I mentioned in the last post that I was considering recording some videos of me speaking Chinese.  Well, here’s the first one.  If I do…

Here is a list of Chinese characters (hanzi) I have learnt for the HackingChinese.com character challenge which I blogged about here. 25/2/13 我 你 他…

The fireworks started as my plane was making the final approach to Changsha.  Somebody down below had clearly got wind of my imminent arrival, and…

I’ve returned to England for the winter holiday, and the journey back was much more pleasant than the journey out.  When I tried to check…

So goes the motto of East China Normal University, and I’ve already written a blog post with that title, but I like it so much…

All pictures in this report kindly provided by Evan Offie. Last Saturday I visited Héng Shān (‘Balancing Mountain’), one of ‘The Five Great Mountains‘ of China,…

Sunday was the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional celebration held around the time of the autumn equinox.  The main activity seems to be…

Once I had finally managed to board the plane successfully, the onward flight to Changsha was pleasant enough.  We were informed that the staff of…

It would have been naive to suppose that the six thousand mile journey to the ‘armpit of China’ would be without incident.  (I’ve seen Xiangtan…

Tomorrow I’ll be moving to Hunan province, China, to study Mandarin for a year in Xiangtan University.  I’ll be using this blog to record anything…