war in China

From a recent article in the English section of the Taipei Times:

The Pentagon said in a statement: “On March 8, 2009, five Chinese vessels shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity to USNS Impeccable, in an apparent coordinated effort to harass the US ocean surveillance ship while it was conducting routine operations in international waters.”

Highlighting mine. This sound to me just like what I've heard about Mainland Chinese people's driving behavior!

After have read so much about China, I will finally go visit the Mainland a couple days from now. Stay tuned for first-hand reports!

PS: I don't think that I will go sailing, but I wouldn't miss out on an opportunity if it would present itself. :-)

PPS: On China's military expansion rhetoric:

“They claim Taiwan, obviously. They claim the Senkaku Islands, which are between Taiwan and Japan. Japan also has sovereignty over those at the moment. They claim the Paracels, which Vietnam claims. They claim the Spratlys, which Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia claim.”
“They claim lost territories basically wherever you can find a piece of Chinese porcelain from 500 years ago,” [Democratic Senator Jim] Webb said.

a method to divide and conquer Chinese characters

Writing this other lengthy post helped me to sort out my thoughts on Chinese characters and increase my understanding. Shortly after, I had a mental break-through: as many characters are composed of other characters it seems that two different methods of learning are necessary: one method to memorize the shape of a non-composed (atomic) character; and another wholly different method to memorize which parts make up a composed character. Some of the recurring parts of characters are not characters themselves and they make learning harder, because you have to learn the part while also learning the composition. The key insight is to factor out those parts, give them invented names and memorize them seperatly!


This idea revolutionized my learning of the Chinese script. While the thousands of characters still remain arbitrary, there is at least an optimal, non mind-numbing method to memorize them. Don't look for a deeper meaning; just decompose and memorize along the actual shape of the character. Realizing this and using it in practice I also realized how uneffective the "etymological method" of teaching the characters is: first of all, you learn sometimes have to learn components of a character that used to be components in earlier forms, but are not any more represented in the current form. This way, you first learn a wrong character and then add the correct, modern version without any further story to memorize the modern component. You only know that it is somewhat similar and simpler than the original one, but that's not precise enough to memorize it. It is especially ridiculous when comparing it to the length and elaboration of the story explaining the old, now wrong version of the character. Furthermore, the etymylogical approach does not help to memorize small differences between characters which are very similar by appearance, but have a completely different ethymology. I already complained how this approach makes it hard to locate a character in a dictionary. It's a trial and error process that's completely unnecessary: character lookup should be based on shape alone, since that's all that the user has when he needs this function at most!


Right when I had this insight to split my learning into memorizing of basic shapes and memorizing of of compositions, I thought that I should turn my notes into an interactive website just like zhongwen.com. Using Unicode it is technically trivial now to display characters on the web and typing them up on a website with links is not much harder then typing them into a notes file as I currently do it.


I had already started to plan the design of such a website when I thought that my idea being so obviously great, somebody might have had the same idea already. And indeed! No long websearch was necessary to reveal the wonderful book Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters I bought it, and I really like it. This book takes the only reasonable approach: no matter how insane and complex the Characters are, just look at what's being given --the character shape-- and memorize it using the most efficient approach. If I should ever seriously try to learn the Chinese script, I will do it using this book. And I will use the same method for learning characters which are not in the book -- using zhongwen.com and other sources to research the character components.

Taiwanese encounters

Unexpected rain led to three unconventional encounters. Here comes the summary.

一。I was packing up Bunny to take the MRT when suddenly somebody held the bike for me, so that I could easily wrap it up. I since I was bent down to hold I bag, I couldn't even see who was helping me. When we were done, the young man started a conversation with me (the typical where are you from... how long are you staying...) and after the most typical things were said he offered me to exchange contact information, so I can call him when I need any other help in Taiwan. He said that he might go to Germany at some point and would like to know somebody there. So this somebody would be me. He told me that he just graduated from school and wants to try to work in several foreign countries. He was really very nice and so we exchanged addresses.

二。In the MRT the train windows were steamed from inside since the rain cooled the outside down. A girl was drawing Tictactoe on the window. I drew a grid next to hers and we played a game. Of course it was a draw. After a short pause, I decided to start a conversation like Taiwanese do and asked "How old are you?". We had a short conversation and she couldn't guess where I was from. Unfortunately she got off at the next stop. Sometimes it is so interesting to talk to people, but unfortunately not many people offer such a nice ice-breaker as Tictactoe.

三。Off the MRT it was still raining a lot. I saw a man waiting at the MRT exit, waiting for the rain to subside I thought. What hope did he have that it will end soon? I asked myself. Maybe if he is waiting I should wait to. In great conversation mood I greeted him and asked: "Where do you have to go?" and another nice conversation followed. He told me many things of which I understood some. He said that he expected the rain to lessen in half an hour (but now, 90 minutes later, it still seems to be raining). After twenty minutes I decided to go and brave the rain and he parted, too.

I never had so much smalltalk with strangers on any day in my life before. But here in Taiwan it's really interesting. People are not the same as home and it's a way to get to know them. When I am waiting somewhere where other people are, I am always debating with myself to start a conversation or not. At home (be it Germany, France, or Canada) I usually don't do this kind of smalltalk and I am usually happy that way. Here it's different...