My first trip to Changsha

[Andy]

It is been fun to experience those things that I have been reading about here. From the taxi drivers to the concrate hard beds it is all part of the fun. The air polution is hard to not notice. When I arrived in Changsha I was disapointed a little bit because my lady was not there to greet me at the airport. Our translator was there and a driver from the agency. She was in the middle of moving and could not come to meet me. This was yesterday, luckily today I have meet her and we spent some time together visiting the orange islands. She does not speak english and we only had my electronic translator with us. Unfortunetly she did not like the translator much, because it is a slow way to chat so for tomorrow I have aranged for a translator. She did enjoyed the time we spent togheter. People like to stare at me. I need to get used to it. I found Changsha much different then LA.

[shaun]

Andy,

She is very pretty.  Hope you have the time of your life.

Shaun

[brett]

Wow, what a beautiful lady.

I hope you have fun in Changsha. I've just got back from Wuhan and had a fantastic time. I'll upload some photos once I've sorted through them.

I hope you manage to communicate OK. I was lucky my lady spoke quite a bit of English but we had to rely on her electronic translator a bit. Communicating via it was painfully slow.

Make sure you try the local oranges, they're delicious.

[Scottish_Rob]

Nice looking woman there Andy...congrats mate...

[Arnold]

My fellow LA bro , yes you have yourself a nice looking Lady there . I don't need to tell you to enjoy yourself's , but do try to make it easier for the two of you .. by having a Translator with you maybe every other day and let your Lady handle the price for such . Good Luck , Andy .

[JimB]

Nice looking woman Andy. No matter what happens, just enjoy it.  Dont forget, everything is negotiable there.  They wont let you walk away.

[Neil]

She's beautiful!  Have a great time Andy.

[heckerd]

Nice looking lady there. Have fun with your trip in Changsha.

[brett]

You do get used to the stares. The best thing to do is to visit somewhere there is so unlikely to be a Westerner that they simply do not believe you are there. I found such a place walking around the gated compounds in Wuhan. Wow, I am mad!!!

The electronic translators the ladies carry are pretty good. But it seems to take forever for the lady to draw the Chinese characters on the screen. Fortunately I took my notebook computer out and we hooked into the hotel's internet access. My lady installed the thing she uses to type Chinese (it's not Pinyin, and I have no idea how it works, but it is blazingly fast).

I did actually use my phone's Chinese dictionary quite a bit - it was really useful for finding individual words of things (like the names of different fruits, and animals at the zoo).

[JimB]

You do get used to the stares. The best thing to do is to visit somewhere there is so unlikely to be a Westerner that they simply do not believe you are there. I found such a place walking around the gated compounds in Wuhan. Wow, I am mad!!!

Why get so mad at the stares?  They are not being rude, they are just curious. It just takes getting a little used to it.  If your lady saw you getting mad at the stares I would think that would hurt her feelings and make her think you do not like Chinese people.  My wife said as much to me.  I just made one comment on it. She said she was glad I did not mind as they are just curious, not being rude.  Now I thought the stares i got when with Qingqing were priceless.

[brett]

Oh you misunderstand me there JimB. I did not get mad about the stares. But walking around some of those compounds in downtrodden Wuhan, well that was a bit mad.

[JimB]

Ok, sorry, I must have misread it.

[Danny]

When I took my daughter to Shanghai she was seven, and she had the longest, silver-white blonde hair. When we started to wander around the tourist sites a succession of people came up to us and asked to take a photo of her. I am very ashamed to say at first I thought it was some kind of scam. But then we realised that was all there was to it. So my little Emma had such a wonderful time, with all these people taking photos of her all day long. She felt like a celebrity. She loved it! *laughs*

[maxx]

I never get used to the stares.So I just stare back.It ussualy messes them up enough that they quit.Another good tactic is start talking to them in English or Spanish.Really jacks with there minds.

[mustfocus]

The electronic translators the ladies carry are pretty good. But it seems to take forever for the lady to draw the Chinese characters on the screen. Fortunately I took my notebook computer out and we hooked into the hotel's internet access. My lady installed the thing she uses to type Chinese (it's not Pinyin, and I have no idea how it works, but it is blazingly fast).

I did actually use my phone's Chinese dictionary quite a bit - it was really useful for finding individual words of things (like the names of different fruits, and animals at the zoo).

I think what you're talking about is something called Wubi (5-stroke).  I hear it's pretty common, however, I never figured out where I could download the software for it.  Personally I prefer pinyin...much faster for me to enter info.

In-Jaul