Stephanie:
You know, I normally ask a lot of questions about kind of the beginning stages of language learning, but then I actually listened to a podcast that you did with Steve Stein in 2017, and I realized the depth of your Chinese language abilities and figured we'd kind of skip over some of the beginning stuff.
Eric Olander:
Yeah.
Stephanie:
Well, the only real thing I wanna ask about the early years is when did you first start studying and what attracted you to China or the Chinese language?
Eric Olander:
Yeah. There's that. Then there's some tips on how to study. I have a very controversial view on how to study.
Stephanie:
Oh, cool.
Eric Olander:
So I can put that in. And then what I've— and then what I really want to talk about is how the role of speaking Chinese is now changing a lot. Yes. And it didn't used to be as important, and now it's super important. So, so that is, uh, you know, and I've just— it's just in the past year I've seen a change. And I think that's a really neat thing to motivate some people.
Stephanie:
Yes, please. Okay, cool. So let's start at the beginning. How did you first get attracted to learning Mandarin Chinese?
Eric Olander:
I went to high school in the east of the United States at a boarding school, and this was back in 1985, long before China was actually open. It was still very much a closed country. It was not developed. It was not the economic power that it is today. It's unrecognizable to what it is today. And when I got admitted to this school, they said, sent a little card in the mail and they said we were encouraging our new freshmen to take what they called at that time strategic languages: Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. Now at that time, Japanese was a very big language because, you know, Japan was coming in and there was all this fear of Japan buying up Rockefeller Plaza and the Japanese were taking over. There was a lot of anxiety in the United States about the Japanese, but it was also quite in vogue to study Japanese, so that made a lot of sense. Obviously, this was still during the Cold War, so it made sense to study Russian.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Olander:
And Chinese didn't really make a whole lot of sense, but I grew up in California in the San Francisco Bay Area where there are a lot of Chinese people, so it wasn't something that was as exotic to me as it would be from someone, say, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, where there just aren't as many Chinese people or Asian immigrants.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Olander:
So I did it, and I thought, you know, what the heck? I wanted to do Spanish, but I was persuaded by my mother. Some of her friends and some older people to say, go ahead and try it. Ah, okay. I'll do it for 1 year. And they said, if you don't like it, you can go back and study Spanish.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Olander:
'Cause growing up in California, Spanish is what you do, right?
Stephanie:
Right, right.
Eric Olander:
So I did it and I have to say it was not love at first sight.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Olander:
It was an acquired taste. Mm-hmm. It took, uh, several years, but you know, when you're in school, I didn't wanna, after 1 or 2 years of doing this thing, start over again with Spanish. We had a 3-year language requirement. So if I started as a junior, I'd have to be with the freshmen in freshman Spanish, and that was not appealing to me at all. So I said, ah, forget it. Let me just power through. And then it started to build. And this is one of the things that I talk to people about when they want to learn Chinese is it requires an inordinate amount of patience. We're talking patience on a level, a superhuman level of patience. So those first 3 or 4 years of high school Chinese back in the '80s didn't really— didn't connect for me. It connected for me after high school when I graduated. I wasn't ready to go to college right away, so I took a gap year and I went to Taiwan. At that time was a preferable place to study Chinese, and that's when it all clicked. Oh, just suddenly made the connection between studying the language in a textbook, sure, and then going out on the street and using it.
Stephanie:
Oh my gosh. Okay, I lived in Taiwan for a little while teaching. Just out of curiosity, was it Tainan or Taipei?
Eric Olander:
No, I went to Taipei.
Stephanie:
You went to Taipei? Okay.
Eric Olander:
Taiwan Normal University, the Mandarin training center.
Stephanie:
Right, right, right. Okay, so you were in Taiwan for a year?
Eric Olander:
That's right, 1989 was when I got to Taiwan, and that was still when Taiwan was very much— it was nowhere near what it is today. Much more modern, very, very hyper-modern society, but, you know, the only democracy in the Chinese Chinese world. And back then, this was still kind of the hangover of authoritarian rule and was still very much there. When you go to a movie, you had to stand up, and there was a picture of Chiang Kai-shek, and you had to put your hand over your heart. It's that kind of thing. Today it's laughable, but back then that was very, very common. Not many foreigners that were there, right? A couple missionaries from the Mormon Church. It was still very, very exotic. But Taiwan's teaching methods, I thought, were far better than they were in the mainland. In the mainland back then, and even to some extent today, but back then definitely, it was comrade Wong Kamala Harris, you're going into a struggle session. It was like, I don't need to listen to learn that. And in Taiwan, it was much more how to mail an envelope, how to rent an apartment, how to take the bus, you know, very, very practical Chinese. So that's why in those days, a lot of people went to Taiwan to study.
Stephanie:
I was in Taiwan in 2003 and 2004, and there were a lot of foreigners going to study Chinese at that point there. So it definitely helped.
