I suppose everyone who comes to live andwork in China has a notion to learn thelanguage. We all have this vision of ourselveschatting fluently to 1.3 billion Chinese and beingaccepted among them like a long-lost brother orsister. Some of us have a background oflanguage learning which gives us the confidenceto imagine that we will be able to add Putonghuato our repertoire in a matter of weeks if not days.So where did I go wrong?