In China, collecting defining moments

I've been in China for about three months now, started the language course two months ago, and began to collect my first language-related defining moments only a couple of weeks ago. Is it too late?

It's not that I don't ask myself if I'm doing something wrong or what I should change, but despite some healthy self-criticism, I somehow struggle to make the whole process of learning Mandarin faster.

I have just begun to learn the characters, so it's quite hard to notice any improvement in my writing and reading already: I might know about 300 and they are 5000, I need to be patient, I'll be able to read the newspaper in about 3000 characters.

I'm getting to grips with the grammar, not too difficult, but still very different from Western languages structures. I know how it works, I've gone through grammar learning before, so I know it takes time.

What I'm finding more challenging, however, is the pronunciation, both when I speak and when I listen.

Speaking is not always easy because I miss many words. However, I try to follow the advice of our laoshi and talk to anybody I meet, but even when I'm happy I for once know the right expression, my excitement is very short-lived: people simply don't understand me.

On the other hand, when Chinese people speak (very fast), my first reaction is panic. When finally my brain starts functioning, it's already too late, the person has left.

 I can never forget my first defining moment language-wise: after hopping on a cab, I told the driver where I wanted to go and he understood without me having to show him the place written in Han zi (Chinese characters). I know it might seem pretty straightforward, but it's not: you get one tone wrong and they'll drive you to the other side of the city.

I was so excited I managed to make the driver understand me for the first time that at the end of the drive I forgot how to tell him where to stop and I issued a ridiculous "zhe ge, zhe ge!" that corresponds to the English "this one, this one!", very little appropriate to the situation.

Since then, I developed a greater self-confidence and I have no problems taking a taxi anymore. Actually now probably I say it so well that drivers feel compelled to strike up a conversation with me and inevitably end up mocking my accent when they realise my only answer is "Ting bu dong" ("I don't understand").

So, since most of my attempts to communicate so far have ended up into a stalemate, I've decided to make some more effort on this. My next steps will include:

1. Watching tv every day even if I understand next to nothing.

2. Getting a language partner for conversation.

3. Going out more often and strike up a conversation with anybody, especially taxi drivers that are proving very talkative.

I hope my Chinese will improve faster with such a full immersion learning process but no worries, next post will still be in English!

"Don't be afraid, you are in China!"

A view of the Great Wall of China

When our laoshi delivered to the class the odd statement "Don't be afraid: you are in China!", the first thing that crossed my mind was to imagine this sentence out of its context.

Admittedly, out of nowhere, it does make China look like some kind of shelter, and said by a Chinese person, you will inevitably think "Wow, Chinese people have a really great concept of their country!"

I am slowly appreciating the fact that Chinese people truly love their country, and every time a foreigner mentions Zhong Guo (China), the face of the local shines with a smirk, let alone when foreigners confess their own love for the Red Dragon.

However, the sudden burst of vigor didn't belong to such a patriotic context, but was simply a way to reassure the class that by living in China we naturally have all tools we need to learn the language properly and quickly.

Our teacher insists, and rightly so, that we need to go out and speak to as many people as possible.

After having overcome the initial shock of moving to such a different culture, I'm starting to getting to grips with Chinese mentality and outlandish lifestyle, so I took my teacher's advice and started talking to people in shops, streets or wherever I had the occasion.

The result so far hasn't been very remarkable as most people don't understand what I'm saying. Did I think learning Chinese was like learning any other language? Not quite.

Last week the government was conducting a population census in Shanghai and when the officer came to my place in order to "count me", I took it as a great occasion to sport the sentences I had just learnt and introduce myself. Wrong guess, little did I know that it was going to be source of greater frustration.

The man only understood I was from Italy, he didn't understand I was here to "study", and when I showed him the character and told him I was studying Chinese, he looked at me puzzled: "Are you studying Korean?!"

I get it: I need to look after my pronunciation.

The trick is to understand the difference between tones, they are four, and the same word can have four (or more) different meanings, according to the tone. Admittedly, to me the tones sound all pretty much the same, but our teacher promised us that they are completely different. It must be, otherwise people would understand at least some of the words I say.

I'm not even starting mentioning how hard learning the characters is, and now we are talking about a "simplified" Chinese, courtesy of Mao who thought the traditional characters were too difficult and imposed to make them "easier".

We learn about ten characters per class, and at the beginning (the very beginning, let's say the first ten characters), I was thrilled: "It's not that difficult after all!" I kept repeating to myself. After thirty characters (I know, just three classes) I had already changed my mind.

Not only the difference between tones is almost undetectable to foreign ears, but many characters are hopelessly similar, with only a couple of strokes marking the distinction between them.

While I'm increasingly less afraid of Shanghai life, I'm starting getting worried about communicating with locals. But I guess, like everything, it's only a matter of time.