Not the Ultimate Chinese Challenge

Surprisingly, the ability to speak Chinese is not a necessary survival skill for working in Jingzhou. Before coming here, I assumed that circumstance would create the need, but anyone can live comfortably only knowing a few words. Despite that few people speak English once you leave campus, it is not difficult to do simple tasks on your own, such as shop, take a bus or buy groceries. Although shopping can become overwhelming due to all of the store attendants that will swarm around you. Everyone wants to help the foreigner! So at least five women will bring numerous products to you, which are usually not what you're scanning the shelves for, while loudly and incomprehensibly speaking non-stop to you and the others in an attempt to determine what you need. It is always fun to communicate through language barriers!!

While not all of the university students speak good English, the majority, including non-English majors, do. And they want to take advantage of every opportunity to practice their oral and listening skills! As a result, most students will speak English with you. Given that I am hear to teach it and our conversation would be very limited if we spoke Chinese, I am not bothered.

Living in Jingzhou still provides a great environment to learn Chinese. (There is a dialect though. If interested in learning Mandarin, you would need to be in Northeastern China.) Nevertheless, you can easily manage without ever speaking it. Of course, it would be wise to learn at least a few words and phrases! Knowing different foods is helpful; otherwise, you will eat the same thing every time you go to a restaurant. Also, being able to tell the taxi driver where you live is key to making sure you get home!

Luckily, I have the opportunity to attend a beginner Chinese class that is hosted for a few foreign students. Since there are only 10 students in the class, the professor allows me to attend without having to pay any tuition or fee, as long as I "act like a student." So I had to buy the text book and I have to do the homework. While I could never become fluent in just one year (Foreign languages are not my forte. So Chinese is REALLY difficult, especially considering that I struggled to learn Spanish, a Romance language...), it will be nice to eventually form complete sentences beyond basic introductions!