Hey, it's supply and demand. If anyone really wants to work for this kind of money, their scheme may yet work. Nothing wrong with it, really. When was advertising really 100% honest?

On-topic:

Yes you should learn how to write Hanzi as it is an extra mnemonic aid to remembering characters. If you write them often, you will not only have a visual memory but also a kinetic memory of the character. The more different copies your brain has of the same object, the easier it will be to remember. The first 100 or so may be hard to remember but then it becomes easier as you start understanding the components. Also, I believe that HSK 5 and up require you to write, so why not start now. It's fun, interesting and relaxing to scribble characters.

Off-topic:

I would not overestimate the problem of homonymy in Chinese. People seem to be perfectly able to communicate orally without needing to spell out characters all the time. The times that people do write characters on their hands, it is often to communicate with people that do not speak their local or ethnic dialect. This happens in any language.

I read on the interwebs that English has a possible maximum number of syllables of around 11000. Yet when searching through the dictionary, only 2500-ish are actually used. Compare that to Chinese (413 syllables x 5 tones = 2050 - yet only using about 4/5ths of that), and we're not that far off really. You could even argue that Chinese uses its resources more efficiently but that would put the egg where the chicken should be.

Yet English combines far more syllables than Chinese does, which greatly increases the number of words you can possibly make. However, if there are a possible 1500 syllables in a disyllabic language like Chinese, the number of possible words is 1500^2 = 2,250,000, really many more than a person can even understand. The most comprehensive Chinese dictionary lists 370,000 words. They could, in theory, all sound completely different. The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary lists 170,000 words.

Homonymy is always a problem in any language and will for obvious reasons occur much more frequently in monosyllabic words than in disyllabic ones. English has a fair amount of homonyms too, think about all the pairs (research-(to) research, request-(to) request these are even homographic). In American English, which does not shift the stress of the verbs to the second syllable, they're essentially homophones.

I'm a linguist, but only a beginner at Chinese. So I'm not sure if the above is all true. But in theory, there is no reason why Chinese couldn't be romanised and why characters could not become redundant.

I had a discussion with my one-time Advanced English students. I asked them whether they thought Chinese could overtake English as the world's lingua franca and I raised the issue of romanisation. Most of them thought romanisation is a condition for Chinese taking that prominent position but it could not happen.

I am not convinced because of the above figure-juggling. I think that, with indication of the right tones, Mandarin Chinese (putonghua) could be romanised. Yes, it could mean that the writing loses meaning for speakers of for instance Cantonese. But aren't they all using Pinyin to enter text, whether or not it overlaps with their own pronounciation? It means that, in their minds, they have already mapped their pronounciation with the putonghua pinyin.

some essential terminology for this discussion:

phoneme = the smallest unit of speech that creates a minimal pair. I.e. it is the smallest unit that will can change meaning of an utterance. For instance, in English, /n/ and /r/ are different phonemes because the words 'pain' and 'pair' have different meanings, even though only one phoneme has changed. They do not necessarily coincide with written letters. For instance, in English, an initial /pʰ/ in 'pot' is not the same sound as a final /p/ in 'sap'. The former is aspirated, the latter is not. In many Asian languages /l/ and /r/ are the same phoneme because it doesn't change the meaning of the word for them. That's why, to the Thai ear, 'light' and 'right' sound the same.

word = the smallest stand-alone linguistic unit that carries meaning. For instance, in the above sentence, 'smallest' is a word. '-est' in 'smallest', however, is a morpheme and does not stand on its own, and is therefore not a word.

syllable = grouping of sounds. In most languages containing at least a vowel, often the nucleus. Optionally they also contain initials and finals, often consonants.

I have successfully bargained at my local market (even though prices are already rock-bottom there) and buying all kinds of stuff that I find too expensive. Usually I get up to 30-40% off, especially in places where I shop often.

My Chinese is not very good but locals seem to make no problem of giving me a discount or giving me something on top.

My method with places I regularly frequent is not making a fuss about the price the first time. Smile, always smile and have a short conversation. Give them some face, appreciate the wares. Then the next time, as they recognise your face, ask politely if they can drop it a bit. But don't argue about one or two kuai, that's not worth it. Just do it on the total price after you bought all of your stuff at the same veggie stand, for example.

With other places I just ask whether it can be any cheaper. If they say no, I move on. If they say yes I try to achieve 70% of the original.

Never forget to smile. Always smile, throughout the entire process. Treat it like a game. And if you think the price is fair, simply pay it. You don't have to bargain just because.

Wait, no, that didn't work after all. Strange, the characters are back, though I'm certain I saw proper Chinese once where the original odd characters were...

I want to get the new Thinkpad X230. Normally, they do custom-fits if you order off their website so you can trim it to your needs. Does anyone know if that's the case for the PRC as well?

Otherwise I'll have to get it off Taobao but you never really find the right set of components.