America has quite a few embassies in a quite a few other cntuorys, and most of those other cntuorys don't speak Chinese. Stick applied for a job in the foreign service, NOT a job at the American embassy in China. I don't think the US gov't hires people off the street (not even Stick, sorry Meg) I imagine they provide language training as well as job training. If you've read the blog, and not trolled in bash foreigners, you'll know Stick has lived in Italy and Germany, so he might be assigned to a country where he is already fluent.