a sisyphian task you may say
I fully agree. That’s part of the point I was trying to make. Wanting to learn Chinese and not wanting to learn Chinese are both perfectly valid, acceptable, legitimate life choices, even if one lives in Taiwan, is married to a local, has a Chinese-speaking child, and is employed in a local firm.
Each must make his/her own choices in life and no one can say another’s choice is wrong or another’s priorities are wrong. One can choose not to live by others’ choices and priorities, but it’s wrong to say others’ choices are wrong based on ones personal beliefs, values and life (which is completely different from that other’s).
However, there’s no question that if one doesn’t reaaaaaaally want to learn Chinese it’s a hell of a lot harder to learn than if one does want to. One needs to have serious personal incentive/motivation to do so. For most of my stay in Taiwan I didn’t have much incentive/motivation to bust my butt trying to learn the language. Now, oddly enough, after all these years I do and I’m eager to learn (and I think it will last). Funny how that happened. But if another person doesn’t feel such a need, I fully understand; we each have different lives, choices, priorities and theirs may be perfect for them.
MT and others hit the nail on the head. You won’t learn unless you have very good reasons to learn. Those reasons depends completely on you and your circumstances.
Bob is also right that learning to speak (and possibly read and write) really fluent is a task akin to dissembling and then reassembling a Boeing 747-400.
In my case, learn to speak, read, and write (type) Mandarin has been enormously rewarding, both personally and professionally.
For those of you who have had some sort of professional success after having learned chinese, would you be so willing as to perhaps share what type of job you are holding, and how knowing chinese has contributed to achieving that position? I’ve been studying for 3+ years now, and though I’m making enormous strides, it is most definitely a sisyphian task in every regard, and one can only question it’s potential worth down the road. I’ve heard too many reports on how knowing chinese is in fact not all it’s cracked up to be, professionally speaking. This makes since too when one considers the armies of native born chinese speakers who speak English better than I do!
I’ve learned a lot of Chinese and I’ve forgotten most of it. So to me it’s not worth it. In my declining years my brain cannot hold new stuff, so why torment myself?
Why not? Lots of people LIKE tormenting themselves. It’s not up to YOU to say whether they should torment themselves. IT’s all like, relative, man. Get with the program.
only punk ass bitches learn Chinese, if you’re hard, or a real down ass G you don’t need that shit. that being said I am fluent in Hakka and Hokkien.
I got offered a DOS job in a Chinese owned English cramschool / educational assistance agency in the Yook. They wanted a Anglo manager who could deal with the teachers and with the Chinese staff. Didn’t want it, though.
It’s not really a huge amount of use here in the UK, because we have a ton of Chinese immigrants who will work for nothing. And if that pisses the whiteys off, it REALLY pisses the legal Chinese folk here. 
It’s not a lot of use if you speak quite well but write like a ten year-old.
It’s not the Chinese that will get you the job, it’s the knowledge of law, or finance or trade, or whatever, and then the Chinese will be a nice bit of gilding on the lily that is you.
Edit Eek! I’m a ‘punk-ass bitch’! Is that good or bad?
Exactly. There are lots of great jobs here for US/UK lawyers who are fluent in English and have good legal skills and experience, even if they don’t speak a lick of Chinese. However, if one wants the top position – to serve as General Counsel of a Taiwan company or Asia Pacific Counsel of a foreign company, one MUST speak decent Chinese. And, those types of jobs definitely may be available to skilled foreigners (even whiteys) who speak Chinese well. General Counsel of TSMC is a good case in point: he’s a white, american with many years of excellent legal experience, who is also fluent in Mandarin and he has an outstanding job. I’m sure others could do the same if they have excellent technical/professional experience AND are fluent in Chinese. And Buttercup’s right that, besides law, the same holds true for finance and business.
Yeah, I wouldn’t have been offered that job unless I had a long, veriafiable, CV of relevant qualifications and experience, as well as the ability to get on with Chinese folk. That’s an ‘added extra’, not a core skill.
(disclaimer: I do NOT have a kewl, international, woopdewoop job, by a long chalk! )
Of course, to get a kewl, international, woopdewoop job one needs training that will prepare one for a kewl, international, woopdewoop job: in particular, a degree in economics, engineering, computer science, physics, finance, business, or law (MA, MS, MBA, JD or PHD), and relevant experience (naturally, working ones way in/up progressively is to be expected). Chinese is just a language, a basic tool for communicating, nothing more, and a few billion people speak Chinese fairly well. Over here, speaking English really well is the exception, so if you (1) speak English really well AND (2) have appropriate degrees and experience AND (3) have that basic tool of speaking Mandarin, there should be loads of good business opportunities: Country Manager, General Manager, VP of Sales or Marketing or Quality, etc. In fact, there ARE lots of foreigners holding such positions in Taiwan and getting paid very well for them (NOT cram school NT60K wages 
).
As for me, I’m confident that if I were fluent in Mandarin I could land a job here earning US$500,000. But I’m not. I’m no where close to fluent, it’s highly uncertain whether I ever will be (though I’m taking another crack at it), and I don’t earn even a small fraction of that. In my mind, the hardest of the three factors is learning Mandarin. Once one has that down, if one wishes to work up the corporate ladder to the big jobs, earning big pay, one must obtain relevant degrees and experience. Otherwise, Chinese ability alone is no better than what your local breakfast laobaniang has.
Note: that wasn’t directed at you buttercup.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”].
