My Chinese Nana

As I was writing my last post, I thought it would be nice to share some photos of my Chinese Nana who has in part inspired my love of China and Mandarin.

This is my Nana, Gladys McGargill, a few years ago on her 80th birthday. She was born in Australia, spent a few years in China, and then the family moved back to Australia for good. Nana spoke English and Mandarin when she was little but when they moved back to Australia, her father did not allow them to speak Mandarin anymore because they needed to do their best to fit into Australian society. This meant that Nana didn't remember any Mandarin...I actually know more than she did as an adult.

Here are a few cute photos of her when she was very young.

This is Nana's family. She is the girl on the far left. Apparently my great grandfather was a Chinese herbalist both in China and Australia. He had a shop (not sure if it would be called a shop, maybe practice, clinic??) in Little Bourke St. in Melbourne.

This is Nana with her two sisters. She is on the far right.

Here are Nana and her sisters on her wedding day when she married my grandfather, Alan Muir.

Nana travelled to China with her sisters about 20 years ago. Here are a couple of photos from her trip. I was about 8 when she went and always treasured the gifts she bought back for me. I even kept the wrapping paper for years. haha She bought me a beautiful pink, silk Chinese brocade jacket and an embroidered handbag. I still have them. :-)

This is my mum, Nana and I on my wedding day. 

This is Nana with her four daughters on her 80th birthday. My mum is second from the right.

Well, that's my Nana. She passed away a couple of years ago and I always wished I could have known more about her earlier life. In the last year before she died, I remember her telling some stories about when she lived in Ballarat in Victoria as a teenager and the things she and her sisters did. It was fascinating to hear how my great grandfather travelled into Melbourne from Ballarat each week and other funny stories about going to the theatre. I also had the opportunity of living in Melbourne for a few years and got to spend a little more time with Nana's sisters and my other Chinese relatives. I really enjoyed my time down there and got to attend a few big Chinese banquets which was a lot of fun. (I was particularly thrilled one time when we went to a restaurant that had Jay Chou music videos playing! You don't get that in Queensland! haha) It was great being able to try more authentic Chinese foods and be a part of my extended Chinese family. 

So Maybe I'm A Little Crazy...

I have this crazy dream that I would one day LOVE to be a Mandarin teacher in a primary school in Australia. Now this is crazy for a few reasons.

1. My proficiency is nowhere near good enough. (In my opinion...and I'm working on this!)
2. Although I try my best, who knows really how good my pronunciation is??? (Also working on this!)
3. I've never even been to China. (I'm working on this too!)
4. I'm not a native Chinese speaker. (Well, my Nana is Chinese so technically I'm part Chinese...not that you'd ever be able to tell!)

Now 3 of those problems I can work on. And I do have a teaching degree so I'm qualified to be a primary school teacher. But it still feels like a crazy dream. I'm sure any Chinese person would be cringing reading this...that some random Australian wants to teach Mandarin, their language! But no matter how much time goes by or how long I spend trying to figure out what I want to do with myself, I always come back to wanting to teach young children Mandarin. It's the ONLY thing I get excited about when I try to figure out what I want to do.

I have absolutely LOVED teaching my boys to speak Mandarin and use it as part of our daily lives in our own home. I also thoroughly enjoyed helping out other students in my chinese class. They often didn't understand what we were learning or doing until I explained it to them.

So, I have a bit of a long term plan. The plan is to keep learning Mandarin on my own and as soon as I can, with a tutor or in a class. Then after my husband does his first year or two of primary school teaching and gets fully registered, we hope to go and live in China for a couple of years (this will hopefully be about 2015) which will give us all a wonderful opportunity to learn the language and experience the culture. Then, unless we just love China so much we don't want to leave, (which could be a possibility lol), we'll move back to Australia and I can apply to be a Mandarin teacher in the Australian public schools system.

My dream does seem somewhat more possible with the very recent push for all Australian primary schools to offer an Asian language (one being Mandarin) to every grade by 2025. This means there will be a much greater demand for LOTE teachers and more jobs available.

Anyway, we will see what happens. In the meantime, I'm really getting back into using ProVoc to help me remember characters. It's amazing how quickly they can come back after doing a few drills and I LOVE how customisable it is.

Lets hope I look back on this post one day and am able to say, "I finally achieved my dream!"

I Like Chinese Website and Videos

I've had quite a break from posting here. It's been a busy past few months with the arrival of Sam on November 14th and getting used to having 2 kids. We are all adjusting well and Max has started kindy this year so I get 5 days a fortnight with just Sam and I...and Sam sleeps heaps so it's pretty much a day to myself. :-)

Here's a photo of Sam from a few days ago. He was 3 months old yesterday! He somehow managed to inherit beautiful olive skin from my Nana who is Chinese. :-) He's the complete opposite in colouring to Max who has very white skin and strawberry blonde hair! (But I still think they're both gorgeous!)

I've been talking in Chinese to Sam whenever I remember as I would really love to see what impact this will have on him as he learns to speak and later, to learn Chinese. I recently read an article talking about how research has shown that long before babies can speak, they can understand words we say and associate them to an object or action, so this has really got me keen again to keep working on my Chinese and keep it up with the boys. Max's favourite CD is still our Chinese songs CD from Better Chinese and we often sings songs together with Sam.

