Chinese success stories

[studychinese]

I have had a couple of Chinese language success stories that I would like to share. They may seem pretty minor, but they are a big deal to me.

 

A brief background - in the last month I went hardcore and did about 20 hours of lessons on italki. I was inspired/shamed by the thread started by tamu, titled "Independent Chinese study: review".

 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/43939-independent-chinese-study-review/

 

So I will go to China and North Korea, arriving in China next week. It turns out I have lost the charger for my camera, so I wanted to try to buy the charger on taobao, as shops are charging $99 here in Australia for a charger that you can buy for $3 on taobao. I had attempted taobao one time before a couple of years ago, and failed miserably. This time I did it, and it was a breeze. So that is success number 1. 

 

After that I wanted to confirm with my hotel in Shanghai that the hotel would be able to accept my package on my behalf. Because the hotel is a 5 star Hotel (Radisson Blu on Nanjing West Road) I assumed that English would be the best way to go. A receptionist picked up but when her English was not up to the task she transferred me to the concierge. The concierge said that he couldn't understand me, so I asked him in Chinese if I should switch to Chinese. He immediately switched to Chinese and thanked me. Anyway, it turns out that this conversation in Chinese was much easier than I thought it would be (probably thanks to 20 hours of speaking Chinese recently) and within a minute I had established that there was no issue with the hotel receiving my package. I felt quite victorious.

 

Does anyone else have any Chinese success stories, no matter how small? A little inspiration can go a long way.

[abcdefg]

There is no order of difficulty or magnitude in miracles or in language success stories. There are no big ones and little ones, hard ones or easy ones. They all are equally wonderful.

 

Congratulations! I know how good that feels.

[geraldc]

Years ago, I was eating in a Korean restaurant in London with my language exchange partner. Decided to practice a little bit of mandarin. When it came to paying the bill the waitress came and chatted to us. She was from China, and explained she had been eavesdropping on our conversation, but couldn't initially work out what language we were speaking, after a while she realised it was mandarin, but due to the speed of talking, she assumed I had developmental issues, and my language partner was my carer. I took that as a win, a native speaker, assuming I was developmentally challenged native speaker!

[simc]

One day after chatting in Chinese with some workmates in Chinese, a colleague (Chinese-New Zealander who couldn't speak chinese, I hadn't met him before) complemeted me on my "fluent" Mandarin. He said that initially he thought I was "the sort of Chinese person who doesn't look Chinese" (I'm european).

[Silent]

In 2012, after a year and a half of selfstudy with a focus on reading I arrived in China expecting my Chinese would be of very little use. I managed reasonably well, that is not always very fluent, but managed to do all essentials in Chinese. Then after a couple of days a few girls chatted me up in a park. After about half an hour conversation mostly in Chinese one of the girls told me I was hard to understand as I had a strange accent. It wasn't meant as a compliment, but I saw it as a huge compliment that they did understand me (somewhat/mostly).

[Lu]

"the sort of Chinese person who doesn't look Chinese"

Ooh I've had that happen (sort of). Chatting with a guard in the Palace Museum, who after a short chat asked whether I was half Chinese. I am tall (1.80) and white and have light brown curly hair and asked him whether he thought I looked Chinese at all. He said he assumed I must be half Chinese because my Chinese was so good.

But that was not the success story. A better one was this: I was leaving Taiwan and wanted to send some things home. I had packed some things in a suitcase, but when I came to the post office the lady told me that the resulting package was too heavy, so I had to repack, and it was all rather complicated. So the post office lady and I were discussing how best to solve this when another foreigner came to the counter next to us. She bought something simple (stamps or sth) and 'her' post office lady told her that her Chinese was so good (it was okay). Nobody told me my Chinese was good. I took that as a compliment.

[ouyangjun]

 

 

Nobody told me my Chinese was good. I took that as a compliment.

@Lu - yes

[roddy]

Along the same lines of Lu's story - I think I've written this up on here before, but just before I moved out of Beijing I popped into a local convenience store to pick up some light bulbs. Was wandering around the shop looking for them. Guy behind the counter grunted '找什么？'. I grunted back '灯泡'. He grunted '隔壁有'. I went next door and bought some light bulbs. 

