Why Chinese?

[icebear]

Similar to Roddy - when I graduated in 2006 I wanted to do anything but think about a serious career or going straight to grad school. I'd had a blast studying abroad, and wanted to do that again and get paid. After a few false starts with other countries where I'd missed deadlines or would have visa issues, I found out that nearly any American with a pulse could get a job a few weeks before starting.

 

Landed in Shenzhen for a year of fun and blew it with the Chinese - just figured it was too hard and I was going back to the US a year later, anyway. After a year of teaching English and fucking around, I decided to get serious career-wise - but further north in China. Started to take my Chinese a bit more seriously once I saw a real, live, walking, talking laowai speaking decent Chinese.

 

Been in China on and off ever since, with an even greater hunger to return each time I leave... hell of a good ride, language included.

[AdamD]

When I was 11 I went to Hong Kong. A tour guide wrote us some directions to give to a cab driver. I'd never seen Chinese being written before and was completely gobsmacked: it looked impossible, but there it was, happening right in front of me. How could she remember all those characters? How could she write them so quickly?

 

Having then spent decades feeling pathetic for only being able to speak one language, and failing to identify a language that would pique my interest—German seemed fine until everyone I met in Germany spoke English—I went to Vietnam in 2008 and saw some Chinese writing on historic buildings. That inspired me to have a go at learning some characters. I started with a fairly basic iPhone app that demanded exact stroke placements and would mark nearly all attempts incorrect; I couldn't even remember four characters, so of course I moaned about the whole language being stupid and gave up.

 

Going back to Hong Kong in 2009, I noticed that I was unconsciously recognising some really simple characters, seeing them again and again: 中, 人, 口. Before I left the country I grabbed some Chinese books from Page One and was determined to give it a go. Those books were:

 

A Handbook for 1,000 Basic Chinese Characters

http://www.bookdepository.com/Handbook-for-1-000-Basic-Chinese-Characters-Guoan-Wang/9789629962838

 

Fun with Chinese Characters, vol. 1–3

http://www.bookdepository.com/Fun-with-Chinese-Characters-Tan-Huay-Peng/9789814351461

 

Now I saw that a methodical approach to remembering characters could make all the difference. I found some character books, mainly thanks to recommendations on this forum (Matthews & Matthews, Heisig & Richardson, Harbaugh) and self-studied for nearly 18 months. In that time I memorised and could write perhaps 500 characters in correct stroke order, but I didn't even look at pronunciations or tones. I'm an introvert, so at the time retaining characters was a big enough accomplishment for me.

 

In 2011 I enrolled in RMIT Melbourne's part-time Chinese language certificate programme. That was the start of my formal learning, but it was also an acknowledgement that I had found the right language and wanted to take it seriously. From day one I worked very hard at remembering tones and getting them right (I recommend this for reasons I'll explain another time), as well as correct tongue placement for the tricker consonants.

 

Last year I completed Certificate III, but I also comfortably passed HSK 3. The latter achievement won me a scholarship to study Chinese at Tianjin Normal University for two weeks in December—one of the most rewarding and exhilarating times of my life.

 

The RMIT course has sadly ended, but now I study independently for 10–15 hours per week. That study includes going to a language exchange group; attempting to read books, magazines and news sites; talking to people in China on Chinese social media, using text and push-to-talk; and writing a diary with a pencil. Just like the tour guide in Hong Kong all those years ago.

 

Five years ago I thought all that was impossible.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

 

Every week I meet new Chinese citizens travelling to Australia and locals who are learning Chinese, and every week I'm asked the same question: Why Chinese?

 

My answer used to be a condensed but meandering version of the above. Now I just tell people I love it more than anything I've ever done; it's a genuinely useful language; and my long term career plan is to help others learn Chinese by working on learning software. It's all true.

[Lu]

My parents were planning a trip to China. Bought books about it, planning their trip on the map, everything. Unfortunately, that was in 1989, and in the end they didn't go.

I read pretty much everything that comes in front of me, so I started on their books. First Wild Swans, that got me interested and I started reading more and more on China, Japan, Asia. I remember reading Li Zhisui's book on Mao before I had the knowledge to realise how shocking it was.

