Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Chinese, Again!

Beijing Mandarin, to be precise.

For those of you who don't know, I am a hopeless asiaphile. It could be argued that this is a result of having Asian-descent relatives, or even that Chinese-Japanese guy I dated after high school - personally, I don't know. (I think I dated that nut job because he was half Asian, not the other way around.)
Maybe I should blame the Japanese Tea Master that taught my high school advanced art class for a semester. And that damn tea ceremony he did for us. Hard to say. But my asiaphilia manifests itself in an interesting, inconsistant manner.

For instance,

  • I have four books on bonsai
  • one dead bonsai
  • two books on Chinese pottery
  • various dishes and items the color of green tea ice cream
  • I know that "chocolate meat", at a Fillippino party, is actually pig's blood
  • and I study Mandarin.

That's right: I studied Beijing Mandarin for a year and a half. I scribbled characters for hours upon hours, peered myopically at palm-sized flash cards and muttered "QuAR? quAr? QUAar?" to myself while I waited in lines. I sometimes dream in remedial Mandarin. (Since I know only about 500 words, it's not usually a very interesting dream.)

Yet, I haven't written a character in a year - it's getting difficult to read Chinese menus.

This, of course, can't go on.

I'm starting another class tonight.

Gotta go, I'll be late!


1 comment:

bitterknitter said...

Good for you. It has been so hard for me to remember the bits of French that I learned while in school, I feel bad for not keeping up on it.