[petodo]

Have you lived in country with completely different language with characters instead of simple <30 letters alphabet for 10+ years? It's very different for English speaker to learn Spanish or German and learn Chinese or Japanese, characters are VERY big barrier when learning, since even when Japanese learns German they just need to learn like 30 letters and they can read and write anything, while vice versa German must learn 500-1000 (Chinese) characters one by one at very least to be able to read some Chinese.

It's one thing to see everywhere words you can memorize when seeing it every single day in shops and online and very different thing when you see just bunch of strokes.

I lived in China for 5+ years and didn't learn the language because the characters are huge barrier. In a few weeks with Duolingo I learned more Spanish without ever visiting Spain than Chinese in few years living there. Same while travelling in Indonesia (where you are/were forced to learn Indonesian), I picked up comparable amount of phrases within few weeks as in China in few years. Of course I learned some basic Chinese characters at very beginning, so I can read at least menu in restaurants and bunch of phrases (how much does it cost, where is nnn,etc.), but I couldn't have any conversation at all with anyone not speaking English (or my mother tongues) and honestly I was not really interested in people who don't learn at least English as I had to learn as well since it's not my mother tongue. It probably helps I've found girlfriend (wife) who can be my translator if needed (which was not really needed even when dealing with paperwork most of the time).

But if author is journalist then I agree there should be set a higher bar for them, so they are able to research independently and make interviews with locals. It's one thing to be journalist covering the country and other thing just living your life working in English speaking enviroment without writing stories for thousands of people abroad.

[tsukikage]

> It's one thing to see everywhere words you can memorize when seeing it every single day in shops and online and very different thing when you see just bunch of strokes.

They become much, much easier to grasp once you notice they're nearly all composed of the same hundred or so radicals and you can break them down and memorise them that way.

> and honestly I was not really interested in people who don't learn at least English

That may be the real issue here. Mandarin has nearly as many speakers as English. Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?

[meowfly]

Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep. Chinese is spoken by a lot of people, but spoken fluency isn't that high. Moreover, outside of the major cities, you will meet very few English speakers.

Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.

[petodo]

> Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep.

I went to China with intention to stay there one year to save some money and continue travelling. Then after less than a year I met my future wife.

> Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.

I lived in Beijing and avoided foreigners outside work enviroment (well we had drinking lunch breaks and ocassionally drank even during dinner after work), didn't frequent bars/clubs for foreigners and first few years even avoided western food. In my first three apartments I had Chinese flatmates (no foreigners, always only me) and we had no problem to communicate in English. The problem in general are different hobbies and culture, not really the language, most of the westerners will have more to talk with other westerner even in broken English than with Chinese who is perfectly fluent in English, it's just fact and speaking Chinese won't change a thing about it.

[meowfly]

I share a bit of that experience when trying to make Chinese friends. The first place I lived was with a family who had a son around my age. He was solely interested in practicing English but he had virtually no life outside of school.

I moved into a foreign students dorm and most of my classmates were Korean and Japanese, but I spoke to them in Chinese. The friend I hung out with the most was Korean and I didn't feel like there was a gap in hobbies. We had a group that would go out and play pool, drink soju, and sing KTV. I never had good opportunities to meet and hangout with other Chinese students. When people go to bars, they really don't go and socialize with others. Socializing is usually contained to the group you are in.

I think I'd say though there is still a big advantage in just being able to converse with taxi drivers, retail workers, etc. People are pretty chatty because westerners speaking Chinese is kind of novel. It is a great way to better understand what I consider a fairly misunderstood country.

[petodo]

I don't think understanding the country and not speaking the language are mutually exclusive. I've met my fair share of foreign students who studied Chinese at home, then stayed in China for a year to not overstay their honeymoon period and yet their understanding of China was completely shallow and they were clueless about China as much as they were when they came, because all their life was dorm parties and clubbing or shagging CN girls and enjoying their student bubble, while speaking local language. Meanwhile I worked for multiple companies over years, talked with plenty of Chinese coworkers whether they were interns or fulltime, dealt with apartment hunt seeing at least hundred of apartments in person, tons of various paperwork with various offices, dealth with hospitals because of wife's pregnancy and visited places that hardly seen any foreigners. You can still understand China even without speaking the language and not understand it while speaking the language.

But I agree western MSM is heavily biased against China and their "journalists" living in their foreign bubble are joke, especially if it's older unmarried men, where you can clearly see what they are doing with their spare time.

[petodo]

> That may be the real issue here. Mandarin has nearly as many speakers as English.

Completely different league, English has by magnitude more speakers than Chinese.

> Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?

Because not learning any foreign language is quite sign of ignorant character, while English is foreign language in most of the world and most of the world English speakers are non natives including me who learned 2-3 foreign languages besides my mother tongue. But you are right Chinese not speaking any other language besides Chinese is less ignorant than me...

[tsukikage]

> Completely different league, English has by magnitude more speakers than Chinese.

That's an incredible claim. Got a reference for it? Wikipedia reckons 1.5bn English vs 1.1 bn Chinese.

[ubercore]

Those numbers are native or second language. I bet the English numbers shoot way up vs Mandarin if you drop the bar to basic language skills or holding limited conversations.