I sometimes get asked what it's like to understand a foreign language.
It just occurred to me that the process is something like listening to familiar music on better and better quality headphones- progressively you hear things that you didn't even know were there before. And then you finally understand the lyrics, and can't quite imagine the time when you didn't understand them.
That's the best way I can describe it.
Showing posts with label chinese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chinese. Show all posts
Monday, November 22, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Done
I went back to Cairns last week to see the renovations. There was a letter for me from the university, containing my degree. A Bachelor of Arts majoring in Chinese and Philosophy.
It's taken a while to complete-four and a half years-and it didn't sink in at all. It was like finding an old birthday card that you'd forgotten about. This is probably because I didn't go to the ceremony, and for that there is a slightly longer story about how I thought I might stay for an honours year, and my dislike of ceremony in general.
So now what? Applications for the Taiwan programs don't really open until early next year. That gives me a couple of months more or less to myself. I'm going to focus on my Classical Chinese, since that's something that has pretty much been entirely neglected in my Chinese all this time. And I've been tarrying with Cantonese for a few months now, with some considerable progress, so I'll keep that up, and hopefully make a trip to HK, China and Taiwan before too long.
I'll probably write on here some more, too, keeping updates on good books and films. Speaking of which...
The Secret in Their Eyes is a brilliant film. It hit a range of emotions, and the actors brought a real depth to all of their roles.
Inception is also one I'd highly recommend. I saw it three times in two days.
Animal Kingdom should take a place amongst the very of Australian cinema. I saw it twice, the second time to gauge reactions from my friends. They all told me they'd never been so tense for such a long period in a film; this is consistent with my first viewing of it.
It's taken a while to complete-four and a half years-and it didn't sink in at all. It was like finding an old birthday card that you'd forgotten about. This is probably because I didn't go to the ceremony, and for that there is a slightly longer story about how I thought I might stay for an honours year, and my dislike of ceremony in general.
So now what? Applications for the Taiwan programs don't really open until early next year. That gives me a couple of months more or less to myself. I'm going to focus on my Classical Chinese, since that's something that has pretty much been entirely neglected in my Chinese all this time. And I've been tarrying with Cantonese for a few months now, with some considerable progress, so I'll keep that up, and hopefully make a trip to HK, China and Taiwan before too long.
I'll probably write on here some more, too, keeping updates on good books and films. Speaking of which...
The Secret in Their Eyes is a brilliant film. It hit a range of emotions, and the actors brought a real depth to all of their roles.
Inception is also one I'd highly recommend. I saw it three times in two days.
Animal Kingdom should take a place amongst the very of Australian cinema. I saw it twice, the second time to gauge reactions from my friends. They all told me they'd never been so tense for such a long period in a film; this is consistent with my first viewing of it.
Monday, June 15, 2009
May All Your Wishes Come True
I have this history exam tomorrow, which I thought was going to be the day after tomorrow. If I had known it was going to be so last minute I might not have gone in to uni today to hang out, but I'm kind of glad I went anyway. It's cold and rainy at the moment, which I actually quite like. This is probably because it is good weather for books, video games and films. And beef noodle soups from the Half-Time cafe in Sunnybank.
But I digress. It was raining when I was planning on walking back home from uni, so I took the ferry instead. They have some banal television program on for people who don't want to look at the awesome view of the river, and as my eyes were passing contemptuously over the screen I saw "Words of Wisdom" in large comic-book letters next to a broadly drawn tree. And then the following faded in to the center of the screen:
"May all your wishes come true." (Ancient Chinese Curse)
This sounds off to me. The only way I know of saying something like this in Chinese is 万事如意 wanshiruyi, and I'm pretty sure it's never used as a curse.
I mean, seriously. I could be totally wrong, but...what kind of Fu Manchu bullshit are they trying to pull here? Even if this was an ancient Chinese curse, it would still be stupid. Can you imagine the bearded villain wriggling his fingers whilst uttering some incantation, to harness the forces of darkness so that the hero... loses some weight, meets a nice girl, gets the kid through college, becomes an astronaught and dies peacefully surrounded by family and friends?
It's moronic, is what it is. "You might not know the entire consequences that would follow from a particular set of conditions" or "If you could see the entire chain of events, you would not wish for it" seems to be the point they're trying to make. Which is actually quite different from getting everything that you wish for.
Let's assume that there really is a curse you can make, which will bring about the actualisation of all of someone's wishes. Firstly, you can't wish for something that you have no conception of. That's not what wishing is. Now, say that drinking a beer would entail stumbling across the street which would entail getting hit by a bus. Unless I harbour a deathwish, it's unlikely that getting hit by a bus is one of my wishes. In fact, I probably would wish for the non-occurence of that event.
Now assume that I didn't know about the causal necessity which would bring about my flattening, and we've established that you can't wish for something unknown. So suppose I wish to have a beer, and I wish that I don't get hit by a bus. If some asshole has put a curse on me so that all of my wishes come true, he clearly hasn't thought it through very well. I will drink the beer. And I will not get hit by a bus; non-contradiction ensures this.
At which point, I like to think that the prick who cursed me has a Cronenberg moment, looking something like this:
In fact, if that curse existed, I would want someone to try it on me. Because one of my wishes is that those dropkicks who try and justify ridiculous ideas by claiming that the idea is ancient and Chinese will have their heads explode. Not to mention all the other awesome states which would be brought about.
Not such an ingenius curse now, is it? My points here are that a) most 'ancient Chinese' stuff is not that ancient, not that Chinese, or just plain fabrication, and b) rationality doesn't discriminate.
But I digress. It was raining when I was planning on walking back home from uni, so I took the ferry instead. They have some banal television program on for people who don't want to look at the awesome view of the river, and as my eyes were passing contemptuously over the screen I saw "Words of Wisdom" in large comic-book letters next to a broadly drawn tree. And then the following faded in to the center of the screen:
"May all your wishes come true." (Ancient Chinese Curse)
This sounds off to me. The only way I know of saying something like this in Chinese is 万事如意 wanshiruyi, and I'm pretty sure it's never used as a curse.
I mean, seriously. I could be totally wrong, but...what kind of Fu Manchu bullshit are they trying to pull here? Even if this was an ancient Chinese curse, it would still be stupid. Can you imagine the bearded villain wriggling his fingers whilst uttering some incantation, to harness the forces of darkness so that the hero... loses some weight, meets a nice girl, gets the kid through college, becomes an astronaught and dies peacefully surrounded by family and friends?
It's moronic, is what it is. "You might not know the entire consequences that would follow from a particular set of conditions" or "If you could see the entire chain of events, you would not wish for it" seems to be the point they're trying to make. Which is actually quite different from getting everything that you wish for.
Let's assume that there really is a curse you can make, which will bring about the actualisation of all of someone's wishes. Firstly, you can't wish for something that you have no conception of. That's not what wishing is. Now, say that drinking a beer would entail stumbling across the street which would entail getting hit by a bus. Unless I harbour a deathwish, it's unlikely that getting hit by a bus is one of my wishes. In fact, I probably would wish for the non-occurence of that event.
Now assume that I didn't know about the causal necessity which would bring about my flattening, and we've established that you can't wish for something unknown. So suppose I wish to have a beer, and I wish that I don't get hit by a bus. If some asshole has put a curse on me so that all of my wishes come true, he clearly hasn't thought it through very well. I will drink the beer. And I will not get hit by a bus; non-contradiction ensures this.
At which point, I like to think that the prick who cursed me has a Cronenberg moment, looking something like this:
In fact, if that curse existed, I would want someone to try it on me. Because one of my wishes is that those dropkicks who try and justify ridiculous ideas by claiming that the idea is ancient and Chinese will have their heads explode. Not to mention all the other awesome states which would be brought about.
Not such an ingenius curse now, is it? My points here are that a) most 'ancient Chinese' stuff is not that ancient, not that Chinese, or just plain fabrication, and b) rationality doesn't discriminate.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Exotic Tattoos
Once I was sitting in a Cairns cafe with my then-girlfriend, who was literate in Chinese. She burst out laughing in the midst of our breakfast and I turned around to see what was up. I saw a tough looking bloke in a singlet, who had a Chinese character tattooed on his shoulder. Here's what must have happened:
***
This bloke goes into the tattoo parlor and asks the artist, "Give me the Chinese character for 'man'"
The artist looks up his folder for the correct character. There it is, man. And so the shoulder goes under the knife, ink goes in, and all is as it should be.
Or is it?
See, the thing was that it was not the character that means man, but the character that was pronounced man. With the fourth tone. Written: 慢
And that word means slow.
The artist looks up his folder for the correct character. There it is, man. And so the shoulder goes under the knife, ink goes in, and all is as it should be.
Or is it?
