Tom is one of our teachers we sent to China. He is a graduate of Oxford University. He started teaching in Shanghai since September 2008 and is still enjoying his life in Shanghai.
Tom’s first 4 blogs entries describe some of his early daily life experiences in China and are reproduced here to give a you flavour of his initial reactions and thoughts...
Until I get the blog working...
I've been planning to keep a blog of my time here in China under the title "Bright lights, big city". Here I start.
London traffic prevented a smooth, stress-free journey to Heathrow. Having expected a leisurely jaunt to the airport followed by tearful goodbyes, I was unceremonously dumped at Wood Green tube station with a 28kg bag and a "Keep in Touch" (love you really mum) in order that I might actually make it to the airport in the same year as my flight. In truth, I felt my adventure was getting off to a slightly inauspicious start. I needn't have worried: flight was fine. An hour-long delay at Heathrow meant that my change at Munich was effortless. It was as if they'd laid it on for me specially. I flew Lufthansa on both legs. I'd recommend them: great food and decent leg room. The only slight annoyance was that every message had to be delivered in German, English and Mandarin; even then ones that no one cares about: tat doesn't get any better just because it's duty-free. Was met at the airport and whisked to my new home for the next 10 months: Shanghai! I hadn't slept a wink on the flight over so decided - as you would - to do the most sensible thing possible. I mean of course to go out for a meal and follow this with a tour of the local drinking spots (they do say "know your community"). It was all very pleasant though I fear I seemed a little manic. I went to what my boss and colleagues called the 'beer garden'. This was a mildly fraudulent description (it had beer but no garden). To my shock, the next morning I awoke at a decent hour, feeling great and ready for the day. I have no doubt there's a portrait of me somewhere taking the hit for this ill-judged escapade.
Anyway, to details. I am actually based in Songjiang, an outer 'district' - if that's the correct term for a self-contained town - of Shanghai. Since I've only really just arrived, I haven't yet made it into the downtown area. I was worried that I might have landed myself out in the sticks but I'm reliably informed that the centre can be reached (door to door) in about 50-70 minutes. Given that most people commute for much longer than this, I really can't complain, seeing as I will be living within 10 minutes of where I have to work anyway. I'm itching to try out going in as it turns out that there are several possible routes and several different modes of transportation; everything from the metro to an illegal minibus - I even heard mention of paying someone to take you on the back of a motorbike. Finding the quickest way seems to be a matter of personal experimentation. I have been there before so it can wait until I'm more settled in.
You will learn little about the history of Songjiang from the hilariously tedious Mayor's website which, as you can see, considers the history of Songjiang to be little more than a chronicle of its various administrative nomenclatures. Songjiang's recent history, as I understand it so far, is intimately interwoven with that of the surrounding higher education institutions. Shanghai's universities were once based in the downtown area; that was until the relevant authorities realised just how much commercial potential lay in such great chunks of prime, central real estate. The attitude seems to have been, "Why waste it on the students?". I sympathise. In the last 5 years, all of Shanghai's universities have been moved out to purpose-built campuses here in Songjiang and the surrounding town has filled to service them accordingly. I don't know how many universities there are in total (a quick internet search says 17 but a more expansive definition of university gives me 31) but whatever the true number this has the distinctive feel of a university town.
I am working for a Chinese university. I am to be teaching, primarily and perhaps exclusively, at the Shanghai Institute for Foreign Trade (SIFT for short). The team I am working with are based at both SIFT and a neigbouring university called Lixin (pronouced Lee-Shin ) University of Commerce. Chinese students take a high school diploma at the end of their school careers. Their performance in these examinations determines, in a manner seemingly more rigid than anything in England, which university they will got to. SIFT is meant to be one of the better ones and the English level correspondingly high. So I'm told. I'll know better when I actually get in front of the class.
