If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Near the end of 2005 I finally took the initiative to learn to speak Mandarin, which is the official Chinese dialect spoken in China, as well as learn to read and write Chinese characters. I opted to hire a tutor in Seattle who could help me in this pursuit. In September 2006, I went to China for 2 weeks, where I found out that my Chinese was good enough to get around, but not good enough to get by. In the summer of 2007, I went to China for 6 weeks, studying Chinese 4 hours a day 5 days a week. By the end of that trip, I spoke Chinese better than 95% of people in the United States (maybe more), but I still needed work. Another month or more in China would have made a dramatic difference in my ability to speak Chinese, but that wasn’t in the cards.
Since I don’t have regular access to speak to people in Chinese, I’m constantly looking for tools to keep my Chinese from going stale in my mind. Most recently I ran across the Rhythmic Mandarin series in iTunes. Most of what’s there is already part of my vocabulary, but I can’t help thinking this would be an ideal solution for anyone who wants to ramp up to learning to speak Mandarin quickly because it uses a fairly unique approach to language learning, based on The Third Ear by Chris Lonsdale.
Rhythmic Mandarin is an amazingly catchy method for language learning, combining music and spoken phrases into context that makes it easy to learn. I think the key for me that sets Rhythmic Mandarin apart from other language learning audio tools I’ve seen is that they effectively chunk phrases in ways you would expect to hear them in conversation, rather than trying to focus entirely on whole sentences or just bombarding you with vocabulary.
I wish I had found this years ago, because it would have made my Chinese language learning much easier. You can order CD versions at Amazon.com, but I recommend you download Rhythmic Mandarin as MP3 files, because you can easily take them with you anywhere. The MP3 files are ready for your iPod, Zune or any other player. The methodology strips away the confusion of learning a language and makes it seem quite simple.
I keep meaning to make a video demo of the PlecoDict Software I use to lookup Chinese characters on my phone. For anyone learning Hanzi, this is by far the best thing out there. I still haven’t gotten around to making a video demo, but here’s a pretty good feature walkthrough I found on YouTube. Taiwan is about to put my traditional character recognition to the test when I head to Computex, so I can’t imagine going without PlecoDict.
I have a theory that a country’s economy is about to impact the tech industry in a significant way about the time all my favorite shareware and freeware is from that country. China is where I’m currently finding the best apps, indicated early on by the browser that became Maxthon and media organizer MediaMan. I’ve since uncovered numerous apps for tweaking video I simply can’t live without, all originating in China. While China has been building the tech we rely on for years, it’s only just started making tech the world can’t live without. Rebecca Fannin, International Editor of the Hong Kong weekly Asian Venture Capital Journal, takes a look at China’s emerging high tech economy with a more researched eye through a new book slated to hit the shelves in December 2007. Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race, which is based on interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs behind companies in industries ranging from mobile phones, search, E-commerce, and software, to provide a face for the emerging tech market in China. You can order the book on Amazon now and get it shipped to your door when it goes to press.
The Forbes list of China’s 40 richest people is out today. Topping the list is Yang Huiyan, a resident of the Guangdong Provence, is reportedly worth US $16.2 billion dollars. At a mere 26 years old, Yang Huiyan might be pegged as a successful dotcom billionaire. Apparently she got rich the old fashioned way, inheriting shares in Country Garden, a real estate company publicly traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Yang’s father, Yang Guoqiang, the chairman of Country Garden, turned over shares in the company to his daughter in 2005. Back in April, Country Garden was off to a soaring start, debuting with a 37% increase in share price on opening day. After the first day of trading, Yang Huiyan was already worth US $9 billion, estimated to be the richest woman in China. Trailing further down the list at #21, Robin Li, co-founder of Baidu, is worth a mere US $2.35 billion. Country Garden 4 other people to the list of 40 richest people in China, including Yang Erzhu at #14, Ou Xueming at #37, Su Rubo at #38, and Zhang Yaoyuan at #39.
One of the interesting side effects (consequences?) of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China is some seemingly strange-but-true stories of Chinese children performing unnatural physical feats in the name of national pride. First their was Zhang Huimin, an 8-year-old girl who apparently ran 3500km from Hainan Provence to Beijing at a pace of 1 1/2 marathons per day for 55 days, with her father bicycling alongside. Her father was later accused of abusing her. Today we hear a story of Huang Li, a 10-year-old girl who reportedly swam 3km in the Xiang river with her hands tied together. I can only assume that the International attention of these odd feats means there are more to come before the Olympics arrive in August 2008.
