Wanna learn Chinese? Ride the Metro.

For most expats who live in China, learning Chinese can be a daunting undertaking: all those characters, strange sounds, and those tones (!!) make you wonder if it's even worthwhile.  Well, to any expat living in Shanghai, I've found a way to learn Chinese in a very simple, almost passive way: ride the Metro.

Impossible you say?  不是！(no way!).  It has worked for me, so of course it can and will work for you!  Let's face it: most of us are way too busy or too broke to take a formal Chinese class, but on the flipside pretty much everyone who lives in Shanghai uses the Metro as their primary mode of getting from Point A to B.  Why not make most the most of your time in the subway and learn some Chinese! 

Before we begin, keep a few things in mind:

• Although you won't become fluent overnight, you will learn quite a few characters and how they are pronounced.  
• It will be helpful to be familiar with pinyin; that is, the system of phonetics using the Roman alphabet.  However, most sounds and vowels are similar to English pronunciation, so for now it isn't necessary. 
• In Standard (aka Mandarin) Chinese, each Chinese character stands for one syllable, regardless of how many syllables a Chinese word has: e.g. 上海 is ShangHai; 红桥火车站 is HongQiao HuoChe Zhan -- Hongqiao Railway Station. 

Now let's begin!

Lesson 1 - Matching syllables to characters.

• Most of the Metro stops are named after the roads they are on.
• 衡山路--HengShan Lu -- Hengshan Road.  
• Remembering the rule one character-one syllable, you now have 衡 (Heng) 山 (Shan) 路 (Lu).  
• You may have also picked up that 路 means road, which is definitely a useful character to know when navigating the city.  

Lesson 2 - Matching English translations to characters

• In other cases the name of a Metro stop is translated fully into English.
• 人民广场 -- RenMin GuangChang -- People's Square
• Looking at the characters, you have 人民 (RenMin) meaning 'people' and 广场 (GuangChang) meaning 'square' or 'plaza'.  Throughout China you will find 人民 on things related with China or the Communist Party, whereas you'll find 广场 in decidedly less politically-charged places, like shopping malls.  

Lesson 3 - Listening to the Metro loudspeaker

• To the untrained foreigner, the omnipresent woman who announces Metro stops sounds as if she's speaking unintelligible gibberish.  Who could possibly figure out what she's saying?  Ah, but there is a way!  You just have to listen for what you need to hear, and tune out everything else.  
• In the Metro, the most important information you need to know is what the next stop is, and when you arrive.  The phrase下一站 (XiaYiZhan) means 'next stop' and 到了(DaoLe) means 'arriving' or 'arrived'.  

Keeping everything we have learned so far in mind, can you figure out what the following phrases mean?

• 下一站：衡山路。
• 人民广场到了。

The next time you ride the Metro, read the signs in Chinese closely, and keep your ear tuned to the Metro announcer.  It will take some time, but before you know it you will be able to read quite a few characters and understand some spoken Chinese.  And hopefully for you, Chinese will become less and less of an "impossible" language to learn.  

好运！(HaoYun--Good luck!)