I had always been interested in languages, so wanted to study a language in university. I briefly considered Japanese, but in the end went for Chinese. This was in 2000. People's reaction usually was 'Chinese?! Why?!' At that point I had never been to China. When I did go in 2002, I fell in love with the country. (My parents came to visit in 2003, their trip had gotten postponed quite a bit, but they liked that now I could show them around.)

All in all, pretty much everything I have dreamed of in life has come true because I learned Chinese. Even at a low point I had in Beijing a while ago, picking Chinese was one thing I was still happy about.

[geraldc]

Family background is Chinese*. Born in UK. Parents thought English was difficult, so they were happy to speak Cantonese to me and allow me to reply in English. 

Used to go to Chinese community school when I was little, but you don't really learn much in 2 hrs on a Sunday, I used to just go socialise with friends. As I only speak Cantonese with family, I have a very strange vocab. Never learnt to read or write, or rather I could read a childrens book when I was a toddler, but by the time I was 13, I'd forgotten it all. 

After uni and a few years of work, I realised that if I didn't learn to read and write, I never would, and if I was learning to read and write, I might as well learn Mandarin. So took a year out, and went to SOAS in 2003.

Found this place as it was pretty much the only English language hit when you googled for HSK exam.  I've really learnt a lot from this place, so keep coming back...

 

*Family is Hong Kong Chinese. However I was born in the UK. Strange mix of dialects. Parents spoke Cantonese to each other. Fathers side all speak Cantonese. My dad spent his primary education in China where he was taught in Mandarin. Mother's side was a bit different. Grandparents spoke Hokkien to each other and their kids. Their kids spoke Mandarin to each other. So my mum spoke Cantonese to my dad, Hokkien to her parents and Mandarin to her brother. Meanwhile her brother spoke Cantonese to my dad, Mandarin to his sister, Hokkien to his parents and Shanghainese to his wife etc.

[Elizabeth_rb]

Thanks everyone for their interesting stories - I've given virtually every post a + vote.  

 

Anyway, here's my tale:

 

I decided to learn Chinese as there were increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants, students and visitors who wanted to study the Bible and, whilst many were/are happy to do it in English, the best way to study any subject (esp. one that's meant to make a serious impression on one) is to do it in one's mother tongue.  So, after making a tiny start on my own with 'Chinese in Three Months' and 'Teach Yourself Chinese', I signed up for an evening class along with 3 or 4 others like me back in Sept 1995.  Our teacher was a Malaysian who thought that tones weren't important for us to learn and, well, her classes were less than inspiring!!

 

I felt that, if I was going to really learn this language, I was going to have to take it seriously and so applied to the University of Leeds for their BA(Hons) in Modern Chinese Studies, which I did from Oct 1996 to June 2000, including a year in Taiwan (at NCCU language centre) in 1997/8 (where I also met my hubby - who had got a scholarship for broadly the same reasons).

 

I took a year out and did some secretarial work whilst still carrying on with my Bible teaching in Chinese for the next academic year, but then went back to Leeds Uni to start a part-time MA in Applied Translation Studies with Chinese as my language.  Sadly, during the first year, symptoms of CFS/ME made themselves known and I had to cut almost everything right down and re-enrolled for the second year for a postgraduate diploma instead (which meant I needed only one more course instead of three and didn't have to waste my work thus far).  

 

Also during my first post-grad year, I was approached by my old department, East Asian Studies, to teach the BA level 1 listening classes as well as to help out with test and exam marking.  I did that until 2009.  On their recommendation, I was approached by the chap who ran the foreign lang side of the university's Language Centre to create some beginners' classes for a special transferable skills for PhD students drive.  Later on, one of the Language Centre staff joined in and she'd also been to the same evening classes I used to take and had the same impression of the teacher there!!!  I was then taken on to teach a credit bearing beginners' module in the Centre, during which I managed to do myself in quite thoroughly and, although I'd undergone successful treatment for CFS/ME in 2005/6, I started on a downward spiral of chronic exhaustion.   End of teaching career, but NOT the end of Chinese!

 

Both my hubby and I applied for the Taiwan Ministry of Education's Mandarin Enrichment Scholarship for the 2009/10 open competition (i.e. the 2 or 3 that are left after the British Academy of Chinese Studies has allocated all its awards to recent graduates etc - some of whom I'd taught in their 1st year!!!  ) and I managed to get one, so off we went East for that year.

