Actually, I don't like so much to live in Beijing, because it's sometimes too stressful. There are just too many people and too many noises here.

Everybody looks so busy. And so do I. We have no time to care about others and we have no time to really enjoy our life.

The air is not clean enough, nor is the water. We are not sure about the quality of the things we eat. 

I would really like to live in a smaller city like Lijiang in Yunnan if I could choose. But I can't until I get retired. At least it seems so to me at the moment. And that's the problem. 

And it's so difficult to make friends here as a Chinese. I say so because it will be much easier for a foreigner for people here are kinder to a foreigner, especially to a white person. Maybe that's just my feeling though.

Anyway I wish I could enjoy more. I am just so tired.

Here, I am going to give you another tip for learning a foriegn language.

The other day I wrote that I learned my English and Japanese mainly through reading aloud. Apart from that, what I did more than many other language learners is writing. I wrote all kinds of compositions. For example, letters, essays, reports, papers and stories, etc.

Again, I wrote more in Japanese and I am trying to write more in English now.

Reading aloud can help you improve your pronunciation, your intonation, and most of all, the sense of the language, while writing can help you deepen your knowledge of the language. 

So I would suggest the students of English to start a blog in English, and those of Chinese, in Chinese. And we correct each other, when we feel like doing so.

At that time, no one wanted to be a middle school teacher in a rural area. We did stay in the big cities but so did all the students of the English Department. I can still speak English but most of my classmates have almost forgotten their English.

And what's worse is that when people were allowed to study abroad, the students of English all went to the US or the UK and we had no other choice but Japan, and the Japanese people think you must be the less intelligent ones since you could only study in Japan.

They believe the most intelligent students would study in America or Europe and that's what the most intelligent Japanese students did when Japan was on her way to the modernization.

(to be continued)

As I mentioned in Part 1, all my classmates had applied for English Department but were put into the Japanese Department without knowing why. Some of those Shanghai students who had seen the elephant went to the dean to ask to be put into the English Department because they knew that English is more widely used.

But the dean told them that learning Japanese would ensure them to stay in the big cities because all the job positions concerning Japanese were in the big cities, and that if you majored in English, you would only be able to speak one foreign language, but if you majored in Japanese, you would be able to speak two because you there still would be an advanced English course for us, and that if you majored in English, you might be sent to a rural area to be a middle school teacher when you graduated.

(to be continued)

I found that I haven't really written HOW but WHY I learned English and Japanese.

Now I'm really going to write HOW.

It's very very easy. I just READ ALOUD for not less than 2 hours every day. I think I did even more when I was studying Japanese at the University. So my Japanese is far better than my English. Well, I lived in Japan for 12 years. But you know, not everybody who lived in Japan for 12 years can speak very good Japanese. And I think that's because they don't read aloud everyday. So they speak broken Japanese forever.

It seems that there are many Chinese young people who want to improve their English here. You can try my way if you don't want to speak broken English forever. Let's make progress together.

Good luck!

I was 15 years old when I recieved the admission notice for the Department of Japanese of Shanghai International Studies University. I didn't know why because I had applied for the Department of English.

But, I thought, OK, I'm still young,I would like to learn a new language. 

So, without any hesitation, I checked in. I found that allmost all my classmates were just like the same with me. They applied for English, but were put into the Japanese Department without knowing why.

Later we learned that it was the goverment's idea to make more students learn Japanese because a friendship agreement was signed between China and Japan the year before.

That meant the interchange between the two countries would be much more frequent and more diversified. And along with that, countless interpreters, translaters and researchers concerning Japan and its culture would be needed. That's why the Japanese Department became the second largest department of the University.

But we still didn't know why and how WE were picked. Not even now.

(to be continued)

Later my parents told me that she had mentioned to them that I was a language talent.

She even recommended me to her husband who's also an English teacher of the third famous high school in the county. 

So her husbnad, Mr.Lao Zhi Ding, whose brother-in-law Zhu Rong Ji later became the prime minister of China, came to visit when he heard that I was admitted to the most famous high shool, and persuaded my parents to let me apply for his school. 

At that time, so-called good students were all trying to become scientists. People believed the whole world would embrace you if you did well in science. Naturally,all my science teachers thought I would major in science some day.And so did I.

But Mr.Lao's visit changed my life.He was so enthusiastic that my parents couldn't just turn him down.I finally entered his school and got into his English class. 

A year later,I was sitting in the classroom at Shanghai International studies University,one of the top two universities that specialize in teaching foreign languages in China.

But I was studying Japanese instead of English. So,next time I will write about how I learned Japanese.

(Fin)

I began to learn English when I was 13 years old. I was a middle school student.The Culture Revolution was just over and the university entrance examination was restarted that year.All the young people were studying hard so as to pass the examination.

Although English was not a required subject at that time,we already had English lessons. Our first English teacher was an elegant woman. Her voice was so attractive that English sounded extremely beautiful to me. 

Many people thought that she was kind of arrogant,but that's not true. She was just too elegant to be loose enough to get along with the people in that little town. 

Anyway I liked her and I could feel she payed more attention to me than to other students.

(to be continued)