Turning Over the Car
When I studied Chinese in Korea, my teacher Kathy (pronounced with an 's' in the middle like Cassie, rather than with a 'th') was adamant about me studying characters. She said that reading and writing were essential. I was equally adamant about not studying them. The only reason I wanted to learn Chinese at that point was so that I could get by on my own more easily when I travelled in this country. I wanted to TALK to people, period.
For the first year or so she mostly relented on the subject of literacy. The Chinese have developed a very effective system of phonetic romanization, pinyin, which the low-level text book we were using relied on anyway. But she still managed to sneak as many characters in as she could, until finally she told me that either I began to study properly or I began to study to alone.
I liked writing. Liked the way similar strokes lined up in endless variations. Liked the symmetry of text. Liked the meditativeness of copying out the same character over and over and over again. Liked the sense of words as art. But I never internalized it. Never gained the ability to glance at a particular character, no matter how many times I copied it or named its flashcard (painstakingly crafted before I went to bed each night), and immediately associate it with the word or idea that it represented. To read even a simple passage I would have to convert all of the characters first into pinyin, and then again into English. Kathy and I shifted from teacher-student to friends and the vault of words in my brain grew dusty and were mostly forgotten.
Language is more than essential in understanding people - it is the framework from which their entire experience is built. This is more true in China than anywhere else I have ever been, where characters are more than symbols strung together to create sound, they are representations of the ideas that shape thought. I wish I had studied harder.
In the village outside of Tai Xing, Chongchong spent one rainy afternoon teaching me the names of all of the people in her family. Very, very patiently. Her name was the first Chinese that penetrated deeply enough that I need only glance at it to recognize it as HER. The second was 'xin' - heart. Coincidentally, a few days after our lesson, I read this passage in my current road book, Amy Tan's 'The Bonesetter's Daughter' (which I highly recommend):
'Precious Auntie taught me how to write this down on my chalkboard. Watch now, Doggie, she ordered, and drew the character for 'heart': See this curving stroke? That's the bottom of the heart, where blood gathers and flows. And the dots, those are the two veins and the artery that carry the blood in and out. As I traced over the character, she asked: Whose dead heart gave shape to this word? How did it begin, Doggie? Did it belong to a woman? Was it drawn in sadness?....'Why do we have to know whose heart it was?' I asked as I wrote the character. And Precious Auntie flapped her hands fast: A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end.'
On the plane from Shanghai to Chengdu, Timothy showed me the characters for the USA. I had always been taught that 'Mei Guo' meant simply 'Beautiful Country' - a nod to the Chinese perception of that great land across the sea. Timothy scoffed. This is the problem with not being able to read. Mei Guo is not America on its own, it is an abbreviation. See this first character? It's true that this is the Mei of beauty ... sheep. Sheep were so important - imagine a pastoral country in which wealth was totally bound up in land and livestock. What was wealth? What was beauty? Fat, healthy sheep. But the Li that follows is not the li of beauty...say the sound aloud, all of the characters together. What do they sound like? May-Ri-Ca ... America. This is what reading opens up for you.
Later, in a friend's apartment, Timothy showed me the character for 'happiness'. God on the left, whatever god you conceive. And on the right, one, mouth, field - family, land, prosperity - all you need to be happy. He returns to this character often, describing things to me, using it all together or breaking it apart to fit the pieces into other ideas, tracing the lines in the air, or in the dust, or into the palm of my hand. In this way he is beginning to build a new vocabulary for me, a new way of seeing the world, through his eyes.
His eyes would have been laughing Friday night, to see me ink splattered amidst a room full of 6-year olds, learning to write with a brush. Paula's calligraphy class, plus one enormous foreigner copying with less skill than any of them. The teacher would hold the brush and it would glide across the rough paper like a swan, dipping its beak gently in one place, creating ripples that spread and fade, or making bold lines swimming towards the edge. And then my turn, the brush simply a brush again, doused in too much ink, soaking into the page like a squashed cockroach. When I would unexpectedly execute a graceful stroke, the pig-tailed girl in front of me would flash a gap-toothed smile and give me a thumbs up. When my brush folded over on itself despositing a fat blob of ink rather than twisting delicately to make a light spot, the four-eyed boy on my left would shake his head sadly, in commiseration and disgust.
Since I didn't have my dictionary with me, I had no idea what I was writing. I could only guess what the two characters I managed to paint with some grace said. I hoped they would turn out to be something lovely, as their strokes looked to me. First, 'xiu' - to flower, or put forth (as in ears of corn). Not was I was expecting, but a beautiful idea in its way. And the second, 'ji' - odd number. Hmm.
Emboldened by my calligraphy, I came home and sent Timothy a text message using only characters. 'Che fan le ma?' - 'have you eaten?' a common greeting. Hours later he wrote back, first in pinyin, confirming what I wanted to say. I smiled, content to be getting the hang of this new language thing. And then, just before my pride could get the better of me, he wrote in English, 'Your characters say that you turned your car over.' Clearly I still have a long way to go.
