Hey

kubus
 July 05, 2008, 06:39 AM posted in General Discussion

I work in software outsourcing in Haikou, if you're in this neck of the woods don't hesitate to get in touch.

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andrew_c
 August 15, 2008, 01:01 PM

I just wanted to share my connection to Haikou, my wife spent half her teenage years there and her parents still live there.  I haven't visited yet, but I hope I will soon, it looks so beautiful in Hainan.

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tommyb
 August 15, 2008, 11:13 PM

You should definitely go. Do her parents speak hainanese?  My wifes parents speak hainanese and they are hard to understand.

We stayed at the Crown Spa Resort outside Haikou, very nice.

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andrew_c
 August 16, 2008, 12:52 AM

Hi Tommy,  You're very lucky!  I really can't wait to go.  And no they can't, they're all originally from Tianjin and just speak (very 标准) Mandarin.  I see from your profile that you're from New York too,  speaking of which, between my parents (New York) English and my wife's parents Mandarin, if anyone is hard to understand it's mine...

BTW: in my original post, I didn't mean to say half, my wife lived there during all her teenage years.

 

 

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tommyb
 August 16, 2008, 12:58 PM

Hey Acorrigan

I hope you do, the first time my wifes family picked us up at the airport, and we drove some 40 minutes to a small town, it was fascinating for me. The locals may speak a dialect, and they say the Guangdong province they speak Cantonese, but I think everyone speaks mandarin.  Very often westerners who can speak a little mandarin are very popular. Unfortunately, we arent able to travel this year, but we will be back, and theres a lot of other places I wish I had the time and money to visit, particularly Shenzhen and Shanghai.

regards

Tom

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kubus
 November 16, 2008, 08:54 AM

Yeah, Hainan is a beautiful place, the chinese often look down their noses at it for being relatively undeveloped but there's a lot to be said for clean air and water!

Andrew, interesting to hear of your wife's hainan/tianjin connections, I have good friends in Tianjin too and spent new year's there this year.

I've been trying to learn some Hainanese recently, but it's definitely harder than mandarin and lacks any learning materials so haven't made much progress yet...