Everything so far has been about induction and settling in. I'm staying in the university hotel until I can get a flat. I have decided to share with 2 of my fellow teachers. There is Tony, a South African Phd student of Chinese heritage (his looks and fluent spoken mandarin have convinced the locals that he's one of them) and Agnieszka, a Pole. There was none of the agony that usually attends such things. We simply looked at each other in a taxi, agreed we could get along and that we should live together. Flight hunting has been a tiring and so far frustrating activity. I can't fault Andy and Lancy, the university people assisting us in our search, for they've been fantastic. They've taken us around 15 different apartments, negotiating with the landlords on our behalf as they've done so. They have the patience of saints. I feel my presence has been a hindrance: one look at so obvious westerner as me and the landlords start to hear "Ker Ching". Tony and I found a fantastic one overlooking a park. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, giant plazma screen, leather sofas - all for 3,500 RMB (that's 280 quid by the way) a month. Any Londerners reading that last sentence are welcome to howl in despair. Split between the three of us it would have been fantastic - how we Gap year students slum it, eh?. Unfortunately the landlady has taken the preposterous step of demanding 10 months rent IN ADVANCE. She clearly doesn't like westerners. The university people are negotiating on our behalf but I remain pessimistic. A real shame. On the serious side, the general standard of the accommodation is stunningly good. It brings home to you how what Westerners apparently 'expect' has had an influence on the renting market. I had my first pang of guilt as I realised just how well we native speakers were being paid compared to the Chinese
Other Miscellaneous facts.
So: it's been a great few opening days but the whole work thing start in earnest early next week. I think coming out here was a very good idea and that China is going to suit me a great deal. Whether this prediction is true will hopefully be borne out in subsequent posts. But I think that's enough to be getting on with for now.
love and regards to family and friends...
First Week's End...
The phrase: 'May you live in interesting times' is, I understand, of Chinese origin. It has always been understood here - as we take it too in England - as a foolish thing to desire for oneself, and best answered, therefore, with the caution, 'Be careful what you wish for'. When setting out to write this blog I hoped to myself to have plentiful material to write about. As my trouble with the agent shows, having something to write about very often simply means having something unpleasant to talk about. So I'm now hoping to live in relatively boring times; at least for a while.
I've now finished my first week of full teaching and had my first proper weekend here in the big city. Looking back on the last week, I'm pretty pleased with how it's all gone. I don't think I'm a natural teacher nor do I think I have found my vocation. Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself and, crucially, I improved with practice. It's really quite fun strolling up and down a classroom, kindly smile in place, quizzical expression permanently on display, sharp eye and ready quip ready if any student - probably a boy - thinks to mutter in the corner. There is something extremely pleasing about eliciting an answer from a student, watching as they flush with pleasure at their achievement, however small. Furthermore, it is no small boost to the ego to a have a class of 24 young people hanging on your every word, sincerely interested in who you are and where you come from. As expected, my classes varied in ability and commitment but what impressed me was how good the bottom end were. SIFT students have a reputation for being good at English. It's nice to see it confirmed. For scheduling reasons, I haven't yet met the 'Advanced' class, the fearsome Business English students who ask reputed to ask such difficult questions as 'What's the difference between metropolitan and cosmopolitan?'. Given how good the 'Intermediates' are I will approach them with a little trepidation. Yet another indictment of our piss-poor system of language teaching back home methinks.
