Connected Speech

To teach is to learn. And to be a good teacher you must learn to be a good learner. And that's what again was the rod that struck me again today in my life as an English teacher in China. In fact the lesson could only really happen today when I had several instances of connected speech arise in my work and then the same phenomenon knocked me around a little in my casual study of the Cantonese dialect.

 

What is connected speech? It's the natural changes that occur to pronunciation of words when in a natural speech. You see, every word has a proper way of saying the word individually, for example "can". When you say it by itself it has a sharp vowel. But put it in a sentence and it degrades: "Can I help you?" for most speakers becomes "k'nai HELL pyoo". The once proud "can" no longer being the centre of attention breaks down to mere consonants. "Can" is most often pronounced in its weak form. Of course, in that rather mundane example there are even more  of connected speech. There is also concatenation which is simply when the sound from the end of one word is pronounced with the sounds of the next. In the example, "nai" and "pyoo" are more attached to the following word than the word we attach it to. In a wander in the computer lab a student asked me about another phemonenon, intrusion. She got me to say "You and me" naturally. Try it. To the untrained ear, you might think you are just saying those three words, but closer inspection leads you to notice that you're in fact saying: "YOO wum MEE". The "w" is an intruding sound. Incidentally this example also has elision with the "d" being hacked off "and" and another effect compounding it, assimilation, where the stump "n" in "and" is influenced by the "me" and becomes an "M". As a result, by the end of the spontaneous transformations, a student will wonder how such an easy word like "and" which they say correctly by itself, could mutate into "wum". Fortunately my student was quite accepting of the interloping "w" and just wanted me to say it naturally.

As a teacher, it took me a long time to realise that though we teach connected speech as something students can say, the first step in learning it is awareness. You need to notice it, or be told it exists and then notice it before you can learn it.Then you can notice the common patterns so when you hear an utterance that somehow has become unintelligible, you have a few cues to help decode it. Even if students can't say it, and believe me they struggle to unlearn the "proper" forms of words when they speak, they do need to be able to listen and recognise it.

But there I was yabbering about something I k'n confidently deal with, my forte, English. When you're the teacher and master of your language you can smugly say how it is with a smile and if there is resistance, you k'n just say that that is what English is and that it has to be accepted. But after I knock off work, I remove my English right shoe and put on my Cantonese left shoe and suddenly begin yabbering in a less consistent, less assured way. In earlier blogs, I've mentioned that Qingyuan Cantonese has routine connected speech with particular words. I'd adjusted to this because they were particular high frequency words. They were set contractions just like English has "won't" "aren't/ain't" "can't" etc.

I knew that there were some mild features in Guangzhou Cantonese too, but not to the same creation of set contractions. Now, watching a HK crime drama I've scratched deeper by noticing the more garden variety connected speech which is more subtle, quick and insidious. And so the left foot has started kicking. The contractions I've only just gaining an ear for a quick. The Cantonese word for but is "daan6 hai6" (numbers denote tone) only now have I realised in the TV shows that it's mostly said as "Daa'ai6" unless said deliberately. Another 3-4 changes I noticed in about 20 minutes of watching all because my mind was switched on to inconsistencies and unintelligible sequences that the mandarin subtitles hinted as being intelligible phrases.

There are inherent difficulties in understanding connected speech: the phenomenon happens more with faster speech. That means that fast speech is not just more difficult because of the pace but comprehension is also obscured by these transformations of sound. And couple that with the tendencies of speakers to go from fast to slower in a turn at speaking (often this happens in language where the key information is later in the sentence so the first part which frames it is hastily rushed through). That means for a learner watching a TV series, when another person starts speaking they'll throw high speed sentence starters before saying their key information. That helps for understanding gist if you ignore the first few words they say, but often the initial burst hits me like a drawer of flying knives, causing me to duck the rush of meaning that quickly ceases by the time I get the composure to listen onward.

Learning language you don't just need patience but a degree of foolhardiness to stand strong in the rush of meaning and take it in. 

The Housewarming

"Burn the golden money first" my mother-in-law instructed, as my sister-in-law, Hiuming, and her fiance, Winston, set up the mini-furnace near the mahjong table-cum-sacrificial altar that they'd placed on the balcony of their new home. It was their house-warming, but one that entailed far more customs than you'd usually associate with a western housewarming party with beer and pizza. They had money to burn, literally. Fortunately the money was fake.

 

When I arrived they were just arranging the table on the balcony: two apples, three cups of tea, four bowls of noodles and five cups of rice wine, and of course a chicken. This was in accordance with Maoming tradition (which my Qingyuan in-laws had a lot of trouble adapting to). These foods were for the ancestors, the chopsticks were oriented for floating visitors, and so was the "money" that was about to be burnt. The mini-furnace wasn't really designed for the winds that were on the 14th floor. And as would be expected, shortly after flaming ashes blew through the living room in mini-whirlwinds, igniting and extinguishing their way past the coffee table, where tea happened to be being served. I scrambled to the kitchen to grab a broom. "You can't use brooms!" I was instructed by the cooks. Apparently you can't clean the house at all until the first three days are up. It's bad luck. So we stamped the flames and collected a few ashes with tissues instead.

 

Even for a seasoned China expat like myself the proceedings still had a lot to notice and learn. Maoming tradition is quite strict. The family of the people moving in have to leave the lights on for three days, and all meals in those three days must be spent at the house. There were the little things, too: Mattresses were all raised on the first day; All new furniture had red paper stuck to them; and lanterns were placed in every room alight; even the time when you can first enter the house is regulated, and you need to wait for a particular time to enter.

 

After talking to my other half, I realise that I just haven't seen the Qingyuan ritual yet. The ritual for the family home was apparently even more elaborate and, being in the countryside rather than the city, had all the bells and whistles. This part of life, though, is dying. Very few people under the age of forty would do them without the insistence of the elders in the family. I remember back to my first Chinese New Year at my former student's place and I was astonished that they would put a furnace in the stairwell of an apartment building (but it's commonsense in China).

Demi-Gods and Semi-Demons

Learning a language as an adult includes many challenges, doubts, landmarks, humiliations, transcendences, confusions, enlightenments and depressions. It is important to treat it as the longest goal you'll ever have because even when you've got it, you don't. Mastery is always further around the corner. 

 

I had another great chat with Sea the other evening (a student). She hasn't been an overwhelmingly successful student, yet she's made a sincere effort, probably the sincerest effort, to get better. Our first chat was about four months ago. She'd gone to my Current Events class, a class that I intentionally make a bit harder for strong students, and unsurprisingly struggled. She with knitted brows and a friend waited in the lounge area for me afterward and we talked for about thirty minutes after the last class of the day (until about 10pm). She'd hit her ceiling of what she could learn in the way she was doing it. I can't recall everything that we talked about but it covered how she was studying and how she could study, particularly to get a better feeling of grammar and to use and remember new words.

 

It is odd to think that that was only four months ago. It felt like a year ago (in my earliest draft of this blog I wrote "a year ago", until I remembered the Current Events class was on the Boston Bombing). She's since taken challenges in her English learning life, leading Lounge Chats and then from her own desire to make variety, created a Debate Club. In a fairly short time she's increased her fluency and use of vocabulary.

 

Yet still I found her with knitted brow and a friend in the lounge. This time she wasn't waiting for me but I like crashing conversations in the lounge so I plopped myself down where she and two others were talking about another problem: motivation. They'd all observed the initial exhilaration of learning, depression when faced with the scale of task and the speed at which they learn, the excitement of overcoming and then the malaise when they settle into a groove. She said she wasn't finding learning interesting anymore. I talked about the need to find challenge, that she had found it daunting to lead the Lounge Chats at first but now it was easy, so now she needed a new challenge. Writing, I suggested. I'm not good at writing, she warily replied. That is the point, I pointed out. I gave her a possible place the writing would go, the school magazine; suggested a possible topic. And she may possibly do it. I hope she does and I hope she feels the burn, overcomes it and then feels great about the outcome. One nice ending to the chat was when she noticed that I was using two similar words, "fluently" and "fluency"; she knew the meaning but not the difference in use. I made a model sentence for each after which she correctly stated one's an adverb, the other is a noun. This was precisely one of her difficulties in the first chat, noting parts of speech. A nice thing to praise her on to leave.

