Chinese (Asian) Yay!

[raining fumi]

Any Chinese or Asians here? Or anybody who wants to visit China/Asia? Feel freeto ask! 3nodding
heart

[Ridged Angel]

I'd love to visit Japan, but then again I don't at the same time. It's weird. But that's a Scot for ya.

[raining fumi]

Japan is awesome, but it is still not really safe from that earthquake a few years ago. The food is delicious!

[JaneZJY]

lalalla..

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

I'm not Asian, but I'd love to visit!
I've only heard things about China, but I really like the culture. I love to watch Chinese dramas, too. I'm sure that's corny, but eh. I'm currently trying to learn Mandarin with some Cantonese mixed in, but ahh the tones! It's going to take some practice to get them right.
Once I expressed my desire also to visit Korea, and someone told me to visit... a particular place. I can't remember it, though! D: Ugh. It'll come to me at a highly inconvenient time, I'm sure. I've also attempted to learn Korean, but it's still a work in progress. ;p
So, all you natives, please tell me about where you live! I'd like to know. :}

In particular, I like to know about little things. One of my friends rides a train to town because he lives so far out. Stuff like that.
What do you regularly have for breakfast?
Do you like to go with friends to a certain place every so often? A town square or something?
So on and so forth. Do tell!

[raining fumi]

Shizuka Mizu

I'm not Asian, but I'd love to visit!
I've only heard things about China, but I really like the culture. I love to watch Chinese dramas, too. I'm sure that's corny, but eh. I'm currently trying to learn Mandarin with some Cantonese mixed in, but ahh the tones! It's going to take some practice to get them right.
Once I expressed my desire also to visit Korea, and someone told me to visit... a particular place. I can't remember it, though! D: Ugh. It'll come to me at a highly inconvenient time, I'm sure. I've also attempted to learn Korean, but it's still a work in progress. ;p
So, all you natives, please tell me about where you live! I'd like to know. :}

In particular, I like to know about little things. One of my friends rides a train to town because he lives so far out. Stuff like that.
What do you regularly have for breakfast?
Do you like to go with friends to a certain place every so often? A town square or something?
So on and so forth. Do tell!

Well, nowadays we have western breakfast (like cereal or toast) but the elders (like my grandparents) eat stuff like rice and pickles (and a type of fried wheat called 油条 yóu tíao). We don't go to a certain place often, but we still have parties and all.
Hope that's helpful!

[Maranduh]

Shizuka Mizu

I'm not Asian, but I'd love to visit!
I've only heard things about China, but I really like the culture. I love to watch Chinese dramas, too. I'm sure that's corny, but eh. I'm currently trying to learn Mandarin with some Cantonese mixed in, but ahh the tones! It's going to take some practice to get them right.
Once I expressed my desire also to visit Korea, and someone told me to visit... a particular place. I can't remember it, though! D: Ugh. It'll come to me at a highly inconvenient time, I'm sure. I've also attempted to learn Korean, but it's still a work in progress. ;p
So, all you natives, please tell me about where you live! I'd like to know. :}

In particular, I like to know about little things. One of my friends rides a train to town because he lives so far out. Stuff like that.
What do you regularly have for breakfast?
Do you like to go with friends to a certain place every so often? A town square or something?
So on and so forth. Do tell!

I just wanted to add that even though Christa1910 and her friends may not go to a specific place often or anything there ARE groups of people who get together in squares all the time in China. There are always groups of mostly old ladies doing line dancing and what looks like calisthenic routines or traditional fan dances and stuff everywhere in the evening, just on the sidewalk area by closed storefronts. Some kids outside our apartment learn kung-fu on the street in the evening and some people play badminton there or in a square or park. Sometimes people set up karaoke machines in squares or on the sidewalk. On Thursday night there were some people in a square here doing some kind of local opera singing. In the evening in my husband's home town the city square is full of people. Some are singing some are dancing some play badminton or something else, some play hacky sack type games or rollerskate and some people may sell some figurines or toys and stuff. There is always lots of music and maybe some dancing and stuff. It's definitely more popular with older people than younger but it's very common anyway.

