2015 China

23 March, Tangkou to Shanghai
Blue Mountain Youth Hostel 200CNY

Mandarin is the official language of China and the most widely spoken of all Chinese dialects. “With close to 850 million speakers, Mandarin Chinese is by far the world’s largest language ... Every syllable in Mandarin Chinese has a pitch that is an integral part of its pronunciation ... The romanization system adopted by the government of the People’s Republic of China, called Pīnyīn, represents tones by diacritical marks over vowels. Thus, for Mandarin which has four tones, the syllable ma can be written in four ways ... tones make a difference in the meaning of these otherwise identical syllables ... mā       ‘mother’ / má ‘hemp’ / mă ‘horse’ / mà ‘scold’ ... Foreign words and concepts are adopted by creating new compound words that translate the concept behind them ... the word for computer is diànnao, ‘electric brain’, the word for telephone is diànhuà, literally ‘electric speech’”. (aboutworldlanguages.com). There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, most seldom used today ... For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you need only 1,000 to 3,500 characters ... Only!

A six-hour journey by bus brought us to Shanghai; and two Metros transported us directly from the South Shanghai bus station to the Blue Mountain Youth Hostel. Shanghai’s Metro comprises several lines, services much of the city, is clean, efficient, colour-coded, well-signposted and a pleasure to use. At the hostel, a young woman showing me to the laundry told me that she just loves “old women from foreign countries”. I thought she was starting a general conversation, then realised she was referring to me! Why? Because unlike old Chinese ladies, old foreigners “enjoy life and are always smiling”.