[*DISCLAIMER* The story is original, but I do not have any rights to the characters, they are property of HOYOVERSE [Genshin Impact - Video Game], also may contain mild spoilers, go play a game first.]
Forsythia Bush by Phil Gennuso Arts
bright forsythia bushcelebrant of springherald of new beginnings
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Yesterday I finally saw some Forsythia bushes blooming alongside some of the roads! Well, that does it! Daffodils, Crocus, and now the bright Forsythia bush, Spring is officially here to stay!
For me, the crown jewel is the sweet Magnolia Blossom, but that is a…
And with this update we are finishing chapter 23 💁♀️✨
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[*DISCLAIMER* The story is original, but I do not have any rights to the characters, they are property of HOYOVERSE [Genshin Impact - Video Game], also may contain mild spoilers, go play a game first.]
sometime in the spring of this year i kept encountering the idea on other social media that chinese is impossible to learn for europeans, that it's too difficult, that no westerner can learn or truly understand it, and in combination with a mainland friend visiting and telling me the ancient chinese etymology of some basic characters (and the 白人饭 Lunch of Suffering meme) i got fed up/enchanted and did the extremely mentally healthy thing of teaching myself basic mandarin, through about ~april to july. at some points in may i remember coming home from work, scribbling characters in my mandarin notebook over and over, doing chores, going to sleep, and repeating the cycle. a taiwanese friend on here helped out with a lot (it's much, much easier if you have chinese friends to help you, however, i am really not about traditional, although i admit it's more beautiful) and baptized me with a chinese name.
i don't know mandarin, and at this point a lot of the characters i'd learned have faded from memory, but i insist that it's not actually difficult to learn chinese (up to a point— maybe HSK 3 or 4 is where it gets really difficult). in fact, learning chinese is really, really fun.
the difficulty lies in the fact that you have to do it every single day for at least an hour, probably for more (i spent pretty much all my free time on it, but there was something not normal going on with me then). you'd think, isn't that the case for every language? yet i don't remember doing daily french like that, and i consider some aspects of french conjugation/russian grammar much more difficult than what chinese throws at you at similar difficulty levels (good luck with motion verbs, non-slavic speakers). i found learning characters to be very, very easy. they're all distinct. if you learn them together with their etymology, looking at ancient chinese and how they developed along with associated idioms, it's endlessly rewarding. at least in the early levels, there's a bit of a system to how characters and words come together and increase in complexity—sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's cute. it's a breath of fresh air to start reading even basic sentences and idioms in a language so entirely different from anything you've experienced before. many people say speaking chinese is easier than reading/writing: in my experience, that's false. i barely started getting a grasp on the tonal system (my goal was to get to HSK 1 solely through written chinese); i remember listening to the same 2 minute audio clip of two people exchanging phone numbers for half an hour or something once before getting everything right. people say "chinese doesn't have grammar" but that's not true, because otherwise it won't be a language at all, though you don't have to learn any conjugations, declensions, etc. at HSK 1-2 you just throw a modifier/particle into a sentence and you're good to go.
the other main difficulty besides tones is that imo chinese culture is borderline impenetrable if you want to have a genuine stab at it (but for this you don't, necessarily, need to learn mandarin). you can learn HSK 1-2 in a few months or a semester, but it will take you years to genuinely understand the cultural context—there truly is no context clue or familiar idea you can latch on to, as opposed to when learning a european language/history, or even turkish, arabic, persian; there is nothing in common here, and if you guess, you'll probably wind up wrong. it all makes me think of how many journalists/experts get russia wrong: i now firmly do not believe a word of what people write about asia unless i find the author knows the language
(I think they meant 9,462,300 and 3,298,600 for the population.)
太阳岛酒家 Sun Island Restaurant
第一百货商店 No. 1 Commodity Shop
教育书店 Education Bookstore
国际机场候机楼 Passengers' Waiting Floor at International Airport
松花江畔 The riverside of Songhua River
中央大街步行街 Walking Street in Central Street
雪乡 Snow Town
冰灯 Ice lights
雪雕 Snow carving
冬泳 Swimming in winter
The back of the first postcard
Sorry about the weird lines. I thought the scanner was broken, but when I tried a personal photo, it came out fine. It must be something about these postcards.
Gao smiled as he looked at his mate, sweet (name) pregnant and sleepy as they walked through the gardens in the dead of night.
"Why can't he sleep when I sleep" (name) said with a sigh as the black haired alpha smiled "he's excited to be in the world and be loved by a wonderful Omega" Gao said kissing (name)s temple "well can get safe the excitement for daylight hours?" (Name) said with no bite as he let out a yawn "I'm too tired to go back..." (Name) said ready to nap on a palace bench but Gao wasn't having that at all, lifting the Omega up into his arms.
"I will not allow my sweet Omega and future pup sleep outside" he said seriously as he carried the Omega to their room, (name) snuggling into his arms as the black haired alpha hummed a soft lullaby "your humming is soothing him..." (Name) whispered as they returned to the bedroom, Gao gently placing him on the bed "then I suppose I should hum more often" Gao whispered kissing his belly as (name) fell asleep once more.