Traveling to any foreign country requires some ability to communicate with the people at your destination. China now teaches English as a second language to the younger generations but this is not yet universal. You can expect that most people working in the tourist industry (hotels, travel guides, larger shops) will be able to speak English but if you are planning on getting off the main tourist routes and exploring China in some depth you will quickly run into a language barrier. Although China is undergoing rapid development many people have not had any exposure to English. To truly be able to travel freely we need to be able to speak and read the local language. A knowledge of local customs is a good idea too, if you plan on spending any length of time immersed in that culture.

In 2004 I made my first trip to China and was lucky enough to have two interpreters in the group I traveled with. It made life easier but I couldn't help but notice that without those interpreters I would have been lost if I had had to order food, buy a train ticket or even ask directions. Up until that trip I had thought that learning Chinese was something I would never be able to do. For English speakers Chinese is one of the more difficult languages to learn and to me it seemed like an impossible task, especially after a participating in a university class that focused on the formal method of learning. I left that class depressed about my abilities but soon realized that it was the method that didn't agree with me. Institutionalized methods may agree with some people but not with me. Its too unnatural. Learning tones and practising words out of context of anything to do with normal life left me feeling very frustrated. So I was pleasantly surprised during my first trip to find that just by spending time with Chinese people I could pick up some basic words and speak them clearly enough to be understood by the common man on the street. 

In preparation for my second trip to China in 2008 I spent roughly two months working with a language program called Pimsleurs Mandarin I. Its a great program and I found I actually looked forward to working with it. The emphasis is on conversational Chinese and the main tool is sound files that take you from very basic words to more complex sentences and finally conversations. While in China I had many opportunities to use what I had learned and while I can't say that my two months of practise made me fluent, it certainly did give me a base of useful words and phrases that were invaluable, especially when I spent a week by myself in a remote part of China. Pimsleurs program is based on research that points to a natural learning method. People learn languages by listening and immitating better than in formal settings. Our brains seem to be able to absorb the information more easily when presented in that natural format.

Oddly enough while I was travelling I met several people who had also learned Chinese (Mandarin) from the Pimsleur course. One young fellow was a Vancouver native who, although he was of Chinese descent, had never learned the language. He told me that before he left to work for a year in Shanghai he had worked through the first ten lessons of Pimsleur Mandarin I and that gave him enough of a platform that he could communicate and easily learn more. This program has our highest recommendation.

This summer (2008) I travelled throughout China with an interpreter for the purpose of interviewing many different martial arts masters. At the end of our journeys my teacher and interpreter encouraged me to continue with my studies so that in coming years I would be able to make these journeys by myself. My goal now is to be able to have a complete conversation in Chinese by next summer (2009). I have full confidence that Pimsleurs will help me reach that goal.

Follow up to Pimsleur

ChinesePod. com is a great website that offers online and offline lessons. You can even download lessons to your iPod and work through them whever you have a spare moment. ChinesePod, like Pimsleur, mixes cultural lessons in with their language lessons giving you an effortless and usually fun way of learning about the Chinese culture as you learn their language. 

ChinesePod has a free trial that allows new users complete access to their sound files, written materials and even videos. 

ChinesePod has new lessons every day. These range from Beginner level to Advanced level. Their lessons are always a lot of fun and are quite informal. ChinesePod is a great way to mix up your learning experience and have some fun with it.