Are you planning to visit China?
kencarroll
September 04, 2008, 05:38 AM posted in General DiscussionI'm interested to know who is studying Mandarin in order to visit China. Is that part of the reason to study? How do you see that? Is anhyone studying without any intention to actually visit?
Jess_Andersen
September 22, 2008, 01:52 AMI am studying with the intent to one day get on a plane, wipe my feet on the boarding gate, and land somewhere in 中国 to live my life. so if maybe CPOD needs a building engineer???
richyfrost
September 04, 2008, 06:36 AMIm going to China in October to Trek on the Great Wall for UNICEF, which is part of my determination to learn.
Though, I started to learn Chinese when on Holiday in Spain after chatting to other foreign people - who all seemed fluent in 3 or 4 languages. I felt quite bad just knowing English, which drove me on to want to learn.
kencarroll
September 04, 2008, 07:36 AMHenning,
Good question. Thisis exactly what I want to find out. Do you plan tio visit China? Long trip, or short? Business or pleasure? How does CPod prepare you fo it? What else could we do?
When I look across all the pods I see that a visit to the target culture is inevitably part of the rason to study - especially for French learners. It's a,lso interesting that the plans are often vague or extend over 3 or more years. I'd like to try to understand this whole thing a bit more.
Anything anyone wants to share about studying and your travel destination is good.
chanelle77
September 04, 2008, 08:33 AMDoes your question include expats studying to live in China for a year or two?
chanelle77
September 04, 2008, 09:24 AMOk Ken, then I can answer your question: My main reason to study Chinese was moving to Nanjing, China for 2 years. I think if I learn the language I can integrate better . To be honest: I was also a bit afraid I could not survive comfortable there if I cannot speak a word.
My idea is that Chinese opens a new door and you see a different world if you have some knowledge of the language. For me it is wonderful to be able to have small chats with people around me and makes life here much more fun.
Yesterday, I was shopping and next to me were two Chinese guys discussing wine and of course I had to say something. The look on their faces when they heard someone speak Chinese in a Dutch supermarket was priceless!
Next week, I’ll be going back to China and I will actively continue my studies with my 2 teachers and Cpod :-)!
light487
September 04, 2008, 10:06 AMI am!! :) I love all things China! :)
I will be visiting later this year I hope! And I am coming to the office so I can bug you all with lots of questions! Yay! Aren't you excited? :) I know you are! :) haha!
I don't want to go to China as a tourist, I want to go there for about 2 to 3 weeks and really, as much I can in 2 to 3 weeks, sink my teeth in and learn what it is 'really' like to live there. My dream would be to live there on a more permanent basis because of my love for the Chinese people. Every time I see a Chinese person, interact with a Chinese person, hear a Chinese person or any thing else, I am immediately filled with joy.. I have a particular connection to the Chinese in general.. I can't explain it any more than that.. but it's more than just a curious fascination.
I can't get enough "Chinese" in Sydney, so the only way for me to get that is to go to China and really experience the real China as it is. I may hate it.. but I highly doubt it.. I will never know, if I never go! :)
I had my first encounter today when a Chinese person understood me without me having to repeat myself.. hehe.. All I said was "Ai ya!" when they accidentally dropped the cream puff, they were making for me, on the floor and started to make another. :) That simple connection between us at that moment in time only lasted a split second but it was enough to leave me feeling as though I was starting to get a feel for things.. It wasn't so much what I said but that it was automatic and that I felt it as much as said it.
Anyway.. enough rambling for this comment. :)
sebire
September 04, 2008, 10:09 AMI was dabbling a bit before I decided to visit China for other reasons, and then once I had decided I wanted to go to China on holiday, I went a bit crazy with the studying in the 6 months prior to the trip. Cpod was useful because getting Chinese lessons would have been really inconvenient because I think the local Chinese school only runs lessons during term-time, which is a complete waste of July and August, and I was leaving in February, so I don't imagine signing up for one term would have been particularly useful. Also, I didn't fancy being shoved back down to the beginner class, and I wasn't low-intermediate back then either.
So yes, my holiday (4 weeks in China) was a good incentive to learn Chinese, particularly as I wasn't going on a tour.