 

Reading novels in Chinese has been my constant challenge. I don't say "challenge" as something that frustrates me but rather something that will always be difficult but will always engage me. I read my first book, a translated version of the Solitaire Mystery, just after I finished my Taiwan scholarship. In fact I can remember doing the hard yards reading the first few pages on the plane back to New Zealand, way back in 2000. The first few pages of any book are the hardest. Every character, every place and situation has to be imagined from scratch. And the writer's style has to be grappled with too. By my count I've read seven whole novels in Chinese, and this is something I'd like to keep going perhaps with one or two books a year, finishing the seventh just this week. It was called Demi-Gods and Semi-Demons. The name doesn't reflect the happenings in the book well; it is not like a greek myth with gods fighting. But it does describe the theme well: the different kinds of people in the world, the benevolent, the flawed, the possessed and the fallen.

 

And just last night I was trying to help one of the flawed talk to one of the possessed. A popular, active teacher slighted a student accidentally in the centre several months ago then on social networking a few weeks later. He is the kind of person who is loved by 98% of people and finds a way to make the other 2% vehemently hate him, and this one student has gone quite toxic in her distaste for him. He hasn't done anything "wrong", and would like to rationally defend himself. My guess is that she'd been fixated on him without his knowing; he rejected her indirectly without realising it (by suggesting she shouldn't join the student council because she was too busy); then did a small thing or two that annoyed her. Now everything he does is "wrong". And he still tries to rationally defend each action, as he did on a horridly intense public "he said; she said" conversation last night on QQ. I was coaching him in a personal conversation at the same time, where with each of his attempts to cool the situation down, he dug the hole deeper. He wasn't really listening to me because he had his own "way". But he was still digging himself deeper. And there may be a line and time where I may have to move from being a friend and colleague to being a manager and make a solution. But it's important for him to learn his way out of this situation. He has to be more selective and tactful in his language, directly yet softly deal with the original "hurt" she suffered, be polite yet responsive and perhaps even withdraw slightly from some of the social networking before moving forward. 

 

I often say to my team of teachers that teaching exposes you to a greater range of people on a more engaged level than other careers. We get to see the full range of personalities people have. And we have to learn to deal with them.

The storm before the calm

It hadn't been a good night of sleep. There were far too many things preceding the sleep to complicate my thinking, restlessness in my legs, and before I was really aware of it I was out of bed, down the road looking for the centre where I'd have my examination. My head felt as if it were in a fishbowl and having developed a strong coffee habit in the lead-up, I was glad to find the centre and a cafe beneath it still with an hour to spare before the start of the test.

 

I shuffled to the end of the queue that led to the counter and put my brain in stand-by mode to gain back my wits. My daze continued until one word pierced it: "communicative" emerged from the drone in an American accent. I focussed. Then I heard more key language but this time : "activating schemata" "methods and approaches" this time in a British accent. I turned around to see an odd couple: a short slightly greying woman and a thin, modern man with an angular young face. I knew they could only be people from my course who were in that cafe for presumably the same reason. I asked them directly: "You wouldn't happen to be...?" and of course they were.

 

It is a peculiar thing of course to know people for so long from their written words and thoughts alone (in this case via an old-fashioned online discussion board) and then suddenly know them as three dimensional coffee-drinking people a long time after. The imagination sometimes is right and sometimes is completely wrong. Cue: coffee related note and study sharing. The exam was what everyone feared. Most of us had been out of university for years and hadn't had the requirement to take a three hour written exam until now. The practicum classes could be easily negotiated because we are experienced teachers reacting with humans; the exam, though, is just cold, white paper. And despite having been a consummate test taker in my past, that past usually revolved around dodging courses that required essays. I'd never scored heavily in tests requiring prose and opinion.

 

So the storm began. Three hours. Three sections. Weighted 40%, 30% and 30% respectively. I spend an hour fifty on the first and started doubting myself and my strategy that I could satisfactorily answer the two other questions in the remaining time. But I did. And it's done. Pens down and please tie your answers together with the string provided. We were swamped by an infinite calm.

 

And in that calm there has been a day and a half of cutting loose. A great afternoon and night out. Yesterday I hiked around the city till my legs and feet ached. The practical lessons await. Now it is time to teach. 

 

 

Some conversations are better than others

In the bustle and hustles of life it's easy to forget what you want to say about a great deal of things that appeal to your mind and intellect. At the end of the day it sometimes just depends whether you've got a pen and pad at hand, or a willing party to converse with on your topics whether your ideas are consolidated or lost. I don't lack those to have discussions on teaching, but for the greater questions that I chew the edges of, I really do lack that person who can give back as good as they get on meatier issues.

 

So when they do come it is sometimes quite astonishing. We had a visitor last weekend, someone I'd met before, and had lunch with him. Perhaps it was just because I could talk to him one-on-one that the topics could flow as they could. I asked him the topic of his thesis: Lexical cohesion in Jane Austen translations, not that it was interesting; lexical cohesion, now that is something I can talk about - it's a Diploma topic - thus we talked for quite some time about the in's and out's of lexical cohesion; that was a leaping point for our discussion of writers: Peter Hessler, Han Han and Nobel Prize winners; our mutual appreciation of commentator Liang Wendao (who has a show after midnight called Open the scroll for 8 minutes, reviewing a book in exactly 8 minutes); and then we broached the wider scheme of social networking in China. It had been a while since I could bounce ideas and impressions of someone. It was good.

 

He's still very young. Just entering the workforce. Possibly gay. Curious and eager about the world beyond. It'll be interesting to see how he develops as a person. And maybe we can talk again.

We won't call you.

"The machine ate our money!"

"What? Did it give you a receipt?" I asked.

"Yes, but it said 'deposited money 0 yuan'."

Cripes! Can machines lie? "OK, well don't panic, we'll take it to the teller."

 

ATM machines in China can do deposits as well as withdrawals in China. Which might seem strange but it takes an age to get to a teller window so it is often the best way to go. The ATM machine in question had just eaten 9000 yuan of our hard-earned cash (almost NZD2000).

We waited in a queue where she told me about other well known cases where banks denied responsibility for the missing money. In one instance a machine regurgitated money shortly after the person went into the bank and a passer-by took it. Since the bank didn't have the money, they didn't compensate the person for a loss. In another case, probably apocryphal, someone called the bank after having a large deposit eaten without a trace; the bank said that there was no-one available. The customer, doubtful about the response, called a policeman over and used another phone to call the bank saying that an ATM disgorged the same amount suddenly. A technician was there straight away.

 

"OK, what seems to be the problem?" we were asked.

"The ATM ate our money."

"Why did it do that? Did you ask it?"

Surpressing outrage as much as humanly possible, we went through the required procedure of forms until everything was about right.

"You'll have to wait until Monday." It was Friday.

"Couldn't you just check the machine now?"

"No, we can't do that. You'll have to wait for Monday."

"Then what?"

"If there is problem, we'll call you."

"And if not?"

"We'll deposit the money back into your account. But we won't call you."

 

This interesting protocol took a little while to sink in but our man at the bank insisted that it'd be the way things would play. The effect is that on Monday you'd be left helpless waiting by phone for a non-ring. And come 5pm, you'd creep slowly to the bank, put your card in the machine to check the balance with bated breath. This isn't American Idol - you don't need to make us wait until after the commercial break!

 

So Monday came. No call. We went to the bank together and checked our balance. The money had been restored. We celebrated with cheese and wine. Nice ending but does it really need to be this way?

