Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

In the interim

Looks like I'll have to change the name of my website. Next month I'll be leaving America and heading to Beijing. Once there I plan to study Chinese and look for writing opportunities.

In the meantime I've been trying to prepare for this new excursion, reading more books on China and trying to find more avenues at being a freelancer. I've also been working to keep my Chinese language skills sharp, mainly by reading comic books.

As I child I collected a shoebox full of Dragonball manga. They were my prized possessions and I always enjoyed looking through the pages and watching the fireballs explode from one panel to the next.

At the time I could only guess as to why the characters were fighting since the comics were entirely translated into Chinese. But now I can actually read the dialogue, and understand what's happening. It's funny: I'm 25, and reading what's basically children's books. Hell yeah!

After my experience in Xi'an, my Chinese language skills have improved immensely and now I can reap the benefits. My mom, however, still complains that its not good enough. This happened a few weeks back when my parents were watching TV.

"Michael come here! Watch him speak Chinese," my mom yelled in the house.

I came down from my room to see what was up. On the TV was a program being broadcast all the way from China that teaches people how to speak Mandarin.

My parents have managed to get some Chinese TV channels over the satellite, so they often watch Chinese programs at home. But this particular show they were viewing featured Mark Rowswell, or Da Shan (??) as he's popularly known as in China.

Da Shan is a Canadian, and although he's not really known over here, he happens to be the most famous westerner in all of China. He's done numerous shows in the country, with his claim to fame being that he speaks incredibly good Mandarin, even better than some native Chinese.

It's interesting to watch Da Shan, but it's not like I hadn't seen him before when I was in Xi'an flipping through channels. So once I saw that it was him on the TV, I rolled my eyes and turned back to my room. "I don't want to see this. I've seen him before," I told my parents.

"No, you should watch," my mom said. "You can learn a lot to improve your Chinese. His speaks so well. You aren't as fluent as him."

I sighed, and turned back to my room. One can't help but feel that foreigners who can speak Mandarin can easily amuse and impress anybody. I, however, am the Chinese-American who struggles to learn his native language.