Study

Here’s a hard truth: Making a true home in Shanghai means….learning Chinese! I tried to ignore this fact for the first year and a half of living here and I’ve never regretted anything more. Being able to have even simple conversations has made my life  profoundly more enjoyable.  After about three years of casual study with tutors, I’m even starting to learn a bit of Shanghainese thanks Shanghai’s most awesome taxi drivers. 谢谢司机！

Learning Chinese was never in my life plan, even after I moved to China…I have these moments now when I can hardly believe what I’m getting my mind to do. Take last week’s Tuesday night class, for example. I spent a good five minutes explaining to my tutor (in Chinese, of course) that reading Chinese feels like hamsters (藏书, cang shu) running around in my brain. I also later explained that if I could become pregnant with a panda (熊猫, xiong mao) , I’d for sure have it. I mean, 当然 (dang ran, obviously/of course).

Charlemagne once said, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.” Well, if not a second soul, at least a whole new set of neuroses to adopt. Sure, I remember the days when I thought air conditioning was great, cold water was delicious and good for you, and that windy days were actually quite pleasant. But now I’m convinced that my 空调 (kong tiao, air conditioner) could give me diarrhea, that my 冰水 (bing shui, cold water) could also give me diarrhea, and of course that when the 风 is 很大 （feng hen da, the wind is “very big”) I should be careful not to use the 空调  or drink the 冰水 lest I want extra diarrhea.

Isn’t learning a beautiful thing?!

Check out my Chinese language blog, Hao Hao Xue Xi, for weekly terms and phrases to work into conversations and daily life!

-R