Luke DERHAM

Curtin University of Technology, Australia
Exchange to University of International Business & Economics, China

On the 14th of January 2008, I arrived in Beijing with my Chinese university professor and we took the opportunity to travel around China before the start of the semester. I remember being at the airport wondering what kind of a challenge awaited me as I found my years of Mandarin study suddenly becoming inadequate – I just had no idea what was being spoken around me and it felt very disorientating. I remember being asked simple questions during our travels such as “Are you hungry?” and “What do you think about this?” and just nodding blankly but not understanding a single word.

I had studied hard at university, but nothing prepared me for being thrown literally into the deep end of the pool. I was surrounded by Chinese Mandarin speakers, and was at a total loss. It took me 6 months to summon the courage and the vocabulary to start holding reasonable conversations with people, and another 6 months before I could voice my opinions intelligently, and most importantly, express what I felt about something – the basis of communication.

In hindsight this period was an excellent learning curve in patience. It is infuriating when you engage in conversation with somebody but you lack the skills to express what you wish to say; but on the upside, it acts as a motivator in your studies – you find yourself driven to learn more, to fuel your mind with those words that you need to express.

It is difficult to describe a culture and a country that has such little resemblance to our own. There are so many cultural and political differences, and our ideas of nationalism and our respective national goals are two very different tapestries. But communication, specifically communication in the same language, is the bridge between these differences. It gives us the ability to explain and justify, express and understand. I must confess I had some extraordinary arguments with my Chinese friends, but our differences were always settled over a pot of tea. Sometimes we agreed to disagree, but the important thing was that we agreed to differ and we felt closer for it.

I look forward to returning to Beijing in the future and seeing the enormous progress that has taken place there over the last two years. It is exciting to know that I will have friends waiting there to greet me, and I’ll try to greet them again - of course, in Chinese.

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