Eric Olander:
The Taiwan government to its discredit, has discouraged young people from coming there to study. And what they've done is they've made it much more difficult for visas. They've made it much more difficult for people to stay afterwards. And I think it's a stupid, dumb idea what Taiwan, what the Taiwanese government has done, because they are turning away people who say, you know what, I can't stay in Taiwan, guess where I'm going to go? Going up to Shanghai, going up to Beijing, and they're losing some great talent. And I think that's really, that's really frustrating for me because again, you know, at some point I'm going to talk about my controversial study methods in Chinese and Taiwan. Really plays an important part in that as well.
Stephanie:
Well, I am curious to ask you, because you mentioned you studied for 3 or 4 years before going to Taiwan, but it was somewhere in Taiwan that it clicked for you and that you started to like it. Was it those teaching methods or was it just being in that culture?
Eric Olander:
So, you know, this is particularly speaking, you and I are both, we both live in mainland China. This is a passionate issue for, for people, whether you come from Taiwan or you come from China. But for us foreigners, I started with the traditional Chinese characters and Zhuyin Fuhao, which is the phonetic system. And my teachers were all from Taiwan. And I cannot recommend enough that when you are starting out in Chinese, that you do not do simplified characters with pinyin. It is really— and this is what's so provocative because people, particularly Chinese people, get extraordinarily emotional about this.
When I was living in Los Angeles and I was running one of the largest Chinese TV stations in the world, but particularly in the US, this was an issue of immigrant parents that almost came into fisticuffs and blows in schools where they were teaching, that the mainland parents did not want them to learn traditional characters and the Taiwan parents not want them to learn pinyin. And it was, it was crazy. But for us as foreigners learning the language, when you study a traditional character, you have a much better understanding of the etymology of that character, of how it came about to be.
I mean, take the character gu, In simplified character, it looks like the arrow. But in the traditional character, you've got the, the human radical on the left, you've got all the details on the right, you know, the box and all whatnot. And there's a story behind that, and it makes it much easier to understand the characters when you understand the origins of where it comes from. That's point number one. And it's not difficult at all to go from traditional characters to simplified characters, right? It is impossible to go from simplified to traditional. So you're closing off that opportunity because in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in some parts of the United States, and other parts of the Chinese-speaking world, they still use traditional characters. And your ability to speak that and understand that— speak, I mean, to understand it— is critical, I think, in some parts of the world. But more importantly, on pronunciation, let's take the character 人 for people.
If you come about and I hear newbies who only start with pinyin, and pinyin is R-E-N second tone up. And so the natural thing for a Westerner or an American or Brit is to go Ren because that's the sound—R-E-N, right? But there is no sound like that. It's actually zh-zh-zh-n, Zhèn. And so the pinyin is not as accurate as the phonetic system. The phonetic actually has zh- and second tone up, and they have a phonetic zh, and it's this little vibration of the tongue that actually does not exist in when you say it in red. So my point is that there's an accuracy that comes with the phonetic system that you just can't get with Pinyin. And when you're starting out, building that accuracy is so important. So I am not partisan to whether it's from Taiwan or whether it's from the mainland. Forget the politics. We as foreigners, this isn't our struggle. Our struggle is to figure out how to speak this darn language that is so difficult to master.
Stephanie:
And to read the characters that are, yeah.
Eric Olander:
Phonetic system to me was a much easier way of perfecting my pronunciation that later on became much more helpful.
Stephanie:
Okay. Now that system that you mentioned, is that the Bopomofo? Is that the same thing? Okay. Bopomofo, that's another— Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have had people recommend that, yeah.
Eric Olander:
They are the building blocks of the phonetic system, of how you pronounce it. And it is, it was a lifesaver for me and it allowed me to again be able to perfect my pronunciation much faster than some of my peers who studied only on the mainland and used pinyin all the time. Now I transitioned over to pinyin. I don't use the phonetic system anymore and I only use simplified characters. So, you know, all my emails and all my typing and everything. So it's again, this is a foundational system as opposed to something that you will necessarily do for the rest of your, your Chinese study life.
Stephanie:
Right, right, right, right. So did, when you were studying in Hong Kong, did you, you obviously learned Cantonese when you were there. Is that correct?
Eric Olander:
No, when I did my master's degree in Hong Kong, and that was all in English. Oh, okay. So I studied in Taiwan under— I studied in Chinese language in Taiwan, but I did a graduate degree in Hong Kong, and that was only in English. So I lived in Hong Kong for a total of 5 years, okay, you know, pieced together altogether, and never really learned Cantonese. It was just too intimidating for me. 9 tones, the range of the tones, and I decided that it would be better for me to focus exclusively on Mandarin because that was hard enough. Right, right, right. The idea of sep— of it would just be all jumbled up in my head. Sure. I mean, saying nǐ hǎo, nǐ hǎo, I mean, all of that would just be so confusing. So I don't recommend people unless— to do that unless they are incredibly talented in languages. Right, right, right. And have really good ways of compartmentalizing those different languages. But studying two Chinese dialects could be very tough. Part of what—
Stephanie:
because I started in Taiwan and now I've lived on and off in mainland China and Ah, I keep watching the news and the things about Hong Kong and specifically the language issues with mainland and Hong Kong, and I really wonder what's going to happen with Cantonese. Do you have any opinion on if— because apparently the news, the evening news is now in Mandarin in Hong Kong already, like some of the news.