A few other things. One of my first tasks has been to collect and begin learning my students' English names. I passed round a register on to which they put their chosen English names. Allowing students to pick their own English names has the advantages of aiding their self-expression and hopefully engaging their interest and enthusiasm in the class. It has the disadvantage of allowing them to pick the names. Though there are Rachels, Michaels, and Vivians - a smattering of Irenes and Joyces hither an thither- many students, whether by accident or design, pick nonsensical or unintentionally hilarious names. A brief perusal of my registers reveals a Flyer D, Skywalker, Shady, Binky, even (my personal favourite) an Etabelec. Confused by that last one? It's 'Celebrate' backwards. Go figure. It is very difficult to keep a straight face whilst saying, 'Now Napoleon, what's grammatically incorrect about this question?'. Difficult but not impossible. Opinion in the staff room is split concerning when we should ask students to change them. Obviously we could if they chose something particularly offensive, a former Jewish teacher here at SIFT was not prepared to teach English to a 'Hitler', but other than that it's wide open to dispute and the margins are the most non-committal shade of grey. Personally, I will be lenient. I suspect that they know they might have to change their names if they were to get a job with an international company. They're uni students. Let them have their fun. It's all got me thinking about how I might go about choosing a Chinese name. I don't have to: 'Tom' is hardly difficult to pronounce, but maybe I will.
On Friday, I visited good friends from home over in Pudong, the side of Shanghai furthest from me. To make my dinner appointment I had to traverse Shanghai using the Metro system. This proved to be an utterly painless experience. The metro is fast, clean, comfortable, air-conditioned, and - compared to its London counterpart - relatively uncrowded. Given how populous China is this last fact surprised me. I'll have to go a few more times before I can say for certain. It was cheap too: I made it from Sonjiang university town stop to Century Park (the equivalent of one side of London to the other) and it cost me 7RMB for a single. That's 60p. All signs and instructions are in both English and Mandarin too. The journey brought home to me how far away I am from the centre of Shanghai. Yes, Pudong is the far side of Shanghai from me. Yes, it was my first time and I added unnecessary time to my journey through minor stupidities. But it still took around 2 hours door to door.
Anyway, when I made it to Pudong, my friends and took me out for a delightful meal at a superb Japanese restaurant in the snazzy part of Pudong. You wouldn't know it to look at it but the area where we were eating was nothing but marshland 20 years ago. Now it's all high-rise buildings, fancy hotels, neon lights, and expensive cars. It is, in the title of this blog: bright lights, big city.
Because the night was .....well quite a heavy one, I made sure the rest of the weekend was quite quiet. Today, I went to the old part of Songjiang - that is, to 'Old Town'. It may be older than where I am now but it's relatively recent. It wasn't great: a bit grotty and smelly but it was perhaps a bit more real. You could get more of a feeling of the buzz of the place. There were also some wonderful stalls selling cheap, knock-off DVDs. I also got to see a Buddhist temple. Which was nice. I tried to get some pictures of SIFT for the blog but by the time I got back it was too dark to get good ones. I'll get some tomorrow if I can find the time. I might not post tomorrow, however, as Monday is my heaviest teaching day. I have a sinking feeling that I will end tomorrow knackered. Oh well.
Potentially short rides in fast machines.
I promised some reflections as well as descriptions. I'm more settled now and - touch wood - there will be no more problems from the nutty agent and his box of glue. Since a weekly chronicle of exactly what I did in the classroom would be exceptionally tedious, not least to me, I'm aiming to post on more specific topics and impressions, though the teaching is providing more food for thought than I had expected. As a westerner, one of the first things that hits you when you visit China as something that you can comment on is the traffic. Chinese motorists - and no where more so than in Shanghai - are truly a thing to behold. Imagine a system designed by someone who'd once visited a country with a working road system but who could only half remember how it all worked once he'd left. Now imagine this person was under the mistaken impression that road rules were optional. This thought experiment gives you only the slightest impression of the cacophonous chaos that presents itself to you as you leave the airport, never to replaced by anything approaching safety and order. Wherever you go, be it the motorway, main road, or country lane, your first reaction is to wonder how anyone safely completes any journey whatsoever.
