Yet another reason why I don't learn Chinese......
Most of my Chinese friends speak decent English. Most of my foreign friends speak at least a little bit of Chinese. The only two girls I've dated seriously here, though foreign, spoke very good Chinese. There's almost never any shortage of people on hand to translate for me; and thus there's zero pressure on me to learn Chinese myself.
And it's really rather nice to be able to devolve the wrangling-with-the-locals stuff to someone else. Partly, I suppose, it's a kind of laziness or cowardice - not wanting to get involved in the hassle that this so often entails. But also, I think, there's something more positive in it, something strangely buoyant and liberating - relinquishing some measure of your own control and autonomy, placing absolute trust in someone else to conduct a transaction for you.
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