 

Since then, we're back in the UK, moved to Sheffield where Sir is doing a PhD and we're both still as involved in our original teaching work as circumstances allow, and I'm trying to spend some time most days refreshing, revising and developing my Chinese.  I spend time with Chinese speakers several times a week normally and enjoy it enormously.  We've also had the pleasure on and off since summer 2000 of teaching a number of other volunteers, some of whom have been/are in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Ghana, The Gambia, Mozambique, South Africa and so on either carrying on their service in native speaking territories or with Chinese immigrant populations.  Another highlight has been interpreting speeches for non-Chinese speakers, which should be going ahead again in the near future, supposing I can stand up long enough (which may actually be a problem....)

 

That's my story.   

[Shelley]

Well my Chinese learning journey started in 1984. I am very keen on embroidery and other crafts. I wanted to embroider a Chinese dragon with some Chinese characters on my denim jacket. Much like a tattoo this would take time and effort and be "permanent" and visible to the rest of the world.

 

Like getting a tattoo I did not want to have wrong characters forever emblazoned on my jacket. In 1984 there was no internet and no Chinese forums to come in and ask is this right?

 

So I enrolled in my local University evening classes and using the Book and tapes Getting by in Chinese by the BBC I embarked on my epic journey (not that i knew that then).

 

After the first 3 months I was very interested in this "Chinese thing" and after 6 months i was hooked. i have never looked back and have enjoyed the last 30 years of learning Chinese.

 

i have met some very interesting people and been to some interesting places, sadly because of my health I will never be able to travel to china, nothing too terrible but just bad enough to stop it being possible.

 

As can be seen from my post in the popular "shelfies thread" I have amassed a lot of books. Also lots of electronic learning aids.

 

I put off doing my jacket for many years as the more i learned, the more I learned how much I don't know. Finally about 5 years ago I started it and finally finished it about 2 years ago,

 

I have attended University classes, private classes and self study. I have achieved a University stage 2a diploma. Not sure what this is equivalent to, but I did it just to find what I had achieved and how far i had progressed on my own.

 

Now I enjoy practicing writing characters, working on my grammar and improving my vocabulary.

 

For anyone starting to learn Chinese i wish you the best, and remember it is very rewarding, although it may not be apparent to start with, you will find it gets better with time

 

This forum has a lot to offer the new learner and the more advanced, they say it is the friendliest Chinese forum around and that is just what I found, a bunch of good people willing to give you their time and knowledge to help us all learn Chinese.

 

Just for the record and to finish this post off the way it started I have posted a picture of the jacket that started it all for me

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Demonic_Duck]

So in the end, you got a skill and a badass jacket! Win-win!

 

I don't think my story's as inspiring as most of you guys'. Having taken very little interest in languages in high school, I decided at the ripe old age of 19 that being monolingual sucked, and embarked on an epic journey of self-studying... Russian. The choice of language was largely random, but I seem to remember my thought process being along the lines of "it's more impressive than Spanish or German, but not as difficult as Chinese". Two years later, my Russian was still terrible, but I'd well and truly caught the "language bug".

 

At that time, I lived in a shared house with a constantly-changing roster of foreign students living there. These included a French Swiss girl and a group of Burmese sushi chefs, who inspired me to dabble in French and Burmese respectively. Later, a Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese girl moved in, so naturally I started learning Mandarin, with traditional characters. I think the fact that I had a crush on her was what inspired me to be a bit more 认真 with the Mandarin than I had been with any of the other languages I'd tried (though in the end nothing happened between us).

 

Anyway, I became more infatuated with the language than the girl, and when she moved away I continued to study, eventually enroling in some classes at my university to supplement the self-study - at this point I switched to learning simplified characters, as the course was taught using simplified. At some time during this year (大三 on a three-year course), I decided I wanted to get serious about the whole Chinese thing, and started looking for jobs in China. I graduated with a good degree (helped in no small part by the grades from that Chinese course, which was aimed at a very low level and thus was easy marks for someone putting in decent self-study hours), and was accepted for the first job I applied for.

 

And... One and a half years later I'm still here, and plan to stay for a good while.

[JustinJJ]

I was fortunate to be sent to Hong Kong for work back in 2010 for a year. I noticed a lot of the expats there would go out socially with a whole group of other expats, but to make the most of my experience there I purposely only made friends with Chinese people. Around half were from HK the others from mainland China. From that period I became really interested in Chinese culture. 

