JamesnYuHong

I first touched Mandarin when I was 22. Fortunately I learned the tones and pronunciation pretty well then -- not from a class, but from a girl I was dating. I'm 36 now, and have studied off and on over the years -- predominately "off." I've had a few bursts where I studied hard for months at a time, maybe even a year. I haven't studied seriously in a few years. Have been married to a Chinese woman (not the original one) for eight years now. I can understand most casual conversations, if the topic is something I'm familiar with. Chinese people, like people anywhere, tend to talk about the same things again and again. I don't have the world's best vocabulary, maybe 3,000 words. I've never seriously studied characters, never attended classes, though I had about seven sessions with a tutor about 12 years ago. I can speak about run-of-the-mill topics, though I get stuck frequently and am not as good at talking as I am at listening. I don't have to speak Mandarin that often, and when I do, it's light-duty. I have no doubt at all that with proper time and inclination, I could attain some form of "fluency" within a year or two. I doubt it's going to happen, because there are other ways I need to spend my time, such as raising my family and earning a living. The cost-benefit ratio doesn't work. I would call it half-decent Chinese with half-assed effort. I do not think Chinese is as hard as many posters are making it out to be. Granted, I started at a younger age. There is probably also some natural aptitude that factors in. I don't think age is a real issue in terms of cognitive ability to learn words and grammar, at least not until well into the retirement years. However, as we age, our identity and self-image set firmer and firmer. Making new sounds, speaking in a new language, feel more and more awkward and threatening to our ego. At a younger age, before that is all firmly fixed, it's easier to step out of our comfort zone. To me, the best thing you can do is get the pronunciation right from the beginning. I was obsessed with figuring out the tones when I started. The thing that helped me down the road was making a bunch of flash cards. It was before smartphones. I made them by hand. I went to the library and copied useful-looking words from Chinese-learning books, then drilled myself. My wife always had a lot of friends over, and I would gradually hear more and more of the words I had learned. Eventually there's an inflection point where you understand the majority and just have to ask what a word means here or there.

This questions concerns a U.S. tourist visa for a young woman (age 20) in China and her father. They are connected to my wife's family by marriage, though they are not blood relatives. My wife is friends with the young woman, who is a college student, and they want to come visit us for a few weeks. (They all loosely call themselves cousins.) What can we do to help them be approved for tourist visas? I know that young single woman sometimes have a tough time getting such visas. We have prepared invitation letters. What documents would be best to bring to the interview? How likely are their chances of being approved?

Because some people want the ability to move freely between two countries for work business, family or personal reasons. They want to be able to live three years in the U.S., two in China, five in the U.S., one in China, and so on. And no matter where they are, they always want to keep open the option of moving back to the other country permanently. Current regulations on both sides make this either extremely messy or downright impossible for people originating from mainland China, no matter which citizenship they choose. The only semi-exception is a Chinese person who has naturalized as a U.S. citizen and then works in China with a Z-visa. But it's still a far cry from dual citizenship. Hopefully, China will one day legalize dual citizenship. Until then, people will try to obtain it covertly.

My wife has immigrant visa stamp in her passport, and greencard, but she still is and intends to stay a China citizen, so I don't think that would be a problem. How I have read people do this is: 1) Get US citizenship, and keep china passport. 2) If traveling to anywhere except China, use US passport. 3) If travelling to China, use US passport to Hong Kong, then China passport into China and back out, the return to USA on US passport. Never EVER let anyone see you have 2 passports! Also, with China/Taiwan opening up, that will soon be a better way. Taiwan recognizes dual citizenship, and will happily stamp both passports for you on entry/exit. Really, it will stamp them both? Why do you say it will "soon" be a better way? What is the obstacle now? Mainlanders have a hard time entering? Just curious.

Interesting. The comments, more so than the post. I liked this point about classical Chinese: It echoes a point made by John Moser in an article called Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard. He notes that "whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible" and makes this comparison: Unfortunately, modern Mandarin is full of idioms and other little twists that come from classical Chinese. There are also the many references to culture, both historical and present, that are hard for a foreigner to catch. I guess it's like that with any language. If you get a group of American guys together, ages 30 to 50, think of how many times they might reference song lyrics, anything from Led Zeppelin to Tone Loc (Funky Cold Medina!) Also, if they're white collar guys, how many times would they quote verbatim from the movie Office Space? How would a Chinese person ever make sense of it all? Fortunately, modern Chinese mainly talk about food and making money, so if you know how to talk about those topics, you're more than halfway to fluency.

