Updates on Learning Chinese

For the new semester, I made the kind of difficult decision to focus almost exclusively on learning Chinese.  Last semester, I took one section of Chinese (1 1/2 hours for 3 days) and 3 elective classes that I spent more time doing the work for than I did on my Chinese homework.

This semester, I take one architecture class and three hours of Chinese a day, five days a week.  I’m also the only person in one of the sections, so things are naturally more intensive this semester.

So this post is partly an update of where I am with Chinese, and partly a small, small amateur guide to some of the online tools I’ve found helpful for studying.  My list is by no means exhaustive or even that big, but if you’re learning Chinese there are a few really good things I’ve stumbled across that I think are useful.

Firstly, where I am with Chinese.  When I got to China, I had been self-taught for a number of months and had a tutor with whom I met once a week for an hour and a half for about 3 months, so my Chinese was pretty minimal.  I could say very basic things very, very slowly.

I ended up in intermediate Chinese anyway, which I found challenging but totally do-able.  However, I don’t think I engaged with the language nearly as much as I could have.  I didn’t review much, I rushed through my homework, and while I tried to be active in class, class was at 8 am and therefore painful.

This isn’t to say I didn’t improve.  I learned a lot of every day Chinese by just being in China–going to the wet market, asking people for directions, buying things, haggling with vendors, etc.  But I know I could have done better, and that brings me to this semester.

This semester, like I said, I’m taking more intensive Chinese.  Except for my one-person class, my other sections have one other person in them, and I have class every day.  Also, my teachers this semester are especially interested in teaching us vernacular Chinese and getting us to talk about ourselves, films, philosophy, and relationships (thus far).  I have a suspicion that I’ve learned more these past three weeks than I have all of last semester.

The conversations we have in class are still extremely halting.  Every other sentence I have to ask how to say some crucial word, and then try to fit it into a phrase.  But very, very slowly we have had some good conversations.

In fact, yesterday I talked about a short film I made and managed to get the point across in very choppy Chinese.  And the other day we talked about whether our lives are driven more by coincidence or destiny (having to stop and ask what the words for “coincidence” and “destiny” are of course).

This semester, the grammar structures are a lot more intense and nuanced, too.  Yesterday I had a really hard time slowly going over some of them with my listening teacher, and even though it was really difficult, I feel like by the end of the semester I’ll be able to express myself in a lot subtler ways.

And of course, my every day Chinese keeps improving.  I went to the market today to buy almonds and I understood that the vendor was telling one of the other customers that whatever she was buying was good for her health.  I also understood all of what he said to me–try these almonds, they’re super excellent (well, he said “really, really good” technically), is it okay if I give you more than 1/2 a pound?).

But that also brings me to my serious shortcomings.  My conversational Chinese is still pretty bad, especially not in a classroom setting where I can ask my English-speaking teacher how to say something.  So even though I understood everything the vendor said to me, I could barely reply.  The most I got out was, “Yeah, they are delicious”, “No I don’t want anything else”, and “It’s okay if it’s more than half a pound.”  But it was a struggle to do that, and I found it hard to respond quickly and in a natural conversational rhythm.

And even though I can understand much, much more than I could even last semester, my listening skills aren’t very good, so I’m planning to really work hard in my listening class and develop that.

For my homework yesterday, I had to read a small “diary entry” in my textbook, and one of the paragraphs said, “Before I came to China I thought my Chinese level was pretty good, but after I got off the plane I realized I knew basically nothing.”

I definitely wasn’t as confident in my skills as that, but the realization of how little you know is definitely a familiar one.  I think it’s safe to say, though, that I’ve reached the point where I can see things improving.  I’m not saying fluency is in sight by any means, but I definitely feel like I’m confidently moving up in skill levels, and hopefully by this semester I’ll have made some dramatic improvements.

So on that note, some resources I’ve found helpful:

My favorite thing so far is a site my friend recommended called Slow Chinese.   It’s a podcast series about different aspects of China recorded in slow, simple Chinese.  I still have a really hard time understanding it, but each podcast comes with the text in Chinese below it, so that helps.

There are only a million flash card sites out there, so I think it really boils down to personal preference, but I’ve personally found Anki very useful since it works on a spaced repetition pattern.  That is, you do the flashcards like you normally would, but after you answer, you tell Anki if the card was easy, good, or if you need it again.  After you’ve done the card once, a “hard” option appears.  This is so that Anki can shuffle to the front the cards you need the most help with.  It then gives you a regimen where, out of the deck you make you might have 6 new cards to learn and 20 to review.  The amount of time before you’ll see a card again depends on how difficult you find it, with the harder ones appearing more frequently.  If you like having a regimen, I think this would be really useful.

