Archives for March 2009
Five Important Chinese Phrases
Earlier, I posted an article about five important Chinese characters to learn before traveling to China. You have no idea how hard it is to narrow these lists to just five, but I decided to tackle it again with useful phrases. I won’t bog you down with trying to read pinyin, so I’ve included audio samples of each sentence recorded by a native friend. Listen, rinse, repeat.
1. Duo shao qian? (How much does it cost?) ~listen
If you’re not very good at remembering phrases, then just focus on this one. It’s the most important Chinese you can know, whether you’re haggling at a market or trying to buy a banana from a street vendor. The interesting thing about this phrase is that “duo” means a lot, and “shao” means a little. Put together, they become a question about how much money (qian).
2. Cesuo zai nali? (Where is the bathroom?) ~listen
You could just as easily scream, “WC!” while holding your crotch and get the same point across, but the structure is useful for asking where other things are. Just replace “cesuo” (toilet) with a different object or place. Of course, this does nothing to help you understand the directions given to you. Oh well! Note that the sentence order for this is backwards from English: Bathroom at where?
3. Wo yao neige. (I want that.) ~listen
Rather than bother figuring out what the names of all the foods are, it’s easier to just point at things and say, “I want that. And that. And that. And that.” You’ll feel like a little kid barely learning to speak, but that’s the fun part! To break it down, “wo yao” means “I want,” and “neige” means “that.”
4. Ting bu dong. (I don’t understand.) ~listen
As much as I don’t like having to use this phrase (or hearing it from other people), it’s a good one to know. Directly translated, it means “hear don’t understand” and is the best way to deter someone from speaking Chinese with you. But this is only for hearing. If you want to talk about not understanding something else, you’d have to swap out the “ting.”
5. Xiexie ni. (Thank you.) ~listen
Obviously, there’s a lot more you could learn. Nothing simple charades can’t compensate for, though, right? In the end, you’ll appreciate knowing how to say thank you more than something like, “Bring me the bill,” or, “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” The people you thank will appreciate your efforts to speak Chinese, as well. You can get by with just “xiexie,” but for those extra formal moments, you can tack on “ni” (you).
The Hospital Waiting Game
I went to the hospital yesterday for a checkup. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with me now that wasn’t already wrong with me before leaving for China. I asked my supervisor if she could find a doctor who spoke English, so nobody would have the uncomfortable task of translating my personal problems to the only guy who really needed to know. The following week, as the two of us walked into the hospital, she turned to me and asked, “So can you explain your problem to the doctor in Chinese?”
She ended up with the uncomfortable task of translating my personal problems to the only guy who really needed to know. And now the two of us can never look at each other the same again.
Anyone who stays in China longer than a month week day will probably have to go to the hospital, and, oh boy, it’s a fun experience. It can easily turn into an all-day ordeal, since you’re not allowed to make appointments ahead of time. It’s first come, first serve, and people are still trying to cut in front of you at every opportunity. I found it amusing, too, that, when I went into the doctors’ office, none of them looked very busy. In fact, one of the doctors was playing Solitaire on the computer. And you thought they only pulled that gag in the movies.
The bottom floor of the hospital was like a bank with several cashier windows. Every time there was new insight into my checkup, we were sent back to the cashier to pay for the next treatment/examination/medicine. The overall process cost me 500 RMB, or about $70. That’s pretty good, considering I don’t have health insurance here, and back home, the co-pays and prescriptions would have run about the same. For China, though, these checkups are considered expensive. My supervisor said she had to pay 1,000 RMB just to have a cold treated. Some people barely make that much in a month! If hospital visits run such a high gamut, it makes you wonder why everyone is so eager to head to the doctor whenever they get sick.
The nice thing about being at a Chinese hospital is that everyone’s so preoccupied with their own illnesses, they don’t much care that a foreigner is in their midst.
The Worst Job
My apartment is in a great location. Outside my kitchen window is a bunch of construction, and outside my living room window is the garbage house. These little buildings are all around campus and fill up with crap surprisingly fast. Then all the crap disappears just as quickly. Where does it go? Mommy, where does all the crap go?
