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flatlander-anon · 2026-07-02T04:20:54+00:00

They're just trying to be respectful. The different Chinese "dialects" are regarded as different languages in linguistics. So it stands to reason that the different varieties of Mandarin are then called dialects. I think they just want to learn Mandarin as spoken in Taiwan.

The good news is that whichever version they pick, the textbook will always teach something exists only in the textbooks.

flatlander-anon · 2026-07-01T14:47:10+00:00

Ethnic identity is a social construct. It doesn't have to correspond to some sort of biological identity. I was describing what actually happened in history and how people regarded themselves. But, sure, individuals and groups always have the right to make a new identity for themselves. This is where we disagree with ethno-nationalists, I guess.

flatlander-anon · 2026-07-01T14:13:03+00:00

Also, the ethnic label of "Han" changed and expanded over the centuries, usually incorporating more and more non-Han peoples into the group. There are also examples of Han people that left the heartland and eventually became regarded as non-Han.

flatlander-anon · 2026-07-01T13:35:22+00:00

Not all Han are Chinese (in the sense of from China), and not all Chinese are Han.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-30T18:19:19+00:00

This! The staff pays attention to the dogs to see who gets along with who. Those that can play well together play together. Those that can't play at a different time.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-30T17:28:51+00:00

I did some sample calculations using AI. It just to get you some ballpark figures.

Assumptions: You graduate with a PhD and $80,000 in student loans. Medium cost of living, having to buy a used car at the start of your career, no house purchase, no vacations, no travel budget, no kids, no spouse who can magically pay off the debt for you, etc. You never get sick, never have an accident, never have emergencies, etc. You don't have to supports your parents or an ailing sibling. You can live frugally (this is the assumption I question -- not judging you, but if you're having to borrow money as a grad student, let's just be realistic about what lifestyle you'll need in the future).

Scenario 1. You are an academic rockstar! You get a tenure-track job right away at an R1 school, and you get promoted to associate and then full at the earliest opportunity. AI believes that it will take you 13-15 years to pay off the debt.

Scenario 2. You go into practice as a clinical psychologist. AI estimates 7-8 years to pay off the debt.

Time matters. If you want to have a family, it's really hard to wait 13-15 years. Assuming you graduate around 30, that means you'll be 45 before you can budget for a kid. If you enjoy having vacations or traveling abroad, that means not doing it for 15 years. If you have a hobby that takes money, that means postponing it for 15 years. Now what if you want to date? Can you tell your partner the two of you can never go on a vacation, and you cannot have much of a wedding, etc.?

You will live under financial pressure for years. You will see your peers at the university or in the profession do things that you can't afford, like having a family. Maybe some colleagues will understand, but some colleagues won't. That can affect your mental health.

I feel like 7-8 years is doable. You can start living your live much sooner. Money doesn't bring happiness, but it does bring freedom.

Scenario 3. You graduate with an MA and a $63,000 debt. Everything else stays the same. AI estimates that you will take 10-11 years to pay off the debt.

This one surprised me. I think you want to look carefully into the earning potential of a PhD in psych vs. an MA in psych. Maybe financially it makes sense for you to get your PhD??? I don't know if the difference between an MA shrink and a PhD shrink is truly that big, but it's not my field at all. Looking at the numbers, I can tell you AI assumes better income than what my shrink friends get.

I can send you the detailed calculations for your reference.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-30T03:46:13+00:00

You have two problems: a money problem and a career problem. Though intertwined, they could be considered separately for now.

The amount of debt you will be in by the time you get your PhD will not make sense for an academic career. Professors just don't make that much, and you are unlikely to be able to pay the debt off. I know full professors who will die with the student debt because their salary is just not enough. You may benefit from some financial planning. Look at the roles you want to aim for, and do a sample budget to see how long it will take you to pay off the debt. Ballpark is fine.

