Forgotten

But not gone.

I'd rather forgotten about this blog until I saw that someone visited Green Bamboo (the other one) via this blog a couple of days ago. At the moment, this place has lost any vague purpose it might've had. Perhaps I should revive the ethical and philosophical problems again.

So what's been going on? Well, I spent July and the first week of August riding around Chengdu and visiting the sights (although if you want pictures, you'll have to go to Green Bamboo). I spent three weeks in Zhuhai in August doing a TEFL training course. It was a lot of work, especially because I had to do a four-week course in three weeks. Anyway, on the final day I was awarded my certificate, which means I'm now formally qualified to do my job.

It also means that a job in Hong Kong is more likely than it was. I'll be talking to some people about that when I go there next week for the National Day holiday. I'm still undecided whether I should spend two years here in Chengdu (I reasonably like the place) or whether it's time to get away from Mainland China once and for all. This is my sixth year here.

The other thing I spent a lot of time doing over the summer was trying to learn some more Chinese characters. I've also ended up amassing a small collection of character dictionaries which list characters in different styles such as lishu (clerical script), running script, grass script, seal script, metal script and oracle bone script. The last three are the really ancient forms of characters. My favourite script is lishu.

I stumbled across dictionaries of these things when I was in Zhuhai. It was a chance discovery when I noticed that there were dictionaries in the 艺术 section of a bookshop. I suppose I should've expected to find such dictionaries, but such things have never crossed my mind. When I got back to Chengdu and started tracking down various bookshops here, I found that they're not only well-stocked with art books, but also books on calligraphy. I suppose that until now my interest in Chinese hasn't been sufficient to be particularly interested in such matters.

I've also tried my hand at a little calligraphy using a brush, but not surprisingly, without formal instruction, my efforts are clumsy. I know there's a proper way to do this, but I'd need to be taught it.

I've also been trying to broaden my cultural knowledge of China in other ways such as reading stories from Chinese lit. that aren't the four classic novels. I've just read three well-known folk tales, and I bought some albums of 古筝 (gǔzhēng) today. I admit that the purchase was expensive and not exactly successful. Four of the discs are muzak, which really only leaves three that are worth listening to. I also dl'ed a few tracks off the Net via Baidu. I quite like some 古筝 music. Soothing, contemplative, reminiscent of summer breezes through groves of bamboo.