Imagine going to school at 7.30 in the morning each day, and then not being released from this veritable prison until 21.00 in the evening. Also, this is when you’re 5 to 6 years old. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? It is the plight of the single Chinese child and the dark side of the one-child policy.

Officially, kindergarten and primary school only go on until 17.00. But every parent here wants to give their child the best possible education and so they enroll them in evening classes whenever they can. There is one class I am going to be doing which is on a Sunday evening from 19:30 until 21.00. Oh, the horror. Although I am likely to move that one to another time as I would like to keep my Sunday free, but those kids will definitely find something else to fill that time slot!

You are probably familiar with China’s one-child policy. Couples having a second child whether by accident or on purpose pay a hefty fine which will bankrupt the poorer Chinese. The richer people of China are now starting to generate enough wealth to pay these fines and bigger families are starting to emerge. Although I knew what the answer would be I was still curious as to what happens when someone gives birth to a twin. I could almost imagine some cold, strict, Chinese official coming up with a gun and saying: “this one, or that one?”. But a woman giving birth to a twin, and especially two boys can be the target of jealousy and harrassment. However, also a mixed twin – called a dragon (male) and phoenix (female) twin, how cool is that) can cause enimosity.

One girl I am tutoring spends her days from 6.30 in the morning – when her school goes out for the obligatory morning exercise – until 22.00 in the evening. Which is when they fall asleep exhausted after doing their homework. Apparently, a lot of pupils tend to fall asleep in class. And at the end the result of all this studying is that they are ill-prepared to face the real world out there. Without things like an internship and social relations many face a big challenge when attempting to find their jobs. Employers tend to prefer those students which have studied abroad at some point, which is something only wealthy parents can afford to do.

But enough about that for now. Let’s look into my effort of learning Chinese!

Grammatically it must be one of the simplest languages I’ve seen. However, it is also one that until now – especially in daily use – seems unromantic and impolite. They label the days of the week as ‘day one, day two, day three’, and their months as ‘month one, month two, etc.’ Thursday just always sounds more interesting to me. However, it makes it very easy to remember, of course. I still always forget what Thursday is in pretty much every language from German to Spanish. Possibly because it is just my least favourite.

Speaking of favourites, I had a hell of a time trying to ask my language exchange student what her favourite movie was. Just trying to explain the concept of favourite anything was difficult enough, but I also had to explain what a movie was to get her to understand the question. They would not say ‘what is you favourite movie’ in Chinese. They say: ‘your favorite movie what?.

But also in other things like pronouns and possessive pronouns it’s quite simple. Something such as ‘yours’ is written and said as ‘you thing’, ‘we thing’, ‘I thing’. And of course there is the biggest advantage of all; no verb conjugation. For example for ‘I swim, I swum, I am swimming, I have swum’ etc. they have just one word.

Something funny is that they don’t know something like ‘he/she/it’. They have just one word for it and it’s sexless. So when Chinese speak English they will often refer to someone as a she when it’s actually a man or vice versa. It’s an alien concept to them and I can see some funny situations arise from that like ‘I’d like you to meet my friend, he is very handsome.’ And it then turning out to be a woman…