Wondered why you feel that most Chinese wives would be reluctant to go overseas, or to have their husband work abroad? I do not necessarily disagree. I really don't know how the majority would think on this issue. There are, of course, a few cases where the couple have either gone to stay in China or plan to do so. I think my own wife would consider going, but the situation would have to be just right. The obstacles would be financial and the feeling that the U.S. is a good place to raise kids. What are the factors that you feel would prevent most from wanting to go abroad? There are the obvious advantages of being close to kin.

The key here would be to take a trip to China and renew your passport in-country, rather than from the U.S.

The Chinese are masters of this. It's what they recently did with the visa policy for spouses and relatives of Chinese nationals.

It is hard for me to imagine any man save his wife and let his child float on downstream. Even harder for me to imagine any wife doing the same for the husband. I think that most people who have had kids would agree. Most would save the kids above all else.

Does anyone have experience actually doing this? Wondering if it would be better to apply for the extension, or to have her go back to China and then return. If the latter, anyone know how long she would need to spend in China?

My mother-in-law is here on a visitor's visa. It was stamped for a 6-month stay, which will soon end. Does anyone know how likely it is that an extension would be approved? Any advice? Or better for her to go home to China and then return? Thanks!

Pimsleur can be pretty useful in the early stages of learning Mandarin. I would not recommend using it as Pimsleur advises, though. Pimsleur wants you to focus only on listening and does not provide transcripts. I advise learning pinyin well and going online to find transcripts that people have made on their own for the lessons. Pimseur is good for pronunciation and getting a feel for the language but the vocabulary it introduces is very small, even by level 3.

And now back to the topic at hand: syphilis. To redirect the thread, and for your viewing pictures, here are some nice photographs of syphilitic body parts. Warning: NOT SAFE FOR WORK. http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/cdc/syphilis.html You're welcome!

Pretty sure this is not true. I think it is 100 percent SS benefits.

You know, we start out to have a nice little discussion about babies with syphilis, and you guys have to go and turn it into something unpleasant.

During retirement? If both are U.S. citizens, I don't know of any practical way to stay in China long-term if neither party is working. China turns its back on former citizens. That is why maintaining dual-nationality would be so attractive. Otherwise, you and your U.S.-naturalized spouse could keep running to Hong Kong every three months for new tourist visas. But eventually you would reach an age where that is too strenuous. If the Chinese spouse has living parents in China, or children, longer L visas may be possible, renewable in-country.

The reason people would want dual citizenship is so that they can work/stay for indefinite periods in either country but also have the right to return to the other country. Perhaps a couple would like to work for 10 years in China, then come back to the U.S., or vice versa. There are also people like RogerLuli who want to retire in China with a Chinese spouse. If his spouse keeps Chinese citizenship and U.S. green card, she will be fine in China for two years with a reentry permit, but then what? She can apply for a new re-entry permit. Then what? And after that, then what? They are retired and there is not an end-date to their stay in China, but she would like to have the door open to the U.S. just in case. (For one thing, once the green card is gone for good, the U.S. would probably not grant her a visitor visa to go see Roger's family.)

True. It seems to be the best option for a lot of people. However, the disadvantages are: -inability to sponsor relatives for immigration to the U.S. -risk of losing the green card if you stay out of the U.S. too long.

I'd like to start a discussion about dual citizenship. As most know, China does not recognize dual nationality. And yet some people do manage to keep both nationalities. This comes up on forums every now and then. But overall, it's not easy to get good and complete information on this. I hope that a few of the members here may have solid info. Since questions of which citizenship to maintain come up here periodically, I figure this will be of interest. I know generally that the process involves making pit stops in Hong Kong and switching out passports each time you travel between the U.S. and China. My questions would be: -Exactly what is the process? -How risky is it? If the dual-nationality holder were searched, the officers would surely discover the second passport. -Would clandestine dual nationality be a realistic long-term option? Might coordination between countries eventually lead to cross-referencing, so that Chin would find out about the dual nationality? I'm looking forward to hearing from those who can fill out this subject.

