Learning Chinese is a lot of fun. I get to feel like a young child again as I walk around outside discovering my world of becoming literate. Learning to speak and listen is one thing, but learning to read is another. Although reading isn't super important, it's fun and important to learn some words. Here's a short introduction to learning Chinese charachters.
Some characters you learn out of necessity... 男 (boy) and 女 (girl) will tell you which bathroom to use. 街道口 (my street name) will tell me which bus I can take to my house.
Some characters you learn because they are easy... 一 (one), 山 (mountain), 不 (no...).
Some characters you learn because they look cool...哭 (cry), 夸 (I'm not sure, but I know it's "kua")
However, some characters you learn because of emotional connections behind them. For example, 拆 (cut down) is a character which brings sadness to my eyes. China is developing. This means that many old buildings are being cut down in order to build newer "better" ones. The other day I ventured to my old old apartment. The 拆 character was everywhere. The entire complex is being torn down. I didn't even recognize the gate as I walked by. I decided to see if my old building was there. Sure enough, it will soon be torn down. A few people still live in the complex, but most buildings are deserted and awaiting their fate. Here is a walk down memory lane...
By the way... I saw the character near my current apartment... [sigh]... it just keeps going.
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| The main entrance |
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| Looking back into the street |
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| This used to be an open area, now it's full of garbage. |
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| I walked past this every day and wondered what it said. Now it's crossed out... and I still don't know what it says. |
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| The door to my building |
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| Haha, we always walked past this... it's still there, but now with lots of beer bottles |
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| My floor... |
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| kitchen on the left, bathroom on the right |
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| Our couch used to be there |
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| TV |
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| My old bedroom |
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| Nicole's bedroom. Her map of Wuhan is still on the wall. We haven't lived there for over 3 years! |
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| View from the roof |
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| The whole to climb through to get to the roof |
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| Here is the 拆 character, which carries so much meaning |
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| The walkway I took every day... |
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| This is just for fun. It's where Nicole and I would buy our train tickets. They were so patient with us! |