Shanghai's motorways are populated with a scattered collection of slightly rusty blue pick-ups, the occasional Western-style sedan - Chinese model - the only reminder of the new middle-class. I found it all surprisingly familiar. In Singapore there is the same combination: billboard signs rusting quickly in the humidity; their glossy ad slogans the only distraction from this sign of accelerated decay. Road users are exhorted to buy all the usual things: toothpaste, face cream, and car insurance. Jackie Chan's beaming visage accompanies an assurance that a product with his name on it can cure your male pattern baldness. The motorways look new but the cars on them are old. Often, a greyish haze will cloud the afternoons in a dreamy fug of heat and pollution. Personally, I don't find this smog as oppressive as some do. The word I'd use to describe it is wistful, which can be a nice background to thought on an hour and a half journey into town.
The speed takes some getting used to. You go very fast, jolting as you take off briefly after hitting one of the undulating roads many protuberances. There is no lane discipline; cars veer in and out of the hard shoulder, mostly to avoid hitting some other driver who has slid sideways into the slow lane with similar abandon, nearly causing a crash whilst doing so. It's funny really: though one's first reaction is fear, after a while this gives way to a kind of cheerful fatalism of the well-if-it's-my-time variety. You stop caring about seat belts for the same reason; not that you have much choice if you're sitting in the back: often as not they aren't any. At peak times, as in other places around the world, the mismatch between road supply and demand results in congestion and gridlock. If you've ever been caught in one of Shanghai's jams you think of only one thing: Thank God for air conditioning. At such a point if anyone thought to even think of squeaking about global warming, you'd be inclined to tell them in no uncertain terms that the polar bears could just go hang.
To the uninitiated, the most frightening part of motorway traffic is the scrabble for toll booths. Thousands of tightly-packed cars and lorries meander between available queues, most attempting to gazump those waiting, some just sitting tight, moving only to prevent the gazumpers from being successful. The distances between each car are achingly small at all times. A vehicle's horn becomes, in such circumstances, far more than the safety valve for frustration it is in England when some cretinous imbecile's road manoeuvre is too egregious to ignore. It becomes an essential companion for communication with other road users. When studying for my driving test, I was always amused by the highway code's po-faced assertion that the purpose of a car's horn was to 'warn other road users'. 'Like hell it is,' I thought, 'it's so white van man can let you know that he thinks your micro-second delay at the traffic lights is costing him money.' Not so in Shanghai. When every second driver is cutting into your lane, a sharp blast lets them know that; first, you are in the area of road they were planning occupy - in other words: to warn them; second, that they're pushing their luck and; thirdly, that you are not all that impressed with how they have attempted to push their luck in this particular situation. Another blast, another crash avoided seems the logic.
Traffic at a toll booth
There has been as yet no move against speaking on a mobile phone whilst driving here in China, so of course everybody does it. As an aside, it is interesting to me how natural and basic a reaction my discomfort now seems when I am driven by someone who answers their phone (the Mandarin expression when answering a phone is not 'Ni hao', but rather 'Wei' - pounced 'Way'). It seems natural but, of course, it is not. The prohibition is only a couple of years old in the UK and before it came into force I didn't bat an eyelid. It reminds you how quickly laws, passed in a relatively arbitrary way in the case of, say, the smoking ban, quickly acquire the normative validity, that feeling of 'rightness', that should be reserved for more deserving pronouncements and prohibitions like drink driving and driving whilst using a mobile phone. Speaking of the smoking ban (public places), I heard, to my astonishment, that it's on its way to China. I need to check this as I still can't quite believe it. I was sceptical that it would be enforceable. I thought that many of the bar owners would have to prize the ashtrays from their customers' cold, dead hands. However, given that I have experienced how quickly the passing of a law can be converted into an internalised norm, and I'm in China, perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to judge.
