Learn some more about Mandarin from Su Li, one of the teachers from the Maastricht Language Centre. After a week together I have learnt a lot, but I think my pronounciation could still use some work!

Nǐ hǎo! Mandarin isn’t an easy language to learn usually, but with help from the Language Centre we will learn some basics to help navigate our way through the more rural areas of China. China has eight major dialects; Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Fuzhou and Hokkien-Taiwanese. As Mandarin is the most widely spoken dialect, that is…

Dutch Jesuits traveled far and wide across not only China, but South America, Africa, Japan, North America and others, and with over 250,000 logs in the University closed stacks we were not short of routes to choose from. The Jesuits whose route we will follow are Albert d’Orville and Johann Grueber who traveled together from…

It is four weeks until we pack our bags, wave goodbye to Europe and begin our month in China. Already we have spent hours investigating where to go on our route, starting in Beijing and heading west towards Larung Gar and Tibet before returning east again to Shanghai. Figuring out our route was difficult enough even…