Hello Everyone:
It has been a long time since I posted on this blog. I had been too busy in Singapore and lost track of my joy for writing and my 'duty' to keep you all informed as to my latest activities, thinking, work, and ideas. BUT, for a variety of reasons, I have decided to take some away from my job in Singapore and travel to China for three months to study Mandarin Chinese, travel, and explore the long and fascinating history of this interesting country.
I arrived about three weeks ago, and have been settling in. I had some trouble accessing this website from inside China, and so I was not able to post until now. I hope to be more regular in my posting from now on. I will try to post summaries of the places I visit here, post reflections on learning Mandarin, and post any other thoughts that come up during my time here. Some ideas that I plan to write about very soon include: my initial impressions of china, an interesting realization I had about 'roads', my recent trip to 乌镇 (wu zhen), and many other ideas.
I'll keep this first post pretty brief. I am currently living in Hangzhou -- a beautiful and old city about 1.5 hours west of Shanghai. Hangzhou was the Capital of china during the Southern Song dynasty, and the city is filled with history and striking architecture. But it is also very modern. It has a very good public transportation system, including a very convenient public bicycle share system. I use the red-colored public bikes almost every day. Hangzhou is probably most famous for its beautiful West Lake (西湖）. This picturesque water body is the central attraction in the town, and has been so for over 1,000 years. There are many great legends about the lake, and I have already spent a lot of time on its shores exploring and enjoying its beauty. I'll be sure to post some photos soon.
And my Chinese lessons so far have been very good. I am learning quite fast, and being immersed in the language has been very rewarding. I had a solid foundation in vocabulary and the "feel" of the language from my study with Rosetta Stone software. But now I get to really practice conversation. And I can say I have already seen great improvement. I think I am just now getting over the threshold of being able to understand people and more confidently express my thoughts, needs, ideas, and sometimes even jokes!
So, I hope to be posting here a couple of times a week, and I hope everyone is well and finds these stories to be interesting.
-- Alek, in Hangzhou
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| At a waterfall in a nearby village. |
I arrived about three weeks ago, and have been settling in. I had some trouble accessing this website from inside China, and so I was not able to post until now. I hope to be more regular in my posting from now on. I will try to post summaries of the places I visit here, post reflections on learning Mandarin, and post any other thoughts that come up during my time here. Some ideas that I plan to write about very soon include: my initial impressions of china, an interesting realization I had about 'roads', my recent trip to 乌镇 (wu zhen), and many other ideas.
I'll keep this first post pretty brief. I am currently living in Hangzhou -- a beautiful and old city about 1.5 hours west of Shanghai. Hangzhou was the Capital of china during the Southern Song dynasty, and the city is filled with history and striking architecture. But it is also very modern. It has a very good public transportation system, including a very convenient public bicycle share system. I use the red-colored public bikes almost every day. Hangzhou is probably most famous for its beautiful West Lake (西湖）. This picturesque water body is the central attraction in the town, and has been so for over 1,000 years. There are many great legends about the lake, and I have already spent a lot of time on its shores exploring and enjoying its beauty. I'll be sure to post some photos soon.
And my Chinese lessons so far have been very good. I am learning quite fast, and being immersed in the language has been very rewarding. I had a solid foundation in vocabulary and the "feel" of the language from my study with Rosetta Stone software. But now I get to really practice conversation. And I can say I have already seen great improvement. I think I am just now getting over the threshold of being able to understand people and more confidently express my thoughts, needs, ideas, and sometimes even jokes!
So, I hope to be posting here a couple of times a week, and I hope everyone is well and finds these stories to be interesting.
-- Alek, in Hangzhou
Note... it seems the picture i posted did not work. I'll try to fix that.
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