Chinese New Year Holidays (02/2010)

The Lunar New Year is a very important time in Asia, often marked by numerous celebrations and festivals. Taiwan is certainly no exception. The festivals I attended will be the subject of later posts - this one just covers the second week of February.  The sheer sights and sounds surrounding the preparation of his holiday are impressive. The first few photos below reflect merely shopping for snacks to be presented during this time.

During the holiday week itself (starting Feb 15 this year, with the proper evening being Feb 13), most of Taipei supposedly goes back to their respective hometowns, leaving the city a veritable ghost town.  Evidently that was not the case this year as queues and crowds were aplenty.

Having not wanting to have imposed myself to my Taiwanese friends I remained elusive about my New Year's plans, specifically the evening - I decided upon a solemn but reflective dinner at the local 7/11 which turned out to be quite good (as every other business was closed that night).  The next day, was quite nice as I was invited to my professor's house along with her family and some students to enjoy traditional home-cooked Taiwanese food. Sheer joy!

Escaping Taipei was a nightmare along with the considerable rain, so much of the week was spent in parks or hot springs :).

NTNU's Mandarin Training Center/師大的國語中心

First - sorry for the absence of posts... the last several months were quite eventful and I had little time to blog, so now I'll be doing some catchup :).

The NTNU's Mandarin Training Center (國語中心) is one of if not the oldest institute in Mandarin studies for foreigners in the world and that is one of the reasons why I chose to live in Taiwan to study Chinese. Many know this is why I was here, but not what the school itself actually looked like or what the courses entailed.

I decided to stray from the usual path (big surprise) and opted for 1 on 1 instruction with a devoted Chinese professor as I felt this would be the most effective course of action. Three times more expensive, but I progressed  about six times as quickly - cost saved per unit time!

A full time student has to attend 10 hours per week of regular class (or 1:1 class in my case) plus 5 hours per week of large group classes (ranging from movie watching, singing in Chinese, or a discussing special topics such as Chinese kung-fu or traditional medicine) in order to qualify for visa extension and full credit in the course.  As I was not taking regular class and because I left the country often, I didn't need to worry about the group classes as I preferred to converse with my Taiwanese friends for those 5 hours per week instead.

The students that attended 國語中心 were an eclectic lot from around the world - although there weren't as many North Americans as I would have expected, and of those that came, many were from the 'middle' states such as Ohio and Mississippi, or from California [many dot-com refugees]. The vast majority of students actually came from Japan, Korea, or Thailand. It was quite interesting to observe the different kinds of students - one could see English teachers deciding they actually wanted to learn the local language, young students taking a break from undergrad, foreign housewives married to Taiwanese or ex-pat men looking to adjust to Taiwanese life, and the occasional technology entrepreneur. One thing in common is that they were all far more studious than students of other Mandarin schools in the area.

My teacher was a very kind lady in her early 60s who was a devout Christian with a witty sense of humour and great patience in instructing me PROPER Mandarin use - she spoke Beijing standard and constantly told me that learning Chinese is a step-by-step process - you simple cannot treat it like an elevator (i.e. memorizing 100 words a day and hoping that will make me fluent). She was completely right as I find myself forgetting ever so many words.

I will miss 國語中心 and the daily routine surrounding my life there. My final month became too busy and I had to cut down my classes, a decision I am beginning to regret given how precious my time was there.