 

When my secondment finished I returned home and a few months later changed jobs. That job in investment banking required me to work 80 or so hours a week (i.e. 9am-12am is very normal) so after a while I got sick of it and wanted to take a career break. I had really been interested in Chinese for a while but never had the time to learn it so thought I'd take that time to relax, learn Chinese and experience China. I went there and studied 10 hours a day for 7 months (this seemed relaxing/fun having come from a very intense work environment), then taught English while continuing to study hard for another 9 months in China.

 

After returning home around 5 months ago I've continued to work in finance (although I get much better work-life balance now) and try to spend a few hours a day on Chinese and speak it to any Chinese person I come across. 

[Shelley]

@Demonic Duck  -  thank you

[abcdefg]

All my adult life I've liked to travel to new places and experience what they had to offer. Was fortunate in being able to do some occupational travel as well as leisure travel.

 

Had a stressful though well-paying job, and liked to get far away from the phone when I had vacation in order to decompress. Also liked to go to places that provided a real change from home (USA -- Texas.) Visited China in late 2005 and fell in love with the people, the food, the culture, but wasn't sure whether or not it would prove to be just be a passing infatuation.

 

Over the next several years I returned to take short-term language classes in China and explore different parts of the country. Each time I lingered a little longer. My strategy was to arrange classes in a different location each year, but also make a second stop somewhere else in China to briefly check out another region on the way to or from the primary destination. 

 

Eventually developed a "favorite triangle" of Zhuhai in the far south, Harbin in the far north, and Kunming in the southwest. Would supplement my short study abroad trips with some "don't forget everything" projects while stateside. My goal was to develop enough Chinese language ability to be able to travel easily in China and make friends along the way.

 

Was taking more "China time off" from my job each year, finally settling into a pattern of working only six months of each year and traveling in China the remaining six months, with those six month blocks being broken up. Was fortunate to be in a line of work where that was possible. Always studied pretty diligently but in a practical, non-exam-oriented fashion. Sought out one-on-one teaching most of that time.

 

Now I've retired and live in Kunming most of each year. Still take private language classes that have some specific focus, usually only six weeks at a time, with travel in between. The idea is to maintain some life balance and to immediately use what I've learned. Have knocked around at least a little in every province except Tibet and Xinjiang.

 

Have made a point of learning enough Chinese history to make the travel more meaningful. Also take every possible chance to spend time with local experts who can teach me about specific aspects of Chinese culture. Have a circle of Chinese friends and don't hang out with expats. Speak Chinese 99% of the time.

[Meng Lelan]

From the time I was very young my family all visited the public library every other week to check out books (this was the 1970s). I was six when I found a children's fiction story about an American brother and sister who travel to China and are introduced to their first ten characters. From that point on there was nothing that compelled me more than Chinese characters. The words seemed to be sign language on paper. Because I was deaf as a result of the rubella epidemic of the 1960s, I was not able to attend the local Chinese school or formal Chinese classes and neither was I able to attend Hebrew school with all my Jewish friends who were preparing for their bar/bat mitzvah. Knowing my interest in Chinese, my parents, relatives, and neighbors often gave me materials and arranged for some informal tutoring. This was easy to come by as this was a medium sized university town and many professors came from Taiwan and Hong Kong at that time, though few were from mainland until around the 1980s. The Chinese school was run on Sundays at the local armory where the ROTC trained except Sundays, so quite often the locals used the facilities for  indoor running, fitness training, and walking especially during cold or inclement weather. I used to go run and play on their track if I couldn't do so outdoors. Classrooms that were used for ROTC instruction and training during the week doubled up as the Chinese school classrooms on Sundays. The kids would scurry into their respective grade level classrooms about 1pm and  during breaktimes they would sit by the track with their snacks about 2:20pm or so before going back in for another hour of class. Sometimes after class (especially after finishing midterms) they would toss their old graded worksheets into the trash and I would secretly fish them out as study resources. I especially treasured a worksheet about the supermarket which the teacher had handmade with a drawing of supermarket aisles and blanks in which the student had scrawled the 漢字 for various food items/categories.

For my 10^th birthday I got a Dr. Suess book "My book about me" in which you could fill in all kinds of things about yourself. For the page about what I wanted to be, I wrote "a teacher about Chinese" (that's how I worded it).

