[westiseast]

I guess my point is that I don't think that's particularly relevant. The story is "man does something incredibly difficult whilst dealing with big work pressures". I doubt that Marks life pressures are greater than lots of "normal" people who learn languages everyday, and learning spoken Chinese to his level isn't actually that hard. he also has the benefits of practically unlimited resources to spend on learning.

[new299]

Agreed, private lessons on a daily basis can help you improve very quickly in my experience, you don't even need to do much self study outside that.