jayce calydon but chinese

geeked up and locked in to learn mandarin

[mandoreverie]

Shangri-La Is Calling

大家好！

call me jayce, or whatever. he/him genderqueer, my main languages are eng/indo. im a minor!!

this is a side-blog for my mandarin studies. i started on 21/04/25!

for now i study on my own, i use HelloChinese, Pleko, and textbooks for the most part. everything else is just be trying out new stuff and seeing if i like it or not.

i like mando music a lot, my faves are Pharoah (法老 ), The Chairs (椅子樂團 ), No Party For Cao Dong (草東沒有派對 ), Diverseddie. i moslty enjoy rnb and hiphop/rap <3 my playlist

my goals are to be able to speak, listen, and read chinese well in 3 years. my dream is to be able to go to college in china, hopefully through a fully funded scholarship. but besides for academic reasons, i also just really love the language, and i've always been quite fascinated by the culture since i was young and would love to learn more.

more info about me here, my main blog is @portgasdjayce. i'll probably reply to stuff thru there.

拜拜！

[mandoreverie]

My mandarin teacher is obsessed with baby elephants she keeps showing me videos of them 😭😭😭 she even knows their names

[mandoreverie]

Mando Melody — Day 3

Today's Song：Procrastination by DiverSeddie Pinyin： - Translation：-

Thoughts: i've been loving listening to DiverSeddie recently!!! the first song i heard from him was Serenade but Porcrastination is definitely my favorite. the One Piece reference <3 it's sooo me core guys, i love singing this too cause it's mostly english but the mandarin is also really easy to follow along once you know what the characters are. very silly song!! i def reccomend him!! i think he's fairly popular, i've seen him in many rnb playlists ^^

My Favorite Part:

I'm going to bed tonight 找一个拖延的借口 明天再做也不晚 Really I wonder if I'll ever finish

and

Gotta stick to one niche Mommy always said Then she catch me watching One Piece In between my legs

[mandoreverie]

i finally got a mandarin tutor!

she's pretty experienced, she's taught other languages as well (both in a school setting and outside of it). it's one on one, she's my mothers old friend! she's a yapper too ngl, but i don't mind, i like that she's relaxed.

so what i learned. since it's our first time meeting. it was basic stuff. she was trying to get a feel for what i already know, since it's been over a month since i've started learning. thankfully—she thinks i'm going in the right direction!

my pronounciation isn't all that awful, i just had to learn a few more tone rules. i had a lot of trouble with the letter q lmao, i kept saying it wrong. i had an okay feel for word order and stuff, like i said, just needed a few fixes.

when it came to my writing, she said i was doing okay. i wrote characters a too big, but that's a common trait amongst my writing in every language. if i practiced more, it'd probably be neater too.

she was a bit impressed by my vocabulary, but also told me that i kinda jumped around a lot. which i expected, i do use like 4 different apps and a textbook to quickly increase my vocabulary. she told me to strengthen my basics first—fair! but i'll still keep learning new words haha.

and lastly, this is based off my own judgment—listening. i actually impressed myself a lot, if i paid attention to what she says i'm able to figure out what she's trying to say even if i don't know all the words. it takes me a few seconds to process what she's saying and how to respond back, but like.. for listening to someone speak mandarin irl for the first time.. i think i did okay!

i'll be meeting her once a week, every saturday for the morning. which im good with!! she's very friendly and talkative, totally not what i expected based off how she typed. but then again, she's in the older generation, so i should've known.

[mandoreverie]

I was listening to some HSK audio files and I realized I rely a lot on being able to read to know what they're saying. I have this problem with other languages too honestly, sometimes audio just processes slower in my head and I don't understand quite as clearly.

This is definitely something I need to improve on to improve my understanding and listening skills for Chinese.

[mandoreverie]

I fear I have terribly crude humor cause ever since I learned 色色 and 打飛機 I have not stopped referencing it. I cackle like a teenage boy at a good dick joke.

Also I think 打手枪 is also some more slang for something like that.

I'm terribly sorry 💔

[mandoreverie]

Mando Melody — Day 2

Today's Song：巴黎德州 by The Chairs Pinyin： Bālí Dézhōu / Yǐzi Yuètuán Translation：Paris, Texas

Thoughts: this song is sooo.. sooo soft to me. it's one of my faves by The Chairs. i quite like their whole album actually! i know the lyrics and meaning are vastly different that what i had solidified in my head, but the line Still there’s no place for a man like me" i hold so dear to my heart. it's lovely, it feels like walking down the shore of a beach with a loved one while you take pictures of them smiling. do you get it..

My Favorite Part:

我和你 在清晨的夢裡 （美好的你 和你的傻瓜相機） 南方空氣 海邊的一趟旅行 八釐米裡 你我依舊年輕 （年輕的心 和說不完的話題） 但記憶裡 全都不再清晰 我深愛追逐你的那個自己 But there’s no place for a man like me.

