Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

The much anticipated holiday season is finally around the corner. Visiting families and friends, travelling around the world, or staying home receiving all the guests. Holidays can be hectic. What about learning Chinese?

Sometimes I have my breakfast in a restaurant which is right next to my office building. This is a typical Hong Kong restaurant where you see locals most of the time. The menu is usually placed underneath the glass top of the table. You sit down, you read the menu, and you order your food. In this restaurant, most of the service staff look quite senior in age. And Cantonese is the default language in this restaurant.

In his Neither Here Nor There, Bill Bryson briefly talked about his French learning experience. It is very funny. Also, from my point of view, very sad. 

It happens that, when some students want to say something, they find that they can’t. They are trying very hard to translate everything from English to Chinese, word by word. As a result, they either get stuck, or miscommunicate themselves. I have seen it quite often during consultations or when talking to someone at a gathering.

Sharp eyed readers have noticed that a new and handsome logo have replaced the old one on MSL Master’s website. That’s right. A new logo was launched on Oct 10, 2019. Hello, new logo!

September 12th, 2019, was Qian Xuantong (钱玄同)’s 132th birthday. In 1923, when he was 36 years old, he proposed to simplify Chinese characters, which was the first step to his ultimate goal of making Chinese into a phonetic writing system. He wanted to abolish the Chinese characters.

This year’s Mid-Autumn festival is only two weeks away, and it is a time for Chinese learners around the world to take a break in their regular study routines and to enjoy some of the festivities. Let’s remind ourselves that learning Chinese is also about learning Chinese culture and about participating in the cultural activities. And you don’t have to be in China to enjoy Mid-Autumn festival.

This September and October, for people who are interested in learning Mandarin Chinese, two great introductory Chinese courses are starting soon. Don’t miss it!

Learning popular songs is a great way to learn Mandarin Chinese. We like beautiful songs. They are part of Chinese culture, and can help students practice pronunciations and learn new words. 

I recently had a trip to Okinawa. One day, I got caught in the rain and had to spend a couple of hours in a coffee house, where other tourists suffered the same fate. There was a nice couple from Germany. It was their first trip to Japan and they found it really hard to get around or to order food, because they did not speak Japanese. I do not speak Japanese either, yet for me Japan is not a hard place to get around. The reason is simply because I can read Chinese characters.

This April, MSL Master entered its 17th year. 

In April 2003, when MSL was first started, I only had one goal, which was to provide the best Mandarin Chinese courses for non-Chinese speakers in Hong Kong. My criteria was simple, that students are able to speak Mandarin quickly and fluently on topics related to daily life and work. 

One of the hardest working students at MSL Master, Mr Hui, recently completed the entire MSL Master Mandarin courses. He started from Mandarin Express Intro Level A years ago and finished at Intermediate Level B.

Upon “graduation”, he had some thoughts on learning Mandarin, especially on learning the last textbook, Mandarin Express Intermediate Level B. He wrote a long review “Learning Mandarin through appreciation of Chinese classics”.

Chinese New Year is here. Every part of the city is once again basked in a Chinese deco, the background Chinese music keeps the spirit up, and shops and restaurants are busy promoting special offers. All promise that the year of pig is going to be a prosperous one. 

This is a time when food occupies a center part of people’s mind. What to eat and what good fortune one is going to have are issues dealt by many. It is quite a common knowledge, possibly worldwide, that at Chinese New Year food is highly correlated with auspicious meanings. Fish signifies surplus. Chicken is for good luck, and rice cake represents progress year on year. And those finger licking sugar coated lotus roots carry a meaning of plenitude.

Knowing which food carries what fortune is a partial understanding of food culture at Chinese New Year. What food really does is to bring people together, to reproduce an harmonious political and social environment, a belief deeply ingrained in Chinese mainstream culture and tradition.

Learning Chinese can causes lots of anxieties, for both teachers and students. As the power structure goes, I suppose students suffer more. There are so many defeated students out there, more than defeated teachers. So this post is about students.

Great music, wonderful food, and a fabulous opportunity to reveal the latest Chinese learning materials at ALA annual conference, those are the things we are excited about.

The ALA Annual conference serves as the top resource for public, private, and school libraries in the United States, providing a great platform for education solution companies to showcase their services and products. And this year, New Orleans is the host city of this conference. This is the right place to be for MSL Master. Apart from our textbooks and teacher’s manuals, we have got something new to show to the world.