Language

I avoided learning Mandarin for a year, because, first of all, I was told that I wouldn't need to know it. That advice turned out to be second only to Lord Chamberlain's "don't worry about Hitler. It's not like he's going to kill anybody" in flat-out wrong. Second, I didn't have time and my work schedule was all over the place. But after about 18 months, the level of frustration with trying to learn on my own and being misunderstood at literally every turn became too much.

So I decided to take private language lessons. My biggest fear now is that I will need Chinese anger management therapy, because once I can speak Mandarin fluently, I'm just going to go-off on cranky taxi drivers, nosy store clerks, nasty spitters and public poopers. Once I know Mandarin, I'll see something every day that will make me so angry, I'll just Hulk-out and start tossing cars and bicycles, and destroy property all over Beijing. I'll be so bad that the Chinese will ask Japan to send over Godzilla to put me in check.

JAPAN (answers hot line from Beijing): "Moshi-moshi."

CHINA: "We need Godzilla!"

JAPAN: "What you say?"

CHINA: "Godzilla! This is urgent! We have (an) angry foreigner who is trashing our 5000-year civilization, disrupting our goal of social harmony, and threating our promise of 21st century world economic domination!"

JAPAN: "Ah, so sorry, but Godzilla (is) not available for rent."

CHINA: "We own (70 percent of) your national debt. Everyone knows this."

JAPAN: "He is on his way."

The toughest thing about learning Mandarin in Beijing is finding a good Chinese teacher who knows something about languages. People here who have known nothing but Mandarin their entire lives simply cannot teach the language to someone from another culture. Until Beijing instructors can get an idea of what the language is like from the perspective of the student's original culture, they can forget about teaching Mandarin.

Some teachers here also fail to understand that language is learned gradually. They seem to think that students merely need to repeat what they've heard, at normal speed, and they will automatically pick up the language. Finally, they quickly run out of patience. "Why can't you GET this?" I wonder if this is a characteristic of learning in the Chinese culture.

Plus, I have a suspicion that if you speak Mandarin slowly, folks identify you as mentally disabled. So everyone refrains from speaking deliberately. They even criticize politicians for speaking slowly during their speeches. In a relatively un-diversified society, you apparently need some sophisticated means to separate those who are smart from those who are stupid, and language is one way Beijingers manage to do this. I think this means that I should be able to get anger management training and learn Mandarin at the same time. It would be just like in America where you can rent violent videos, buy guns and ammo, and purchase hard liquor, all in the same place.