Just Another Millenial Travel Blog

June 2026 – three months to go until my next Shanghai trip, I am looking very much forward to. It is a boiling hot summer evening on a Sunday. What did I do during the weekend? Referring to the title your educated guess might not be a nice relaxing weekend at Lake of Constance, instead I am obviously using the time for the activity I am, outside of work, dedicating everything towards: studying Mandarin – and yes I am aware that I should work out more often.

How hard might it be learning a language? Mandarin responded with yes. One year ago I took, probably in the most innocent manner, my first lesson. The initial idea has been to learn some vocab like 你好 and 谢谢before my first China trip to Beijing and Shanghai. As I didn’t knew whether I would like China I saw it as a nice and fun summer side project. One year later it became serious business: 10 hours per week, passing HSK1 and another immersion trip including language school in Shanghai in September. Next years trip to Kunming and Beijing (influenced by the most iconic China trip) are already taken into consideration.

So how did this girl came to that point? As unsuccessful as my dating life is a big love slided, without Tinder and Hinge, into my life: China. And yes I am aware there are problems but I am neither the Chinese foreign ministry of foreign affairs nor a human rights activist. It just completely blew my mind and I have felt a level of excitement I probably didn’t had for any other country before (btw I also loved Singapore which was the first stop of the trip). As someone who ist not a conventional Instagram travel girly (ask my Mexiko travel squad) China hit differently.

As I dislike all kind of superficiality and amateurism it was clear to me if it is serious business between China and me, we have to be abled to communicate, so learning the language became an inevitable prerequisite. A motived but clueless academic overachiever started seriously in September in her Mandarin journey (June to September was the holiday fun part of the story to be precise). Right know I have an estimated 400 hours of learning achieved. So time is here for an profunde assessment.

The first hundred (!) hours felt like permanently running into a wall. Honestly it is not fun at all – nothing is fun when you are not good at it. The Chinese saying that learning is eating bitterness (吃苦) is more than true and yes Europeans are so weak when it comes to learning. A mixture between winter boredom in St. Gallen, stubbornness and excitement for China made me overcome this stage. When learning mandarin in the beginning, at least for me, everything was a problem: the tones, the vocab, the characters, pronouncation in general. Now I am proud that grammar is my problem, and yes proud because I am at a point where I can form sentences that are grammatically wrong, which is victory (and I am understood as my tones are okay enough).

Initially I tried (and subscribed to the paid version, don’t do that) every possible app. It didn’t help and I honestly believe, especially Duolingo, only gives you the impression of learning a language. I also had the whole time private lessons via Preply and honestly I would not recommend this for every language but for Mandarin having classes with a native speaker in the beginning to me is focal as you have to learn the tones very precisely because otherwise simply no one will understand you. As the apps were a failure I started to reassess my learning methodology. Right now I do have the perception I have figured it out so my methodology includes:

Shadowing for tones: my language teacher (if you are looking for a good Mandarin teacher reach out, she is great and really was the game changer in this journey) usually records our notes from last lesson and I listen to her recording and than speak afterwards.

Flashcards for vocabulary: nothing mind blowing, just a classic that works. Important that you learn sentences, also by heart, in the beginning to develop a feel for the language.

Characters: here I work for pure recognition with flashcards and for the stroke orders I do have one of those classic training books. Reading newspaper in Shanghai one day is the clear target. And it is not fun learning characters but they have their own beauty: fire in Chinese is 火 – can you see the literally burning fire the character was formed from?

Additionally: listen to podcasts, YouTube and get as much immersion as possible. I am still figuring out what is good here and will update this post when I have approved recommendations. A huge book recommendation to all my fellow Sinologists: Kingdom of characters from Jing Tsu – I read it voraciously during my last holiday and it brilliantly melts the Chinese history of the 20st century with the development of modern Chinese.

With Mandarin there are clearly no shortcuts but the more I learn the more I fell in love with the unique mixture between complexity and simplicity of the language. One year ago I had no idea about all of that and now I do have, I have to admit very easy, but I do have conversations in Mandarin. Learning the language is first of all finding a setting and technique that works for you and than obviously a huge time invest. If I wouldn’t be an expad in Switzerland without a social life here I definitely wouldn’t have 10 hours per week (to become fluent you need 2200 hours for Mandarin as an English native speaker – for Italian in comparison 600h). Normally I do have two hours per lesson plus 3-4 hours studying each day of the weekend and one hour after work. Yes it is a packed schedule but I really want to archive my goal (HSK6).

You have to love learning, have a very high frustration tolerance and true intrinsic motivation otherwise I don’t think it could work. Sorry for not giving a more fluffy insight here but this is the simple truth that I can report after an intense year. There are at least three more years ahead of me in the same pace and I am dedicated to push through. In the very beginning I would highly recommend to really focus on the tones and pronouncation – if you don’t get this right initially it is hard to correct and it is the foundation for everything. You can still start with the characters later but if your tones are wrong you will never be able to have a conversation.

My five minutes to that topic – eventually I will finish this weekend with a small workout. Honestly still trying to find sports I like, if there are any recommendations please reach out to me, the level of excitement is still limited. There is still a long path ahead of me with Mandarin and I will continue 吃苦!