Year One Chinese Completed

It’s official. For the past, oh, three weeks or so, I have been preparing for and then taking a week-long Chinese exam. This included tests for my writing skills, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral conversation skills, grammar and vocab, and translation. Hmm, have I left anything out? Does that fill out a week’s worth of three-hour long exams?

Let me just say, as an American and a product of the US school system, this way of testing is bonkers. All year we had mini-tests and “quizzes.” Then, all at once, BAM! You’re expected to test on the entire year, cumulatively speaking, and pass to continue on to the next year. Basically, the entire year’s homework and grades mean nothing. They count for a measely 30% of your end grade.

And, yes, I am a 33-year-old woman complaining about the test scoring system.

Just so we have that straight. I already KNOW that I am a GEEK. Always have been and apparently always will be. I blame being a “pretty-plus” size from the ages of 5-12, and wearing glasses from age 5. About the only thing I had going for me in grade school was that I was smart. I got used to it and came to rely on it for a label. Theresa MacPhail = good at taking tests, good student, all-around swot.

And just for the record, I will admit that I wrote a nasty note at the bottom of our vocabulary/grammar test because they had characters on that we weren’t “officially” asked to learn. I know this because I spent the entire year asking, “Now, will we have to know this? Or is this extra?”

Apparently my note caused a ruckus because Asian students don’t usually complain. Well, welcome to the western educational system where you can not only complain, you can petition for a higher grade if you feel the grading system was unfair. One of the proctors at the test ran to our section leader with my test in hand, unsure of what to do. That teacher later told me she simply shrugged and said, “Don’t worry.” And then she told me that they weren’t counting anything we hadn’t yet learned. Reason being, that they have to make up the final exam back in March, agree upon it, and then SEAL it. No changes are allowed. (BTW – it sounded like a CIA document, the way they all talked about it.) They had to GUESS where we would be up to on examination day. They guessed chapter 33 – we were on 27. Guess we’re not as smart as they thought we were.

The upside of all of this is that it’s over and I am now officially done with year one Chinese. At this point, I can write a small article, talk up a storm, and read basic things. I’m chuffed, I have to admit. It feels pretty good to be this far along – even if I have another huge mountain to climb next year.

After everything was over we had a party to celebrate. It was the entire Chinese Department – Cantonese and Mandarin learners all together. The Cantonese classes performed songs, did speeches, all very impressive. We had nothing. So when our lead teacher asked if anyone from Mandarin was willing to say something and no one raised their hands. . . . .

Can you guess it?

Of course I volunteered. I wasn’t exactly willing for everyone to assume that we hadn’t learned how to SPEAK yet. I had no idea what I was going to say and I ended up winging it, but I got my main point across and even managed to get a few laughs. Now that’s progress. Telling a joke in a foreign language feels extremely rewarding.

Afterward, I went out for drinks with a Korean student and a Japanese student in my class. All three of us used Mandarin to talk all night, it being EASIER for us to communicate in Chinese than in ENGLISH. This was cool. And we could still speak it a bit tipsy.

Semester 2 – Chinese Really Begins to Kick My Proverbial Ass

Well – we began our second semester last Tuesday. In the first hour, I realized that the game has been upped considerably. Last term, I sat complaisantly by as other students struggled to form simple sentences, listened as the fellow housewives/students made the same pronunciation mistakes for the umpteenth time, stared at the blackboard as someone asked for the same characters to be written out one more time. I expected us to be in somewhat the same position, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

First off, the bad students are gone. Ding dong, the witches are dead.

I should tell you that for 15 weeks I had to listen to non-stop complaining that studying Chinese was hard. (Gasp! Say it ain’t so!) The primary complainers were two women with vastly different backgrounds. One was a Pakistani passport holder who has already lived in Hong Kong for well over 15 years. Just recently had she decided that learning the language was of any interest/use to her. She spent half the time discussing how inept the teachers were and how intelligent she was, and the other half using her Ramadan fast as an excuse for brain malfunction. The other complainant was a Canadian passport holder married to a Korean hedge fund owner. Her major complaint was that she was constantly telling her driver to cart her children to violin, soccer, and various other lessons, telling her amah what to cook for dinner, and following her husband to amateur racing events he had entered – and therefore had no available time left over to study. Poor thing. It’s simply desperate being privileged in today’s day and age. She also had complaints regarding the style of teaching, which is basically the same thing in postgraduate programs the world over.

The mantra is, in a nutshell, you study on your own or you don’t. No one is holding your hand. You get out what you put in. Where did these women go to school? Or maybe I should rather ask how long ago did these women go to school? Because one of the problems they both faced, to be honest, is that they had 20 years of missed studying to catch up on. Anyone who has returned to school after a break will tell you, it isn’t easy re-learning how to study. It’s an art form, really. Everyone has his/her own style.

So, anyway, hallelujah, everyone who complained is now gone. They decided, quite rightly, not to continue. And honestly, I don’t really blame them. Learning a language after you’re past the age of 30 is incredibly difficult. At times, I have wondered how far I will get as well.

