It's all relative...

would be the ideal title for a blog post about the recent visit of my parents.

That's not what I want to write about though.

I want to write about language.

It's something that I was thinking about on that recent trip.

Most of our friends are here in China for a specific reason.

Well obviously everyone is here for some reason or another, but what I mean is almost everyone has a China-related reason. Some are here for relationships, some for family reasons, some people are exploring family history. Quite a few are here to improve their study of Mandarin.

Caroline and I are obviously here for her job and therefore our plan is only ever short- to medium-term depending on things like my job (which I expect progress on soon).

We both started off with Chinese lessons, but it's fair to say that for better or worse excuses we're no longer studying the language. We have reached a point at which we can deal with most day-to-day issues, but we're both aware that we're a long way away from an intermediate level. From our perspective that's mostly fine, neither of us wants to stay here forever, nor do we want our professional careers to have a specific focus on China.

Obviously though there are occasions where this attitude falls down. We deliberately live in a housing compound that has experience of international residents, but it can be a drag trying to get anything done and although it is frustrating, I'm the first to accept this is down to my inability to express myself beyond the basic.

As I say, most of our friends, here for a specific reason, therefore have a stronger motivation to study Chinese. Between university, friends, lovers and their own private studies, most of our friends have an enviable level ranging from conversational to downright fluent.

So in certain situations we tend to defer to their better abilities, which of course can be very irritating for them. The silly thing is that for about 80% of these conversations we would be just fine, if slower, clumsier and more simplistic.

Normally when travelling, at least one of these linguistically-gifted friends will be with us and so Caroline and I take a relative back seat on the communication front. Recently however we have had more guests from Europe. Most of whom, reasonably don't speak a word of putonghua (common language or Mandarin). In these circumstances, Caroline and I then have to take responsibility for all interaction. Consequently our guests get the impression that we know what we're doing and can speak without too much trouble.

From the experience of the latest trip, that then gives me confidence to try and manage more and more complex conversations (within reason). All of which I am happy to report worked out without incident, although I was unable to have a discussion with a taxi driver about how many people he thought lived in Leshan in Sichuan.

Speaking of Sichuan, I seem to have a particularly difficult time making myself understood there, even the extreme basics of rice, vinegar and so on seemed to be a bridge too far. Perhaps I've picked up too strong a Beijing'r accent or something...

Another interesting point was in Hong Kong. Obviously it feels culturally more familiar than Beijing and of course many more people speak English. I don't like being totally dependent on other's grasp of my language though and so I experienced the frustrating lack of any Cantonese words at all and ended up feeling more at home when I arrived back in Beijing, able to talk with people, albeit haltingly.

Whichever language I'm speaking (other than English) I experience different levels of confidence and pride depending on who else is with me. I assume that's the same for everyone. It's clear to me though that in order to continue progress in any language you have to be prepared to speak and make mistakes no matter who is there.

As I've said before, Brussels was in that respect, an extremely difficult place to improve French speaking. Any small slips in grammar or accent would normally see the conversation change quickly into English.

German is of course my language focus these days, but despite extensive research I haven't been able to find any suitable lessons here in Beijing. The search continues...