By Maurice Quek

An encounter that occurred earlier this year in Mexico was nothing short of revelatory.

The sentence - "Bu yong le, wo bu bi zuo" - coming from a blue-eyed, blonde-haired Caucasian, stunned me into silence for a good 10 minutes.

The Mandarin expression, meaning "There's no need, I don't need a seat", came after I wanted to let him have my seat on the bus.

I could almost hear the cogs in my brain cranking overtime to reconcile what I had just heard with what I had just seen.

It wasn't just that the phrase was uttered by a Caucasian, but also because it was spoken with an immaculate Beijing accent.

He had lived in Beijing for a year on a work assignment and had been forced to pick up Mandarin in a hurry.

What's more impressive was that he also happened to be equally fluent in French, German, Spanish and, of course, English.

And so, on that fateful bus ride in Mexico, where I was attending an international student conference - World Model United Nations (WorldMUN) - I was shocked into realising how inadequate I was in my own mother tongue.

As this fellow conference attendee continued assailing me with perfect Mandarin, I could only nod and smile weakly. I did not dare open my mouth to speak, for fear of revealing how bad my Mandarin was.

I haven't picked up a Chinese story book since primary school.

This realisation came back to haunt me earlier last week when I had to write an article about Chinese nationals in Singapore complaining about a worksite safety poster.

I had to communicate with Chinese nationals, much to the amusement of my colleagues as I stammered my way through my interviews.

Readying myself before every interview by looking up the Chinese translations of English words on an online Chinese dictionary - thank you Dict.cn - you would think I was studying for a major Chinese exam.

Shame on me.

And to think I was contemplating learning another language, like the ever-popular French or German.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon of ambitious multi-lingual wannabes is rampant in Singapore. Many Singaporeans do not have a fluent grasp of their native language, yet they attempt to learn new languages.

I have to apologise to my dad, an alumnus of The Chinese High School, who till today has been trying to drill into me the importance of the Chinese language.

When I was seven, he made my sister and I read Chinese books by promising to smoke one less cigarette per day for every Chinese story book we read.

When he eventually quit smoking while I was in primary school, I quit reading. Which, at that point in time, made perfect sense to me.

What people have to realise is that this is not just about ethnic pride, but rather the essence of language that spurs me to bring this to our attention.

The moment I spoke to the Chinese nationals (with a slight Beijing accent) I was interviewing, they opened up and spoke to me as though we came from the same town.

The ease at which I got them to talk was amazing.

With just a slight effort on my part, I got a torrent of comments from them.

That is the essence of language - communication.

Although it has already been mentioned countless times, it is futile to ignore China's rising power.

Being able to communicate effectively in Mandarin will prove to be an asset to anyone in this day and age.

As much as I dread it, it's time to hit those Chinese books.


For more my paper stories click here.