I majored in Chinese as an undergraduate and got a master's in education and went to and from China many times. But my passion in life has always really been, as I wrote in the Dr. Suess book, to be "a teacher about Chinese". That is what keeps me interested in Chinese now and forever, as for getting that job, it's not going to be possible here in San Antonio where the "Chinese fever" never really caught hold. It's actually declining here. Probably because Spanish is so strong here or this city isn't known to be up with the times.  So the plan now is to go into blind rehab work in a VA hospital for ten or so years then maybe get a master's and/or PhD in Chinese literature, maybe in Taiwan at NTNU where many of my favorite professors trained originally,  then after that hopefully what I wrote in the Dr. Suess book will come true, but it won't be in San Antonio where I am right now but the goal is of course get out when my kids finish out high school. 

[abcdefg]

But my passion in life has always really been, as I wrote in the Dr. Suess book, to be "a teacher about Chinese".

But you have done some Chinese teaching, haven't you?

[Meng Lelan]

That was in the Confucius Institute here until administration introduced a large number of major changes. Quite a few other Chinese teachers left during that time also. 

[abcdefg]

Understand. Hope you get to realize your goal eventually.

[Meng Lelan]

I think I will, but it won't be here and it will take a large amount of major hard work also. 

[ZhangKaiRong]

My one is a long story, so I need start from scratch. Here in the Eastern part of Europe, everybody says that being able to speak languages is the key to a better life. This is why parents want their kids to start learning languages very early. I started to learn English in kindergarten, which was obviously not my choice but liked it very much. In high school, we had to take a second foreign language to learn, we could choose between Latin and German. I wanted to learn Latin, but there weren't enough classmates to pick up that class, so everybody ended up taking class in German. I hated it so much! Fortunately, our English teacher was also graduated in Spanish language and culture, and she organized a Spanish specialization circle where we learnt Spanish as a third foreign language and some Latin culture.

 

When I started university, I could manage myself quite well in English and Spanish and was also being able to speak mediocre German. I picked some business language courses in my first semester, but I really felt that I needed to learn something new, something with no connection to Europe. Apart from English/German/French/Spanish/Portuguese/Russian, my university offered Hindi, Arabic and Chinese language courses, but none of them picked up my interest. Then I met some Japanese exchange students, who were really nice to me and taught me a lot about their culture and language, so I started to learn Japanese. The problem was that I started to learn it by myself, due to the fact that language schools near my place didn't organize Japanese classes, and my coursetable was already more or less full, so I wasn't flexible enough to go to the other end of the city. I learnt the kanas and some kanjis, learnt a lot of grammar, but in the end I got lost in my individual studies, without proper guidance I didn't find suitable materials for my level (and to be honest, I wasn't patient enough), so I didn't continue to learn Japanese and I thought that eastern languages couldn't be learnt unless you were majoring them.

 

Then in the following semester I lacked some credits so I took a course in ancient Chinese philosophy. but I didn't plan to actually sit the classes, it was a Thursday night course so I originally intended to sit it on the first and second week and then borrow the other students' notes last week to pass the exam. But the class was so interesting! The professor who taught us was one of the best sinologist in the region, and apart from his academic qualities he was also a fun and energetic person, who I admired then and still admire now. At that time my knowledge on China was shamefully little. I don't know how the education system is in other European countries, but at history classes in high school we were focused on Western and national history, so I only heard about Qin Shi Huangdi and the terracotta army, Confucius, the Great Wall of China, yinyang, fengshui, Ming dynasty, Jiang Jieshi, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and nothing more, only these keywords. So during that course I learnt a lot of new things on Chinese culture, I've never missed a class! We needed to read Feng Yulan's book on the history of Chinese philosophy, and there were some other recommended books on general Chinese history, culture, etc. I read most of them, including Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Lin Yutang's A Moment in Beijing, Wild Swans, etc., saw a lot of Chinese movies (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and also started to focus on news concerning Chinese politics and economics. Then, at the end of the semester we submitted our essay and took the test, and I was the only one who achieved 100%. When we went to the professor's office to get our mark recorded in the transcript, he said he would like to have some words with me. He said that I seem to be really interested in China, and I should take his classes in Chinese language and join the Chinese Studies Student Association, because I had potential in this field. So in the following semester I took the Introduction to Chinese language course  and joined the Chinese Studies Student Association. This happened four years ago, and my obsession with China and Chinese is still in my heart.