Read somewhere that almost 1/3 of US women have got herpes, and not from toilet seats. I've seen that, too. I think it was in the MSNBC health news section. and herpes can never be cured, I understand syphillis can be cured. Herpes once you have it you always do, and spread it easily. So what does that say about Americians morality and sexual practices, come on guys tell me your excuses for the USA being one of the most STD ridden countries in the world.Decline in Christain values , just bad luck or Jerry Springer? my guess is none of the above but guys and girls here doing for a long time what you now pointing your finger at the chinese for doing. I'm not a political,religious guy but I see through hypocrasy easily, if you are going to post a thread like this also post the stats for here too I think you may be suprised. Hypocrisy? We're talking about China because the OP posted an article about China. What they do or don't do in China to deal with babies being born with syphilis has absolutely nothing to do with the US. I didn't see anybody here being judgmental until your post. Some people have better reading comprehension than others. Have you thought of a tutor? Have you thought of posting something substantive instead of just insulting people? e.g., what in this thread was judgmental prior to the post by 'do or die'? it was judgemental in that implied china has a behaviour problem that we do not,also I believe herpes can be given from mother to baby in birth. China has the curable STD problem, we have the noncureable one, which must say something in itself. I think everyone here knows that people are pretty much people. They get up to the same things in every country, with the possible exception of extremist regimes (e.g., parts of the Middle East) where people fear for their lives if they get up to too much. I don't think you can judge the morality of a people by what diseases are more common in their society. It has more to do with public health efforts, education and prevention. Antibiotics and sex education are the reasons syphilis is relatively rare in the U.S Herpes is a bit of a different story because most people who have it are symptomless carriers, and condoms don't do much to prevent it. If you gave blood tests to all the people who claim "I've never had an STD," there would be plenty of surprises as people found out they actually have herpes! So herpes runs very common in the west. It probably is extremely common in China too, but it is not a common thing to test for or track, so hard to say for sure.

It is OK for people who plan to basically be retired. Even then, there is always the possibility that on some whim or technicality it won't be renewed, in which case your family could be separated. For people who still have to work, would like to raise a family in China etc., it is truly useless. A series of one-year work visas is the only way until/unless you qualify for the green card. And one-year work visas don't give you a lot upon which to build a stable life.

The one advantage I see is for someone, say an American, who wants to stay in China with a spouse. Instead of having to renew the long-L visa once a year, you might only have to do it once every two years. However, I have heard that China already gives two-year long-Ls sometimes when you have had several one-year long-Ls in a row. This still does not cover the two areas that a lot of people want to see China address: -a green card-type status for spouses that is reasonably easy to obtain. The current green card would be perfect, if you could actually get it. Something like a long-L but with work privileges would be a major step in the right direction. -Return-home privileges for Chinese who have obtained citizenship elsewhere. Dual citizenship would be ideal, but something lesser that would allow an indefinite stay along with work privileges would be fine. I believe India has something like that. I hope that the accumulated policy changes over the last six year or so suggest that China is inching toward these two things. Maybe over the next 10 to 20 years it will happen.

Thanks for explaining. That is a higher-rolling lifestyle than I would lead. But then, I am broke.

About spending $3,000 to $4,000 a month: I don't understand how you could spend that amount of money in China, especially when housing is covered. What did you buy? You realize that most Chinese live on a small fraction of that? Am I naive?

I was able to get health insurance through my school, but it didn't amount to much. Anyone would be foolish not to consider traveler's insurance in their budget. We used liaison international http://www.sevencorners.com/insuranceplans/travelmedical/ I was able to get a credit card from Citic bank. I do generally agree though with your point 9. Foreigners are generally not accepted as equals within Chinese society, at least not where we lived. Thankfully though, my wife's family did accept me as an equal part of their family - which to me was the most important status to achieve. Was your wife able to be covered on the traveler's insurance? I had thought that that type of insurance only covered people who are outside their home country.