08/5/18

View to modern Guangzhou – Huacheng Square

Liwan district is my favorite part of old Guangzhou, but for modern view I head to Huacheng Square and the long park that runs North to South between Zhujiang New Town and Liede. Luckily my office is right next to the park!

The park is beautiful during the day and magnificent after dark when all the lights are lit!

Huacheng Square is a must place to visit for anyone traveling or living in Guangzhou. You can find the Opera House, new library and Guangdong Museum at the South part of the square. With a beautiful view of the Canton Tower.

On the photo above, taken from the Four Seasons Hotel at 72nd floor, you can see the library on the left, Guangdong Museum is the black building and the Liede bridge n the background. I cross that bridge everyday to work.

The Guangdong Museum has a great exhibition on the history and culture of the province.

In the evening there are water, light and music shows, but they can be very crowded so be careful.

All in all, Huacheng Square is a great place to visit and take visitors as well.

07/29/18

Where to go with kids in Guangzhou – Aoti Utopa Mall

New shopping malls made for kids are popping up all over Guangzhou. Aoti Utopa Mall used to be a furniture mall, but it has transformed into a kid’s paradise.It isn’t a fancy mall and looks old on the outside, but it has pretty much everything you need.

Address for taxi or GPS: 广州市天河区奥体南路12号优托虭·奥体店

So what does Aoti Utopa Mall include?

Outside there are amusement park rides, two water parks, wall climbing, diving training and other activities. Outside there is also two big slides for free that kids and climb and slide on.

Inside you find many indoor playgrounds, trampoline park, swimming playarea, shops, restaurants and a Auchan supermarket. The restaurants are more for the Chinese taste, but does have Pizza Hut as well those wanting western food.

Pictures from our visits:Carousel ride 20rmb or buy a set of tickets for 300rmb so each ride is 10rmb.Rentable stroller with airplane functions for the kid to enjoy. 3rmb per 15 minutes.Waterpark with a shallow pool for younger kids and deeper pool with more obstacles for older kids or adults. We bought a discounted ticket on 亲子周末 app and paid only 29.90rmb for both of us.Ball pit in the middle of the shopping mall. There is a “tree” climbing activity next to it as well for older kids.小Q indoor playground. This is a chain with locations all over Guangzhou. It doesn’t has as many climbing or slides, but has a lot of games, cars, role play, supermarket toys. One time ticket is around 80rmb.

This is just a small portion of activities and play areas that Aoti Utopa Mall offers. Go and see your self!

Parking is free for two hours. During weekends the huge parking lot gets full, so better to arrive early. This Saturday at 10:30 there was lots of space left, but at early afternoon when we left it was almost full.

All in all it’s worth to visit with kids!

06/25/18

Giving a speech on cross-cultural marriage and how to solve some issues

Last Sunday I had the change to give a speech at DU Talk about Cross-Cultural Marriage. DU Talk is a weekly event where different speakers come with different topics each Sunday evening. So far I have attended speeched about traveling, social media, trading etc. This time I was honored to be the guest speaker my self!

As with only been married for less than 5 years I’m far from an expert on marriage, I had a more personal view on my topic. From my own perspective and experience I introduced how a cross-cultural marriage might start, evolve, what challenges there might be and how we have solved them.

Here I would like to share my ideas on the five struggless we went over during my speech and some of our solutions as well.

1. Deciding where to live

Me and my husband haven’t never fought over which country we should live in as we have been in agreement that our life is in China at the moment. We also see our selves living here for the next 5 or 10 years at least. In the future we hope we could divide our time more between Finland and China, but a move to Finland isn’t in the plans right now.

2. Language struggles in a relationship

Me and my husband certainly had issues with the language whne we started dating. My Mandarin wasn’t that good at the time and his English was even worse. We had problems in communicating with each other, though nothing major. Now I feel I can express my self and my feelings better in Chinese, but of course it’s still far from being the same when I speak Finnish. But it has to be at least one person in the relationship who sees the effort of learning the language of his/her spouse.

3. How to plan a cross-cultural wedding

I have written about our wedding a lot before, about combining the cultures, choosing the date, the legal wedding and finally about our big day that included a Chinese part and a Finnish part all in one day.

4. How to get along with your in-laws

Me and my husband laid out some rules early on, even before having kids. We wanted to live on our own, though close to the family, and do things our way. Being firm and honest from the beginning has been working well for us and the in-laws let us live our life the way we want. My Chinese husband has also always been independent in a sense that he has argumented his view to his parents and done his way even before meeting me.

It’s important to be your self, you can not try to fake something during the first visit and then keep it up for the rest of your life. Be who you are and see if you are a good match with the family before you marry.

5. Different views in raising kids

Me and my husband are pretty much on the same page what comes to educating our daughter. We don’t believe in disciplining kids through violent matters and we do believe in the benefit of Chinese education in a sense that we want our daughter to be fully fluent in Chinese.

The Chinese grandparents do have very different ideas or raising kids, but because they usually see our daughter once or twice a week, their influence isn’t that significant. We want them to have fun with their grandchild and our daughter to have a nice relationship with them, but we don’t wish them to have much say on her education or up-bringing.

06/21/18

My first online course! Survival Chinese 101 is launching

 

Exciting news! I am publishing my very first online course 1st of July and it’s alrady accessible as a beta course right now. You can find my course at: expatchinese.teachable.com/p/survival-chinese-101

 

Who is this course for?

Survival Chinese 101 -course is for everyone who want’s to learn just enough Chinese to survive their holiday, business trip or their first weeks in China. Nothing extra, nothing too difficult, just the basics you need when communicating with the locals.

This is a course for zero beginners who want to try learning Chinese and dip their toes in the water. Have you ever thought about learning Mandarin? If yes, this course is the perfect start.

 

 

How do I study this course?

Each lecture has a video lesson to follow, quiz, PDF exercises you can print out and a comments sections where you can ask all your questions and connect with yout fellow classmates.

Survival Chinese 101 -course can be studied at your own phase, whenever or whereever you want.

 

Why to join now?

The course is open for beta testers at a reduced price of 99USD. As a beta tester you get to start the course right away, get free coaching from me and get to give feedback that will affect how the end product will look like. Help me in creating a course that fits your needs!

 

Full course launching July 1st!

Find out more at Survival Chinese 101 and check our the preview video of the course!

04/30/18

April in photos

April started with a family road trip to Yangjiang and beautiful sand beaches. Unfortunately it rained half the holiday but we had a lot of fun anyway!

Anna started learning how to use the kick bike to go around and always remembers to put her helmet on.

We had a picnic lunch at our balcony before the weather started to turn too hot.

I participated in a Limiting Beliefs workshop done by our Expat Chinese student Ben Massen. He taught us how our limiting beliefs stand in the way of our success.

Later at the office I got to break the board of my limiting beliefs!

I visited my university (Sun Yat-Sen University) to learn a bit about Chinese seal carving, it was a lot of fun!

Above is the seal I carved. It’s the traditional old character for “to study”.

I had a power lunch with five other women and talked for three hours about life and business.

Last Friday I took part in a free WeChat webinar about getting things done. Right away I assigned one of our interns to manage our free study group on WeChat, learned to delegate.

That was my April in a nut she’ll, how was your month?