LEARNING CHINESE GOT ME LIKE: oh, lawd, maketh me a bilingual sea creature
LEARNING CHINESE GOT ME LIKE:
Of course I KNEW learning Chinese would be difficult (alas, one could say the same thing about pooping when constipated, but the knowing and the doing require an extremely different level of concentration). And I have never been, nor will I ever be a "let me dip my toes in the kiddie pool before the deep end" kind of girl. Ain't nobody who on an adventure got time fo dat. BRING ON THE DEEP END! COME HITHER, THOU BOTTOMLESS WATERS OF IMMERSION! MY INTELLECT SHALL DROWN IN YOU UNTIL I AM A BILINGUAL SEA CREATURE WHO SPEAKETH CHINESE!
Lesson #1: Learning a language via immersion has been more of a continual exercise in humility and patience and self-discipline than it has ever been about intellect. The Henan province has such a strong dialect, that if I were to learn and consequently speak actual Mandarin, no one in this province would understand me. There are a thousand different ways to say the same things, so that means learning two languages simultaneously. *sigh* Such is life.
Time gets away from me here and not because I'm wasting it. I'm teaching classes and preparing lessons and trying to learn Chinese with the help of my sweet and long-suffering tutors. LORD BLESS 'EM. No lie: I spent 45 minutes last week on the letter R, because albeit native Chinese speakers, that letter is a sound from Pluto only aliens can make.
But language is culture and culture is language, so that is why learning the language is a high priority. It would be an absolute shame and waste of my time and my wrinkle-free twenties to come to China and only talk to myself. But, please, do not be mistaken: I am no academic angel. When the times comes to meet with my tutors each week, I hardly ever want to go because OHEMGEE LEARNING IS HARD AND ALSO HUMBLING, just like going to the gym is hard, but once you're there, you're there, and you might as well lift something or human hamster run on the treadmill. The road to toned thighs and language fluency are made up of the same stuff: the showing up is the hardest and most important part.
So I'm here, learning and re-learning and fumbling around like a nimrod in all kinds of ways, which has led me to discover some beautiful truths about my saved-but-still-being-sanctified self: I am more impatient than I realized, less self-disciplined than I want to admit, and my pride is a stubborn old nag. Two hours of straight Chinese has got me like why-didn't-I-go-to-a-Spanish-speaking-country-instead?!? And these kids absolutely SHAME ME when it comes to study habits (all the stereotypes are true & I daresay some students possess the supernatural ability to study while asleep - they are brilliant little Asians and I love them for it).
But I'm showing up and I'm learning my Chinese ABC's and it will probably take the rest of my life + a pair of linguistic arm floaties to swim in the bilingual sea, but hey. You know what? I'm choosing to believe the work sticks, even when it feels like it doesn't; even when my brain feels less like Velcro and more like a defective Sham-wow. I'm choosing to believe the work is worth it because one day, after months of heavy lifting and clean eating, a muscle will appear for the first time since NEVER, and after months after living in nothing short of a linguistic pinball machine, you hold a conversation in Chinese for the first time EVER and YOU.FREAK.OUT because low-and-freaking-behold the showing up inches itself out of hibernation and proclaims its tiny presence: Look at me! Look at me! it says. I exist! I exist! I exist! even though it was there all along -
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