See, the thing was that it was not the character that means man, but the character that was pronounced man. With the fourth tone. Written: 慢
And that word means slow.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Looking Back On It
Blindness is an excellent film, I went to see it on Tuesday. It was only showing at the Portside cinema, which meant an hour on the ferry. I got on at five in the afternoon, which must be the perfect time for riding ferries, with no glare, a slight breeze, and sky of shifting colours. I looked back out onto the river and had time to think about the workshop in Suzhou.
***
The middle of an undergraduate semester doesn't seem like an obvious time to be travelling to China, but the majority of my trips there are in fact mid-semester. I've always been nervous when going on sponsored trips, worrying about whether I'm qualified or whether I'll know anyone there. The last two trips- Grandad Wen's delegation, and Hanyu Qiao- ended up being far cooler than I had imagined would be possible, and a good number of my friends are people I met through those trips. So, though harboring self-doubt as always, this time I also had some feeling that it would be worth the worrying.
And it really was.
And it really was.
***
I had an early start, waking up before four am for the Brisbane to Sydney, then Sydney to Shanghai flight. I was on the same flight as Australian author Julia Leigh, who was going to have her novel The Hunter translated into Chinese. Julia was the first person I met involved with the workshop, and she was totally cool and very friendly. Our flight was delayed for an hour or so because of some torrential rain, during which time I asked lots of questions about the process of creative writing. On the plane I watched In Bruges which I really liked, and two other films which clearly didn't have much of an effect on me since I can't remember them. Oh, one was a Chinese film called Mi Guo, apparently called Lost, Indulgence in English which sounds a bit too similar to Lust, Caution in my view, Lost and Caution going together and Lust, Indulgence also quite similar.
***
As we walked out to the arrival hall in Shanghai there was a driver with a Penguin sign waiting for us, which was damn cool. To get off the plane and have a people-mover reader with driver and tea and water inside, that's the best way to arrive in Shanghai. I think it was about two hours drive to the hotel in Suzhou, the first time I've done that drive at night. There were nice rural houses along the way with candles burning in the yards. We arrived exhausted at about eleven, which is one in the morning on Australian time, which meant I think twenty one hours after I had woken up. You'd think I'd have gone straight to sleep but after I had put my bags down I felt a surge of excitement at being back in China, and the airline food hadn't sat that well, so I hit the street nearby to get a late-night meal. After a bit of walking I found a Sichuan restaurant where I sat by the window with a novel, ate Kung-Pao Chicken and Tomato-Egg Soup and rice, and the waiter came over and chatted to me about why I was in Suzhou and so on. It was nice to be there for a reason. Some North-Eastern guys were head-rollingly drunk at the table nearby, and given the naming arrangements of "Second Brother" and so on I got the feeling they might be hoodlums. I hoped so anyway. There was much swearing. I went back at one am China time and slept well.
***
I had been told that I had to register downstairs between 10 and 4, and I woke up at seven with a lot of energy. I had a good breakfast of congee and warm soymilk, and went out to see what the city was like. There was a wonderful street just nearby, a Historical Street in fact.
It was really lively when I walked down it mid-morning, in search of a phone-card. I walked the length of the historic street without finding any of the newspaper-phone-beverage-internet-sage carts so common outside the fourth ring road in Beijing. After I crossed a busy road I spoke to an approachable looking guy who had kittens in with the eggs he was selling.
He pointed me in the right direction where I spoke to a woman who had one phone-card left. I wanted another one for Julia so I went off walking in the opposite direction and found an official China Mobile store. It's actually less convenient buying the legitimate phone-cards, and I sat there as people argued about whether my drivers license was acceptable to use as identification.
I had some dumplings for an early lunch, and the place was packed. When I got back to the hotel, registration had opened. As I signed my name I saw two familiar names- Brendan and Jim, from Beijing. Then on the elevator up I met Nicky, who contributes to Paper Republic, and whose posts I've always enjoyed. The world suddenly felt much smaller and friendlier.
He pointed me in the right direction where I spoke to a woman who had one phone-card left. I wanted another one for Julia so I went off walking in the opposite direction and found an official China Mobile store. It's actually less convenient buying the legitimate phone-cards, and I sat there as people argued about whether my drivers license was acceptable to use as identification.
I had some dumplings for an early lunch, and the place was packed. When I got back to the hotel, registration had opened. As I signed my name I saw two familiar names- Brendan and Jim, from Beijing. Then on the elevator up I met Nicky, who contributes to Paper Republic, and whose posts I've always enjoyed. The world suddenly felt much smaller and friendlier.
I spent the remaining hours before the opening ceremonies reading my excerpt of Wang Gang's The Curse of Forbes (which I would actually say as "The Forbes Curse" but that's just me). After some confusion I found the room where I had to be, meeting Duncan along the way, a very funny and friendly guy with a BBC voice. The talks kicked off with simultaneous interpreting, followed by dinner, followed by readings from the authors. All very cool, and the Chinese authors in particular were very entertaining not just in their readings but in what they said preceding. By this stage I'd met fellow Australian Paul, as well as Alice and Skye. I knew by now that it was going to be an awesome week.
***
We tried different paces in the translation sessions. For the first day we didn't get past the first two sentences. Eric had told me that there'd be a lot of discussion- argument, even- over how to express a sentence, but I didn't realise it would be to that extent. Such talks were invaluable though, to revealing the limitless ways a sentence could be understood and expressed. We later split up into groups, which was faster, though we still had to explain our choices, which is something you don't often do when you're translating by yourself. There was a great session on film subtitling- I ended up having breakfast with the director of the documentary the next morning- and my group managed to slip some Northern English phrases into the clip. Oh aye.
In the evenings we'd head down the historic street to the Bookworm cafe, which had a pretty good selection of beers. I think we drank them out of Boddingtons and Leffe.
In the evenings we'd head down the historic street to the Bookworm cafe, which had a pretty good selection of beers. I think we drank them out of Boddingtons and Leffe.
***
And so the week- days translating fiction, interspersed with buffet lunches and dinners, and drinks in the evening by the canal- went, and I look back at it, and it has an odd temporal distortion. It doesn't quite feel like a week, but more like a montage in a film. It's rare when a period of time is composed solely of curiosity, friends, learning, relaxation, but that's what the week was.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Lust and Caution
When I was taking formal classes of Chinese as a second language, the approach to a new text of any sort was usually one of caution. It seems to me that it's because the use of 'strategies' in the classroom. It invariably involved a person by person recitation of the text, and since it's often hard (especially as a beginner) to get the reading right of a new Sinograph, there was a tense atmosphere during the process. Who was going to be the unlucky person who got dealt a new character that they didn't have the time to find out how to pronounce? Conversely, you felt lucky when you could recite a paragraph which consisted of no unknown words, or at least unknown pronounciations.
There's two big problems that result out of this pedagogy. Firstly, unfamiliar Sinographs become associated with tension and embarrasment. Some might argue that this will encourage people to 'know their shit' in order to avoid getting caught out, just like doing your homework well might have saved you from the cane. I disagree. In my own experience, when I had that mindset it meant that I'd avoid doing extra reading where possible, because the more I read the more foolish I felt. This of course meant that my reading didn't get much better, and so I felt even worse about it. (-This is a period from when I started learning Chinese in mid 2004 to some time towards the end of 2007 when I changed the way I thought about literacy-)
The second problem is that since the focus is purely on pronouncing properly, it is likely that people will pay less attention to what the actual meaning is of the text, and become more concerned with having the proper pinyin annotation. This arises in a false sense of what understanding really is, thinking that so long as all the characters are individually pronouncable then the flowers of imagery that grow out of comprehension will shoot-up with no further nurturing. What is more likely is that people will fail to see where the various words and phrases are seperate, and what they are really describing, since the concentration is consumed with not screwing up, rather than appreciating whatever is being read.
As a slight digression, I think this is why foreign learners of English often overestimate their reading level- they can pronounce all the words, and conflate ability to pronounce a word with understanding its meaning (apologies in advance to my Dad, who hates the word conflate). This was made clear to me recently reading Anthony Burgess' autobiography: I had no trouble mouthing any of the words, but often I found myself at a loss to specific meaning, and so had to consult a dictionary about once per page (Burgess writes with an archaic, though mellifluous, vocabulary).
My thinking changed, as is often the case, outside the classroom, when I was thinking more about film than about Chinese. In particular, I was reading the few English interviews with a personal hero of mine, Christopher Doyle. Out of curiosity I entered his Chinese name 杜可風 into Google (I believe this was the first Chinese web search that I ever did). Up came many, many more interviews and articles than existed in English. I clicked on the first. My reading ability was really bad at that stage, but using an online dictionary I persisted through the whole interview. In fact, persist isn't quite the right word. The dictionary was more like a spoon I was using to get honey out of a jar. You don't persist your way through a jar of honey. I wanted to know everything that was being said. If there was a phrase that I didn't know, and Christopher Doyle was saying it in Chinese, then I wasn't intimidated. I had to know it. Just like how I will finish off every last molecule of a creme-brule, I was interested in absorbing every single word or turn of phrase in that interview.