Anyway, at least on the motorways the chaos is conducted without the involvement of pedestrians - in straight lines. But in both Songjiang and downtown Shanghai, there happens a meeting between the car, the person on foot, and everything in between. In England the pedestrian crossing is sacrosanct, an oasis protected by invisible barriers over which the pedestrian feels he can walk in comfort and safety. It is exceptionally rare to see anyone deliberately run one when people are about to cross, unheard of when they are actually are doing so, probably because of the stiff penalty that would be forthcoming if anyone was injured because of such an action. In contrast, Chinese pedestrians have to earn their place in the pecking order. As you cross, taxis, bikes, and mounted carts attempt to plough a way through, regardless of how many people there are. Slowly, they jostle their way by, the crowd dividing into different streams around them for the purpose of convenience. You learn very quickly never to cross the road without looking at least twice. You learn even quicker that you must develop the mysterious sixth sense the locals use to avoid the hazards that la brief look missed. It is difficult for a British driver to conceptualise the red traffic light as 'advisory' but clearly it is possible. There are people with whistles and flags at most crossings. Your first reaction upon seeing them is to wonder what they do.
A pedestrian crossing
Yet the system works - that is, functions. The mass of interweaving cars and people proves adaptive, self-limiting - we might say workable. When the body is deficient in one area it often succeeds in achieving compensating advantages in others; the blind, so the the cliche goes, often have a more discriminating sensitivity to sound and to sounds than the sighted. So too for road systems. Shanghai drivers have to contend with a much less ordered system - an irony given the controls that exist in other areas of their lives - but, I would guess, are much better at judging small gaps and small distances. Similarly, I am sure that even the poorest drivers have quite an awareness of surrounding road users. It seems, at all times, so exceptionally dangerous. And yet it works. Well sort of. China is the still the number one for road deaths in the world, according to the World Heath Organisation, with more than 300 deaths every day (as of 2004). The most common cause of these fatalities is driver negligence. So for all my musings above every day a far greater proportion than average of those near-misses become no-misses.
Here in provincial Songjiang . The distances involved in getting around, between work and home, between home and supermarket and so on are just large enough to make walking everywhere a tiresome bother. Scooters are very popular with Songjiang residents as are power-assisted bikes. I'm on a just an ordinary bike which I picked up for a very reasonable 300RMB (they sell them in the supermarket). Because most of Songjiang is young, it was designed with some thought. The roads, much like continental boulevards or American highways, are wide, with dedicated cycle lanes accompanying the thoroughfare on either side. In keeping with the advisory nature of the rules, it is common to see cyclists going the wrong way up one of these lanes.
A road junction in Songjiang
Anyway, I'll end the post by sharing a little observation. There are certain minute details that you notice once you are in situ in a foreign land that you think about surprisingly often, yet rarely think to mention. In Songjiang the roads' concrete construction has had a surprising consequence that I notice everyday on my cycle ride in to work. The travelling cars all emit a high-pitched whine, remarkably similar in pitch and timbre to the distinctive cry of Formula One racing cars. As I hope I have show above, this is not entirely inappropriate.
I was aiming to post every couple of days or so. To adapt an adage: I aimed to be a writer but, unfortunately, work intervened. So this post is playing catch up to a very great degree. Given that I've now been teaching for a month and have got a week's worth of holiday before me, it's probably best that I attempt a condensed summary of what I've been up to with perhaps a little comment on the more salient nuggets of experience.
It has all been a bit a blur. It's amazing how quickly you can settle in to the most alien of environments. When I first arrived, everything from the thickness of the air to the tonality of the background babble exercised the grip of the exotic. Minute by minute I found myself scrutinising the minutiae of my sensory experience and savouring the differences with what I knew. Just over a month later, I find that I'm already now doing some things in 'default mode'; that state, honed by careful repetition, where your efficient but unnoticing self takes over great chunks of your daily activity, wasting such vast chunks of your life as it does so that before you know it you find the day dream over and yourself a 50 year old with a paunch, a bald pate, and nothing of importance to show for the last 30 years but a desk plaque, a small pension, and the small hope that your retirement will be accompanied by a decent carriage clock. This little detour into my nightmares aside, the preeminence of this life-wasting autopilot is, somewhat curiously, both a good and bad sign; good in that it means I'm settled; bad, in that it means I might be too settled. I have every intention of warding off this directionless limbo. I'm off to Nanjing (aka Nanking) tomorrow with my flat mate Tony and have plans for an action packed week before the return to work. I'll start playing some music again (having been paid I can actually afford a guitar!) I'm even joining my fellow teachers in regular Tae Kwon Do classes. Scoff if you like.
