Place and space

As we exited the arrival terminal, the calls of "taxi" intensified as did the steeliness in our eyes. We marched towards the clearly designated taxi area, just as we would in. At that area we were approached by a man with seemingly official taxi driver attire who asked which hotel we were off to; we told him and showed him the address; he told us 200; we told him that wasn't the price the hotel said; he asked and we agreed a price; to save face and relations he said how "airport taxis" charge less. Sometimes, it isn't important where you find yourself but whether you know the local "rules" and the local "play book". The above could have been in Guangzhou but in this case it was Dempesar, Bali. Bali is renown for its friendliness. And it is a friendly place not just for your custom. We've had great instinctive hospitality from almost everyone. The first glum uninterested Chinese-like service came at a superette... owned by a Chinese proprietor. Since the traffic is a little crazy, locals will help tourists cross the road. Vendors do actively approach you to sell things or offer services, but they do it politely and accept no for an answer. It would seem that commercialism and integrity can live side by side. We did have a moment that could have proved this further: As we returned from a meal, we were approached by a friendly guy on a motorcycle, Solomon. He explained about a resort, Royal Karma Bali, who had a special promotion at a hotel around the coast. We were given two prize envelopes that we ripped open to see what we'd won: first envelope was just two t-shirts and a choice of ou extra (we chose a 300,000 rupiah meal voucher, about NZD30); the second envelope however was the top prize, one prize that would be revealed after a gold sticker was removed. It had to be one of the following: 7 nights free in their hotel, or USD1000, or a camera or a shopping voucher for 2,000,000 rupiah (NZD190). We just had to take a ride to the hotel to collect the prizes. Sounds dodgy doesn't it? I delayed a day saying that day wasn't convenient but commenced a little research: it appears to be a rather well-known timeshare scheme. They take you over, give you prizes but also a hard-sell that might take an hour or two. On the internet you can find a lot of different feelings about it; humorously, one post had almost the exact same story as I had above including the exact order of prizes. We weren't into this. So I met Solomon alone at the agreed meeting place. He was full of energy and happiness but I got to the point quickly. My wife was "sick" so we wouldn't go that day nor any other day. He was clearly disappointed but to his credit took our decision without argument and headed away. Bali is pretty good for what we want of it, namely relaxation, good and exercise. It almost didn't happen for various reasons but I'm glad to be here!

In form

I've probably written about it before. It's highly likely that I've had many moments in China where I've composed blogs about it in my head that I've never gotten around to writing. That is: Chinese bureaucracy.

It's true that China has one of the earliest developed bureaucracies. A good 1300 years before William the Conqueror took England as part of Normandy and had the Domesday book written, the Qin dynasty set China on its way to big comprehensive governing, and it has never really looked back. But age has never not brought the fruits of efficiency. Pretty much any encounter with it leaves someone from a more western modern consumer-oriented bureaucracies with a lot of head-scratching.

Take proving that you don't have a criminal record as an example. I had to get two of these, one for my life in New Zealand and one for my life in China. The New Zealand one was pretty straightforward: I got the form online and did the list of requirements. I e-mailed it and within two weeks received the necessary letter, sent to China for free no less.

It's hard to know at what point I should start my story of getting it for my time in China. How much boredom can you take? Let me start at the real beginning. I asked the company visa officer and she said it should be able to be done at the local police station but when I went there they were completely mystified and told us to go to another organisation in another district. When we went there though they said that they couldn't do it for foreigners and pointed us to yet another organisation. Finally we found someone in that building and after she'd woken up, I gave her photocopies of my passport and registration form.
"Is this your only passport?" she asked. It wasn't; I'd travelled to China on my old passport. Apparently they don't link their information in any way. So I had to scan and send copies of my old passport to her. She told me it'll take four weeks to get the information from the police. We called her yesterday and she said it was ready. Ready, however, was solely from her point of view. When we went into it today, we picked up a document which she said we had to take to another floor; on that floor I signed different pieces of paper that I didn't read and was given an invoice to pay. I went to another floor to pay (130 yuan, roughly 26 dollars NZD) and then back to the original floor.
"Come back next Friday to pick it up."
"Sure, thanks." I said in a calm way, which was only calm because I hadn't yet started to puzzle how a mere piece of paper could take so long to produce.

I assume next Friday I'll get this piece of paper with the necessary chop (an authorising stamp). The irony of going to the police then being directed to an organisation that takes four weeks to get information from the police is not easily missed. The shock that apparently all I need to do is commit a crime and then come back with a different passport to evade them is not a difficult conclusion.

There are lots of forces at work that has produced this messiness of systems, the lack of clarity of process and seeming ineffectiveness. I spoke to my mother-in-law on the way back from the office and I asked her to be the mayor of the city because she said that she'd make a one-stop shop for citizens to go to to connect all these disparate invisible un-signposted departments and save the normal people the terrible hardship of dealing with bureaucracy. She'd have my vote, if it were up to a vote, and I were eligible for that vote.