It's no surprise that the first topic I was ever able to speak articulately about in Chinese was the lustful cinematography of Wong Kar-Wai's films. If we are, to use David Hawkes' felicitous expression, interested in more than just 'speaking to people on trains', then literacy is vital. And the best way to get there is through lust, not caution.
There's two big problems that result out of this pedagogy. Firstly, unfamiliar Sinographs become associated with tension and embarrasment. Some might argue that this will encourage people to 'know their shit' in order to avoid getting caught out, just like doing your homework well might have saved you from the cane. I disagree. In my own experience, when I had that mindset it meant that I'd avoid doing extra reading where possible, because the more I read the more foolish I felt. This of course meant that my reading didn't get much better, and so I felt even worse about it. (-This is a period from when I started learning Chinese in mid 2004 to some time towards the end of 2007 when I changed the way I thought about literacy-)
The second problem is that since the focus is purely on pronouncing properly, it is likely that people will pay less attention to what the actual meaning is of the text, and become more concerned with having the proper pinyin annotation. This arises in a false sense of what understanding really is, thinking that so long as all the characters are individually pronouncable then the flowers of imagery that grow out of comprehension will shoot-up with no further nurturing. What is more likely is that people will fail to see where the various words and phrases are seperate, and what they are really describing, since the concentration is consumed with not screwing up, rather than appreciating whatever is being read.
As a slight digression, I think this is why foreign learners of English often overestimate their reading level- they can pronounce all the words, and conflate ability to pronounce a word with understanding its meaning (apologies in advance to my Dad, who hates the word conflate). This was made clear to me recently reading Anthony Burgess' autobiography: I had no trouble mouthing any of the words, but often I found myself at a loss to specific meaning, and so had to consult a dictionary about once per page (Burgess writes with an archaic, though mellifluous, vocabulary).
My thinking changed, as is often the case, outside the classroom, when I was thinking more about film than about Chinese. In particular, I was reading the few English interviews with a personal hero of mine, Christopher Doyle. Out of curiosity I entered his Chinese name 杜可風 into Google (I believe this was the first Chinese web search that I ever did). Up came many, many more interviews and articles than existed in English. I clicked on the first. My reading ability was really bad at that stage, but using an online dictionary I persisted through the whole interview. In fact, persist isn't quite the right word. The dictionary was more like a spoon I was using to get honey out of a jar. You don't persist your way through a jar of honey. I wanted to know everything that was being said. If there was a phrase that I didn't know, and Christopher Doyle was saying it in Chinese, then I wasn't intimidated. I had to know it. Just like how I will finish off every last molecule of a creme-brule, I was interested in absorbing every single word or turn of phrase in that interview.
It's no surprise that the first topic I was ever able to speak articulately about in Chinese was the lustful cinematography of Wong Kar-Wai's films. If we are, to use David Hawkes' felicitous expression, interested in more than just 'speaking to people on trains', then literacy is vital. And the best way to get there is through lust, not caution.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Awesome
I went to use Adsotrans recently and was surprised to find something entirely new, something entirely awesome.
Popup Chinese.
That post I wrote about Adsotrans is still valid- the website has that sweet web 2.0 dictionary. But they're also now producing podcasts. These podcasts have a real personality to them and they're totally Beijing-centric. They have a brilliant, eclectic range of content up so far, ranging from KTV to literature. I don't really listen to language-podcasts for Chinese much anymore, I've been sticking to the Chinese news podcasts from the ABC and BBC recently. But this is definitely the most impressive podcast I've ever heard. It's often really hard to strike a balance between practical and fun. These guys have found it.
Popup Chinese.
That post I wrote about Adsotrans is still valid- the website has that sweet web 2.0 dictionary. But they're also now producing podcasts. These podcasts have a real personality to them and they're totally Beijing-centric. They have a brilliant, eclectic range of content up so far, ranging from KTV to literature. I don't really listen to language-podcasts for Chinese much anymore, I've been sticking to the Chinese news podcasts from the ABC and BBC recently. But this is definitely the most impressive podcast I've ever heard. It's often really hard to strike a balance between practical and fun. These guys have found it.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
有话好好说 - Keep Cool - Film Review
I've got a blurry view of Zhang Yimou. I can't quite figure out what his style is, and I'm not sure whether he's a good director who occasionally makes crap films, or a crap director who occasionally makes good films. The truth is probably just too complex for a simple view like either of those to hold.
I haven't seen his films in any chronological order, and that doesn't help. I first saw Hero and 'Surrounded' (aka House of Flying Daggers); fun, anodyne f ilms lacking much substance. Then I saw Happy Times, which I really liked. It had a soul and a sense of humour. Then I saw Raise the Red Lantern, which was burningly haunting.
And then I saw 'City of Golden Armour', aka 'Curse of the Golden Flower', aka 'Curse of the Golden Breasts'.
Keep Cool is probably closest to Happy Times, which is to say, it's one of Zhang's films which I really liked. The pace and feel of the film is almost reminscent of early Wong Kar-Wai films like Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. This is probably because of the on-location shooting, and the largely handheld, constantly dancing cinematography.
And in the same way that Chungking Express seems, to me at least, to capture something of Hong Kong, Keep Cool is quite an accurate depiction of Beijing. The dialogue is chock-full of Beijing dialect (or rather, they speak in Beijing dialect throughout the whole film), our main character played by Jiang Wen (from Green Tea) is somewhat of a hooligan, and it relies on the distinctly Beijing sense of humour, or at least North Eastern brand of humour. The scene with Zhao Benshan (who was also in Happy Times) reading poetry outside the apartment is particularly hilarious.
With any luck, Zhang's next film will be more along these lines, and not some epic, craptacular.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Toilet Humour
On Wednesday a friend and I went to Sunnybank for some Chinese food. Our conversation (we catch up each week) usually goes something like this:
P: "So, where do you wanna go?"
C: "I'm easy, what did you have in mind?"
P: "Um...how about Sunnybank?"
C: "Sounds good"
We often go to Little Taipei, 小台北, but this time we went to a place called "Malaysian Corner", if I remember its English name correctly. It could be slightly different, but what stood out was the fact that it bore no resemblance to the Chinese name, 旺角餐廳, i.e The Mongkok Diner. The menu was partly Malaysian, but only partly. I'm guessing it's modeled on Chinese restaurants within Malaysia, making the assumption here that there is a large Cantonese population which settled a while ago in Malaysia (I'm pretty sure this is true).
Anyway, I got a dish of Kungpao Chicken, 宮保雞丁or 宮爆雞丁depending on where you go, which was tasty but had nothing on what I used to get at the cafeteria of my apartment in Beijing.
Given that the food was nothing to blog about by itself, and that I'm in need of interesting things to blog about since returning from China, at least the toilet didn't disappoint. There was a sign which read:
請勿蹲在廁板上如廁
please do not squat on top of the toilet seat whilst using the toilet.
I found it particularly funny to find such a sign in Brisbane. I've never seen a sign like it in China before, and didn't see any in Hong Kong that I can remember. I have had annecdotal evidence from female friends which suggests that such a sign is certainly justified at certain McDonalds within China as people adjust to a seated toilet as opposed to a squatted toilet.
I guess that it's overseas Chinese (especially overseas Cantonese) condescension at their 'cousins from the country' which provokes them to put up such a sign in a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane.
Anyway, I'd only give The Mongkok Diner 2/5 for it's Kungpao Chicken, but the toilet adornments made the trip worthwhile.
P: "So, where do you wanna go?"
C: "I'm easy, what did you have in mind?"
P: "Um...how about Sunnybank?"
C: "Sounds good"
We often go to Little Taipei, 小台北, but this time we went to a place called "Malaysian Corner", if I remember its English name correctly. It could be slightly different, but what stood out was the fact that it bore no resemblance to the Chinese name, 旺角餐廳, i.e The Mongkok Diner. The menu was partly Malaysian, but only partly. I'm guessing it's modeled on Chinese restaurants within Malaysia, making the assumption here that there is a large Cantonese population which settled a while ago in Malaysia (I'm pretty sure this is true).
Anyway, I got a dish of Kungpao Chicken, 宮保雞丁or 宮爆雞丁depending on where you go, which was tasty but had nothing on what I used to get at the cafeteria of my apartment in Beijing.