Well, Timmy, somebody has the unfortunate job of sorting through the trash several times a week, separating it into what can be recycled, what can be turned into compost, and what needs to be burned. Sometimes, I’ll see the workers with their children out there, squatting in the garbage strewn all over the road, tossing certain items into the cart to be taken away. It’s a “bring your son to work” day I’d rather skip out on.
Knowing my garbage gets sorted by hand makes me a little hesitant to contribute to the pile. It’s pretty obvious which garbage bags are the foreign teacher’s, because I’m most likely the only guy in all of Wujin district who buys cold cereal. I can just see them snickering amongst themselves, “Who goes through that much toilet paper? Is this guy made of corn or something? Ha, ha, ha! What a loser.”
TV Roundup: Volume 4
Curb Your Enthusiasm (Seasons 1-6)
I’ve read a couple articles that suggested It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia was the new Seinfeld, but after watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, I have to seriously question these reviewers’ credentials. Not only does Curb Your Enthusiasm star Seinfeld-creator Larry David, it follows the same plot of easily offended people making big deals out of nothing while falling victim to some of the most embarrassing situations ever imagined. And we all know there’s nothing more enjoyable than watching someone else make a fool of themselves. Larry David is a master at messing up small favors or putting his foot so far into his mouth, it nudges up against his colon. The show is also done with an intentionally low-key style that gives the impression this is what celebrities are like in real life. A teaspoon of Curb is enough to make you feel better about not having your own little group of fickle celebrity friends to butt heads with.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (Season 1)
When you want to make another hit in the league of 30 Rock’s behind-the-scenes TV sitcom, you have to do more than multiply the title by two. In all fairness, Studio 60 does a much better job of creating a believable studio environment and even grants you a few glimpses of the show everyone’s frantically working on. However, their show that is supposed to be raking in the viewers comes across as incredibly juvenile and lame… and so do the people running it. Characters may use fancy words with haughty attitudes, but there’s no denying that what you’re ultimately getting are a bunch of “professionals” behaving like they’re backstage a high school play. Some episodes really struck gold, like one about a disaster show or another about Mathew Perry’s character doing drugs, but rather than build on these great ideas, the writers continued to dwell on political and religious issues nobody cared about and eventually got the show canceled.
Chuck (Season 1)
Call me a party pooper, but I’m a little tired of the bumbling loser who, by sheer luck and the help of people who actually know what they’re doing, manages to save the day. I think it was Johnny English that finally did it for me. I’ve also seen enough TV/movie geeks who speak Klingon and endorse the Xbox 360 in everything they do and yet are still ten times more handsome and charming than I am. Okay, so I have serious issues with Chuck. It’s an amusing and cheesy look at what life would be like if a lowly Geek Squad employee suddenly had a whole bunch of government secrets dropped into his brain, and when the show is all about Chuck and not his idiotic friends who work at the same store, there’s some fun to be had. If anything, though, Chuck just gives me a better appreciation for Burn Notice, where the spy action was cooler, the jokes were funnier, and the lead’s BFF was Bruce freakin’ Campbell and not some chump in a green polo shirt.
Home Movies (Seasons 1-4)
Home Movies is an interesting journey. The longer this cartoon stayed on the air, the more erratic its quality became. Higher highs. Lower lows. While it wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny in its earlier days, I enjoyed the premises of three kids getting together every day after school to make ridiculous movies with even more ridiculous music numbers. Somewhere along the way, though, Home Movies stopped being about Brendon and his “home movies” and turned its attention to the soccer coach, John McGuirk, who can be hilarious in small doses but should have never been given top billing. If that doesn’t sting enough already, the children slowly start acting like smart-assed adults and the adults like children who can’t do anything right. What you finally end up with in Season 4 is the near opposite of what you might have fallen in love with in Seasons 1 and 2. There are some great, great laughs in this series, but watching it beginning to end will probably upset you more than it will entertain you.
Nine Months of Chinese Architecture
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve really been hurting for topics to write about these past few days. Or has it been weeks? Probably months. I previously mentioned how all expatriates reach a point where their adventures stop being adventures and start being common routine. Are you starting to believe me yet?
