Why your Chinese teacher in Singapore was wrong

Hi there or shall I say, 大家好 - as someone who actually does use my Chinese language skills for work, I'd like to address some of the lies that your Chinese teacher may have told you when you were at school. Now I'm writing this primarily for my Singaporean readers, many of whom were forced to learn Chinese whilst they were at school and told lies about how useful it would be for them in the work place. My father was one of those Chinese teachers back in the day (he retired about 23 years ago) so not only was I getting that rhetoric at school, I was getting it at home too and of course, 99% of it was completely untrue because my father spent his whole life as a school teacher - how could he have been expected to know anything about the big, bad working world out there? I think such Chinese teachers grossly exaggerated the usefulness of Chinese because they feared that their students would lose interest in the subject if they knew there was quite a big chance that it would be one of those skills that they would never use once they leave school. I did a piece recently about my relationship with maths, given it was one of the subjects I struggled with at school and now I don't have to use at all in my career. I thought I'd do something similar with Chinese, given that I do use it at work now - the irony is that many of my former classmates in Singapore as well as my two sisters in Singapore do not use their Chinese at all in their work but I'm the one working in London who has to use my Chinese quite a lot. So, let's use the Q&A format to tackle this issue and confront some of those false claims that our Chinese teachers made back in the day. 

Q: How do you use your Chinese at work? 

A: One of my employer's biggest client is a Chinese company so having a Mandarin-speaking member of the team definitely gives them more confidence to deal with us and it's not even a question of them not being able to speak English - they all speak English (albeit with an accent) but it's more a question of having someone they feel can better understand their cultural needs and will do business with them their way. So I help take care of a lot of their needs as they do often prefer to talk to me when dealing with my company and they are a rather interesting company to work with!

Q: Do you do any translations? 

A: No actually and there's a very good reason. Remember how I am categorically forbidden from actually doing any maths in banking because of this thing called human error, hence we leave the calculations all up to computers? We are working with a company full of people who grew up in China with Mandarin as a first language, each time I translated something, they would be like, "thanks for your email Alex, I hope you don't mind, I've made a few changes." Then I look at the draft I sent them and it's unrecognizable, like they've totally rewritten it and it often sounds better. They'll strip out a lot of the more Singaporean-Chinese expressions I use and replace it with a Beijing-standard equivalent. So here's a simple expression for example, if I wanted to say, "I have never been there", I would say 我从来没有去过那里。They would say something like 我从未去过那里。Another example would be the expression, "such a good opportunity" - I would say 这么好的机会 but they would prefer the expression 如此好的机会 - we can understand each other as the two sentences essentially mean the same thing and anyone fluent in Chinese would definitely understand both sentences, but they clearly expect me to adhere to Beijing-standard Mandarin. I just got so used to them editing everything I ever translated that it just got to the point where it was just faster to let them do the translations. On one hand, Singaporean-Chinese is clearly different from Beijing standard Mandarin but on the other hand, if there's someone around who is clearly capable of doing a far better job than me when it comes to translations, then it makes no sense at all to let me try.

Q: Wait, so what do you actually use your Chinese language skills for if they don't let you do any translations at all and the client actually speaks English very well then? 

A: Well, let's get one thing clear: I was NOT employed specifically for my Chinese language skills. Hell no, let me be the first to admit that my Chinese isn't that good! If my company was after someone with good Chinese language skills, then I would have never ever gotten this job. I was hired because I have years of experience in the distribution of fixed income investment products - the fact that I happen to speak several foreign languages is completely incidental. There are people who do what I do without speaking a single foreign language and they operate only in English. My language abilities adds another dimension to what I do of course but it isn't really that essential as English is still pretty much the language of business no matter where you go in the world and whilst being able to speak the language of your client is a big advantage, it becomes less essential when you either have an excellent product or if you're so good at your area of expertise they're happy to either speak English with you or engage the services of a translator if necessary. Thus the fact that I can speak Mandarin is useful but not that vital as the vast majority of the work I do is conducted in English actually. 

Q: I speak Chinese very well, can I do your job then? 