Given that the food was nothing to blog about by itself, and that I'm in need of interesting things to blog about since returning from China, at least the toilet didn't disappoint. There was a sign which read:
請勿蹲在廁板上如廁
please do not squat on top of the toilet seat whilst using the toilet.
I found it particularly funny to find such a sign in Brisbane. I've never seen a sign like it in China before, and didn't see any in Hong Kong that I can remember. I have had annecdotal evidence from female friends which suggests that such a sign is certainly justified at certain McDonalds within China as people adjust to a seated toilet as opposed to a squatted toilet.
I guess that it's overseas Chinese (especially overseas Cantonese) condescension at their 'cousins from the country' which provokes them to put up such a sign in a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane.
Anyway, I'd only give The Mongkok Diner 2/5 for it's Kungpao Chicken, but the toilet adornments made the trip worthwhile.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Such Hospitality
I've just read a rather extreme example of 'hospitality' in the Three Kingdoms, and thought I'd give a quick, rough translation. There's actually an odd sort of moral ambiguity here (even, or especially, in the Chinese, I think), and I wonder about the significance of this little part of the story. The plight of women in the Han dynasty was certainly pretty horrid. As always any corrections are welcome.
一日，到一家投宿，其家一少年出拜，问其姓名，乃猎户刘安也。当下刘安闻豫州牧至，欲寻野味供食，一时不能得，乃杀其妻以食之。玄值曰：“此何肉也？”安曰：“乃狼肉也。”玄德不疑，乃饱食了一顿，天晚就宿。至晓将去，往后院取马，忽见一妇人杀于厨下，臂上肉已都割去。玄德惊问，方知昨夜食者，乃其妻之肉也。玄德不胜伤感，洒泪上马。刘安告玄德曰：“本欲相随使君，因老母在堂，未敢远行。”玄德称谢而别…
One day, Liu Bei went to stay overnight at a house and was met by the young man living there, a hunter named Liu An. Upon learning that Liu Bei was governor of Yu, Liu An wanted to provide a meaty meal for all; unable to find any meat, he killed his wife and cooked her.
“What kind of meat is this?” asked Liu Bei.
“It’s wolf,” replied Liu An. Thus satisfied, Liu Bei went on to eat until he was full, and then stayed the night. At dawn, Liu Bei went behind the house to get his horse, when suddenly he saw the corpse of a woman inside the kitchen, with the flesh on her arms scraped away. Liu Bei, shocked, asked Liu An, and only then found out that last night’s meat had been that of his wife. Liu Bei was so moved he couldn’t help crying as he mounted his horse.
“I’d love to come along, but while Mum’s alive I don’t dare venture out far,” said Liu An.
Liu Bei thanked him and left…
一日，到一家投宿，其家一少年出拜，问其姓名，乃猎户刘安也。当下刘安闻豫州牧至，欲寻野味供食，一时不能得，乃杀其妻以食之。玄值曰：“此何肉也？”安曰：“乃狼肉也。”玄德不疑，乃饱食了一顿，天晚就宿。至晓将去，往后院取马，忽见一妇人杀于厨下，臂上肉已都割去。玄德惊问，方知昨夜食者，乃其妻之肉也。玄德不胜伤感，洒泪上马。刘安告玄德曰：“本欲相随使君，因老母在堂，未敢远行。”玄德称谢而别…
One day, Liu Bei went to stay overnight at a house and was met by the young man living there, a hunter named Liu An. Upon learning that Liu Bei was governor of Yu, Liu An wanted to provide a meaty meal for all; unable to find any meat, he killed his wife and cooked her.
“What kind of meat is this?” asked Liu Bei.
“It’s wolf,” replied Liu An. Thus satisfied, Liu Bei went on to eat until he was full, and then stayed the night. At dawn, Liu Bei went behind the house to get his horse, when suddenly he saw the corpse of a woman inside the kitchen, with the flesh on her arms scraped away. Liu Bei, shocked, asked Liu An, and only then found out that last night’s meat had been that of his wife. Liu Bei was so moved he couldn’t help crying as he mounted his horse.
“I’d love to come along, but while Mum’s alive I don’t dare venture out far,” said Liu An.
Liu Bei thanked him and left…
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Junkie
I must be building up a tolerance. 250 grams used to last days. Now I'm doing 500 grams in an evening yet still thirst for more.
My name's Cooper, and I'm a strawb addict. Perhaps it was not eating a single strawb for a whole year, or perhaps this winter has produced a particularly fine, juicy, succulent bunch of strawbs. Either way, I'm hooked. It's probably the best thing about being in Brisbane right now.
So the word for strawberry in Chinese, 草莓 caomei, is literally straw berry. This is a bit much to be sheer coincidence, so I figured that strawberries probably aren't native to China. Seeking a China-centric answer, I looked up Chinese Wikipedia. I found out in Cantonese it is 士多啤梨, which I found out is pronounced sih do be leih, a transliteration from the English without meaning, as such, but does finish with the character for pear.
It was a good way to learn a bunch of words I'd never learn otherwise (which I'll probably forget in a few hours, but if I look up enough entries on fruit after a while...I'll be fluent in er, fruity language...ba-doom-tish). Apparently the part we eat is not actually strawberry fruit, but a part of the outer floral envelope created after the pollen has disseminated. The real strawberries are the little yellow things covering the surface of the strawberry. Or something like that.
I need another hit, but my supply is running low...
My name's Cooper, and I'm a strawb addict. Perhaps it was not eating a single strawb for a whole year, or perhaps this winter has produced a particularly fine, juicy, succulent bunch of strawbs. Either way, I'm hooked. It's probably the best thing about being in Brisbane right now.
So the word for strawberry in Chinese, 草莓 caomei, is literally straw berry. This is a bit much to be sheer coincidence, so I figured that strawberries probably aren't native to China. Seeking a China-centric answer, I looked up Chinese Wikipedia. I found out in Cantonese it is 士多啤梨, which I found out is pronounced sih do be leih, a transliteration from the English without meaning, as such, but does finish with the character for pear.
It was a good way to learn a bunch of words I'd never learn otherwise (which I'll probably forget in a few hours, but if I look up enough entries on fruit after a while...I'll be fluent in er, fruity language...ba-doom-tish). Apparently the part we eat is not actually strawberry fruit, but a part of the outer floral envelope created after the pollen has disseminated. The real strawberries are the little yellow things covering the surface of the strawberry. Or something like that.
I need another hit, but my supply is running low...
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Cantonese and the Three Kingdoms
So I finally have a concrete example of a way in which Cantonese is more 'old school' than Mandarin. On my couple of trips to Hong Kong, I'd sort of figured out that shi (to be) in Cantonese was hai. I'd assumed it was their way of pronouncing the word written 是.
But it's not! They actually use the really old word 系 xi, which you can still find in old texts (like the Three Kingdoms). Can mean the same as shi in certain contexts. Like the phrase I just read:
融曰：“我系李相通家。” Rong said "I'm a relative of Minister Li"
This piece of the puzzle just clicked now when I found the Cantonese word in the Wenlin definition. So that's why it popped up all the time in those HK gangsters films I've been watching.
I've just started dipping my toe into Cantonese properly by the amazingly awesome website designed for mainland Mandarin speakers learning Cantonese, 520hai. Something tells me it may not be entirely legitimate, as there are expensively produced videos up there entirely for free...but hey, their lessons are really useful. I'm still at the stage where I'm gaping at the fact that there's 9 tones, and trying to get my ears and eyes linking up to the new pinyin system.
Well, you know that saying, I think it's something like 千里之行， 始于一步 (the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step- let me know if I have that wrong). Or maybe something like 九声之语， 始于阴平 in this case. (a language of nine tones begins with the first tone- my classical Chinese sucks do please point out if that's wrong, anyone- Jeremiah? Sunny? Laurie?)
Anyway, I hope someone finds the 520hai link useful- I'm amazed such a site exists.
But it's not! They actually use the really old word 系 xi, which you can still find in old texts (like the Three Kingdoms). Can mean the same as shi in certain contexts. Like the phrase I just read:
融曰：“我系李相通家。” Rong said "I'm a relative of Minister Li"
This piece of the puzzle just clicked now when I found the Cantonese word in the Wenlin definition. So that's why it popped up all the time in those HK gangsters films I've been watching.
I've just started dipping my toe into Cantonese properly by the amazingly awesome website designed for mainland Mandarin speakers learning Cantonese, 520hai. Something tells me it may not be entirely legitimate, as there are expensively produced videos up there entirely for free...but hey, their lessons are really useful. I'm still at the stage where I'm gaping at the fact that there's 9 tones, and trying to get my ears and eyes linking up to the new pinyin system.
Well, you know that saying, I think it's something like 千里之行， 始于一步 (the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step- let me know if I have that wrong). Or maybe something like 九声之语， 始于阴平 in this case. (a language of nine tones begins with the first tone- my classical Chinese sucks do please point out if that's wrong, anyone- Jeremiah? Sunny? Laurie?)
