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Skritter Review: Learn how to write Chinese characters

March 25, 2013 by 16 Comments
 

UPDATE: If you buy a Skritter‘s subscription through one of the links on this page and uses the coupon “FURIO3952″ you get a 20% discount for the first six months.

What is Skritter?

Skritter is, in my opinion, the best way to learn how to write Chinese characters.

Since I started to use it ten minutes per day (about two months ago) I’ve learned how to write 492 characters and 169 words (composed by two or three characters). I’m also learning the meaning and pronunciation of those characters.

Why do you need a software to write characters?

If you watched the video at the beginning of this post you already know that the software is pretty cool.

But the real reason for using Skritter is the algorithm behind the software, which allows you to remember more than the 90% of the characters that you are studying (in the photo below you can see that in the last 30 days I was able to remember the 92.9% of the characters that I studied, [Read more...]

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Tips for moving to China to work or study

March 18, 2013 by 2 Comments
 

moving to China

In this article I’ll explain what kind of VISA you need to work or study in China, how to spot an honest employment agency and which are the most common ways to find a job in the Middle Kingdom.

What kind of VISA do you need to work in China?

The only way to legally work in China is to get a Z VISA (working VISA) that must be transformed in a resident permit within fifteen days from the day you arrived in China.

In order to obtain a Z VISA you need to pass several medical examinations and have a Foreign Expert Certificate released by the local government. You can’t ask the certificate by yourself;the firm that is going to hire you should get it and send it to you. [Read more...]

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On celebrating Chinese New Year with a Chinese family

March 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
 

Capodanno cinese

This article was written by Marta Lovisolo, who studies in an high-school at Nanjing since September 2012. She lives with a Chinese family so, when she refers to her dad, mom, sister and so on she’s actually referring to the family that is hosting her.

Click here to read my interview to Marta, an insider point of view on the life of Chinese high-school students.

But I stop here. Let’s Marta do the talk!

Getting to the village

[Read more...]

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Hacking Chinese Characters Challenge

March 4, 2013 by 10 Comments
 

learn Chinese characters

UPDATE: If you buy a Skritter‘s subscription through one of the links on this page and uses the coupon “FURIO3952″ you get a 20% discount for the first six months.

Procrastination is a dangerous animal. And it bites me quite often.

I’ve known about the Chinese Characters Challenge promoted by Olle Linge at Hacking Chinese since January.

However it took me a month to join the challenge. Well, I finally did.

What is the challenge about?

It’s all about learning how to write Chinese characters in an efficient way.

While Chinese people spend a great deal of time learning how to write characters by repetition since the primary school, a person that starts with Mandarin when he’s older shouldn’t follow this tactic.

It’s boring and it takes ages to learn how to write characters this way. Modern technology blessed us with [Read more...]

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Ode to slow travel. And to the reasons you could do it too

February 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
 

Slow Travel

“Instead of wonder WHEN your next vacation is, maybe you need to setup a life you don’t need to escape from,” Seth Godin

February is the best month to visit Bangkok. Forget the forty Celsius degree and the tropical storms. In winter the sky is clear and there are thirty degree at most.

I go out, sit in in a bar just in front of a pedestrian street, order a breakfast with eggs, mango juice and coffee. I plug in my Vaio 11.3 inches, switch it on and start to work.

I get lost among the web of Gothic tattoos of the Norwegian tourists and the screams of the waitresses wrapped up on succinct dresses that unveil small breasts and a backside that will never know the taste of cellulite.

I reckon I arrived ten days ago and I almost know nothing about this town. I spend most of my time on this terrace, writing and programming a website that will soon be [Read more...]

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Food from Dongbei (North East China) – Photo Essays

February 18, 2013 by 13 Comments
 

food from China

The Dongbei is the North East region of China.

Even if people tend to associate China with rice, this isn’t exact. While in the South of the country the staple food is rice, in the North is wheat. Especially in the North East, they also eat a lot of potatoes and corn.

Dongbei restaurants

The restaurant from Dongbei are within my favorite Chinese restaurants (perhaps at the same level of Xinjiang’s restaurants).

They are quite cheap and you will always get plenty of food. Every time I go to eat “Dongbei,” I end up eating too much and blaming myself to be such a greedy pig. But let’s check the photos of Dongbei food! [Read more...]

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The night Sally lost her job, her home and her savings

February 11, 2013 by 8 Comments
 

The crisis of Wenzhou

Wenzhou, July 2011

Sally is a twenty four year old international broker who used to work for one of the small textile factories of Wenzhou when the financial crisis hit the Zhejiang Province of China.

The night she lost her job, the police arrived at the factory and knocked on the dorm’s doors, where the brokers and the other workers lived. They started at the first floor, where the immigrant weavers from Sichuan Province stayed, and then went to the second, where the “well-off” brokers lived.

“Where is Li?” shouted out a police officer that was looking for the boss of the factory “You have to go, we’re seizing everything here!”

Confusion. Nobody understood what the hell was going on. Sally, who wasn’t [Read more...]

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A method that you should avoid in order to learn Mandarin fast

February 4, 2013 by 5 Comments
 

Remember the hanzi

Want to know the best method to learn how to write Chinese characters? Click Here!

“There aren’t many actual shortcuts. Things that look like shortcuts are actually detours (disguised as less work),” Seth Godin.

Today I want to talk about Remember the Hanzi, an alternative method to remember Chinese characters.

If you never heard about it, I suggest you to read my review of the method before to keep reading this article.

Seven reasons for which you should avoid Remember the Hanzi (if your goal is to speak Mandarin as fast as you can)

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Why the hell I’m going back to Shanghai?

January 28, 2013 by 9 Comments
 

In February 2012 I was back to Pudong airport. I was coming from my hometown, in Sardegna, after the holiday of Spring Festival.

In Sardegna as usual there was the sun, the sky was blue and nobody ever heard of 2.5 PM particles.

Instead, the air of Shanghai was highly polluted and, as usual, it was pouring down.

“Why the fuck I’m back to China?” was my first thought.

But it was a rhetoric question. Both my job and my [Read more...]

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What there is on my backpack when I travel around Asia?

January 21, 2013 by 3 Comments
 

my backpackMy luggage during my three weeks in Xinjang.

One of the questions that I receive from the readers that are coming to China is:

“What the hell should I put on my backpack?”

My answer usually is:

“Unless you are planning to climb the Everest, the same things that you would bring to any other place. Just remember that the Chinese winter is cold, so bring a couple of warm clothes.”

Today I want to share what I bring when I travel around China or South East Asia and how I organize my stuff.

p.s. This is also what I would bring to America, Africa or Oceania.

How do I travel?

I always travel with a 70 liters Ferrino backpack ( the grand-parent of this one) that I bought in 2000 (yes, it’s indestructible!) and a smaller backpack North Face that I bought in 2011.

In the sequel I will call [Read more...]

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