There's a range of new HSK exams coming out in 2005 - I've written up what little I know here.

Some time ago I mentioned reading and enjoying Wang Xiaobo. I had a shot at translating one of his essays into English, and the result is below. Credit is also due to everyone who helped over at Chinese-forums.com - if you follow that link you'll see an earlier version, the current one with notes, and [...]

Finally got around to doing more on the HSK Vocab Database today - description of what's new here. Time for beer now, as I've just spent far too long trying to correct errors in the database and my eyes hurt. And beer will help.

How chuffed am I? Way back in 1998 I started learning Chinese from elementary school readers (I was teaching in an elementary school at the time). One of the stories I read was the suprisingly titled 'Karl Marx Loves Children'.
I was reminded of this story while writing this post for Chinese-forums.com, and I managed [...]

Went snowboarding at the weekend. Never been skiing or snowboarding previously, and I'm not sure I enjoyed it enough to go back and do it again, but it was good to try.
It was out at Nanshan. There hasn't actually been any snow yet, and they only had artificial snow on a couple of the [...]

Driver #205476, 'fessed up when he realised that he'd missed the exit from the 2nd ring road, stopped the meter at 18Y and drove me round the long way at no extra charge, instead of pretending that the long way isn't a long way as most drivers do when they miss the exit. Accepted a [...]