[mandoreverie]

Day 32, 23/05/25.

oh my god i've been SO busy this past week, barely had a real chance to study until today. had events and outings back to back since saturday. i've passed the 1 month mark!

so, to summarize the past day 30 and 31 specifically, i was quite literally full for the WHOLE day. but, on my down time i was doing my flashcards and listening to Coffee Break Chinese. besides that, sadly i didn't had time to do anything else.

but finally got a day of rest—and to catch up! so, today i got started off with some videos. i've been exploring random youtubers i find and see what i like the most, i ended up finding a guy called Bing Qi Mandarin. he does beginner stuff, mostly HSK 1-3! his videos are super easy to understand, and if i have any other specifics i'm curious about i just google it or use Pleko.

---

and like the previous entry, i've been making sentences off what i know and then checking later for corrections! here's one i made:

你见到老师昨天？烈说看到他昨天，他在商场一起和华。 (Nǐ jiàndào lǎoshī zuótiān? Liè shuō kàndào tā zuótiān, tā zài shāngchǎng yīqǐ hé Huá.)

in my head i wanted something a little bit gossipy, lowkey scandalous. i don't even know how i came up with this, i was riffing.

anyway, after looking some stuff up, here are the corrections;

昨天 is a verb usually put in the start of sentences. i'm still not very sure of how to structure sentences in chinese, honestly i just base it off english. i don't know what verbs and nouns are guys, i just know the words..—but besides that. i think the first sentence is correct.

but i think i could emphasize it better by making it specifically a question? like by using 有没有 or 吗。

so, the possible improved versions could be:

你昨天有没有见到老师？OR 你昨天见到老师了吗？ honestly i'm still unconfident with the use of 了。i have a hard time understanding how to use it, but from what i know it's like.. a 'completion' of an action of some kind? or a change..??

anyway, the second sentence. i had a bit of a difficult one with this one, i wasn't sure on how to describe that the teacher was seen WITH someone else. also, the names are random. i just searched something up.

so, the first mistake is again for the placement of 昨天。and like i said earlier, 一起和华 was quite awkward wording. 和华 itself could be fine, but i'm pretty sure it'd be better if i were to put it before 一起 instead.

i think using 了 in this sentence could also benefit it. emphasizing that 烈 saw him, past tense..? i think! also, after looking it up, 呢 might benefit here. so I think the improved version could be: 烈说他昨天看到他了，他和华在商场呢。

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okay, that's it for the most part. i wrote some super messy notes while looking stuff up but thats it haha. might write more though, it's only 9pm right now as i'm writing this.

[mandoreverie]

Mando Melody — Day 1

I want to post Chinese songs I like once a day (when I remember). Might be english songs from Chinese artists. Might be Cantonese. Might be Taiwanese artists too. I dunno, I'm just gonna be posting, will be using #mandomelody, feel free to filter.

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Today's Song：讓一讓 by GONG and Jony J Pinyin： Ràng Yī Ràng

Thoughts:

This is actually the song that got me super into Chinese music! I was listening to my friend's Lin Lie playlist (a Chinese character I love sm!). And when i was on the train with my friend just listening to music, suddenly this song was playing.. and I actually processed it. Stopped being something in the background, and I deadass paused talking to my friend just to listen to the whole thing. Let it be known, I was HOOKED.

My Favorite Part:

全都在這混沌地方 困在大千世界盲人摸象 有人自甘喝著淤泥湯 有人注定位歸九重天上 你想我陪你待在鯉魚塘 但我還有我真正該去的地方 你說我早晚變得就像你一樣 抱歉這是我永遠不會上的當

Basically, the first verse. I rlly like the meaning of the song too.

[mandoreverie]

Day 29, 20/05/25.

Technically writing this at Day 30, but its still the morning and I'll be busy all morning and noon.

So, yesterday I managed to study for about two and a half hours. I was honestly asleep all morning and busy all night haha so the fact i even got any studying in at all- thank God executive dysfunction didn't beat my ass that day. Sort of.

I'm still figuring out what works the best for me, but today I mostly expanded my vocabulary list.

I know more words than this, but i didn't write down all of them. Im still quite behind on my notes compared to what I've actually studied through HelloChinese and stuff. But honestly, I sort of use my notes as a review? Like I learn it and probably in 3-5 days I'll put it in my notes. It makes sure I actually remember and recall! Though, I do plan to sink in more time to catch up once I'm not busy.

Besides notes, I did about 15 minutes of Anki Flashcards. Some words that I found myself struggling a lot to remember is；没关系，不谢，谁，岁，对不起。not the characters themselves but the meanings.. I often switch up 对不起 and 不客气。

Whenever I can, even if I don't write them down I try to look at what I'm doing or studying and make up my own sentences on the spot, then checking through Google or whatever to see what corrections need to be made.

Since I was at the mall yesterday, I came up with this.

我和我的家和我的姐姐的男友在林荫路。

But after some corrections turns out 林荫路 wasn't a common word for mall like I assumed.

So, I switched it to 商场。

I also found that 我和我的家 wasn't the best to represent "Me and my family". I had assumed 家 would just mean family but turns out it's more common to use 家人？I'm still not too sure. And also that i should omit the 的 before 姐姐。

So, the correction is 我的家人和我姐姐的男友和我在商场。

Hehe, 我们都一起吃饭！