Wŏ Shìr Zhào Wēi!

Nĭ hǎo, wŏ shìr Zhào Wēi. In other words, Hello, I am Joey! I'm excited to say that not only do I now know how to navigate my way around the pronunciation of this sentence, but I also have a been given a Mandarin name! Since my last post I have bouldered, visited one of Hong Kong's largest street markets, taken advantage of school's Olympic sized pool, saw Snow White and the Huntsman, and had my first Mandarin assessment (each event corresponding to MTWThF, respectively).

Learning to boulder - like rock climbing but on a much smaller wall that requires climbers to complete a sequence

The beginning of Temple St. Market

My first Mandarin quiz went well for the most part. We were quizzed on writing pinyan (shown in the title) and on some basic characters. I could not remember one of the characters, but other than that it was fine. In general I'm not great at writing characters. This language is tough for me. I am tone deaf trying to differentiate between four tones, and I am a terrible artist/drawer trying to craft beautiful characters. It's all good though. I am so glad I am taking the class, a lot of people are willing to help, and the other aspects of the language are actually much easier than Spanish. For example, verbs do not have to be conjugated based on the pronoun. What a relief! It is also nice to tell people I am studying Chinese because they seem to really appreciate when international students (particularly native English speakers) take the time to learn their language since they have been studying ours (as required by their schools) from a young age.

As a quick conclusion I want to give a short description about Hong Kong's relationship to China (as people have been asking and I've learned a lot in my Government and Politics course). Yes, Hong Kong is technically considered a part of China. Prior to 1997 it was a British colony (taken as a strategic location to block to spread of Communism following WWII). In 1997 when the land was given back to Beijing things were so different between the people that the Beijing government granted Hong Kong (and later Macau) the title of Special Administrative Region. This is famously described as "One Country, Two Systems." China was to be united as one country, but the SARs could maintain their previous systems. Thus they have separate currencies, do not strictly censor, and are allowed to be capitalist. Some rights not afforded to the SARs are anything dealing with national policies or defense. There is much debate as to whether or not mainland has kept its promise to have one country, two systems and many scholars predict that Amendment 31 (which grants this status) will be dissolved by 2047 and the regions will be forced to adhere to Beijing's regulations. It is a very controversial topic, and I am excited to learn more, but hopefully that clears things up a little.