183 dtg (Intense Study)

Disclaimer: This blog is a an English translation of my first attempt to diarize the experience of living in Qingdao in Chinese. For those people that can read simplified Chinese characters, you can find pictures of the original hand written versions here (page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4).

Note: For people used to reading English (i.e. all of you), this may appear quite boring, as I don't write very well in Chinese. It's just a time thing though, I still have 183 days to go after all.

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Sorry for not writing for so long to let you know how the experience in Qingdao has been going. In one word though: Intense. Intense study, intense life, intense feelings.

Part One: Intense Study
For the past four months, I have spent on average 12 hours a day studying. In the mornings attending class from 8am to 12pm at Ocean University of China, then going straight home to continue studying in the afternoon. Originally, I used to go for lunch with my fellow students after class, but there were a few problems with this. The first is that the restaurants near my school use lots of MSG when preparing their food. Although this makes it taste better, I find that after eating I feel extremely tired. Obviously, going home and falling asleep for a couple of hours means that you can't study。

The second problem then? Not enough time. At the start of the university semester I joined the Ocean Univeristy of China B-Level Chinese class. Not only was the Chinese proficiency of all my fellow students much higher than mine, the content of the textbooks I for the most part couldn't understand. Just reading the most basic passages of text would take about an hour.

The last problem was my listening ability (or lack thereof). At the time I arrived in Qingdao, I had never spent time listening to normal Mandarin Chinese conversation before, with the exception of the few days at the business conferences I used to help organise for work, so my ability to listen and understand spoken Chinese was really bad. Let me give you an example. On my first trip to Qingdao, and old Chinese man asked me "Where are you from?" ("Ni shi nar de ren?"). That question I could answer no problem "I am from Australia" ("Wo shi Ao-da-li-ya ren"). But his next question "How old are you?" ("Ni shi duo da?") I didn't understand. "Duo Da" literally means how big, so I thought for a moment ... duo da ... ah, Australia is a very big country, so he must be trying to tell me that he knows Australia is one of the biggest countries in the world. "Yes! Big! Big! Very Big! Australia is very big!" (Dui! Da! Hen Da! Ao-da-li-ya hen da!) I excitedly replied "Australia is very big!". I swear this is a true story - at the time of coming here my listening ability really was that bad. Now, this was a big problem, because in my classes the teachers only speak Chinese, and I couldn't understand a single word of what they were saying. What to do then?

Chinese children's stories. Since my Chinese ability was like that of a child, I figured I should use the methods used to teach kids. I asked my private tutor, Cynthia, if she could read childrens stories to me, she said that would be no problem.

For the first couple of weeks this was really tiring, as I couldn't understand most of what Cynthia was saying. Luckily, she is very more patient than words can describe. Every time I asked her "please say it one more time, please say it one more time". Gradually, I learnt how to listen to spoken chinese.

This made me very happy, but there was still one problem. So long as it was my teachers speaking I could understand, but others people's voices I still had trouble with. I had to become accustomed to other people's accents and pronounciation. With this in mind, I contacted another Chinese friend of mine and told her my idea, she agreed to help me. After that, we met every day to spend an hour studying Chinese stories. I discovered that my favourite stories are called "cheng yu gu shi": these are simple stories that have a deep meaning. Normally, that meaning is expressed by way of four character phrases, for example "Shou Zhu Dai Tu" (don't be lazy and just rely on luck), "Zi Xiang Mao Dun" (to describe people who's actions contradict their words), "Ye Gong Hao Long" (a professed love of something you actually fear) etc. I was really enjoyed these stories, not only because they were very interesting, but also because they helped me to learn about Chinese culture.

So, my April routine became like this: In the morning attend class, and then go straight to meet my friend and study these stories together for an hour. After that, return home and study, either on my own or with Cynthia. Apart from an 30 minute afternoon nap, I was studying continuously until 6pm. Obviously, I couldn't be going for lunch together with my fellow students!

Except for running on Tuesday and Thursday nights, my routine was to eat dinner and then continue studying until midnight, and then go to bed. This routine continued until the middle of May. Around that time, I found the content of my classes at Ocean University was getting easier over time - I needed a new challenge. With this in mind, I signed up for the HSK - Han-yu Shui-ping Kao-shi (Chinese proficiency exam).

The HSK is the standard in China for testing foreign students knowledge of Chinese. They say if you want to use your Chinese ability when applying for a job they might ask you "What is your HSK score?", so it's very important. Also, the content of the exam is more difficult than the content of our classes at Ocean University, with lots of new words. At the time of registering, I figured that no matter what my score, the process of preparing would have a lot of benefit. Not only for the new words, but also teaching me how to understand more difficult passages of text.

On the 15th of May I began attending special HSK preparation classes at another Language School. From then until now, my routine has been the same as before, just that I now attend the HSK classes in the evening.

At the time of writing, I have just finished my exams at Ocean University of China, and only have tomorrow's Chinese Proficiency Exam to go. After the exam is finished I'll write the second and third parts - intense life and intense feelings.