Arrogant and Chinese

So I suppose I'm a little arrogant. But then again isn't everyone? I have absolutely no problem for people telling me what to do in areas that I clearly don't know anything about (or clearly know much less than those around me at least). Architecture? Please, teach me, I beg you. Flags? Know very little. Business? Again with the same. But don't come up to me and know something clearly less than I do and try to teach me about it. That's ridiculous. Yesterday I had a woman trying to show off how much she knew about using the internet in China. Hmmm .... wrong thing to show off around me. It's like someone trying to teach me how to live in China. If I had never been there that would be great, I would probably welcome the opportunity to learn. But I lived there three years and this woman hadn't even been there a semester. Give me a break.

Anyways, so much for my arrogance. Many people don't understand two things about me, both related to Chinese but in indirect ways. One people don't understand when I say that my Chinese class is hard for me. "You know Chinese why should it be hard?" Yes, I can speak every day Chinese but that means little to nothing in terms of learning how to write and read Chinese and even with speaking if you sat me down to watch a news broadcast (in Chinese) the probability that I would understand is very little. The second thing people don't understand is why I'm learning Japanese. Believe it or not I'm learning Japanese to help with my Chinese (among other reasons). Japanese has at least three different writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji (also Romanji and a few others that aren't "as important"). Kanji comes from old Chinese, it's literally old Chinese characters. Some of these are still used in today's Chinese but some aren't. So the ones that are used in today's Chinese I can learn and the others will be helpful if I have to read historical texts in Chinese. Most anthropologists or people who study Japanese and Chinese know this but the every day person doesn't tend to.