Anyway, I hope someone finds the 520hai link useful- I'm amazed such a site exists.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Floating Along
I was in the library this evening, and at 7.30 decided that I'd best be off soon. I'd just read a few more minutes and then head to the bus station. By the time I put the book down, an hour and a half had past. I had to run to the bus station, otherwise it'd be another half hour until the next bus. I just made it, but by that stage it was packed and I had to stand at the front, by the driver.
I'd never ever had that view before. The road is presented in front like a wide-screen presentation, and the slow, rolling, bouncing motion of the bus makes it feel almost as though you're gliding along the road. Try it sometime.
On the way back home I heard a Taiwanese on her mobile discussing university matters, and she inserted the English phrase "international finance management". It made me think how people choose to use foreign expressions for things that they could say in their own language. In this case it seemed particularly odd, because it was actually harder to say in English than Chinese. In English you'd have 10-11 syllables, as opposed to six in Chinese (国际金融管理, guoji jinrong guanli).
As I counted out the syllables and realised this weirdness, I considered asking her why she said it. But I figured she wouldn't appreciate it.
I'd never ever had that view before. The road is presented in front like a wide-screen presentation, and the slow, rolling, bouncing motion of the bus makes it feel almost as though you're gliding along the road. Try it sometime.
On the way back home I heard a Taiwanese on her mobile discussing university matters, and she inserted the English phrase "international finance management". It made me think how people choose to use foreign expressions for things that they could say in their own language. In this case it seemed particularly odd, because it was actually harder to say in English than Chinese. In English you'd have 10-11 syllables, as opposed to six in Chinese (国际金融管理, guoji jinrong guanli).
As I counted out the syllables and realised this weirdness, I considered asking her why she said it. But I figured she wouldn't appreciate it.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
To Sinicize the Games
Before going to China, I'd never put much thought into what it meant to localize a video game. Now I see why this process would be costly and lengthy. It means, in this context, to subtitle or dub over all the text in a video game. English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese- these languages seem to be prime for localization teams, probably because of the video game playing populaces of nations speaking those languages.
In China, I found that many games were not localized. A game might have a Chinese package, and a Chinese name, but the game itself was entirely in English more often than not. I suspect this is why the majority of video game magazines at the newsagents were of the 'strategy guide' variety, which is fancy way of saying "how to beat this game step by step."
One game which is localized, or Sinicized rather, is World of Warcraft, and it's now a massive source of income for Blizzard (which should be Blizzard Activision now, for budding stock traders). It's probably not a coincidence that it's a game which can't be pirated. It can only be played with an account kept on official servers, so there seems to be no way of getting it for free. Apart from WoW, Chinese gamers are relatively ignored; I'm not even sure if games made within China, such as the recent Splinter Cell game by Ubisoft Shanghai, get Sinicized.
What's interesting though is that Chinese netizens have taken the matter into their own hands, and release 汉化 (han4 hua4, 'Sinicized') versions of the games for free on the internet. It's probably the case that because of the rampant media piracy in China, the software developers/publishers/distributers don't feel it's worth the investment to Sinicize their products. But the lack of official Chinese language software is no doubt part of the problem now, and those in charge would be better off with a carrot rather than a stick approach to solving it.
And on top of that, I'd like to add, that playing video games in Chinese is one of my favourite ways of learning the language. There's nothing like having to solve an interactive puzzle in Chinese. Anyway, enough nerd-speak for now...
In China, I found that many games were not localized. A game might have a Chinese package, and a Chinese name, but the game itself was entirely in English more often than not. I suspect this is why the majority of video game magazines at the newsagents were of the 'strategy guide' variety, which is fancy way of saying "how to beat this game step by step."
One game which is localized, or Sinicized rather, is World of Warcraft, and it's now a massive source of income for Blizzard (which should be Blizzard Activision now, for budding stock traders). It's probably not a coincidence that it's a game which can't be pirated. It can only be played with an account kept on official servers, so there seems to be no way of getting it for free. Apart from WoW, Chinese gamers are relatively ignored; I'm not even sure if games made within China, such as the recent Splinter Cell game by Ubisoft Shanghai, get Sinicized.
What's interesting though is that Chinese netizens have taken the matter into their own hands, and release 汉化 (han4 hua4, 'Sinicized') versions of the games for free on the internet. It's probably the case that because of the rampant media piracy in China, the software developers/publishers/distributers don't feel it's worth the investment to Sinicize their products. But the lack of official Chinese language software is no doubt part of the problem now, and those in charge would be better off with a carrot rather than a stick approach to solving it.
And on top of that, I'd like to add, that playing video games in Chinese is one of my favourite ways of learning the language. There's nothing like having to solve an interactive puzzle in Chinese. Anyway, enough nerd-speak for now...
Friday, July 18, 2008
In The Deep End (And A Request)
It's about 2 am and I'm taking a break from some reading I need to get done for university. Stuff I need to get done before the first lecture begins. Not light reading, I'm afraid; more like, the hardest reading I've ever put myself through. I'm only doing one Chinese course this semester but I think it's more than enough: Reading the Three Kingdoms. You may know this as a really long historical novel, and the basis for many martial arts films, including that one recently with Andy Lau and Sammo Hung. And you'd be right. Other than that I've got some philosophy of science courses, but that's another flavour of quark.
It's hard reading for a few reasons, the first being the language used. Sure, I've read (and I'm reading) sections from The Art of War, The Dao De Jing, and the Zhuangzi, which show Classical Chinese in varying difficulties. But they all come with a modern Chinese translation, so an English example would be that it's kind of like reading Shakespeare with each paragraph paraphrased by Hemingway. Because of that modern translation, I'm able to get through relatively painlessly in those otherwise difficult works.
However, whilst the language in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is more...colloquial?... (people with proper knowledge of Chinese linguistics will hate me for my ignorance!)..the problem is the version I'm reading has no modern translation. Oh sure, it has an English translation, but it sucks. There's been a few times when I've gone to the English to try and check my understanding, only to find that very section hasn't even found its way into the translation. Nice. I put the lack of a modern translation down to the fact that it almost is modern in some ways, it just uses a totally different set of words (no doubt I'll sound like a twit when I start using these archaic words in conversation). I'm reading it online -for free, at the recommendation of our lecturer- so I can use Wenlin to help me read it.
This is a double edged sword. There are times when Wenlin (or the ABC dictionary, I guess) will recognize as a phrase something which isn't supposed to be a phrase, or will try to translate something which would be better given as a Chinese synonym (like 就是 for 乃). It can be quite confusing, though it's not really the fault of the software, just a limitation. The result is I sort of alternate between reading on my laptop and checking the English definitions for the unknown words, then consulting my portable electronic Chinese-Chinese dictionary for stuff that makes no sense in Wenlin.
So my request is thus: Some smart software engineer should design an addon for Wenlin which adds in a Chinese-Chinese dictionary (but keeping the pinyin). Or, if anyone knows of software like that, let me know.
I've calculated I'll have to read something like 2 chapters a day if I'm to finish on time. The novel is very enjoyable and I'd be lying to say I'm not drawn in, which is quite a feat given the amount of frigging about I have to do with said dictionaries.
The other life-jacket in this deep end is that we're allowed to do the assessment for the subject in English. The lectures though, I'm told, are in Chinese. I'm not sure if it's irony, but I'm sure there's something odd about taking on harder Chinese courses in Australia than in China.
It's hard reading for a few reasons, the first being the language used. Sure, I've read (and I'm reading) sections from The Art of War, The Dao De Jing, and the Zhuangzi, which show Classical Chinese in varying difficulties. But they all come with a modern Chinese translation, so an English example would be that it's kind of like reading Shakespeare with each paragraph paraphrased by Hemingway. Because of that modern translation, I'm able to get through relatively painlessly in those otherwise difficult works.
However, whilst the language in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is more...colloquial?... (people with proper knowledge of Chinese linguistics will hate me for my ignorance!)..the problem is the version I'm reading has no modern translation. Oh sure, it has an English translation, but it sucks. There's been a few times when I've gone to the English to try and check my understanding, only to find that very section hasn't even found its way into the translation. Nice. I put the lack of a modern translation down to the fact that it almost is modern in some ways, it just uses a totally different set of words (no doubt I'll sound like a twit when I start using these archaic words in conversation). I'm reading it online -for free, at the recommendation of our lecturer- so I can use Wenlin to help me read it.