In other news we can access Google again. In the lead up to the fourth of April Google begins to be inaccessible. For those who are unfamiliar with dates, on that day 25 years ago, tanks rolled through a certain square in Beijing where student protests had gotten a little out of hand. For more information about the power of dates in China, read the excellent book Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler. It's well worth a read.

Types of people

There are repeated motifs of all sorts in life. Some are common but repeat subtly; others might take years to recur, but could be near identical to the previous iteration. It is bizarre but strangely common sense that these thing happen again and again. History does repeat as human nature duly ensures.

About ten years ago a few months prior to a birthday, I had an idea that kept me awake: my party could be a scavenger hunt. Throughout the night I thought of several devious clues; I thought of the venue, tahaki reserve below Mt. Eden; and then I started to prepare. It was hard work! Each idea needed a lot of time and sweat to bring to reality, even a "simple idea", to take a photo from a particular angle and get participants to go to that location to take their next clue, needed an old school camera, photo development and putting photos in envelopes. Then the envelopes just had to be fastened to a site the morning of the event and a few prayers that neither the elements nor random curious people would take them away. It really was the realization of my kind of event. I'd enjoy participating, and my mind would have been perfect to solve each of the riddles. You can imagine the problems that arise from this though. Most people are not like me. And clues conceived in the wee hours of the morning are hardly like to be solvable.

And that's how it played. I'd got people into teams, had everyone do face painting and then sent them on Mission Impossible. I just sat around while others did it, a kind of a weird way to spend a birthday. The sitting was eventually interrupted by confused cellphone calls and after an hour or two I called off the hunt. My party guests were good natured about it but I always get a bit embarrassed thinking about it. My big unreasonable dream realized to mystify and tire my friends.

And so it too was another person's big dream in our company. She conceived of an awesome event before the company awards night, an amazing race event where all teachers, after a tiring days' work, would run around the city solving clues and becoming better teammates in 30 degree evening heat. Yeah, on paper it looks bad and it's truly a triumph of the human spirit that half of teams made it through, one team spent three hours out doing it before completing it and having dinner at 10pm... Most, I assume, will only look back on it happily with the distance of hindsight. I dodged this bullet by virtue of my dodgy knee. I'd helped out as a course marshall in a trial run (where the trial team amusingly went there own ways in frustration after a disagreement over a clue), then served as a phone-a-friend helpline.

Thunder, all through the night!

Morning grey, lunch showers, afternoon downpours and evening storms. The climate gears have turned and clouds churned into summer mode. Yesterday was in fact the "lixia" the period on the Chinese calender that indicates summer begins. That didn't stop Xi'an in central China from snowing a few weeks ago. It's hard to regulate the weather.

This wet period also marks my days back in my home centre, armed with just a solitary crutch that is only really called into use when ascending and descending the stairs. It's good to be back, but gosh it's hard work. There is a lot to do and I'm teaching almost as much as a my teachers are while managing. Either end of my day, I'm doing exercises and even started going to the gym to use the exercise (probably the most vigorous exercise I've been recommended to do, and even that with no resistance). But it's been good to be active again. Being able to bend my knee means that I can go in a car comfortably, go to the movies and take the bus. 

The weather has also impacted what was going to be some relaxing time to celebrate our second anniversary. It was 9 May 2012 that we registered our marriage and the main date that we'll observe our anniversary. We were planning a much delayed trip to a hot spring. (My leg had prevented it and a trip to Thailand earlier in the year.) Now with the persistent stormy weather we won't be going this year. It's a bit of a shame but does give us a nice long weekend just to relax.

My use of my new phone is going to all new extents: Language Exchange (HelloTalk, where have you been my whole life); podcasts of all natures; it is again hard to know whether this is a great benefit or a great distraction. But please let me get distracted enough to find out.

Thoughtful risings

Mornings can sometimes blend into each other in our memories. They are, after all, ritualised phases of our days with the habits that we've acquired to successfully clear the sleep from our eyes, much of a muchness. I'm a very regular waker - I usually boast that I never need an alarm clock because I'll get up about the same time every day. And my Chinese risings follow a fairly strict yet unoriginal schedule: coffee, e-mail and then some sort of reading and a late breakfast. 

The wake-ups I can remember specifically in my life are few but they are there. They aren't marked by things that happen usually but by things I'm thinking about that cause me to stir much before the body clock is otherwise set to ring, thoughtful risings. Today is one of those mornings. A previous blog about Xiaogang park is one of those too. (Probably more than one blo post.) I can remember a thoughtful rising like this in Taiwan.  

