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Chinese language represents chinese culture and chinese traditions

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Chinese language represents chinese culture and chinese traditions

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Live: Celebrate Asian Culture Carnival 亚洲文化嘉年华盛大举办

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Is Mandarin Chinese still worth learning in 2020: pro and con?

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Is Mandarin Chinese still worth learning in 2020: pro and con?

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A few days ago I was lurking on Twitter and I came across an old post by Eric Meltzer from 2017 titled, "It's probably time to learn Chinese". If you're not familiar with Eric Meltzer, he's deeply involved in the Venture Capital / Blockchain scene here in China, which I dabbled with a bit in 2017. I've never actually personally met the guy, but he claims to possess a high level of Chinese, and seems to be pretty successful, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Eric's article: https://medium.com/@wheatpond/its-probably-time-to-learn-chinese-63587376c2d2

The main rux of his article goes as follows:

Learning Mandarin is an extremely high ROI activity because:

- China has stopped copying others and begun creating its own products and technology
- 1.5 billion or more people speak Mandarin
- Very few Mandarin speakers speak English

And then he gives some additional "fun" reasons to learn Mandarin:

- Mandarin isn't actually as hard as we in the West believe it is
- Chinese characters are easier to learn and use because of technology
- Chinese people love it when foreigners (mostly non-Asian foreigners) speak Mandarin

And then, well, that's the end of his article on WHY you should learn Chinese. No deeper explanations, no stories about how his Mandarin has boosted his career or opened opportunities that wouldn't be possible without it. He spends the remaining 2/3 of the article on Mandarin-learning tips. Nice, but not what I came for!

Convince me Eric! Tell me why I should pour years of my life into a language, when the ROI is dubious at best, and completely useless at worst.

......

All right, well if Eric isn't gonna lay it out straight, then I guess it's up to your boy Cinnabarhorse here to give you the facts. I'm not going to teach you how to learn Mandarin in this article. I probably will in another article. But not in this one.

In this article, I'm going to argue why learning Mandarin in 2019 is an absolute waste of your time, and why you should go learn programming or engineering instead. WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS. For some people, including myself, learning Mandarin was the best decision I ever made, and I dread to think what my life would have been without it.

I'll talk about why you should learn Mandarin in a second. But first, why learning Mandarin is an absolute f*cking waste of time.
WHY LEARNING MANDARIN IS AN ABSOLUTE WASTE OF TIME
1. CHINA DOESN'T WANT YOU

If you're watching this video, you're probably interested in China in some capacity. Maybe you're afraid China is going to take over the world. (They're not.) Maybe you want to come to China and strike it rich. (Good luck.) Maybe you just like expanding your horizons by learning about different cultures and languages. (Whatever, hippie.)

Learning Mandarin is an absolute waste of time because day by day it becomes clearer and clearer that China doesn't want you. Last year China introduced their new foreign visa classification system that separates foreigners into different categories, based on their technical skills. Guess how many points knowing Mandarin gets you? Out of a maximum 120 points, possessing HSK5 or above nets you an earth-shattering FIVE POINTS!!! For comparison, being 25-45 years old nets you 15 points. Being young is literally 3x more valuable than speaking fluent Mandarin.

Based on the new system, unless you have a Master's degree, several years of working experience at a Fortune 500, and ideally a couple patents, then China doesn't want you.

2. CHINA DOESN'T NEED YOU

In his article, Eric claims that the ~300 million number of English speakers in China is false propaganda by the government. I mean yeah, if you add up every Chinese person who knows how to yell 哈喽 at a foreigner in the street, you'd probably get that number. But more realistically, he believes that 10 million is about right.

10 million people?! That's still a huge number of people! Last time I checked, there were only around ~600,000 expats living in China. Most of them are probably teaching English, and find little to no use in learning Mandarin, beyond basic daily conversations, 你很漂亮！

The reality is that China has a surplus of English speakers willing to take lower pay, endure tougher working conditions, and adapt better to local conditions than foreigners. China will only give working permits for jobs locals cannot do, which are increasingly fewer and fewer. Sorry, China doesn't need you.

3. CHINA DOESN'T LIKE YOU

This point may sound a bit jaded, but I'm going to say it anyways. China doesn't like you. You see, China's relationship with foreigners is very perplexing. On the one hand, many Chinese envy foreign fashion trends, foreign luxury brands, and even foreign faces. The term 混血, referring to babies of mixed ethnicity, is growing in popularity, as Chinese girls undergo plastic surgery to make their faces more "立体", or three-dimensional, more like foreign faces. The Kim Kardashian look is in vogue here in China, and Chinese demand for foreign brands is practically insatiable.

