<p>see if you can find a way to let them know that you’re cantonese and while it helps some you were in no way fluent in chinese previously.
the way i see this is that when adcoms see that you’re chinese (of any kind, they can’t differentiate) and taking chinese, they assume that you’re already relatively fluent and therefore taking chinese as the easy way out. At our school, most of the many chinese people take chinese and for them it’s really easy. However, I imagine that adcoms would look for people who look to challenge them and would assume that you weren’t by taking chinese as a chinese-american. So I would definitely try to explain it without making it look like an excuse.</p>