look up these  these three words in the dictionary. I have now decided to learn them because i think they might come in handy one day

告诉 gao su (both 4th tone) means to tell.

忘记 wang ji (both 4th tone) means to try.

试做 shi zuo (both 4th tone) means to forget.

now …. lets use them all in the one sentence

我忘记试做告诉你我的象有蓝色的眼睛！

Here are some simple phrases that I learned this week:

行啊  Xing ah

- OK/in agreement

没问题

mei wen ti - no problem

We were reading the chinese newspaper - The Peoples Daily - the other day in class when we came upon this word:

鸟巢

Niao chao (3rd tone, 2nd tone)

It means birds nest, and for a moment we couldnt work out what this had to do with the olympics …untill we looked beneath the heading at the picture of the famous twisty olympic stadium!

Learning chinese, I always try to learn how to say the phrases I think will be the most useful to me.  This was one I discovered on a podcast given to me by my teacher last week. 

我错过了！

wo cuo guo le !    -   I missed it ! 

This can mean you missed a TV show, the bus, a meeting with a person or anything where you missed a certain time. 

Beijing is gearing up for the olympics or 奥运会 with about a week to go untill the opening ceremony… this is what I found on the china daily website which is a great website for getting a quick update on what is happening in China.  www.chinadaily.com

Beijing ready and calm at 10-day countdown

Beijing finally cooled on Tuesday as a brief heavy shower embraced the city around noon after a hot and humid week.

The rain, though lasting only 10 minutes, will hopefully help restore confidence in the city’s air quality, according to Guo Hu, Beijing Meteorological Observatory director.

“The rare lack of rain and wind to blow away accumulated emissions contributed to the city’s substandard air quality,” he said, admitting a number of days had failed to meet the local standard for good air quality despite the capital’s car control measures.

“The temperature and humidity will gradually drop and we will have better air quality and more comfortable weather in August.”

His confidence was shared by many as the city goes through every detail to fulfill the dream of billions on its 10-day countdown to the August Olympics.

你好我叫
Alice.  现在我在 Hawkesdale 中学上十一年级。我的学校差不多有三百七十学生。我有汉语课， 英语课， 化学课， 数学课， 生物课， 科学课。 我喜欢上生物课，科学课因为很有意思, 也因为我有很好的老师。我也觉得英语课很有意思因为我很喜欢看小说。  我不喜欢上化学课因为没有意思，没有用！我也很不喜欢数学课因为太难学了。我最喜欢星期二但是我不喜欢星期四因为第四节课是数学课。我每星期有五节汉语课. 我喜欢学习汉语因为我要再去中国。 我也觉得外语很有意思。因为星期二第三和四课是汉语所以我最喜欢星期二。          我们上午上四节课，下午上两节课。我每天早上九点上课。每天上午从十点五十分到十一点十五分我们休息，从一点到一点四十五分是午饭。我们下午三点半放学回家。我早上八点十分坐公共汽车去学校。我坐公共汽车回家。

这是我的课程表。

These are the answerts to find the chinese on pg 一百二三十五六 of 汉语

1。上 完 音 乐 课 就 上 历 史 课。

2。第 二 节 课 也 是 数 学。

3。我 们 星 期 一 上 午，  第 一 节 课 是 数 学。 

4。下 了 课 以 后 有 课 外 活 动。

我不喜欢上化学课。化学课没有意思。我喜欢上汉语课因为我觉得外语很有用。我不喜欢上数学课。数学课太难学。 我喜欢上科学但是我有时候觉得科学很难学。 我喜欢上英语课因为我喜欢看书。 

1. 我们每天下午五点半放学回家。pg 122

2.我们学校有一千二百多个学生。 pg 121

3.我们都在二年级三班。pg 121

4.下午有时候上一节，有时候两节。pg 122

5.我和王华，李强同班。pg 121

6.二十三男个生，二十五个女生。pg 121

7. 上 午上四节课。pg 122

这是我的鸡。她叫henny penny.她两岁。她最喜欢吃甲虫。

Since ive been learning how to ask questions in chinese i thought I’d try a few and see if i get a response, (in chinese…of course!)….