(Actually I can remember a lot of tramping mornings, too, but they are a class of their own with their own distinct quality, but at the same time with similarities to this kinds of wake-up, one of which I can hear right now: birds, even in Guangzhou, audible from the 26th floor.) 

This morning it was thoughts of a more logistical nature that caused me to stir, or at least render me incapable of returning to blessed sleep. The unknown of residence visa processing times, of human psychology and biology, of finance and fate were on my mind. Uncertainty is that demon that not only steals sleep from the front end of your rest but can deduct it from the end too.

I'd always regarded myself though as an early riser. Adult life, especially my life in Guangzhou, has changed that, but it has always been true that I have clearer thought in the early morning. A normal wake-up is good for reading. A thoughtful rising is good for writing. It's a good time for thinking about friends and writing to them. 

I pause between paragraphs and stare outside my half-open sliding doors to the overcast hazy morning and the buildings opposite. And I type to the sounds of birds. Once at our first apartment together, I remember going out on the balcony with a chair and table. A small birds landed on our kumquat tree, pondered for a few moments and then flew away. 

Steps

43 days ago I fell on some steps and from that day till yesterday I hadn't bent my left knee. But then yesterday I went to the physiotherapist for the first time and my knee was made to start bending, and even got to bend it myself for now. The tendons are still rather tight and the muscle much less than it was. Even with the physio's help, I could only bend it 85 degrees, and when measured my left thigh was 6 centimetres smaller in circumference than my right. Clearly I have all the work ahead of me.

But there is a bright side: yesterday, I also took my first steps without crutches and slept for the first night without a knee immobiliser off (a weird feeling indeed). I still need to keep the immobiliser on during the day, so I walk with one leg straight, but the fact that I can now hold hands or put an arm around my wife as we stroll makes it all OK.

Are you listening?

Listening as a skill is something we rarely think about. In a rudimentary sense, a native speaker of a language should have good listening skills. After all, they understand all or most of the words in use, the grammar is naturally comprehended, we have broad exposure to different accents, and this is so much so that even if a phone line isn't clear, we'd still be able to get the gist of what someone said on the end.

But does that mean all native speakers with normal mental development have complete learning skill? If you think "yes", it's worth posing a few questions to you the reader. For example: Do we understand someone speaking in legalese? What about financial news? Do we follow a story written from another culture when we hear it? (Imagine listening to, say, a religious myth from India explained in English.) Perhaps not as easily. Even in our own language, learning skills can be genre/register specific. This is even truer when learning another language. 

In my own learning situation, when involved in a conversation, I can understand 95% of Mandarin and about 65% of Cantonese; I can understand 85% of the news in Mandarin and about 15% of Cantonese; listening to a story, I can understand understand 90% of stories in Mandarin, but only about 10% in Cantonese;  listening to an opinion monologue, though, I can understand about 90% and 80% of Mandarin and Cantonese respectively. This can show that the Cantonese skill is not correlated much to the Mandarin ability. The range of situations that I've practiced Cantonese has been much more limited and their are many "holes". It is a common student misunderstanding that one form of practice, say, watching movies, will help them in another context. 

As mentioned in the last blog, I mentioned my entering of the smartphone era. Podcasts are now delivered to my phone on a daily basis (a Cantonese opinion monologue being one of them); as much as these are nourishing, they aren't always that complementary to other forms of listening. Listening to my novel in Cantonese as an audiobook is similarly problematic to other skills. Right now the news in Cantonese is playing. And none of this is helping me (much) with listening to people speaking to me. Last night I called my parents-in-law and handled the conversation quite well but with a couple of moments when I froze when I missed what they said. 

During my convalescence, I resumed my diploma project work and re-directed one of the three section on to how we teach listening comprehension in class. It is a great topic that also makes me think deeply about me, who learns Cantonese outside of the classroom, about the kind of experiences my students and I need to strengthen my understanding of what I hear.

Anyway, it's week five since my kneecap splitting fall. My leg is no longer in a cast... it's in a knee immobiliser that does the same job but can be removed and attached more easily. I'll need it on for another three weeks. Rehabilitation starts in one week. Fortunately I'm back at work and at least getting into the swing of things. It's been obvious that a lot of the communication has not been well handled with me at home. There was a lot of "I thought you knew", when it's obvious that there were no e-mails or phone calls that would have got the message to me. In a cross-cultural office, with people of different levels of professional habits, it was always going to be hard to keep in the loop being at home for so long. For now, it's good to be back!

Smarter?

Here I am, sitting on the window-sills in the sun. (Chinese bedrooms often have a wide window-sills that let one sit, put things or gather dust.) My leg is still fastened onto a plaster splint. I say I've got a cast on but the front of my leg is not covered in plaster. It makes sense to do it this way: you can still put pants on if you only have plaster on one side; and besides, is it necessary to cover the whole leg? Anyway, life has been rather laid-back in my weeks of home-ridden sick leave. 

