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Comment by gjkood | Hacker News Reader

Actually, buying Bunnie's "The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen" [1] was what motivated me to make the trip. I was motivated enough to spent 7+ months learning basic Mandarin before making the trip. Not to mention the WIRED videos on Shenzhen featuring Bunnie [2].

Learning the Mandarin number system made negotiating prices a breeze.

I just got the Hardware Hacker a month or so ago. Great read.

[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-gui...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6F_ApUq-c

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I made audio files of all words and phrases in "The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen" and posted it here: https://soundcloud.com/sexycyborg/sets/shenzhen_bunnie-huang

This is awesome. Would love to visit China and learn basic mandarin.

Visited Shenzhen a couple years ago and was blown away at the scope. Sprawling supermarkets of state-of-the-art electronics! Met folks who were finding suppliers for their kickstarter projects... so cool.

Since Hong Kong is still (for all practical purposes) not really under full Chinese rule, Beijing is pouring gobs of support into making Shenzhen the world's electronics marketplace.

Fun fact: Shenzhen is home of the 2nd tallest building in the world (after Dubai).

  >> I was motivated enough to spent 7+ months learning basic Mandarin

That is impressive.

I have tried learning Mandarin, and found that in the same amount of time that you could be communicating (at a very basic level) in another language (even one considered 'hard' like Japanese), with Mandarin I am still trying to get tones right.

I definitely did not learn it on my own or through self study.

I attended Mandarin classes at the San Jose Learning Center. (http://www.sanjoselearningcenter.com/mandarin.php)

A special shout-out to my fantastic instructor Larry Xue.

It is not easy but it has changed my life and outlook.

Tones are hard but far less important than people make out. If you can copy someone else's sound, you will eventually just get tones right automatically. This is how Chinese learn. There's no need to learn them formally. (Source: 16 years, native English speaker, fluent Mandarin, some capacity with multiple tonal languages + dialects)

What was your path to getting started?

(from beginner to being able to make basic conversation)

Alcohol.

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