Chinese cover of Radiohead’s Creep

Few things stir up high school nostalgia for me quicker than Thom Yorke going on about how un-special he is. Even now, Pablo Honey is a regular shuffle on my iPod (and still my favourite Radiohead album). Throw in the fact that I’ve been trying to re-dedicate myself to learning Chinese lately, and I was …

Almost – a new friend

As I was quite active in the blogger scene (if you can call it that) up in Dalian, and had met a few good friends because of it, I was eager to check out what Suzhou had in way of bloggers when I first moved down here two years ago. At the time the only …

ChinesePod affiliate program back up

ChinesePod.com, one of the pioneers for learning languages via podcasts, has recently relaunched their affiliate program, and I gotta say, it’s better than ever. An affiliate program might not mean much to many of you, but I know a lot of folks that read this blog regularly also run their own China-related blogs and sites, …

Why not to study Chinese at university

As some of you may know, I’m enrolled at Suzhou University (or Soochow University, SuDa) studying Mandarin. Having just completed my mid-terms, I want to give a bit of a summary on the problems I see studying in this way. First, the title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, as overall I …

Practice writing Chinese on your computer

Over the past couple years of half-heartedly studying Chinese I’ve come across a good number of computer-based tools to help in my studies. ChinesePod, Google’s IME, Adsotrans and Google Translator, Wenlin and a bunch of great freeware and Firefox plugins – just to name a few. However, about two months ago I was casually browsing …

Put Down The Chalk & Pick Up The Language

My road through the Chinese language has been a bumpy one full of roundabouts and dead-ends. In the more than two years I’ve been here I’ve not had any formal Chinese education, and I’ve really no excuse for it. I’m often praised and then quickly chastised by Chinese co-workers on my level of Chinese. When …