 

Hard to imagine a simpler interaction, but just the fact it went off without reference to anyone being foreign or having whatever level of Chinese, and that it was my last few days in Beijng so I was paying more attention to stuff, made me remember it.

 

It also contrasted with an earlier incident in the same shop where I'd almost missed a bus due to the lady behind the counter being shocked that not only did I have a bus card, I knew how to put money on it, and telling me about this at some length while I watched the bus I needed to get approach the length of Jiaodaokou Nandajie.

[simc]

I've never lived in China, nearly everything I know about Chinese has come to me through a set of earphones. So I go to China on holiday and people would ask me how many years have I lived in China. I repled "Two weeks!".

I savour these moments of smugness. Its usually the case when you try to say or write something your delusions about your proficiency are quickly brought back down to earth.

[Guest realmayo]

No successes for far too long but it's a great topic and has in fact got me to book my first ever italki session so who knows?

[abcdefg]

I get positive reinforcement every day or two here.

 

Yesterday buying chicken wings at the market, I asked the price. Vendor said they were 32 Yuan a kilo. Smiled and told the lady I thought that was a little too expensive and asked if she could make them cheaper. I suggested 25. "二十五块好不好？"

 

Reply was, "Since you know how to bargain and can do it in my language, I will give them to you for 30." We struck a deal and she threw in an extra wing free after weighing out the others. We both felt like winners.

 

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

 

But what I actually find more and more is that locals want to beat me up because I'm not  talking 昆明话。It seems I have used up the free mileage that is available for just using 普通话。

[li3wei1]

A long time ago, I was in Taipei, and I wanted to take the ferry from Kaoshiung to Macao, so I called ahead to ask about the details, how to find the pier, food on board, etc. At the end of the conversation, the woman said "And you'll need a visa". I said, "no, I won't need a visa, I'm American". "Oh, are you a 华侨?".

 

Unfortunately, as I said, that was a long time ago, and it's gone a bit downhill from there. However, several years later, after living in Hong Kong for a while, I came back to Taiwan and delivered a 45-minute talk with slides to an audience of academics and journalists, in Mandarin. I practiced, and it went well. People laughed in the right places, asked relevant questions which I could answer, and the translators were happily translating me for the other 'foreign experts'.

[traunk]

A few weeks ago the wife and I were taking some Chinese friends to the St. Louis open air market (Soulards). The wife was having troubles finding a parking spot so I decided to entertain our friends with a joke. I took an old blonde joke I knew and tried to spit it out in Chinese. To my surprise, not only was I able to get it out without too many ums, but they also laughed at the punch line. 

[Demonic_Duck]

I basically treat any new type of transaction successfully carried out in Chinese as a small victory (asking for something I haven't previously asked for at the supermarket doesn't count, though). The most recent one was going to the hospital, though it's not one that I'm hoping to repeat soon - the first hospital I went to was horribly overcrowded and dirty.

 

I guess my greatest success in this sense is being able to answer the phone in Chinese. Though there wasn't a definitive moment with this one, it's something I remember not being able to stomach the possibility of doing when I arrived in China, but now it's second nature.

[Flickserve]

I came to this via the top ten posts of 2014.

 

I came to HK basically looking the part of a local, having a very cantonese name but not speaking any chinese except the odd word here and there. My job involves speaking to many people almost everyday.  HK people would saying I would pick up cantonese naturally. I guess it was because I look the part but it dawned on me that language diffusion doesn't work on me. Their next suggestion was watch HK soap opera series - well that is torture to a mind numbing degree. The plots are terrible.

 

So to get by, I learnt a few stock sentences that get me by. I would always be asked "Oh, you are from overseas - where are you from?" to which I replied England.

 

6 months later, after ten lessons of cantonese, this book and help from work colleagues, something happened. Instead of the same question of "where are you from?", the question now changed to "where in China do you come from?" I took that to mean my heavily accented british-cantonese accent had now improved immeasurably to something closer to HK.

 

Now, HKers ask me if I am from Singapore...:-(