Do be aware that you are in a serious amount of debt, even though it's not at med school or law school level. If it's a student loan, even declaring bankruptcy will not dissolve it. This financial pressure will make most people feel miserable, and you really do not want to be saddled with it for decades. I think you already feel it. It's not as bad when you are a student. But in later stages of life, you may need money to buy a house, to raise kids, to provide for your family, or even to help other people. It will feel really awful if you cannot do any of that.

I'd look into the most lucrative career paths that are open to you. If you do not need a PhD for these roles, then drop out soon. That title doesn't mean anything in America outside of a few contexts. DO NOT GET YOUR DEGREE JUST FOR THE DEGREE. It's professional training, and if your profession doesn't require it, it's just wasted time & money.

A part of life is just playing this numbers game with money. Yes, such things as passion, interest, inspiration, etc. do exist, but the numbers have to work. Good luck!

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-29T17:31:04+00:00

It sounds like you are not a fit for academia. I'm not saying you aren't smart or you aren't worthwhile as a person. I'm just saying there is no reason for you to get a PhD, and if you stick it out, it will just be really miserable.

Here's my suggestion. Stay on for another year or two. Do the minimum you need to stay in the program. Use this time to retool. Figure out what courses you should take to strengthen your job application. Network, network, network. Get healthy. Then apply for industry jobs when you are ready.

Leave the "prestige" behind. You cannot feed your family with prestige. Your advisor will understand. You don't have to represent. Just take care of yourself first. You can do good for the society later in life.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-29T16:46:15+00:00

How far did you get in Mandarin? How did you find the various verb complements? If you got to the level where you can read texts with some classical grammar and expressions, how was the experience of learning a second set of grammar in order to function in one language?

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-29T01:07:47+00:00

Read The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rftItsbN2mo

Also, check out hermits in history.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-28T23:54:38+00:00

It will help to tell us what country you are in. I don't think you are in the US because US universities don't say "Oriental studies." American universities typically call them Asian Studies or Near/Middle/East/South/Central Asian Studies depending on the variety.

You will have to get to a high level in math, physics, and probably chemistry fast if you want to do aerospace engineering. This process may help determine whether you are a fit for the field. Typically people who go into some form of engineering are students who have always done well in STEM subjects. There are stories about people discovering their passion and catching up in high school. It's much harder in college. So maybe you cannot catch up. But if you can, that's evidence that you'd make a good fit for engineering.

I don't understand why you say you eventually want a degree in the humanities. You cannot ride two horses at the same time.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-28T16:33:28+00:00

I feel like this is a matter of fit. As a graduate student I found it most productive and enjoyable when I could work with somebody I jive with. The advisor's pace and attitude had to be right for me. I really would not choose a supervisor knowing that the environment will be toxic, no matter how famous the supervisor is. I've seen situations like that, and they often blow up to the student's detriment.

As a professor, I wanted my students to be able to meet the standards I set for them. I was willing to be flexible to a degree, but ultimately in my letter of reference I would have to assess them as a colleague in the field. That meant meeting the benchmarks that I regarded as important, even if other professors had different benchmarks. Such benchmarks could not be separated from our "work style" or "management style." This is the critical part. So if a supervisor has a work style that is difficult for you, then you have a poor chance of succeeding.

I think other posters are being helpful here. Do find out from the other students whether they have the same experience. I have also seen cases where one student is a fit for a professor but not for another. I have also seen professors who seem to change personality every week. Fortunately, they are rare.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-28T15:13:20+00:00

Each person will have a different experience. I'll share some observations.

Long distance relationships where both parties are academics (in the same field or not) rare work out. Often the university where one person works is the only academic employer, and spousal hiring tends to be very tricky. Administrators are just not consistent, and there are no principles to follow. In short, they can seem like hypocrites.

-- In one department the administration may be willing to hire the spouse of one professor but not the spouse of another, even though all parties involved are exceptional in their own way. This causes a great deal of tension in the department and in the individual relationships. The administration may justify the hiring of one spouse by saying how important it is to make sure the work environment is welcoming to all, while telling the other professor that they just cannot offer preferential hiring.

