Learning Chinese: My Chinese New Year Resolution

I’ve been studying Chinese for an embarrassingly long time. I started in secondary school, where I was required to take two years of a foreign language to graduate. After two years of two hours of Chinese a week, I left school with a firm grasp of both “nǐ hǎo” and Chinese pronouns.

I decided to continue my studies at university. Armed with my limited knowledge, I miraculously managed to test out of the first term of Chinese. I had been studying for two years, and my professor thought I was only prepared to skip ten weeks of classes. I enrolled in the Level 2 class, and over the next ten weeks, I doubled my knowledge of Chinese. After that, I forgot it – all of it – then I took one more term of Chinese, for which I was utterly unprepared, years later. After that, I did something I was even less prepared for: I came to China.

I flew to China fantasising about having conversations with native speakers and achieving fluency within my first year. I was going to soak up all the Chinese around me. Except, there wasn’t actually that much Chinese around me. I was teaching English, socialising with my English-speaking colleagues, reading English books, and watching American TV shows. Simply being in China didn’t immerse me in the language.

I do have far more opportunities to practise here if I seek them out. Being in China is certainly very motivating, and I was never completely deluded about how easy learning would be. I’ve had a Chinese tutor since my second or third week here and have studied independently on and off. I just wasn’t making the progress I had dreamed of on the plane over.

I resolved to do better. I was going to spend more time studying Chinese. I wasn’t planning to do anything differently; I was just going to do more of it. Somehow, though, telling myself over and over again that I’d study Chinese after I got home from work didn’t motivate me to study any more. If anything, spending the whole day reminding myself I was going to study when I got home just exhausted me.

Something had to change, and I had an idea how to do that. A horrible, awful idea. Since I was too tired to study after work, I would have to wake up earlier and study before work.

I’m not a morning person. I haven’t been one since before I went to university. Waking up earlier was no small step for me, but I couldn’t think of any other solutions. I eased myself into it. I set my alarm just ten minutes earlier. That, combined with the fifteen minutes I usually spent watching random YouTube videos while drinking my coffee, allowed me to spend a respectable twenty-five minutes studying Chinese in the morning.

When I got used to that, I moved my alarm up by another ten minutes, and then another ten after that. I now have time not only to study half an hour of Chinese but also to revive my long-abandoned yoga habit.

I expected to hate waking up earlier, but I’m much happier now than I was when I was sleeping in. Finding time to fit exercise into my routine has boosted my mood. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it. The feeling of heading to work with all my personal goals already accomplished is just as good. I now go to work more alert and in a better mood overall.

It’s only been a month, but I know my new morning routine is here to stay. For one, January is one of our busiest months. The children are off public school for the winter holidays, so they enrol in extra English classes. I also got sick right in the middle of this hectic period. If I can keep my routine going through all that, I can keep it up no matter how busy I am.

I know I’ll continue because I’ve come to understand why I wasn’t reaching my goals before. Previously, I didn’t have a set time to study. The question, “Should I study now?” was constantly running on a loop in my head, and because I can’t (and won’t) study Chinese all the time, I fell into the habit of answering, “Ask me later.” Now, I study every morning without question.

Getting rid of that question was just as important as setting a specific time to study. My old yoga habit died when I got ill and took a week off. Once I broke that habit, I had to ask myself if I wanted to start again today. I always planned to start back up tomorrow, imagining that Lazy Aly would magically transform into Super Aly and do all the things I didn’t feel like doing today. This time, even when I was unwell, I still managed an easy stretch routine to keep up my momentum without overtaxing my sick and healing body.

Super Aly never showed up, but it turns out I don’t need her. When goals become daily routines, you don’t need superhuman willpower to keep them going.