This is a double edged sword. There are times when Wenlin (or the ABC dictionary, I guess) will recognize as a phrase something which isn't supposed to be a phrase, or will try to translate something which would be better given as a Chinese synonym (like 就是 for 乃). It can be quite confusing, though it's not really the fault of the software, just a limitation. The result is I sort of alternate between reading on my laptop and checking the English definitions for the unknown words, then consulting my portable electronic Chinese-Chinese dictionary for stuff that makes no sense in Wenlin.
So my request is thus: Some smart software engineer should design an addon for Wenlin which adds in a Chinese-Chinese dictionary (but keeping the pinyin). Or, if anyone knows of software like that, let me know.
I've calculated I'll have to read something like 2 chapters a day if I'm to finish on time. The novel is very enjoyable and I'd be lying to say I'm not drawn in, which is quite a feat given the amount of frigging about I have to do with said dictionaries.
The other life-jacket in this deep end is that we're allowed to do the assessment for the subject in English. The lectures though, I'm told, are in Chinese. I'm not sure if it's irony, but I'm sure there's something odd about taking on harder Chinese courses in Australia than in China.
Monday, June 23, 2008
A Problematic Education
It's almost exam time, and I'm in a bad mood about that, which is nothing new. What is new is that I know exactly what is wrong with this batch of exams, or more broadly, the system they're a part of. Perhaps if I recount what I'll be tested on, the reader may begin to deduce a pattern.
My exams are for newspaper reading (where we have yet to read an actual newspaper), focused reading (where we read about pandas and compassion and disabilities), oral Chinese (where we talk about repairing bikes, ordering food, and virus protection software), 'reading' reading (where we read selected opinion pieces from newspaper textbooks), listening (where we are tested on 5-10 second dialogue snippets filled with peculiar oddities from the Beijing topolect, and 5-10 minute vignettes about ordering virus protection software, repairing pandas, and compassionate disabilities), and audio-visual class (where we will be tested on 5-10 minute dialogues from films, with a focus on the Beijing topolect).
My biggest complaint is that preparing and passing the above exams is extremely time-consuming, and yet seems to produce very little advancement in language profiency. I think that's most likely because the context is so boring that it's rather forgettable, ba-doom-tish.
On the other hand when I'm just reading BBC articles, Lao She's Cat Country, The True Story of Ah Q, video game magazines, and so on, I find that I'm able to recall all the new stuff I learn without really having to review the stuff. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that the reviewing happens naturally.
My conclusion, reached at after a year studying in China, is that I'm never taking any more specialised 'language classes', be it in Australia or overseas. I was discussing all this with my friend Plato this evening and in the process, I showed him some of the articles I'd written for class. He checked them with great interest, and noted that many of the 'corrections' made by my teacher were in fact unnecessary; I'd written something in an idiomatic, natural way, only to have it simplified or made into something unnatural. Furthermore, I showed Plato our textbooks and he was disgusted with the fact that they were in fact full of grammatical errors or improper usage of words.
So I ask the question, what the hell is up with the 'Chinese for Foreigners' education system in China? Who writes these things, what are their qualifications, and what are their real goals? This is probably overly paranoid of me, but I partly suspect the more official programs (such as the universities) don't really want their foreign students to get too proficient, especially in the more political vocabulary. After all, an incisive critical essay can be quite effective.
Though, they shouldn't worry about that with me, not just yet anyway. I've got about all the literay finesse in Chinese of a steroid-raging lemur attempting the 8 legged essay in the midst of a mardi gras parade. Or something like that. And, as the comments in a recent philosophy essay I just recieved pointed out, my English writing skills aren't that good either.
Ah well, always good to be humbled and what not.
My exams are for newspaper reading (where we have yet to read an actual newspaper), focused reading (where we read about pandas and compassion and disabilities), oral Chinese (where we talk about repairing bikes, ordering food, and virus protection software), 'reading' reading (where we read selected opinion pieces from newspaper textbooks), listening (where we are tested on 5-10 second dialogue snippets filled with peculiar oddities from the Beijing topolect, and 5-10 minute vignettes about ordering virus protection software, repairing pandas, and compassionate disabilities), and audio-visual class (where we will be tested on 5-10 minute dialogues from films, with a focus on the Beijing topolect).
My biggest complaint is that preparing and passing the above exams is extremely time-consuming, and yet seems to produce very little advancement in language profiency. I think that's most likely because the context is so boring that it's rather forgettable, ba-doom-tish.
On the other hand when I'm just reading BBC articles, Lao She's Cat Country, The True Story of Ah Q, video game magazines, and so on, I find that I'm able to recall all the new stuff I learn without really having to review the stuff. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that the reviewing happens naturally.
My conclusion, reached at after a year studying in China, is that I'm never taking any more specialised 'language classes', be it in Australia or overseas. I was discussing all this with my friend Plato this evening and in the process, I showed him some of the articles I'd written for class. He checked them with great interest, and noted that many of the 'corrections' made by my teacher were in fact unnecessary; I'd written something in an idiomatic, natural way, only to have it simplified or made into something unnatural. Furthermore, I showed Plato our textbooks and he was disgusted with the fact that they were in fact full of grammatical errors or improper usage of words.
So I ask the question, what the hell is up with the 'Chinese for Foreigners' education system in China? Who writes these things, what are their qualifications, and what are their real goals? This is probably overly paranoid of me, but I partly suspect the more official programs (such as the universities) don't really want their foreign students to get too proficient, especially in the more political vocabulary. After all, an incisive critical essay can be quite effective.
Though, they shouldn't worry about that with me, not just yet anyway. I've got about all the literay finesse in Chinese of a steroid-raging lemur attempting the 8 legged essay in the midst of a mardi gras parade. Or something like that. And, as the comments in a recent philosophy essay I just recieved pointed out, my English writing skills aren't that good either.
Ah well, always good to be humbled and what not.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
New Sinology
There's a really good article which Laurie put me onto, called "On New Sinology", by Geremie Barme.
There are two parts that really stood out for me which I'd like to point out:
'New Sinology' can thus also be described as an unrelenting attentiveness to Sinophone ways of speaking, writing, and seeing, and to the different forces that have shaped the evolution of Sinophone texts and images, as well as Sinophone ways of sense-making. Textually, the interests of a New Sinology range from the specificities of canonical and authoritative formulations in both the classical language (or rather the languages of the pre-dynastic and dynastic eras) and the modern vernacular to the many inventive bylines that have emerged more recently in our media-saturated times.
And,
Indeed, if we fail to insist on linguistic competence in Chinese as a necessary requirement for precise and rigorous engagement with Sinophone texts and images, our students may ultimately fail to make their own sense of what it means to be studying China.
That's so true. Without that competence, we're just restricted to whatever is available in translation, which by nature is going to be a bit behind the times.
In another sense, I suppose the New Sinology contrasts the 'Old' type insofar as there were guys who could read classical texts and produce scholarly translations- which is extremely impressive, especially given the resources of the times- but wouldn't be able to sit down and watch a film.
There are two parts that really stood out for me which I'd like to point out:
'New Sinology' can thus also be described as an unrelenting attentiveness to Sinophone ways of speaking, writing, and seeing, and to the different forces that have shaped the evolution of Sinophone texts and images, as well as Sinophone ways of sense-making. Textually, the interests of a New Sinology range from the specificities of canonical and authoritative formulations in both the classical language (or rather the languages of the pre-dynastic and dynastic eras) and the modern vernacular to the many inventive bylines that have emerged more recently in our media-saturated times.
And,
Indeed, if we fail to insist on linguistic competence in Chinese as a necessary requirement for precise and rigorous engagement with Sinophone texts and images, our students may ultimately fail to make their own sense of what it means to be studying China.
That's so true. Without that competence, we're just restricted to whatever is available in translation, which by nature is going to be a bit behind the times.
In another sense, I suppose the New Sinology contrasts the 'Old' type insofar as there were guys who could read classical texts and produce scholarly translations- which is extremely impressive, especially given the resources of the times- but wouldn't be able to sit down and watch a film.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Reading versus Writing
John has a good post you should all read, called Pinyin VS Hard Work (yeah, all three of you who read this blog).
Don't run off yet, this isn't just a post linking to a post linking to a post; I'm going to actually give my view on something here. But a warning: remember that this is my blog, not an academic journal, and I'm not really that good at Chinese, so you should probably listen to the links here more than me, even when I disagree with them- they are real Tongs.
So basically John talks about a post where Victor Mair basically says how he basically learned to read and write Chinese, more or less, is about the gist of it. And his method is pretty straightfoward: he reckons it's a good idea to "learn like a baby", and without beating around the bush, he goes on to say that insofar as literacy is concerned, this means reading a Chinese newspaper annotated with pinyin (or bopomopho, or whatever).
Having seen lots of Beijing babies chilling with a coffee and reading the newspaper, I can attest to the efficacy of this method.
