Next weekend I will be going to Macau for two nights. Macau is an island off the southern coast of China, that although formally part of China, enjoys a great deal of political and economic freedom (much like Hong Kong). It has taken full advantage of this freedom, and over the years transformed itself into the "Las Vegas " of Asia. My trip there is going to be absolutely insane - a friend of a friend's father, who is a hotel developer in Macau, has hooked us up with suites in the Venetian, which is the biggest casino/hotel in the world (not too shabby for a poor college kid). We're going to gamble, lay by the pool, explore the city and also catch a John Legend concert as he is playing in our hotel. Stories to come......
Little else to report, except that a friend of mine who is doing a semester at sea was in Shanghai yestday and today. I spent my day showing her The Bund and Nanjing Lu. A few pictures below.
***Another note about the Pinyin Debate ***
I spoke to my tutor about replacing the character system with pinyin, and she gave me the best reason yet.
In China there are 7 different major dialects, each spoken in different regions of the country. For instance Shanghainese, spoken here in Shanghai, is vastly different than traditional mandarin chinese thus explaining why cab drivers never understand me (even my tutor said she can't understand Shanghainese and she is a native chinese speaker). The different dialects sound nothing alike, to the point that they are nearly different languages. However, they all share the common character system. Therefore, switching to pinyin would leave Chinese accross the country virtually incapable of communicating with eachother as each dialect's phonetic spelling of words would be vastly different. Just something to think about.....
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