Because the dead wood is gone, so to speak, the teachers have all speeded up. Or rather, gone back to normal speed. Suddenly, every word is in Mandarin. And it is speeded up to normal speech rate.

And, to tell the truth, my 32-year-old brain is struggling to keep up. It is so difficult that I cannot even express to you how difficult it is. For the first time in my life, I am not naturally gifted at something. I was one of those obnoxious students who always knew the correct answer, who didn’t have to study that much, who got straight A’s with the occasional B her entire life and threw a fit over the solitary B- I ever received (in anthropology, by the way, and I am still incensed over the test I failed). I am in trouble. I have to practice everyday, study everyday, and even that is not enough.

What Chinese is really asking me to do is to RETHINK how I think. And that is a gargantuan task, but one that is, I think, long overdue and much needed. How many times do we get the chance to step outside, literally, of our thinking patterns?

A door is opening somewhere and I am trying my damned best to walk boldly through it, no matter where it may lead me. Because I can feel a dramatic change happening to me through my study of Chinese. Really I can. For the first time, I am seeing that Theresa MacPhail really isn’t who she thought she was all of these years. Without my native language to bolster up my persona, I’m completely uncertain of who I am, what I want, or what kind of future I’ll have. It’s all up in the air.

And maybe, now that I think of it, that is why those women dropped out. They were frightened of what they were realizing, that they didn’t really know who they were or what their lives were about. And, again, I don’t blame them. Chinese is kicking my ass in more ways than one. But I’ll be interested to see what kind of woman pulls herself up off of the mat.

Hallelujah

Today, for the first time since I began 6 weeks ago, I understood something in our listening comprehension class. This is akin to asking directions at the Tower of Babel and figuring out that you need to turn left outside the gate to get to Sodom. It’s like a flash of revelation. A moment in time when you instinctively throw your hands up into the air and wave them around like you just don’t care.

No kidding, I literally did this. I think it may have been accompanied by a guttural, “Yeah”, as well. If it had been a sporting even, I may even have slapped someone’s ass in celebration.

Let me explain:

Tingli ke is our listening comprehension lesson. Twice a week, we huddle into a listening lab straight out of the 1970s to listen to antiquated tapes about drinking coffee and saying hello. This may sound both easy and nonsensical. However, it is neither.

The goal I agree with, but up until now I was dubious about the method. The goal is to speak in real-time, i.e. no slowing down for the foreigners, and hope that we learn to listen in real-time. So far, this has been laughable and frustrating. The words zip by and, if you’re lucky, you pick up one or two. That translates into knowing that something or someone is doing something tomorrow. You have a little information, but it’s about as much as the FBI or CIA knows regarding various terrorist alerts. There’s chattering, but we can’t quite make it out.

For weeks, I have sat in my cubicle with my headset on wondering why in the hell I was bothering. Also, I became fairly certain that the Chinese might have invented the language just to keep outsiders from understanding anything they said. Now, however, it is as if someone has suddenly turned on the light in a dark room. I’m still stubbing my toe, but at least I can see what it is now.

Today I understood the entire taped conversation. I could answer questions regarding said conversation as if I actually knew what I was talking about. This, people, is progress.

Now, if I could only learn to pronounce things, I’d be all set.

Old School

Classes began two weeks ago, which adequately explains the dearth of entries to anyone who has ever been involved in a postgraduate program. Tie in to this the fact that I am at a University where I am at a serious lingual disadvantage, and you’ll more clearly see my point. Basically, I am getting my academic ass kicked.

I’m the swotty girl that always sat near the front of the class as to better see the board. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss anything, oh no! Each morsel of information I swallowed down whole and could regurgitate pretty much at will. That being said, I think it’s fair to assume that I was decent at school. You don’t work that hard if you can throw a ball or you have a date on Friday night, is what I’m saying.

So, this puts me into a difficult position vis-a-vis Chinese.

I am lost. Already. We barely got past hello, how do you do, I’m an American, how about you and I am dangling to the edge of understanding by my fingertips.

Here are my problems in a nutshell:

1. Rate of speech: SLOW DOWN! Please. For god’s sake, give those of use unused to tonal languages a fair chance. However, if they really did slow down, in real life situations, people would still speak at a normal rate. In that case, I would never, ever be able to understand a single thing anyone said to me. Good, fine. Throw me in the deep end of the pool to see if I can swim. So far, I’m sinking like a stone, but hey – things could turn around.

2. Chinese laoshi: I’m used to American teachers, who, quite frankly, at least in the public school system, are a little lazy. And in university, the majority of them are just trying to get through class so that they can get back to their own damn work. LAID BACK. Not so the Chinese teachers. They are gung ho about learning and would like to set a fire underneath our Mandarin wannabe asses. In other words, they are not into the idea of allowing us to learn what we like at a nice, slow, not-one-child-left-behind pace. Two of them also have trouble communicating in English, which is a problem since none of us can yet communicate in Chinese. In some ways, it’s like being a child. There’s a lot of pointing and name-giving and quite a bit of flailing arms and hands in a desperate attempt to gesture meaning. It’s like a three-hour game of charades – EVERYDAY.

