Hello everyone. I am working hard at Chinese. Here’s what I’m doing. Heisig. Each day I study 60 characters from Heisig’s famous book, Remembering Simplified Hanzi. 60 characters is a lot and it takes 2-3 hours every day all by itself, this is a big chunk of time if you have a full-time job. I’m…
Category: Hanzi
My Chinese desk 我的中文书桌
A glimpse of my desk. I am cramming Chinese into my head, absolutely cramming. I more or less confidently recognise over 600 characters from Heisig, which well-thumbed volumes you don’t see in this pile here because they are in constant use. I am the top of my league in Duolingo and set to take first…
Chinese is back on.
I know it’s been a long break. The last ten years have been like this. I get thoroughly stuck into Chinese, then something happens, usually work, and I could be away for two years. Then I come back to it and start again. Each time I re-start, it is quicker to catch up and then…
Accidentally setting one’s clothes on fire.
Good evening, everyone. I’ve just been reading an alarming news story over at The Chairman’s Bao, which has graded Chinese-language articles for learners of Hanyu. It is a story about a Miss Tang, an internet celebrity who was badly burned at a coffee shop. It is graded at Level 3 and I am most definitely…
A thick mist rises over the lake.
Hi everyone! Today’s character is 湖 hú, meaning lake. If you follow Heisig, it is character 156. Those three dots on the left hand side are three drops of water. It is the water radical, 水 shuǐ, in compressed or abbreviated form 氵 I have two versions of today’s sentence. The first is from Pleco, is longer and…
The wind howled through the trees.
Character of the day is hǒu. If you use Heisig, it is character 99. It means ‘roar’. You can make a couple of words with this character, distinguishing between roar as a verb and as a noun. Handy. Even if you are a beginner at Chinese, like me, you will probably recognise jiào because it’s one of…
The whole thing was a nightmare.
Character of the day is rú. If you use Heisig, it is character 104. It has a few meanings but the one we are concerned with today is the verb “be like” or “be similar to”. Here is today’s sentence. It’s interesting to note that 一切 means ‘all’, ‘everything’ or, in this case, ‘the whole thing’. We…
This gentleman will pay for everything.
I’m constantly looking for ways to refresh and consolidate my knowledge of the Chinese characters I’ve learned from Heisig. I nominally know 250 but I am prone to forgetting them if I don’t study and I need to connect them to other aspects of Mandarin, so from now on I’m having character of the day…
Learning resources, 2018
For me, studying Chinese has things in common with exercise. When you are in a routine of doing it every day, it is relatively easy to keep on doing it. The easiest time to go to the gym is when you just went yesterday. If you lapse and let the hours in your day fill…
Returning to Chinese after some travelling
I did a huge pile of work and also travelled a lot in March, so Chinese took a back seat. I even took my Heisig book away with me and optimistically carried it in my hand luggage everywhere I went, yet my schedule was so full that I didn’t get a look at it. I…
The Hanyu You Want 