Public Holidays in China

This coming Wednesday is Tomb Sweeping Day, a public holiday in China, and because of this, I thought it appropriate to write a blog post on why this results in me having uni on today, a Saturday.

Avoiding Misunderstandings

As someone who has to deal in my second language on a daily basis, I still occasionally get instances where my accent and non-standard pronunciation causes misunderstandings. Occasionally, I also run into misunderstandings when I speak correctly.

Since I don’t look Chinese, most people try to make allowances for the fact that Chinese is not my native languages. This means, amongst other things, that if they believe that I’ve said the wrong word due to getting my tones mixed up (the most common pronunciation error that foreigners make), they mentally substitute the “correct” word for me.Usually this is fine, but occasionally the word that people assume is “wrong”  is actually the word I originally intended to say - but people mishear it because they're expecting to hear something different.

Tips for Studying in China

While the thought of studying in China may seem intimidating at first, it is actually not a hard thing to do. The costs are low (both in terms of fees and cost of living) and there are few barriers to entry for foreigners into most courses. The two main factors which make it hard to study in China are the relatively small number of people who go to China, and the fact that those interested may not be aware of where to search for information on Chinese schools. 

Why I Chose to Study in China

I began studying Chinese when I was thirteen years old. At the time, I didn’t think it would lead to my studying in China, but it was definitely a factor in my choosing to come here. After studying the language through high school and then university, I found that I still only had a rudimentary grasp of the language. Now, had I put more effort into studying, I definitely could have reached a higher level of proficiency, however a large part of the problem was related (I feel) to two issues: 1) specialist language study in Australian universities is not nearly intensive enough; and 2)without having the proper language environment, fluency is very hard to attain.

When I first came to China, I had plans to improve my Chinese while teaching English, but I abandoned this idea after one year. My reason for this was simple: when teaching English, the classroom environment is an English-language environment. Between this, and the fact that the nature of English teaching means that you’re surrounded by students and colleagues who can all speak English (meaning that there’s less incentive to study the local language), I found that during my first year in China, my Chinese speaking skills improved the most dramatically when I went on holiday and talked to people on the train. I would recommend that anyone who wishes to teach English overseas as a way to expose themselves to a foreign language keep this in mind. I’m not saying that my Chinese didn’t improve during this time, but at the same time, it didn’t improve as quickly as I would have liked.

Communist Propaganda

The Chinese government likes to engage in propaganda in order to keep the population in line. Here are some example of a long-running propaganda campaign in my city:

Be dedicated and love your work!

Be friendly and harmonious!