Oh and when I asked my husband what a common breakfast would be he said definitely some kind of deep-fried bread with soy bean sauce. 3nodding

[sweetysweetycandy]

i'm chinese/
emotion_dowant

[SATSUl]

I'm not Chinese, but I speak Mandarin pretty well, though I'm extremely rusty.

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Maranduh

I just wanted to add that even though Christa1910 and her friends may not go to a specific place often or anything there ARE groups of people who get together in squares all the time in China. There are always groups of mostly old ladies doing line dancing and what looks like calisthenic routines or traditional fan dances and stuff everywhere in the evening, just on the sidewalk area by closed storefronts. Some kids outside our apartment learn kung-fu on the street in the evening and some people play badminton there or in a square or park. Sometimes people set up karaoke machines in squares or on the sidewalk. On Thursday night there were some people in a square here doing some kind of local opera singing. In the evening in my husband's home town the city square is full of people. Some are singing some are dancing some play badminton or something else, some play hacky sack type games or rollerskate and some people may sell some figurines or toys and stuff. There is always lots of music and maybe some dancing and stuff. It's definitely more popular with older people than younger but it's very common anyway.

Oh and when I asked my husband what a common breakfast would be he said definitely some kind of deep-fried bread with soy bean sauce. 3nodding

I think that's great. It'd be cool if I lived somewhere where I could go to the town square just to play badminton. And interesting choice of breakfast!

Christa1910

Well, nowadays we have western breakfast (like cereal or toast) but the elders (like my grandparents) eat stuff like rice and pickles (and a type of fried wheat called 油条 yóu tíao). We don't go to a certain place often, but we still have parties and all.
Hope that's helpful!

Also interesting choice of breakfast!

So there's another question I just thought to ask the pair of you.
Chinese characters, as I've been told over and over, have no phonetic value that you can see just by looking at them. Full of meaning, but no indication to the pronunciation. So how do you go about learning the pronunciation of a new character you haven't seen before? I heard that there is a set of characters dedicated to being "spelling characters" to show how to say something, but I don't really know how it all works.
Also, how are Chinese to Chinese dictionaries arranged? How do you know what page to flip to to find what word you want to look up? =O

[raining fumi]

sweetysweetycandy

i'm chinese/
emotion_dowant

I am Chinese too! Yay~

[raining fumi]

Maranduh

Shizuka Mizu

I'm not Asian, but I'd love to visit!
I've only heard things about China, but I really like the culture. I love to watch Chinese dramas, too. I'm sure that's corny, but eh. I'm currently trying to learn Mandarin with some Cantonese mixed in, but ahh the tones! It's going to take some practice to get them right.
Once I expressed my desire also to visit Korea, and someone told me to visit... a particular place. I can't remember it, though! D: Ugh. It'll come to me at a highly inconvenient time, I'm sure. I've also attempted to learn Korean, but it's still a work in progress. ;p
So, all you natives, please tell me about where you live! I'd like to know. :}

In particular, I like to know about little things. One of my friends rides a train to town because he lives so far out. Stuff like that.
What do you regularly have for breakfast?
Do you like to go with friends to a certain place every so often? A town square or something?
So on and so forth. Do tell!

I just wanted to add that even though Christa1910 and her friends may not go to a specific place often or anything there ARE groups of people who get together in squares all the time in China. There are always groups of mostly old ladies doing line dancing and what looks like calisthenic routines or traditional fan dances and stuff everywhere in the evening, just on the sidewalk area by closed storefronts. Some kids outside our apartment learn kung-fu on the street in the evening and some people play badminton there or in a square or park. Sometimes people set up karaoke machines in squares or on the sidewalk. On Thursday night there were some people in a square here doing some kind of local opera singing. In the evening in my husband's home town the city square is full of people. Some are singing some are dancing some play badminton or something else, some play hacky sack type games or rollerskate and some people may sell some figurines or toys and stuff. There is always lots of music and maybe some dancing and stuff. It's definitely more popular with older people than younger but it's very common anyway.

