Just curious!

I try to write love letters, my dreams (through well sanded sleepy eyes), and grocery lists. Whata bout you?

I've not done dreams, but I have described them in Chinese to my wife often enough. In addition to love letters and grocery lists, I've done a few minor essays for school, to-do lists, budgeting, portions of diary entries, notes to self, and various others. A lot of it is typing but it still helps to expand vocabulary when writing for different purposes and different audiences (self, school, wife, 朋友圈, others).

Only grocery lists, lol.

Postcards. And greeting cards. A bit of calligraphy, but mostly cards, I guess.

Skill-tastic everyone-- thanks!

Tausha: do you attend a calligraphy class, or are you self teaching the ways of the brush? =P

Be swell!

Well, I did attend a calligraphy course that was... uh, offered by the sinology department of the local university (well, I kind of pretended to be a sinology student... shhh!).

I guess it's possible to learn it on your own but it's much, much easier if someone points out what you're doing wrong (and amazingly enough, it's not as simple or easy as it looks. Quite the opposite, in fact!).

Do you have calligraphy experience as well or are you inquiring because you're planning to rectify your lack of writing beautifully?

Writing notes from classes and do my tests however that's basically it, unless there is some official paperwork to do

I wrote A LOT of Chinese during my coursework for my graduate program in Taiwan. After finishing up my two years of classes written Chinese is reserved for personal notes, to-do lists, journal entries and writing messages to my wife's family members.

Nice Jake! When you entered your masters program, what level of Chinese were you at? Do you feel comfortable in the language (I should probably scout your blog for these deets)! I've heard (perhaps I am wrong) that HSK 4 is sufficient? What are your recs?

Tausha: my writing is that of a child who passed his 5th name day! If calligraphy can "brush up" my writing skills, then I'll hand my wallet to a teacher and tell em' to rob me! Worth the investment, you say? How long have you been writing beautiful Chinese??

Thanks for the insights everyone!

@klooste on the subject of calligraphy... Yes! Do it! The whole reason I started Chinese in the first place was a calligraphy teacher who came into my art class for a demonstration at high school. I convinced him to give lunchtime classes and it went from there. I've let my brushwork slip a lot in recent years as I focus on language learning, but it's absolutely key to keeping the writing interesting and satisfying - the reaction from Chinese people when you can do calligraphy is always nice, despite not being able to string a sentence together :)

Well, my Chinese isn't exactly beautiful yet, I can tell you this much. I started about two years ago but I don't practice very regularly, mainly because of a lack of time. So I'm in no way an expert and what's following is solely based on my experiences and warped perceptions and it might be very much different with a different teacher. Anyone who wants to chime in and correct me, go for it.

So in the beginning, after learning how to hold and move and twist the brush, you will probably learn how to write regular script, going through all the different basic strokes in the process. That's fine because regular script is what we Skritter people know and love. It's not what most adult Chinese use when they're handwriting, though, at least the ones I've encountered overwhelmingly prefer a more cursive style.

Unfortunately, even if you can write a regular Chinese character beautifully with brush and ink it will probably still look pretty sh**ty if you write it with an ordinary pen. You will spend a lot of time getting the lines and hooks to have exactly the right amount of width and curve and a lot of this simply cannot be done without a brush. This will not improve your handwriting at all, in my opinion.

Having said that, it will probably help you with getting the proportions of the characters' components right which is nice because they're pretty important, too. This will improve your handwriting if you were struggling there.

Still, I think, if you're really into having your writing look like that of an adult, you might want to eventually move on to a more cursive style. Which I can tell you nothing about except that I have difficulties reading it which is the sure sign of a grown man's penmanship.

No, seriously, I would suggest you try calligraphy if you have the chance. It's a time consuming hobby, though, and for a long time you have to cater to beauty standards that have developed and changed several times throughout the centuries, and only if you've mastered that you can even think about adding a personal touch to your writing (again, this might be different depending on your potential teacher, and no, I'm nowhere near that level). Also, you need a high tolerance for having ink on your stuff.

By the way, I found this to be interesting:
http://www.chinese-outpost.com/language/characters/chinese-character-styles-and-handwriting-samples.asp#handwriting

@klooste The program is Taiwan didn't require a specific level of Chinese coming in, but we were required to write around 5-6 pages outlining our goals in the program and our teaching philosophy.

Before graduating the program, non-native speakers are required to pass the TOCFL Level 5 exam, which is B2 on the European scale of language proficiency. It was originally TOCFL Level 6, which I was just shy of passing last time I tried. Still have to take the exam again when I'm able to find some time! The program also requires us to write our thesis in Chinese... which is the real "test" of language skills, since you also have to defend orally as well once you're done.

I don't have a very good metric for where my Mandarin is at right now, but I'd say I'm fairly comfortable in the language. My written Chinese needs the most work, but I don't have much of an issue with reading, speaking and listening. I've been studying for almost a decade now, and I've spent a fair amount of time studying in China and Taiwan, so it's kind of 應該的吧 at this point. With that being said, there's still a lot of room from improvement!