This is the beautiful landscape that can be seen out our back window of our apartment in Xining.  Breathtaking, eh?

On many evenings over the past two years, from the comfort of my couch, I have stared out at this gray brick building.  The other day as I stared at it it dawned on me that I could actually read the Chinese characters on top of the building.

When I first started learning Chinese, I could only make out the word "大"
(da) which is a very common and simple character in Chinese.  It means "big", "large", or "most".

Over time I learned the word for world which is "世界" (shijie).  I think I learned this one during the World Cup last summer.

And only recently I picked up the word for carpet "地毯" (dita).

So I was pretty happy that I could make out all the characters on the sign: Big Carpet World.  This is what you call two years of progressive literacy.  Granted there is some English on the sign, and I’ve known that this building used to be a carpet factory, but that’s beside the point.

I can read, people!  I can read.  Just don’t hand me a Qinghai newspaper.