I may have broken my knee but the most discomfort came from my back, my thighs and my shoulders. At one point I was waking up at 5:00am in the morning with muscle spasms in my quadriceps. Now with two days before the cast may come off and it comes as a little bit of a disappointment. I really want the cast off but the time with it on has been beneficial. I feel healthier, less stressed, better prepared and perhaps even smarter.

Smarter? Perhaps I'm just saying that because I'm at the beginning of my iPhone life. But it's worth mentioning: I now have a smartphone. Sick leave has been quite beneficial for mastering my apps. My favourites are: Podcasts; Radio NZ; Radiolive; New Zealand radio; wechat; Air quality; BBC; Night Sky 2; Chinese audiobooks and Cricinfo. It's been good to be able to listen to, say, bfm for background music. 

Chinese audiobooks might be the next step for me. In the last few weeks I've finished reading the first Chinese kungfu novel in a series of three books during this sick leave. I'm going to try and listen to the second book of the series with the written word in support. Actually I can listen to it in both Mandarin and Cantonese. These are both easily accessible via my phone. It might sounds weird but my proficiency in reading is way out of balance with my listening and speaking and most definitely my writing of Chinese. Reading is king. This is despite being in China where you'd expect me to be speaking and hearing lots of Chinese. My bent towards reading is so strong that it's twice as good. Hopefully this is a good step to level me out.

Podcasts are something I tried hard to get into at one stage but now have a lot of power to use. Probably the most valuable to me is historical podcasts that keep knowledge alive. My previous kungfu novel had a character who grew up in Genghis Khan's Mongolia. The author though tried to keep quite historical despite the non-existence of the key character. Listening to a podcast though shortly after I could listen and patch the historical background, before and after, of Genghis Khan's conquests, while eating my lunch. 

There is a good argument to say that smarter phones can make you dumber. But right now I think I've got myself well geared to use my smartphone smartly.

 

My break

"Were you drunk?" No. I have been asked that a few times.

"Were you texting with your new phone?" No. Surprisingly I'm yet to be asked that. And to be honest, with the rate that people do use their cellphones and walk I'm surprised there aren't more falls.

I was walking on the footpath, which to be honest wasn't an outrageously potholed stretch, when somehow the rubber on one shoe caught; I lost my balance; I mainly landed on my hands; but one knee also connected with the point of a step and thus I broke my kneecap. I didn't realise it at the time: I've only had soft tissue injuries in my life till now and hadn't heard a crack. I thought at worst it was bruised So we kept walking for about 10 minutes more to "walk it out". Near a subway entrance I found that I couldn't even contemplate going down the stairs to give our clothes to the drycleaners. So I waited near the top. And as soon as I tried to move again, it'd become very stiff and hard to move. I thought it was at least soft tissue damage. 

I went home and performed R.I.C.E. (rest, ice, compression, elevation). At that stage I thought rest was the key. I didn't want to damage it any more by walking to the hospital. In the evening though, I realised that it was probably inevitable that I had to go to the doctors, and the earlier the better. We went out at about 8pm. Came back at 1am. The easy diagnosis, one that even a layman could see from an x-ray, was a broken patella. A cast was put on (although it's not the casts that I'd always seen; they just put the plaster at the back of the leg, and then bandaged it around the front of the leg; makes sense!) and I was sent on my way back home.

Life with a broken knee? It's not all that bad and I have enjoyed many of the advantages: Little stress, lots of mental energy, lots of time to dedicate to the pursuits of reading, writing, watching and thinking. Also with my new smartphone, I'm reconnecting with a lot of people that I hadn't contacted much. It is slightly badly timed though as two friends are visiting Guangzhou and there is a wedding, all within the month that the cast is definitely on.  

One problem that I'll have to deal with is muscle pain because of the bad posture I constantly have (a straight leg is hard to handle in most arrangements); the over-exertion of my compensating limbs; and the eventual rehabilitation of my steadily weakening broken limb. I've tried to make some time for exercise every day, specifically back stretching and abdominal strengthening a part of my day. Standing up is a little bit of a hassle and any exercise must take care not to move the muscles in my left leg. I often try to use the bed: bedcercises, perhaps.

Anyway, I've got good spirits and I'm glad for the change. For the rest of you, be careful out there! Keep your hands as free as possible when you walk, your eyes aware of the ground. I wish you all good health.

Tales of the Spring Festival

"In New Zealand, do they allow drink-driving?" I was drunkenly asked on the third day of the Year of the Horse. No, I answered but then it isn't allowed in China, either, which might make you wonder why I was asked. But we were drinking, with numerous drivers getting poured more and more red wine indiscriminate of their status as drivers.