 

This was the Bank of China. "Wei renmin fuwu", literally "for+people (do) service", is the slogan and guiding principle for the Communist party and any state-owned organisation, including the whole local banking sector. It is meant to guide civil servants to see their job as servants to the masses... Yeah, it was never going to happen. It's often made fun of by adding -bi to renmin, to make "wei renminbi fuwu", for+ the people's money (RMB), do service" as often they won't do anything unless there is something in it for them. Or the system extorts maximum cost to the individual to achieve whatever small ends you wished to achieve.

 

In my fourth year in China, I still cannot help but make snide comments about how unexcited government workers act, how half-open buddha-eyed they appear, how disrespectfully some hurl your change on a counter, and how they may speak and ignore. There are exceptions fortunately and usually it is in particular organisations. And it isn't fair to say that the problem is just state-owned companies. The culture of reluctant, lethargic and rude service is in the private sector as well where you'd have optimistically thought that people would be more encouraged to smile, jump up and offer you something different.

 

Spring back

It is not such an idle thought to wonder about talent. Surely as a set of three siblings we weren't exactly missed by the gods of wisdom, intelligence and wit: yet we aren't exactly leaders, gamebreakers or makers of tomorrow. Not that we are uniquely or extraordinarily talented, deserving of more. From my aerie in central Guangzhou, I wonder sometimes whether my humble allocation of intellect has been fully activated in the pursuit of higher ideals. I often wonder whether this was because despite sharpness in some areas, I'm startling obtuse in others.

 

In my field of work, lately, I've felt frustrated to say the least. I'm not in favour with new management that look for a kind of person, which I'm not, and they would be happy to let the others who weren't that kind of people hang in the horrible limbo of "potential". "Potential" being the feedback they give you when you aren't progressed forward. You have "potential" qualities that may be developed and realised in the future. It could be hard to wait, if you think about waiting, for a time that may never come. I was in a holding pattern until just recently, despite a huge diploma workload, I produced several initiatives. The one that has actually attracted attention is merely an intellectual doodle.

 

The doodle? I called it the cruelty quotient (CQ). I checked how often teachers gave the lowest score (1) in at least one aspect of student assessment. Outstandingly, I found myself the cruelest of them all. I gave close to 30% of my students the lowest possible score. To put this in perspective, only one other teacher was close. Three had given 0% of their students a 1. Thus I shared. I went regional. Now the idea is national. I like the idea of measuring as a way to isolate "training needs" (another way of saying that someone either doesn't know what they are doing or isn't doing their job).

 

I've got more to give than that. I hope that I'm not producing all this to show what a loss I'll be when I leave.

 

 

Making the front page

Chinese New Year brought a sharp drop in the temperature from what had been a very warm winter. Being my fourth Guangdong New Year, it was still the second warmest. Temperatures were always between 10-20 degrees which made it great for walking around the villages and paddy fields, kicking shuttlecocks and sometimes even hittting them with the badminton racket. It also suited the production of the featured photograph in the newspaper - we look cold don't we! The text reads:

 

"Western son-in-law spending new years at the in-laws

 

Daniel, who works in Guangzhou as an English teacher, married Qingyuan girl Little Zhong in May last year. 'This is the first year I've had a new year dinner as a son-in-law so it is something very significant (for me)," he said as spoke to this reporter holding Little Zhong's hand. In the picture he is with Little Zhong, the grandfather, his parents-in-law and his brother after they finished a large new year meal. Little Zhong and Daniel have been together for three years and have spent their new years together at her family's place in Waangho street, Qingyuan. He said that he didn't have any family in Guangzhou and there wasn't a feeling of new year (for him) so he would certainly spend his new years in Qingyuan. Having lived in China many years, he understands the special significance of Chinese new year and when in China would definitely spend new year with his parents-in-law. He is preparing to take the family to have dimsum on the first day of the new year and visit relatives and friends."

 

It is rather hastily written, factually incorrect (it was a phone interview and her brother isn't in the picture) and repetitive but it is still pretty good, even if it is just the Qingyuan Daily.

 

Chinese new year also brought some breakthroughs in my language learning. My exposure to Qingyuan dialect must have reached a critical point where I've heard set phrases enough to understand a good portion of them without much thought; I can catch the general rhythm of speech - my brain can even parse the sentences of some of the faster speakers; I catch Qingyuan contractions which I knew existed but never heard them nor understood in speech; I can solve problems (like my missing pants this morning) and hold basic conversations. This doesn't mean that I'm fluent by any stretch of the imagination, but this level provides much more access into dinner conversations (notoriously difficult to follow), which means a presence and contribution to the discussion and, even more importantly, the ability to really start to build relationships and rapport. Everyone in my Chinese family has made an effort to include me but there are members who've really tried to sustain a connection despite my limitations of language. One of them is my Coffee Uncle. I'll call him that because there are so many uncles and he does have the distinction in our conversations as the uncle who, out of the blue, admitted a preference for coffee. Since the first time we met, he has always had the biggest smile and genuine yearning to communicate. It was only a few days ago that I managed to sustain a conversation of a few minutes with him. This is the purpose of language and I'm really glad to connect more.

 

I also tend to be not just the linguist but language analyst, I'm piecing together some interesting regionalisms too. Despite the fact that my Qingyuan extended family mostly grew up within 15 kilometres of each other, there are still interesting differences in language. A case in point is a word as simple as the number two, which sounds like "yee" (the same as in Hong Kong Cantonese) in my new home village of Waangho, but sounds like "zzzz" in my cousin's hometown of Dayou down the road. Apart from the cute closeness in the English alphabet (y->z) there isn't much apparent to indicate why this might be the case, and it is still rather gobsmacking that a word as fundamental as a number can have such different pronunciation. (I should add, in case you are that way inclined that it is of the same origin; these two forms come from the same ancestor that gives Mandarin "er", Japanese "Ni" etc. By coincidence we have our future brother-in-law staying in our apartment with us, who comes from Maoming in western Guangdong (300 kilometres away). It isn't much of a surprise that their Cantonese has some significant differences to what is spoken in Guangzhou and Qingyuan but it is a mutually understandable variant. (I have trouble understanding but that goes without saying.) But what makes this a coincidence is that they have two consonants that are different, and one of them affects the number two, which they say as "ngee". I only raise this because it is the way of the amateur language analyst. It offers a door of exploration. It is quite possible that one of the reasons I can't understand some people is because some fundamental words are fundamentally different in sound. Sometimes catching these small differences is your way in.

 

We went on an often misguided voyage to Maoming (the hometown of my future brother in law). I finally swam at a Chinese beach, and it wasn't bad and ate a different kind of completely authentic country cuisine. Qingyuan people are crazy about chickens and geese. Maoming people love their seafood, ducks and chickens. Since I've loosened up a little about the food that I eat I could at least try these things without confusing people too much. One of the most important parts of life is exploration and experiencing.

Remember boy you're a superstar!

"It's taken a while to get back to the blog." Perhaps, in a world increasingly dominated by microblogs these are the most common words in the blogosphere. As one who benefits from mentally editorialising, it's a shame not to be able to elaborate and structure my thoughts in the ether of a blog on a more regular basis but microblogs do have their powers: The photos attached are from occasional emergences in that sphere.

 

I'm enjoying my work. As someone who is also plotting to move company this is an important admission - but that's where considered decisions can form. Today I gave a warning letter ending, thankfully, in a smile; I informed a teacher she'd had complaints and she eagerly soaked up advice; I gave another relatively unmotivated teacher her performance review. And beyond that I did a training session to 20 service specialists in the morning; oh, and I finalised a chess event in March; gave a grammar study group; finalised our Successful Students project; brainstormed openly with another. And another one, a real powerhouse who produced this I barely spoke to. Such is a day of so many focusses. There is drama and tension in a lot of those summary sentences. But satisfaction too.

 

Books consumed my pre-diploma time last year. They were an outstanding feature - another year I'm literally thankful for. I'm not sure if I mentioned that I finished The Water Margin weeks ahead of schedule. With the diploma, time seems so much less. At present I'm having my rare moment enjoying music on China's version of youtube. Listening to music that once transported me, playing with the music videos I'd never seen. Tricky, a performer I like, made two straight albums of mostly short songs. There is a beauty in short songs. At first you get the feeling of something over far too soon, but that's life. They pass far too quickly. You go back and you can cherish every beat of it more. 