Note: that wasn’t directed at you buttercup.[/quote]
Of course not! 60k? I don’t work for that - I can get more than that working in a shop.
The woopdewoop job’s a kid’s thing, anyway. I would genuinely hate my life and myself, if I had to do something I hated - I’d die inside if I had to do sales or law. I know because I went down that ‘career’ path and taught for years. I’d never ever do the corporate thing again. I’m very ambitious, but not in my bill-paying activities.
My take: being a Western expat in an executive position in a non-Anglophone country is closely linked to the “achievement and mastery of challenges” trait some, but not many, people have.
Mountain climbers, wilderness trekkers, solo circumnavigators have the trait. If the trait is combined with high-value economic skills, like law, engineering, architecture, you get people like the GC for TMSC, and successful entrepreneurs outside the native country. If the trait is not combined with high-value economic skills, you get mountain climbers, wilderness trekkers, solo circumnavigators (boat, motorcycle, etc.), et al.
An Asian language is an “achievement and mastery” challenge, similar to the challenge of obtaining “high-value economic skills”. Some of these trait-holders are happy as an Anglophone attorney/engineer/etc. in JP, KR, or the 'wan, but a fraction of the trait-holders also must “master” a language challenge, or two, or three. It’s a double-traitholder indicator. Some folks sky-dive and scuba-dive. Double-traitholders expats “must” master the local language and climb the economic ladder.
Based on my anecdotal evidence (i.e., my life experience), the top academic achievers from undergrad days are usually not the expat “achievers”… being an expat is way outside the comfort level for undergrad achievers (too much uncertainty on every Maslovian level, esp. career Net Present Value, “rules”, and “scoring”).
Dunno… I agree that language is just another tool in the tool-box. But, unless you are working for a local company, once you get past the country level positions, language skills become irrelevant.
I don’t know that foreign language speaking exec.’s are anything special, except for maybe a higher tolerance for ambiguity and risk. In my mind, language is like any other skill; with time and effort it comes. Some need more, some less.
What is a “woopdewoop” job anyway? I mean it’s work, as great as it might be, it’s still work. I don’t know that anyone among us want to end up like Schmidt.
As far as money is concerned I think the same answer as TEFL’ing applies. If you’re doing it for the money you are doing it for the wrong reasons.
But if there are personal reasons that make it worth it then jump into this language headfirst.
[quote=“maunaloa”]My take: being a Western expat in an executive position in a non-Anglophone country is closely linked to the “achievement and mastery of challenges” trait some, but not many, people have.
Mountain climbers, wilderness trekkers, solo circumnavigators have the trait. If the trait is combined with high-value economic skills, like law, engineering, architecture, you get people like the GC for TMSC, and successful entrepreneurs outside the native country. If the trait is not combined with high-value economic skills, you get mountain climbers, wilderness trekkers, solo circumnavigators (boat, motorcycle, etc.), et al.
An Asian language is an “achievement and mastery” challenge, similar to the challenge of obtaining “high-value economic skills”. Some of these trait-holders are happy as an Anglophone attorney/engineer/etc. in JP, KR, or the 'wan, but a fraction of the trait-holders also must “master” a language challenge, or two, or three. It’s a double-traitholder indicator. Some folks sky-dive and scuba-dive. Double-traitholders expats “must” master the local language and climb the economic ladder.
Based on my anecdotal evidence (i.e., my life experience), the top academic achievers from undergrad days are usually not the expat “achievers”… being an expat is way outside the comfort level for undergrad achievers (too much uncertainty on every Maslovian level, esp. career Net Present Value, “rules”, and “scoring”).[/quote]
Interesting post. I’m a ‘high achiever’, and could have studied anything I wanted, anywhere I wanted, as a teenager. It’s my personality that makes me a ‘low achiever’, professionally, however. It all bores me, and although I am perceptive, I don’t care about playing the game. I did well enough within teaching, and lived in a few countries, but although I would love to have a high salary, I don’t have the application, or the ‘soft skills’ needed to get it.
Huge cop-out I know. Maybe I’m still just a silly teenager who can’t be bothered to try anything, in case I stuff it up?
Have you thought about a solo circumnavigation… something novel… a dirigible perhaps. An ESL dirigible. Train the trainers from above.
Maybe. Feeling a little bruised today after getting totally chewed out for making a basic mistake. But I only ever make basic mistakes. I have no head for detail. Feeling reflective. My life is fine, but it’s just another set of circumstances, not me.
I am not well. I am off topic.
For me, it’s been worth it on a personal level, but not on a professional level. That said, my Chinese isn’t anywhere near good enough to be good for anything professionally anyway.
However, I’m sorry I didn’t just buckle down and do the university thing five days a week for the first few years I was here, before I got married. That’s one thing I regret. I took the painfully slow, “studying by myself” route. I wouldn’t recommend it. I should be a great deal more fluent by now. But, like MT, when I first got here I thought I would be heading home in a year or three, and that it wouldn’t be worth the time, money and effort to go the uni route, so I studied by myself (very much stop start with long breaks in between) purely because I liked writing the characters.
But, like most things in life, had I known ten years ago what I know now I could have done things differently. Then again, if I could know now what I will know in ten years from now I might do things differently today. At the end of the day you can only do what you think is right for you, right now, and ultimately just do what you enjoy and for your own reasons. Chinese is no different.
Plans are nothing; planning is everything. Always have a 5yr plan, but be flexible and patient about the implementation. It’s worth it.