Thoughts on China

I’m sure I’ll use this for a few other things, but I have never been much of a diary writer. I am so psyched about going to China this October, though, that I think I’ll overcome my writer’s inertia. I probably should have started this a year ago, when I first thought of taking a trip to China. I’ve been to a lot of helpful web sites and read a lot of helpful books. As I go along here, I’ll try to link to those helpful sites and review the helpful books.

I am also attempting to learn ?? (Chinese). I’m lucky to have a great tutor, whose English name is Sophie.  She majored in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in China and I couldn’t ask for a better teacher!  I am tutoring her to prepare for the essay part of the GRE, so our relationship is mutually beneficial.

Sophie’s name is ?? (Xu? F?i) in Chinese, which means “flying snow”. If you look at the Chinese characters (??, or Hànzì) for her name, you can see that the right one is a flying crane and the left one (you may have to enlarge the fonts to see it more clearly) has two parts. The top part is rain and the bottom part is a broom, so the meaning is “rain that can be swept with a broom”, or…..snow! This is one reason why I’m interested in the Chinese language. There are thousands of years of built up meanings in the characters, so each one has a story to tell. In any case, I think her name is poetic, not unlike the names given to native Americans (aka Indians).

Besides Sophie, I have a few Chinese friends/coworkers who I annoy with my bad pronunciations, as well as the new characters I have learned. They are pretty good sports about it, so again, I’m lucky!

Well, that’s enough for an inaugural post. I’ll try again tomorrow.