 

 

 

Fall

I might as well say it is Fall. I noticed a few American "t"s entering my pronunciation so I might as well realign some of my vocabulary to American, too, right? Being abroad does change some subconscious choices and even makes you think about the conscious ones too.

It's been a month since my last blog and that reflects two new uses for my leisure time. One has been that natural consequence of my power reading earlier this year: I hit gravel to slow myself down reading a Chinese classic, The Water Margin. I'd read the first of the four Chinese classic novels in my first year, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and, being the project that it was, was quite daunted by the prospect of another. But in August I missed the boat on a distance diploma course I'd intended to do and with only travel planning and sweating to do in my late summer free time, it was easy to get into. Since it is my second classic, I'm fortunately able to read much faster than I was before. I average about 15 pages a day. My day has a nice start, a coffee on the balcony or sofa to peel of a few pages; if I catch the bus, I read some; if I nick out to lunch, I bring it and read half a page before my food arrives; the bus back too, needless to say; and then maybe a bit more while Christy watches Hong Kong soaps. And then there are good weekends and average weekends.

The Water Margin is known by all and read my comparatively few, it seems. I don't enjoy it as much as The Romance but it does have its good points. It has more sex and violence than you'd expect in a 700 year old book. It also seems to have the recurring theme of evil women - I can only guess the writer was a misogynist. There are some brave female warriors too, but they barely get a line. There are 108 heroes in this book. All up a mountain for a good portion of it, apparently killing the corrupt and not hurting the innocent. I'm not sure how many I could name for you now, but I think I'd get to thirty before I started scratching my head. I'm up to page 820 of 965 and I really want it finished because...

I had my stroke of luck. In the middle of the year I was professionally down on my luck having been effectively demoted and missed the course that would have made the time worthwhile. Mid-October, I go an e-mail re-offering me a place in the course I wanted to do. Starting the next day, more or less. It was an easy decision. The one olive leaf of shame I have is being well underqualified (credential-wise). It is pretty much the gold standard of ESL qualifications and one that I don't mind some short term pain to get.

But of course there is still the matter of 145 pages of blood, women and loyalty to slash through so that I have the time... You might wonder why I don't just put the book on hold and let my academic reading reign for the time being. And though I should consider than option more, it's (a) a book and I don't put down books easily without quiting altogether; (b) 108 heroes and their various backgrounds are hard enough to remember with only night breaking the flow of reading; (c) I like it.

Fortunately for you, if you wanted to know all the above, I haven't done my reading yet this morning so I could write this blog. Now I think it's sat next to me long enough. It's time for coffee and battle.

Train of thought

"Please sit in the seat number shown on your ticket," the PA boomed at every stop from Qingyuan to Wuhan. And Wuhan and back. It was a simple rule but one that we couldn't follow. It is the rule that it is imperative to break in China. This rule, though elegantly simple and common sense, doesn't fit with the ticketing system that operates in China: Ticketing for train trips during the national holiday period can only be bought 5 days before the day of departure. Since 100 million people want to buy those multiple tickets and the best way is to use the internet to buy the tickets, thereby avoiding the pandemonium of the ticketing office. The computer system chooses the seating and your travel party / family is left scattered in three different carriages.   Fortunately, everyone knows the drill. You ask someone else to move to another cabin so that you can sit next to your wife and they'll get up straight away. It is one of the few acts of public kindness that people know is not a trick, that I help you, someone else will definitely help me. Or perhaps everyone wants to do the fingers to the System embodied by the PA.   But of course, the Good Samaritan whose seat you're in may get off the train before you, and so another passenger might get on with your new seat number. That's fine: You just tell them the situation and they head to the other carriage to sit in your ticketed seat. Of course, if they themselves are in a group, they may just evict you.   Either way, on our slow train to Wuhan and our fast train back, it gave us something to do, besides play cards, read books and eat. Wuhan itself had more: Cheap taxis, sweet rice wine for breakfast, and hordes of people looking for some holiday diversions. All the places we went to, bar one, was overcrowded to the point of obliterating almost any redeeming tourist value. But so long as you are there for a collective experience that'll bring you closer together, you'll enjoy! We lined for Huanghe Lou in a massive queue that snake around the base of the building, slowly crawling into the building, but once there, it was a queue up the stairs, and then a queue around past the gift shop, which led to another queue up another set of stairs. We pulled out at this point. Whatever was at the top would not be able to be appreciated.   And that's what this autumn's enlightenment might rest upon, if I were to go by the Wuhan newspapers: what is the enjoyment of travel and how can a system give the most enjoyment to the people. It might sound a bit patronising but Chinese people are still learning how to be travellers and appreciate special places and events properly. They know its special and thus go there just to indicate that they've been there. They "got the t-shirt".   The system for public holidays is peculiar. The government will change the weekends for most workers around public holidays so that everyone has continuous long holiday stretches (with continuous long stretches of work before or after. If there were a three day public holiday from Wednesday to Friday, they may move one weekend to Monday and Tuesday, thus giving a seven day break, for example. This is very benevolent of the authorities to ensure that people have maximum togetherness on special days. But holidays aren't necessarily just for family togetherness: this system is the bane of the traveller. Because there is no flexibility for most workers, everyone is off on those exact same seven days, using transport on the first and last, going to various sites on the third, fourth and fifth days. Most people choose to have their "family togetherness" from their home because of an aversion to the throngs of people choking anything worth being at.   At almost every site, I found myself repeating the idea of giving companies, or people, the power to stagger their own holidays around national holidays. And was met with an article suggesting the same thing in the paper. At least someone is listening.

Eroded moon

An eroded moon. An orange grim thing. That is the night sky that welcomed me as a newborn child, in the sky. My lunar birthday falls four days before Autumn festival, which has a full moon. Four days before Mid-Autumn festival it is less than full. It doesn't bother me that my moon isn't full. My solar birthday, the first of October, marks a particular angle of the sun at its highest point in the day in a season. No-one but a calendar can see it. My lunar birthday, 11th of the 8th month, I know can expect the same incomplete moon, maybe orange, maybe white, maybe yellow, maybe blue, hanging on less than full in the sky year in and year out of my life. That is my moon. The moon of my birth.   After 3am I know that moon would have set. All that would remain is Orion, a visitor to my sky. I've only seen it this once in the three years in Guangzhou. I can only savour in this. The grim moon gone; the hunter rises; this early in the morning; after the guests have left; after the party; on the day; of the same moon; on the day I was born; I type and live here; in the distant city of Guangzhou,

Tripping point

Guangzhou had its first tumble into autumn. Temperatures dropped finally to the comfortable range of 20 to 30 degrees. Guangzhou also tumbled into protest for the second time since I came to China. The Senkaku / Diaoyu Island dispute flared up. The roads around my office became choked with people, police and barricades. Japanese made cars in Tianhe district, as in other cities recently, were vandalised. At least one was set alight. A plume of smoke reached to the sky. Sound like a war-zone? Well, barring all out street battles tomorrow, naturally it is but an image produced is a mere spark in an otherwise dry, normal day. Let's hope the spark burns out.   I've almost always had an apocalyptic streak. Maybe it was a result of watching and reading (well, half of) The Stand in my youth. I sometimes consider what would happen, so far from home, should a real pandemic engulf the world. Or with a economic crisis, China lurches back into revolutionary mode and relive unpleasantness of the Cultural revolution as the foreign influences are blamed. I'm psychologically ready for anything.   Why is damp Guangzhou so dry? Well, the country is a historical tinderbox. Some dates are flashpoints 9.18 (September 18th). With still another day to get to that mark, things could be interesting. Though I'd rather them not be.

Freedom flying

Even as a search item, freedom is a fraught word...