When you first get to China, you take pictures of every building you see, because they all look so fascinating. Nine months later, you find yourself constantly passing on photo opportunities, saying to yourself, “Nah, I already have so many pictures of Chinese rooftops, and that one’s no different.” I dug into my archives to demonstrate this very effect:
The first time I scrolled through this post, I could have sworn some of those pictures made it in there twice. Man, I’ve been here too long.
Music to my Ears
I have to keep reminding the Chinese supervisors not to leave me alone with the students, though I don’t blame them for always wanting to skip class. When they do sit in on one of my lessons, they reel with boredom and develop bruises on their face from banging their head against the desk. That almost sounds like I’m describing the students, not the teachers.
There is one particular class that goes through a night and day transformation when their teacher is/isn’t present. They are absolute monsters when left alone and surprisingly sweet angels when monitored. Last week was the former. While most of the class was ill-behaved, there was one kid who was being a total brat for the entire 40 minutes. On my way out of class after the bell rang, I caught a glimpse of him mocking me behind my back. I turned around to confront him, and he, recognizing I was pissed, fled the scene. I’ve never seen a kid run so fast! He managed to disappear from the entire building in only three seconds.
For the following week, I had put most of this behind me, but at the end of class today, the same student approached the podium and feebly said, “Teacher, I’m sorry. I was wrong. Can you forgive me?” Wow. I’ve been waiting six months to hear a student say that! Maybe you don’t appreciate the significance of it as much as I do, though. Here, let me put it in a blockquote:
Teacher, I’m sorry. I was wrong.
Can you forgive me?
Yeah, that’s better. I know this student’s Chinese teacher coaxed him into apologizing (where the word “coax” is more likely to mean “twist his arm and threaten to tell his parents”), but I’ve gotten pretty good at playing the part of the ignorant one. I can pretend like this came from the bottom of his heart.
Can’t Can Chang Chan
There are some things (we could call them problems, even) about your native language you don’t really think about until you start teaching it to other people. Then there are some things (still problems) about your native language you think about all the time, regardless of where you are. And it seems like the barely noticeable difference between the words “can” and “can’t” has always proved troublesome. I find myself constantly asking people to clarify, “You mean you can or you can’t?” And they irritably reply, “I can’T!”
It almost makes more sense to simply say, “I am not able to…” from now on, but that’s a difficult habit to start and would probably turn off a lot of people, anyway. What’s wrong with you? Why do you talk like that? You think you’re better than me?! Or you could just pronounce “can’t” the British way, as is popular among Chinese English students. I already gave them “chips” over “French fries,” though. They don’t get my “can’t,” also!
The reason I bring this up is because the same kind of subtle ending exists for Chinese words. After working with my Chinese tutor for five months now, you’d think I would be familiar with her pronunciation and be able to differentiate between certain sounds. Well, okay, you probably wouldn’t think that. The point is, the two of us always struggle with the G sound when it comes at the end of a word, like “cheng” or “feng” or “jing.” Whenever I don’t write a G, my tutor tells me there is one, and whenever I do write a G, my tutor tells me there isn’t one.
Gah! Languages can be frustrating, English or Chinese. And I said “can” that time, not “can’t.”
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye
There’s always going to be at least one person talking (or rather yelling) on his/her cell phone while riding the bus downtown. You can always tell when the conversation is about to end, too, because the person starts repeating, “Mmm. Ah. Mmm. Ah, ah, ah. Hao de. Mmm. Hao de, hao de, hao de. Mmm.” Then click, it’s over, and without any goodbye. It kind of seems like the conversation wasn’t finished yet, that maybe the person just got sick of listening to the other guy say, “Mmm. Hao de. Mmm, mmm. Hao de,” and decided to end it.
“Hao de” in Chinese is like saying, “Okay,” by the way.
To take some of the responsibility off my foreign affairs representative, I started calling the water bottling guy on my own to get my water bottles replaced. Making Chinese phone calls is such a scary thing, though. If there’s a problem with my request, I can’t exactly fall back on hand gestures and facial expressions and monkey-like pointing and grunting. Every time I call, I keep my fingers crossed he won’t ask any questions, that he’ll just say, “Hao de,” and hang up. Naturally, then, our conversations have the same dangling end as the conversations on the bus. I know, it’s not really expected to say goodbye, but without it, I feel like there’s a corner of the universe out there restlessly spinning out of control.
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