No, really, I actually think it's a really good idea, and considering how much of a pain it is when you just want to sit down and chill with the Nanfang Zhoumo but find yourself pulling out the e-dictionary just to read an oddball character in a headline...it would be a nice addition to any newsagent, to say the least. I didn't start learning characters properly until I started university, by which time I'd done about 2 years of night classes coupled with a month in China studying at an intensive short course. In the night classes we just did pinyin really, so I think Mair probably has a good point about not killing the fun of learning a language by forcing the characters on too soon.
But there's this line, "Slowly, with practice, I also became capable of writing in characters as well." That's a lot like what various Chinese professors (ethnic Chinese and not) whom I've met have told me, and I'm sure it's correct, but it's horribly vague.
Well, I guess his article is about reading after all, and not writing. But still, I have lots of friends, especially overseas Chinese, who can read Chinese really well, but can't write more than a handful of characters, so I think Mair owes a bit of an explanation for that aside.
Anyway, my real complaint with the article (which is not, really, a complaint after all, but just somethin I'd like to add) is that he misses an opportunity to inform everyone about a modern alternative, which I think is actually better than an annotated paper text.
Annotated texts are nice to some extent, but all that pinyin can be distracting; I think pinyin works best on a fleeting, need-to-know basis, not an omnipresent sort of thing. Friends, I give you.....ADSOTRANS!
Paste in the text with the hard characters, wait a minute or so, and then...well, I won't spoil it for you, but I assure you the result is awesome. Awesome to the max.
The best thing about something like it (and there are retail alternatives like Wenlin and Clavis Sinica, but a mass collaborative project like Adsotrans is so much cooler and will dominate those products before long, mark my words!) is that you can read whatever you want. Well, anything on the internetz, anyway, and that's a lot of choice. Much better choice than whatever a newspaper chooses to handout, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and by coincidence, Mair does talk about the sneeze thing in there too. But I repeat, there's nothing 'devilishy difficult' about those two characters, if you have a mnemonic method in place.
I'm going to write another entry soon about what I would actually think of as a better way to learn to write, namely the mnemonic method of Matteo Ricii and Heisig, so check back soon(ish). It'll be fun, and I've just found an article by J. Marshall Unger which looks like good reading...
Some more related reading, and quick word on each, in the meantime.
David "Whiner" Moser - Why Chinese is So Damn Hard
This guy apparently has awesome Chinese, and it's not really meant to be taken seriously- it's pretty damn funny. But anyway, it's an article where he complains about characters being hard to learn, and textbooks being boring. Big, big agreement from me on the second point. Almost all textbooks I've used suck more arse than some experimental Japanese bidet. But that is why we have....ADSOTRANS! And mnemonics...
Victor Mair -Illiteracy in China
This is another article where I think characters get a harder time than they deserve. He hazards some pretty wild guesses, which he readily admits. Like this one, having a swipe at the statement "College graduates are tested on 7,000 characters or more."
Now, I'm not a mathematician, or a genius. Far from it, I can assure you. But according to the always reliable *cough* Baidu, the total amount of Chinese university students as a percentage of the total population is 5 percent, so, I dunno, it doesn't seem that unlikely. Interesting question though.
Victor Mair -Awkward Sneeze
Ok, so maybe I should have attributed the sneeze thing to Mr Mair instead of John B? Anyway, it's a good article, and it's interesting that Singapore is allowing e-dictionaries in their Chinese exams. Would be nice if the HSK had a similar slackening of the rules...
Don't run off yet, this isn't just a post linking to a post linking to a post; I'm going to actually give my view on something here. But a warning: remember that this is my blog, not an academic journal, and I'm not really that good at Chinese, so you should probably listen to the links here more than me, even when I disagree with them- they are real Tongs.
So basically John talks about a post where Victor Mair basically says how he basically learned to read and write Chinese, more or less, is about the gist of it. And his method is pretty straightfoward: he reckons it's a good idea to "learn like a baby", and without beating around the bush, he goes on to say that insofar as literacy is concerned, this means reading a Chinese newspaper annotated with pinyin (or bopomopho, or whatever).
Having seen lots of Beijing babies chilling with a coffee and reading the newspaper, I can attest to the efficacy of this method.
No, really, I actually think it's a really good idea, and considering how much of a pain it is when you just want to sit down and chill with the Nanfang Zhoumo but find yourself pulling out the e-dictionary just to read an oddball character in a headline...it would be a nice addition to any newsagent, to say the least. I didn't start learning characters properly until I started university, by which time I'd done about 2 years of night classes coupled with a month in China studying at an intensive short course. In the night classes we just did pinyin really, so I think Mair probably has a good point about not killing the fun of learning a language by forcing the characters on too soon.
But there's this line, "Slowly, with practice, I also became capable of writing in characters as well." That's a lot like what various Chinese professors (ethnic Chinese and not) whom I've met have told me, and I'm sure it's correct, but it's horribly vague.
Well, I guess his article is about reading after all, and not writing. But still, I have lots of friends, especially overseas Chinese, who can read Chinese really well, but can't write more than a handful of characters, so I think Mair owes a bit of an explanation for that aside.
Anyway, my real complaint with the article (which is not, really, a complaint after all, but just somethin I'd like to add) is that he misses an opportunity to inform everyone about a modern alternative, which I think is actually better than an annotated paper text.
Annotated texts are nice to some extent, but all that pinyin can be distracting; I think pinyin works best on a fleeting, need-to-know basis, not an omnipresent sort of thing. Friends, I give you.....ADSOTRANS!
Paste in the text with the hard characters, wait a minute or so, and then...well, I won't spoil it for you, but I assure you the result is awesome. Awesome to the max.
The best thing about something like it (and there are retail alternatives like Wenlin and Clavis Sinica, but a mass collaborative project like Adsotrans is so much cooler and will dominate those products before long, mark my words!) is that you can read whatever you want. Well, anything on the internetz, anyway, and that's a lot of choice. Much better choice than whatever a newspaper chooses to handout, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and by coincidence, Mair does talk about the sneeze thing in there too. But I repeat, there's nothing 'devilishy difficult' about those two characters, if you have a mnemonic method in place.
I'm going to write another entry soon about what I would actually think of as a better way to learn to write, namely the mnemonic method of Matteo Ricii and Heisig, so check back soon(ish). It'll be fun, and I've just found an article by J. Marshall Unger which looks like good reading...
Some more related reading, and quick word on each, in the meantime.
David "Whiner" Moser - Why Chinese is So Damn Hard
This guy apparently has awesome Chinese, and it's not really meant to be taken seriously- it's pretty damn funny. But anyway, it's an article where he complains about characters being hard to learn, and textbooks being boring. Big, big agreement from me on the second point. Almost all textbooks I've used suck more arse than some experimental Japanese bidet. But that is why we have....ADSOTRANS! And mnemonics...
Victor Mair -Illiteracy in China
This is another article where I think characters get a harder time than they deserve. He hazards some pretty wild guesses, which he readily admits. Like this one, having a swipe at the statement "College graduates are tested on 7,000 characters or more."
"A pipedream!!! I doubt whether even a hundredth of one percent of the Chinese population can write 7,000 characters; probably no more than 2-3% could recognize that many."
Now, I'm not a mathematician, or a genius. Far from it, I can assure you. But according to the always reliable *cough* Baidu, the total amount of Chinese university students as a percentage of the total population is 5 percent, so, I dunno, it doesn't seem that unlikely. Interesting question though.
Victor Mair -Awkward Sneeze
Ok, so maybe I should have attributed the sneeze thing to Mr Mair instead of John B? Anyway, it's a good article, and it's interesting that Singapore is allowing e-dictionaries in their Chinese exams. Would be nice if the HSK had a similar slackening of the rules...
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Revenge of the Sneeze
note: When I write something in italics, assume that it's said in Chinese (except this, obviously. Just trying to get some workable device going here, bear with me, I might use some pinyin as well, at least until we get the formula right)
"It's too hot!"
"It's stinking hot!"
"It's disgustingly hot!"
"It's like an oven in here!"
"I'm sweating like a pig!"
Such were the example sentences I wrote on the blackboard today to try and arm the kids with some vocabulary relevant to the day.
"Ok, can you read this out please?" I said.
"It's too hot! It means, the weather's too hot, right?" said Tammy.
"Yes, that's what it means. Now could you read the second one please?"
"Teacher, the t you wrote is missing the stroke through it. It's wrong! We're not reading it!"
"What? I didn't write it wrong...it's just, handwriting."
"Teacher wrote it wrong!"
I pondered my options for a moment. Tammy is one of the better students but she's also really arrogant, stubborn and whiney. I could insist that I was right, being a native speaker of English and all- "Whatever I do is perfect, geddit? Just imitate me!"- but I'd tried that before and it didn't stop their criticism. And they'd use it against me in future.