A: No you can't, because my employers would ask you a simple question if you applied for this role: are you a highly experienced expert when it comes to the distribution of fixed income products? The question isn't going to be "how good is your Chinese"? I am competing with other fixed income distribution specialists in my field, rather than people who are able to speak Mandarin well. Without my expertise and experience in this area of finance, I wouldn't be able to do my job; in this context, if you wanna do what I do, then you need to get plenty of experience dealing with fixed income products rather than spend a lot of time and effort learning Mandarin - I have written plenty about working in banking on my blog. 

Q: Why did my Chinese teacher tell me that Chinese was so freaking useful then? 

A: Let's put things in context. You need to see things from your Chinese teacher's point of view. When I was a student back in the 1980s and 1990s, most of the Chinese teachers in Singapore spoke little or no English as they went to "Chinese medium schools" in Singapore. Allow me to explain that little part of Singapore's history, right up till 1983, there was once the option to send your child to a Chinese medium school where all subjects like maths and science would be taught in Chinese, whilst English was taught as a second language. You could go on to do your degree at Nantah University entirely in Chinese, so your limited ability in English wouldn't stop you from pursuing a degree. Such Chinese medium schools fell out of popularity by the late 1970s as most parents in Singapore recognized that English would be the dominant language in Singapore. That explained why many of the Chinese teachers who taught me back in that period struggled with English so for such Chinese teachers, they were very frustrated by this whole situation. because they weren't exactly uneducated or stupid, yet because they often struggled to express themselves in English. Thus they were afraid that they may come across as uneducated or stupid because they couldn't speak English. So imagine if this Chinese teacher was placed in a common everyday situation like checking into a hotel, buying a train ticket or visiting the dentist, they would be so much more comfortable to handle all the communication in that situation in Mandarin rather than struggle on in English. Some Chinese teachers from China working in Singapore experience the same challenges in Singapore - they must struggle with English the moment they leave safety of the classroom and step outside the school.

Q: So why is the Chinese teacher's logic so flawed? 

A: Let's compare and contrast two statements. Statement A: the Chinese teacher would be delighted if he finds out that the lady at the pharmacy speaks Mandarin and thus he doesn't need to struggle on in English with her to get his prescription. Statement B: Chinese is therefore an extremely useful and important language to learn, to ensure that everyone can use it at places like the pharmacy to communicate with clients like the Chinese teacher. Just because statement A is 100% true doesn't make statement B true, therein lies the flaw in the logic of the Chinese teacher. The problem is that statement B is produced entirely from the point of view of the Chinese teacher who hates having to struggle on in English, that perspective is not useful because we need the perspective of the employer of the pharmacy in this case. So questions for the employer to determine whether or not would be: what percentage of your clients speak only Mandarin and cannot speak English? How much business would you lose if none of your staff could speak a word of Mandarin? If the pharmacy was in a place like Chongqing or Shenyang, then yeah the answer to those questions would be "practically all our customers speak Mandarin only and no English, we would lose most of our business if our staff weren't totally fluent in Mandarin." However, in a place like Singapore, the answer is more like, "only a tiny percentage of our clients speak only Mandarin and no English at all, we usually can just ask another customer in the pharmacy to help us translate in a worst case scenario and so we wouldn't lose any business at all if none of our staff spoke a word of Mandarin." Thus the owners of the pharmacy would have a totally different take on the matter, their perspective is totally different from that of the Chinese teacher. Hence whose perspective do you think would be more useful to the students? 

Q: But China's economy is booming, there must be loads of Chinese customers for any business looking to expand into China to sell into this new market. So for this purpose, surely Mandarin must be useful, right? 

A: Yes and no. Again, we must be careful to make sure that our logic and reasoning is sound. Firstly, not all companies are expanding into China - ironically, I have two sisters in Singapore who work for Singaporean companies. Because of the presence of Indian and Malay colleagues in the office, everything has to default to English to avoid alienating them and even in meetings, it is considered impolite and inappropriate to even use any Chinese words when expressing yourself in the presence of non-Chinese colleagues. So you could spend years studying Chinese like my sisters only to find that you're not allowed to use it in the workplace in Singapore! Secondly, you need to examine the balance of trade between China and the rest of the world, in particular, between China and Singapore. China sells a lot of stuff to Singapore but Singapore actually sells very little back to China. The reason is obvious: Singaporeans are huge consumers of made in China products - walk into any big supermarket or department store and many of the items there would have been imported from China. But the very few Singaporean companies that do sell to China are have a massive challenge: do you have a product or service that the Chinese don't already have in China (at a much lower price)? Hence the biggest exports are high end electronics (like integrated circuits), petrol-chemical products and then there's education and tourism as well - when Chinese students and tourists come to Singapore. Your Mandarin doesn't have to be great to buy from China, but it has to be perfect if you wanna sell into China - therein lies the huge difference. 

Q: But these people from China must be quite grateful and relieved that you can speak Mandarin right? So they don't have to struggle on in English with you, you're making life much easier for them. 

A: Actually no! May I remind you that the stereotypical older Chinese person who doesn't speak English (like the Chinese teacher) probably doesn't have much money to spend. Are there rich Chinese clients who don't speak English at all? Yes there are, they do exist of course but when they are such big spenders, they then have the right to demand that people like me speak perfect Mandarin when I serve them. That's right, if I wanna earn their money, I jolly well speak Mandarin to a very high standard to please them and they will complain if they feel that my Mandarin isn't good enough. There's no element of them "being grateful" that I can speak Mandarin, hell no. Not at all. This reminds me of an incident I witnessed in Tunisia - I stayed at a 5-star hotel when I was there on holiday and there was a travel agent in the lobby of the hotel. They offered private guided tours (but were very expensive) - so one morning, I witnessed a Russian lady walk into the travel agency and she started yelling at them in Russian - she didn't even try to speak English! So, she had booked a tour but the driver is late, she has been waiting for a while and demanded that they tracked down the driver. I thought, oh I can help! I speak French fluently and I get by in Russian and Arabic, I can help this Russian lady communicate with the Tunisian travel agent. Then just as I was about to step in to help, the travel agent replied in Russian - he was pretty affluent (albeit with an accent) but it was evident that he had plenty of experience dealing with Russian tourists. Was the lady impressed that the travel agent could speak Russian so well? Hell no, she was just pissed off that the driver they had arranged for her was so late - she paid a lot of money for it and demanded very good service in Russian, of course. 

Q: Isn't that rich Russian lady quite unreasonable expecting people in Tunisia to speak Russian with her?

A: There's the question of perspective. When you're rich, you can make demands but when you're poor, you're in no position to make any kind of demand at all. Hence that's why that rich Russian tourist could throw a strop at the travel agency in Russian; whilst I navigated the public transport system in Tunisia speaking French and Arabic with the locals. My budget didn't allow me to throw a strop in English at the local train station (nobody would have understood me even if I did anyway). The rich lady from Russia probably had Googled that travel agent in advance before arriving in Tunisia, to make sure that she could pay to be served by Russian speaking staff. So it's not unreasonable when you consider how much the travel agency is charging her for providing that service: their prices are ridiculously expensive but then she is gladly paying for a premium service whilst people like me choose to go explore the city on my own without using a guide.

Q: Since you mentioned it, before the pandemic, loads of tourists from China come to Singapore - surely there are jobs in the tourism sector for those who can speak Mandarin well then?

A: China has closed her borders and Chinese tourists have not been allowed to leave China for over 20 months now - we still have no idea when China might change their stance on that issue since they're so afraid of travelers getting infected abroad and then bringing the virus back to China after they've worked so hard to keep it under control. But putting the whole Covid-19 thing aside, even if you are working as a Mandarin-speaking tourist guide for Chinese tourists or working in a hotel that serves Chinese tourists, guess what? A lot of these service-sector jobs related to tourism are very poorly paid. Let's take a hotel for example: sure the hotel will hire a reception who can speak Mandarin if they regularly get guests from China, but being a hotel receptionist is a poorly paid job. Those in senior management of the hotel may be taking in the profits if the hotel is doing well, but the figures in senior management are hiding away in their offices - they're not the ones at the front desk listening to the tourist from China complaining that her room is too noisy and demanding an upgrade. Pardon me for stating the obvious please: sure we all want a job where we feel that our best skills and talents are being utilized, but would you accept such a poorly paid job (such as working as a receptionist in a hotel) just to be in an environment where you can speak Mandarin everyday? People who end up in such poorly paid jobs don't do it out of choice - they accept the job as they can't find anything better paid; it is at best a last resort, a short term solution (until they find something better). I bet you that is one harsh reality your Chinese teacher never mentioned. 

Q: So why is there this myth that rich Chinese people will be grateful if you speak Mandarin with them then?

A: Poor Chinese Singaporeans have no money, no power but they have this one skill: they do speak Mandarin. So they're hoping that this one skill they happen to have can give them special privileges such as the instant friendship of people from China the moment they speak Mandarin with them. That's completely false of course for the following reasons: firstly, there is a huge difference between speaking a minority language and a widely spoken language. I speak two minority languages to a very high standard - Welsh and Straits Hokkien which is defined by the kind of Hokkien we speak in Singapore, peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian Riau islands - this is quite different from the Hokkien they would speak in Taipei or Xiamen. When you encounter someone who speaks a minority language (as spoken by a relatively small number of people and you're never in the majority no matter where you go), there's immediately a sense of kakilang as we say in Hokkien - that sense of kinship is immediate as your ears perk up the moment you hear someone speak your language because you are a part of a very exclusive group of people who speak that language: that's often enough to start a conversation and make a new friend! However, when you speak a widely spoken language like English, Mandarin, German, French or Spanish, no that magic connection simply doesn't happen. Chinese people just roll their eyes and think, big fat fucking hairy deal, you speak Mandarin, over a billion people in the world speak Mandarin and you think you're so fucking special just because you're one of those billion people who can speak Mandarin? Yeah right. Fuck off, you can fuck right off. You're not special. Not at all, you wish you were but no, you're not! 

When you speak a language that over a billion people speak, you're not intelligent, you're not special - you're just doing what so many other people are doing. Let me give you an analogy to make my point: when my nephew was about 9 years old, my parents were amazed that he knew how to send a text message on a mobile phone. My parents raved about it as if he was a computer expert and I'm like, he grew up with that technology, I would expect him to know how to compose and send a text message like that; if he didn't, then holy shit he would be a real fucking retard. Anyway, it was like he was a 2 year old texting away, he was already 9 at that time. A 9 year old sending a text message is really no big deal and by the same token, a Chinese person speaking Mandarin is no big deal either. You're merely doing what's normal, what's expected of you. If you're a Chinese person who can speak something like Italian, Welsh, Spanish, German or Russian to a high standard (oh, like me), then okay you're doing something highly unusual that would make people sit up and take notice of your talents. But a lot of poor, working class Singaporean Chinese people are so uneducated and unskilled that they simply don't have any special skills to speak of, they aren't able to do anything that's going to make them stand out in a crowd, they can barely do the bare minimum to get by in life. That's why they create this alternate reality by taking something as ordinary as their ability to speak Mandarin and pretending that it is some kind of special skill that would enable them to instantly connect with people from China - well I'm sorry to be so blunt, but that is a really desperate fantasy on the part of those pathetic losers who wished they had some kind of special talent or skill. 

Q: Okay that's harsh but surely speaking the same language enables you to build rapport with people from China?

A: If you really wanna establish rapport and be someone's friend (in a social context) or do business with them (hey that's what I do with my Chinese clients), then you really need more than just a common language. You need something you share in common like a common interest (in a social context) or a common goal in business. I'm going to recycle this story from a recent post so I apologize in advance if you have already read this story: there's this guy in my gymnastics club whom I am going to call Mr Cross because he always crosses his feet when he twists. You're not supposed to do that as it's ugly form, you get a deduction for that mistake and you risk spraining your ankles if you don't uncross your feet in time before the landing. Hence I tried telling him once that he shouldn't cross his feet like that but he got so defensive about it - claiming that doing so makes him twists faster. Since I wasn't looking for an argument ("you're so wrong, I'm totally right, I know about about gymnastics than you do, you're seriously going to break a leg if you don't listen to me etc"). No thank you, I merely backed off and we just never spoke again. And that's someone who speaks English (well, Mr Cross is indeed British) with whom I share a common passion for gymnastics and yet somehow, we have totally failed to establish any rapport whatsoever. So I think it is rather foolish to assume that just because you happen to speak the same language as the other party, that you're somehow going to establish rapport easily on that basis of sharing a language. No it's actually a lot harder to establish rapport, you need a whole lot of social skills for that.

Q: So is the Chinese you learnt at school in Singapore useful at all or not? 

