A Lifetime of Chinese

Cassandra Hill

SBS reporter Cassandra Hill started learning Chinese at Sydney University in 1989, at a time when everybody else was learning Japanese. After almost 20 years, she still can recall: "The main thing I remember about my Chinese classes at Sydney University was laughter."

When I started learning Chinese at Sydney University in 1989, no one could understand why. Not even my Singaporean-born boyfriend.

At that time, lecture theatres across Australia were crammed with hundreds of students wanting to learn Japanese.

‘JAPANESE SPEAKERS WANTED’ screamed the job ads.

Japan was shaping up as one of Australia’s biggest trading partners and everyone wanted a piece of the action. Every economics student with their eye on the future was signing up for Japanese.

And here I was - signing up to a class with just fifteen students - determined to study Chinese.

The main thing I remember about my Chinese classes at Sydney University was laughter.
It’s not like we didn’t take our studies seriously – we were all really keen! We spent endless hours being grilled on pronunciation, trying to wrap our tongues around the unfamiliar and rich sounds….poring over Classical Chinese characters, trying to make sense of ancient poetry and making fools of ourselves as we attempted to contribute in-class, struggling to follow our teachers’ bullet-fast Chinese patter.

I was one of only three students from an Anglo background, in a class of students from Cantonese-speaking or Japanese backgrounds. It seemed like they had a slight head-start because they could at least understand the concept of reading characters – but other than that it felt like we were all in the same boat….and it made us laugh as we tried to learn, which created a great bond between us. I started to look forward to my Chinese lessons more than any other class at university.

We were lucky enough to be taught by the esteemed Dr Mabel Lee, one of Australia’s leading authorities on Chinese language and culture – and were visited by a Chinese poet who taught us for a term or two.

And the results spoke for themselves.

When it came time to graduate, we were all really sad to leave our Chinese class. I still have a photo taken on our last day. All of us, smiling into the camera, but knowing that we’d never be all together again.

After university, I focussed on trying to establish a career in television, studying a postgraduate degree in journalism – and my Chinese seemed to go by the wayside for a while.

Eventually, I landed a job at Australia’s multicultural broadcaster, SBS. It broadcasts TV and radio programs in nearly seventy different languages. As SBS often reports stories about China and Australia’s Chinese community, I thought it was the perfect time to resurrect my Chinese studies.

As my hours as a reporter are erratic and long, I couldn’t make it to evening classes, but the teacher at the local college agreed to give me private lessons. With Chinese now fresh in my mind, I was able to slowly use it as part of my work.

At the same time, my husband and I decided to plan our first trip to China. It was my dream to travel to this place I had been learning about for nearly fifteen years now. It was also my dream to file a TV report from China.

Luckily for me, I got my big break. Around the time I was thinking of going to China, Australia’s then Prime Minister, John Howard, was planning to attend the Boao Economic Forum on Hainan Island. SBS political correspondent was supposed to cover the Forum – but in the end, she couldn’t make it down to Hainan Island from Beijing – so, as I was already in Hainan, with all the right accreditation, I got to file the story!

I am still working on improving my Chinese, even though I have a young toddler these days. But now she’s learning Chinese along with me! I have bought her a cassette tape of children’s songs in Chinese – like ‘If you’re Happy and You Know It’ (‘Ruguo ni hen Gaoxing’) and she sings and claps along. She is not even two, but can say ‘Ni hao.’

Over the years, I have been asked a million times by different people –“So why Chinese? What made you study Chinese?”

Before, no one would really get it.

Now, as China and Australia’s relationship strengthens and businesses around the world try to forge ties with China - and as the world increasingly looks to China for the Olympic Games and beyond…..all of a sudden, no one is asking me that question anymore.

It’s great that Sydney University is launching the Confucius Institute – anything that fosters further understanding of Chinese language, history and culture in Australia is an idea worth pursuing.