The China Experience is actually a collection of different visits over 10 years. Each visit included different areas and different people. When I first put the pages up, there were only four or five sites devoted to aspects of Chinese culture. China was not connected to the Internet. Today there are millions of Chinese pages and increasing information about the people and their lives.
There are two sets of pages for each of the topics. The first is primarily text. The images on these pages are large so that you do not have to go to a graphics viewer unless you are really interested. In addition, there are text links which lead to further pictures to illustrate the topic. I decided on this approach to make the pages load faster. If you are reading the pages, the in-line images should be loaded by the time you get to them.
The second set of pages are primarily pictures. In most cases, these are different images than are found on the text pages either through text links or in-line. To keep load times fast, the pages are limited to about 10 images.
If you start at Beijing on the text page, the links at the bottom of the pages will take you through the text pages. The same system is used on the picture pages. You can do the pages in any order you want by returning to the China page and main menu.
Most of my monitors are set at 1024X768 pixels. It would be nice if everyone had the same resolution -- but if you are using 640x480 resolution, the bottoms of some pictures may be cut off. I did this on pictures which would look good either in full frame or cropped to the top. For the most part, you loose the legs and foreground, you won't gain much from scrolling. I left the pictures large for the people who at 800X600 would otherwise always be looking at small pictures.
I became interested in learning techniques associated with language acquisition when I first started studying Chinese. My interest in neuropsychology, learning theories, and computers joined to turn my interest to creating methods to help the intermediate learner bridge the gap between vocabulary acquisition in the early stages of language acquisition and the translation required of more advanced learners.
I have been very fortunate to find friends who share my interest and are willing to lend a helping hand from time to time. Today, friends and I translate by e-mail. Liu Xiaoyun, Lin Lin, Zhang Meng, Li Di, Feng Xie, Liu Yu Rong, Cao Hui, and Shu Chang -- so many others have helped in one way or another.
The pages would not have been the same without Zhao Min Qiang who was my Research Assistant for three years. He learned four different programming languages in two years to be able to code the original searchers, flashcards, menus and some of the games. He became an Oracle programmer and then moved on to javascript, PHP and others to implement tasks and designs I gave him.
Brienne Hughes, Josh Glavine, Sean Smith, Katie Smith, and Josh Keezer, students at UMF, all worked on either the China Experience or on Ting. Josh Glavine programmed and designed the graphics for the number movies in Flash.
A special note of thanks to Al Bersbach, Phillip Theruvakattil, Fred Brittain, Mal Carey, and David Irving at the UMF Computer Center who are always ready to give a leg up when I would reach a block in programming.
Thanks goes to Theo Kalikow who can make a quick decision, Angie LeClair who shared her knowledge, Howard Smith of China Smith Travel who knows China, and to Cai Zunan, Liu Yu Rong, Ren Meng Yun, Wang Yong, Nancy Hu, and all of the other people in Beijing who showed us hospitality. Special thanks to Northwest University in Xi'an and Shanghai University for well planned introductions to their cities.
The pictures included in these pages may be freely used for educational purposes in the classroom. I would appreciate e-mail if you want to use them for any other purpose.
Pictures and content may not be distributed beyond your local site or used for commercial purposes without permission.
I want to thank NETSCAPE (TM) for their wonderful browser and early innovative work. All pages have been tested with Netscape 4.6 and above. Then tests with other browsers are performed. If you are using either Netscape or IE all features should work correctly. If you have multiple plug-ins which defeat the internal programming in the browsers, you may not be able to play some games, hear the sounds correctly, or have to play the sounds on another blank page. QuickTime (TM) and Wizard (TM) are two sound plug-ins which will defeat the internal sound players in the browsers. Install and Uninstall is easy for QuickTime, or if you know how to change the files associations for plug-ins you can return the associations for .wav files to the browser. The pages have been tested with Windows95, 98 and 2000 both in Chinese and English versions. They have also been tested with Mac System10 English version.
To see Chinese characters on the pages, you must either have a Chinese Simplified font installed on your computer and specified in your browser, or a Chinese system. If you have a Chinese system, you can enter Chinese in the quizzes and search pages, if you have only the font, you will have to change your character encoding to Chinese Simplified under View on the menu bar of the browser when you enter the pages. Before you write and tell me that I can put HTML code on the pages to let you skip this step, I have found that some Chinese systems cannot "see" the characters if GB2312 is specified by html on the page. Please get more detailed information on characters, sound files, and browsers on the FAQ page.
Return to the China Page and Main Menu
mshea@maine.edu
http:// hua.umf.maine.edu/China/notes.html
Last update: February 1996, 1999, 2002
© Marilyn Shea 1996, 1999, 2002