I think the resources on CPod are pretty good now for holidays, though I think the part I was almost completely unprepared for was eating out. Reading a menu is really difficult - I could identify basics like "noodles" and "pork" etc. but didn't actually know what we were ordering at all! I think we just asked the waitress to pick something for us half the time.
light487
September 04, 2008, 10:39 AMSebire said: "I think the resources on CPod are pretty good now for holidays, though I think the part I was almost completely unprepared for was eating out. Reading a menu is really difficult - I could identify basics like "noodles" and "pork" etc. but didn't actually know what we were ordering at all! I think we just asked the waitress to pick something for us half the time."
This is exactly the type of things I want to know now so that I don't go unprepared. I was in a Sydney Chinatown restaurant tonight and luckily they had everything in English and Chinese but when I get to Shanghai and surrounding areas, I know it isn't going to be that easy.. I don't want to end up ordering something that will be too.. let's say.. strange for me.. hehe.. I'm a bit picky when it comes to food but I enjoy most genuine Chinese meals which seems to consist of soups with meat and vegetables, rice and noodles. :)
henning
September 04, 2008, 06:19 AMKen,
what kind of visit do you have in mind with this question?
A short holiday or a longer stay (several months to several years)? Because I would expect the type of visit makes a big difference regarding the impact on learning motivation and learning objectives...
sebire
September 04, 2008, 11:30 AMJust hope the restaurant has a menu with pictures (though even then you don't really know what you're going to get!) The time we went to a restaurant with an English menu, it wasn't very good - it was just all the boring stuff. Lettuce with oyster sauce? I can make that at home!
I did know some stuff, there's quite a few lessons on food now, however it is always comedy when they present you with a massive menu with no pictures, all in Chinese.
Henning, it is a useful series, but I guess it's just one of those situations where you just need a vocab blitz, particularly if you're just heading to China for a holiday. Before I found it a little difficult to find all the various dishes scattered throughout the podcasts. I wonder if there is such thing as a typical Chinese menu?
sparechange
September 04, 2008, 10:18 PMI am planning to go, but that's not why I started learning the language. In fact, when I started studying (June 2007), I had no such plans. I didn't have concrete plans to visit China until sometime earlier this year.
It's a very "chicken or egg" scenerio. Studying the language definitely warmed me up the idea of visiting; and my plans to visit serve as strong motivation to keep learning.
That said, I'm pretty sure I'd keep learning even if my plans to visit fell through.
sparechange
September 05, 2008, 12:56 AMTo answer the rest of your questions...
I'll be going in 2009 with some Chinese friends of mine (husband/wife/3-year-old daughter) to visit their friends and relatives. We should be there for a total of about 3 weeks. Our main destination is Chengdu, but we will probably hang around Shanghai for a few days first. They were talking a few weeks ago about possibly going to Hainan to visit some other friends, but who knows. Either way, it will be the trip of a lifetime for me. I've never been outside the United States.
How is CPod helping me prepare? Well, I suppose the most obvious is teaching me the language. Other than that, I think the cultural bits (a la Dear Amber) will be helpful as well.
What else could CPod do? For this trip, lots more of those regional accents and dialects. Pleeeeeeease!!!
woolap
September 05, 2008, 01:55 AMI think the biggest thing Cpod can do is keep it exciting and interesting. Keep the culture up front, as well as the humor. These are all things you've been doing right. Yes, trips to China motivated me at first, but the style of Cpod kept me coming back compared to some of the other resources (competitors) out there.
Actually, I never intended to subscribe, but the style of Cpod was so great I had to!
jamestheron
September 05, 2008, 02:30 AMAside from having a job in China, a Chinese girl friend, boy friend, or spouse, I think most people only have a vague reason for starting such an undertaking. As such, there is probably a possibility of going to China, but no definite plans.
I made my first trip to Beijing and Shanghai (including my pilgrimage to the CP "factory") last year and my second trip to Shanghai and Kunming last month.