On the other hand, many Chinese people are extremely patriotic, sometimes to the point of jingoism. I don't think there's anything wrong with a healthy patriotism - in fact, I believe lack of patriotism is the cause of many problems back in America - but xenophobia is harmful. I experienced this firsthand when I used to make videos for the Chinese internet. A simple video of me explaining why I don't like eating hotpot was used as evidence online that I hated China and should 滚回美国.

As I'll talk about in a moment, I love China and I love Chinese people, but the acerbity of the internet towards foreigners looking to build an online presence in China can be quite demoralizing.

When you meet Chinese people offline, in the "real world", things are much better. Chinese people in general are friendly towards foreigners, and I've never had an incident of direct xenophobia directed towards me. However, if you end up dating a Chinese man or woman, you should be advised that their friends or parents may strongly advise them against dating you, which could tank your relationship before it even begins.
*Bathroom break*
All right! Now that I have completely crushed your ambitions of learning Mandarin, let me briefly tell you my story, and my reasons for believing that learning Mandarin is still a wonderful idea, for a certain group of people.

First of all, who am I to give you advice about learning Chinese? Well, I've been speaking Chinese since 2007, have attained a high level of proficiency, and have used my Chinese in China to accomplish many fairly impressive feats. In 2015, I used Mandarin to pitch my app startup to an incubator in Xiamen, and was successful in raising a significant amount of money. Later, when my startup pivoted to creating educational English videos, Netease Youdao signed me for a year's contract teaching English online through their flagship livestream product, Youdao Ketang. I also advised several Chinese blockchain projects during the ICO boom of 2017.

Was knowing Mandarin really essential to my career? Obviously everyone has different talents and interests. Ever since middle school, I've been interested in learning languages, so learning Chinese was a perfect fit for me. All I can really say for sure is that learning Mandarin gave me the confidence to journey to China, make tons of Chinese friends, and even start a business here.

And this is why I think learning Chinese can be an amazing investment for a certain group of people. The truth is that here in China, opportunity is everywhere. Obviously having an impressive background helps, but even if you don't, you can still discover opportunity, have an amazing adventure, and get to know a culture vastly different from your own.

Just in my friend circle alone, I have friends who:

1. Own a successful English school with a Chinese partner
2. Perform regularly at night clubs and other venues
3. Help foreign blockchain projects raise money in China
4. Get paid to tour around China while doling out world records
5. Make videos that get millions of views per month on Weibo, Bilibili, and Youtube

Yes, you may have difficulty securing a long-term visa, and yes, China probably has plenty of people who could do whatever you can do, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying. China is an enormous country, with a vast population hungry for knowledge, entertainment, and companionship.

Above all though, I'm grateful to my younger self for putting in all the hard work to learn Chinese, because without it, I wouldn't have found my amazing girlfriend Nono. Not knowing Chinese in China really limits your dating pool. If you want to cast a wider net, you've got to know more Chinese than just 你很漂亮！

Eric Meltzer is right that the barrier-to-entry for learning Chinese is VASTLY lower than it was just ten years ago. It's sad to say, but learning how to write characters isn't really a required skill anymore. Recognizing them and using pinyin to input is really all you need. There are numerous apps to help you find language partners, and online courses that can teach you the basics for free. Although Mandarin Chinese is still known as "the world's hardest language", in reality, it's much simpler to learn than before. But, your friends and family will still think you're a genius for learning it!

So what do you think? Is Chinese worth learning in 2019? I'm genuinely curious what you think. Leave a comment below, or answer the poll on the top right.

If you liked this video, remember to give a thumbs up! Subscribe to my Youtube channel, Cinnabarhorse. I'll be bringing you fresh content about China and learning Chinese every week. Until next time, 再見～

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Is Mandarin Chinese still worth learning in 2019?

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A few days ago I was lurking on Twitter and I came across an old post by Eric Meltzer from 2017 titled, "It's probably time to learn Chinese". If you're not familiar with Eric Meltzer, he's deeply involved in the Venture Capital / Blockchain scene here in China, which I dabbled with a bit in 2017.

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The most widely spoken language in the world

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The most widely spoken language in the world