The phrase ‘long time no see’ is one of the rare exceptions where it seems that English has absorbed a little piece of Chinese. In this case, the grammar. The sentence structure of 好久不見 (hao 3 jiu4 bu4 jian4) is quite unlike anything else in the English language, and it has been posited that it actually came from China, although other people think it came from native Indians in North America.

Anyway, why am I writing this? I have been locked up indoors for two days, hiding from Typhoon Jangmi, slowly going crazy… and I decided to get back on the Chinese study horse, after a rest of a month or two. Need to work out some nice ways to get some decent study back in my programme, and the blog was the best approach – so, once again, I present Chinese Burn. Let’s see if I can keep it up a bit better this time.

A map, showing the relative boredom levels of people stuck inside.

On its way to Japan – take me with you!