After almost two years here, I’d like to think I have achieved a basic ability in Mandarin, at least enough to survive in daily life and have interesting drunken bar chats. Characters and vocabulary are starting to stick in my head in increasing numbers, and I’m finally getting a little more comfortable stringing the whole mess together (although, yes, the tones still get me down). I no longer feel lost, and the language is feeling pretty commonplace and comfortable to me (although, obviously, still often not understood very well). I’ve been thinking this was quite an achievement, considering I’ve never even studied the language.
And then nights like last night happen. I went out to dinner with some staff from the primary school I moonlight at, and I had what could only be described as a complete Chinese language meltdown. Of course they told me that my ability was astounding, but they were only being polite: they acted like they didn’t understand a word I said, even the basics. Or if they did, it would be greeted with some laughter after a long pause (”OH!..I think he means…!”) To accompany this, their Chinese was sounding completely foreign again, I couldn’t catch ANYTHING they were saying. I was messing up and misunderstanding very basic stuff. I have no idea how this happened, but last night was a very shameful display. I had scary flashbacks of September 2002. Disgraceful.
Needless to say I returned home extremely frustrated with myself and briefly considered donating my Chinese learning materials to the street noodle lady to complement her coal supply. But then I consoled myself by thinking about some of my students, who after many years of toiling over English can barely string a sentence together in that language. Today I share their pain (and then, of course, laugh at them).