"Don't worry, we have three policemen drinking with us tonight," the host winked with a cheery drunk grin. Of course the policemen were not going to stop our incapacitated drivers plowing their cars into walls, but at least no-one was going to get fined or embarrassed. I don't know how many vehicles I've sat in with a drunk driver at the wheel. Often it might be a tired drunk driver, too, because not many people have cars and those that do are the transport for the evening. 

The host of that evening (a high school reunion party) is a regular feature of my calendar of events. He is a school teacher by profession but now has a very profitable side trade in Chilean wine, which he'd brought at least two boxes of to the evening.

"I know you like baijiu, Daniel; I've got some in my car! It's China Railways Wine," he said after I was already very comfortable. I declined. 

"We haven't had your wedding wine. You have to drink with all of us!" Both I and one of the policemen had got married but without a banquet in Qingyuan. This has been a source of joking and maybe even sincere gripes whenever I've gone back. The wife of the policemen made a vigorous and rather loud defense of her husband, and I was protected from needing to drink a class of wine with every person at the table. Many of those at the table came to me to drink anyway. 

"In New Zealand we wouldn't knock this kind of wine back," I say as I down a full wine glass with a gentleman I have some acquaintance with (another policeman). One of the myths I've sought to dispel this trip was that "Cheers" does not mean "gan bei" (dry your glass/bottoms-up). It's not working.

It was nice to come out of that evening not too drunk at all. It gave me time to contemplate the cycle of celebrations. The most important day of course is Chinese New Years Eve, which is the most traditional part. There are meals with the close family. The matching couplets are stuck on the wall. Then fireworks are released in a seemingly non-stop period of pyromania that ends somewhere near two a.m. The first day of the new year is quiet. It should only be the nuclear family. No sweeping should be done (unless you want to sweep away your good luck). The second day of the new year is when you'd visit relatives, so we headed to a neighboring village where my mother-in-law grew up. Wine was had. (I learned a new word: tou paau. This is locally brewed firewater. I've had this kind of thing before but this was actually rather good. I was to learn that it is thought to be over 60% and I was going to be drinking it a lot more at fourth uncle's birthday on the sixth day of new year.) 

The second day really also shows how far China has come: there are traffic jams in all the little villages as cars, almost unheard of a few years ago, crowd out the roads an available parking space (virtually none). When I came to Qingyuan, the greater family had access to one car (a cousin could use a business car) and he was the only one who could drive; now there are three cars in the greater family and about six people who can drive them. That pattern has seemed to have occurred elsewhere. My first year in Qingyuan only witnessed a few cars. Now they're all through the little villages.

The third day is not a day for visiting relatives so a perfect day for the reunion. The fifth, sixth and seventh days were dinners and drinking that really made me rather queasy about the sight of any food or alcohol, but they were the completion of family events in each corner of "the Qingyuan triangle". The Triangle might exist in other places in China, but could be unique to our family, it goes something like this: In the Mao era of China some people were considered to have a bad background if their parents or grandparents had been landlords in the pre-Communist times (1949). This could affect your life in so many ways. A-gung, our name for grandfather, was the son of a landlord before their lands were stripped of them and the harassment that goes with old recriminations stretches a long way. His children struggled to find husbands and wives because of this baggage. And it was a problem all over China. Neighbouring villages had families of former landlords, too, in a similar predicament. In what must have been an elegant solution for the time a triangle was made by daughters from one corner marrying into another corner, thus the towns of Waangho, Daaiyau and Gwongtau are linked for me. From a foreign point of view it smells like the arranged marriages with the deal brokered over a dinner of chicken with firey alcohol to ease the awkwardness. But everyone is happy, now at least, and the families go on and prosper.

All of the dinners in the Triangle are great because they're the uncles and cousins I know best. There are usually jokes I can follow. Everyone is smiling. I guess it's what the season is meant to be about. We left on the afternoon of the seventh day of the Year of the Horse, the body yearning for some rest from the food and drink. It's got it now. Time to relax and have a great new year~!

Boy, do I have a proposition for you!

I learned a new piece of English grammar last week. This might astound you as I've taught English for more than a third of my life, and am revered as "a grammar guru" and nicknamed "Professor" in two different centres. But yes, I learned something new, something lurking right under my nose, and yet something that apparently most Chinese students learn at University. It hadn't come up as a question, not in normal materials and textbooks. So it remained unlearned and unexamined until now. It's called a noun complement.

