From other people—“who” and “what”.

 
      1. Workmates.  This may come as a surprise, but one of the worst places to practice and improve your English is in your work unit!  A number of my ex-students   have told me speaking English in the workplace is tacitly frowned upon—it belongs in the classroom.  Remember, the workplace is ultimately an arena, a zone of combat, where your colleagues are also competitors, as it were; it is not a social club where you can be innocent, transparent and carefree.  There is also something of a cultural taboo at work here—some people (especially those outside the big cities) view speaking English in a Chinese workplace as, well, unpatriotic. 

2. Roommates.  This is also hard!  For most, if not almost all Chinese people, English is the language of the head and not of the heart.  Of all places in your “post-college, pre-marriage” life, your apartment should be a safe haven and your roommate a familiar, accepting and confiding face.  After a “long, hard day at the office”, you want to unwind at home, and so does she.  Jumping into English won’t help at all.  Perhaps she wasn’t an English major at college, so she cannot join you.  If she is a colleague, English and “work” may be the same thing!  Besides, you never spoke English with your college roommates, and why?  It wasn’t “cool”!
3. Classmates.  Every year, college classmates graduate, disperse to the four winds—and stay that way.  Apart from class reunions at some restaurant or someone’s wedding party, it is amazing how quickly people lose contact.  Again and again I hear, “We are both so busy.”  Typically, English-language relationships between classmates don’t happen.  Old classmates are a source of “social capital” best saved for emergencies.  To do so otherwise is like “robbing principal” out of a trust fund for unimportant needs.  In the end, you may suffer. 
4. Your old English teacher.  Once you had an English teacher. They vary in quality: some treated you as their own children (their “babies”), others contributed to your English education, and others were “so-so”…just another teacher.  Once you have left them (or rather, they have left you and moved on), it is hard to re-establish the relationship you once had.  Remember!  The foreign teachers are always sifting through the hundreds of students they see, looking for “prospects”, the way a river-gold miner sifts through gravel looking for pieces of gold.  To be a (foreign) English teacher in China is a transient, lonely and culturally superficial occupation, with few real, or long-term friends.  When they are found, happy is the foreign teacher!  Almost all my real friends in China are those who I sifted out of the river gravel, or those given to me by heaven: they are all old students.  Current students are river gravel being sifted.  If you are one of these selected old students, happy are you!  Your future is good.  However, know this: the foreign teacher has chosen you because you are able to offer some service which they could not do alone—buy rail tickets, introduce them to business contacts, and the like.  (Here, I am not trying to discourage you—I am just telling you how I think it is.  Enjoy the relationship, and be realistic.)  If you are not one of these students, the odds against you are very, very high, in terms of having a meaningful, productive English-language relationship.  Foreign teachers move on, and so do you.  Teachers who stayed in one teaching site for three years have a better chance of making and keeping real, long-term friends than a teacher who worked in one city for one year.  However, I do not want to be totally deterministic—there are exceptions.  As for your Chinese teacher of English, I do not know what to say, except that you (the ex-students) are many and they (the teachers) are few. 
5. Your boyfriend/girlfriend.  First: it is likely that you both met and developed your relationship over something other than “a love of the English language”—sports, watching films, karaoke singing, being on student committees, and so on.  (Remember, for many Chinese students, English is but a means to an end, and not an end in itself.)  If you try to integrate English into your relationship, your partner may consider it unnatural—your peers certainly will, and some may consider it unpatriotic.  Second: what about starting a relationship with the declared intention of making it an “English-only” relationship?  With another Chinese person, beware of mismatching in other areas of your life (other interests, emotions, and so on), and beware of ferocious peer pressure, gossip, rejection and criticism.  They will ostracize you!  With a foreigner?  It is true you will learn English very quickly if you have a foreign boyfriend (foreign girlfriends are much rarer).  However, be very careful, as the “rules of the game” are different, and the potential for making mistakes and being hurt is higher. (I think). 
