Nearly ten years after coming to China, after working for the Shanghai Hilton as Concierge, United Airlines as ticket agent, and for a Corning Inc. joint-venture project my working days in China were numbered. The Chinese workers had begun completing their courses in international management and had started to remove their blue and green suits to put on a white collar and tie. I could feel the need of the situation was gradually moving from foreign wage earners, like myself, to these newly trained local wage earners. The idea of returning to America at the time did not seem right. I had experienced and learned too much, a new language and the basics of dealing in a foreign culture. However, these things are intangible thus would be next to impossible to demonstrate without an "endorsement" of some kind.
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Ten plus years in China and a knack for language allowed me the right ingredients to learn Mandarin. With this I was able to pass the State Mandarin Proficiency Exam (HSK) which allowed me to attend university without any further Mandarin training. I decided that my "endorsement" was to be a degree in something pertaining to China, this would allow me to advance in the language and add to the knowledge I had already attained. It would also allow me a whole new perspective on the China which I had come to know. My interests led me toward Minority language and culture and through much consideration, and guidance from one Tibetan friend, I chose to attend Inner Mongolia University in Huhhot. I was to be the first foreign student to receive a degree in Mongolian Language and Literature.
July 1995 was the beginning of a whole new life for me in China, what would come of it I could not say, all I knew was that I must go through with it, and I did. After settling down in Huhhot I began my Mongolian classes at the university. For the first year, my teacher taught me with traditional Mongolian primers which gave me a good base in the traditional written language, it may be interesting to note that there is a substantially large difference between traditional written and spoken Mongolian. During the second year, I began to learn grammar and the rules behind the spoken language. From the beginning, I felt sure that I would be able to learn this language within one to two years, however after the second year I was still feeling as if I had only scratched the surface. I was constantly amazed at the beauty and expressiveness of the language. At times I would find that through learning Mongolian I was relearning my own language, reorganizing my own world view.