It all came about when my other half presented me with a student sentence and asked me to explain why it was wrong. Here, you have a go: "There is a phenomenon that children are doing too many exams and not learning enough real knowledge." It clearly is wrong to the ear by a small margin but why exactly is it wrong? Both of us could quickly fix the problem using "where" instead of "that", and in fact that's exactly what she'd said to the student, but the student, as some student tend to do, said that he wanted to use a noun complement. What is this thing that the student was bent on using (wrongly)? Well here are some examples of noun complements: "It's a fact that he is corrupt.(1)" "There is a possibility that New Zealand will also win the cricket series against India.(2)" All of these are logical sentences and they look very similar to the wrong sentence. The noun complement (in italics), however, is not all it seems. The key idea is that a noun complement is a proposition and the noun in front of it (e.g. fact, possibility) shows the author/speaker's attitude towards proposition. Got it? So in sentence 1 and 2 the author is commenting on an idea by stating it's a fact or a possibility. And going back to the student's sentence, stating that something is a phenomenon is not an attitude, it's an observation or a description. It doesn't fit the mould, no matter how much our student would like to use some fancy pants grammar. "The student won't follow that explanation." Well, that's there own fault: if you can't understand my explanation don't use grammar that you're using just for ego. Don't play with fireworks; you might get burnt!

But the idea of a proposition is a fascinating one. Suddenly I wondered whether I should read a book about logic to find what it means in philosophy (it is a philosophical term), but my eyes dried at the thought. Yet here embedded in language is a device which sucks the substance out of a statement to reduce to a proposition and hoists it by a ropey noun of the author's choice. I like it. And I like that I know it.

Neither an attitude or a proposition, I became an uncle for the second time with the birth of my brother-in-law's first child. I actually became an uncle when I got married (I gained a 12 year old niece-in-law) and now I have a nephew, my wife's younger brother's son. Her younger brother is the only son of the family so the only bearer of the family surname that continues patrilineally back to the ancestor who came to Qingyuan so many generations ago. Now with that procreation all done and diapered, my mother-in-law is looking at us to further the family... Suddenly I start to look at it as some kind of proposition.

A millisecond

New Zealand this week won a test series at cricket. It's something I still managed to celebrate from a distance in Guangzhou, discreetly watching on the screen at work. It was a comprehensive series win that could have, and should luck have been better in the first game, it would have been a 3-0 whitewash against a team ranked higher than us. Cricket is a game of milliseconds and reactions. If a bowler can get the ball to you a millisecond faster than you can get your bat down, you're out. If they deprive you of an extra millisecond to react to a spinning ball as it rears off the pitch, you might nick it into your pad and have it float into a murder of vulture fielders. But if you can react that millisecond earlier as a batsman, then even if class bowlers place the ball in the right place, you can react in a way that can accommodate the movement, the pace and the direction.

My Cantonese listening has made a similar breakthrough: I've gained a crucial millisecond in processing speed in the last two months. Don't know where it came from. But again it is a small amount that makes a huge difference. As mentioned in previous blogs, Cantonese has rather extensive connected speech (especially the Qingyuan dialect although probably all of the more rural dialects of any language). This extra millisecond means I don't need just observe the phenomenon but catch the meaning in stream. I can even sometimes process and guess words I haven't heard before in the flow of speech. Of course, I'm still far from an acceptable level (in my eyes) but it is nice to have achieved perceptible progress. Perception is everything when it comes to motivation and confidence!

It's a millisecond but it is the gap that I need in conversations I'm not a part of in order to take part. Previously it wasn't the case: When it's just a conversation with me and another, I can get what they're saying, and they can generally get where I'm coming from. However with another speaker, suddenly the conversation would course out of my grasp as language is clattered out and burbled back with just some key words popping out to keep me in the game. Now it's different: I can follow many of the turns and topics that pop up in a conversation and respond and even, when the mood and language co-occurs, interject a thought of my own. It's that ability to interject that this millisecond has bought me. And I'm so glad.

Time of any sort is an interesting concept. I read a few days ago that a University friend of mine passed away. Her death is a bit of a mystery from what little I've got from the Herald online and other items. Perhaps, the case is not being followed. She's probably the third person who has had association with me growing up that I've heard the passing of. Sadness and loss mixes with an awareness of life and that of death. The first friend I knew who'd died was a primary school friend Robert. He lived just opposite school. I hadn't seen him for many years when I heard that he'd died in a car crash, he driving, before he got to 20. Board 2 (soon to be board 3 with my arrival) of the Massey High's chess team was Michael. I hadn't seen him for a few years after graduation when I heard he'd tried to drive a van around a railway barrier and got taken out by a train. Now Ying's passed. I'm trying to remember something clearly more than the multitude of vague memories where lots of people were around and a lot of people were talking. Two memories last clear as bell: She arranged a weekend away on a marae, which I was to present some sessions (probably culture shock or Maori language, which I somehow decided to teach). I remember the passion and the energy (which is what most remember so clearly). She was in China when I arrived too, in Shanghai doing something interesting. We chatted often by skype, and then she had her identity stolen bar her skype number so I tried to help ensure all her friends knew that she requests via gmail and facebook were from an evil source. That's all left in my head of a life. 

