Author name: Sapore di Cina

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The Karakorum Highway (Photo Essay)

The Karakoram Highway follows the old Silk Road route between China’s Xinjiang Province and Pakistan’s Gilgit–Baltistan region across the Karakorum. It’s the highest paved international road in the world as the Khunjerab Pass reaches an altitude of 4,693 meters. In September we rented a taxi in Kashgar (I was there with my girl and we …

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Kashgar old town – A glance at the Silk Road (Photo Essay)

Kashgar, which was one of the most important oasis along the Silk Road, is situated at the extreme West of Xinjiang Province, between the Taklamakan Desert and the border with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Even if today has about 400,000 people and its newest neighborhoods are similar to many other Chinese cities, Kashgar features one the …

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How to survive to the crazy Vietnamese traffic (plenty of photos and videos)

While we get on the night bus that will bring us to Hué I look at Jelen and tell her: “I’m happy we are leaving Hanoi. I was craving a bit of peace.” It wasn’t because of the insistence of the street vendors or the screams of the pseudo-backpackers that cross the world to get …

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Chinese Flash Cards Review

Six months of Chinese flashcards’ review: The lessons I learned

Anki’s screenshot: The number of flashcards I reviewed every day in the past six months. Click here to discover what Chinese courses that we recommend at the moment! It’d been six months that I’m studying Chinese in a regular fashion. The idea was not to master the language as fast as I could. This is …

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Ten unconventional habits of Vietnamese (photo stories)

Before arriving in Vietnam I was expecting a country similar to southwest China with less pollution and more scooters. And I was right! No, wait, I’m just joking. There are a lot of differences between China and Vietnam. In this post I would like to underline ten habits of Vietnamese that surprised me (keep in …

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Chinese characters: Remember the Hanzi, a controversial method

Click here to discover what Chinese courses that we recommend at the moment! This post is a review of the method invented by James Heisig, the master of Kanji (the alphabet that Japanese people borrowed from China) and Hanzi, that is the Chinese characters. The introduction of Remember Simplified Hanzi by J. Heisig and T. …

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The advantage of memorizing Chinese characters in a context

Click here to discover what Chinese courses that we recommend at the moment! I’ve already discussed in my plan to learn Chinese how I prefer to rely on the “context” while learning a language. This post tells how, when I started to study Mandarin again some months ago, I was able to fix forever on …

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Travel Lijiang Yunnan

From Lijiang to Lugu Lake: Chronicle of a Hectic Trip

Lijiang: the South door to Tibet. This story tells how instead of getting on the public bus that from Lijiang arrives at Lugu Lake – the homeland of Mosuo people, last matriarchal tribe, – we trusted a crazy driver and reached the lake only after ten hours of vicissitudes. From Dali to Lijiang We leave …

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Chinese Characters

Find out how much of a Chinese newspaper you can understand

Click here to discover what Chinese courses that we recommend at the moment! Two months ago I started to study Chinese (here my plan: How to learn Chinese fast: my (lazy) way) and decided to share my progresses on this blog as an extreme attempt to keep motivated. However, a post only talking about me …

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Anki Flashcards

Anki flashcards: A shortcut for learning Chinese

Click here to discover what Chinese courses that we recommend at the moment! Disclaimer: Even if this post mainly target Chinese learners, the ideas I share are quite general and I believe they hold true for any language. Why should you use flashcards to study Chinese? The use of flashcards involves active recall testing, that …

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Most Livable Cities China

Five Reasons to Hate China (and Five Reasons to Love China)

How to pee on the street… The daily savageries Where do I start from? The Beijingers that every summer wander with the t-shirt rolled-up on the stomach to get some fresh air; the Qingdao people puking in Pijiu Jie (Beer Street); the hygiene (?!) of the restaurants’ kitchens among the draining of dirty waters, garbage …

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