My mother use to take an online course for Chinese painting many, many years ago; as my hobbies includes a lot of creative arts, I took an interest in her course books, curiosity got the better of me and my mother told me to give a go. I was okay with it and my mother praised me for my work, but never really kept it going. Later was told my handwriting was good and strangely took to it rather well, ending up taking on calligraphy as well. My mother doesn't really praise me for much; I was never treated like a princess; rather brought up as a tomboy to make sure I was taught to learn and do things by myself. I feel there is a connection to my Chinese cultural background when I practice it, it is very satisfying when it looks good.
I was born in England, so not going to say my Chinese will be top notch; or my reading, speaking, writing skills be up to standard or fluent. Like many British born Chinese children, our English will be better than our Chinese, after all we need to make a living and to learn English is part of survival and my mother tongue is not the national Chinese dialect or even second in rank. I did learn and improve my Chinese due to watching movies, particularly Jackie Chan action movies and television dramas. At home I will flip between English and two Chinese dialects, one being Cantonese and the other my home dialect; often a sentence will be a mishmash of the three languages, so you have to understand all three to make out what I'm saying.
The most insulting thing a Chinese person had told me was in Debenham's, not a English person. A Chinese customer obviously from mainland China told me I should speak and greet Chinese to him (Mandarin), I did learn Mandarin as well, but he should really have read up on Chinese history and the fact I was in an English speaking shop. I was also called a derogatory term by another Chinese person from Hong Kong that I was a "banana" (yellow on the outside and white on the inside), I'm obviously far from being "white washed", just because I'm born in England doesn't make me uninterested in my cultural background or fully integrated into Western culture. It's upsetting to be discriminated, yet by Chinese people who should know better, clearly people don't know my full background history and should get to know me first.
There are 10 Chinese dialects, there are also dialects in a dialect. Most Chinese people will have to learn other dialects, just like another language; the tones and writing system slightly differs and most of us will not understand each other. There are two writing systems; that means learning to write in two ways as well, though that does not mean every Chinese person can write in both systems. The first, are traditional characters and the second are simplified characters. The simplified system was introduced to main China in the 1930's, so it is not as old as traditional characters, mainly to improve literacy and communication. Only some of the traditional characters were replaced for simple characters, so in a way the traditional characters were not made extinct but co-exist. As China is a big country and speakers of other dialects did not want to loose their own mother tongue or did it catch on completely, traditional characters still exist as second form of writing. Traditional writing is standard in Taiwan, most used in Hong Kong, it is still standard with some other dialect users there are over 50,000 characters. Simplified however, is considered China's main writing system. Unlike English, the Chinese writing system is not phonetic, but is made of radicals which makes it harder to learn; this will be explained further with my calligraphy work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters
The national dialect in China is Mandarin; used mainly in mainland China and Taiwan, Cantonese is dominant in Hong Kong. My dialect, is also mainly in Hong Kong; which I will not be spilling the beans to anyone, it is nice to talk without nosy individuals eavesdropping. I cannot say too much about the other 7 dialects or can I name them, but you can read about them in the link below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese
