A little Mandarin goes a long way toward deeper connections
All those hours agonizing over learning Mandarin are worth it when you see the smiles, and relief, on locals’ faces.
Mandarin Chinese, or Putonghua, meaning “the common language”, is a tough language to learn for those unused to tones. It has four tones, or five if you count the neutral one, and the distinction between them, to my untrained ear at least, is minimal.
Putonghua relies on these tones to distinguish its many homonyms — words that sound alike but have different meanings. That means that without mastering the tones, it is very easy to be talking absolute nonsense even if you are pronouncing the pinyin — the Romanized spelling — accurately.
So, it takes a long time to learn to say the words absolutely, completely correctly. And it’s very easy to insult someone’s mother when asking a question, as both are pronounced ma, just with different tones.
But I’ve found Chinese people don’t mind if your pronunciation is off or if your grammar is all upside down, though maybe it’s best to leave mothers out of it.
For the most part, people are simply excited to see a foreigner make the effort.
When jumping into a Didi — an app-hailed cab — I confirm the last four numbers of my phone number, just seconds before the driver’s app does the same, to reassure him or her I’m not a confused tourist getting in the wrong car.
Managing four basic, kindergarten-level words gains me the compliment, “Your Chinese is great!”
Now assuming I’m fluent, the driver can’t contain the raft of personal questions about to burst out: “Where are you from? How long have you been here? Are you studying or working? How much do you earn? Are you married yet?”
My Chinese friends assure me this considered polite chitchat, though it’s taken me, a Brit, a while to keep my feathers unruffled when at the receiving end of the interview.
Being able to, shakily, respond to these questions (following years of embarrassing misunderstandings), I hope, leaves a favorable impression of foreigners with my temporary fellow countrymen and women.
Another benefit of being able to understand what’s going on around you, aside from the obvious benefits of surviving daily life, is that you can find the many cheat codes to modern Chinese life.
Often, these are in the form of actual codes: QR codes, which offer discounts on everything from dinner out and coffee to buying groceries online and even cab fares.
Chinese people love a bargain and will go out of their way to get the best deal going. This becomes addictive, and if you’re willing to put the time in, there’s very little you’ll need to pay full price for ever again.
But for me, the main benefit is the connections I can make with total strangers, people I’ll probably never bump into again in this bustling capital of around 20 million people.
Every now and then, someone’s curiosity will get the better of them, and they’ll stop you in a shop to interview you according to the usual script, unwilling to let this chance encounter pass them by.
Being able to ask questions in return offers a direct glimpse into local life that we expats can often float blindly past, absorbed in our own social bubble. After all, we didn’t move to Beijing to eat burgers and go to the pub.
Unlocking Mandarin means unlocking China, and learning is the key to deeper cultural connections that widen our perspective of the unfamiliar.
But let’s be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what, exactly, I’m saying to people.