While looking for inspiration on ways to overcome such challenges, I found a Wikibook called “how to learn a language“. One good piece of advice is to listen to audiobooks in your target language. So where does an English-speaker find Chinese audiobooks? A link to the free audiobooks at LibriVox of works in the public domain brought me to discover poems Tang Dynasty (618-907); specifically a work compiled in 1763 called Three Hundred Tang Poems (唐詩三百首).

To practice my pronunciation, I have been listening to a poem called 佳人 (Alone in Her Beauty) by 杜甫 (Du Fu). It helps to have a copy of the poem to read at the same time. So I have prepared a version in Simplified Chinese that I found online and added pinyin for anyone like me that would find it helpful.

佳人 (Alone in Her Beauty)

[Download MP3 | English Translation]

绝代有佳人， 幽居在空谷。
juédàiyŏujiārén, yōujūzàikōnggŭ

自云良家子， 零落依草木。
zìyúnliángjiāzĭ, língluòyīcăomù

关中昔丧乱， 兄弟遭杀戮。
guānzhōngxīsāngluàn, xiōngdizāoshālù

官高何足论， 不得收骨肉。
guāngāohézúlùn, bùdéshōugŭròu

世情恶衰歇， 万事随转烛。
shìqíngwùshuāixiē, wànshìsuízhuănzhú

夫婿轻薄儿， 新人美如玉。
fūxùqīngbó’ér, xīnrénměirúyù

合昏尚知时， 鸳鸯不独宿。
héhūnshàngzhīshí, yuānyāngbùdúsù

但见新人笑， 那闻旧人哭。
dànjiànxīrénxiào, nàwénjiùrénkū

在山泉水清， 出山泉水浊。
zàishānquánshuĭqīng, chūshānquánshuĭzhuó

侍婢卖珠回， 牵萝补茅屋。
shìbìmàizhūhuí, qiānluóbŭmáowū

摘花不插发， 采柏动盈掬。
zhāihuābùchāfā, căibăidòngyíngjū

天寒翠袖薄， 日暮倚修竹。
tiānháncuìxiùbáo, rìmùyŭxiūzhú

All my dishes are gone: bowls, plates, and plastic containers. My most useful frying pan and a small saucepan. Several other convenience items and foods are missing. It’s not surprising that a thief would remove locks, but this thief takes the time to put the locks back!

Until I have a solution, the floor of my small room is littered with cooking equipment. Foods that a mouse would enjoy must remain in the kitchen. I met a neighbour while I was taking things back to my room and he says he’s lost cooking oil, dishes, and other items. Someone here is robbing from all of us. Even if I could cook, I don’t have anything left to eat from.

Cat sleeping with toy mouse (Flickr photo by Artiii, Creative Commons).

I’m afraid that my food will be stolen. My new neighbour is rude and loud… probably a thief too. A mouse is now living in the wall beside my bed. 哎呀！ This is the second time I’ve had this kind of neighbour since I moved to the International House in Halifax.

我有点儿害怕我食物被偷。我新邻居很无礼，很响亮。。。想他也是小偷。一个老鼠现住在床边的墙里。哎呀！从我搬家到哈利法克斯的International House公寓，这是第二次我有这样的邻居。

Update: The building owner arrived with poison today. No one had told him about the mouse, but his timing was perfect. Problem solved? I hope so! Friends with cats are especially invited to visit anytime.

Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.

A train passes through a market in Bangkok, Thailand.

Watch this one through to the end… it’s a pop-up market on a train track in Thailand. Amazing.

(touque tip: Boing Boing)

我最近搬家到了加拿大哈利法克斯，在圣玛丽大学学习商业。在加拿大换大学换得不难，但是不太容易。比如我以前在温哥华是电脑老师。圣大商业学生都学习程电脑课，内容是Access, Word, Excel,等等。我觉得太容易的课。老师说：我必须参加程电脑课，所以没办法。

我星期一，星期二晚上有上课，不可以吃中秋节的特别的菜。我真想在天津我和朋友们2004年一起包饺子，吃饭，喝白酒。这次晚上有数学课。我以后安排教哥哥的小孩儿怎么包。觉得他们太小，但是可以好玩儿。在加拿大可不可以买中国的白酒？我不知道。我从中国只拿一瓶山西的白酒。如果在哈利法克斯要真的中国食品，可以买。我已经买了饺子皮儿，花椒，等等。两次我自己做葱油饼，但是做得不好啊！我不熟练。做炒面比葱油饼更容易，所以常常做。

你中秋节在你家乡吃什么菜？

Happy Mid Autumn Festival everyone!

Saint Mary’s University (圣玛丽大学)

I went to a bank today to exchange money. I wandered into the bank and the big electonic numbers clearly meant I needed to have a number. Where do I get a number? Which set of workers do money exchange? There was one worker who seemed to be some kind of greeter that I wanted to attempt in a sign-language conversation, but she was helping someone else. I stood around like a clueless tourist and started staring at a sign with todays exchange rates until a worker brought me a paper with a number on it and pointed to some seats where I could wait.

Korean banks seem to have a much more open layout than Chinese banks. Chinese banks have giant bulletproof glass to keep you and the staff apart. Canadian banks don’t have the glass, but they do make you stand around at the small counters where you are served. Here I get to sit in a fairly plush chair and show my best smile to make up for the fact I haven’t a clue what to say. As I hand the worker my passport and Chinese currency, she receives it from me by holding her right hand with palm up while placing her left hand on the right arm. I’ve learned a little about these customs from my Korean friends in Tianjin, but this was my first experience without someone guiding me. I can only imagine how rude I’ve been today in very small ways, but I’m sure everyone understands that foreigners don’t necessarily understand these customs. Jeju has a strong tourism economy, so I feel like I can count on an understanding community.

