Swedes in China

A common misconception is that Mandarin is best studied in north-eastern China, where the standardized dialect (and thus the standardized accent) is spoken. Down here in Fujian Province, the Mandarin accent is influenced by local languages such as Hakka and Minnan. I won't go into the phonetic details, but around here people tend to drop certain sounds and turn voiced (Swedish: tonade) consonants into voiceless.

Xiamen has two international schools: Xiamen International School (XIS) and Manila Xiamen International School (MXIS). Before we decided on MXIS for Ville, we had several e-mail conversations with both schools. The following is a rundown of how they answered our questions. (Note that the information is from 2011.)

Wow, time moves fast. We've been living in Xiamen for more than seven months now (in Chinese: 我们在厦门住了七个多月了 – my homework this week), and with our improving Chinese skills, life here gets easier by the day. I suspect we will be very busy for the coming couple of months before our move back to Sweden, but I'd still like to try to take the time to round this blog off with a few updates.

Saturday October 1st was China's National Day. It was also the start of China's National Day Golden Week – one of two annual weeklong national holidays in China. For Xiamen that means about one million more tourists than usual, and sure enough, downtown on Saturday and Sunday evening was jam-packed. The two last bus stops between the pedestrian avenue Zhong Shan Road and our home usually take at most three minutes to ride between – on Saturday night it took me fifteen.

Today is the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar. On this day the moon is at its fullest and roundest of all the year, and that means it's time for the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, zhōngqiūjié)!

Last Wednesday marked the beginning of the five-day China International Fair for Investment & Trade (CIFIT), which is one of the largest fairs of its kind in the world and held annually in Xiamen. It's been reported that this year it had more than 100000 visitors! Naturally, this sudden flow of people puts a strain on the city's infrastructure: At Ville's school they had three days off, since the school buses would only be stuck in traffic.

They say the best way to learn something is to teach it. In my experience, the best way to learn is actually to blog, so since I’m trying to learn Chinese I’ll blog about Chinese. Or, to be precise, about Mandarin and hànzì.

I feel like we got here yesterday, but at the same time the fact that we were still in Sweden just two weeks ago is a little hard to comprehend. A lot has happened in a short time!

Jag försöker verkligen att ta seden dit jag kommer när jag är på nya platser. Jag undviker västerländska frestelser som Pizza Hut och pizzan "Blackeberg" på Me and You2 bar (ett ställe i Xiamen som drivs av svensken Uffe, där man även kan avnjuta pizzan "Alvik" och "Kalmar"). Men när det gäller kaffevanor är jag oerhört konservativ. Utan ett god kopp kaffe försmäktar jag på denna ö!

En dryg vecka in i det nystartade projektet ”Ett år i Kina” är det dags för min första projektstatusrapportering. Jag börjar med det som mest upptar mina tankar för tillfället: bristen på KAFFE och caféer!