"You learn Chinese? Chinese must be hard for you..."
I have hit a serious hurdle to learning Chinese in China: the Chinese don’t seem like to speak Chinese...to Chinese students. Well mostly university aged students, odd huh? A lot of my foreign friends have had similar experiences and it is painfully annoying. I understand that this Chinese generation has spent countless hours/years route learning English and that studying overseas is impossibly expensive and that they received precious few opportunities to converse with a real live whitey. I dont care im not here for charity.
The stereotypical suspects:
The “hello” hit and run guy:
This guy, or group of guys, will yell shit at you in a public place and promptly piss off. Along one street i collected a grand total of seven “hellos” within an hour - this is about as “friendly” as rock hurdled at your head. These idiots are harmless but deadly annoying. Maybe just a step up in sophistication from the children who point while calling out “LAOWAI” or the guy who pedals buckets of recycled waste around town.
The English specialist who is actually rubbish:
Often when lining up for some food or service, the queueing whitey will be noted and the staff will desperately seek out the resident “English specialist”. Usually this chap/lass has “hello, what is the matter” nailed down pat, but once you start speaking (English) the fear will cross the face and you will realise that this individual has never met a foreigner before and you might as well be talking to a sandwich. But do not fret the Chinese will be quickly cracked open and you will be able to piece together a meaningful conversation. Beginners with limited exposure to china should brush this type aside.
The language exchange partner:
Your textbook claims that if you can make Chinese friends you Chinese will quickly improve, i think this is a myth. Now some exceptionally social/patient people may make friends with Chinese at an upper intermediate level with both languages being spoken. But usually this is impossible because both parties will be desperate to impose their learned language and if the English speaker speaks relatively rubbish Chinese, and the Chinese reasonably rubbish English, communication will be difficult if not impossible. So the generally weaker language partner will be conquered and will normally leave the relationship shortly after.
The Chinese elite:
These bastards are few (top 5-15% of the student population) but they WILL hunt your white arse down and will REFUSE to use Chinese unless yours is impeccable. This crew have majored in English, studied for countless years, have an impressively deep vocab, respectable fluency and are my final frontier. They will not be at all perfect, deeply flawed in fact, as they have never had a foreign friend or lived aboard, so their English will be strange, things wont make sense and they will frequently misunderstand you. What i don’t like about this type of person is that they will sometimes deploy sly tactics to win their way into English: pretending not to understand your decent Chinese, or conversely claim that your chinese is perfect and that you have no room for further improvement (bizarre). These are bread and butter tactics.
My advice:
Once the white face is seen the chinese brain will click into english mode, to reset the brain back to chinese you will need to say the first few setences flawlessly (keep it simple and clean), afterwards you can get a bit more sloppy with tones/expressions. Trying to return fire by pretending you cannot understand their clumsy english or forcing through into chinese will not work.
Disclaimer: i like china and the Chinese people, I have Chinese friends and this post is born out of profound frustration.
I have hit a serious hurdle to learning Chinese in China: the Chinese don’t seem like to speak Chinese...to Chinese students. Well mostly university aged students, odd huh? A lot of my foreign friends have had similar experiences and it is painfully annoying. I understand that this Chinese generation has spent countless hours/years route learning English and that studying overseas is impossibly expensive and that they received precious few opportunities to converse with a real live whitey. I dont care im not here for charity.
The stereotypical suspects:
The “hello” hit and run guy:
This guy, or group of guys, will yell shit at you in a public place and promptly piss off. Along one street i collected a grand total of seven “hellos” within an hour - this is about as “friendly” as rock hurdled at your head. These idiots are harmless but deadly annoying. Maybe just a step up in sophistication from the children who point while calling out “LAOWAI” or the guy who pedals buckets of recycled waste around town.
The English specialist who is actually rubbish:
Often when lining up for some food or service, the queueing whitey will be noted and the staff will desperately seek out the resident “English specialist”. Usually this chap/lass has “hello, what is the matter” nailed down pat, but once you start speaking (English) the fear will cross the face and you will realise that this individual has never met a foreigner before and you might as well be talking to a sandwich. But do not fret the Chinese will be quickly cracked open and you will be able to piece together a meaningful conversation. Beginners with limited exposure to china should brush this type aside.
The language exchange partner:
Your textbook claims that if you can make Chinese friends you Chinese will quickly improve, i think this is a myth. Now some exceptionally social/patient people may make friends with Chinese at an upper intermediate level with both languages being spoken. But usually this is impossible because both parties will be desperate to impose their learned language and if the English speaker speaks relatively rubbish Chinese, and the Chinese reasonably rubbish English, communication will be difficult if not impossible. So the generally weaker language partner will be conquered and will normally leave the relationship shortly after.
The Chinese elite:
These bastards are few (top 5-15% of the student population) but they WILL hunt your white arse down and will REFUSE to use Chinese unless yours is impeccable. This crew have majored in English, studied for countless years, have an impressively deep vocab, respectable fluency and are my final frontier. They will not be at all perfect, deeply flawed in fact, as they have never had a foreign friend or lived aboard, so their English will be strange, things wont make sense and they will frequently misunderstand you. What i don’t like about this type of person is that they will sometimes deploy sly tactics to win their way into English: pretending not to understand your decent Chinese, or conversely claim that your chinese is perfect and that you have no room for further improvement (bizarre). These are bread and butter tactics.
My advice:
Once the white face is seen the chinese brain will click into english mode, to reset the brain back to chinese you will need to say the first few setences flawlessly (keep it simple and clean), afterwards you can get a bit more sloppy with tones/expressions. Trying to return fire by pretending you cannot understand their clumsy english or forcing through into chinese will not work.
Disclaimer: i like china and the Chinese people, I have Chinese friends and this post is born out of profound frustration.
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