Xiaohongshu
2025-01-16 16:16:01.841322+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
A while back for work I was traveling to Hong Kong, and even into China, and it was always impressive to me how many people there spoke English. I was, for a while, trying to learn enough written Chinese to at least be able to flag down the right cart in a dim sum restaurant (I have eaten way more types of intestine than I ever thought I would), and when people saw me practicing glyphs they'd engage me to practice their English with an American. A few people tried to teach me some Cantonese words, but generally shook their heads sadly at my pronunciation and difficulty hearing some of the sounds.
So I find it very amusing that Americans are learning at least written Chinese, if not Mandarin, because US social media companies decided that the best way to compete with a video platform was to dupe lawmakers into enacting a protectionist ban.