A: Not particularly, it is far from enough if you intend to use it at work. There's a huge difference between what I would refer to as academic Chinese and business Chinese - now academic Chinese is what you would study at school to get through exams whereas business Chinese will focus on the very specific technical terms and jargon you require to deal with the kind of work you do. Someone working in a Chinese pharmaceutical company would need a completely different set of vocabulary compared to someone working in a Chinese investment bank. Academic Chinese usually involved cramming the students with more and more vocabulary as well as what would translate as "Chinese idiomatic proverbs": 成语/谚语 - that's when we used a very condensed number of words (only four in 成语, you're allowed a bit more in a 谚语) to convey a far more complex concept. So to ace those Chinese exams, you need to be very hardworking and memorize a lot of information to demonstrate that you are able to both understand and reproduce those Chinese expressions as well as excel at reading comprehension but it doesn't teach you any of the business Chinese skills one would require to use Chinese at work. Most Chinese oral exams are so basic and involve reading a text containing loads of difficult words, it simply tests the student's reading ability and then the teacher would just ask a few questions to test how well the student has understood the text. Whereas in a business context, you need to negotiate with the other party - this goes beyond understanding what the other party is saying, but you need to be convincing, compelling and persuasive: you need a lot of social skills and business acumen rather than the ability to speak Chinese. 

Q: So where can I learn this kind of business Chinese then? Are there courses?

A: Hell no, there aren't any and your Chinese teacher certainly can't teach you any of that. Firstly, your Chinese teacher simply has no idea what kind of job you will do in the future or what kind of industry you would end up in, hence it is mission impossible for a Chinese teacher to try to give you the relevant vocabulary for your future career. Secondly, the whole set up of the classroom simply isn't conducive for this at all - there is only one teacher with a whole classroom full of students. Hence by default, the teacher speaks whilst the students shut up and listen - they rarely get the chance to speak up. Contrast that to when I am in  business meeting with a client delivering a sales pitch, I have to do the complete opposite: I do not just sit quietly and listen, I have to speak up, I have to be expressive, articulate and engaging. The classroom is simply not the right place to learn all of those skills you need for business. You either need a mentor who is willing to give you the kind of 1-on-1 attention that you need for this kind of training or you're just going to have to figure this out on your own. I have to point out that you can't pay a businessman enough to teach this kind of course because the experts in this area can earn millions a month and no student can afford to cough up a few millions to take such a course!  The "teachers" who run any kind of cheap "business" courses are all out to con you anyway, because if they were any good at real business they would be making millions from being brilliant in the business world rather than trying to con idiots to spend some money on a course that is run by a totally incompetent teacher who cannot help them at all. 

Q: Okay, what about going to work in China then? Surely if China is booming, is it the land of opportunity?

A: Again, you're barking up the wrong tree. Unless your Mandarin is native standard perfect, you'll find it very hard to compete with the locals in China. Besides, do you have any idea how intense the competition is in China with a well-educated working class so desperate to attain social mobility they will literally work themselves to death (the famous 9-9-6 work culture is uniquely Chinese) and accept far worse conditions than you Singaporeans will ever consider? And even if your Chinese is that brilliant and you are willing to work that hard, guess what? There is no reward for all that as salaries in China are still a lot lower than in Singapore so you're working much longer hours for far less money for the same kind of job in China - that's a really bad deal and it is the reason why workers from China are desperate to come and work in Singapore, not the other way around! In any case, you'll also be competing against the elite of China for the very best jobs and you need to know what you're up against: these elites have paid for the very best education and would speak better English than the vast majority of Singaporeans, so it is a complete fallacy that Singaporeans are somehow better off than people in China because they're supposedly bilingual. Hell no, people in China mock you Singaporeans for being fucking stupid: supposedly you speak two languages but both equally badly. You suck at both English and Mandarin. And if you're a highly educated, highly skilled, highly educated professional, then you would be able to find great opportunities in Singapore - there wouldn't be a need to go to China at all to find better opportunities. If you are an idiot who can't find good work in Singapore then you would still be an idiot who can't find good work in China. 

Q: So is there any point at all in learning Chinese then? 

