Lunar New Year Celebration Memories

 I've been meaning to write on here, and yet, life, tiredness has taken over. But here I am! I've been thinking about Lunar New year, and Chinese New Year and wanted to write about it. 

Upon seeing a student wearing a traditional Vietnamese dress, it brought upon my own memories of celebrating Lunar New Year a couple of years ago. I am not a drop of Asian or Chinese but the way I learned more about this special celebration was through my Mandarin language class in college. I learned how to say new year phrases, learn about traditional food and dishes that are eaten, and decorations that are put up. Actually, the Chinese word for Spring 'Chun' or 'chuntian' is put upside down as a form of decoration for the new year. 

One time, I participated in a Lunar New Year celebration on my college campus; it was to learn how to write Happy New Year phrases in Chinese with black ink on red paper. Red is a lucky color, and that's why children would usually receive hong bao or a red envelope with money inside. 

That was a fun and enjoyable time, to learn how to write out happy new year phrases with other classmates. The boy who liked me (I write 'boy' since he was a few years younger than me and still looked like he was in high school lol) was also a classmate of mine, and though he was half Chinese himself he didn't particularly like or was good at learning Mandarin. I really enjoyed it and I felt like usually we were paired up for class work. 

I felt like that class invigorated my life during my time there and I felt like learning the language (though it wasn't always easy) felt effortless and enjoyable.

And that's the thing, I still want to feel and be that way. After all these years of on and off again of learning and studying Mandarin Chinese, I would still like to become better at and continue call it my passion, hobby and my best-spoken foreign language. 

I recently checked out a book from the library of Chinese reading and learning. I have yet to dive into it.

 Xin Nian Kuia Le! 新年快乐

The Joys of (Trying to) Speak Chinese

 

Speaking Chinese yesterday and coming up with a script brought me back to when I did a Chinese language speaking competition back in 2015 in SF, recommended by my Zhongwen Laoshi- Chinese Professor. Back then, I had to write up a few minutes of a speech about myself with the help of my professor. Then I had to memorize it, word for word, no notes.

The hardest part was memorizing it and then imagining myself speaking to a group of people I don't know. Unfortunately, and admittedly, I didn't so well or as well as I thought I would. I forgot most of my speech after hearing others, and I remember saying in my speech a few times- 'dui bu qi', I'm sorry (for forgetting my lines!)

Yesterday though, I didn't memorize my 1-minute spiel in okay Chinese, or 'hai hao' which means okay. Instead, I wrote it out and did my best to remember the words I was trying to use and mostly read off of the script. 

I forgot how enjoyable and rewarding it is to remember what you know to speak and write it down! How much I can recall and yet how little I still know and can use in even simple sentences. Oh, the joys of language learning. It makes me want to continue learning, zhuo ba! Let's go.

Cheers

 Upon studying Chinese practically daily now, I've come across memories from my earlier years with Chinese. The other night, as I was writing down vocabulary, one vocab word in particular struck me.  It's 'ganbei' which means 'cheers'.  It brought me back to a TV show I watched often in Fall 2015, instead of doing some of my homework. It became addicting as the story line was interesting, and as any series, its meant to hook you so you continue watching. I heard about the show from a friend in early college, who was half Chinese, half black, and sometimes her and I would speak in Chinese to practice. 

The point and main objective of watching was to improve my Mandarin but in the end, I felt like a gained a drama series, and listened a lot, with English subtitles. However, this word brought me back to that show. When a girl was shouting 'ganbei' before new year's or with her and her boyfriend (or the guy who liked her), I don't remember, since it was filled with entangled story lines and drama. 

Cheers to this week's challenge of studying!! 

My Fortune

 I love opening up fortune cookies. I actually enjoy opening up one more than eating one. Something about reading what's inside creates a bubble of excitement. 

In the summertime, I went to Panda Express (I know, very authentic Chinese cuisine!) with my mom. I opened up my Chinese fortune cookie, eager to see what was inside. I was going through an open and unknown season of uncertainty but also hope. My fortune read, "The gift of contentment is in your near future". That was nice to receive, I thought. 

Now, I didn't create this blog with the intent to focus solely on Chinese fortune cookies. Though I will say, my sister's envelope from a letter 7 years ago hit the nail on the head when she wrote on the back of the envelope with, " 'A truly creative person vids himself of all self-imposed limitations'- from Chinese fortune cookie I had. " 

Not only are Chinese fortune cookies seen as the symbol of luck and success, but that one spoke to me about how to continue with Chinese language learning after graduating from College with a Minor in the language. That was 7 years ago. The number 7 isn't magical or very special in Chinese culture, 8 actually is. But 7 is pretty close. 

It's actually been a little over 10 years since I officially started learning, of course with a lot of breaks, gaps, and side journeys in between. 

If I'm honest, I actually never thought I would continue with studying and learning Chinese. But I guess I was wrong. This blog will help me do just that! To not only be inspired, motivated and goal minded with Chinese as well as to make some progress and be lighthearted and creative with it. I'm a true creative at heart, so if it's not even just a little interesting or making it fun, then it's easy to get sidetracked. :0

Chinese is considered one of the hardest languages to learn, at least for native English speakers (I don't think of it that way, as some people say- why do you study the hardest languages?) It's because I enjoy and need the challenge, and actually prefer different writing systems. (Sorry Romance languages).

 Furthermore, Chinese feels like part of my identity in ways with not only that I chose to study and learn on my own first and then in college, but also since I started when I was a younger~ early 20's. I've spent my 20's off and on with a number of languages, but Chinese has been and still is my best-spoken language, not to mention one of the most useful languages I've learned or dabbled in. What better reasons to open up these possibilities of learning again? 

So, wish me luck on this adventure of enhancing, embracing and simply enjoying Chinese language learning once again like those 7 + years ago.