Oh and when I asked my husband what a common breakfast would be he said definitely some kind of deep-fried bread with soy bean sauce. 3nodding

Yes yes, it's true!
There are always a bunch of old ladies dancing at a square or a karaoke or people playing badminton. And in the summer, some old people would come together to play chess at night, since it is cooler outside. Or to drink tea.
3nodding

[raining fumi]

Shizuka Mizu

Maranduh

I just wanted to add that even though Christa1910 and her friends may not go to a specific place often or anything there ARE groups of people who get together in squares all the time in China. There are always groups of mostly old ladies doing line dancing and what looks like calisthenic routines or traditional fan dances and stuff everywhere in the evening, just on the sidewalk area by closed storefronts. Some kids outside our apartment learn kung-fu on the street in the evening and some people play badminton there or in a square or park. Sometimes people set up karaoke machines in squares or on the sidewalk. On Thursday night there were some people in a square here doing some kind of local opera singing. In the evening in my husband's home town the city square is full of people. Some are singing some are dancing some play badminton or something else, some play hacky sack type games or rollerskate and some people may sell some figurines or toys and stuff. There is always lots of music and maybe some dancing and stuff. It's definitely more popular with older people than younger but it's very common anyway.

Oh and when I asked my husband what a common breakfast would be he said definitely some kind of deep-fried bread with soy bean sauce. 3nodding

I think that's great. It'd be cool if I lived somewhere where I could go to the town square just to play badminton. And interesting choice of breakfast!

Christa1910

Well, nowadays we have western breakfast (like cereal or toast) but the elders (like my grandparents) eat stuff like rice and pickles (and a type of fried wheat called 油条 yóu tíao). We don't go to a certain place often, but we still have parties and all.
Hope that's helpful!

Also interesting choice of breakfast!

So there's another question I just thought to ask the pair of you.
Chinese characters, as I've been told over and over, have no phonetic value that you can see just by looking at them. Full of meaning, but no indication to the pronunciation. So how do you go about learning the pronunciation of a new character you haven't seen before? I heard that there is a set of characters dedicated to being "spelling characters" to show how to say something, but I don't really know how it all works.
Also, how are Chinese to Chinese dictionaries arranged? How do you know what page to flip to to find what word you want to look up? =O

Ok, this will be confusing. smile
The Chinese characters, lets say, 草 （grass）. It's made of two parts: 艹 and 早. We would say, 艹has three strokes, so in the dictionary, under "strokes", we would search for 3. And then, we flip to a certain page, and look under "strokes 3" to find 艹. Then, under 艹, we would look for 早, which is 6 strokes. And then, we find the word "grass" with its meaning and its pronunciation. It's really confusing...... ^ ^ hope that helps!

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Christa1910

Ok, this will be confusing. smile
The Chinese characters, lets say, 草 （grass）. It's made of two parts: 艹 and 早. We would say, 艹has three strokes, so in the dictionary, under "strokes", we would search for 3. And then, we flip to a certain page, and look under "strokes 3" to find 艹. Then, under 艹, we would look for 早, which is 6 strokes. And then, we find the word "grass" with its meaning and its pronunciation. It's really confusing...... ^ ^ hope that helps!

No, that's not confusing at all!
That makes the most sense, actually; going off of the "construction" of the character.
But how do you figure out how to pronounce the character? Do dictionaries use Pinyin? Or...? =o

[raining fumi]

Shizuka Mizu

Christa1910

Ok, this will be confusing. smile
The Chinese characters, lets say, 草 （grass）. It's made of two parts: 艹 and 早. We would say, 艹has three strokes, so in the dictionary, under "strokes", we would search for 3. And then, we flip to a certain page, and look under "strokes 3" to find 艹. Then, under 艹, we would look for 早, which is 6 strokes. And then, we find the word "grass" with its meaning and its pronunciation. It's really confusing...... ^ ^ hope that helps!

No, that's not confusing at all!
That makes the most sense, actually; going off of the "construction" of the character.
But how do you figure out how to pronounce the character? Do dictionaries use Pinyin? Or...? =o

Yes, we do use pinyin. Most kids in china starts to learn pinyin when they are in pre-school. They use pictures to help them remember how to pronounce a certain pinyin. Like for ō, there is a mouth shaped like a huge O and stuff like that. 3nodding