My Chinese

Despite only being in China for less than two months, I’m consistently amazed by how much my Chinese has improved in the little time I’ve been here.

When I first got off the plane, I could barely understand my cab driver as I asked him to take me to my apartment. A few days later, I was starting to be able to have conversations. Two weeks later, I could have full conversations even though I had to ask people to repeat themselves a good amount of times.

Before coming here, I thought that I would only be able to communicate with the Chinese grad students in English. I’ve since found that I’ve actually used very little English while talking with them and have been speaking mostly Chinese in my day to day life.

The one area I’ve found where my Chinese isn’t at a satisfactory level is communicating with participants however. While I can talk about everyday topics in Chinese and give basic requests and instructions, I can’t quite adequately explain how to do the the task to participants. This means I’ve still needed a grad student, Song Shuang, to translate for me but hopefully my Chinese will be at a level where I communicate with participants myself if I ever return to China to do research.

I’ve recently started talking with these two Tibetan guys I met at this restaurant I frequent outside my apartment. One night we’ll speak only English so they can practice their English, and the next night we’ll speak only Chinese so I can practice my Chinese. We’ve discussed a variety of topics such as what our lives our like back home, differences between the US and China, religion and even the political status of Tibet. While being able to speak about such complex topics in Chinese was undoubtedly pleasing, I was particularly pleased last night when I was able to discuss my research in Chinese. Previously, I had only been able to adequately explain my research in English. While it was probably a simpler explanation that I would have given in English, I was glad that I was able to convey the point of my research. All in all, I’m going to miss the level if immersion I’ve experienced here in China. I don’t think I would have reached the level where I can discuss such complex topics in Chinese, if it wasn’t for PIRE.