Chinese

The "Yellow Fever" line is an oldie but a goody, and it's often been said that behind every  stereotype exist a gain of truth. A regular contributor to beijingkids, Dinah Chong Watkins, gave her two cents as to why she believes expatriate men prefer Chinese women in her recent China Daily column.

If that piques your interest, then click here and here for more of the same, but different. 

The entrance to Dandelion School for migrant school children in Daxing, south Beijing. All images Dan Edwards.

Gongyi Xiqiao is a frontier outpost on Beijing's southern fringe, a cluster of highrise apartment blocks grouped around the last Line 4 subway stop before the city dissipates into dusty outlying villages. Take a cab ride twenty minutes further south and you reach a low-rise strip of shops along a pitted two-lane road. Only an incongruously colourful iron gate fronting a disused factory distinguishes the street from thousands of others skirting the capital. Welcome to Dandelion, Beijing’s sole officially recognized high school for the children of migrant workers.

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Tired of carrying wads of Reminbi to pay for the weekly groceries? Overseas credit card fees really hitting the wallet? Have no fear, the Chinese banks are here! It’s time to get yourself a local bank account with an ATM debit card. All places in China that accept credit cards accept bank debit cards (Unionpay) and can be used without additional fees.

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Check out this article from Xinhuanet.com:

Children in China's main cities are reaching puberty too early - a condition known as sexual precocity - and at a much higher rate than those in Western countries.

A Beijing doctor, who runs the city's first sexual precocity clinic, said her research into the condition showed that in Shanghai, the rate was as high as 1 percent.

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On the eve of Chinese New Year and in the days to follow, expect to hear firecrackers go off well into the middle of the night. No, your fortress is not being attacked, although it certainly sounds that way. Coming from a long line of tradition, the loud bangs from firecrackers are thought to fend off evil spirits and ghosts. Although, the noise will probably be more successful at frightening the the uninitiated than warding off bad luck. If this is your first time spending Chinese New Year in China, brace yourself for a week of uneasy living.

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With Spring Festival on our doorstep, it's time to get into the spirit of things. Check out any one of these great temple fairs for a full day of fun -- lao Beijing-style.

1) Ditan Temple Fair 地坛春节庙会 (地坛公园内)
Tel: 64214657
Feb. 13th – Feb. 20th

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Being able to speak two languages (or three, or four) is an amazing skill. But beyond the obvious benefits of simply making one's self understood to a wider range of people, the cultural benefits can really broaden your horizons.

Teaching your children Mandarin can be invaluable, and if your stay in Beijing is intended to be a long one, it will be a necessity.

An interesting article in US family magazine Cookie, sung the praises of embracing more than one culture and language:

"In the global culture, what could be more important than knowing several languages?" asks Orville Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, who, with his Chinese-born wife, Baifang, has raised sons Sebastian and Sasha to speak three languages. The boys have interacted in Mandarin with their mother and her relatives ever since they could talk, and they were enrolled in a French lycée as soon as they hit school age.

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Who doesn’t love the story of Cinderella, a tale of unlikely love with magical elements and a triumph of good over evil?

 
But the real question is, what's the best way to study this fairytale?

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Mao's Last Dancer is a drama based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin. At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village and sent to Beijing to study ballet during the last years of the cultural revolution. The film explains how Li's amazing life took him  the United States as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet, and then on to Australia as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.

Filmed on location in Australia and Beijing, Mao's Last Dancer premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and is set for release in Australia today.

Unfortunately the film won't be released in China, however I recommend you get your hands on the book.

I always tell my Chinese friends—and everyone else for that matter—that my Chinese only reaches a tolerable fluency once I’ve had a few cocktails. All of a sudden my tones are perfect, my vocabulary is impressive, I’m witty and entertaining. Basically, I turn into the Bing Crosby of the Chinese language.

Learning Mandarin is no easy task, but you can be your own worst enemy. It’s hard to accept the humiliation that inevitably comes with trying to string a sentence together in a foreign language, but you can’t let the fear of humiliation stop you. After months of Chinese classes where I was expected to take part in class discussions about sand (I kid you not), I was going nowhere fast. I’d stumble through some basic sentences to get by, but to be honest I spent more time staring into the bottom of my coffee thermos than practicing my Chinese.

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