Learning Mandarin in Taiwan

A few months ago, a CNN article declared that Beijing residents were chanting “Add Gas!” in preparation for the Summer Olympics. The article painted the phrase and the act of chanting it as comical, perhaps some kind of communist control scheme orchestrated by the political elite. As for me, I knew the phrase well, the phrase I’d heard at local baseball games, the same phrase friendly onlookers had called out as I climbed the steep mountains of Taiwan on my bicycle. Something in that article showed me that I had been attempting to learn a language that was almost completely misunderstood by most of the outside world.

Mandarin, which is commonly referred to simply as “Chinese,” is the official language of Taiwan and mainland China and is also spoken by many elsewhere in East Asia. Learning this language has fundamentally changed my living experience in Taiwan and has brought me new, unexpected opportunities. As a result of the experience of learning Chinese and using it in my everyday life, I’ve come to the conclusion that to truly learn a foreign language, one must love the people who speak it, and to love a people, one must speak their language. If this seems like a paradox, you’re dead on, and it’s one of the many conundrums that one faces in talking the talk and walking the walk of a foreign culture.

Years ago, after traveling abroad solely in French- and Spanish-speaking countries, I found myself – much to my surprise – on a plane to Taiwan, a country that previously I couldn’t even locate on a globe. Twenty-three years old and fresh out of university, I had a backpack and a scraggly beard when I got here. I was bewildered and confused by the rush and roar of the traffic, while simultaneously electrified by the foreign sounds and sights. A friend of mine who’d traveled in East Asia described Taiwan as “The farthest the industrialized world has ever strayed from the West,” and this phrase alone brought me across the Pacific to the busy streets of this island on a trip that would end up changing my life.

After one crash course on how to teach English and another on using chopsticks, I was ready to begin my new Taiwanese life. This included learning to communicate. I’d always thought of learning Chinese as impossible, but soon realized that it was just highly improbable.

Within a few months I’d learned to give directions in a taxi, choose my desired cup of tea, and order my noodles without onions. Past that, I relied on the kindness of others; the Taiwanese were incredibly warm and open to me, and the vast majority had some (though quite limited) English skills, so it was possible (especially in the big cities) to get by on a next-to-no-Chinese diet.

For a while, I just responded to anything people said with a few of the Chinese terms and phrases that I’d learned. These included “American,” “twenty-three years old,” “English teacher,” and “I’m not married.” Often, while eating my lunch or resting after a bike ride, a stranger would approach me, say a bunch of Chinese words, and then pause, waiting for me to respond.

I’d wipe the sweat from my forehead, clear my throat, and shoot out “American,” or “teacher,” praying that I’d answered the question correctly. The person would then either smile and nod, or look puzzled and amble slowly away. Today I’ll find myself laughing about these encounters, imagining that this is what may have happened when being approached:

Stranger: “Excuse me, you’re sitting on my motorcycle.”

Me: “No, I’m not married.”

After some time I made the fateful decision to get serious about getting to know the people around me. What did my next-door neighbor do for a living? Why did the Taiwanese people love firecrackers so much? What was there to eat here besides fried rice and dumplings? I was feeling lonely and alienated being, in effect, deaf and mute. In a country of almost 23 million I was seriously limiting my chances at making new friends, requiring them to speak fluid English.

There was also the convenience that would come with learning one of the local languages. Playing charades (chicken, cow, pig, etc.) each meal had become tiring, and “twenty-three-year-old English teacher” hadn’t gotten me too far when I was in a doctor’s office for a head cold.

And so began my love/hate (usually love) relationship with Chinese.

I started off by using a local networking site (tealit.com) to find language exchange partners. The principal idea here is that an English speaker and a Chinese speaker hang out and teach one another about their respective cultures and languages. As I had virtually no Chinese skills and my partners had virtually no teaching skills, these liaisons became a good way to meet people but a crummy way to learn anything.

I next went to a private language school called TLI (Taipei Language Institute). This school has locations in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, offering classes to meet any budget and any schedule. This enterprise offers highly-qualified teachers who understand exactly what a new student needs. I slowly accumulated Chinese vocabulary and grammar, following their carefully mapped-out curriculum. I am today still friendly with the director of the Taipei outlet, and I often joke with her that she was my Anne Sullivan (Helen Keller’s teacher). In truth, however, this is no joke – she was the one who “gave me my voice.”