As topical as the CP dialogs are, real life conversations often combine topics in unexected ways. For example, in Kunming, I wanted to book a tour at the hotel to visit Shilin. While I expected the converstaion to be pretty standard, I was thrown when the topic of lunch came in. It went something like this:
Me (but in Chinese): Excuse me, do you have a Shilin tour tomorrow?
Xiaojie (who cannot speak English): Oh... Yes we do.
Me: Good, how much does it cost?
Xiaojie: 250yuan. Is Chinese food OK for lunch？
Me: Um... Um... Huh?
Of course, I knew the words, but was completely taken by surprise as I momentarily had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
Perhaps a lesson on clearing up a misunderstanding would have been good.
My decision to study Chinese now is not so much to travel, but to reach a goal I made 15-20 years ago but gave up on at the time.
xiaohu
September 05, 2008, 06:03 AMJamestheron,
I laughed heartily as I have also experienced the dreaded, total non-sequitur, leave me scratching my head going, 你什么意思？moments.
Of course then there are those priceless moments when they say something in a way that you haven't studied and it leaves you in a total dazed and confused state!
One time I went to a Chinese restaurant to eat, I ordered all my food in Mandarin, told the waitress I wanted 冰水 and 热茶 to drink, and then she asked me...
"还有吗"？
The way I was used to was, "你还要别的吗"? To which I would respond, "不要别的了".
But what was this, 还有吗???!!!
I know not of which you speak!
I just sat there confused, suspecting what she said meant the same thing as 你还要别的吗, but I wasn't sure. I just froze up, not saying anything, not wanting to say the wrong thing and look like a complete moron!
She gave me a very weird look then kind of walked away.
Moments later she came running back talking 10,000 miles a minute, rambling off a string of sentences I had absolutely no hope of understanding...then she stopped abruptly and said mockingly, "可是。。。你听不懂"！
I watched her as she walked away, she turned around and shot me an evil smile as if to say..."I got you you idiot 老外"!
I was mortaly embarassed! And I was pissed!!! What a 母老虎!
My friend who was with me asked me, "what was that all about?"
I said, "Maybe if she would have talked a little slower then I'd understand!"
He just looked at me blankly, "huh?"
Thank God I've never ever had a run-in like that with any Chinese people since then. 99.9% of the time even if I would make a ton of mistakes, they would be very gracious and still complimentary that I was trying to speak with them in their language.
Yeah, some lessons in how to handle misunderstandings, and how to handle these situations in Mandarin would be helpful. If only there were Chinesepod 5 years ago.
jasondondi
September 06, 2008, 07:15 AMI went on a 20-day trip through China back in April, and found many of the chinesepod lessons to be particularly helpful for refreshing myself on what I think of as "random wandering around and being a tourist" language. I do plan to go back again sometime... hopefully sooner rather than later.
Originally, when I began studying Chinese, it wasn't so much out of interest in Chinese as it was lack of interest in the other languages offered--I had to take a language, and wanted something challenging... if only I'd known what I was getting myself into. My interest in Chinese culture and history came as a result of language study, rather than as an impetus for language study.
I'll second sparechange's suggestion to toss in some accents (regional dialects would be nice too, but it'd be a huge undertaking). Mandarin sounded less and less like Mandarin the farther away I got from Beijing. So, even some very simple phrases got little more than a very puzzled, "清满一点儿再说" from me.
And to everyone dealing with food problems, we managed to get by with a fair deal of requests along the lines of: (in Chinese) "Since I'm an American, I don't know anything about Chinese food. Please bring me a pork dish, a spicy chicken dish, dumplings and a soup."
kevina
September 06, 2008, 12:40 PMI have been to China several times for business and will be going again. While I don't "need" to know Chinese to do business, as all the people we deal with speak English - I feel it will show respect for those I work with if I can speak the language. I have also enrolled in a beginners Mandarin class at NC State and I find my study with Cpod a great supplement to my lessons there.
henning
September 04, 2008, 11:28 AMThis is why the Hungry Traveler series is pivotal - across all levels, by the way.
joannah
September 04, 2008, 05:43 AMI'll want to go one day. I was thinking of doing a incountry intensive language program through my university but my marks didn't look like they'll be good enough. I will probably been living in Singapore for a while next year which might give me a chance to use some chinese.