I guess this will only become more common as I age, and it's quite astonishing that with all the people that I have known since primary school I only can recollect three dying.

The Contest

"You must be Daniel," a young voice squeaked from behind me. I replied in the affirmative as I turned to face a dark skinned  pixie-esque child and answered a few more questions. "I was born in Tennessee," she said out of the blue.

"Really? When did you come to China?" I enquired with a solitary raised eyebrow.

"When I was four."

"You've had an interesting life. Good luck for today."

She thanked me and perhaps even at her young age knew it was the time to take her leave and leave me to my solitude at the judges desk.

It was the Guangdong University and High School English Speaking contest semi-final and I was one of the five judges. The other four judges eventually arrived confirming what I'd already worked out from the name plaques: I was the only native speaking judge. I got on quite well with the judge next me an editor at Guangdong TV. Reading the instructions and materials I realised why I may have been a choice for this role. Most of the materials, names, event choreography were all in Chinese. And the instructions themselves already gave me a fair indication of the kind of speech competition it was. To get through to the grand-final a contestant might only need to speak at total of 1 minutes and 5 seconds of English spread over 3 "events". But I won't get ahead of myself! Let's listen to the contestants.

The first round, self-introduction, was about to begin at break-neck speed. After the cheerleader dancers had dispersed the contestants marched on stage to express themselves in 20 seconds and be scored out of 20 marks (judges can't score beneath 80% so the bottom score was 16). With barely seconds between each introduction judging was intense. "Performances" were a mixture of an American style "Oh my god, let's get this party started, I'm gonna, like, blow you away with my talent. See y'all soon!" to more strait-laced restrained self-introductions. Naturally being the creme-de-la-creme of the English speakers in schools and unis, there were some extraordinary kids with extraordinary backgrounds that can come through the contest criteria. Young Tennessee, for example. Other kids claimed in their multilingualism with pride: "I'm Jason and I can speak four languages: Chinese, Russian, Spanish and English. I'm a master of tongue twisters. Listen to this: Binbinblamblambinblambalmbirnbin. Yeah!"

Then we tumbled into the talent contest section where candidates could sing a song, dance, dub a movie or do a fashion show. This was allocated 30 marks of the 100 total score. While some contestants did use English in their performance (there was an outstanding male performance of Rolling in the Deep, and even Shakespearean sonnets read), most were not. You might wonder why they have a talent section in a speech contest, but it's for TV and most of the viewers wouldn't understand the speaking side if it were just English, right? We had a human beatbox, magic, latin dance, tradition Uighur and Thai dance (from non-ethnic Chinese competitors), even a rendition of that famous 70s band A-bee-bee-A and a 12 year old belted out .

Then we went onto the next course, the meat of the competition, the 50 point Travelling in English section. In this 45 second performance, participants would look at a screen to be shown a place name and picture from which they need to start a story for fifteen second, before another image comes up on the screen of an everyday object which they have to merge seamlessly into the story for another 15 seconds of speaking, before another image comes up, that of a movie star who also needs to be part of this continuously created improvised story which then should end on the 45th second. Don't try this at home. Most in the contest struggled, whether it is just a ridiculously difficult challenge or they didn't really understand what was being asked of them. Most performances were descriptions: "This is Great Barrier reef in Austria. It's a famous place. I like it and I want to g- Oh, and this is a time bomb. This is very dangerous and I hope there isn't a time bomb here toda- And Jackie Chan is a great man from our China..." "Time up!"

And then the smoke cleared briefly. Of the 20 students in each of the two sections, 6 students were advanced to the final (on a later date) and another 6 were knocked out of the competition based on their scores from the whirlwind first three rounds. The final 8 had to PK down to four contestants to advance. How do they do that? Well, the higher scoring of the eight can select an opponent from the rest and then act as the Affirmative side of a debate topic that would come up on the screen. They'd have 30 seconds to state their case; the other would have the same to match their argument; then their would be an unmoderated "free debate" section, in which one person could dominate if they liked. After that further 1 minute of spontaneous language generation, each judge would need to raise "Win!" signs to signal that they believe the affirmative side was stronger; no sign raised would signal that the negative side was stronger. If three or more judges support one side, they progress and the other person is knocked out. Simple enough?

Topics were often out of the worlds of the High School students. "Golden Weeks be cancelled" (Golden Weeks are the government defined periods of time that almost everyone has off work; it includes compelling companies to move the office weekends to form long holidays for the workers. It causes travel chaos and for that reasons people think that it should be abolished; but many people, with some basis reject it because without the government making it uniform, evil companies will exploit the lack of simplicity to deny their workers of holidays. It's an interesting topic.) The students talked about playing basketball and study. And of course they have barely seconds to think and then elaborate. The classic one was for the university students was: "We shouldn't keep our national identity in the age of globalisation." Try elaborating your thoughts on that in 30 seconds.

