Nĭménhăo, dear readers. I have been diligently studying since we last spoke. As you may recall, I’ve been cramming 60 characters a day into my head, using Heisig’s famous system in Remembering Simplified Hanzi. There are two volumes of RSH and Vol. 1 takes you up to 1500 characters, learned through an elaborate yet precise system of mnemonics. Tomorrow, I will finally arrive at 1500 and the end of the book.

Why am I doing this? I’m a self-taught student of Chinese. I’m not getting any younger and this is probably the last attempt I will make at learning this rewarding yet difficult language. Because I have clear GOALS, I’m booked into to take the proficiency test HSK 1 in September and I aspire to take HSK 2 in January.

HSK 1 requires knowledge of 150 words. As most words are compounds, the total number of characters you have to know exceeds that, for instance, ‘taxi’ is 出租车, so you need chū zū (rent) and chē (vehicle) to make up the word. I haven’t counted the total number of characters used in HSK 1 but some bloggers say it is 178. It seems like more, but maybe that’s because I ran into a lot of other words from Duolingo and suchlike which I recognise, are featured in Heisig, but don’t appear in HSK until level 2. In fact, this is why I think I can tackle HSK 2 in the new year.

So that’s why I’ve been slogging through Heisig like it’s my second job. I need to have a firm grip on all the HSK 1 vocabulary. I’d already started using Heisig’s system from years ago, so I wanted to incorporate the HSK language acquisition within the learning I’d already done.

Anyway, I’d better get back on it. I had a go at translating the first sentence of that book I mentioned, you can see my notes below. At this rate, it is going to take me a long time to read it.