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).

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!