Finally (this list is the smallest thing ever oops), if you want to get into the theory behind learning Chinese and how best to learn, Hacking Chinese has a lot of good articles on how to improve your tones, how best to learn characters, etc.

I feel like I should add that all three of these were recommended by my friend, as well as a host of other things I haven’t yet tried.  Once I do, I’ll certainly report back to you all, or maybe make a links page of Chinese learning resources.  Again, I am by no means the expert on this, but I thought these were some good sites.

This semester seems to be largely about shifting expectations that I have for many, many things, but learning Chinese is definitely one aspect of that.  So here’s to a better, more productive semester, and see you all soon.

Chinese Class + Calligraphy

Each chapter of my Chinese textbook begins with a reading on some random subject out of which we get vocab and grammar for the lesson.  This past week the reading was about the history of Chinese characters, and at the end my Chinese teacher let the class try some calligraphy for ourselves.

First, we used brushes dipped in water on a special paper where you can write something that stays visible for a few minutes before it dries and you can use it again.

After practicing over the weekend we were allowed to write in ink.

I really enjoyed using the brushes even though I’m not particularly artistic.  It takes a lot of concentration and peace of mind to write well, and everything has to be done exactly a certain way from how you hold the brush to where you put your arm to how much pressure you apply to different parts of the character.  The characters felt much more alive, I think, than when you just use a pen.

I also found the history really interesting.  We learned some of the more obvious pictograph aspects of the characters, like how 人，日，and 月 evolved from pictures of people, the sun, and the moon, respectively.  But what was most interesting was the way different parts of different illustrative characters combine to form more complex words.

For example, the word for history is 历史。The evolution of the 历 part is as follows:

The ancient character for tree is:

 

Put two of them side by side and you have the word for forest.

Put two of them under a a cliff radical:

 

Then put this footprint thing (technical terms, definitely) underneath the trees:

止

The footprint under the trees shows feet walking through a forest.  This was eventually simplified to 历, which shows the path of the feet through the forest.

Why is this character the word for history?  Because history is the study of the footprints people have left through time, i.e. their paths through the forest.

Not every character has such an involved story, but the ones that do are really cool.

A character I always wondered about is 好, which means “good”, half of which is the character for woman and half of which is the character for “small thing”.  In fact, one half represents daughter and the other son, and combined they mean “good” because families with both a daughter and a son were said to be very happy families.

And here’s our happy little class picture!  Leo and I are making the same awkward face…

Next time, I will post about the Zaha lecture.  I have lots of thoughts that need to be organized, so stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

学习情况

What am I doing here?

Maybe you ask yourself this.  Maybe it’s something that’s constantly on your mind.  Maybe it keeps you up at night.  Maybe you really don’t care.

What am I doing here?

I have no existentially satisfying answers.  If you’re in dire need, I recommend Emerson.  But I thought, since I post about things I’m doing around Beijing and long, rambling things about architecture and air quality, I would post about what I’m actually doing in Beijing (and more pictures of campus).

(One of the views from the architecture building.)

Obviously I take Chinese.  I was placed in intermediate Chinese, which is amazing to me because I am mostly self-taught.  I had a tutor for 3 months but probably spent 6-7 months, on and off, learning by myself.  Intermediate is sort of the catch-all category and we have a sizeable (though by no means unconquerable) range of abilities.  But it feels so fulfilling to have pulled myself along thus far.  To have never taken a Chinese class and yet to have your abilities judged above those of a beginner and to be able to understand what your teacher says is a wondrous thing indeed.

I take a Latin American politics class, as well, which is called “Area Studies” here.  It’s taught by a fellow 老外–my only non-Chinese professor.  It’s a great class so far because this past year and a half I’ve focussed almost exclusively on China, occasionally venturing into Japanese politics/film and domestic politics.

But my knowledge of the rest of the world is inexcusably meager.  So I’m really glad for this opportunity.

(The original main gate to campus, which used to be considerably smaller.  People are always swarming about getting their pictures taken here.  On the other side of the gate is a massive lawn and a building that looks weirdly like Monticello.)

My study abroad program is a really unique in that we’re allowed access to the post-grad classes at Tsinghua as well.  We were warned that they’re really difficult… but there was a class on urbanization and social development, so how could I not?  So far it’s going well and we’re covering a lot of familiar ground, like how cities are planned, what value go into the planning, how Beijing falls short of ideal on many levels…

Last week we covered social issues that are important to consider when planning and developing a city, like health care, education, and social security.  So far we’re getting a fairly holistic view of planning cities that is highly focussed on the needs of the people, which is exactly what I want to be learning about.

