You need to have a REALLY good reason to learn Chinese

[roddy]

5 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

i just don't get why people are so overly sensitive and uptight around here Lu

Stick a post up, or message an admin (you have four to choose from now) naming names, linking posts, and suggesting who needs re-educated, rather than making a vague complaint in the guise of a poor joke. Or just hush about it.

 

?

[renzhe]

On 5/29/2018 at 5:14 PM, 889 said:

You're free to babble on and be asked about your country's leadership and political issues and social problems

I think that this is an important point.

[happy_hyaena]

On 5/29/2018 at 5:50 PM, i__forget said:

It seems almost every other topic is sensitive when you speak with Chinese people. Can you talk about politics? No. Can you talk about culture? No. Can you talk about history? No. Can you talk about football? No.

 

I've been able to talk about all of those things with Chinese people - even sensitive things like regarding Taiwan and Hong Kong. The trick is to not approach the situation with the mindset of "you are a brainwashed Mainlander who needs to be re-educated by yours truly", but rather with an open mind and curiosity where you ask them why they think so and so. The fact that I'm a "foreigner" has actually been in my favour because I don't really have a dog in the race. But then again, it requires a certain amount of humility, social skills and open mindedness that I guess some people lack.

[lakesandrivers]

Glad you brought it up, OP. 

 

I have given it much thought. This is my first time moving to live long-term under a communist sky. I was born in a half-baked democracy but at least I may speak my mind because I was then a citizen. Then long-term places were Singapore then Australia, in between were short-term contracts at Ireland and California (Is it not a country? Are you not entertained?). As for Singapore, it is not the fault of the ruling party that it has mastered the scare tactics smashing the opposition into total disarray. And for all our faults, Australia is a mature democracy; today's government could be toppled into playing as the opposition. An opposition oftentimes is just a half-hearted player in the field because it complains all the time and proposes spending sprees knowing there will be no consequences.

 

Yet there I would say politics is the first topic to be avoided at all costs with anyone but close friends. One has to remember one's purpose there, be it for work, studies or vacation. Did we not all had our time enduring crazy bosses and coworkers? If it was not for the work (experience or paycheck or both), then why did we? Mine will be for long-term studies.

 

But culture might not be a forbidden topic, at least not for me. As a topic it might be race-specific, unfortunately. As an overseas Chinese, conversations on Chinese culture with mainlanders often turned into a historical banter of how 60 years of 下南洋 had evolved our culture in so many ways. And it often ended with a literal thought on 五百年前是一家。But for a non-Chinese to bring it up might just feed - likely negatively - into their siege mentality, a product of endless local propaganda against Western propaganda. Yes, they are all propaganda ?

 

Ultimately, you have a point. Why learn a foreign language if one may not talk about this or that without fear of repercussions? But as other forumers pointed out, maybe even under a red sky it is not that strict. Maybe mere conversations, minus politics, could be held with close friends. Guess I would find out soon enough.

[Zbigniew]

44 minutes ago, happy_hyaena said:

it requires a certain amount of humility, social skills and open mindedness...

 

I agree, though I suspect the opinions you happen to hold on the topics under discussion and how well those opinions coincide with those of your hearers have some bearing on the reception you get, regardless of how much humility you can muster. Presumably, when you say you've been "able to talk about all of those things with Chinese people", you have actually volunteered your own opinions, on certain of the topics at least.

[Lumbering Ox]

On 5/29/2018 at 12:40 PM, 陳德聰 said:

Sounds like these people are not friends. Why interact with them at all? I find strangers utterly, mind-numbingly boring and annoying.

 

Hey I am a stranger to you and I'm not boring and er what was that other thing you said?

 

16 hours ago, roddy said:

And yet here you are, day after day, because actually it's full of fantastic helpful people. It's a little tricky to run a site which brings together such a disparate group of people, so do feel free to stick a post up explaining how we could do better...

