You know how people are always giving advice like Learn Chinese, it’s so useful in today’s working world, China is really booming? Those words always sort of flew in my right ear and out the left. I took them in, but like a dilapidated old sponge, not much was retained. After all, after ten years of studying it, I’m pretty invested in Spanish. Fluency in that language is so close I can nearly taste the sangria. I love Spanish and it loves me. So why would I ever have started learning Chinese? It’s supposed to be quite difficult to pronounce and has its own characters. Pshh.

The thing is… now I want to learn Chinese.

After almost five weeks of hearing it, I no longer interpret the sharp, undulating tones of spoken Chinese as unfamiliar or strange. I recognize snippets of words here and there; I can now direct my taxi driver to my house or work without needing to whip out the piece of paper where I have the addresses written down in Chinese. I can say bu yao to the persistent shop owners who heckle me to buy their bags and watches every single day and I say kuai (bucks) instead of yuan as if I’m a local. Ordering in a restaurant and thanking someone for their assistance is as easy as pie.

So why do I want to learn Chinese, when clearly I’ve got all the basics down perfectly?  It’s because I’m so hopelessly in love with Shanghai it’s ridiculous. The thought of leaving this Saturday night has got me downright sad. I just know I’ll start pining for this place once I’m home. And although I’ve ticked off mostly everything on my “To Do in Shanghai” list, I still feel that I haven’t even dipped my toes into the waters of this amazing city. There are so many more restaurants to try! Clubs to visit! Gardens to explore! Therefore, a new life goal has emerged: get a job in this city after I graduate.

My work experience here has been so wonderful. I’ve really enjoyed the structure of having a productive 9-5 job. After days of Microsoft Office usage, conference calls, and lunch with really sweet coworkers, I get off work and go do Something. My office is in such a prime location that Xintiandi, a restaurant hotspot, is a two-minute walk away and the extremely extensive subway is accessible from my building, ready to carry me wherever I please. The thought of not being able to be in Shanghai for most of my weekdays compels me to do something worthwhile after work, giving me the motivation and energy to take advantage of being here that I probably would have had difficulty summoning otherwise.

The workplace has made abundantly clear that one of the most useful skills I could possess in order to be employable in China is the ability to speak Chinese. Everyone in my office speaks English quite well, so it’s not that there is a blatant language barrier between my colleagues and me. It is in a meeting where everyone else lapses into their common native tongue to make a point more quickly or when lunch conversation slides out of English as I am distracted by having to pick up enormous xia long bai with my feeble chopsticks that it hits me; my life would be so much easier here if I mastered the complexity that is Chinese. My colleagues’ exclusion of me through language isn’t even impolite or rude because I’m the foreigner who has been forcing them to take the trouble of speaking English when they talk to me. The reality is, internal work would be more efficient and speedy in this office if everyone spoke the same language. So if they’re going to have a foreigner around, wouldn’t that person be much more appealing if he or she spoke the same language?

It’s the simple rule of when in Rome… I mean, if more people are comfortable in Chinese than English, it makes sense to switch. Majority rules, right? Except I’m not sure that last bit would translate properly in China…