Language Discrimination

When I was a little kid, I used to admire the educated people especially in my community because most of them lived a good life and were able to provide their families as well as to enjoy their lives to the maximum level. They had many financial investments and could travel to any part of the world to make more investments. Generally, they never lacked job opportunities. This encouraged me to travel to China to continue with my studies in the mechanical engineering. I flew to China accompanied by the few Chinese that were travelling back to their country from America. I sat near two Chinese ladies that were talking for a long time staring at me with suspicion. This made me conclude that they had been referring to me in their talks, and this made me be a bit nervous. I started wondering how my life would be in China where strangers were normally not welcomed since they believed foreigners always going there to grab their job opportunities. When we alighted, I remember asking one Chinese gentleman in English where I could find a taxi taking me to college. The man pretended that he did not understand English and just went away. I asked the other  man, and this time he listened to me at least and helped me to cope with the resistance.

Since I am a Christian who loves Lord, I used to attend one of the Chinese Christian churches where l had noticed that discrimination was all over the country, even in the church. The Chinese Christians were allowed to occupy all seats in the church, while those speaking English like me were standing during the whole service. As I left the church one afternoon I went to a consumer shop and picked the plastic soda as I had been thirsty. The shop manager noticed that I asked the shop attendant on the price of the product in English. When I was going to pay, the manager instructed the cashier to first serve his fellow Chinese customers and to attend to me later.

In the engineering class, we were only the two American students. I loved netball very much, and I could not stay in China without joining one of the netball clubs at the Campus. I received a cold welcome as most of ladies did not want me to play with them as I had been a stranger that did not speak Chinese .  I could not understand the connection between playing netball and speaking Chinese especially at that moment when the club had a tournament with the competing campuses, and I had already informed the players that I was a good player and loved the netball with the big passion. This really discouraged me, and I decided to find another netball club outside the school that was made of English speaking players.

After finishing my engineering course, my wish was to firstly practice in China before going back to America. I wrote my application to three companies; I only received an interview invitation from one of them. After entering the interview room, the first question even before being greeted by an interviewer was, “Which language do you speak?” I told him that I spoke English, a bit French, and I have already enrolled for the Chinese language class. He responded coldly and told me that in his Company they considered communication to be a key factor towards their success; and he was sorry he could not hire me. This really humiliated me, and I clearly understood that the language discrimination is all over the world, not only in America.

I later understood from my former Chinese classmates that the job applicants with English names never receive callbacks if to compare with those having Chinese names, even if those and those have the equal work experiences and equal education levels. The interviewer also told me that the Chinese government required every foreigner to be very smart in his or her communication skills (Kaufmann 2).

I don’t lose hope, and as I continued learning the Chinese language, I wrote many applications to various companies but I had only received the same cold responses just because I did not speak Chinese. This reminded me of my Dad telling us several times about that the best place to live in was where someone had been born. One day I tried to go personally to a Human Resource Manager at the Car Assembling Company. The manager told me that though they had not advertised any vacancy, they really xould hire only the Chinese speaking candidate.

Every event in China really bored me because any moment I would receive the embarrassment from the Chinese fellows. Later, I went back to America with the strong affirmation of my Dad’s statement that the best place to live in was where you had been born. However, I continued with my studies in China, and I faced the language discrimination every minute being there. I went back to my country where I believed I would be comfortable, since I was no longer discriminated because I could not speak Chinese. Today, I am a rich lady as I have been employed to one of the biggest Car Assembling Company without any difficulties and the language discrimination. I live the happy life that I could have ever wished and admired before since I was a little girl. I will never forget any moment I spent in China as everywhere I went to I had been discriminated just due to the fact that I did not know how to speak the Chinese language. My experience derived from China changed my relationships with those people speaking a different language than me. I like helping them, and I do not want them to undergo such bad experiences in my country like I had had while being in China.