The spine of a book

Another two fellas who had a chance meeting in my mind were Rodion Raskolnikov and Vito Corleone. They also were separated by time, countries and, in this case, were completely fictional. But if anything that is a reason to more easily facilitate dialogue between them.   Rodion was the confused protagonist of Crime and Punishment. He was an odd man in his early twenties, some elements of him I think I could identify with myself at that age. But he had aspirations of something great, and in a fever, went so far as to kill two people. He wasn't of the disposition to live well with the consequences, or the social implications that are entailed by being suspected of murder. He couldn't help but implicate himself, directly and indirectly to the police, his family and friends, despite their being very little in evidence to convict him. One of the interesting pieces of circumstantial evidence against him was an article he wrote proclaiming that some men, meant for greatness, were not bound by laws and rules of man; they're not bound by any Social Contract. Napoleon, Nixon and Mao were such individuals, (One could also argue, however, that reality caught up with all of them to some degree.) Rodion wanted to prove that theory so killed as an experiment, and in effect he disproved himself.   Raskolnikov was a rather pathetic individual when you get down to it. He was the only one who even posited that he could be great. But it is easier to break from the fetters of being common when others believe in your entitlement to be above the law. Vito Corleone as the Godfather was such a man. In the book the Godfather, his son explains it quite clearly: "He (Vito) doesn't accept the rules of society we live in because those rules would have condemned him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a man of extraordinary force and character. He refuses to live by rules set up by others, rules which condemn him to a defeated life. But his ultimate aim is to enter that society with a certain power since society doesn't really protect its members who do not have their individual power. In the meantime he operates on a code of ethics he considers far superior to the legal structures of society."  And thus the Godfather reigned whereas Raskolnikov failed.   A little background research revealed Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather, was deeply influenced by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the author of Crime and Punishment; he even modelled a character in the Godfather on Raskolnikov but not Vito. So perhaps this isn't surprising. Rasklonikov wouldn't have done well with a mafioso eyeballing him. He'd have fallen over himself to take an offer that couldn't be refused. He wouldn't have made it far up the chain of a regime (an arm of a gang) to be even a caporegime (the head of the gang). And he lacked any of the attributes to pull people to his leadership.   The Godfather stands as probably the best novel I've read this year. I've consumed two others in quick speed since then; I'm still barrelling along with a thirst for more to read. Long may it continue.

The content of a/your character

Chen Mengjia and Bill Hicks never met. Except in my mind. I read of them two books apart but I'm sure, despite lacking a common tongue, might speak a common language. And despite being of different times and cultures, they might have had some common references.    The two come to mind for many similarities - but mainly because I read them close together: Chen was a thread in a book, Oracle Bones (by Peter Hessler, mentioned in an earlier blog). He was vocal to prevent Chinese characters being discarded in favour of an alphabet and first got labelled a Rightist, then a Counter-Revolutionary and when the Cultural Revolution happened, he had one Struggle Session too many and leapt out a window to end it all.   He had a certain foolhardiness to be vocal about Chinese characters because it was Chairman Mao who was the proponent of using an alphabet. Speaking against an idea of the leader, is to speak against the leader. But he had something to say. And why not say it? Can holding opinions really be a crime? And what if they're transformed into words?   Bill Hicks lived in a more forgiving time although he still found the social climate of America in the 80s and early 90s a cross to bear. But if he didn't have that cross to bear perhaps he wouldn't have been a comedian. His opinions, probably most of them, were transformed into "sets" and rants that he did on stage to both entertained and appalled audiences. He did feel that he had a message of change. But perhaps, crudely, his work only pushed the boundaries of acceptability.   My introduction to him had been a strange one. A cassette album I bought about 12 years ago had a drawing of him on the inside cover (captioned: "another dead hero"), without explanation. I thought it was the band trying to create a mythology for their album and thought nothing of it. It was only later that I read that the weird stand-up clips that got spliced into songs on another album were said by the very same person, but without referencing where they came from. It is strange to know the words spoken by someone long before you know the person themselves.   Hicks died young from pancreatic cancer. A harrowing struggle session in itself, but not from the Man he railed against, and who swallowed Chen, but from the Nature that he venerated. Irony, I guess. His comedy wasn't terribly accessible. His words could be coarse, crude, brutal and violent. But that was part of his point: that there is freedom to say and do these things. When flag burning became a constitutional issue, he lit cigarettes with a burning flag. A symbol of what gives freedom should not be used to suppress freedom.   In the last phase of his life, Hicks had his own patch of being censored. He had huge admiration for David Letterman and felt it a privilege till the twelth and final time he appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. The best way to tell this story is from the mouth, well, show, of one of the protagonists: Click on 1, 2, and 3. I'll take the apparent: David Letterman can be exceedingly humble in his apology. Truly, a lesson for us all. In the Hick's biography he was a paper thin character but I'd assume that he decided to seek this redemption off his own bat.  Mao, our fourth protagonist, probably didn't specifically demand the persecution of Chen Mengjia. He didn't need to. (Society also doesn't need to, either, to snuff out undesireable voices.) But he pre-empted some of the Hicks irony with his own form: After being strongly of the mind that Chinese Characters should be done away with in order to increase literacy, he did an about-turn and decided they just needed to be simplified. At the time it wasn't explained why. But Mao had said it and thus it was done. Literacy didn't improve but in death, perhaps, Chen might feel better though not if he knew the whole story: According to Hessler, Mao wasn't swayed by the martyr-like words of people like Chen; he had a chat with Stalin who advised against it.   We can pipe up and pipe down but change often happens in its own way.

A chat with Chris

This could easily be re-named: a chat with Aaron, a side-stroll with Amy, a bumble with Ben, or a mumble with Matthew, although the latter hasn't happened yet; that will happen tomorrow morning, after all and I won't claim to comment yet what hasn't happened.   Growth often happens when the unending chaos and solipsism of the individual ends against the unbending face of another. I've lacked real chats until now. I've chatted with Ben. But that chat started and ended with others. I'm another to him, so incidentally it can lead to me. My chat with Aaron, though drunken as chats with Aaron must be, was all the more revealing because the more he opened his soul and thus the less I felt I held in my hand to play. He doesn't open his soul. Buy him beer he does. He also grabs my nipples, in an odd way to prove he's not gay, but that is an aside you understand.   Chris is and was a blank slate and too young to really read and be read. We hadn't talked for over a year. We may talk before he leaves for England. I'd for so long held the forced conception that I'd invited him once, he came so it was up to him to show initiative and organise something, or else I'd never put effort into trying to re-establish contact. It was great to talk to him. Maybe those rules are meant to be broken. Or else, are those rules meant to be kept for a simple life. I'd be happy without the chat. But what magic "chats" hold.   I'll talk to Matt about growth, about goals, about GROW: Goals, Reality, Options and the What, Where and hoW. Matt is my learning point in particular. How to make the thorny rose grow. He is a Rose. But he has to be held in the right way. He shouldn't want people to dance to help him. It is almost a contradiction that everyone must approach one in ceremonial indirectness to help. But thus.   Don called yesterday. Twice. Locally I'm wanted and needed. At least in the short-term. Don is a simple soul. He wants the best for all. He is confident with a losing hand. Or a winning hand. You only know once you get to the last round of betting.   I'll always win though. I have an ace in hand. My Christy. My unbeatable trump. I'll only hold her, never show her, never let them know how I win.

Fallen Trees

The first typhoon of the Guangzhou summer passed through town in the past week. During the worst of it I was listening to the radio at home, sometimes momentarily trying to focus on the words of the host to grab a little Cantonese "practice". I heard lam syuu repeated and bounced it around my mind just as a sound, the intellect not really wanting to embrace it as something meaningful. Long after the sound stopped the translation is issued from a sleepy corner of my brain: fallen trees; they were reporting the traffic hazards to motorists and were mentioning where the storm had taken down trees.   Every time has its words. Storms have "fallen trees". When learning a language, to anticipate a few of these words is to grasp a lot. Once you know the context you are in you can apply the knowledge of these key words, signs and signals and understand more about where you are and where you're going.