6. Husband/wife.  For you married people, Chinese is the language of your heart, the language of your “pillow talk”—not English.  English is only a “head” language, and if it is introduced into your close relationship, there could be certain adverse “side-effects”.  It is much harder to communicate one’s deep feeling and emotions in a foreign language.  However, you might try, but would your partner agree?  Can they even speak English, and at your level?  What will serve to hold this “English-based” relationship together?  Will it rather pull you apart?  The future looks grim.  The one important exception to this rule can be found in those couples that passionately share a common belief or ideology, a shared vision, a joint task or purpose.  In some sense, their marriage itself is subordinated to a “higher” purpose, be it political ideology, religion, humanitarian concerns, or whatever.  These people will go to the ends of the earth together, speak English together (or some other language), and remain in love together to the very end.  Don’t you wish you could find or have a spouse such as this? 
7. Children.  What about speaking English with your children?  It would, after all, improve their grades in school.  Sorry, I have more bad news for you.  Here is a story about the experiences of many Chinese people who have gone to the U.S. to immigrate and settle down.  They struggle to learn English, get a job, and in time integrate (to varying degrees) in their new society.  Their children are born, grow up, and learn English with ease.  The trouble comes when either the parents (or else the grandparents) want the children to learn Chinese, the language of the “old country”.  Usually, the children do not want to out of peer pressure, but mainly because it has no relevance to their daily life.  “Mom!  Dad!  None of my friends speak this language!”  The same situation could hold true in China, with parents trying to teach English to their children.  There is also the question of children accepting their parents as “yet another teacher”.  Of course, parents can and have done this, but it requires strong, persistent dedication.   
8. People from your local neighborhood.  Perhaps there is someone in your local neighborhood who you know speaks English—can they help you?  My feeling is, no, they can’t, or won’t.  First, the relationship is one-sided, with you as the dependent party.  You are asking from them, but what is going the other way?  Then there is “social inertia”; you don’t just ask someone to speak English with you.  Finally, you don’t want to upset the social balance of your “home turf”, where people might talk about you for a long time.  Look farther outside. 
9. English “parasites”.  This is the inverse of the previous section.  These people want to have you “teach them English”.  Sometimes there is no structure to their requirements—you must provide that, too!  They wish, as it were, to “milk” you, and have little to return to you, which you would like to have.  (This is why some foreign teachers feel they are being used as “English cows”.)  You cannot “teach someone” English—they need to help themselves, and the relationship must be “mutually beneficial”, or at least mutually agreed upon.  The “name of the game” is results, not relationships.  Therefore, the “English parasite” will do you no good.  Try to avoid or end such relationships. 
10. Dead-end relationships.  Some relationships are not worth having—literally.  This is not because the person you are helping is a parasite, but because they have no future in the English language.  An example would be some person whose English is terrible, even hopeless, but they want to “go to (study in) America”.  You could spend a long time trying to help them, and for what?  It’s your life, too!  Some people should have changed their major a long time ago, but someone (probably their parents) forced them into an unhappy relationship with English.  Remember, it’s about results, not relationships.  It will go better for you if you start thinking like a mortgage/loan officer at a bank, not everyone’s “fairy godmother”! 
11. “Turkeys”.  In Chinese, a turkey is “xiao ren”.  These are some of the most dangerous people in society, I feel—and not just in terms of trying to learn English on the go, on your own, without any foreigner!  These are the people you should beware of the most!  In America we say, “For every one person who wants to do something, there are nineteen turkeys trying to pull him down.”  It is the same the world over, wherever success and envy co-exist.  Those who fail in the self-imposed “rat race” will resent those who aspire upwards and struggle onwards, who long to burst out of the present inertia and force themselves into their future hope.  They are many and they are watching you.  Without a doubt, they are your most dangerous external enemies.  Beware! 
