It"s gone on long enough: I"ve been in China for six months and existed on a vocabulary of roughly 500 Chinese words plus a handful of characters to get by. Since many foreigners living full time in Beijing speak an impressive amount of Mandarin, my relative ineptitude is begin- ning to make me feel like a social pariah in expat circles as well as severely limiting my ability to befriend local people. It makes me highly envious when I see a Westerner and a local happily chatting to each other in Mandarin and, quite frankly, I feel rather rude that I"m unable to do the same. Many of the younger Chinese generation speak brilliant English of course, but this is no excuse: I need to improve my Mandarin skills, fast.