This morning, I stumbled across some great short videos on youtube from a website, www.i-like-chinese.com/. Most of the videos are only about 1 minute long and teach you the words for common objects and other common words such as friend, thank you, China etc. Most videos look at 4 words and include a picture, the characters, and pinyin. This is perfect for me as I don't have too much time now and am really only focussing on individual words or very short phrases with the boys right now.

I found them fun to watch and it was really easy to practice saying the words and hear the correct pronunciation. Max and Sam seemed to like them too. :-)

Here's one of the videos to give you an idea of what they are like.

Easier to Download Chinese Flash Cards

Hello! You may have noticed awhile back that Scribd changed the way it works and if you wanted to download documents that were stored there, you had to sign up, upload your own document, and then you could download whatever you wanted within the 24hrs after uploading your document. You could also pay but that defeats the purpose of providing free stuff!!

Well thanks to my multi skilled husband, I've now got my own web space and have uploaded all my PDF's so that you don't have to do anything but click on the link and it will automatically open in a web page ready for you to download. I am much happier with this as I know when I want to download things off the web, I don't want to muck around so I'm sure you don't want to either.

I've updated all posts with PDF downloads in them and any in the future will be a simple click and download for you. This should make things much easier for everyone. :-)

Here's links to my previous posts with the flashcards.

Lesson 1 Flashcards
Lesson 2 Flashcards
Lesson 3 Flashcards
Lesson 4 Flashcards
Lesson 5 Flashcards

As for my lack of Chinese posts these last few months, I have to admit I'm quite distracted with baby things. This will definitely (I think!) be our last bub so I'm trying to sew and make as much as I can since it will be my last chance to make baby things for my own kids. So things will probably remain quiet in the near future with not so regular posts until I get the majority of projects crossed off my list. In saying that, we are still practicing speaking Chinese and my son's favourite music at the moment is our Chinese songs CD's. He's even memorised the words to one of the songs and sings it while he plays.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I know I really must get the rest of the flash cards up for book 1 so will try and do that before bub arrives as I'm now often not able to do much other than sit on the couch...will have to see how I go though!

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or suggestions for posts, please don't hesitate to comment!

Family Relationship Names in Chinese

I stumbled across this fantastic site this morning that details, in a lovely clear table, all of the family relationship names in Chinese such as mother, uncle on the father's side, older sister etc. It includes formal and informal names in both Mandarin and Cantonese and shows the characters and pinyin. Amazingly, it goes through the generations from great-great-grandparents right down to great-great-grandchildren!

Here is the link for the detailed table. You will also see links under the heading near the top of the detailed table page that lead you to an introduction page and a page that has a diagram in English of a family tree. These are worth reading as they explain a bit of how the information is organised and how to easily use it.

I hope you find this handy!!

Flash Cards For Lesson 5

Ok! After a bought of sickness going through the family, I think it is finally over and I am itching to get back into life. I'm not feeling so sick and tired from being pregnant so it's time to start doing stuff again. :-) 


Before I get to the flashcards, I just have to share a couple of exciting moments I had the other day. Out of the blue, my little son asked me if Baby Bob (just our nickname for the baby before he is born) will be a 哥哥!! He wasn't quite right but I was amazed that he was thinking about the Chinese names for little brother and the relationship between himself and the baby. I reminded him that he (my son) will be a 哥哥 and Baby Bob will be his 弟弟. 


My other exciting moment was hearing my son singing one of the songs on our children's Chinese CD while playing in the bath. I had no idea he had actually memorised the words and was so proud of him because I have only heard him memorise words to English songs before. It is so wonderful that even while I have been unable to keep up with regularly teaching my son Chinese, the immersion he is getting and little conversations we have are actually sinking in!


Alright, now down to business. Here is the next set of flash cards for lesson 5. Like I've said in a previous flashcard post, please keep in mind that the translation comes from my teachers who are native Chinese speakers and have lived there for many years. They may not be exact dictionary definitions or I may only have one meaning for a word that can actually mean a number of things. These books are aimed at children (but can still be used by adults) so some definitions are simplified and could be considered 'kiddy language'. I have tried to put in a little extra information where this was the case.

Click on the link below to see my flash cards.

Flash Cards for Lesson 5

If you notice any mistakes or have any suggestions, feel free to comment!

I'm Still Here!

Just thought I'd pop in and let you know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Also a BIG welcome to all my new followers!!! Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I hope you find this info as helpful as I have!

I have just had a wonderfully sick pregnancy and even though I'm over half way now, I'm still getting sick at least once each week which is very annoying. I'm also a little sidetracked with sewing and knitting baby stuff. :-)

Aside from that, I did start reading our Chinese books to my son again and he has now been asking me what each page says and then repeats it back to me. He just turned 3 and has realised that when you read a book, you read the words (or in Chinese, characters) that are on the page so he likes to know what they all say. I finally got my ipod replaced too (there are some perks to having my husband work in an Apple store!) so we have been able to listen to his Chinese songs again. It's so cute to hear him copying everything they say and sing. He still isn't really doing tones yet but I can hear some tonal change in his voice which is an improvement. I can't wait to see how our new little bub takes to Mandarin as he (yes, it's a boy!!!) will get to hear it from the moment he is born. He'll also have his big brother using Chinese so it won't just be me talking.

Well I hope to get back into this very soon. I have the rest of the flashcards for my 1st textbook to post and I am always stumbling across more wonderful Mandarin resources that I can't wait to add here.

Thanks for reading!!!