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Learning Chinese is more difficult than building airplane

By Michael Ruhnke (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-05-27 10:06

I first came to China in January of 2006. I was working in the USA for a battery company. They recently had taken part ownership in a battery factory in Ninghai, East China's Zhejiang province. The job posting simply said "China Opportunity".

The pictures of the area looked nice. My family at the time needed money so I signed a one year contract. I liked working and living there so much I signed a second one year contract. However, in the early part to the second contract the business started to have problems so the company let go a lot of their engineering staff. That included me. I didn't want to go back as my marriage had ended in the middle of the first contract. But not having a job and finding it difficult to find one in China without Chinese language skills I headed back to the USA.

Michael Ruhnke [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Back in the USA I had found a good paying job, as a manufacturing engineer. I liked it and it paid well. However, I really wanted to return to China somehow. By hook or crook I had to return. At that time I had been independently studying Chinese for about 3 years. My idea for returning would be to study Chinese. My plan to change my life… go back to China as a Chinese language and culture student. Lean the language and start a new life.

I had an internet language partner at the time, located in Sichuan's Chengdu. She told me that Chengdu had a world famous college located there and I should look into it. I remembered Chengdu from the 2008 earthquake. Seeing the pictures of the destruction really touched me. It was like my home had been destroyed. So having the chance to study there and possibly start a new life there, I quit my job and jumped on the next plane and headed out.

I arrived on Aug 31th, 2009. I remember the day because that is my new wife's birthday. She wasn't my wife at the time just a woman I had been chatting on the internet with for several months. I wanted to have a friend to help me with things when I arrived and if it turned into more that would be good too. We met on a dating website. Her profile didn’t have much to say but her picture was different and interesting. So, I sent her an e-mail to learn something about the person in the picture. In January of 2010 we were married. She has to be the best cook in China. Next month we are expecting the arrival of our first baby. Needless to say we are very excited.

After arriving at the Sichuan University I took the entrance exam figuring to exempt myself from at least the first year's classes. Well, that didn't happen but I did test well enough to skip the first semester. Learning Chinese is probably the most difficult thing I have done in my life. I am a private pilot with and instrument rating, mechanical engineer, pretty good golfer and tennis player, however, by far, learning Chinese is the most difficult thing I have ever tried to do. More difficult than building a homebuilt airplane, that took 15 years, so if Chinese takes 15 or more years I am ok with that.

I meet a lot of interesting young people at the university most of them are foreign students. The come from all over the world, England, Germany, Russia, Thailand, Africa, Mexico, Australia, Norway, and even New Zealand. They stay for six months or a year, some longer. I always find it very interesting that most of these foreign students can speak English. So, if the communication in Chinese is not going well we switch over. Some of my teachers are Master Degree students who get the opportunity to teach at the Foreign language school for a semester or two. They are very helpful and excited to be able to use their English language skills to teach and at the same time improve their English skills.

Not all of my time is spent learning Chinese. Up until recently I had been teaching English part time. I never thought of my self as a language teacher, engineering maybe, but English never. I was a terrible high school student. But once I learned that learning was important I made a much better college student. My Chinese students tell me I am a good teacher because I make the subjects interesting and I am very patient and polite. Chinese students are so busy and very intelligent. Many of them dream of studying abroad and many have made that dream happen. It is always fun to talk to a student after they return from studying in the USA. They all say it is nothing like you see on television.

Every day I am here I marvel at all the building I see, be it housing, shopping malls, hotels or entertainment venues. My wife was just telling me how much China had changed in the last 10 years. She left China in 2001 to follow her old husband to the USA, upon returning three years later she could not believe the difference. I had arrived in 2006, since that time things have changed, mostly prices, but not much else. In the three years she was gone the country went from hardly a car on the road to what we have now.

Because the baby will be coming a time would come when my wife would not be able to drive the car. So, I had to get a drivers license so that when the time comes to take her to the hospital. I would be able to do the driving. One would think the test would be simple to pass for a person that has been driving for 35 years but not so. China uses the international system of road makings and signage, quite different from the USA. They have practice tests on line that really help a foreigner prepare for the test. You need to get 90% to pass and some of the questions can be quite interesting. I passed on the first try! I am so proud of the accomplishment I will list it on my résumé.

I don't know what the future will bring but I am sure China will be part of it. China is like a woman and I have been in love since first sight.

The author is a US citizen currently living and studying in Sichuan, Chengdu. He studies Chinese language and Culture at the Sichuan University, Wangjiang Campus.

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