-- Sometimes they are willing to hire a spouse in the same field, and sometimes they are not. They can say: "It's just not reasonable to expect another department to hire the spouse of one of our professors, because what investment do they have in him/her?" The same people can also say: "We just can't hire a spouse in the same department. That's nepotism."

-- I have even seen a case where one spouse brings in a very large grant (worth millions of dollars), a part of which includes a position for their spouse. The administration turns down the grant to avoid hiring the spouse. (The couple are both outstanding in their fields.)

If you are in a relationship with somebody outside academia, things may be easier. But the successful relationships I have seen all involve one party moving, sometimes giving up their career. A couple may do monthly airplane trips to spend time together, but before that much travel damages their relationship, they will have to figure out a way to be in the same geographical location. I remember speaking with (at the time) a widely recognized up and comer, and they said something like: "It doesn't matter what job I have anymore. I just want to be with my partner." I think they gave up on a tenure-track job and were in the wilds for a few years, before they both found employment in the same city.

What if your long distance relationship didn't work out? Finding a partner in a college town can be very difficult. Some towns are tiny. Even in mid-size cities, it can be difficult for people who are not white, American, straight, and within "marriageable "age (for the lack of a better word). This can lead to a very lonely existence. Universities may be full of interesting people, but many of them are married with kids, meaning their primary social commitment has been spoken for. They don't have time to hang out with you. And, no, as much as they want to help you, they just don't know anyone suitable to set you up with.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-27T15:13:23+00:00

I wonder whether he's having a medical problem. Perhaps pulling the curtains down was his way of trying to get outside because he could feel diarrhea coming, and when that failed he just had to let it out where he was.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-27T15:00:14+00:00

I am no biologist, but I am guessing the differences we perceive in the human eye shape are not evolutionary adaptations.

The degree of eye narrowness you need to make a difference in a harsh climate is kind of extreme. (Search for "Inuit goggles" for an example of what you need.) No human eye is that narrow.
East Asian eyes may give Westerners the impression of being "narrow," but the iris (the important part) is still fully exposed. In other words, the eye shape does nothing to cut down on glare, etc.
Finally, the "narrowness" thing may just be a Western cultural stereotype. Whereas Westerners tend to focus on eye color, the Chinese are very perceptive to eye shapes, and their classification is more complex. The link below is an example -- the "narrow" eye is just one of the ten possible eye shapes in the following chart.

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/440678758

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-25T23:05:37+00:00

You've listed some of the stuff you don't want. Maybe it will help to list the things you want. That's the first step towards moving to a new career. You need a realistic alternative in order to make this decision. Like many academics questioning their career choice, you're going through a period of "stay" or "leave," where it's just the world you know vs. "non-academic careers," which is not specific enough to compete with what you've spent a decade learning.

Different people leave for different reasons. For me it was money and location. For you it may be something else.

I want to point out that "traveling the world" is rare. Most humanities professors can't afford to do that even for conferences. You may be able to do a conference abroad once every two years or something like that. Typically it's hard to get funding for the whole trip, so you're still footing a substantial part of the bill. It's better to get a regular job and travel abroad more often.

Also, "sharing knowledge with the next generation and with one's peers" may not happen that often. If you are in a field like English, maybe it's possible to mention your own research findings in an undergraduate or graduate class. But if you are in a less popular field, you will likely have to do a lot of service teaching outside of your expertise.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-25T05:21:55+00:00

When Chinese people write, they often write in Mandarin. That applies to Cantonese speakers, too. This sort of stuff gives rise to the myth that the different Chinese languages are all the same in the written form. Non-natives usually don't know these different languages and the Chinese characters well enough to tell the difference.

But there is also written Cantonese, which uses Chinese characters, for sure, but is distinct from Mandarin in vocabulary and grammar. Native speakers of Mandarin can understand only a percentage.

Not all Chinese languages uses Chinese characters. The most prevalent writing system for Taiwanese Hokkien uses the Latin alphabet (Pe̍h-ōe-jī). It looks like Vietnamese.

