It’s been two months and the experience has been truly wonderful. Being called ‘banana’ or fear thereof is more than a stone’s throw away. A friend of mine told me two reasons why Chinese generally have higher IQ than the rest-they are forced to compete from young age to attain a better education due to limited resources (after all 1.3bn people isn’t a small number) and the wonder of Chinese language (it must be one of humanity’s most complex method of communication with its various strokes and tones). But for freedom of choice, I’m almost convinced that every person should learn it from a young age.
Put aside the fact that mastery of the language allows you to speak to nearly a third of the world’s population, the benefit of brain stimulation is enough of a justification. I came to Beijing early this year to study mandarin. I paid for one semester (my slush fund has been depleted after nearly a year of continuous travel). With a little bit of help through CUCAS Excellent Student Scholarship, I managed to enroll at Beijing Foreign Studies University. This wasn’t my first visit to Beijing for that would be in May last year – at the start of my Transiberian journey. The visit, while lasted only for a short time, convinced me that this is a place worth returning to, especially to learn mandarin. It has the characters of a big city (something that I rather regret at a later time) and it has the weight of history guarding and burdening its development. But more importantly, this is the China central central! everything starts from and ends in Beijing.
When i arrived, I was armed with 6 characters – my Chinese name and “wo ai ni”. Of course this didn’t get me anywhere. I was determined though to make sure I get the most I can while I’m here, partly because a difficult trade-off I have to make between using the money for travel or tuition. My decision for the latter meant I have to maximise every penny spent.
Learning an average of 30 characters a day is absolutely hard, especially for a guy who used to see a character and considered it a picture of some sort. Now just because you know a character, it’s meaning and how it’s pronounced doesn’t mean that the average Chinese on the street will understand you (or vice versa for that matter).
The litmus test is ordering a dish in a restaurant – which I failed miserably. And no, it’s not over a complicated dish like kungpao chicken or sautéed beef, the humiliation is more humbling over a bowl of ‘mi fan’ (read: rice). This is after one and a half month of studying so you can start to imagine how frustrating and jaded I was. The funny part of course is when I tried my best to start pronouncing them in various tones hoping that in the end I would catch a break somehow. It ended up confusing the ‘fuwuyuan’ even more.
I’ve decided that I have to alter the way I approach my study. Some of them might be overly simple or plain obvious but they are critical:
1. Tones, tones, tones and tones.
Spend more time at the beginning on pinyin! Yes, I know it ’s boring, repetitive and downright annoying. But unless you get this part absolutely right, your effort in the future will be rendered almost useless. Let’s face it, most of us is above 14 years old. And guess what, we have to retrain our tounge, the shape of our mouth/lips and the wind force from within to pronounce Chinese correctly. When i tried to do retrain them, i didnt even know that my mouth and its compartments are capable of such maneuvers.
2. Learn proper stroke order
If you are serious about the language, you need to learn the proper stroke order to make sure you can recognize the characters better and enhance your writing speed (plus it’s more beautiful). When they were young, Chinese have to learn his by hard. There is no easy way out but practise, practise and practise.
3. Flashcards
Create flashcards and carry them with you whenever you go. The standard flashcard is two sides: at the front you have the characters and at the back is where you put the pinyin, English translation and sample words (as needed). If you have iphone/ipod/ipad and alikes, Pleco software is an absolute must. You dont need other dictionary.
4. Make local friends
When you are at school you tend to be protected. You language teachers will speak to you so they can be understood. Most people encounter different experience – yes they speak faster, with their own accents and if you are in Beijing, with lots of Rs. Bear in mind also that a lot of people do not speak putonghua well, they come from their respective villages in search for a better living in the big city. So having Chinese friends will undoubtedly help. If you want to fully immerse yourself in the culture even further, then having a Chinese boyfriend or girlfriend will turbo boost your learning experience.
That’s my two cents so far. The journey has just begun…