Some Basic but useful ways for learning another language

I would like to say some basic ways for foreigners who learn Chinese in some teaching places. Though basic, they are really useful methods to learn another language out of your country.

1: Make genuine friends with locals – you should remember to make friends you have to give more than you take!!!
2: When in Rome do what the Romans do!!! Do some research about the culture and participate in the activities. For example if you talk to Irish man you have to go to the bar without talking anything. If you talk to Chinese talk, you’d better about food and future.
3 Be genuine when you are talking to people. Ask them what they want to do. Don’t expect them to do it all the time in your way. Ask them what they want and think what you could give them.
4 Be positive and helpful – not only talk and helpful when its convenient for you!!! I had some bad experience with fake friends
5 sometimes you have to try new things and don’t be afraid to do it. Learning a language is not only words but also tradition, food, behavior etc.
6 Try it and never give up.

For more information about learning Chinese , check echinacities.com.

Some Useful ways of contacting

For foreigners in China, you have some ways to getting news out of China. CCTV 9 is an English language news media. It is for foreigners who don’t know Chinese language and broadcast in English. Some English newspapers and magazines are also available like China Daily, China Today and so on. You could buy them nearly everywhere. Only if you read English, you could choose many ways of getting news without worrying.

International fax services are available in most large hotels for a fee of a dozen RMB or more. Faxes within China can be made in the ubiquitous photocopy outlets that have the Chinese characters for fax written on the front door.

A list of telephone numbers exist for you to choose what kind of service do you want in China like 110,119,112 and so on. 110 is when you are trapped in danger and 119 is the fire alarm and 112 is for the hospital. There are many others and you could try echinacities.com to take a look.

If you want to call your family you may find it is a little difficult, and usually impossible without a calling card, which can often only be bought locally. But you also would find these cards are very cheap in China and the connection is surprisingly clear, uninterrupted and delay-free.

Want more ways of contact? Go to echinacities.com.

Chinese Valentine’s Day

The 7th Day of the 7th Month of the year is called Festival of Qi Xi Jie in china and sometimes it was called “Chinese Valentine’s Day”. This festival comes from a beautiful story.

 

Long, long ago there was an honest and tolerant farmer named Niulang, who had lost his parents in his childhood. He lived with his brother and sister-in-law. His sister-in-law treated him badly and often made him to do lots of work. One day, she gave Niulang 9 oxen and told him that he could back home only when the amount was 10 oxen. Niulang was forced to leave and lived alone.

 

One day some fairies in the sky flew down to swim in the river. Niulang met Zhinv with the help of the old ox. Later, Zhinv came to the man’s world and became Niulang’s wife. Later after their marriage, they have one boy and one girl. They were having a happy life together.

 

Good life always won’t last long. Their marriage is not permitted between mortals and immortals. The Lady Queen Mother came to the man’s world and seized Zhinv back to the sky.

 

Niulang didn’t give up. He flies to Zhinu’s side with the help of the magic ox but at that time, the Lady Queen Mother appeared again, she used a hairpin to draw the Milky Way across the sky to separate the couple forever.

 

Niulang and Zhinv couldn’t meet with each other except crying face to face along the Milky Way. Their love made magpie moved and millions of magpies came and became a bridge to let them meet with each other. The Lady Queen Mother then allowed them to meet in the bridge on the 7^th day in July.

 

This is the origin of Chinese Valentine’s Day

 

If you want to know more holidays and festivals in China you could go echinacities.com. You would find more information in the site.

The reason of why it is hard to learn Chinese language

The foreigners find that it is really difficult to learn Chinese language while easy for Chinese to learn English. One of the most reasons is related with Chinese language structure.

 

1: The pronunciation of Chinese has four tones, cacuminal, nasal sound, explodent and so on, while many of them couldn’t be found in English. Some foreigners think that the most difficult is to master the tone. No matter what kind of tone in English word, your meaning won’t change, in Chinese, even a little change in tone would change the whole meaning.

 

2: Chinese character is hard to write. There are lots of strokes of a Chinese character and still has the distinction of simple and complex font and still like Song typeface. English word is just combined with A-Z 26 letters.

 

3: The grammar is really, really very hard to learn as grammar in Chinese is not so preciseness as in English. The Chinese sentence has many ways of saying. In some degree, the person who is saying something may not know its real meaning. Most of the time we depend on our language sense, but for foreigners, they don’t have language sense like Chinese. They would feel puzzled about different meaning expressed using one sentence.

 

4: If a foreigner couldn’t learn common Chinese language well, classical Chinese will not in the range of considering. Please don’t hope that you could know the meaning of poem.

 

Chinese language is hard to learn but there are also many foreigners learn it very well. Some of them could even sing Chinese songs. You just need to master the right way to learn, and then you would have great improvement. For you learning you could go to language corner. You would find you proper way to learn Chinese.