Introduction

I have lived in Sweden for 17 years, and I am together with Swedes most of the time. Although I am born in Sweden, my mother is Chinese, and my appearance is yellow skin and black hair. Because of mother, I have gradually developed an interest in Chinese. At home I speak Cantonese and Shanghainese, but when I began to study Chinese, it was Mandarin. So studying Chinese meant that I was studying another ‘language’ from scratch.