Why 8? I am not sure if 8 is right but I am sure I already did at least 8 trips in China. Being lazy to post an entry every time, I decided to leave it like this and try to update some feelings about China. Now that Olympic Games are over (paralympics not yet) here is some pride to take by Chinese for the very nice and well organized games. Chinese took a lot of trouble to keep everyone safe and happy and also marked a good score on competitions. Congratulations to China!

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 2:03:37 PM (GTB Daylight Time, UTC+03:00)    Comments [0] 

This time I decided to visit as many cities in China as possible in a short period of time.

Therefore I arrived Hong Kong then entered China by train, to Guangzhou. This city I visited before, it is very convenient but pollution is a real big problem here. Shenzen is reachable by local fast intercity train. This train travel with up to 200km/h and it is very modern. Shenzen is closer to the sea, air is much better and it is full of IT industry.

Next I flew to Beijing to meet a friend coming also from Romania. After visiting the famous taoist temple "White Cloud" or Bai Yun Guan in chinese, we took a sleeping train to Shenyang, capital city of Liaoning province. Shenyang is a very important industrial and transportation city. The first impression is that the city is a bit crowded but one can find very nice food, especially at Korean style restaurants.

During the first weekend we took a short trip to Changchun, the capital city of Jilin, the province north of Liaoning. This city is an academic city, with more space and flexible architecture. Especially the parks are very nice.

After this next stop was in Dalian, main port of Liaoning province. A lot of industry appeared in this city that is more elegant than Shenyang, especially in downtown. Also the sea helps a lot with the air quality. However during this period of the year I encountered both in Beijing and Dalian the dust storms coming from Gobi desert. Sometime these dust storms reach as far as Japan.

After Dalian we arrived in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province, the turism city of China, also one of the most important centres for silk. Here we visited the "Ling Yin" buddhist temple, a huge one, built in a scenic area. Ling Yin stands for Hidden Spirits. This city and the surroundings are worth for a full lenght vacation, 2 weeks minimum.

Next stop Fuzhou, capital city of Fujian province. This city is nicely placed between mountains and the sea, and seems to be very clean and carefully taken care of.

Well, seems that all cities in Fujian have something nice to show for the visitor. Next I visited Quanzhou, historically being the start (or end) of the silk road to Europe. Also Xiamen is a very beautyful city, an island city with tropical vegetation and nice environment.

At the end of the trip lies Shenzen, probably the most modern Chinese city up to date. Lifestyle tends to follow Hong Kong lifestyle and business is flourishing everywhere. Links to Hong Kong, my next destination can be by train, by metro (at the end of metro line in Shenzen there is Chinese custom, then a 300m long bridge, then the Hong Kong custom; after this one a train is available toghether with a combination of MTR for any destination in HK city), or by ferry. I will take the metro link this time to enlarge my experience. Maybe I will also post a short HD movie I will make with my camera as reference how to do it...

Below is a very interesting taoist stone from Bai Yun Guan wall, with unknown author, describing some advanced taoist practice. I suppose very few people really understand it's true meaning.

Saturday, May 31, 2008 9:48:30 PM (GTB Daylight Time, UTC+03:00)    Comments [0] 

I visited this time more remote locations. I felt like going back in past when I lived as a child in a small town in Romania. Only that it was much crowded. I traveled from airport about 70km to my destination and it was all the way an inhabited terrain. Only later, when we went on the mountains, I have seen less population.

I was very impressed with the status of cultivated fields. Any parcel worthy for cultivation was filled with crops. Except river banks where vegetation was wilde and mountain forests themselves, I could not see any unattended land. It made me feel a bit sick as I realized how much desolation is in landscapes back home. I did not carried a camera this time due to some wrong assumptions, but I promise to come back with photos after a future visit.

People were very friendly and many mentioned they heard before about Romania (Luomania as chinese say). I was very impressed and though it will be very difficult to return the honor they did to us in full.

Monday, August 20, 2007 4:46:38 AM (GTB Daylight Time, UTC+03:00)    Comments [0] 

Learning Chinese language seems not to be very difficult. But what one can do beside going to a Chinese class at home or even in China? Here is some of my experience so far BUT please keep in mind that I did not learn the language yet, only got a very good information about what I SHOULD do!

One thing is to get some Chinese language guides, materials and tools. I have, up to this moment, the following items:

- Rosetta Stone Mandarin Chinese Level 1 and 2 - it is PC/Mac based software that uses the "immersion" techniques toward comprehension and understanding the language. It is very good for learning Chinese at young ages.

- Fluenz Mandarin 1+2 DVD+CD is also a computer tool (you have to choose between Mac and PC) that uses innovative techniques to teach Chinese language for adults. It covers spoken Chinese and pinyin writing and is aimed to reach fluency in speaking Mandarin. Personally I think it is a great tool for myself.

- Sinolingua manuals published in China for English speakers. This is a written course that is very interesting and proposes a very clever approach of getting into Chinese language. It has some audio casettes as well but I was unable to find them so far. It is spitted in 3 parts that should be followed in this order:

1. Intensive Spoken Chinese is dealing with building a Chinese vocabulary of about 1000 words
2. The Most Common Chinese Radicals starts plunging into Chinese characters in a very smart way
3. Rapid Literacy in Chinese is to be taken after completing first two stages and maybe in parallel to following an instructor led class of Chinese.

- Finally for taking an instructor led class in Chinese I would opt going to China for 1 month. There are special universities that sell short packages of intensive language learning. Just Google on "learn Chinese in china" and you will find many opportunities for any budget. As I decided to do a self paced study in the first place then go to China for a class, I cannot tell who I consider best at this moment. Anyway I will follow-up on this entry at the right moment.

Therefore for the time being I will combine Fluenz + Sinolingua book 1 to get up with a vocabulary and a way to create sentences with it. Then I will study the around 100 radicals (it seems fascinating after a first glance on the Sinolingua book 2). At the end I will combine Sinolingua book 3 and a Chinese language class somewhere in China.

Last but not least, the online resources might help very well. I am glad to use http://www.chinese-tools.com as a helper to my studies.

Making Chinese friends works and helps at any moment. It is a great way to plunge into a new language as well!

Sunday, August 12, 2007 11:40:52 PM (GTB Daylight Time, UTC+03:00)    Comments [0] 

Travelling in China is very interesting. I only was to Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau so far. At Guangzhou you get the sensation of early 1990s when Bucharest was still a poor city, however the chinese government invested wisely in very good infrastructure. Driving is very crowded, poeple in Bucharest must not complain if they can experience this one. However in Guangzhou there are many expressways built suspended on top of old roads that carry out the tranzit traffic. City center is very cosmopolite with fancy and quite expensive restaurants. We liked an italian one, Antipasto. Here there is a picture of me with the Antipasto manager, Lily.

Hong Kong looks very much like London, only they have a strong taste for vertical development. Indeed is a good location for electronics shopping, prices are nearly half of those in Europe. 

Macau is the Asia's Las Vegas, in a very real competition for world's gambling capital fame. Even if we won some money at the casino we spent them all at bar and we got even with the resort... 

I spent only few days there, I will add more after the next visit.

Next time we will visit some more remote locations, I am very curious about villages that I learned to have more inhabitants than Bucharest, our capital city...

Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:38:07 PM (GTB Daylight Time, UTC+03:00)    Comments [0]