Eric Olander:
Yeah, there is a strong— and some of it, because Hong Kong is a still very much a pluralistic community. So there is still a sizable international community there, which is why they still have English language programs. Obviously, the native-born population in Hong Kong is Cantonese, and then there's a growing Mandarin population. So the fact that they have Mandarin news doesn't necessarily mean that, uh, the communists want to take over all of Hong Kong and change it. Of course that's what they want to do. We know that, right? Very clear and upfront about it.
There's no secret to it. In about 25, 28 years, it's going to happen officially. It will happen much sooner sooner than that, unofficially, right? Uh, the fact is that Hong Kong is, is going to be a part of China where Mandarin is going to be far more prominent than it was in the past. That is very threatening to a lot of people. That doesn't mean that Cantonese will go away. It is regardless of what happens politically in Hong Kong. Uh, Hong Kong is still very much part of the, of that, that Pearl River Delta area, which is, which is Cantonese first, and I don't see that changing. But then again, when you go to cities like Shenzhen, the business language is increasingly Mandarin. Yeah. It's not Cantonese.
And Hong Kong has resisted that, where the business language is a combination of Cantonese and English. But now that's starting to change a lot. I am one of those people who believes that the more that Hong Kong integrates in with the mainland, the better off it will be in the long run, because we know how the story ends in Hong Kong. Right. There is no escaping that. We know how the story ends. So, Whether it ends peacefully in the sense of, and you know, after the 50 years of the Joint Declaration and the fact that one country, two systems, that does expire on the, the day that that officially expires, Hong Kong becomes a normal part of China, right? That will again happen probably much sooner than that.
It's underway right now as they're establishing something called the Greater Bay Area, and part of the Greater Bay Area is going to be this fusion of culture and people and economics and technology and innovation and everything between Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, and even some Macau in there as well. So the language will be part of that. If you want to speak Chinese, you have to speak Mandarin with the elites on the mainland. It was shocking in my, in my graduate program at Hong Kong University how few of my Hong Kong classmates spoke Mandarin well. And it really speaks to the fact that a lot of people in Hong Kong are not preparing well for the inevitability of what's happening. Mandarin levels still among native-born Chinese are, are appallingly bad, right? Right, right.
Stephanie:
So were you saying that Cantonese and Mandarin are going to exist side by side rather peacefully?
Eric Olander:
Um, they exist side by side. Mandarin and local dialects throughout China exist side by side, um, depending on who you are and what, what you need the language for. So people who, who are at lower ends of the economic ladder oftentimes don't need to be bilingual and will speak in the local dialect. Those who are speaking across provincial borders and national borders and have more education oftentimes will speak multiple languages, multiple dialects, including Mandarin. So I think that Hong Kong will reflect the diversity that exists within China where people speak multiple dialects. And just as if you're in Guangzhou, you can speak Cantonese and Mandarin, same will be in Hong Kong. And with a little more English, probably. That will be the difference, is there'll be a little bit more English rather than Chinese Mandarin and Cantonese kind of competing.
Stephanie:
I see, I see, I see. I think we skipped a lot though. We went from 1989 in Taiwan to your time in Hong Kong. We did. Yeah.
Eric Olander:
One of the defining features of my kind of Chinese linguistic adventure is the fact that I've never stopped. Not for the longest— I've stopped 32 years of studying Chinese is about 3 months one time, one summer. Wow. And since then I haven't stopped for 32 years. Now, I haven't lived in China for most of those— much of the— most of that time, right? So even though I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Kinshasa, Saigon, all these different cities around the world where I was working in media, journalism, and public affairs and doing things like that, I continued to study Chinese. Twice a week, sometimes 3 times a week, never stopped. And, and that was the key thing because I always knew that I was going to use it at some point. It was also just a, a personal hobby and a passion project, but there was also this sense that I've put so much time into this already, 10 years, 15 years at that time.
I don't want to quit now because then I would lose everything. So when people come to me and say, I want to learn Chinese, What should I do? I say you have to really kind of stare yourself cold into the mirror. Ask yourself, are you willing to commit the rest of your life to do this and never stop? You can't take like, you know, 6 months off. No, because it's just— it is shocking how fast it just evaporates from your brain. It just goes away. It dissipates so fast. You can go from HSK 3 back down to HSK 1 in the space of 6 weeks, 7 weeks of not studying. It's really alarming how fast that happens. So, so that was the, that was the secret. So from, from those early years, I just kept doing it all along. No matter where I went, I, I found a tutor.