你叫什么名字？你住在哪里？你几岁？你最喜欢吃哪一个食物？你家有几个人？谁是你的老师？你去哪一间学校？这是谁的电脑？你有几个电脑？

I just did a search on mooncakes which are a cakey thing eaten by chinese during the moon or harvest festival and i found some interesting stuff.   This is from wikipedia …have a read.
Mooncakes were used as a medium by the Ming revolutionaries in their espionage effort to secretly distribute letters in order to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China in the Yuan dynasty. The idea is said to be conceived by Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) and his advisor Liu Bowen (劉伯溫), who circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and the only way to prevent it was to eat the special mooncakes. This prompted the quick distribution of the mooncakes, which were used to hide a secret message coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month.
Another method of hiding the message was printed in the surface of mooncakes as a simple puzzle or mosaic. In order to read the encrypted message, each of the 4 mooncakes packaged together must be cut into 4 parts each. The 16 pieces of mooncake, must then be pieced together in such a fashion that the secret messages can be read. The pieces of mooncake are then eaten to destroy the message.

As you can see they did some pretty clever stuff….cant say I really like the cakes though.   I got given some by the chinese host family I stayed with . They are very rich and have a flavour that not really like anything else…

Having just had easter (with perhaps a little too much chocolate) it got me wondering about what kinds of things they celebrate in china.  I’ve heard of the moon festival but am wondering if they celebrate christmas and things like easter as much as we do here in Australia…. if you know of any more let me know! 

This week  China was in the paper…it is almost every day but oh well!

Anyway a few days ago I read an article about china reconsidering the one child policy.  At the moment couples can only have one child because the chinese government wants to keep the population from getting any bigger.  Generally, any other children born dont recieve government support with things like education and healthcare so it costs the parents.    This sometimes means that the richer the parents the more children they can have.  The chinese government is reconsidering the policy because the ageing population means less people will be able to work  but they havent made any descisions yet. 

我叫爱丽丝， 我是女生， 我十六岁。 我比较矮矮的， 身高1。62 米。我有绿色的眼睛，褐色的头发。  我认为我是比较高兴的人。我的最好朋友是非常好,  高兴的人。我从澳大利亚来。  我住在 hawkesdale。 现在我在hawkesdale中学上十一年级。  我最喜欢汉语课。

我家有妈妈， 爸爸， 弟弟和我。 因为我们都住在我们的农场， 所以我的妈妈和爸爸是农夫。  我弟弟是学生,  他上七年级。我有多的动物。 我有十四只鸭子和十三只鸡。我们也有六只狗和多的牛和羊。 

我的爱好是看书，听音乐， 游泳和网球但是我最喜欢弹钢琴。

please tell me if any of this is written wrong!!

This is a great book that our chinese teacher got us onto.  It has  lots of usefull sentence structures and a handy section full of nouns, verbs and adjectives.  As the name suggests it does actually help make chinese super easy:)

technochinese-episode-1-year-11.mp3A podcast that we are learning from in chinese

At the moment im liking…

• learning different sentence structures as opposed to learning individual words because I can change words to get a different meaning.. eg wo zai xue xiao  i can change the xue xiao to something else to get a different meaning
• friday morning class breakfasts …especially when we actually get a chinese conversationg going 
• getting to know characters just coz were constantly seeing them.
• hearing more spoken chinese

What im hating……well finding more difficult anyway !!

• trying to remember how to write characters… i seem to be able to recognise them ok but when it comes to writing them its a lot harder
•  trying to find that character that you’re swear you’ve seen before but just cant remember, in the chinese dictioary ( tho i am getting better)

A pair of shoes catches your eye so you ask the lady in the stall what they cost.  She says, “usually 350 kuai, but for you 300.” You reply with

“I’ll give you 50.”

she then says”, you joking?, your best price?”

again you say “50″

she then says “ok my best price: 150″ At this point you walk away,

the further you walk, the cheaper the shoes get…

‘Ok…Ok lady 120..just for you….ok..ok 100..my last offer…blah… blah..blah’

 untill finally the lady shouts at you because you’re so far away “Ok, Ok lady, 50.” 

 You then walk back pay for the shoes with as correct money as possible

 (as they sometimes don’t like to give correct change!) take the shoes and go. 

and thats how you buy stuff in china

We all loved these raincoats.  Sometimes you could see a little kid’s head sticking up in the coat when they were sitting on their parents knee!

This was a temple where you could pray for a good harvest. (something us farmers were interested in!)

When we were at the temple it was raining so we all had to buy umbrellas, it was also really slipperey so dad decided after slipping over that he should go barefoot!!

1. I am not a fan of girly singing and dancing….

2. girls on chinese idol sometimes wear bright hawaian shirts (these aren’t usually worn by people trying to sing to anyone but the under-5 age group)

3. The girls trying to sing in english don’t usually pay attention to the pronunciation of the words, and just assume that the audience has no idea of what the song is supposed to sound like!