12. Unfriendly foreigners.  Yes, there are unfriendly foreigners out there.  You want to speak a few words of your hard-earned English with them and bang!  They refuse you, tell you to get lost, or “blow you off”.  It hurts.  Or worse still, they will charm you, coddle you, use you, make promises to you, drive you to ecstasy—and dump you.  I heard a story (which I can believe) of a foreign boy who broke up with his girlfriend by telephone, a few minutes before he boarded his airplane home.  Remember, most foreigners have their own agenda for being here in China, and they don’t want to be deflected or distracted from it.  (Neither would you overseas, chasing your Ph.D.) 
13. No encouragement.  Now, we change from “who” to “what”.  In your quest to learn English, you will invariably face periods of loneliness, when nobody is encouraging you.  How tender and helpful it is when someone encourages you!  It can make a real difference.  However, you are now alone—it seems that few people care.
14. No support.  In addition to what people say, what do they do for you?  Do they give you their old books, papers, magazines, or a friendly smile as you pass them?  Do they stop you and inform you of any English-related news you may not have heard about?  Is it “safe” for you to walk about publicly as an avowed lover of English and of self-improvement?  If not, you struggle alone.  Here, the indifference of those around you can be as draining as their opposition.
15. Public opinion.  Public opinion can be very destructive; moreover, it opposes many who want to stand up and grow tall in English.  The further you get away from the centers of modern culture and higher education (i.e., the big cities and the universities) it becomes stronger.  Public opinion is also often inspired and fuelled by ignorance and envy. 
16. Other people’s vision is imposed on you.  If there is one constant in education, it is that the leaders and administrators of most (or all) schools think their way of educating, their “system”, their “model” is the best or only way. The same is true for many companies.  When an outside vision is imposed on you, it is hard to follow your own.  If you do, you may lose your job.  The very moment you declare who or what you are, others will be attracted to you, to conform you to their mold.  There is nothing more miserable than being “re-built” into a system you don’t agree with.
17. The cult of conformity.  In small groups, the dominant-value carriers often try to force or persuade others to conform.  It is so much easier to shut up and do (or be) like those around you… for, if you do pursue English seriously, you will stand out and soon become a target.
18. The cult of mediocrity.  One of the defining traits of envy, I believe, is its strong desire to cut down, reduce, weaken, or even destroy that which it hates, for it knows it will never make a similar achievement.  Many social groupings—be they a whole society, a village, a school, or even a class—will knock down any individual who sticks his neck up too high.  The safest way is to be nondescript, “so-so”, common—which is really a way of saying “mediocre”.  Of course, you do well in your job, but that is just to please your leaders.  Above a certain invisible line, you lose their pleasure and incur their envy, as well as attacks from your threatened peers.
19. On competition.  The working world—the place of employment—is a zone of combat.  Ask any college graduate.  Ask yourself…you just got your job, right?  For anyone who wishes to aspire onwards and upwards, this means most of those around are rivals; therefore, it is hard to learn English peaceably with the very people you are in competition with. 
20. Individual initiative is pushed down.  All of the above problems have a cumulative effect.  That is, the individual—you—is less likely to try to study English alone, on the go, without a foreign friend.  In a culture where “face”, reluctance to stand up and stand out, and group consciousness are considered as important, personal initiative is often pushed down.  It seems everything is against you—overtly, subtly, or covertly.  It appears so easy to give up! 

Resentment from others.  We live in a more progressive and modern age, yet resentment never changes—it is as old as humanity.  It is a very, very fine line between using English to extract the elixir of “development” from a foreign country into China, and using English to extract oneself out of one’s current “zone of inertia”; between serving the country first, and serving oneself; between being an organic part of the crowd and becoming its advocate, and being a rebellious lotus plant springing out of the mud of mediocrity and becoming its target.  Those who study English on the go, on their own, without a foreigner, and with true devotion will be looked upon with a whole range of feelings. 

21. Thus closes this section.  These are some of the forces you will experience from other people as you go out on your quest.  Next, we will examine the problems within.