Now, back in those old days, I would have to— I actually did tutors one-to-one, face-to-face with another human being. And now, today, for the past 9 years, my tutors have all been online. In Skype. And so that's been something that's very helpful for me. You know what they say with the gym, that the best gym is the one that's closest to you because you don't have an excuse to get out of going? Right, right. Well, the fact is, for me, it was always the, you know, the convenience of it. When you have a tutor that's face-to-face, right, where you actually have to drive there, you park, you go, you spend an hour, then you drive back, it'd be like a 3-hour commitment sometimes to study Chinese on a week— sure, sure— or on a weekend. And that was— that's tiring. Yeah, I did it, but it was tiring.
So when the opportunity came as the technology evolved to get online and do it, um, I, I jumped at it. I don't necessarily recommend it for everybody because, and particularly at a very, very early stage beginner level, there is an advantage about being in a class and getting that collective communal support that you're not alone. Because in those dark moments where you just don't feel like you're progressing and you're not moving forward with this language, having that support is really, really important. But as you become more advanced, HSK 3, HSK 4, HSK 5 and above, then going onto Skype and finding a tutor and really fine-tuning your, uh, your Chinese studies, then that's a better way of doing it.
Stephanie:
Sure. Well, after the first few years with your tutors, I imagine you were quite a bit above textbooks. Like, how— what do you use with the tutors to practice or to study or what have you?
Eric Olander:
So, uh, this is very funny you asked that because you and I had not talked about this before, before our conversation today. So I have a rather unconventional method of studying Chinese today. Okay. I really urge other people to do. Sure. No one else has ever followed me down this path. That makes me really crazy or really bold. I don't know which one. Okay. In the beginning, I followed the textbooks. I got to UC Berkeley and I started taking Chinese there, and I didn't like the textbooks that they had because they pushed us back into mainland textbooks.
Now, back then, this is the early '90s. There was this textbook called Practical Chinese Reader. It's a green book, and surprisingly, 25 years later, believe it or not, it's still in existence today. Oh my gosh. It is, and it was such a terrible textbook back then. It's— so it is shocking, but nonetheless, it had this very, very strong communist kind of tone to it. It was again, Comrade Wong, Comrade Lee, you know, going together to the, you know, celebrate the proletarian revolution, you know. It was just Okay, and that's fine for some people. That just isn't the language that I wanted to learn, right? So I got annoyed with the, the way that they— that there was— the language is being taught, right? I also want to talk about bad Chinese teachers. Let's come back to that. Yep. Because 99% of people quit, and a large reason of it is because bad Chinese teachers. Yep. Um, but anyway, so I said, you know what, this is stupid. I don't want to do this. This is not what I want. So I went to the TA, the teacher's assistant, And I said, do you want to make a little bit of extra money? She was like, of course. So I said, can you, you know, tutor me twice a week or 3 times a week, the same amount that I would study in class, but just tutor me after class what I wanted to do?
And I started studying news and newspapers and things like that, more practical language. Sure. And that's when I— that was the last classes I took was at UC Berkeley freshman year. And after that, I've been with private tutors my whole, my whole time. Sure. What I do now and what I've been doing for the past 8 years now is studying Chinese. Is I use Weibo. And so what I do— awesome— I, uh, and you can go find me. I am Dà bǐ zǐ lǎo wài, Big Nose Foreigner. And, uh, for people who've been around China, you'll know that, that Chinese people love Western noses. And when I was young— I don't have a particularly large nose, I have a normal American nose— but I got so many compliments on my nose. So I just thought, let me use that. So my handle is weibo.com/dabi_zilawa, and I just post updates about my life. That's, you know, like what a lot of people do on social media. Right. But the reason why it's such a great teaching tool is because with my teacher twice a week, I am able— I practice grammar, writing sentences. We discuss what I'm going to write beforehand, so I get vocabulary, but also learn about the language and the culture and rhythm.
Of Chinese social media, which today is an inescapable part of life, just as it is everywhere else around the world. And so I've built a following of about 1,200 followers. Oh my gosh. Which is not huge, really. I mean, it's— but at the end of the day, I have 1,200 Chinese followers, so I'm not what they call a big V in China. But, and then, you know, and what I'm able to do is share my, my culture and my experiences. It's completely apolitical. It's just about my life. It's just about my family and our life in Shanghai or life in Paris or life in Saigon. And so if you go to that, you'll see, uh, you know, completely innocent in that sense. My other social media are much more political, uh, about Chinese policy in Africa and things like that. This has none of that. And this is— and every week we post 5 or 6 pictures, and then I end up responding to about 15 to 20 comments. So it's a great way that I get to learn the language beyond what I would normally do in everyday textbooks or conversational types of discussions like that.