 

So this is it, it was more like 缘分 than an intentional choice. But I didn't regret it at all.

 

PS: sorry for the long post

[zhouhaochen]

I rather accidentialy went on a university exchange year to Hong Kong, which back then most people in Europe believed was in Japan without having any idea, knowledge or special interest in China. Once I got there I was hooked though, I had never thought there could be people living on this planet who are so fundamentaly different to where I am from and I found that fascinating. However at my uni courses were taught in - very poor - English, there were no classes offered for Cantonese and Mandarin classes were taught in Cantonese, so I ended up learning just about nothing. I did see so a Chinese world around me that I could look at, but not understand or be part of because I was just not able to communicate. A secret world of Chinese characters that I just had no access to.

After graduating in Finance, I found out in less than a year that I had studied a subject I had no interest in working in and needed a radical career change. That's when I though, what about just quitting my job and learn Chinese for a year? It all went quite quickly and two months later I started studying at BLCU. The first semester was loads of drinks and fun, but almost no Mandarin progress at all - I did learn just enough to completely mess up my tones for years though as I did not pay attention to them (nor did my teacher as we were 20 people in class).

The first time I actually learned Mandarin was when I started living with two Chinese guys who were interested in speaking with me (I had previously lived with Chinese people, but all of them basicaly saw it as a rent sharing agreement and had no interest in social interaction). We watched TV, cooked, went swimming, anything I would usually not do back then - I tried a thousand times but they would not come to a bar with me - but I suddenly could feel how my spoken Mandarin improved. The second semester I got lucky because the university closed due to SARS and we got our tuition money back. I used that then on a private tutor who helped me to straighen out my tones and teach me the way I thought I should be taught. Both tutors are very good friends of mine today and both tell me that they hated be back then for being such a difficult and demanding student. I continued living with my Chinese friends and started making good progress. At that point I found out for the first time about radicals in Chinese characters, the existence of which at university somehow was never mentioned.

After that I went to London for a Masters, which is a great place for practicing Mandarin with all the Chinese students, came back to Beijing etc. I kept studying with tutors, online, private schools at university and became an immersion fanatic. Back then I would only write text messages, which was a big thing back then as the older people amongst us might remember, in Chinese even to foreigners who could did not speak or learn Mandarin, which I think lost me some friends. I put post-it notes in Chinese characters all over my apartment, a list of new words every two weeks in front of the toilet seat, watching Chinese TV and so on.

I would say the final step I made though once I started working for an Austrian company in Beijing where nobody except the boss spoke English and she was not going to start speaking it because of some trainee like me. Our customers were Chinese, my colleagues were Chinese and I spoke only Chinese all day. I still remember how incredibly tired I was after the first day at work. It was exhausting, as there was never any chance to speak anything other than Mandarin - but it was the best training I ever got.

[xuexiansheng]

My tale may not be as interesting as some of the posts of my fellow 'Forum-ers', but here goes:

 

Back in 2004 I was faced with the frightening prospect of graduating with a Theater Arts degree from University. The summer before I met a friend at a summer program and he mentioned he was going to China to finish up a doctorate in Chinese medicine. It all sounded very exotic and interesting and I guess the idea just struck something with me. He originally meant to visit, but he later suggested I could go to school at the university he had attended to work on his Chinese, Anhui University. Without much reason other than loving being a student, I decided to take on the challenge and go to school in China for a year! I started saving up my money and enrolled in a first year Chinese course.

 

The class was excellent, I met a good friend I'm still in contact with after ten years and my teacher inspired me to learn and gave me my Chinese name. We learned traditional characters and worked from an old primer that had all the classic communist era primer plot points. “The friendship store”, “the albanian student asking where the library is”, “Comrades assisting the exchange students”, it was so hokey, but my teacher had fun with it and his teaching style for beginners was excellent. I didn't learn much grammar or know much Chinese, but manage to get myself to Hefei to start a year of as a liuxuesheng at AnDa.

 

The schooling at AnDa was pretty good, we had four hours of class five days a week. The problem I encountered was my level of Chinese. I knew enough to not want to start back at Beginners (Chujiban) saying “Ni hao!”, but I wasn't good enough to be in Intermediate (Zhongjiban). After asking friends for advice I decided to jump into the deep end and go into Intermediate. I was WAAAY over my head for the first six months, then for the last three months I could kind of understand what the teacher was saying and contribute a little in class. I drilled my characters, tried to keep up and got a lot of passive understanding.

