Bulgaria with Noodles

Dear Ryan, Congratulations on the Hangzhou jobs! If it is an American-style school, then I hope that it will pay you both some American-style salaries. Now I am trying to search my memory for all of the things that I wish that I had known BEFORE we went to China... First of all, Mandarin. Yes, Mandarin. You need to be absolutely sure that Mandarin is the language that you (and your children) will come across in China, as there are in fact several (rather different) languages. Cantonese is spoken in Guangzhou and HK, whereas most of mainland China speaks Mandarin. Just to be awkward, the people in Shanghai have their own language. Yes, there are some similarities between these different languages, but you need to be absolutely sure which one you are going to need before you start learning it and you definitely should make a start immediately, as soon as you have finished reading this e-mail! DON'T try to learn all of the characters (there is no alphabet). Mandarin has about

I am very pleased to have an excuse for including some of my old photos of Shenzhen!  Recently a friend of mine told me that Serpentza, a video blogger (or "vlogger") based in Shenzhen, has finally decided that he is going to leave China. He is fed up with living in the Middle Kingdom. Well, I watched the most recent Serpentza video and I thought to myself, “What a twit!”  I used to respect Serpentza a lot because he made a big effort to learn Mandarin, an incredibly difficult language that I never mastered. Well, he did live in China for fourteen years, he made quite a lot of money out of China, in one way or another, and he did get to meet some pretty Chinese girls, so you would think that he might be just a tiny bit grateful. But when he started making videos that said that all Chinese girls are "easy" and then he made some more videos criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, what happened? The CCP was not happy. Wow! What an amazing surprise! Whoever would have

A few months ago I wrote a piece for my blog about learning Mandarin, Character Building . Now I am going to write something about learning Bulgarian. I remember that I had a CD and a little book called Easy Peasy Mandarin . It probably is part of a series: Easy Peasy Brain Surgery , Easy Peasy Rocket Science and Easy Peasy Quantum Mechanics . Well, compared to learning Mandarin, learning Bulgarian really is easy , but then again learning just about any language would be easy, compared to Mandarin. So what makes Bulgarian (relatively) easy? Well, first of all, there is an alphabet. Yes, okay, some of the letters are not the same because an H in Bulgarian is X, whereas an N is an H! The “ya” sound is made by a letter that looks like an R but it is the wrong way round, while the Bulgarian “S” sound is written like a C. While the Bulgarian alphabet is supposed to be based on the Greek letters, some things have been changed a bit over the years. So, yes, the alphabet is a bit of

How about Easy Peasy Brain Surgery? Before I came to China, I bought lots of books and other resources, in order to learn some Mandarin. After all, I had learned French and Latin at school, then Greek and Hebrew at university. Marrying a Russian lady meant trying to learn at least a little Russian, while buying a house and an apartment in Bulgaria has meant that I have even learned some Bulgarian phrases. “So Mandarin is not going to be too tough!” I thought. Yeah, well, we all make mistakes. Mandarin is much, much harder for a westerner to learn than any of the other languages I have come across. There are just no points of contact, zilch similarities. If you know English, then German and French are not so difficult because there are so many German and French words that have found their way into English. Mandarin, however, is not like that.  For a start, there are no singulars and plurals in Mandarin. You have to guess from the context. Then there are the tones. No, I am not

Okay, so it is 5.30am on a Monday morning. It is time to get up. Showering, getting dressed and having breakfast are usually slow-motion action replays, only not so fast. Then, after a twenty-five minute walk along the street and through the park, I arrive at Green Oasis School, also known as GOS. It's a good school in the centre of Futian, the posh central district of Shenzhen. I am now in my fifth and final year as a Year 5 teacher. Of course I cannot speak much Mandarin and I cannot read any at all, but fortunately I have the wonderful services of my assistant or "teaching partner", Miss Yanee. Friday, 15th of June, 2018, will be my last day in the teaching profession and then my wife and I will be returning to Bulgaria for our retirement. We will be leaving just after my 59th birthday, so I will still be a whisker away from being an OAP. The Porter's Lodge, as I quaintly call it Teaching Chinese students is a delight. The nine- and ten-year-olds in my c