A Complete Guide to Failing the HSK 6
The HSK, China’s test of Mandarin proficiency for foreigners is your key to being considered the Jedi Master of Lao Wais.
Just imagine sipping a frosty Carlsberg at the Smile Bar in scenic Quanzhou. Hotel California softly plays in the background, and a satisfied look comes across your face, as you cheekily slip your HSK level into the conversation. You. Are. The. Man.
More than any wild stories about “What Changsha was like back in ’95” or “I remember when beer was cheaper than water”, more than a Green Card or owning an apartment in Minhang, the HSK 6 certificate marks you as an elite presence in the foreigner community. A man amongst boys.
HSK 6 is the black belt, the green lightsaber, the Patriots football helmet of grizzled China veterans. It shouts your Waiguo Pengyou awesomeness loudly from the highest rooftop, more than any other event or experience. Forget the heart attack at age 32 or that you’re licensed to drive a forklift in Henan. HSK 6 is the holy grail of Lao Wai-dom. Chinese folks will agree that you’re Da Shan’s cousin. And when you walk into the room… well…. foreigners will swear it’s the second coming of Peter Hessler!
My guide to this test will give you all the information you need to know to be inducted into the Foreigner Hall of Fame. I passed HSK 5 with flying colors and failed HSK 6 three separate times – twice because of my own low score! So, sit back, pour yourself a cup of Pu Er Tea (probably about time to use that disc of tea that’s been your cabinet for 4 years) and enjoy the complete guide to failing the HSK 6.
Testing your mindset
You’ve heard that IQ tests and the SAT have cultural biases against minorities, well the HSK has a bias against you! Even more than testing your knowledge of the spoken and written Chinese language, the HSK 6 is a test of your cultural mindset. How do approach a question or problem? For example, if there is a multiple-choice question – A, B, C or D and you have to guess completely, keep in mind that the test takers are trying to teach more than test you. If when you look at the answers and ‘C’ pops out to you as something your elderly neighbor might say to you condescendingly when you’re discussing ‘cultural differences’ – it’s probably the answer. Likewise, if answer ‘D’ seems kind of negative or gives you the sneaking feeling it’s somehow a loss of face for somebody (somewhere, somehow), then don’t answer ‘D’!
In summary, knowledge related to the world’s largest Buddha that’s also attached to a cliff over a fresh water lake, or yet another obscure fact about the architecture of some random building from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, shouldn’t matter and has absolutely zero relevancy to your ability to flourish in China. In all my years in China, no one ever wanted to be my friend because I could tell you facts from Du Fu’s early childhood or about the development of Shenzhen’s public transportation system. But the good people at Confucius Institute want you to give a damn about those things and if you don’t you probably won’t pass HSK 6
Pretest
I took the test three times, once in Shanghai and twice in Detroit. The first go around in Shanghai I was planning to study for months in advance, but had just become a new father and was heavily medicating by binge watching episodes of Breaking Bad. I must have slept 45 minutes total the night before the test and could feel myself bombing throughout the duration of the exam. Even then, I still almost passed…
When I moved back to the US, I decided to try the test again, this time at Wayne State University in Detroit. I showed up to the test center, early one morning. It was a miserably cold day and was pouring rain. I waited and waited, but the proctor never showed up to the testing center. Later, she admitted that when she saw someone was taking the HSK 6 in Detroit she assumed it was a mistake and slept in that morning.
The third time I took the test I failed again and now the soil of my failure can bear the fruit of your wisdom. To be fully prepared I highly recommend memorizing the entire 5000-character vocabulary list. If that gets a bit tedious you could also try watching grass grow or the Detroit Tigers having batting practice. You’ll also want to take several practice tests in the days leading up to the test, so that you don’t pull a mental hammy.
There are three sections on the test, each worth 100 points. A total score of 180 out of 300 means you passed the test. Here is a breakdown of the sections of the test, followed by tricks and tips from me.[1]
Listening (听力)
This is the section to rack up as many points as possible, the easiest section of the test.
Reading (阅读)
The four-part reading section is easy to get bogged down in. The key here is that you’ll run out of time to answer each question thoughtfully and so it makes sense to focus on the sections where getting more points is possible. If you are one of those nerd-hermit types that memorized all 5000 words, you can skip what I’ve written here and go to the next section. (Or consider what socialization might feel like).
Part 1 is basically ‘find the mistake in this sentence’. Part 2 is filling in multiple blanks with words that all look pretty good to your lao wai brain (都差不多吧!). Part 3 is matching answers to blanks in short stories. Part 4 is questions about half page articles. My bold take is that you should start with part 3, then do part 4, then part 2, then part 1 you can basically fill in by guessing. Part 1 is so difficult, so convoluted and confusing that you’d have to be Jesuit missionary super-genius to figure it out.[2]
Writing (写作)
This section involves reading a short article for 10 minutes and then writing a 400-character summary of the article. After the time for reading the article is finished, it disappears and test takers must summarize and create a short article from memory. This was a section I scored quite well on the first time I took the test, even though I was somewhat unfamiliar with the topic to be written about it. The second time I took the test, the topic was healthcare and I was so excited. I spent years working in the healthcare system in China and figured I could breeze through with my knowledge of this specialized vocabulary. Unfortunately, I discovered several annoying things about this section.
First, you had to input each character of a word one by one into the text box. The system did not allow predictive texting (e.g. yin wei (因为)– when you typed yin, it didn’t pop up with wei as the next likely character.) Also in this example the text did not necessarily show the specific ‘wei’ you were looking for when you input the pin yin into the computer. For example it may have given you 伟 instead of 为 as the next character listed.
Besides that, the system made you scroll through a list of characters for ‘wei’ that were not necessarily in order of common usage. I think this is the test creators’ way of not making the computer-based test far easier than the written test, where you would have to write characters from memory and by hand, with no prompts given by the computer. However, one unintended result of this is that even when you do know the next character, input of it is very slow, as you have to scroll a list for each character. This made even writing 400 characters by the end of the time allotted a difficult task. I think I only made it to 300 something.
Third, once you input a word or character, there is no going back and editing what you have written without deleting all subsequent text you’ve put down. For example, if I’ve already written three paragraphs and I notice an error in the first sentence of the first paragraph, there is no way for me to edit that mistake without deleting all three paragraphs and having to write them all over again. With the slow pace of character input, this essentially ensures that you will not make any edits to what you’ve written.
The writing part appears tantalizingly easy, but alas none of the crutches you can use in everyday life, like predictive texting on phone or computer, are available. It’s like trying to type a term paper using only two pointer fingers.
Conclusion
The HSK 6 is crucial if you want to get into a Chinese University, Graduate School, or land that big promotion at work. But more importantly, it can propel you into the pantheon Old China Hand Hall of Fame. Pearl Buck and Norman Bethune are waiting for you to join them. So is Crazy Marty, who has worked at the same kindergarten in Changzhou since 1986. Much like Star Trek, you too can boldly go where no white person has gone before. Good luck, God bless, and Jia You!
REFERENCES:
1. https://mandarinmania.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/HSK-6-Test.pdf
2. Spence, JD (1984) The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Penguin Books.