Do you ever get the feeling like it’s all… pointless?

Blasphemy, I know. How could I even suggest it? But there it is. I’m surrounded—SURROUNDED, I tell you—by non-Chinese-speaking people! All these years of practice… well, both of them… and for what? So I can order a Diet Coke one week a year when I go overseas?

Gah. What I really need to do, what we ALL need to do, is move to Shanghai. Who’s with me? Come on, we’ll start a ChinesePod commune. We’ll get one of those old houses with the courtyards and we’ll spend our days chatting in Mandarin. Poor tongue-tied expats will wander through our doors in desperate need of help after a solid linguistic thrashing by a native bully. We’ll train him like a kung fu fighter in a Jackie Chan film and send him back out there armed with useful phrases and a mastery of the dreaded 了. (It even LOOKS like a weapon! It reminds me of a kama.)

I keep trying to find places to use my limited skills. Just the other day I discovered that the independent auditor here at work is from China and I chatted her up but good. Of course, she’s still doing that thing where she tells me my Chinese is great… but she keeps talking to me in English.

I’ll wear her down. Just you wait and see. 我会！