Best app for learning chinese

Greetings~!

I'm sure it's no surprise to you readers that I'm currently in China. I thought this post might be a lil helpful to those who kinda have trouble with chinese. 

My chinese is bad, really bad. Before I came here, I only knew very very basic words and couldn't read nor write any characters apart from my name. When I started uni, we had this compulsory course which was Chinese Language, That class really helped. We were taught the very basic and well, step by step. After 3 semesters, I can say that my chinese has improved tremendously, though not good or anything. I still don't know a lot of characters. 

End of my story. :)

Now, let's move on to the app. I'm pretty sure now smartphones are the thing right now. Nobody doesn't have a handphone. Everyone owns either a smartphone or an iphone. Regardless of which phone you're using, you install apps. So, this app I want to introduce is so so so so useful if you ever need any help with chinese.

The app is called Pleco.

It looks like this.

You can check out their website here.

I'm not even kidding when I said this is the best application for chinese translation. I've downloaded a lot of apps, and deleted them too. But this, is definitely a keeper!

The key features which I just screenshot from their website:

I really love the handwriting feature. I mean there are countless times when you see a character but you don't even know the pinyin for it, so how the hell are you suppose to check the dictionary when you don't even know the pinyin? With this handwriting feature, that is no longer a problem. 

This app is simply amazing and best part, it's free!

So, for those of you who are learning chinese, definitely check this app out. It's very useful and it definitely helped me a lot. Hopefully, it will help you too. :D

Renting in China?

Greetings~!

I thought I should make a quick post about this since my sis & I recently moved into a new place. Our previous rent was RMB4000 per month which is ALOT for a 1 bedroom, 1 kitchen, 1 toilet & 1 living room kind of place. It wasn't exactly convenient or anything since it was nowhere near a subway station.

This new place we found is RMB2100 per month for 2 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 living room & 1 toilet. The thing is, it is faraway. Other than it being far, it's really cozy & a really awesome place to live. Everyday, I just can't wait to go home after classes. :D

How we found this place? (you may skip this next paragraph if you don't want to hear my long story :P)

Actually, I had to take a bus from my old place to my uni everyday. You just get bored looking out the window all the time right? They have this mini TV in the bus which shows advertisements. They show the same advertisements pretty much every single day to the point you actually remember the advertisements. One of the advertisements was pretty stupid, it was a girl dancing with a donkey singing ganji wang. That's how I got to know about this website. Wang means online/site. 网 is the character for wang. If you ever see this word, it means internet/online/site, anything to do with the internet.

End of my story. Now, let's proceed to how to actually use this site to rent an apartment.

I'll take you step by step:
1. Go to http://bj.ganji.com/

It should look something like this:

2. Click on the word which says "租房" which means "rent an apartment"

3. You will then be directed to a page which looks like this:

The first green button means whole of beijing. If you have a specific preference, a specific district in beijing, then select the district you want.

Second green button is of course the price range.

Third green button means how many bedrooms you want.

Fourth green button means "characteristics". This is a lil more specific, like, near the subway & stuff like that.

Well, the rest you can just browse and choose anything to your desire.

4. Open the links of the rooms you like in new tab. Then you can see more detailed information regarding each room/apartment. There's even a chat option which I find really useful. 

I actually used the chat located at the bottom right corner of the screen & spoke with a few agents. They are very helpful. You can just tell them your criteria & they will help you find the apartments you need. Though I must warn you that some of the apartments you find to your liking may have already been rented out. So, do chat with the agents and ask them.

I found a few, then set appointments with the agents, went to check the places out & decided which one I liked best. 

And that's how I found my current apartment.

If any of you readers have any questions whatsoever, feel free to email me at joubajoubawa@yahoo.com

I'll be more than willing to help. :D 

This website has been a HUGE help to me, if not for that website, I would never have found my current place and at this rent. I mean, RMB2100 per month for a 2 bedroom apartment? You can't find any apartments at this rate in Beijing.  

Stay tune to my blog for more tips and also reviews. :)

See you again!