I read that you’re about to start your serious study in the language soon. Lots of luck to you, and I hope you’d have prof. who respects the traditional ones.

In my days, I’ve been able to communicate with Japanese and Korean scholars through my traditional Chinese writing. I don’t see giving that up ever!

You’ll still need the Asian language packs installed to view them (which ChynS, you obviously do).

As for an input method for Chinese… check out the Google one

PS: Sorry about the NYC/NY-central mixup… read it too fast.

I’d left comments for you under that Survivor: China of yours.
Neobie on realityfanforum.com found this news:
http://www.meijumi.com/article.asp?id=878

So, 柘林湖风景区 it is. That reporter doesn’t really know about Survivor as a reality show, he’s calling it a 纪录片(duccumantery) (don’t know why some of the characters won’t c&p, I don’t have the Chinese key ability …) Let me try again: 柘林湖鹿角尖景点. Funny how some time the 4th character is “deer” and sometimes it’s “six”. I know they sound alike, but shouldn’t there be an official name? This is fun, I think yours is the first blog I could post bi-lingual!

Growing up in Taipei in the 60s, 70s, , it was awful never having a Birthday cake on the special day it really counted. You see, my B-day happened to be on the day before Moon Festival. Weeks prior to that, all the Bakeries already notified their customers that, they would all be devoted to baking Moon cakes and Moon cakes alone! No other orders would be accepted. This was, of course, before any household has it’s own oven. (Even these days, not so many Chinese kitchen would bother with the stove-top with ovens. Microwave plus convectional is as good as it gets. That’s why many of us have hilarious experience cooking our first turkey or even chicken in the States. But that’s another story …)

Where am I? Well, I’m happy to have stumbled upon your blog while digging for info about Survivor: China. Nice to read about your life in SuZhou, Ryan. My parents are from NanKing and ShangHai(pardon the spelling, I’d learned it differently from you guys.). They “ran” to Taiwan w/Chiang 1949 as young teens.

I’m not even sure if I were allowed to post comments on your site yet, so here goes …

Ta for now!