A: Sigh. So, you want the short answer? It is no, it's a total waste of time if you're Chinese Singaporean. If you're non-Chinese, then the answer is yes try it if you're up for the challenge. The fact is Chinese is a difficult language to master to native first-language standard, having Chinese blood, being of Chinese ethnic heritage doesn't help at all - the only real help your parents could give you is if they actually spoke to you in Mandarin throughout your childhood to provide that environment where you were forced to operate in Mandarin (instead of English) to attain that first language proficiency. Let's say you do all that and you work super hard at school to become great at Chinese, guess what? Most people are just going to shrug their shoulders and say, "yeah but he's Chinese, so what? Big deal." But when a white person even struggles to get out a few basic phrases in Mandarin, Chinese people fall over themselves to lavish praise on them. It's not fair of course, because regardless of what nationality or ethnicity your parents are, Chinese is just as hard to learn. Unfortunately, Chinese Singaporeans are set up to fail when it comes to Chinese. If we don't speak Mandarin well enough, we get so much judgment when by others criticizing us for being yellow bananas who cannot speak our own language. Yet if we make a valiant effort to master Chinese to a very high standard, we get no credit whatsoever by anyone (Chinese or non-Chinese) because people just assume that speaking Mandarin should come naturally to us. Thus by that token, why bother if there's very little incentive or reward in exchange for all that effort you are going to have to make to even speak Mandarin to a decent standard then? I certainly recognize a terrible deal when I see one. 

Q: Why are Chinese Singaporean students being forced to learn Chinese at school then? Do you think that all Chinese kids in Singapore be forced to do Chinese as part of their curriculum then?

A: A colleague in London recently asked me, his daughter has the chance to learn a foreign language at school and he was deciding between Spanish and Chinese. He asked me for help as he thought that Chinese might give his daughter an advantage for the future, but I told him to pick Spanish instead. His daughter currently speaks neither language - she is starting from zero. So is his daughter invests 500 hours in learning Spanish, she will become very competent in Spanish. But if she invests that same 500 hours in learning Chinese, she would get past the basics but still struggle to operate in the language. As someone who works with investments, we're always looking for a good rate of return and Spanish would offer this young student a much better rate of return than Chinese for the time she invests in it because it is a much easier language to learn for her, given that her mother tongue is English. Now a major reason why Chinese Singaporean students are made to learn Chinese is because it was based on the assumption that most Chinese Singaporean kids would come from households where Mandarin (or something like Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka etc) would be spoken hence we're not starting from scratch, we're merely building on the foundation that the child has already accumulated through interacting with various family members prior to even setting foot in the primary school classroom for the very first time. That would be true in my generation (it certainly was in my case), but this is no longer true in 2021 as many Chinese Singaporean families mainly speak English instead of Mandarin at home - thus young kids are showing up in primary school with very little exposure to any Chinese and the poor teacher has to literally start from scratch, so that's such a major change within just one generation and the education system hasn't responded at all to it. 

Of course I believe it is useful to learn a second/foreign language and all students in Singapore should be offered the chance to do so but far more flexibility is needed in the system. The current system is based on an assumption that was true a generation ago and is no longer true today, hence students should be given a menu of a mix of Asian and European languages from Korean to French to Japanese to Spanish and simply be allowed to pick any two languages they like, without having Chinese being assigned to them by default. After all, a key component of being successful in learning a language is interest - you have gotta be interested in what you're learning if you wanna get far in it and if the young student is fascinated with K-drama and K-pop, then by all means let them learn Korean instead of Chinese. I really don't abide by the mantra that all Chinese people have to master Mandarin because it is a part of your heritage: oh please, we live in 2021. Young people with a decent education are a lot more global in their outlook these days in terms of their cultural identity and the unprecedented success of Squid Game is a good way to illustrate this point: so many non-Koreans from the Spain to America to Singapore have embraced Squid Game because we are open-minded enough to engage the story and find parallels within our own struggles in life, thus relating to the story without fussing over the fact that it is quintessentially Korean. Your cultural identity is developed based on your personal choices when it comes to the cultural experiences you consume and that comes down to you choosing to watch Squid Game or listening to K-pop despite not being Korean. This should be about what you want your future to be like, not your past or where you're from. 

Okay guys, so that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Did you learn Chinese when you were at school and did you actually get to use it in the work place? Would you have rather learnt a European second language like French or Spanish instead of Chinese? Why do Singaporeans have so many misconceptions about the way their 'ability' to speak some Mandarin is perceived by people from China? Have you ever dealt with people from China using your Mandarin skills and how did that go? What do you think about the overall standard of Mandarin in Singapore today? What kind of Chinese teacher(s) did you have back in Singapore then?  Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.