I don't think I can upvote this comment enough (only once sadly), especially China law blog (it's really good). Yes Chinese is an interesting language (I love i

I don't think I can upvote this comment enough (only once sadly), especially China law blog (it's really good). Yes Chinese is an interesting language (I love it's lack of or minimalistic grammar), and the character system though difficult is flexible enough to become the writing system of any spoken language in the world. But knowing Chinese is not much of an ecomomic advantage, it's better than knowing nothing but it's not worth the effort. I'm learning out of nessisty, osmossis if you will. Living here and my wife being Chinese(although that made no difference, she speaks English to me all the time and hasn't got the patience to help me learn) I kind of have to. When I leave (and for most people that's a certainty) I'll be able to appear a little snobbish, "oh you can speak Chinese, how wonderful".