With the cost of a China tourist visa for UK citizens up to nearly one hundred and fifty pounds this year I resolved to give the mainland a miss, and head for Taiwan. Great price on a return ticket, but a twenty-two hours’ gap between flights at Beijing needed filling.

Discovery of the italki website, in combination with a renewed spurt of producing stories in Chinese, could prove a winning formula for my literary prospects. As an italki member I write Chinese, post it into the website, and find it corrected by a native Chinese speaker, or two, or three, a few hours later. Translating […]

Tuesday’s London Mandarin Learners Meet-up session involved participants introducing themselves to the group. One of us turned out to be a ‘swing’ dance instructor. This brought to mind another of Su Shi’s poems – Butterflies Lingering over Flowers