When I finish studying in Nanchang I plan to return to Jeju to study Korean language. I’m starting to see my Chinese language habbits really coming out strong. I’m always saying “hao” (good) in response to things, for example. I bought some kind of shrimp burger from a KFC and I even said to a worker “wo yao” (I want)! In China I had learned the Korean numbers from 1 to 10, but I’ve recently realized that Korea has 2 systems for numbers. One is a purely Korean system while the other is based on the Chinese numbers. Numbers are fun for me because I never know which system to expect, and it’s fair to say the system I understand is pretty slow for me to translate. What I hadn’t counted on was that Korean currency, the Won, uses high numbers. My green tea with pomegranate drink cost KRW$1,000. Maybe it’s nice that I can use the number one with both counting systems, but I didn’t have the forethought to study the words for ‘hundred’ or ‘thousand’.

I’ve ony been on my own for a couple hours, but it’s really a lovely place and I’m having a lot of fun. I took a walk by the ocean just to smell the salt water in the air and enjoy the clear blue sky. Looking toward the centre of the island is Hala Mountain, a volcano which is the major geographical feature of the island and is, of course, responsible for the islands existance.

Zhong Shan Road is dotted with mostly middle-aged ladies trying to grab my attention with cries of “hello” followed by the word for “shoes” in Chinese (rarely English) along with lots of pointing at shoes to be certain I’ve understood their meaning. I’ve yet to meet anyone who expects me to know how to say “你好” (hello), let alone make a sentence, so they tend to smile and laugh easily when I say “不要，谢谢” (no thanks) which I think is a lot more polite than the reception they get from anyone else as they hustle to work the street. They often smile at me like I’m a big fun challenge for them since they’re smiling so nicely at me and working so hard to make it clear that I should be buying shoes from them. The less English they use the more dramatic and exaggerated the hand gestures tend to be, which is not unlike how I felt trying to communicate when I landed in Beijing for the first time. Perhaps that’s why they become momentarily dumbstruck when I point to my own shoes and say with a smile “我有” (I have) until it registers that I’ve given a cheeky reply and can understand them perfectly and the dramatic gestures are wholly unnecessary. These women work very hard every day trying to attract buyers to their little shoe boutiques located in little alleys and streets connected to Zhong Shan Road —spots that shoppers would never find without some encouragement — and they give lots of character to the shopping centre of Nanchang.

On this particular day I wondered for no particular reason into a large (for Nanchang) department store located on the corner of Zhong Shan Road and 8-1 Avenue (中山路在八一大道). I let myself be carried in by the solid stream of shoppers moving as a line through the store and listened to people around me talking about what nationality I might be and how tall I am. When the man behind me made a guess at my height while talking to his wife, I surprised them both by correcting his guess with a smile which opened a small conversation with the very nice couple. Since I had come to explore, I didn’t talk long before I excused myself to run around the store to discover its many departments.

From jewellery to shoes and bags, I moved upstairs finding myself surrounded by womens underwear. Not unlike other stores I’ve been to in China, the escalator to the 3rd floor was located in an obscure location requiring you to wander through isle after isle of lingerie before moving up to the next floor devoted to womens clothing. It’s not until the 4th floor that you start to see anything for men, which means that men have to really travel across the store from one escalator to another just to buy some clothing. I don’t know anything about the shopping habits of Chinese men, but I know many of my friends in Canada like to go inside, make their purchase, and get out quickly, but many stores in China don’t appear to cater to that style of quick shopping.

As I wind my way through the store I can hear the workers — usually young women — talking about me, encouraging their coworkers to say hello to me, calling other workers over to get a look before I’m out of sight, etc. One worker was standing with a group near a corner and, once I’d passed, expressed to her friends that I’d scared her. She just didn’t expect this tall foreigner to appear from around the corner. Somewhere else in the store I stopped to retie my shoelace and caught a group of workers having a very nice conversation about me. Only when I starting laughing along with their discussion did they start to become a bit quieter. One girl was too embarrassed and hid around the corner, but the other three coworkers tried to tell her not to be embarrassed, because I couldn’t possibly understand. Ha ha!

I imagine that the original building wasn’t big enough for the store, so they knocked down the wall that joins the neighbouring building and continued their products on a floor that might be correctly termed the 5th-and-and-a-half floor, reminding me of Being John Malkovich. I’ve seen this solution to lack of space used in several stores in different Chinese cities. What I liked about it was that, on this particular day, the store appeared pretty average from the outside yet, once inside, the store seemed was much larger as I wound my way from escalator to escalator.

The top floor was devoted exclusively to baby products and children’s toys… or so I thought. Hidden among the toys was a sight I still can’t explain or understand: a grocery store. Why would anyone put a grocery store in such an obscure and awkward location? Do they really have enough customers willing to wander around and trek to the top floor to buy food? There were a few customers, but it was practically empty compared to any other grocery stores I’ve seen in Nanchang. I keep imagining that there must be another entrance to this grocery store that I failed to see. Even if customers relied on an elevator, there is no way this store could achieve any economies of scale.

Apparently there is now an Ikea store in Nanchang which is also located in a bizarre location. I’m preparing to leave Nanchang for the winter holiday, but I’ll go looking for it when I return in March. If you know how to find the Ikea, please leave a comment!