3. Characters: we already need to know around 60. That’s right, six-oh. To read and write. On a dime. As if your life depending on the several strokes and their order being correct in ten seconds. At some points, I’m fairly certain that I have daydreamed about getting my eyes seared with a hot poker rather than look at another character. Slowly, however, I am recognizing things on the street. Which is cool – like having a decoder ring. So, I am willing to put up with it and I have actually constructed flashcards. Yes, people, I am doing it OLD SCHOOL.

As a final thought about the past two weeks of my official introduction to the Chinese language, I must relate that I love the poetic quality of it, the sheer ridiculousness of keeping the characters instead of turning to an alphabetic spelling, the timelessness of it. Chinese is 4000-6000 years old. And in proper tradition, I have been given a Chinese name. It is Ma Li Shan. Which means horse, beautiful coral. Nonsensical. Finally, a name that describes me.

It’s All Chinese to Me . . .

In the fall, beginning in September, I will be entering the University of Hong Kong for a degree in Chinese (Putonghua). Last week, I finished my private writing tutoring sessions and tonight I am off to my weekly group lesson. I thought I would pay homage here to the journey of foreign languages by detailing some of the interesting things I have learned since I began to discover the Chinese language.

When I first came to Hong Kong, I was under the impression that everyone spoke English. I have to admit that this assumption was rather silly of me, even though I didn’t exactly formulate it entirely by myself. Before leaving the U.S., everyone I met who had either lived or visited told me the same thing. “Oh, don’t worry,” they said, “everyone can speak English. You won’t need to learn Chinese.”

This is simply false. I suppose if you weren’t interested in talking to anyone outside of your office, the hotel, or the stores, then you would get along just fine without any Chinese. However, if like me, you wanted to learn anything at all about the culture or the people who live here, then making an effort to learn to speak a bit of Cantonese or Putonghua goes a long way. I have noticed that even with a poor effort, people tend to give me the benefit of the doubt. If I speak just a smidgen of Chinese, I am no longer just another gweilo (Cantonese for white ghost) or lao wei (Putonghua for old foreigner).

Most people speak English the way I speak Spanish, intermittently and with a scarcity of vocab words to choose from. Sometimes even the business people I meet cannot speak as well as I expected, and that is after many, many years of study and practice. English is hard. However, they have gotten back theirs and then some because Chinese is even harder.

The first thing you should know about Chinese is that it is different everywhere you go. For instance, Cantonese is only spoken in Hong Kong and a small portion of Guandong province. However, this still means that there are millions of speakers. Putonghua, or the common language, is spoken everywhere else in China. Even so, each region comes with its own dialect and in common usage among families and friends, sometimes they will still use the dialect instead of the common language. And here’s the neat part: the characters are the same in each case, but the pronunciation is completely different. Which means that I could write something and be understood, but speak it and have people stare at me like a crazy woman.

Of course, all of this is a moot point between Hong Kong, Taiwan and the rest of China. Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional characters. The rest of China uses the simplified version. In my experience, I am extremely happy about the simplified versions. I cannot imagine learning the traditional, meaning more detailed with more pen strokes, characters. It’s hard enough learning to memorize the simplified version.

The next most important thing about Chinese is the fact that it is a tonal language. Most people have no conception of what this means. Let me demonstrate. I can say the same set of two letters, in this instance MA, in four different ways and it will mean four different words. Saying ma in the first tone means mother. Say it in the third tone and it means horse. You can see the difficulties that might arise should you not be paying attention or have trouble pronouncing words. And if you are tone deaf, please do not even attempt to learn Chinese. You will literally injure yourself trying.

Those are the hard parts. If you can master the tones, then Chinese is a surprisingly easy language as far as syntax goes. There are no tenses – yes, that’s right, you heard me correctly, no past or future here folks – and there are no articles for the nouns. If you want to say that something happened in the past, you have to say so.

When you begin to learn the language and the way people actually speak with each other, you notice that the Chinese people are obsessed with food and money. Every saying relates back to them. For instance, if I want to say, “Hey, how’s it going?” I ask “Ni chi le ma?” which means “Have you eaten?”

But if we had a billion people, then I’m fairly certain we would be obsessed with food and money as well. Hell, as it is, the U.S. already has the fattest people on the planet and we’ve got plenty, so what’s our excuse? And to hear people talking about their sub-zero refrigerators and Fendi handbags, I’m pretty sure we are obsessed with money and status, too. So, go figure.

Any anyway, I half-jokingly suggest that we should all learn Mandarin Chinese now, while we still have a choice in the matter. From what I have seen on my travels, this nation is on the rise. It’s only a matter of time before the real business is done in Chinese, not English. And when that happens, hopefully I’ll be ready. I already surprise the heck out of Chinese people when I speak anything. Apparently, lao weis are famous for NOT learning the language. From what I’ve seen, this is true. There are people I have met who have lived here for 20 years and don’t know how to speak a word. And they say colonialism is dead.