 

This forum works because it doesn't have a thriving off topic section. I've seen other forums that seem to use off topic to push up message count and eyeball counts and they quickly turn into dens of scum and villainy. Just looking at the unread threads, everyone is on topic. I wish more forums about something would stick to what they were good at.

 

There was an old dilbert comic strip where dogbert was losing his hate on for humanity and fixed it by visiting Internet forums.

[abcdefg]

Here's the 福字 decoration on the front door of my next door neighbor's 隔壁 apartment. I thought it was pretty funny, but as you might guess, we seldom talk politics!

 

On the other hand, I've been raked over the coals plenty by Chinese friends about Trump. Have even been shown mobile-phone videos of him doing stupid things and saying wild-eyed, hair-brained  anti-China stuff while foaming at the mouth.  

 

 

[陳德聰]

8 minutes ago, Lumbering Ox said:

Hey I am a stranger to you and I'm not boring and er what was that other thing you said?

Touché.

 

The vast majority of the people here on the forums are neither of those things, and the ones that are are generally only one of them and not both

 

I think there is a lot to be said for adaptive social skills and interacting with people from any country, really. But more towards what the OP seems to be getting at: the implication that learning Chinese to interact on social media with China-Chinese people is not a good reason to learn Chinese. I must agree this is not a particularly good reason to learn Chinese. I mean, when one learns English, I can’t imagine they’re excited to finally understand and participate in the comments under YouTube videos.

 

But we don’t need to look that far to find some potentially good reasons... The same reasons anyone learns any language basically all still apply to Chinese. There’s arts, culture, history, tv & film, travel, business, potential in-laws... Is “widening your scope of the world to include an entire new language” not a REALLY good reason(TM)?

[i__forget]

11 hours ago, lakesandrivers said:

But for a non-Chinese to bring it up might just feed - likely negatively - into their siege mentality, a product of endless local propaganda against Western propaganda. Yes, they are all propaganda ?

What Western propaganda are you referring to? And what kind of Chinese propaganda are you referring to? 

[lakesandrivers]

3 hours ago, i__forget said:

propaganda

 

Oh, as in from both perspectives:

Chinese: Our system of values are superior to yours, all the time.

Western: Our system of values are superior to yours, all the time.

 

I am all for individual rights, one person one vote and the rule of law, but over there I will be too busy with achieving A's, food, sports, dragon boat, sight-seeing, visiting the legacy of Later Jin and Qing in Shenyang, and a part-time job, among others, to be drawn into any political discussion.

[Beelzebro]

34 minutes ago, lakesandrivers said:

Chinese: Our system of values are superior to yours, all the time.

Western: Our system of values are superior to yours, all the time.

 

The problem with drawing this comparison is that these things aren't really equivalent. Chinese people don't really have an ideology except Chinese nationalism, in the name of which all other "universal values" (as espoused by the West) are thrown under the bus. The Chinese government and their propaganda advocate that there is no such thing as universal values. If you ask any random Chinese person whether or not human rights, democracy, freedom of speech etc are good things, they will pretty much all agree that yes they are, but they will mostly also say that increasing the wealth and power of the Chinese nation is more important. They may phrase it differently but that's the essence of their viewpoint. This is why although it may overtake the USA economically, China will never be an ideological rival to it, as the USSR was. Traditional Communism was supposed to be internationalist in nature and therefore appealed to workers all over the world but "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" fundamentally means authoritarian Chinese nationalism, which unsurprisingly no-one outside of China is remotely inspired by.

[陳德聰]

The way I see that fitting into interpersonal relationships is that you can choose to meet people where they’re at, or you can try to impose your personal beliefs on them (or if you’re quite savvy you can go with the flow and mix-and-match depending on the situation).

 

Yes, on an ideological level, your country may be running an entirely different game from China’s, but on an individual level, if you want to talk to another human being, what sense does it make to be imposing your personal beliefs on them?