Stephanie:
Oh my goodness, that's wonderful. And you've got the motivation of there being somebody on the other end, so you're having like a non-real-time conversation via social media with these people.
Eric Olander:
Yeah, and it's again, it's going back to that, the tradition that I picked up in Taiwan, really using practical Chinese, Chinese that you can use with people as opposed to academic or textbook Chinese, which I don't feel is always as relevant. I see what my wife was studying, HSK 3, when she's doing some of the language and the vocabulary that she's learning, and still so much of it I find just not practical or relevant. So going back to why do most people quit studying Chinese?
I'm one of the few Westerners that I know that's kept going with it. Most of my classmates, one, maybe two, with, you know, from high school and college have all quit. And most people quit. And why is this? Now, it's hard. And we as Americans in particular are not accustomed to these kinds of long-term challenges. We're now, we've been trained from very early on to have of immediate gratification, and Chinese does not afford that. No, it just— there's no shortcut that you can take. There is no Rosetta Stone that you can take, no course, no online. There is no shortcut. No, it is brute force memorization. That is, that is it. Character after character after character. There are online tools and apps and things like that that make it easier. Sure. But at the end of the day, you are memorizing characters, and there's just no way around it because that's the way this language can be learned. Yep. You can speak on a— sure, on a basic conversational— you want to get survival Chinese, you can, you can do it all sorts of different ways. If you want to, you know, order jianbing on the corner in Shanghai, fine.
That, that's not what I'm talking about. But if you want to get to a professional level of Chinese where you can hold a business meeting, you're not going to do it with any shortcuts. No. The problem though, I find that in particularly in places like the US and Europe, that Chinese teachers are not well trained on how to teach Westerners. So they bring a methodology that is perfected in teaching Chinese kids how to study. Yep. They bring it over to Westerners. Yep. And it doesn't work. We're not conditioned to do that kind of learning. And the strictness and the, the, the, the testing all the time.
And that to me is really one of the big shortcomings. And one of the big opportunities out there is for language academies to come up who are trained in teaching Western children and Western adults in how, according to their learning methods. And so that's to me one of the biggest frustrations. I have yet to see that. I think there's a very big opportunity in doing it. Just like there's VIP English where the guy's made a billion dollars. I don't know how much money he's teaching English. There is a big opportunity to teach Chinese better because for the most part, the Chinese teachers that are out there today cannot teach it very well. Yeah, leads to a lot of people getting frustrated and quitting.
Stephanie:
It does, and rather quickly. I'd say within the first 6 months, if not shorter amount of time, people start, they're very enthusiastic, they get their tutor, they sign up for their classes, and they experience those classes and they stop. And I am no different. I— that's what happened to me the first 3 times I tried to do this. And this time I'm actually self-study— well, self-studying with other people's materials, but I'm not in a classroom for that very reason, because I just I just could not find someone to treat me as an adult. And for me, it was more of, it wasn't the strictness so much as it was, they were teaching people learning their first language. They were teaching children who needed to learn the physicality of holding a pen. And they were teaching people who were making their first real sounds into their first sentence. And as adults, we don't need as much scaffolding in that way. We need other stuff. Yeah.
Eric Olander:
So whether it's they're teaching like children, or whether it's they're teaching like Chinese, or whether it's they're teaching— they're just disconnected with the way that we have grown up learning. Yeah. And so, and I just— it annoys me to no end because that is such a missed opportunity. And the Chinese government is spending so much money with Confucius Institutes and language education programs around the world, but they're missing the key thing, which is understanding the culture. And when I mean understanding the culture, understanding our culture.
Yeah. My child, who's 9 years old, is learning— he goes to school in Shanghai, but he's studying an American method, and his learning kind of methodology is completely different than that of a Chinese child or other Asian children for that matter, because Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese are much more similar to the Chinese method. Right. But the European methods and the American methods in particular are very, very different, and I find very, very few Chinese teachers understand that. Yeah. And, and that's unfortunate. And it's really, it's really unfortunate because it's really stymied the growth. I would have thought that 30 years into China's opening, that the streets of Shanghai and Beijing would be covered with foreigners speaking Chinese by now. Right. And it is still quite rare. Yeah.
There's a lot more than there was 20 years ago. Sure. No doubt. 20 years ago when I was in Beijing, there was nobody. It was just freakish when a foreigner spoke Chinese. Right. Today there are more. People don't freak out in cities like Shanghai that you speak Chinese. So they're used to seeing it a little bit, but there's nowhere near enough. And what's kind of depressing and sad right now is that programs in the US in particular are shutting. They are, yeah. So Stanford and Berkeley are cutting back their programs. Mm-hmm. Why? Lack of interest.
Stephanie:
The last thing Americans need is less language learning. I mean, well, it's a fucking hard language to learn.