 

There’s also a field trip later in the semester to some remote part of Hebei, which should be exciting, particularly as I’m starting to become more interested in the early stages of urban development as opposed to development of well-established major cities.

 

Finally, though… my absolute favorite class.  The class that impressed the hell out of me five minutes in and has already had a huge impact on my study of urban planning: Theory and Practice of Regional Architecture.

 

This is also a post-grad class, but a supremely chill one.  We (me and a bunch of architecture students) show up every week to a studio room where, when it’s not being used for class, people congregate and work on their projects on massive tables, leaving plans, slide rules, pencil stubs, cut-outs of models, and various architectural ephemera scatted all over.

 

Either we sit for a lecture from one of three professors who are also practicing architects, or we gather round one of the big tables and have a seminar.  Today we talked about the various architecture problems our respective regions face, so we talked about how Italy is struggling to find a place for its past in its contemporary identity, how Trinidad and Jamaica are struggling to find a contemporary identity, how Lithuania is divesting itself of Russian influence, and how America is all over the fucking place, stylistically.

 

But what the class boils down to is sitting around and talking about architecture with people who love architecture, and talking about it from a really comprehensive perspective that includes culture, climate, aesthetics, and history.

It’s not quite the dynamic semester I’m used to (like with loads of political science and art history), but it’s been a good line-up so far.  And actually, I should probably stop talking about my studies and maybe go… do some studying.  Readings on capitalism and the rise of international trade beckon…

 

The Tsinghua Campus

It’s only the second day of school and I’ve already managed to get into quite an odd situation.  I went to a class today that was all lecture with no mention of the course by a professor not listed on the class schedule, but in the right room at the right time…  And we don’t meet again until next Tuesday, so I won’t figure out what’s going on until then.

But that’s a weird story for another day, so let’s move on.  I’ve been biking around campus a lot, getting a feel for the place and admiring the architecture and the former imperial gardens.

 

So far, the lotus pond above is one of my favorite places.  At the pond is a statue of the poet Xie Hun, who was a contemporary of Lu Xun.  Tsinghua’s name actually comes from a poem by Xie Hun, hence the statue.

 

Some of the greener features of campus include a mostly-stagnant canal that nonetheless manages to look impressive and lovely.  It also has a bike path running down both sides.

 

Which is where I met one of the campus cats, 酸奶 （suānnăi, or yogurt).

 

There are also little parks along the canal with sculptures and benches and such.

 

And roses everywhere!  Roses grow like dandelions here and all over Beijing.  Tsinghua also has a full-blown rose garden that looks color-coded and very neatly manicured.

 

In some places, nature has even reclaimed its space.

 

But of course, my primary concern is always architecture,

 

Tsinghua does not disappoint.  Above is one of the dorms in a line of identical buildings.  I’m 100% not a fan of the superblock style of architecture that is one of many sad holdovers from the period of Soviet influence, but something about the geometric precision and the repeating patterns really gets to me.

 

This is the building where most of my classes are.

 

The architecture department is working on a… thing of some kind that involves building these cool-looking structures alongside the department headquarters.

 

On Tuesday I’ll take pictures of the interior of their building because wow.  It’s perfect.  There are pieces of projects everywhere, mock-ups, schematics, people drawing, plans for things, building materials, and construction-in-progress everywhere.  Also all the stairs have been spray-painted with messy geometric shapes.  Why?  Who knows.  Architecture is art, you know, and art schools are the same in any country to some extent.

 

There are still many buildings I need to take pictures of, including the new theater and the (sadly useless) environment department building.  (In lecture today, I learned that barely 1/5 of the solar panels on the outside are functional and that the self-regulating system keeps the dean’s office a nice cool 37 degrees Celsius all summer.)

So of course it goes without saying that the architecture is my favorite part of the campus.  Even more so than the jiānbĭng.

 

But I also love how bike-friendly it is.  In fact, if you don’t have a bike, good luck getting anywhere in a timely fashion.  Campus is that big.  And forget driving.

 

At Tsinghua, we believe in the hegemony of the bicycle, not the automobile!  Obviously for convenience and not out of protest against cars, but still, it makes me happy.

Soon I’ll have pictures of the other buildings, the little neighborhoods, and the interior of the architecture department.  But up next, a trip to Wangfujing.