 

Anecdote time:

I brought my Chinese boyfriend to a gathering of my high school friends when he first came to Canada because I wanted him to meet more English speakers who I could be relatively sure were not jerks, in an environment where people would be more likely to be genuinely interested in getting to know him than just out in the wild.

 

But what I did not count on, was one guy who turned out to be a bit of a walking stereotype. He had learned some Mandarin in his youth and travelled to China before, was very into self-studying a range of topics including, apparently, Chinese politics. So here I am introducing someone new who is trying to learn English and the person who takes the most interest in talking to him, literally the first thing that he asks is “so how do you feel about Xi Jinping?”

 

The most awkward part is that after truthfully answering “I don’t have any feelings about him” the conversation moved on to comparisons to Hu Jintao and MAO ZEDONG. This is what I call a massive failure of tact, and I wish I could say that this type of interaction was not repeated.

 

But it reminds me of how annoying it is when Chinese people try to talk to me about things I have no interest in. When OP tries to talk about sports to Chinese friends on social media, are the sports even sports the friends are interested in? Maybe you get the responses you get because the person you’re trying to talk to has nothing to offer that conversation? I mean without more information, this is just a bunch of speculation back and forth about why people aren’t giving you what you want from interactions.

 

Moral of the story, not every person is your personalised window into a hidden world, and not every person has to have an opinion on everything, especially things they have no interest in.

[AaronUK]

17 minutes ago, 陳德聰 said:

He had learned some Mandarin in his youth and travelled to China before

 

This reminded me of a comedy I watched before where some people who had learnt chinese living in China expected to engage with any Chinese person back home in the west just by showing off their language skills, like that would be interesting in itself.

 

'no one cares you lived abroad':  https://www.youtube.com/embed/tNQFNfUHnxs

 

 

[i__forget]

27 minutes ago, 陳德聰 said:

But it reminds me of how annoying it is when Chinese people try to talk to me about things I have no interest in. When OP tries to talk about sports to Chinese friends on social media, are the sports even sports the friends are interested in? Maybe you get the responses you get because the person you’re trying to talk to has nothing to offer that conversation? I mean without more information, this is just a bunch of speculation back and forth about why people aren’t giving you what you want from interactions.

I have no Chinese friends, I don't speak their language and they don't speak mine. This is the current situation as of now.
I'm posting stuff on my wall, I have more than 350 followers, so I don't try to talk to someone in particular. I have an audience! 

[陳德聰]

Somehow I feel that is very different from the way you framed it in your original and subsequent posts? Or perhaps the title of the thread is just too vague? Can you clarify what you take issue with exactly?

 

Edit: My mistake, it appears I took 889’s talk of friends as a proxy for your situation.

[imron]

9 hours ago, i__forget said:

I'm posting stuff on my wall, I have more than 350 followers, so I don't try to talk to someone in particular. I have an audience! 

So you post stuff on your wall in English, hardly any native Chinese speakers comment, and somehow this means "almost every other topic is sensitive when you speak with Chinese people"?

[abcdefg]

-- comment deleted by me -- 

 

[i__forget]

3 hours ago, imron said:

So you post stuff on your wall in English, hardly any native Chinese speakers comment, and somehow this means "almost every other topic is sensitive when you speak with Chinese people"?

All my  followers are Chinese, they want to learn English. I mainly post my translations in Chinese and they correct them. Every now and then I will write about something random, in English. What are you asking me exactly are you still not convinced about the nationalism in China after the two examples I gave you? I can write more but I'd rather not to.

[roddy]

Honestly, you've gone from giving the impression (not deliberately, I know) that you're having actual conversations with real people. Then it's on social media, but we're still going to assume it's people you actually know. And now it's some kind of learn-English Facebook page?

 

Show anything to 350 people and you're going to have a couple of dull folk in there. Ignore them, if it's disrupting your community warn 'em and block 'em. 

[Jim]

You must also realise that people going onto Facebook to learn English are a self-selecting demographic hardly representative of the broad swathe of the Chinese nation.