Eric Olander:
Yeah, it is. There's no two ways about it. It is. But I will say now, so there's been this discussion in the kind of Chinese learning community. Mm-hmm. And it started in part with a by a podcast by Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo, who run the very, very popular SupChina group and then also the Sinica Podcast. And a couple years ago, they said something which I thought was super interesting, where they said that if you want to study Chinese, do it for the right reasons, because if you study Chinese, you're not going to get rich and make a lot of money because you can speak Chinese. And I think they're absolutely 100% right. If you think you're going to study Chinese— and I hear this in wealthy communities in New York, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, where they Their 3-year-olds already have Mandarin tutors and you think, why? Well, it's the language of the future, so they're going to be rich if they study Chinese because they'll get more job opportunities. You know, up until recently, I thought that was a complete joke. That was ridiculous because if— and I think in this point, Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Guo were absolutely right in saying if you want to get rich in China, become a venture capitalist, do bioengineering, become a, you know, a certain kind of trade lawyer, you know, very, very high-level specialized skills.
Those will still pay very, very big salaries. So invest your time in those those professional skills rather than in studying Chinese. What I have noticed though over the past year, just in the past year, is that something has changed here in China and that life for foreigners is getting much, much more difficult. Yep. Or should I say life for some foreigners is getting much, much more difficult. Life for me is not getting more difficult. I'm having a blast. But I've noticed that a lot of my colleagues in the office that I work at who don't speak Chinese, right, they're being shut out of meetings. They're not being included in emails. More and more meetings now are being held only in Chinese. I work at a big international company, sure, where it used to be that English was the standard, right? And now it's just because I can speak Chinese, I get to go to those meetings, whereas my colleagues, my other Western colleagues who can't, oh wow, uh, they, they get shut out. Sure. And my HR director, she came up to me and she said, you know, she said, if you don't speak Chinese now, it's going to be much, much more difficult to survive in China and to get a job.
And so now I've seen this change a little bit, that if you want to live and work in China, particularly at a high level, which is what I mean, a high level is is, you know, in a corporate capacity, in a very senior level. I think now we're at the stage where Jeremy and Kaiser should probably reevaluate that because for non-highly specialized people, I don't have a degree in engineering, for example, you don't, I think it's going to be almost impossible in 5 years to be here without speaking the language. And that's a change. That is something that is very, very different. And it's much, much more hostile for foreigners who don't speak the language.
Stephanie:
Right, right. And it, on a lot of levels, it makes sense. It is the main language here.
Eric Olander:
Let's just be honest here. How many times would we have a meeting in a corporate office in the United States where if one guy didn't speak English, we would switch the meeting into Spanish or into Chinese, something else? Exactly.
Stephanie:
We totally wouldn't tolerate that. Yeah.
Eric Olander:
No, and where should they tolerate it? China's at a point now where they don't need our technical expertise the way they did when they had to make that compromise 15, 20 years ago. Today they don't need that. So therefore they're really just speaking in English to be polite in some respects. And that politeness is now wearing thin. But that being said, you know that if you apply for a visa, they're also grading you on your Chinese level. Sure. You HSK 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah. You know, and so it's not just even on the corporate level, but they're evaluating you on the visa level.
So if you don't speak Chinese well, you may not even have the chance to be here because the government is evaluating that as well. Right. So that is, it's a different game now that we're playing, uh, just even 5, 6 years ago. But in the past year in particular, I have seen a really noticeable change. And for people like me, it's exciting. And, and, you know, I get such a, you share my excitement. I love the fact that you know, more meetings are being held in Chinese, and then I get to be a part of this, right? Because that is— I mean, I feel like a fly on the wall. What a privilege for me to be part of this other culture and to be able to see inside things that most other foreigners can't see.
And Chinese culture is so complex. Yeah, I mean, I've been going back and forth now and studying this language and culture for 33 years, and I feel like I barely peeled back 2 or 3 layers of the onion. And that is something that is remarkable. And so I have another 30, 40 years of studying this that I think at some point I will eventually figure it out, but never trusted anyone to say I really understand the Chinese culture. Right.
Stephanie:
See, it amazes me that you're saying, you know, 32 years in, you're still studying twice a week. I figured, I assumed that after a certain point there would be just using the language, not so much conscious studying and analyzing and things, but— No, not—
Eric Olander:
no, I know other people who are far more smart, far more talented and intelligent than I am.
Stephanie:
No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying at all.
Eric Olander:
I am not one of those people. I have to keep studying. And even if I live in China, which I do, I still take my lessons because I find that my work language is quite a narrow range of vocabulary. Sure. And so if I want to broaden that out besides what I use in my day-to-day work, I have to, to do in with a tutor because I don't want to burden my colleagues with teaching me Chinese and saying, "How do you say this?" and "How do you say that?" That's just, that's not what it's supposed to be. The language is not, is supposed to be fun to engage and interact with people and not necessarily kind of say, you know, be my impromptu tutor.
