I discovered a curious thing with the words ‘hui’ come and ‘qu’ go. If I want to say I will go to China in 2 weeks (which I will more or less) then I use the word ‘qu’. If however a Chinese person living in London was going to China in two weeks, they would use the word ‘hui’. Even though they might be living in London the fact that they are Chinese means that they would use the word come where I would use the word go if, for example, I was living in Beijing and was making a trip to London. Well that is what I heard from one of my language partners, the other, from Taiwan, gave me a different story so now I don’t know what to think exactly except that there are many ways the language and its many dialects can be spoken.
I wonder if this rule, when it is a rule, applies indefinitely, and if China or the ‘Centre County’ has us down as a far away province, linguistically speaking. The language came into being a long time ago when the UK must have been an obscure island to the far West. On a contemporary Chinese world map the UK is over there on the top left hand side.
I also read the other day that a Chinese admiral was meant to have discovered America before Columbus.
