If you’ve been here long enough, you may have heard the advice that the best way to learn Chinese is to get yourself a pillow dictionary. A Taiwanese lover with whom to converse in Chinese. Someone to help you navigate your cultural dysphoria. Seems like sound advice. Not always.

I had one of those. When we were dating, I was so proud. Not because she was beautiful. She was. I was prideful of my amazing Chinese language ability.

I hadn’t been in Taiwan very long and had not studied Chinese very much, yet I had a girlfriend who I exclusively spoke Chinese with. Two or three days a week I spoke nothing but Chinese. Sometimes she would phone in the night, and from a dead sleep, I would wake up and speak Chinese before even beginning to think. I thought: Wow, Chinese is surprisingly easy to learn. How about that I’m not just gifted in the bedroom, I’m excellent at languages too.

I was awesome!

After we broke up, I started speaking Chinese with more Taiwanese people than just her. I was shocked by how bad their Chinese was. Most of them didn’t understand a single word of their own language.

I would be talking to them in my perfect Chinese and they would look at me like they couldn’t tell if I was speaking English, German, or Russian—but they were positive I wasn’t speaking Chinese. I was truly shocked and genuinely thought, what the fuck is wrong with these people? I could not believe how bad Taiwanese people‘s Chinese language skills were…

… because my ex-girlfriend never told me I hadn’t really been speaking Chinese…

…I’d been speaking English using Chinese words—a coded language only she understood.

Educational value…nil.