Does Chinese become your Everything?

[PerpetualChange]

Prior to my Chinese study really ramping up over the last year, I studied maybe 30 minutes per day, and otherwise enjoyed learning guitar and piano, playing video games, reading novels, watching movies, etc., in the rest of my free time. 

 

I realized the other day that Chinese study has begun to imperialize my inner life. Aside from normal study, now I find myself only reaching for Chinese books, only watching Chinese movies, only playing games if they have a Chinese language pack. It's almost as nothing seems worth doing anymore, unless it can improve my Chinese as side effect. I've even gone as far as spending downtime at work on reading webnovels. Some people the Meetup group I attend have said things to me like, "You know you're not Chinese, right?"

 

I'm sure my study patterns will ebb and flow, but I'm just curious if others have also become so obsessive that Chinese-related activities become almost all they do. 

[Lu Jo dido]

Hi,

 

The same  thing happens to me since a few years ago. I'm kind of obsessed with Chinese language.  I only want to do things that have any kind of relation with Chinese. But I'm not fluent in Chinese, and maybe sometimes I feel frustrated because I can't raise my level just by watching movies or reading texts. Unpleasant situation... ?

[Shelley]

I have been through it and still do it to some degree. I think it might be a possibly useful attempt at immersion when you are outside China ( I noticed the OP was in the USA). 

 

Its almost like food or drink and you can't get enough, when I started studying in 1985, there was a veritable wasteland of chinese books, films, anything in fact. I collected anything and everything I could, I have programs from going to see the Chinese State Circus, I bought every souvenir they sold with in my price range. I scoured second hand book shops for anything written in chinese and ordered books from the library and copied what I could in the time I had. As software started to appear I tried everything I could and bought some.

I made memorable treks to London China town and the most wonderful Book stores there and visited the tea rooms, and sat in the center of it all drinking in the sight, sounds and smells, the beautiful colours of the fabrics and more,  the voices speaking so fast I couldn't even begin to understand and the smell of Peking duck cooking. Precious, snatched moments of chinese life.

 

I think that as more became available via the internet and the open door policy began, I started to become more selective and as my knowledge of Chinese increased I realised what was worth having. I still have a lot of books and will always keep them.

 

I wouldn't worry about it, I do think it will come and go with your life and how it changes. Enjoy it all and learn what you can.

 

 

[abcdefg]

10 hours ago, PerpetualChange said:

I'm sure my study patterns will ebb and flow, but I'm just curious if others have also become so obsessive that Chinese-related activities become almost all they do. 

 

I went through a phase in which study of Chinese language and culture occupied a large chunk of my life. After living here (in Kunming) several years, balance was restored and now Chinese is just the language in which I conduct daily affairs, pursue interests, hobbies and such. It's no longer an obsession in and of itself. 

 

I learn little new bits of Chinese language as they are needed. Often these "new" things are simply "old" things that I learned before and then didn't use for half a decade, only to meet them again farther down the road.  What I don't do, and probably never will, is read for pleasure in Chinese. I mean novels and such. That would help a lot with vocabulary retention. 

[suMMit]

@abcdefg without:

 

I went through a phase in which study of Chinese language and culture occupied a large chunk of my life.

 

 

you probably couldnt have made it to:

 

now Chinese is just the language in which I conduct daily affairs, pursue interests, hobbiesand such. It's no longer an obsession in and of itself. 

[matteo]

Ahaha that's hilarious (or maybe really scary...) love the title and I think this is a great topic. I have the feeling that this is quite a common pattern for Chinese language students.... 

 

I also started off studying quite casually, the main reason being that lots of my workmates at the time were chinese and I got very curious to understand more of what they did and how they behaved. I thought it could be an interesting but harmless hobby, say something that you do couple of hours a week and you slowly improve without you life actually revolving around it. 

 

After a few months and a couple of evening courses, it started dawning on me that  if I wanted to achieve any kind of real - even small - improvement I would have to drastically increase my commitment. So I started studying regularly; as the flashcards multiplied and the number of words got into the thousands, the time needed to maintain the knowledge slowly and stealthily crept up. 

So now basically I try very hard to study a couple of hours a day, to maintain what I know and hoping to improve a bit. 

I do sometimes have the same feeling that you describe, of trying to always include some Chinese learning in every aspect of any activity, and I think for me that is a bit for enjoyment, a bit because I invested so much time in it already that I feel every moment not spent cultivating this "investment" is - well, I wouldn't say wasted, but...  

 

Because - like everyone else - I have a life, and work, and hobbies, squeezing in all this study is not easy. I always have to try and optimize my time but often it's just a matter of not having energy to do everything!

So at the same studying Chinese is the activity that I enjoy the most, and a huge commitment that sometimes weights on me. Kind of like the Ring of Power.

 

I don't think this is really sustainable in the very long run so I have as an objective to get as good as possible within say a year and then give a good earnest shot to living a long period in China. So it will either sprout into a beautiful tree, or I will have to kill it at some point I guess

 

Hope it makes sense, as usual I'm writing in a hurry cause I'm at work. No time to write when I'm at home, gotta study.

 

 

[Larry Language Lover]

Great thread.  This is also happening to me.  I am a huge language enthusiast.   My greatest loves were French and German.   I was not interested in Asian languages.   Duolingo introduced their brand-new Chinese course.  I checked it out only out of curiosity and got hooked.   I keep up with my other languages still, but Chinese has become my big obsession and it occupies the largest chunk of my time compared to the others.  It has also become my big frustration at times as I came to the realization that I cannot treat it the same as the previous languages or make the same kind of rapid progress.   It is my big challenge.   Chinese appears in my dreams in some way or another very frequently, so that shows my state of mind.

[DavyJonesLocker]

On 12/19/2019 at 4:03 PM, PerpetualChange said:

Some people the Meetup group I attend have said things to me like, "You know you're not Chinese, right?"

 

 

How full on Chinese are you going? 

[PerpetualChange]

5 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

How full on Chinese are you going? 

This is a point of contention, honestly. We don't speak all that much Chinese (hence I go less and less), but you would think it'd be a relatively safe space to talk about Chinese music or movies... but nah, not so much.

[DavyJonesLocker]

4 hours ago, PerpetualChange said:

This is a point of contention, honestly. We don't speak all that much Chinese (hence I go less and less), but you would think it'd be a relatively safe space to talk about Chinese music or movies... but nah, not so much.

 

Seems odd, I thought you might be turning up and squating on the heels while you talk to people. Lol

 

I  met one guy before and he did seem to be going overboard on the Chinese cultural aspect, using  too many idioms ( not that it's a problem in itself but some seem just inappropriate for foreigners to he randomly throwingv around), talks about the cultural reforms a lot and introduces himself using his Chinese name to westerner folks. 

It was like that he had no identity himself and needed to adopt a Chinese one. Bit pathetic if I'm honest 

[道艺]

If I don't have a minimum of 2-3 hrs of some type of Chinese interaction per day, I notice my mood really gets irritable. Like I'm wasting my time living in China. Which I'm glad happens to me. 

 

But my foreign friends always say I'm turning more and more Chinese each time I finally decide to leave the bubble