After over two years at TLI, I found myself quite fluid in Chinese and able to hold long conversations on an array of topics. I could express my feelings, eavesdrop on conversations, and make friends who knew no English at all. The next step was to look into university classes. There are dozens of universities on the island offering intensive Chinese classes, but the two big names are National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Both of these internationally recognized schools have intensive language-study departments and welcome hundreds of foreign students each year. After just two semesters in NTNU I’ve seen dramatic improvements in my writing, reading, and spoken grammar, and would recommend a university program to anyone who is committed to mastering Chinese.

At this point I am quite comfortable with my level of mastery of the Chinese language, though I’d be lying if I said the road has been smooth along its entire length. Yes indeed, there have been a few bumps and potholes; here are a few of my less graceful moments.

One day, while I was practicing yoga on the roof of my fifteen-story apartment building, an autumn breeze came along and slammed the stairway door shut, leaving me trapped. I , to be honest, got a little freaked out and had to discontinue my meditation, but about five minutes later a man came up to hang his laundry. I asked him to hold the door and as he held it for me, he asked how long I’d been up there. Still agitated, forgetting the word for minute, I replied: “Not long, about five days.”

There’s also the time I lost my keys and had to call the landlord for replacements. Mispronouncing the word for key, I kept repeating, “I want to die! I want to die!” The landlord, not knowing what to do, called my boss, who drove to my house, concerned, asking me if I needed professional help.

While shopping for towels one time, I wanted to know how big a certain packaged towel was. Mixing up the word for swim with the word for sleep, I held up a small face towel and asked the store manager, “Can I sleep with this?” He looked at me, bewildered, before saying, “I guess so.”

These types of stories could go on forever, but I’ll instead finish up by addressing some of the most common questions that people put to me regarding my studies, for I sense you may have been wondering about the same things yourself.

Some tips on learning Chinese

1. Isn’t it hard?
To this I always reply: “It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it’s really not as hard as it sounds.”

Most learners will say that the hardest part is mastering the infamous four tones; the same sound has many completely different meanings based on which tone is used. This can create ambiguities like: My mother loves me vs. My horse loves me or Excuse me vs. Please give me a kiss.

2. Why study Chinese abroad?
To this, the answer is easy: immersion. When you study a language in its “proper environment,” every moment can be a learning experience. Watching ridiculous game shows on TV, listening to people chat in the street, and going out to get a cup of coffee, all become part of the language-learning process. A teacher can help with pronunciation and grammar, and a podcast can help with listening skills, but: What does a person utter when you’ve stepped on his foot? How do Chinese speakers mimic a cat’s “purr”? How do you say yuck! in Chinese? All of this comes from immersion.

3. Why not mainland China?
This question is a little hard to answer, because I haven’t had much experience with people from the mainland. What I do know is that, in general, the people of Taiwan love foreigners and are really moved when they see others trying to speak their official language. I’ve experienced nothing but patience and enthusiasm from everyone I’ve interacted with here.

A few weeks ago, on a crowded subway car, I was writing my Chinese homework when the woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder. Apparently she’d been looking over my shoulder and noticed a mistake in my work. She pointed out the mistake and wrote the character correctly for me, congratulating me on my hard work. As I said earlier, learning a language is dependent on enjoying the people, and folks in Taiwan are indeed very easy to like.

Another factor in Taiwan’s favor is that here, in contrast to mainland China, traditional Chinese characters are still officially used. Simplified characters have been used on the mainland since the 1950s, erasing much of the history and cultural significance each traditional character possesses. An example is 國 (guo; country). In traditional Chinese, this character is made up of several constituent characters – one for spear or weapon, 戈, another for mouth, 口 (signifying population), and a border, 囗, to enclose them all. With the simplified character 国, however, this meaning is completely lost. For no logical reason the character inside the border is that for jade. Many traditional Chinese characters have “stories” like this to tell, in fact making them easier to remember than the so-called simplified characters, and to understand them is invaluable in understanding the semantics of the language and its unique writing system.

4. Why Chinese?
As an ESL teacher, I constantly tell my students: The beauty of learning a language is that you can meet new people, hear new perspectives, and make the world that much smaller. Mandarin has an estimated 1.05 billion speakers across the world, more than English, Spanish, and Arabic combined! That’s a lot of new friends and a lot of new perspectives. Besides this, all economic indicators point to mainland China as the next great superpower; as this unfolds, ability in Mandarin will become a skill more and more valued.

For me personally, my experience in Taiwan has been inseparable from my ability to speak the language, and I can’t imagine having tackled my studies any other way. I have developed deep affection for the people here, and that couldn’t have happened without hearing their stories and letting them hear mine.

(Source: Taiwan Events & News / Writer: M. Davidoff / Date: April 2010)
 

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