And then it was all over. Girls in air hostess uniforms with really short dresses marched on stage to give the certificates and two boxes of crackers to all participants, and then oversized flight tickets were given to those going to the final. They don't need to fly though: the final is in Guangzhou as well. I got given a whole gift set of crackers to take home. The advantage of being so mean with time was that 40 students in total competed in four hours. I was exhausted afterwards. I may be up for the final, but as an English teacher, god, I hope finally actually get to speak.

Alcohol

The student government meeting wasn't a success in the beginning. The other D had estimated 20 attendees, whereas we hardly broke 10. And that was even with this D (me) as a special attendee to encourage attendance. (We obviously overestimated my star appeal.) We even had the meeting at a restaurant to increase the comfort and decrease the formality. Then Wing, a student, started pouring me baijiu (Chinese wine), and then after a sequence that I mostly remember I vomited into the dish collection tray outside our room. I wasn't that ashamed from such a thing: It is the third time in my life that alcohol has gotten the better of me, but then all of those times were since I came to China. The important thing for me was to be in the classroom the next day at top form to show that such an event was not in the least detrimental to my work performance. (A teacher called in sick so I had to handle 6 classes that day, as well as train our new teacher – I had my work cut out for me.)

 

I often consider the role alcohol has in my life. I have a compulsive personality and the addition of alcohol has had on me is something worth my contemplation. Having read a lot of kungfu novels of late, I get the feeling of the ceremonial element that alcohol has fulfilled in the past. I've never really thought the "social lubricant" aspect of alcohol which dominates these days has much to be appreciated – it seems a step down from what alcohol could be. It cannot be denied that it is a powerful substance worthy of more respect than being used merely as a stimulant to be what you're not. So what do I want from alcohol? And since I use the more highly geared of spirits, how do I want to show my respect with their powers?

 

I remember conversations with a bipolar Rastafarian pot smoker, who after a psychotic episode that put him in hospital would launch into the defence of hallucinogenic mushrooms on the account of them getting one more in touch with reality at the drop of a hat. From these rather pitiful discussions, what I picked up was that, regardless of substance, the crucial difference was between a textured world layered with awareness and a world textured through an increasingly incapacitated brain. I guess I want to have the feeling of a different perception; to relax and be at ease with things that come to mind, not just the things that bully me; and to experience something sensory with people I want to be close with (food does this too). Most of my wine is drunk in the hours before I sleep at home after work and not in the company of anyone other than my wife.

 

In other news, I'm reading my first Haruki Murakami book, Kafka on the Shore. Coincidentally, it is the second book in a row that's title is a piece of music in the novel's fictional space. (The Smiling Proud Wanderer also had a flute and harp composition by the same title.) I've only read half of Kafka but am enjoying the world that Murakami has created and appreciate some of the art in how he writes. It is especially well enjoyed with a few shots of baijiu.

Fear

I'm not the kind to worry much. I'm reasonably carefree. But I do have a fear that something is eating away at my powers of thinking; that my mind itself is losing its edge, and doing so much faster than it would be expected via ageing alone. This might be a kind of mental hypochondria but such conditions do exist and with dementia in the family it makes good sense to be self-aware. The evidence? Well, a fear needs scant evidence to feed it, especially late at night, but I feel my bogeyman makes a good case even in the light of day.

Exhibit one is the communication problems I never thought I had before. It seems I struggle a lot more now to formulate an idea, even a simple one, in a clear way. As a manager, it is something I have to do on a regular basis to my superiors, to my team and to my peers managing other centres. The general pattern: I open my mouth instinctively starting from somewhere midway into the topic, reversing back to where I should have started, losing control and inadvertently getting my references backwards (like calling Bob Julie, and Julie Bob). I start to panic a little when my listener frowns to indicate the effort at which they are expending in order to follow me; this in turn sends me into a panic of mixed metaphors and the incorrect use of key vocabulary; and then sometimes I seem to stutter in a way I cannot recall. I relate a little to George Bush, I guess.

As a teacher, my powers of expression are my livelihood, too, and oddly at first they seemed unaffected by this "decline". I always understood this as because in classes I could focus for short periods of communication, while communication in life is not so easily segmented and is never ending and often pops up on you unexpectedly. But now I'm finding the pattern recurring in my teaching, where students might not follow me on a more a frequent basis.

This problem affects all three of my languages. Sometimes I think that perhaps my surplus of language might be the cause of the problem, that my brain is overwhelmed with holding together three separate languages (big hefty things, they are). But that is not very scientific and I've never heard of that before, except in the unfounded fear of parents who think their children will get confused if raised in a multilingual environment.

So instead I occasionally fret or worry and my managers and colleagues frown. Is this going to get worse?

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).