In Firefly, everyone is fluently bi-lingual in English and Chinese 500 years in the future. As China gains more and more ground, it’ll be increasingly important for Americans to learn to speak, read, and write Chinese.

In studying Korean 15 years ago, I learned a few Chinese characters (at one time, I knew 1500 of them), but I don’t remember most of them now. And I certainly never learned to pronounce them in Chinese.