For the first year or so she mostly relented on the subject of literacy. The Chinese have developed a very effective system of phonetic romanization, pinyin, which the low-level text book we were using relied on anyway. But she still managed to sneak as many characters in as she could, until finally she told me that either I began to study properly or I began to study to alone.
I liked writing. Liked the way similar strokes lined up in endless variations. Liked the symmetry of text. Liked the meditativeness of copying out the same character over and over and over again. Liked the sense of words as art. But I never internalized it. Never gained the ability to glance at a particular character, no matter how many times I copied it or named its flashcard (painstakingly crafted before I went to bed each night), and immediately associate it with the word or idea that it represented. To read even a simple passage I would have to convert all of the characters first into pinyin, and then again into English. Kathy and I shifted from teacher-student to friends and the vault of words in my brain grew dusty and were mostly forgotten.
Language is more than essential in understanding people - it is the framework from which their entire experience is built. This is more true in China than anywhere else I have ever been, where characters are more than symbols strung together to create sound, they are representations of the ideas that shape thought. I wish I had studied harder.
In the village outside of Tai Xing, Chongchong spent one rainy afternoon teaching me the names of all of the people in her family. Very, very patiently. Her name was the first Chinese that penetrated deeply enough that I need only glance at it to recognize it as HER. The second was 'xin' - heart. Coincidentally, a few days after our lesson, I read this passage in my current road book, Amy Tan's 'The Bonesetter's Daughter' (which I highly recommend):
'Precious Auntie taught me how to write this down on my chalkboard. Watch now, Doggie, she ordered, and drew the character for 'heart': See this curving stroke? That's the bottom of the heart, where blood gathers and flows. And the dots, those are the two veins and the artery that carry the blood in and out. As I traced over the character, she asked: Whose dead heart gave shape to this word? How did it begin, Doggie? Did it belong to a woman? Was it drawn in sadness?....'Why do we have to know whose heart it was?' I asked as I wrote the character. And Precious Auntie flapped her hands fast: A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end.'
On the plane from Shanghai to Chengdu, Timothy showed me the characters for the USA. I had always been taught that 'Mei Guo' meant simply 'Beautiful Country' - a nod to the Chinese perception of that great land across the sea. Timothy scoffed. This is the problem with not being able to read. Mei Guo is not America on its own, it is an abbreviation. See this first character? It's true that this is the Mei of beauty ... sheep. Sheep were so important - imagine a pastoral country in which wealth was totally bound up in land and livestock. What was wealth? What was beauty? Fat, healthy sheep. But the Li that follows is not the li of beauty...say the sound aloud, all of the characters together. What do they sound like? May-Ri-Ca ... America. This is what reading opens up for you.
Later, in a friend's apartment, Timothy showed me the character for 'happiness'. God on the left, whatever god you conceive. And on the right, one, mouth, field - family, land, prosperity - all you need to be happy. He returns to this character often, describing things to me, using it all together or breaking it apart to fit the pieces into other ideas, tracing the lines in the air, or in the dust, or into the palm of my hand. In this way he is beginning to build a new vocabulary for me, a new way of seeing the world, through his eyes.
His eyes would have been laughing Friday night, to see me ink splattered amidst a room full of 6-year olds, learning to write with a brush. Paula's calligraphy class, plus one enormous foreigner copying with less skill than any of them. The teacher would hold the brush and it would glide across the rough paper like a swan, dipping its beak gently in one place, creating ripples that spread and fade, or making bold lines swimming towards the edge. And then my turn, the brush simply a brush again, doused in too much ink, soaking into the page like a squashed cockroach. When I would unexpectedly execute a graceful stroke, the pig-tailed girl in front of me would flash a gap-toothed smile and give me a thumbs up. When my brush folded over on itself despositing a fat blob of ink rather than twisting delicately to make a light spot, the four-eyed boy on my left would shake his head sadly, in commiseration and disgust.
Since I didn't have my dictionary with me, I had no idea what I was writing. I could only guess what the two characters I managed to paint with some grace said. I hoped they would turn out to be something lovely, as their strokes looked to me. First, 'xiu' - to flower, or put forth (as in ears of corn). Not was I was expecting, but a beautiful idea in its way. And the second, 'ji' - odd number. Hmm.
Emboldened by my calligraphy, I came home and sent Timothy a text message using only characters. 'Che fan le ma?' - 'have you eaten?' a common greeting. Hours later he wrote back, first in pinyin, confirming what I wanted to say. I smiled, content to be getting the hang of this new language thing. And then, just before my pride could get the better of me, he wrote in English, 'Your characters say that you turned your car over.' Clearly I still have a long way to go.
posted by Roberta | 11:08 AM
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