In the darkest corner of the Prisoners' Dilemma

Every scenario and interaction in China tends to be influenced by culture and the guoqing, (a nice Chinese term: the factors specific to a country, usually China). It makes us all into sociologists; or just a bunch of angry, ranting foreigners. I'm the former only once the annoyance subsides.   At this point you can imagine me standing waiting for a lift. Lifts are very much a thing of the last ten years. Many residential housing areas don't have them. Even in our far-from-old complex certain buildings don't, which must make moving house and buying new furniture a difficult experience. Lifts, and any sort of convenience for that matter, are a resource and a resource that is always going to be scarce in China. Stairs in many complexes are neglected, dirty and full of shady types. Escalators for each floor are often not placed well for convenience, requiring you to walk a great distance, and incidentally past many shops. So lifts are the way to go, really.   So you can imagine now that I'm not the only one waiting for the lift. DING! The lift has arrived fairly full, and it's going down - I'm going up so I'll wait a bit longer. What little space that was freed up by alighting passengers is taken by people boarding. The surprise is to come when that same lift comes back up: most of the passengers who boarded, and some who had been inside from the start, are still there, jammed in like sardines for the upward leg of the journey. No one gets off. The doors shut probably up one floor before the same scene is repeated. Why would this be the case?   An easy mistake to think is that many people just mistakenly boarded a lift without checking whether it's going up or down. Maybe some do this, but not the majority. When the number of people waiting for the lift and are present in the lift rises to a particular point, the only way to be certain that you'll get to your floor soon is to board at any opportunity. Of course, this isn't pleasant. You'll have to squeeze in, be pushed around as other people leave but it's obviously viewed as worth the experience. Unfortunately, as soon as the strategy becomes rational (i.e. the lift is almost full), it causes problems. For every one person going in the wrong direction, there is one prevented from going in the right direction, a much shorter journey, from boarding. An example would be the lift mentioned, it got to the second basement carpark, the bottommost floor only for the waiting passengers to gasp in the realisation that no-one was getting off and no-one would be getting on. Except they don't gasp. It is an understandable strategy. Other people aren't hell, they're straw dogs, furniture, circumstance, the trees that hide the woods. It is ultimately an antisocial strategy, reducing the utility of the lift and the convenience.   Such situations remind me of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Objectively, option A is better than option B. When everyone would be better off if everyone was to choose option A, and everyone would be worse off if everyone chose option B. But they still choose option B because (1) they don't trust others to choose option A; or (2) they realise that choosing option B would have a more certain, definite, immediate benefit, whereas option A was slightly less certain.   Chinese are often at the bottom-right hand corner of the Prisoners' Dilemma. Resources will always be scarce and they'll always unapologetically, understandably take a life where their adverse effects on everyone else is far too clear to see.   Rain-laden clouds are traipsing in and out of Guangzhou; they growl and menace; zap and spark. My own clouds had barely moved out: My snag has pulled me off my horse. I'm a casualty of the changes that are afoot in my company. I'm on my feet again, a foot soldier. I think I'd better find another horse!

Pearly whites

When Hu Chunhua sees me coming she's working on the teeth of an old Cantonese fellow and tells me to leave my medical history on the table and wait outside. I barely read a paragraph before she calls me back in and tel;s me to sit in the dentist's chair. The old fellow isn't out of the seat so I hover. They talk as he takes the two inch steps of the elderly. "Come over and sit down!" she says again. He is still making his way through the narrow entrance so I wait patiently for him to be completely clear before I nip in and fulfill Dentist Hu's exhortation to sit.   She's an interesting one. She knows me from my numerous visits to treat ulcers but rarely remembers exactly where I'm from or what I do despite asking. She's always chirpy. She is practical too. Sometimes she does me the benefit of my treatment before payment at the counter. This is one of the most annoying process in the hospital. The doctor establishes your treatment but you'd have to go to another floor to queue and settle the bill before treatment can begin. She also has discreetly done small treatment for me without cost. Don't tell her boss.   She works on the second floor of the community clinic five minutes walk away from our apartment complex. It took us about half a year to be brave and go into the clinic. Chinese healthcare mainly uses horrendously big hospitals to administer the masses. Good doctors go to big hospitals. So there was some scepticism about the quality of care we'd get at this small, often shut, establishment. But it's use became quickly clear. In China, a doctor's note is required for paid sick leave. When you're sick, the thought of the large hospitals and the tribulation of going upstairs downstairs to the doctor, wheezing in queues and whatnot, would only get you sicker. At the clinic though, if you have a common cold, you could get a note within about ten minutes and the cost of about eighty New Zealand cents.   Hua Ming, a doctor, usually takes me for those visits. My susceptibility to colds and tropical flus has taken me out at least once every three months. She remembers me, too, but not my nationality, job or how long I've been in China, despite asking me some aspects of my identity on every visit. She shatters the idea that doctors overprescribe, sometimes giving me nothing, sometimes inquiring what is already in the medicine cabinet, usually she'll give me a blood test and that requires going upstairs to the phlebotomist.   I don't know his name - and he too asks me the same questions, especially where I'm from and what I do. He sometimes isn't even at his station. His station has no bell. His station is an office with a sliding window with a seat outside it. When I have a blood test I sit on that seat put my arm through the window so he can prick my finger and pipette the blood up for computer analysis. But if he isn't there, so I just sit on that seat. My diagnosis can't go any further without it. Someone else might spot me sitting on the seat and hear downstairs for him. I hear his footsteps and the pause in footsteps when he yells gossip back to the conversationalist he has just been dragged away from to attend to me. He looks at me as he disinfects my finger: "You're Russian, aren't you?"   I saw Dentist Hu today. She cleaned my teeth and dabbed an ulcer. She was fabulous. Out of all the places that I frequent, it is kind of sad that it is the hospital where I've maintained the longest Mandarin-based relationships. Reading another's experiences of life in a small town, I realise I'm missing a big part of the Chinese experience. With work worries, a surge to get fit and literature drawing me back, it is hard to find the time and energy for Chinese. At least I can get sick from time to time to rely on my Chinese for things that really matter.

