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…
Tag: 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…
I’m going to take an exam
I entered myself for the HSK1 exam in September, so I have two months to prepare. The photo shows my notes that I made today. The numbers to the left are those assigned by Heisig, on whose book I am relying to learn individual characters. HSK1 requires you to know 150 words. Most are compounds,…
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…
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…
I coloured my consonants
I’ve been up all night doing Chinese, because I couldn’t tear myself away. Because I am memorising all these characters, using the Heisig method (I’m nominally up to 250 characters now), I’m very interested in memory aids and techniques. Some people use a coded system of four colours to remember the different tones (dīng versus dǐng,…
That’s close enough
As you can see, today I got all 236 Heisig characters right and just made one mistake in the pinyin, where I used a fourth tone instead of a first tone. That’s good enough for me and I’ll now give myself permission to move on to Chapter 11 of Heisig. I’m glad I took his…
The Hanyu You Want 