 

Hefei was wild back then (2004) we called it the Alabama of China. Foreigners were fairly rare and the economic boom hadn't really reached a backwater like Hefei. It was great because it was 'real' China, but also very difficult for a star-eyed 24 year old, who had just moved away from home for the first time. Luckily, my friend who was studying Chinese medicine was there and I managed to bungle through a year without too many problems. But, after a year and still thinking I wanted to be an actor I pretty much decided that Chinese was a just some crazy thing to put on my resume.

 

I gave the acting thing a half-hearted go for a couple of years and decided it wasn't really my thing. Any language skill I had gain atrophied. The whole time I was still trying to make sense of my time in China. It had definitely changed me and I felt some serious culture shock, so I went on the internet to read obsessively about other people's experience in China. I read a lot of blogs and came across Chinese-forums.com. It has been an invaluable tool for at first just keeping up a little in Chinese, then with my resurgence of interest in the last few years to understand the full possibilities of what it takes to really know China and Chinese language.

 

The last five years work a good union job that leaves me with time to pursue my interest in Chinese. I've gone back to school where I took my first Chinese class. (lo, these ten years ago!) I had to pick back up at second year and took third year and an introduction to Classical Chinese. My current passion has been Classical Chinese (as if modern spoken Mandarin wasn't hard enough!) Though I started ten years ago this year, I definitely don't feel like I know the language. But, I've also made some progress and enjoy it as a hobby. Plus, gives me an excuse to keep traveling back to China each year for a month, which I started in 2012, went back in 2013 and I'll be headed back in June this year!

[Frederik451]

well my story is quite random I graduated high school in 2010 in Denmark (No not in Copenhagen, but the second biggest city - Aarhus  ). I didn't really know what to go for at university, so i decided to take a year off. i got a job in a kindergarten where i ended up working for two years while i was thinking about what to do with my life. My best friend is half egyptian half danish and we had always talked about going to Cairo and learn Arabic at some point in hour life. so after working for two years (its very normal in denmark to take even three years off before going to university. - something my international fellow students i met in china thought was really weird   ) we decided to go to Cairo for a semester and learn arabic. we are in summer 2012 at that time. then **** me if the whole middle eastern revolution didn't explode again in Cairo and after deep discussion for a long time we decided to cancel the trip.

 

sitting my friends room with arabic learning books in our hands ready to go, we were like... damn. thats not what we planned.. well. lets go somewhere else. 

 

we took out a huge world map and looked around. My friend then said - "i've always liked kong fu and i think chinese sounds pretty cool". 

 

we googled "chinese language school Beijing" and clicked on the first hit which at then was www.hibicc.com (beijing international chinese college) - send them an email and 5 minutes after my telephone rang. it was the marketing manager from the school (who ended up becoming one of my best friends in Beijing) and one month after we arrived in the big city. after one semester we decided to go for one more. why stop when you just learned the basics? during the second semester i decided that i wanted to study chinese at university. and here i am today. studying Chinese and business at University Of Southern Denmark. I'm at HSK 5 now and my goal is to take number 6 before i graduate in 3 and a half years  

 

 

funny how random stuff sometimes changes your life  

[jbradfor]

Pretty simple, actually: I wanted to study abroad, to me China was the most interesting place to go, and I wanted to be able to speak the language while I was there.  So I took two years of college Mandarin in the USA, then went to Taiwan to study for a semester (fall 1989).  And then done almost nothing with Chinese since :-(  Looking back, however, that time in Taiwan was one of the best, more formative, and enjoyable times in my life, and I have no regrets.

 

Why did China seem the most interesting?  That is a bigger puzzle, one I don't really have an answer for.  Yes, embarrassing to admit, there was a girl involved, but she spoke Cantonese (and her English was better than I could every hope my Mandarin to be), so that wasn't the reason.  In spite of no family involvement with Asia (genetically, professionally, travel, general interest), I've always been drawn to East Asia.  I do wonder if maybe there was some early childhood event that sparked it, but, if so, it's long forgotten in the blur that is the memory of my childhood.  So it's going to remain a mystery.

 

Oh, and about that girl?  She's now my wife.