Warm up Cool down

It has been only a week since my interview for survival. My mood has fluctuated in the aftermath to what I thought was a pretty average interview by myself. Within the coming week, I'll be served some sort of reality - maybe good maybe bad. One of my friends/erstwhile competitors was philosophical about my criticism that our managers have higher managerial expectations of us than they have of themselves when it comes to change management. He said that we are all managers and need to be able to cope with more able subordinates. True - I'm out qualified by two of my subordinates. Well said, I guess, but it is hard to discern any technique or strategy that has been used to demote three of your most talented managers, and address the ripple effect down the chain. But it can be the worse, right? One has to ask, how would Chairman Mao manage? (HWCMM?) You might wonder why I'd even raise the fellow apart from this whole being-in-China thing. I've just finished Peter Hessler's two books River Town and Oracle Bones, lovely books that enrich the whole experience of being in China - to hear a voice that is insightful into the, dare I say it, Chinese mind. Mao is always there in the background. Mao is the baggage for a heck of a lot of Chinese people. Mao could manage a revolution! (Though perhaps not a country nor an economy.) And in some ways the new managers are handling a revolution. Chairman Mao, according to Deng Xiaoping (his successor), was 70% right and 30% wrong, which is a nice way to cover for rather efficient mismanagement. He could run a good revolution - he declared the People's Republic on 1 October 1949 after all. But from that point on made management decisions that led to tens of millions of deaths. He would surely run the company into the ground. But management, especially of a large overpopulated poor nation, is hardly an easy thing. It's a modern fascination to wonder how people of the past would do in the present. We'd all want to know if Aristotle would handle the credit crisis with aplomb, or whether Napoleon would have been a great stock market trader. But my job is important to me so I want to imagine what Mao would do in the hot seat of my company. So HWCMM? Well, the biggest thing is his dedication to a dogma: Mao hated even the notion of a class structure, of anything beyond the enforced egalitarian of the masses, those who were not class enemies or the communist upper tier. Perhaps Mao would flatten out the structure all together. We are a school and a school should just have teachers, plowing fields and fields of fertile minds. Make it simple: just have your farmers tilling - reduce the "upper class" of management (well, perhaps just the middle level) and occupy them with labour so that there is no chance of revolt. Er, well maybe he's still holding his own with this crowd. It is the way we're going... Probably the aspect of the interview for my position that annoyed me the most is the difference between expectations and reality. It had happened before. We have been told that we have moved to a Competency Model. This is where every job should have its strengths which candidates are measured by. Sounded good. I entered my first interview with the faulty impression it applied to interviews. It wasn't the case. It wasn't surprising that it was a case for the most recent interview. I still prepared to show my worth under each of the competencies - but it wasn't required. They ask you questions from oblique angles to test out your reasoning - they did that even though they didn't have a thorough understanding of your past or present. I reflected with another friend/erstwhile competitor afterward that we both didn't say our biggest achievements because we were driven away from answering meaningfully by a style of questioning that rarely went near covering the stated competencies. It often was looking for our basic philosophies - which is good but the philosophy they were looking for wasn't stated. Do you conform with the thinking that we haven't told you about. My philosophical friend/erstwhile competitor took it as testing our ability to think, and if we were creative we could pull in our particular achievements. But this all is speculation, what is more important is HWCMM? Well, the chairman was big on basic philosophy, too. Philosophy was the root of the problem. (But is it a problem?) Even your background may lead you astray. Ability can be misled by philosophy after all so we should evaluate whether people abide by the dogma of the Party. It makes it simpler after all. So, er, well comparing how he managed and the way the interview was run, I can see some similarities... I think he'd like the whole "tell them one thing and then attack them contrary to their expectations" strategy. Reminiscent of the Hundred Flowers campaign. Maybe Mao wouldn't do a bad job after all... It might be a bit hasty to say that he'd run a company into the ground any faster or slower. I should really drop this negativity. It isn't doing me any good than amusing me and driving me onto the recruitment websites? I just want the final decision out in the open so I can properly adjust and think what I really want. If I'm demoted, can I deal with a year without solid aspiration? It'd give me time to get qualified to diploma level. I can manage a school now in my sleep. (I'm not prone to boasting but I'm doing terrificly well right now with my school.) It's true that I'm still learning but I can stay in this school forever and my learning is only getting less and less. I'm an innate optimist though. The thing that breaks me out of my negativity is currently the prospect of being one of the two left standing. It'd be mighty interesting. I do want it. It might be twice the work for the same money. But it'd be well earned money. Growth money. I would love the challenge. Just let me have the challenge. Please. All is forgiven. Mao. Whatever your name would be. I shall serve thee, the party and the company, and shan't make splashy wave-making arm movements apropos your leadership. I should just work this out at the gym. Warm up. Work out. Cool down. Then and only then is it real.

Dragons and boats

In New Zealand, Christmas is the only festival that really pulls people together. But in China, almost every festival is a time of family and rituals; and with government designation as a national celebration, there are always days off to get back to the hometown and celebrate with a meal, let off fireworks, play mahjong and sit around getting eaten by mosquitoes.   Dragon Boat festival was on Saturday and again we returned for two days, one night to Qingyuan. The government designation is all the difference here: Dragon Boat festival was only designated a holiday in 2008. In the south of China, Winter Solstice is traditionally a bigger festival than Spring Festival but without the support of national holidays, it is a struggle to celebrate it. Short holidays have their own perils because the government does more than just designate holidays: it instructs all companies how to rearrange weekends to make sure that employees have consecutive days off. And they make sure the majority of people in the cities are having off the same days, and will be piling into intercity transportation at the same time etc.   But the traffic struggles are all fine because soon you'll be home eating, drinking and playing mahjong. There is one problem in my adopted home: only one person knows how to play mahjong (and like bridge, mahjong is a four person game). Fortunately, card game genes are strong in the blood of all Chinese people, but the first game that has been played at the last couple of festivals has been Chinese chess. I'd brought my chess set during Chinese New Year, and got the challenge I'd wanted. I won some, lost some and in long protraced struggles even drew some. I hadn't had much of a challenge over the board prior.   This time it wasn't I who brought a chess set but Ah-Wing. He's an interesting fellow. Being my sister-in-law's fiance, he is my future loukam (men who marry sisters - Chinese is great for being specific with relationship names). He has George Clooney's jaw and one of the few Chinese people to have hairier legs than me. It is a testament to the man to have brought the set because he was the only person I was undefeated against - and he challenged me directly. In the past he'd come close but could never get more than a draw. This time was to be his time to enjoy - three straight long wins in the afternoon - I'd missed chances to win in two games. Brother Hou is my only current loukam, and he is the strongest player among us; he came over later in the evening and played for most of his stay. Ah-Wing and I had been winless against him so we combined forces and surprisingly won two straight times. (I say surprisingly because you'd think that based on the past record he'd superior technique than both of us put together: we were winless against him.) It was late and Ah-Wing went for a shower and, perhaps unnerved by being destroyed twice, Brother Hou yielded easily to me in the next game. My first win against him.   Earlier, once my three game series in the afternoon with Ah-Wing, the girls got us onto cards, the main one being Cho Daai D. It is a card game similar to President/Asshole. We'd started and noticed her mother on the fringe. Her mother's hands get itchy when others play cards, and with a hand in hand, she squints at her cards for quite some time before winning one devastating trick after another.

Zhu Wenyu

Was he a good teacher? It is a decent question to ask. As I think back I replay memories from 12 years ago - a full cycle of the Chinese zodiac - to remember as clearly as possible what set him apart.   Zhu Laoshi (Teacher Zhu) was my first Chinese teacher when I arrived in Taiwan, and it must be said that before he taught me, I didn't have much desire to teach English; when I returned to New Zealand I accelerated my graduation and was chomping at the bit to teach it. Had I just had an affinity on my own or was he really the catalyst that I claim him to be?   When I think back to him, I'd often think how most good teachers begin: talented but without the refinement of time and skill. He had his methods - interesting (but often inefficient) methods. His passion and compassion were easy to spot. He knew how to engage but not to teach skill. That might be harsh. Even the best teachers, without guidance, don't necessarily know how to do the basic function expected of them: to impart both skill and knowledge. And how long was I in a mode of teaching that, though entertaining, though knowledgeable, though confident, was not meeting that basic expectation either.   My first class in Taiwan was difficult. I'd arrived a week previously and had stayed in a club mate's family home but had struggled to understand them and be understood. In other words I was not a high level student. But come the placement test, I proved what a great test taker I was, and placed myself one level short of the top. While doing the test I knew what was going to happen and in the first ten minutes of the class, I showed the massive gap between me and my classmates. Deep-ends do help with the ol' swimming skills though, and it's that which gave me enough to survive. What allowed me to splash was his handling and my classmates' grace. The compassion and patience was immediate from the first day.   And he loved language. I didn't know if he was a literature buff, not that it's necessary, but he "got" language too. And that is something I got eventually. He may not have taught me the skill of using Chinese in the most efficent way, but the concept of language and the relation of words, idioms and grammar came clearly through his lessons, even without teaching them explicitly. Once I got it with Chinese, when I came back I cracked the back of English grammar on a piece of refill. The mystery of language became better than a mystery: It became a puzzle.   I liked puzzles. I don't know if he did. I approached teaching in the same way he did. With compassion, patience, energy and openness. It is the foundation of all good teaching.