But perhaps I'm still being too easy on myself. Am I, after all, really in an environment so alien to me? I am teaching in classrooms yet it wasn't too long ago that I was on the inside of them. These classrooms are at a university, an institution I myself left only 4 months ago; so recently in fact that I haven't even technically graduated. Lastly, the university is in Shanghai which is supposedly the most 'Western' of China's many metropolises. Is there really a challenge here to be had?
Of course there is. To dismiss the differences would be superficial and glib. Whenever you live in another country you are always different from the native inhabitants. Teasing out the implications of this is half the fun. For example, I am for the first time in my life living as an ethnic minority. If this sounds anywhere near as pompous as I intended, then good. Seriously though, I had forgotten when you live in a country like Britain how, on a fundamental level, you look pretty much like everyone else: Caucasians, for want of a less crude term, are still in the vast majority. Britain may be multicultural but it is not multiracial in the same way as, say, the United States, where in many cities there are many distinct ethnic groups together in large and roughly equal numbers. Consequently, if you are white and do not stand out in other ways by being, say, particularly tall or short/beautiful or hideous and have a dress sense that rejects deliberate ostentatiousness, you can blend in seamlessly during your daily public excursions. You can conduct entire areas of your life as effectively invisible - in the restaurant, on the street, in crowds - because as your countrymen's eyes briefly sweep over you their internal Darwinian-honed computers, finding just another confirming instance of regularity, simply register, 'No feature of interest' and move on.
Being an ethnic minority is being rare enough in a population to cause a flicker of interest but more importantly a reaction, however momentary. There is nothing racist, incidentally, about how this all occurs most of the time. Someone holds there gaze longer than is necessary because they are subconsciously registering, 'Different from norm.' It is involuntary and takes considerable practice in resisting. Like most unconscious reactions, no doubt it has its origins in our Savannah-roaming ancestors and their incessant guard against 'the other' whether it be another tribe or a hungry lion.
The fact of the reaction is not itself significant. What matters, of course, what everyone concerns themselves with, is what form the reaction takes. Here in Songjiang the reaction is noticeable: there has been a lot of staring. This reaction is elicited by a combination of two things: my status as a Westerner and my ethnicity as a comparatively tall, fair-skinned and very blond (well more so since the Sun bleached it) Englishman. The latter is important because I feel I've had more staring even compared to my fellow teachers. I've found myself asked repeatedly whether my hair is dyed for instance. Some girls will gaze in wonderment as they pass in groups. You give them a smile and they burst into fits of giggles. Such experiences are not entirely unpleasant. The funniest example of this occurred in a restaurant a week ago. I was eating out with two of my fellow teachers. I noticed out of the corner of my eye a girl standing up then sitting down repeatedly and recognised the universal signs of a nervous person being put up to something by their friends. Before I knew it a rather breathless girl appeared at my side and, shaking a little as she did so, asked me whether she could have her picture taken with me. Not being a cruel sort, I said of course. She returned twice more throughout my dinner; the next time to ask for my name, which I wrote down for her on a piece of paper, and once more to say goodbye as she left with her friends. She did all this looking like she was having heart palpitations. I feel this is close as I will ever get to being a rock star.
