Hong Kong, summer 2011. The heat and humidity were stifling. I was sitting in the back of a taxi going from Kowloon to my hotel in the city center. It was my first time in Hong Kong, and I was told the taxi drivers spoke English. I gave him the name of my hotel, and he started driving, shouting in Cantonese at someone on his phone. He was using a headset to call hands- free, as he needed his hands to drive the stick shift Toyota Camry that had seen better days a decade ago. Accelerating in third gear, still shouting at someone through his headset, he brought me to the wrong hotel. I tried explaining this and failed miserably. The doorman of the hotel finally came over to help me out. When we were finally on our way to the right hotel, the driver looked at me in his rearview mirror and started speaking in his own tongue.  The only words I caught were ‘ang mo’.

I found out later that ‘ang mo’ is Chinese for ‘red-haired’, derived from ‘ang mo kui’, meaning ‘red-haired devil’.  The taxi driver was essentially calling me a ‘stupid white tourist’. My first reaction was to be offended; now I just laugh.

We are social creatures, and part of being social is being able to communicate. That is why it is so vital to learn foreign languages, especially Mandarin or one of its dialects. The Chinese population totals about 1.3 billion people, which is about twenty percent of the world population. While this might be something you already knew, it also means that by not speaking Mandarin, you won’t be able to communicate with one out of every five people on the planet. 

Moreover, having lived in Amsterdam for sixteen years and in Singapore for more than two years, I have come into contact with many of the different cultures. In Amsterdam, I learned to speak five languages, and at Penn State I continued to learn Spanish by taking Spanish 3, and I started to learn Mandarin in Chinese 1. The importance of learning languages was further emphasized in my International Relations and International Political Economy classes.

Concerning culture, be it a European one, such as the Spanish or the German, or an Asian one, such as the Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian or Malaysian, central to all of them is respect. Not speaking the language does not command respect, but attempting to, even if you aren’t fluent, will go a long way. Native speakers appreciate that you take an interest in their language and culture, and that you make an effort to communicate. It sets you apart from the millions of other ‘ang mo’ who can’t speak their language, and don’t even try.

Respect is important not only to prevent being insulted while on holiday, but also when pursuing a career overseas. Asia is said to be the ‘up and coming’ region. Europe is in economic disrepair, the Middle East in social disarray, and the U.S. is facing stagnant economic growth, while our Asian counterparts are experiencing an economic boom. Asia is the place to be.  That’s where the money is, and speaking Mandarin will open more doors than you can ever imagine.

My advice: learn Mandarin, don’t be an ang mo.