PK

Using a symbolic language,it is only natural that Chinese have mastered the most compressed language in English: the acronym.   Product names are the most common ones you hear. LV is an expensive brand famous for hand bags. CK is famous for underwear. XO, far from being a kiss and a hug, is a by-word for cognac. Since they're commonplace for Chinese speakers to use them, students will use them all without hesitation in their own English thinking that the alphabet indicated that they were English.     Oddities abound. WC is one of the longest existing Chinglish acronyms. Can you guess what it stands for? It is not a global sporting event but a humble latrine. The letter originate from the archaic name of water closet. OT, which I associate with occupational therapy, means overtime. BMW is a put down: big mouth woman. TMD is a Chinese curse phrase which doesn't bear elaboration. From my first weeks in China I learnt a new one, PK, which comes to mind more frequently now.   PK is even more obscure than WC in that no-one is entirely sure whence it originated. When I asked, no-one could tell me its provenance, and some even really struggled to explain the meaning. After exposure to this phrase I can kindly define for your enlightenment that a PK is a head-to-head match: one person will win, the other will lose. It is a verb too, You can PK someone, to challenge them for a position, for a title etc. According to Baidu, the Chinese dominant Googlesque website, it originates from Player Kill, a common phrase in old computer games, apparently.    As reported in The Snag, after climbing the mountain and achieving my goal, I've found an ogre at the top swinging to knock me off. Or rather, in a more realistic sense, two of us have just climbed up, and two rather pleasant people are at the top and the space at the top only accommodates two. They're nice. They aren't exactly stamping on our fingers. We're all pretty good friends. But while we are up here, we're going to be PK the odds-on winners for our own piece of the crumbling crag.   Your Chinglish word of the day. My reality. When I wrote earlier, I wasn't rating my chances. But now I'm getting myself organised. I can see my strengths and my achievements more clearly. I have a strong supporter who is quite determined to push me onto the top, too. So I shall surge up and PK with all my might.

Book ends

We went cross-town last weekend to a Chinese doctor, a old, sagely, genuinely traditional earnest Chinese doctor, who operated out of a non-descript room in an old housing complex. He was a great guy, had said my blood was toxic and that's why I still have pimples on my shoulders. Fair enough, but on this particular day, he wasn't in. We were greeted with his door closed and a simple paper sign suggesting he wouldn't be in for the next few days. It wasn't a trip in vain as we got to see one of the most extraordinary sights of my two and a half years in China: from a narrow path in the complex came a topless teen riding an old bicycle in the process of putting on a t-shirt. Think a moment. You're on a bike, following twisting and turning paths, one hand on the handles and the other hand trying to pull a t-shirt over your head. How does that work? He actually couldn't get the t-shirt past his head. Don't try this at home, and definitely not in the narrow corner-ridden alleys of an old housing area. He struggled with the shirt. Didn't peddle. Missed us. Came close to a wall, somehow knew it. Turned at a right angle. Still couldn't get the shirt off his head and out of the way of his eyes. Turned another right angle and into the clear, where he managed to shake shirt down to his shoulders and, removing both hands from the handle bars to pull it over the rest of him. Genius!   Now I only raise this because I was profoundly disappointed by the doctor's absence. Not because of the lack of a diagnosis and prescription, but because I brought a book for this visit to the doctor. Which I wouldn't be reading this time. Queueing is an inevitability in China, and I had prepared my book for the long wait and I really wanted to read the book. Instead we'd be going somewhere else, where books were harder to read. So apart from seeing a miracle of instinctive blind control of a bike, I couldn't continue my book, and this was annoying. For once more my mind was obsessed with literature. Perhaps you don't know what it's like.   When I study Chinese, language takes up all my non-essential time outside work. I love language to bits. Witness the blogs dissecting Qingyuan dialect! But in a sea of hanzi, dialect, four character phrases and xiehouyu, one's brain does yearn for the familiar. Twice in these two years my brain has gone through a stretch of just wanting English literature. It desires it like water to a thirsty desert dweller. I'd see a book and I want to just ingest every word and paragraph. And then sated, I can go back to Chinese study with diligence and application. I haven't got to that point yet though. On our honeymoon I ripped through Mildred Pierce a great Depression era novel by an American author (James M. Cain) who no-one seems to know much about, but his work made The Postman Always Rings Twice (a movie I'd heard of but not seen). He wrote it in 1941, but we only bought it in Hong Kong because it had Kate Winslett on the cover. Apparently she'd starred in the mini-series, which I have since bought on DVD but also haven't seen. (500 minutes of Kate Winslett isn't a hard sell for me, but with other competing things to watch it'd knock out a fair few nights of entertainment.)   But that hardly stopped my hunger. Next I cracked into Crime and Punishment, an even older book written in 1866 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was a struggle for 80 pages and after that it compelled me at every free moment of the day. Except in the bathroom where I read the much more contemporary About a Boy, by Nick Hornby, which was made into a movie with Hugh Grant. An adorable, cringe movie but likeable nonethe less. I like the idea of always having a book in the bathroom, or a newspaper or magazine at the least. I've always had short Chinese stories to read there, now I munch through a cutely written book fiction book in English.   While I had those two going, I decided to start my third book simultaneously: Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler, a gentleman who'd been in China since the early nineties. This non-fiction book, though in English, I was still surprised to be able to buy and read this in China. It has some outstandingly sharp observations about China and politics, and one of his widely quoted acquaintances was a Uighur (a "Chinese" minority, pronounced wee-ger) with a hatred for Han Chinese (the majority) and quick with incendiary comments. Probably the reason for my dabbling with a third book is that one of my basest literary desires is non-fiction.   Crime and Punishment ended yesterday, the punishment had to come, and I've begun to rattle through Oracle Bones. Hopefully my yen for reading will last to the end of the other two books. And then? Mandarin, Cantonese and Qingyuan dialect will no doubt greet me with open arms and added zeal, especially before Dragon Boat festival, when I'll go back to Qingyuan and my diet will be set. There's nothing like urgency to switch one's priorities.

The Silence of Time

Cocktail parties are de rigeur in our school chain these days. It started back when my second creative, but barely tolerable, centre manager had it as an idea: it took; it sold and other centres just had to follow the same line.   Our centre is the fourth to give it a shot and though it feels a little disorganised, it should be fun and taking place tonight. (I'm sending this after midnight.) You can't just make cocktails though: you need activities. And we have activities. And of course I need to do an activity, too.   Our most versatile local teacher didn't know what he was going to do. He wasn't familiar with cocktail parties enough, so I threw an idea out there: The Double D Variety Show. (Our names both start with D, if you should be thinking the wrong thing.) We had hoped that students would queue up to perform in some way. We were disappointed. We only had a few takers and that left a lot of time for the hosts to construct "games" and activities.   I decided on an activity one morning: I'd ask the crowd if they know what hypnotism was. And then explain it, and elaborate that the other D had been hypnotising me over the week to get me to do something special at this party. He'd then ask me: Do you know how to speak Chinese? Do you know any Chinese songs? Both of these I'd deny and pretend to be on his idea. He'd clap his hands and my head would sink limply and he'd speak to the audience about his plan, saying that when I heard certain music I'd believe I was a Chinese rock star and even prepare a student with a yellow card, the punishment for staff who speak Chinese in our centre. He'd clap me back awake and then play the music. My face would tense. I'd grab a marker and then sing my favourite Cantonese rock song, well the first verse until he'd put an end to it. And clap me back to consciousness, and the denial and the punishment.   A great gag. I hope it works. I hope I don't laugh. And I hope I don't pull a blank in front of a crowd. Singing a song in front of people would be a new thing. Karaoke is different. Everyone is doing it and not many would look at you, and you can stare at a screen for support. Fingers crossed.   Singing a song in another language without support is a little bit like driving around a curly racetrack. Once you start a verse it is fairly easy to go on, but get to a corner and you either make it or spin. There are several hairpin turns in this song - once I say one tricky sequence, it'll follow it up with a sucker punch line. Well, that's how it seems.   It is important to know that 98% of my students don't know I can speak any Chinese; and the other 2% just have suspicions that they can't quite confirm. At my last school I was spotted reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the subway; at my first school, I was overheard telling a cleaner where to put something. But I've been largely free of suspicion: Probably, most will be suspicious after this performance. They will either have to believe that the second D can hypnotise or at the very least I can remember whole tracts of Cantonese and produce largely with correct pronunciation... Is it worth the gag?   The song I'll sing is called the Silence of Time, and starts outrageously: I've down a thousand cups yet aren't drunk. An appropriate line to start the partying, you'd think.