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When it came to my language studies, I also played it safe. I chose a beginner’s class to review the four tones of Modern Chinese. Months earlier, in Montreal, I had done a brutal summer intensive class. The summer intensive burned through a mountain of material and my head still awhirl, I felt a review was in order. Ironically, the teacher in Montreal bore an uncanny resemblance to the Dalai Lama and when I mentioned it, he replied he was an actor who had played His Holiness in film and television.

Spoken Chinese has a musical quality and this is due to the four tones. Learning them is crucial because certain words are exactly the same but for the fact their tones are different. “Sweet” and “soup” are both “tang” but “soup” has a high tone while “sweet” has an ascending tone. I once asked for sugar for my coffee only to be surprised with a bowl of minestrone.

Learning Modern Chinese would be useful for research. Depending on the age of the Tibetans I talked to, people might speak both Chinese and Tibetan. Many younger Tibetans are bilingual. One of the young masters, the 17th Karmapa, grew up in Tibet and fled at the age of 14. As a result, he is fluent in Chinese and will often cite texts from the Chinese Buddhist canon. In a similar manner, fluency in Modern Chinese would open avenues for my Phd. Chinese and Taiwanese scholars have written extensively on Tibetan culture and religion and their work would be helpful.