Chinese language partner for as little as 8 RMB!!

8 RMB for a Chinese language partner?!?! Is this possible you ask! I am sure the picture has given it away and you have guessed I am talking about the friendly taxi drivers that many of us spend time with everyday (and no comments that they are not all nice!!). Simply chat with your cabbie and practice your Chinese - easy!!

Most of the drivers in Guangzhou speak Mandarin as their first language, admittedly they may have a Funan (hmmmm, Hunan) accent or they may be local drivers with a Cantonese accent, but either way it is a great opportunity to speak Chinese. People always tell me they do not want to make a fool out of themselves with their friends and colleagues as their language skills are not good. This is even more of a reason to use the taxi driver as your language partner because the chances of seeing them again are limited so who cares if you make a few mistakes!!

Introduce yourself, ask him some questions, say anything you like. It will help you to remember what you have learned, can build your confidence and you can even learn some new words and phrases as your skills develop. At the end of your journey you can even grab the fapiao and claim the 'language training' on your expenses!

Trip to the flower market

As Ben mentioned in his blog on February 12, 9 adults and 6 children including Koco and I set off on February 15 to the Xihulu flower market - the oldest spring festival flower market in Guangzhou. We took a lot of pictures. Students bought “wu3dai4tong2tang2guo3” (five generation in a family) which is a very traditional spring festival plant in Guangzhou and some other flowers. Their picture also made the way onto the front page of the Guangzhou Daily newspaper. Here are some other pictures:

Mandarin Corner - 11th March

Next month we will hold our third Mandarin Corner on Sunday 11th March. It will be a chance for our students, their friends and anyone else to come along and practice their Mandarin. Our trainers will organise fun games in Chinese so feel free to pop in and take a look.

Three Little Pigs - Chinese style

Following on from Tina's earlier post about Pigs I thought I would share this interesting flash cartoon movie. Its the story of the Three Little Pigs; the catch.... its all in Chinese! It includes the script in Chinese characters, pinyin and English. Its hilarious... Enjoy!

http://www.chineseblast.com/node/118

Pigs; good or bad? That is the question!

Last time, I talked about “Dogs in Chinese eyes”. As the pig year is coming, I now will talk about the pig.

A pig ironically has a dual image - both positive and negative in Chinese culture. On one hand, pig represents people who are sloppy, lazy, greedy and dirty. On the other hand, pig also represents good luck and wealth. This year is strongly believed to be the “year of the golden pig” which returns every 60 years. People believe children born this year will be blessed with good luck and financial wealth. As wedding halls were crowded in 2006, maternity hospitals are expected to be packed in 2007.

Despite people’s strong belief about the “year of the golden pig”, all of the limited idioms about pig in Chinese are bad meanings.

Here is the most famous saying about pig in china:
“ren2pa4chu1ming2zhu1pa4zhuang4” which literally means pigs are afraid to be fat and people are afraid to be famous. If pig is fat enough, it will be killed. If a person gets famous, he/she will get involved with a lot of troubles. This saying is deeply rooted in the Chinese philosophy of “zhong1yong1” (the “golden mean” of the Confucian school) which is the way of wisdom and safety between extremes; sufficiency without excess; moderation.

What do pigs represent in your country? Write to us and tell us some stories.

Student trip to the Spring Festival flower market

Spring Festival is just around the corner and to learn a little about Chinese customs New Concept Mandarin is organising a student trip to one of the Flower Markets on Thursday 15th February @ 3pm. Students can meet at our training centre and then our teachers will accompany you to one of the flower markets. We will make you speak Chinese along the way so a good chance to practice bargaining for some flowers.

A Chinese New Year without flowers is like Christmas with no tree, so from 15th February until 2am on 18th February (the first day of the Lunar Calendar) each of the districts in Guangzhou has a flower market. The markets are also a great a place to soak in the festive season and see the locals gleefully choosing flowers for their homes. Different flowers convey different meanings and unless you have had your eyes closed for the last few days you will have noticed orange plants appearing on many street corners. Orange plants signify luck and wealth as in Cantonese the words have a similar pronunciation and also their shape resembles a piece of gold.

For now, Happy New Year.... Or Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Choosing the right language

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? - - Trilingual
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? - - Bilingual
What do you call someone who speaks one language? - - British!

For most Brits learning another language usually means dabbling with French and German at school then stopping there. It is easy to blame our lack of enthusiasm for languages on history, laziness, being an island race or simply that English is the ‘world’ language. Why do we need to learn a different language? Why learn French? Or German? They should speak English, shouldn't they?!!!

Maybe all along it was more a question of choosing the right language. Over the last few years the UK has witnessed a huge demand for the Chinese language, and not just at university level, but right down to primary schools. It might not be overtaking French and German just yet, but as we can see from recent stories in the news, the numbers studying Mandarin are on the up. Here are a couple of interesting articles:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1698082,00.html

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=386448

Working for New Concept Mandarin I am bound to say that mastering Chinese brings great benefits, but now the world is saying the same!! This trend is not only in the UK, but all over the world so there will be more to post soon, but for now, choose Mandarin!!