Much of the last few weeks have been spent preparing for my first trip back to mainland China.
Part of that preparation has involved getting my Mandarin back up to speed. I spent just a year in Beijing learning how to read and write, cramming more than 50 new Chinese words a day into my mind by writing characters over and over again in my notebooks.
The last 2 years in New York, I had the opportunity to use my Chinese while reporting on Manhattan’s Chinatown. But without reading and writing characters on a regular basis, it has all started to fade, fade away.
In China, and especially Beijing, schools and tutors geared toward foreigners wanting to learn Chinese were readily available and super cheap. Here, tutors can cost as much as they do in the U.S. and Canada. So I’ve been doing a lot of self study and I also enrolled myself in a local Putonghua language course, geared toward Hong Kongnese who want to work on their Mandarin pronunciation. It’s not the ideal course. The books are in traditional Chinese characters (beautiful but so very difficult to learn) as opposed to simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China since the 1950s and 60s as a means to boost literacy. And half of the class time is dedicated to pronunciation. I need more help with the reading and writing than the speaking parts. BUT, the class takes up very little time (once a week for an hour and a half), gives me a chance to mingle with locals, AND I get to learn traditional Chinese characters while I’m at it.
The bags are packed. I’ll be traveling to a town in Zhejiang province early tomorrow morning. I think there are some great stories there. I am hoping to share them with you soon.
