Ohio!

[taipeidawn]

Why are there so many people here from Ohio?

I'm not being rude, I'm from Ohio myself (Cleveland area when young, OSU for undergrad.) But I am just curious! When I lived in Ohio, the concept of studying Chinese was weird. And moving to China was even more odd. And Taiwan??? What's that? Isn't that Thailand??? So I think it would be great to hear from you guys in Ohio! Why did you decide to study Chinese and how does everyone around you deal with it??

[xuechengfeng]

Columbus here.

I decided to study Chinese for business & political reasons, the fact that it is a challenge and unfamiliar culture to me, and the thought of being able to converse with a billion people.

Anybody who asks me what I major in and say Political Science & Chinese, they look at me in awe for the latter.

Then they proceed to ask me to say something to them, and I go

[confucius]

Though pockets of Ohio remain primarily inhabited by Amish farmers, there does appear to be signs of intelligence living elsewhere in urban settlements.

Ohio was one of the first US states to establish a trade office in Hong Kong and had a representative working in China as early as 1984.

In fact, Ohio's very first sister state relationship was established with Hubei province in 1979. The Ohio State University in Columbus has a very good institute of Chinese Studies and you can even find Cantonese food in Canton.

[wushijiao]

My Chinese girlfriend is off doing business with a company from Ohio today....every few days she has to meet someone from Ohio. All very nice people, she says.

I'm from Colorado....but my Dad was from Clevland, and went to Miami of O. In Colorado you meet many people from Ohio. It seems like it is a great place to be from, but maybe not exactly a place you move to (no offence) .

Also, is Canton named for Canton (Guangzhou)?

[xuechengfeng]

Confucius: Yes, Ohio State's Chinese program is highly regarded, so I hear. I think there are some very good teachers. There is also an immense amount of Cantonese food in Columbus, and from what I understand, most of it is. My Chinese literature professor said once he guesstimated that there were only 3 or 4 Chinese restaurants in Columbus, but he looked it up and there was over 100 I think! There is a large Asian population here.

Wu: Ohio is definitely an OK place to live, but I (like many other of my friends, OK all) want to get out of here after college. It's not somewhere where I'd like to settle down my life.

[beirne]

I live in Cuyahoga Falls, just north of Akron. I started studying Chinese when I heard that the Unicon international unicycling meet would be held in Beijing. I thought it would be something different to attend. I've been to plenty of unicycle meets but hadn't been to China. I hate going somewhere where I don't know the language, though, so I started taking private Chinese lessons at the American Institute of Languages in Bath.

Another reason why Chinese interested me was something I read in the 1965 World Book encyclopedia when I was a kid. It said:

Spoken Chinese is weak in speech sounds because the language is monosyllabic. That is, each word has only one syllable.

This baffled me to no end. I couldn't figure out how a language like that could work. I now know that that definition is wrong and I racked my brain for nothing, but I still like studying the language.

There are a fair amount of Chinese in the NE Ohio area. Not like in San Francisco or New York, but enough to make for a small Chinatown in Cleveland and some ethnic organizations. Both Kent State and Case Western Reserve teach Chinese, although I haven't taken classes at either school.

BTW, I was born in Akron and lived here until I was 7. I then moved to Los Angeles, where I lived until I was 14. I then lived in New Hampshire, the Dominican Republic, and Tulsa. I have since lived in the Akron area 23 years straight. So I'm not quite a pure Ohioan but the Akron area is my favorite place to live.