Chinese made easy: learn how to speak Mandarin in ten simple lessons

My bike fell apart in the course of one day last week. I left my apartment that morning and, groggy and grumpy, kicked my kick stand right off. On the way to class, a pedal dropped off. The other one fell off later that afternoon. Later I stopped to pump up a tire. It exploded. That evening, my chain snapped and flew off into the honking traffic. It was that kind of day - a China day.

The day after, I took the bike to my local repair man. He fixed it in 15 minutes over a conversation about the British Royal Family. It cost ten yuan (60p). I rode off into the balmy evening in search of a three yuan (20p) bowl of noodles and a two yuan beer. It was a lovely day - a China day.

I arrived in Beijing last August for a one-year Chinese language programme at Beijing University. I had downloaded the application form from their website knowing nothing about the university or the course. And on previous visits to the city, I had never liked it, this grey, drab, sprawling web of eight-lane ring roads.

Nine months on, it is still grey, drab, sprawling. But I have developed a grudging fondness for it, punctuated by moments of mind-blowing frustration at its idiosyncrasies and wonderful clarity when I realise that actually, this is all very exciting.

I live in a flat that I euphemistically like to describe as ‘Chinese’. Chunks of ceiling fall off with damp. The kitchen has great gaps in the tiling where the pipes run through. Cockroaches scuttle in and out. The shower is a hose with a shower-head that you hold over yourself standing next to the toilet. An unidentified substance drips from the bathroom ceiling.

I have 20 hours of classes a week. They are taught entirely in Chinese. The teachers are mostly young and invariably willing to be side-tracked from tedious textbooks into revealing conversations about their personal experiences of modern China. We have heated debates on economics, equality and nationalism. We present inscrutable Chinese jokes, songs and idioms to our classmates at the beginning and end of each class.

There are over 500 foreign students in the Chinese language department from all over the world - Americans, Japanese, Russians, Scandinavians, even a few North Koreans, sporting Kim Il Sung pins on their shirts. The common language is Chinglish.

All Chinese levels are covered from absolute beginners to children of overseas Chinese who have grown up speaking the language. Progress is fast when what you learn in the classroom is so immediately useful, indeed essential, outside it. A placement test when I first arrived put me in class 16 (out of 30), the very middle of intermediate. We were retested at the beginning of this semester and I moved up to class 26.

Outside of class, I have unintentionally but quite happily stumbled into the lucrative bosom of Beijing’s middle-class mums. Soon after moving in, my neighbour cornered me in the stairwell and asked if I would tutor her seven year-old son in English. I nervously agreed. Two lessons later she carted me off to meet her friend who also wanted an English tutor for her son. A week later I was tutoring the son of their next door neighbours as well.

I have come to treasure my snatched hours with the three boys in-between their ice hockey practices, piano lessons, badminton matches, swimming sessions and art classes. Their families have become my friends. They force feed me dumplings and vegetables after class. They help me with my Chinese homework. They invite me to their second homes in the suburbs of Beijing for the weekend. And they pay me enough to live a Chinese life of luxury if I wanted to.

I don’t, and instead make do with regular 60p manicures and occasional hour-long £5 massages. In between these indulgences, it is possible to live a life more frugal than many Chinese. I am intimate with the Beijing bus system - no small feat for a foreigner. My flat is in a dusty little park where old people sit on benches playing mah-jong. I shop in a nearby outdoor market, its ground slippery with rotting vegetables and a meat shed that never fails to incite a grimace. But the produce is fresh, seasonal and cheap. Last month it was pineapples (50p for two), then strawberries (30p for one and a half kilos) and now it’s cherry tomatoes (20p for a kilo). I can buy my food for a week for less than a pound.

There is a thriving expat scene here. Embassy workers, executives, businessmen, students and English teachers by day, at night they descend on Beijing’s latest hotspot for raucous, sweaty nights in western-style bars. But I don’t have foreign friends - in a city where the albeit benign stares, shouts of ‘halloooo!’ and mutterings of ‘laowai’ (foreigner) on the street already make it so hard to feel at home, being surrounded by foreigners only makes me feel more foreign.

Despite my relative immersion, I am not fluent in Mandarin. I can work my way through a Chinese newspaper and after two semesters of classes conducted entirely in Chinese, my listening comprehension is now very good. I can enjoy a Chinese movie and eavesdrop on conversations. But language is still a barrier.

It is a language of nuance and context. Learning the basics is easy, but the more you study, the more you realise how far you have to go. Every day I find myself frustrated at my inability to put together coherent sentences fast enough, at my use of inappropriate words in inappropriate situations and at the toneless, English sounds that emerge from my mouth instead of beautiful, lilting Chinese.

Nevertheless, this year has been worth far more than the £2000 Beijing University tuition fee I paid for it. I will leave Beijing this summer with a deep understanding of the country and its people. With my Chinese, I will have a highly sought-after, marketable skill to add to my CV. And I will be able to lay claim to an intimate, if love-hate, relationship with one of the most exciting cities in the world.

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