Women in Beijing have a very Victorian obsession with avoiding sunlight and keeping their skin pale, wearing sleeves to cover exposed arms and those full face sun visors. I can’t figure out how this fits in. In my travels around Beijing, I stopped at a Wal-Mart, which had a huge display of Jissbon condoms in the middle of the aisle, which was odd in that I’ve never seen condoms get prime retail space in the U.S. The English product description on the box was too fun too ignore. Guess I’ll add this to the list of things to bring should I ever find myself at a nude beach.
The first time I saw the iPhone I commented that no one who relies on a Blackberry would ever switch. Typing speed is too important and the iPhones keys just can’t cut it. Apparently a new study by User Centric has some science to back up my assumption, although the sample size is a bit small. In tests, people could type text faster on tactile keys. Which got my thinking about 3 billion other people who will enter their native language faster on devices other than the iPhone – the half of the world that writes something other than a Roman character alphabet as their primary language. You need a stylus or some other writing tool to quickly enter most complex character languages and the iPhone prides itself on not having a stylus. My own recent trip to China finds me switching away from my Blackjack to a Treo 750 so that I have the convenience of a keyboard and the flexibility to enter Hanzi when I need to.
While I love all the historical sites in and around Beijing, my favorite place I visited this time was the 798 district, which is a modern art district inside the city. Most of my photos there are from exterior, including graffiti art and statue installations, as the galleries won’t let you take photos inside. If you travel to Beijing anytime soon or visit during the Olympics in 2008, this is one place you should definitely visit to see that Chinese creativity didn’t stop with buildings constructed in the Ming Dynasty. Another favorite was Fragrant Hills Park, which is a nice escape from the pollution and concrete of Beijing City.
I’m headed back to China on Saturday 30 June 2007. I made my first trip to Beijing last summer, when I attended DemoChina to cover emerging tech companies. I was lucky enough to bump into a number of familiar faces, including Lee and Sachi (who were on their yearlong tour around the world) and Sam Whitmore and Christy Andrade (who were also taking in the experience of DemoChina). This time I’m spending 6 weeks in Beijing, studying Mandarin at Peking University and site seeing around the city.
I haven’t made any specific plans to meet with any geeks while I’m in Beijing, but I’m hoping to meet a few kindred spirits while I’m there. The Maxthon offices are in Beijing, so there’s a good chance I’ll drop in on Jeff Chen and the rest of the browser development team. I’m likely to check in on Tudou.com to see what’s new with the Chinese equivalent of YouTube. I may also see if I can’t get a peek at what the Beijing offices of Microsoft are like, since I’ve already spent plenty of time at both the Redmond and Mountain View campuses.
My other big plan for this trip is to seek out some of the modern cultural flavor of Beijing. I saw most of the major historic landmarks of Beijing on my last visit, but I’m also curious about things like the kinds of live music people are playing, where the modern art scene in Beijing is, and what local people do for fun, which are some of the same things I look for when I visit a new city in the U.S. I’m also hoping to revisit some of the places that were under construction and renovation in anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games. If you happen to be in Beijing or know anyone in Beijing, be sure to drop me a line.
Malaysian pop star Guang Liang, who is ridiculously popular throughout China, seems to have a huge following among piano enthusiasts for his megahit Tong Hua (which translates to Fairy Tale). You can find Guang Liang sheet music at many of the DIY sheet music sites like TabNabber.com
For an idea of what all the hype is about, you can see the music video as presented by YouTube here:
Coupled with the tragic music video and the more marketable name Michael Wong, Guang Liang is quite possibly the Malaysian equivalent to Justin Timberlake. I’m guessing there’s crossover potential here, although currently, the official Michael Wong site is available only in traditional and simplified Chinese.
Any technology that increases the number of clicks to get to the point SUCKS. (e.g. click link in Twitter > click in FF > read post12:08:34 AM November 04, 2009
from TwitterRide
I have a theory that a country’s economy is about to impact the tech industry in a significant way about the time all my favorite shareware and freeware is from that country. China is where I’m currently finding the best apps, indicated early on by the browser that became 
Recent Comments