Promoting Chinese as a global language: thoughts and frustrations

This Wednesday, a representative from the Chinese embassy came to talk to the students of the Hebrew University about Chinese studies in China. Mr. Li requested that all the Hebrew University students who studied in China come and talk to him. Although I’ve studied in Taiwan and not China, and even that wasn’t for very long, I was extremely curious as to see how this meeting would go and try to understand why the Chinese embassy wants such to hold such a meeting.

I was surprised to see that quite a few students came to attend this meeting. Apparently we have fellow students who stayed in China for a while, with one 3rd year girl who lived in China for a few years speaking almost fluently, atleast as far as my non-Chinese hearing goes. The meeting started with handing out Chinese art calendar gifts, and was held in Chinese – which made it very difficult for most of the students, like myself, to follow all that was said.

The Chinese government’s goal, as I understand it, was to promote Chinese as a global language, trying to improve the Chinese-studies services offered in China and to encourage more people to come and study Chinese in China. The Chinese government has requested that all embassies meet with the leading local universities to work together in making this happen. Mr. Li wanted to hear every little detail about why people want to study Chinese, why people want to study Chinese in China, why people aren’t coming to China to study Chinese even if they want to study Chinese, starting from the structure of the classes and schools to the economical considerations.

He asked a few questions that I was curious about myself , like "Why did you start to study Chinese?" probably expecting answers about China being the next super-power and the next-economical center of the world, but getting weak responses about students wanting to translate Chinese texts and understand some Chinese they met on a train in China. He was direct enough to tackle the students with questions like "if China is so cheap, why do you need our scholarship? why not just come and study?" which was responded with a weak description of the financial miseries of the Israeli student. Although he occasionally commented that what we said "is very important, very important", I believe he was only trying to save our face and that we didn’t really offer any meaningful insights. I was especially interested in some of the side-statements he made about plans to promote Chinese studies into Israeli high-schools and some thoughts about "making Chinese be like English".

The Hebrew University goal, as I understand it, was to show that Israeli students are serious about China and for the Chinese government to invest more funds in the university and offer more scholarships. Mr. Li played along, bringing the message of a possible increase in Chinese scholarships offered for the Israeli students. Is receiving a few more scholarships a year the real accomplishment the Hebrew University should be looking for?

Something that’s been on my mind alot lately, celebrating my 1 year anniversary of studying Chinese, is that even students who’ve studied Chinese for years aren’t able to hold a decent conversation in Chinese. Never, in my darkest expectations, did I think that my level of Chinese would be this bad after a year. Never, did I imagine that I’ll meet East-Asia BA graduates who can’t pronounce tones and speak clear enough for a Chinese person to understand basic words. The meeting with Mr. Li and my occasional attempts at conversing in Chinese with the Chinese students at the Hebrew University really shook me up. It’s so frustrating and sad.  True, it’s not in China or Taiwan, but if a person invests hours every day for 3 years studying Chinese and still can’t express basic thoughts in a casual meeting, then something’s wrong, and this is what Mr. Li should be interested in. Is it that the Chinese language is uniquely complicated or is it something about the mentality of studying Chinese outside China? in my personal opinion - I tend for the latter. I don’t think Chinese is much more complicated than English or Hebrew, especially when it comes to speaking, but there is some kind of barrier that makes studying Chinese outside Chinese speaking countries almost impossible. What makes the English so wide-spread and common is that the English culture is everywhere – available in everyday situations with real bridges into other nationalities. Is there no way to bridge between the Chinese culture-people and the students studying Chinese around the world?

What do you think?