Learning Mandarin Chinese Changed My Life

Learning Mandarin changed my life, but not in the way you’d think it would.

When I was eleven, I was presented with opportunities to pick a language. I picked Mandarin Chinese.

In the public school system where I grew up, when you were in the sixth grade, you had to pick a language that you would take until the end of your high school days. I was given the paper in Language Arts, and, originally, I had planned on checking off the little box that had French next to it. I had told my mother, the few friends that I had, that I was going to being taking French because that was the chic thing to do.

What changed my mind was the chatter of my classmates around me. This is literally the stupidest reason why to learn a language, but my classmates were gawking and pointing at the Mandarin option and saying that’s a language smart people took. I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be admired. And so, right there, I checked off Mandarin Chinese. My classmates stared at me in awe, gasping at how was brave enough to learn that language. There was only two Mandarin classes in the whole school, one per grade, and they were very small. We all got to know each other quite well if you were in the Mandarin class.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but checking off that little box and then showing up to my Mandarin class in the seventh grade, picking out my Chinese name, was that it was going to change the entire trajectory of my life, going beyond just China and Taiwan, the opportunities presented with just this language.

Mandarin Led to New Linguistic Opportunities

For the first time, I was exposed to culture as an examination to my career and studies. I grew up in an Iranian-American household and we didn’t really get adventurous when it came to the places we went to or the food we ate. And so I never explored different cultures, let alone my own. In my middle school, the Chinese class was very diverse. And suddenly I discovered the existence of Japanese and Korean culture, because my peers were also super into it. I then became into it too, which led to a new interest.

I was super cringe with my interest in Korea at first, but once I grew up a little more, I found an opportunity to study abroad in South Korea for free as a high school student. I had wanted to learn the language after being in my Mandarin class, but I never had the opportunity to actually learn Korean. And so I found the National Security Language Initiative for Youth program, which gave US high schoolers a fully funded opportunity to learn the language in the host country. And so, at seventeen years old, I packed up my bags and headed to Seoul, South Korea.

I used my Mandarin there too. I spoke Korean with a Chinese accent, and at touristy sites I managed to spook Chinese tourists with my skills. But I began to forget my Mandarin and replace it with Korean, and so, when I headed back to Baltimore and signed up for my college classes, I signed up for Chinese I at my college.

My College Experience

I hadn’t taken Chinese since my sophomore year of high school. I took two years in middle school, and then I went to a different high school than the one I was supposed to go to. I went to an arts school that only had Italian, French, and Spanish. I signed up for Italian, took that for a year, and then the county cut our school’s Italian program. Desperate, I tried to find a way to take Chinese again. I missed it. And so I ended up taking Chinese III out of FVHS in Florida, where I memorized words for environmental problems, acupuncture, and poetry.

Chinese I in college was torture, and so was Chinese Conversation I. But I kept trekking through all the way into Chinese III, and, if I hadn’t graduated a year early, I would’ve taken up a self-studied credited course in Chinese Poetry, where I would have been able to write my own poems in Chinese as well as translating Chinese poems throughout history. Unfortunately that didn’t get to happen, but once again I was in a classroom that inspired me to study Mandarin more.

It was in college I began to explore Chinese literature and history more, as well as undertaking another project of mine. I started translating Chinese poetry, specifically from the feminist Qiu Jin who was beheaded for her work. This has made me a better poet at the end of the day, because I’ve had to really dig deep into the nuances of language and culture.

Looking to the Future

I haven’t studied vocabulary or grammar in a year. In a way, I’ve moved on to an obsession with Central and South Asia, where I continue to track and study the movements of goods along the Silk Road. But, at the end of the day, I will not forget that China, too, was a part of the Silk Road. And it still is important on the modern day version of trade and commerce.

I received my degree in International Trade and Marketing, and all throughout it it was all about China, China, China. Learn Chinese for a better career, to make more money. Oh? Now we’re being racist against the Chinese? No need to worry about how Asian-Americans are treated. Stop learning Chinese. Not useful anymore.

Never will I say that I’m learning this for such superficial or cosmetic reasons. Recently, I was doing a lot of research about the empress Wu Zetian, who was destroyed by history. The men who came after her destroyed her name. And while I cannot relate to the struggle to women halfway across the world or claim to understand, I want to continue learning about them. To empower their stories.

Picking Chinese in the seventh grade completely changed my life. I want to learn more dialects, to dig deep in the crevices. And one day I will. But, for now, I plan a trip to China, to try and see the tombs and mausoleums that I always dreamed of. But studying Mandarin led to a deeper appreciation, one where I make a lifelong devotion to the act of language and cultural learning.

中国，谢谢。