So I still, I still use my tutors twice a week. If I set my class tomorrow at 6 AM every day, every other, every Wednesday and Friday on Skype, and I do it before work, I get it out of the day, out of the way. It's like a like going to the gym and it's done.
Stephanie:
And I didn't mean that like it was— Sure, I didn't mean that like it was a discouraging thing. I actually think it's quite a relief and it's inspiring that it confirms how challenging and how much of a marathon this experience is.
Eric Olander:
But also take into account that when you're studying the language, that is only one part of this. Sure. Oh yeah. The linguistic is one part of it. The much more complex part is the culture and the history and how it all intersects with the politics, the economics, the day-to-day life, and all of this kind of comes together. And so by studying twice a week, you're keeping your pulse, your finger on the pulse of the culture as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. You're asking— you're having a tutor that you can ask, "Why do they do this and why do they do that? What is this and what is that?" And again, you will hear— just like the United States is such a large and varied, diverse culture, there is no single answer on anything, right?
And that's really important to understand as well, that just because your Chinese teacher says, well, this is the way it is, and you can ask somebody else and they'll say, well, this is the way it is. Oh sure. And it's completely different on the same topic. Oh yeah. And understand the nuance between those two. Yeah, maybe right, both may be wrong, who knows. Totally. But this is such a complex culture for that, in that sense. And to me, that's what makes it really is so fascinating to be a part of.
Stephanie:
Oh yeah, yeah. And as you're quote-unquote learning the language, the language and the culture is changing over the years, you know. So there's, there's new stuff that's happening that— to—
Eric Olander:
yeah, it's just— say it's changing much more now, much faster now in the past 10 years with, with the internet and social media than it was in the previous, you know, 20 or 30 years, and then, you know, hundreds of years before that, right? Because the culture is now both with online and offline. Right. In the old days, we only had to worry about the offline. Today we also worry about the online culture, which is something that is totally distinct. Right.
And the online cultures vary dramatically from Weibo to Weixin, Douyin, to all the different social media platforms and the way that people communicate with one another. About 20 years ago, I made a little bit of extra money when I was in grad school doing Chinese cultural kind of courses for American companies operating in southern China and Guangdong. And they would say, you know, and there was this basic kind of way we communicate with each other. Americans in particular are very efficient with our language. We'll write an email, top line, "Joe, this is what I need you to do. Thank you. Bob." And Chinese find that to be very, very direct, very abrasive. And the Chinese will write these very, very long emails, same with Koreans and Vietnamese, and then they will bury their request in, you know, paragraph 4.
And so you're teaching the Americans to look for paragraph 4 to find the key kind of ask, right? Because it's a much more kind of indirect type of communicative culture. And so just understanding that, and then again, this devolves in social media, in email, in, you know, short messaging and all these different kinds of platforms. The way we actually communicate and use the language is changing so much based on the technology and how we actually communicate. How you communicate on WeChat, and obviously not just with text, but also with short voice messages as well, the shorthand you use for that. So there's, there's all these neat ways that it's evolving. And so for linguists, this is a paradise.
Stephanie:
It is, it is, it is. And I was going to ask you about Weibo. My goodness, um, the— that it— social media is a goal of mine in the distant future because of— I'm anticipating slang and all kinds of synonyms and just different things that don't mean what they mean in quote-unquote real life. How was it to switch over to that version of the language when you started using Weibo?
Eric Olander:
I will be honest with you. Yeah. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to do that. And that language, that shorthand language, that coded language, some of it coded for political reasons, some of it coded for evading parental screening language, some of it, you know, for all sorts of different reasons. But it is a complex very sophisticated, extremely exciting use of language that I do not fully understand. So I think that is— so I won't pretend to be there. I use a very straightforward, conversational type of language, which is just very direct. Gotcha.
So it's one of my linguistic goals is to be able to learn that. The other linguistic goal that I have with Chinese in particular is to become much better with my chángy So when you hear a— that's just a phrase or saying. The Chinese have sayings for absolutely everything. And some of them are, are kind of phrases or sayings, these are these 2 or 4, 3 or 4 character type of, of kind of short phrases. Sure. That either are rooted in history, so there's a story behind it, or it's rooted in linguistic efficiency. So they'll come, just compact down a phrase into 3 or 4 characters and it's a shorthand. And really elegant, well-spoken Chinese is done with a heavy use of these, what they call chengyu. And that is something that I haven't been able to do well. I can memorize the characters, but I don't know the exact right moment to use them. And that's the key. So, one part is the actual language. Right. And then you have to pair that with the perfect timing on when to apply that language. Oh, my gosh. And boy, when you can do that well— And there are some foreigners, like guys like Da Shan, who he's the, you know, the god of gods of the foreigner study.