Occasionally people call you 'Lauwai' (lau-why), a not-quite-friendly, not-quite-rude term meaning literally 'old outsider'. It is used mainly when the stranger is clearly Westerner; 'Hey there old whitey!' is pretty close as a translation. My Lonely Planet phrasebook notes rather drolly that:
'It's certainly a lot better than outmoded forms of address such as "Foreign Devil" or "American Spy"'
Indeed. It is also quite usual for people to call out 'Hello!' as I cycle past on my way to work. Some are having fun with the only English word they know, others mean it in a slightly mocking way. Either way, as advised, I simply wave back and return a cheerful 'Hello!' myself. If I were in the sticks I would fully expect this reaction, indeed it's half the fun of travelling, but I'm surprised I found it in Songjiang. In the downtown area no one cares. They are too cosmopolitan and foreigners are too numerous for you to be interesting simply on the basis of your appearance. Songjiang is still technically Shanghai so why the difference? I shouldn't complain. For the most part all of the above is meant in a good natured way and is an expression of genuine interest. Many of my students and many Songjiang residents have clearly never been abroad. You forget what an impact it has. Explaining who I am and where I come from has provided some of the highlights of the last few weeks.
On the teaching front, I think like all novices I made a few howlers but my colleagues here at SIFT were fantastic in warning me off many potential pitfalls in advance. I have no doubt they saved me from some unnecessary blunders. I think I understand now the quintessential teacher's frustration: how it all goes often has very little to do with you. This is not an excuse for laziness. For the most part if you prepare well, plan your lessons with thought and care, and turn up clean-shaven preferably not hiccuping little bubbles of breath that smell suspiciously like whisky, you will be fine. But sometimes you can do all this and a class remains unmoved. Other times you can be quite clearly winging it and it all works out. However, what is infuriating is that individual classes are not as consistent as you would expect. Sometimes it is in a good class that you see the yawns and the going through of motions.
More generally I realised that part of the problem was that I had been speaking too much, a failing that my good friends would acknowledge at the best of times. When you are dealing with very good non-native speakers it can be easy to start pitching things too high. Moreover I am not a lecturer. I am teaching them Oral English and thus it is best that I am a facilitator, giving them a chance to practise and consolidate what in fact they do know, and correct them judiciously where necessary. I can achieve this best by shutting up and getting them in activities where it's down to them. They may not be at the level where you can deliver an aesthetics lecture (though this is true for the great majority of native speakers too) but what they've got is more than good enough for most situations where 'functional' English is required. My favourite lessons have been those where I have learnt something about Chinese culture from my students and/or have been proved mistaken in my underestimation of them. I won't go into it now as many deserve blog posts in their own right.
I have also had my first Chinese lessons. It brought home to me the amount of effort required if I am to make any headway with this remarkable language at all. We all speak of learning 'Mandarin' but really this is slightly inaccurate. Mandarin is one of China's many dialects. What is spoken is better referred to as Standard Chinese. The standard dialect is based on the Beijing one. It is a tonal language, a feature which makes it so difficult for a foreigner to learn but with which personally I felt the most affinity. My musician's brain kicked in and I found myself trying to learn vocabulary and phrases as I would a score - that is to say, by 'singing' isolated segments on their own and then stringing them together. There are four tones. The first is flat, like a monotone. The second is a rising tone, similar to the raising of vocal pitch we use in English when asking questions (as in 'Are you sure?). The third is a tone that falls and then rises (think of an outraged vicar saying 'What?!' and you're getting pretty close). Lastly there is the fourth tone, which is falls. It has a feeling of finality to it (try saying 'Damn!' and you'll have it).
In my introductory classes we are focusing mainly on practising the tones and learning the Pinyin system. The Pinyin is a way of romanising Chinese characters and pronunciation. You see it written on all street signs. Though the characters are recognisable in Pinyin you will be mislead if you try and read it exactly as you would in English because certain letters and combinations of letters are assigned different phonetic sounds. Fuzhou Road, for example, looks like it should be pronounced 'Foo-zow' but under the Pinyin system the 'zh' becomes a 'j' sound (as in 'Joe'). So in fact you should tell your friends you're meeting at 'Foo-Joe' Road. Every time I get frustrated with my students it will do me good to remember that I have a very long way to go before I could even get close to matching what they can do.