你是谁？

Hello, Bonjour and 你好. This blog (currently still under construction) will serve to document my 10 month stay in Beijing from this August onwards. And no, I’m not going for the Olypmics! Yes, I will just miss them. No I don’t mind. 

I study Chinese at SOAS, which is one of the colleges of the University of London. Whilst its normally associated with hippies, white guys with dreadlocks and socialists from supportive middle-class backgrounds, there is also a handful of us courageous enough to tackle learning some of the world’s most exciting and challenging languages. If you don’t know much about the pain involved in learning Mandarin you might want to check out this article. However, few of my 同学 (coursemates) regret choosing what is a beautiful and complex language that’s so invaluable to the future.

I’ll not only be using this site to document my own experiences, I’ll try to write and incorporate articles on specific subjects written by my friends and coursemates who are going through the same thing. Having spent a year running a design studio, I have a particular interest in the visual cultures of Beijing and the East in general (check out my studio’s tokyo blog for previous studies of this). Additionally, I’ve had an interest in Politics and foreign affairs for years (mainly due to an overly-inquisitive mind and a Human Rights activist Father) and plan to pursue a career in Diplomacy upon graduation.

So, expect Art, Politics, Music and antics. No doubt there’ll be a combination of the four at some point.

I’ll also try and write a section of the site in Chinese as part of a language exercise. As the year progresses, I should hopefully be able to translate some of my own articles and posts into Chinese with the eventual aim to create a fully bi-lingual magazine on modern Chinese sub-culture, Politics (within reason) and the arts.

the authors

SOAS student at BNU. Likes other acronyms such as the UN, MSF and UK.

A frequent Chinese blogger on Culture and Touris, Richard was recently featured on the BBC regarding online social networking in China. www.richardhong.com

A SOAS student and China veteran having spent 6 months living in Shenyang in North East China before starting the course.