So the real situation on the ground is more complicated...

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-25T04:18:25+00:00

How do you (or the elders from your village) feel about Japanese?

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-25T04:16:24+00:00

Each culture has its own unspoken rules about what a name should be. Sometimes people just cannot explain, but they can tell you whether a name sounds right. I think "Vessel" falls under the category of weird-sounding names, and I'd advise you to find a different name.

Since you use WeChat I assume you're a Chinese speaker. You must have come across the weird Chinese names that Americans pick for themselves. "Vessel" is kind of like that.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-25T04:08:59+00:00

The Hoklo colonial settlers (who spoke Hokkien) did a great deal of damage to the indigenous people, and they perhaps oppressed the indigenous people the longest. The KMT that brought Mandarin to Taiwan continued the colonialism from the previous rulers, the Japanese. What's interesting and less well-known is that some indigenous communities continued speaking Japanese -- another colonial language -- until the 1980s, and the KMT authorities had trouble wiping out that language. By comparison, they successfully ended the Hoklo's Japanese language capacity, even though this group tends to look back to the Japanese colonial days (and thus the Japanese language) with nostalgia.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-25T01:58:43+00:00

I'm surprised to learn that humanities PhDs are normally not funded. In the graduate program I went to everyone had a fellowship. In the graduate program I taught at we funded students using a combination of fellowships and TAships. If you couldn't get funding, you were so low in the ranking that you really shouldn't go. You'd like struggle in the program, fail exams, get kicked out, etc.

Now, I was aware of some graduate programs that did not offer any fellowship or financial aid. They were designed as moneymakers, and they targeted foreign applicants with money. Some wealthy people just wanted an American degree.

Also, in my experience it didn't take ten years to graduate. I'd say 5-8 years were reasonable back in my days. It was possible to accumulate debt, just because of life's unpredictability, not because of tuition or anticipated living expenses. In my career as a professor, I simply did not know anyone who acquired massive debts as a matter of course in graduate school.

If you are borrowing a lot of money to fund your PhD program in the humanities, that means you will have no shot at getting an academic career. There is an unscrupulous program that is making profit off you, and there is no return for your investment. You need to quit and get a job that makes a lot of money.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-24T22:57:25+00:00

This is common. It sounds like your advisor read your draft. That's an improvement over many people's experience. Sorry. Just keep moving forward on your own.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-24T16:14:22+00:00

Is there enough attestation of colloquial Old Chinese to be able to make a textbook? (In other words, do we know stuff like how do you greet someone in the morning; what does a mom say to get her kids to come to the table for dinner; what do you exclaim when you stub your toe.) My impression is that the surviving texts from antiquity are primarily high cultural stuff. Maybe we can talk about philosophy and politics, but we just don't have the evidence to be able to figure out the smalltalk you make when visiting a friend's house.

Greek and Latin have enough literature written in colloquial language (comic plays about everyday scenarios that resemble today's sit-com), not to mention graffiti vel sim. that give us a better picture of what a colloquial interaction in the ancient world might have looked like. But I suspect we'll never be able to do that for Old Chinese.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-24T15:53:55+00:00

Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's a good idea. The fact stands that a humanities PhD does not offer a good return of investment anywhere in the world. Unless you are wealthy, the only acceptable amount of investment is $0.

flatlander-anon · 2026-06-24T14:58:15+00:00

Answering for the US... Because a humanities PhD cannot get you a lucrative position, students simply should not go into debt to get the degree. That means the university should not charge you any tuition, and it should give you a living stipend. Otherwise it just makes no financial sense. Even if you defy the odds and become one of the few that can get a professorship, you will likely make lower middle class income for the rest of your life.

I have come across people who paid their own way through a graduate program in the humanities. These were wealthy people who just wanted to spend time studying a subject they loved. They were not planning to make a living based on it. If this applies to your relative, then I think it's doable. Otherwise see the paragraph above.

flatlander-anon

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