Now I come to wonder. Have you noticed that the chinese department just love to use the word "roots" and "5000 years of history and culture" to persuade us not to abandon chinese? Somehow, even if pupils still don't love chinese, they would somehow feel guilty to abandon chinese. After, it contains their roots. But is that really such an important thing?

Or have you heard your teachers say that it is really sad for people to abandon chinese, because then they would have no identity. They try to identify themselves with the caucasians, yet the caucasians would never identify themselves with the english-speaking chinese. To them, that is tragic.

It seems that these statements seem to have risen more through passion than logic. If you think about it, one doesn't really need any connection to his roots. Orphans live pretty fine. So do the children from mixed heritage background. Do they have roots? Well they do, but to them their roots isn't so clearly defined. So is that tragic? No? So perhaps being unable to find one's roots isn't as tragic as choosing not to identify with one? I cannot see the logic in that.

It is weird that just because you have yellow skin, it means you would have to identify with the events that happened to people with yellow skin. Well of course it is nice to identify with a person just by looking at the exterior, but that is quite superficial isn't it?

I admit that the chinese culture have great things. It is natural for people to have experienced great things to want to share it with the others. However, in my opinion, that should not be forced. After failing to convince people that chinese is great, they try to brainwash people into thinking that abandoning chinese is bad. It's like saying, "Would you like to try this? It is great! No? You suck!"

There only seem to be pragmatic reasons(ie, opportunities in china, your chances of getting into a good school etc.). i really don't think that there are any altruistic reasons for focing people to study chinese when they know in their bones they hate it. As one senior said, "They put us through years of hell studying chinese and they expect us to like it."

Well of course that is his opinion. I personally don't hate chinese. However, i don't like the way they brainwash people into thinking that people who don't study their mother tongue plainly suck. Our comprehensions, cloze passages and summaries are full of essays trying to convince us to embrace chinese. Well, the language they use is good, but the reasoning is still faulty. Someone give me an altruistic reason to study chinese if i hate it please.