What's this business about staying away from Chou Doufu?? I love the stuff! It smells pretty bad ( a kind of horse manure type smell) before its cooked but its great afterwards, especially accompanied by its good friend, Pao Cai (Kim Chee) .

Anyway, Bohitree, I've seen you on zhongwen.com plenty of times and I'm sure I know you (vaguely).

Also, a good way to learn a language faster, is to watch TV completely in that language! It works wonders! Except for HBO etc etc all the channels here in Taipei are in chinese or taiwanese or hakka (with the odd one or two being in japanese with chinese subs). I find that it really builds up the vocabulary! The great thing is, they're pretty fond of old gongfu movies here! So most of the time you can find the good old wuda pian on 'Dianying Tai' or Film Channel. Zhou Xing Chi (Stephen Chow) also has a lot of movies here and I find that sometimes if you switch channels, about 3 different Stephen Chow films are on 3 different channels!

So, anyone have any good methods for learning chinese/characters?

Peace

One Finger Zen