When commitment is what it takes to get you through

As we are approaching the end of August, how is your story coming along?

The closing date for Chinese Writing Contest, Sep 16, is inching up, it’s worth reminding all aspiring Chinese language writers that, sooner or later, all you need to do is to sit there and struggle. 

Indeed, at one point, all writers have to do is to sit there and struggle.

The first time I heard this line was from a musician who was talking about his process of writing music. I thought, wow, no one could get more committed than that! It is a different way of saying “Never give up”. And this level of commitment is also super important for writers who write with words. 

Today, compared to watching streaming or scrolling through social media, everything else seems to be a commitment. 

Wherever we go and whatever we do, it is hard for us to pay attention to things other than the tiny screen in our hands. We are drowned in all kinds of entertainment that is easily available and consumable. That makes doing anything that requires some kind of self discipline hard. 

Reading, something that could give us so much stimulation and pleasure, has become a commitment. 

There was this guy who boasted on social media about how he tricked his son to read books. He gave his son a dollar for each book he read. “I have given him 12 dollars so far this year.” he boasted, “The best investment I have ever made.” 

That is sad. 

Given how smart children are today, his son may soon demand a raise, asking for two dollars for a book, citing that the inflation pushed up prices for candies. Sooner or later, this dad will have to stop offering financial reward. Will his son continue reading books? I doubt it.

This is the wrong kind of incentive and the wrong kind of encouragement. 

Unfortunately, this guy on social media is not the only one. It happens in teaching and learning Chinese as well. 

Around 2015 - 2016, there was a hype for learning Chinese. Barack Obama, a former president of the United States, called for one million students to learn Chinese in the US by 2020. The UK soon followed, calling its students to learn Chinese. 

As a Chinese teacher, I was all for it, except that this hype was built on the wrong incentive. 

According to The Economist, an international survey taken in 2016 showed that the most common reason people studied Chinese was to improve their employment prospects. It fitted very well with the narrative of China’s economic growth at the time. 

However, back then people couldn’t foresee how world affairs change. 

When China’s economy shows a slightly sign of slowing down, due to either domestic reasons or international tension, the reason for learning disappears.

For people who have spent years learning Chinese for future job prospects, they are likely to find their time wasted.

Today, as I am updating this article in 2025, the West-China tension has inched higher with the West trying to stall China’s progress. Coincidentally, according to SCMP, fewer people are learning Chinese. The connection is obvious.

Therefore, we need to re-think why we learn things, to be specific, why we learn Chinese. Monetary incentives are very short lived. There must be something else in learning itself.

I hope Chinese Writing Contest presents a different kind of incentive for people to learn Chinese, especially a different incentive to learn how to read and write Chinese characters.

Reading and writing are both the ends and the means of learning in itself. Reading asks us to spend hours with a book and engage with its text, while writing asks us to spend even more hours with blank pages. 

The good news is that, while we read and write, divesting us from all the social media feeds, we have a rare and wonderful opportunity to reach deep down into our soul and search for that spark.

Reading and writing are no longer taken for granted. These simple activities require some commitment nowadays. And commitment takes courage, which could be as simple as sitting there, struggling.