Chinese because he started so long ago. A lot of foreigners make fun of him. I have always admired him, and— but he is an example, sure, of how a foreigner can, can get to that last level, which I haven't got to. There's a guy on Weibo and social media called Jared. He is amazing as well, a young Canadian guy. Didn't know Canadians were so good with the language. They've done very, very well, and, and both of those guys are, are just perfect in how they apply these zhōngy and these, these kind of phrases to the right situation. I'm not there yet. That's where I hope to be another 10 to 15 years, and that's what drives me.
Stephanie:
Wow, 10 to 15 years. Yeah, no, Dashan actually is, is also now in the HSK 3 vocabulary list. He's— it's the supplemental list, but his name is actually in the— because they have a whole section for prop— for formal, like, proper names at the end of the required vocabulary, and he's there. He's so there. He's a legend. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's won their hearts with that skill.
Eric Olander:
Yeah. For students who are not familiar with him, I really recommend— I mean, his later stuff today is not as interesting. You know, he's moved back to Canada. He does a little bit here and there, and he dabbles, and he's on Weibo and does stuff. But his early stuff, which was Travel in Chinese, was his show, which was a genius program where they did these scenarios, and then he broke down the scenarios. And the wonderful thing about Chinese is that even though that's 30 years old or 20 years old, however old it was, it's from the '80s, in the '90s, and it was really one of the first media programs of teaching Chinese.
And it was so compelling because it's being done by a Westerner, right? And so his pronunciation, and he understood what we were going to struggle with and what we weren't going to struggle with, that was, was just excellent. So I really recommend— a lot of them are available on YouTube, go look it up. Uh, Dashan, I don't know his Western name. Sure, sure, I can find it. The show is called Travel in Chinese, produced by CCTV, and it's about 15 minutes long each episode. But it's just, I just found it a really nice tool and I still remember some of the skits and scenarios.
Stephanie:
Um, not at all equivalent to that, I'm sure, educationally, but the comedy troupe Mama Hu Hu. Yeah, I was going to, to like use some of their videos to study, but I'm not at the point where I can hear the difference between Shanghais and Putonghua, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be studying the wrong like if I was gonna confuse the two. So, and I think they switched between the two every now and then, I think, I don't know. So, but— I don't know.
Eric Olander:
I've never heard them speak Shanghainese, but it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie:
So for now I'm just giggling at their videos. But I imagine it was kind of like that, maybe that effect when Da Shan first came on the scene, it was kind of like, oh, these guys can do that. It is possible. We need to see ourselves speaking such an incredibly difficult language.
Eric Olander:
And there's a whole generation of Westerners now that have grown up in China. So my son, he's 9 years old, he's going to school here, he's studying every day. And I've seen these children, some between 9 and 15 and 16 years old, that speak an amazing Mandarin. Right. And so that is exciting as well. And they are fluent in both the culture and the language. So while I'm dead— well, I'm sometimes pessimistic about adults and some of the college students in the West who are learning.
There's also this other generation of Westerners who are children of expats like myself who are going to school here, and even if they're going to international schools, they're still studying every day, which I think is a national requirement that they have to do. Sure. There are some other schools like Yaochong International School, YCIS, in Shanghai that teach their whole primary in bilingual. So if they teach math in English, they teach another section of math in Chinese, and these kids come out of that program speaking beautiful Mandarin. So there is this new generation and it is going to get more competitive. And I guarantee you, as I said earlier, if you don't speak Chinese, getting a job here is going to be super hard. It really is super, super hard. I mean, there's no— and again, there's no shortcut. So if you're on the fence about learning Chinese, but you know you want to live in China or engage the Chinese abroad, sure, you're gonna have to speak the language. Yeah. And that's just— there is no shortcut.
So, you know, find the little paper with all those boxes and that is going to be your life for 10 years doing that. And again, people think that, you know, they've got an iPad, they could do something different. Uh-uh. I don't believe that. I'm very old school on that. I see the little kids today, the Chinese kids, what are they doing? They're writing the character over and over and over again. And that's how little kids learn it. Yep. So us Westerners are not smarter than that.
Stephanie:
Mm-mm. No, definitely, definitely not. But I do have to admit, I have a lot more questions.
Eric Olander:
Well, we can, we can pick it up anytime, but you can tell that this is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Awesome. Very passionate. The point of actually expressing some of the more negative, the stronger negative opinions is not to discourage anybody. It's actually just to set you up with the right expectations when you approach this language. Oh, absolutely. By the way, this is no different than studying Russian and studying Arabic. These are complex, difficult languages that have very, very deep cultural roots that also take years and decades to understand. Yes. So I would really equate this to Arabic in many respects, that you can spend a lifetime studying the language but you can't necessarily understand the culture, and the culture drives the politics. Sure. And that's something interesting as well. In this day and age, watching the politics is equally fascinating.