"Hey, just wondering, do you guys know the word sneeze?"
"What?"
"Sneeze. Penti."
"Oh, sneeze."
"Yeah...hey...how is sneeze written again? Could someone come and write it please?"
I wrote the English word, and left space for the two characters to be written next to it.
There was first massive squealing over who would get to write it first, followed by a sudden silence of about 2 seconds as people realised that they in fact maybe didn't know how to write it. JJ came up and triumphantly wrote the first character, correctly，喷。 Then The Mental Blank hit her, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a 3 wheeled truck speeding from Shunyi to Beijing.
"It's the 3 stroke water radical...then..." someone began to call out.
"WRONG!" I shouted in response, like an impatient businessman in a cheap restaurant.
JJ returned to her seat, struck by The Blank. By this stage the class was transfixed. Tammy swaggered her way up and wrote the second character: 涕 .
So it was her who had called out before. Fortunately, it was the wrong character; she had written the ti character forming the part of snot, not of sneeze.
"WRONG! IT'S NOT THE SNOT TI! I'LL TEACH YOU ALL SOME CHINESE! THIS IS HOW IT'S WRITTEN!"
I proceeded to write the correct character: 嚏
Silence. And then Tammy started up: "It's not that one! It's the one I wrote!"
"Check your dictionaries," I said, my voice quivering with excitement, "in fact, I'll show you on my mobile phone right now. THERE, SEE!"
As people frantically flicked through dictionaries and shot back wide eyes, I showed Tammy the soul crushing truth.
"I WIN, YOU GUYS LOSE! I FINALLY HAVE MY REVENGE!" I bellowed, like a victorious Spartan (the latter being a phrase I picked up watching the animated Tin-Tin series). The kids erupted into a laughing frenzy.
*******************
I wish I could say I'd shown them once and for all, but things have a way of coming back and biting one on the arse.
In this case, I managed to sour the victory by a small, innocent mistake, in the worst possible context.
We were going through the pronunciation of stinking, thinking and sinking, and I had just tried to tell the semi-bi-lingual version of the whole "We're sinking!" "What are you sinking about?" joke of the English and German submarines (though I used ships, not knowing the word for submarine).
The th sound wasn't coming through with some of the kids, so I wanted to make a suggestion.
"Like, put the tongue under the teeth," I said. At least, that's what I thought I said. Teeth, yatou, right?
Wrong. Some of the kids started giggling.
"Teacher..you mean teeth, yachi."
"Oh...right..." What had I said? Oh, crap.
Yatou. Woman... put the tongue under the woman.
Oh. My. God.
I did find a way of saving a tiny little bit of face, by using a phrase I had just learned today.
"Well, I'm off to go sleep on brushwood and eat gall then." A way of saying you'll spend some serious time thinking about your mistakes, I think. This got a laugh out of them in any event.
In any event, I put it down to the confusion between tongue shetou and teeth, yachi, ending up in the yatou caffufle. But, seriously.
Thank Christ they aren't teenagers.
*******************
I should mention here, I owe the advice about sneeze to two awesome bloggers, which I'll update by blogroll to list since I've been reading them so much recently.
They are:
John B.
and
Brendan.
They know Chinese really well, they write really well and they write about China really well. They're frequently informative, and sometimes hilarious. What more do you want?
"It's too hot!"
"It's stinking hot!"
"It's disgustingly hot!"
"It's like an oven in here!"
"I'm sweating like a pig!"
Such were the example sentences I wrote on the blackboard today to try and arm the kids with some vocabulary relevant to the day.
"Ok, can you read this out please?" I said.
"It's too hot! It means, the weather's too hot, right?" said Tammy.
"Yes, that's what it means. Now could you read the second one please?"
"Teacher, the t you wrote is missing the stroke through it. It's wrong! We're not reading it!"
"What? I didn't write it wrong...it's just, handwriting."
"Teacher wrote it wrong!"
I pondered my options for a moment. Tammy is one of the better students but she's also really arrogant, stubborn and whiney. I could insist that I was right, being a native speaker of English and all- "Whatever I do is perfect, geddit? Just imitate me!"- but I'd tried that before and it didn't stop their criticism. And they'd use it against me in future.
"Hey, just wondering, do you guys know the word sneeze?"
"What?"
"Sneeze. Penti."
"Oh, sneeze."
"Yeah...hey...how is sneeze written again? Could someone come and write it please?"
I wrote the English word, and left space for the two characters to be written next to it.
There was first massive squealing over who would get to write it first, followed by a sudden silence of about 2 seconds as people realised that they in fact maybe didn't know how to write it. JJ came up and triumphantly wrote the first character, correctly，喷。 Then The Mental Blank hit her, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a 3 wheeled truck speeding from Shunyi to Beijing.
"It's the 3 stroke water radical...then..." someone began to call out.
"WRONG!" I shouted in response, like an impatient businessman in a cheap restaurant.
JJ returned to her seat, struck by The Blank. By this stage the class was transfixed. Tammy swaggered her way up and wrote the second character: 涕 .
So it was her who had called out before. Fortunately, it was the wrong character; she had written the ti character forming the part of snot, not of sneeze.
"WRONG! IT'S NOT THE SNOT TI! I'LL TEACH YOU ALL SOME CHINESE! THIS IS HOW IT'S WRITTEN!"
I proceeded to write the correct character: 嚏
Silence. And then Tammy started up: "It's not that one! It's the one I wrote!"
"Check your dictionaries," I said, my voice quivering with excitement, "in fact, I'll show you on my mobile phone right now. THERE, SEE!"
As people frantically flicked through dictionaries and shot back wide eyes, I showed Tammy the soul crushing truth.
"I WIN, YOU GUYS LOSE! I FINALLY HAVE MY REVENGE!" I bellowed, like a victorious Spartan (the latter being a phrase I picked up watching the animated Tin-Tin series). The kids erupted into a laughing frenzy.
*******************
I wish I could say I'd shown them once and for all, but things have a way of coming back and biting one on the arse.
In this case, I managed to sour the victory by a small, innocent mistake, in the worst possible context.
We were going through the pronunciation of stinking, thinking and sinking, and I had just tried to tell the semi-bi-lingual version of the whole "We're sinking!" "What are you sinking about?" joke of the English and German submarines (though I used ships, not knowing the word for submarine).
The th sound wasn't coming through with some of the kids, so I wanted to make a suggestion.
"Like, put the tongue under the teeth," I said. At least, that's what I thought I said. Teeth, yatou, right?
Wrong. Some of the kids started giggling.
"Teacher..you mean teeth, yachi."
"Oh...right..." What had I said? Oh, crap.
Yatou. Woman... put the tongue under the woman.
Oh. My. God.
I did find a way of saving a tiny little bit of face, by using a phrase I had just learned today.
"Well, I'm off to go sleep on brushwood and eat gall then." A way of saying you'll spend some serious time thinking about your mistakes, I think. This got a laugh out of them in any event.
In any event, I put it down to the confusion between tongue shetou and teeth, yachi, ending up in the yatou caffufle. But, seriously.
Thank Christ they aren't teenagers.
*******************
I should mention here, I owe the advice about sneeze to two awesome bloggers, which I'll update by blogroll to list since I've been reading them so much recently.
They are:
John B.
and
Brendan.
They know Chinese really well, they write really well and they write about China really well. They're frequently informative, and sometimes hilarious. What more do you want?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
HSK
HSK results came out yesterday, and I was actually quite interested to see how I'd go this time.
I got a 6 on listening, an 8 on grammar, an 8 on reading and a 7 on synthesis.
The overal score was a 7, which I'm pretty happy with. It means I can enroll for any course at a Chinese university (you know, with Chinese students and all). Too bad I didn't get that result last semester, because the current classes are dipping into new lows of boredom.
I found out why our conversation class sucks the most: the teacher the Communist Party Representative for our faculty. So thats why we never talk about current events critical of China! In fact we never talk about anything apart from the topics of the pathetic textbook.
I guess it also explains why she always seemed to laugh very uncomfortably at my jokes about the Dalai Lama, class struggle and class enemies.
I got a 6 on listening, an 8 on grammar, an 8 on reading and a 7 on synthesis.
The overal score was a 7, which I'm pretty happy with. It means I can enroll for any course at a Chinese university (you know, with Chinese students and all). Too bad I didn't get that result last semester, because the current classes are dipping into new lows of boredom.
I found out why our conversation class sucks the most: the teacher the Communist Party Representative for our faculty. So thats why we never talk about current events critical of China! In fact we never talk about anything apart from the topics of the pathetic textbook.
I guess it also explains why she always seemed to laugh very uncomfortably at my jokes about the Dalai Lama, class struggle and class enemies.
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