Block Facebook Succeed!
I see ridiculous Chinglish signs so often, I don’t really look for them anymore. Now, I get this greeting every time I log onto my hotel’s Internet service:
But the Internet hasn’t been full of succeed today. Due to recent riots in Xinjiang province (resulting in an unfortunate death toll), the PRC is itching to put a lid on free speech again. Considering every other notable social site has already been blocked, the only thing left to do was axe Facebook. Yep, Facebook’s down. I can no longer stay in touch with people I hardly know. On the plus side, I don’t have to put up with any more “Jeremiah took the quiz What Disney character are you? and the result was Hannah Montana” notices.
Five Important Chinese Characters
Picking out five Chinese characters from a pool of thousands seems a bit unfair, but I was really hoping to keep this list in line with my other lists of five. I’ve got a good thing going! And let’s not kid ourselves. We’re never going to learn 3,000 characters. The few you can learn, however, will make your trip to China much easier.
1. 女 (female)
The most obvious reason why you would want to know this is to avoid accidentally stepping into the wrong restroom, though the picture of a blue man or red woman is usually a giveaway. But there’s more! You wouldn’t want to find yourself buying a pair of of the opposite gender’s pajamas, would you? How embarrassing! Not to mention the character 女 appears as a radical in many, many other characters, so it’s a good one to memorize.
2. 肉 (meat)
Not every restaurant has an English menu, or even a menu with pictures, but by the time you realize this, it’s too late to turn back without hurting someone’s feelings. Fortunately, I’ve had pretty good luck with pointing at something that has the character 肉 in it and getting a pork or beef dish that isn’t half bad. Half being the key word.
3. 下 (down/next)
This is a very versatile character. Not only does it mean down or lower (as in the lower level of a building, the lower bunk bed, etc.), it can be used to denote the end of something, like the end of work or the end of the day. Oh, it gets even better! 下 also means next. This is important for knowing which button to click when using a Chinese computer, sure, but it’ll let you keep tabs on the next bus/train stop, as well.
4. 车 (car/vehicle)
I debated and debated whether or not to include this one, but it’s actually a useful character for finding the bus station, the train station, or even a taxi, since 车 appears in the name of all of these modes of transportation. It can be daunting to make sense out of a Chinese bus stop sign, but if you’re desperate to get out of town, looking for the stop that has 车 in the name is a good place to start.
5. 园 (park)
This is another one that might seem out of place on such a cramped list, but the more I think about it, the more I realize 园 has helped me find the right bus stop on several occasions. When traveling as a tourist, you’re likely to visit a lot of gardens and parks, or at least use them as markers to find other areas. The names of these scenic spots tend to end with 园, which solidifies this as one of the most important characters to be able to recognize.
Quote of the Day
“Why today my grammar is so bad?!”
I love it.
I Really Did Go to China
See? It’s a picture of me with a pagoda in the background. I must be in China if there’s a pagoda in the background. The guy with me is Bart, another teacher at my school. He has done more than anybody to help me adjust to Changzhou. Today, we both had the day off, so we walked around the city. And I have been sweating since 11:00 this morning.
Bart has shown me a lot of great places to eat; I am going to live well while staying in downtown Changzhou. It’s strange to think that, in two months, I will move back to the Star School in dumpy Wujin district. Today, though, I tried my hand at ordering dumplings again. It went much better. Let’s translate:
“We want four beef and cabbage dumplings.”
“No, you can’t have four. You have to have six.”
“What?”
“You have to have six dumplings.”
“Six?! Why? We want four… of those. Those.”
Bart turned around and used his method of picking out the youngest-looking Chinese person and saying, “I know you know English. Can you help us?” The guy did know English. And he managed to explain that we were trying to order four individual dumplings instead of four plates of dumplings. Ah, of course.
The beautiful thing about this is that, while there was a misunderstanding between me and the cashier, I understood what she was saying. She just didn’t understand me. Later in the evening, Bart and I went to an Italian restaurant, and again we ran into trouble when trying to get separate bills (Chinese people like to put everything on one bill). I was using the term “zhangdan,” and the waitress had to explain (in Chinese, which I understood) that “zhangdan” means the bill that tells you what you ordered. What we wanted was the “maidan,” or the bill that tells you how much it costs.
China is so much fun.
If you’re going to fall down, do it carefully.
Chinese is Like a Storm Raging Inside You
My Chinese class just started a new lesson on medical terms, like how to say hospital, headache, vomit, and diarrhea. Man, that last one would have come in handy when I was in Hexian in 2006. It’s pretty hard to explain to a doctor who doesn’t know any English what your symptoms are unless you’re willing to resort to embarrassing charades. After that night, I have no shame.
With Chinese, it’s actually really, really easy to learn new words and implement them. Wait, what? Did I seriously just say that? When I tell people I’m learning Chinese, they whistle, “Ooh! Tough language!” I don’t know where they get this idea, though. Chinese grammar is so simple and straightforward, and related words (like morning, noon, and night) end up having connected… er… uh… wordage… instead of being fanciful and arbitrary.
I think it’s the whole concept of tones that scares people, how a simple fluctuation can change what you’ve just said. But it’s not like this is some foreign concept to us. We have similar devices in English. My favorite example is taking the sentence, “I didn’t say I liked her,” and putting the emphasis on different words to make it mean something else:
I didn’t say I liked her. (She’s just my friend.)
I didn’t say I liked her. (I like somebody else.)
I didn’t say I liked her. (I only hinted that I liked her.)
I didn’t say I liked her. (Stop accusing me that I did.)
I didn’t say I liked her. (Jimmy Poopypants said that.)
Granted, it’s not quite the same in Chinese. There’s not a lot of subtext to try and decipher. You just might end up saying, “I want to eat five sleeps,” instead of, “I want to eat five dumplings.” That sounds funny, but don’t we take the same risks with words that are too similar to each other in English? Somebody asks you what you’re doing, and you say, “I’m baking,” and they reply, “What? You’re bacon?!” Well, whether you said “bacon” or baking,” we know what you meant. The nice thing about being new to Chinese is that people will often still get what you’re trying to say based on the context. But they may make fun of you afterwards for saying it wrong (wouldn’t we all).
I remember one of my Guanghua students trying to teach me her Chinese name, and she kept saying, “Huang Wenwen.” And I’d say, ”Huang Wenwen?” And she’d say, “No! Huang Wenwen.” The only difference, of course, was that I was saying it like a question. That’s the hardest part about learning to speak Chinese: abandoning the practice of saying everything like we’re asking it. When we say something we’re unsure about, we habitually raise our voice at the end to let the other party know we don’t have any faith in ourselves. Seriously, stop it.
My teacher always tells us, “Be thankful you don’t have to learn English,” because, in comparison to Chinese, English is a monster of a language. It’s when you want to start reading or, even worse, writing Chinese that it gets to be troublesome and deserves its infamy.
I can’t even make sense of that in English.
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