3/10/10 6:53 PM
Crazy taxi ride yesterday that I forgot to talk about. The guy maneuvered like he was on a bicycle. He almost hit someone, in one of those I'm-walking-here-but-you're-walking-here-so-I'll-move-out-of-your-way-oh-wait-you-moved-the-same-way-I'll-move-again-oh-wait-you-moved-again sort of moments, but with a car and a person rather than two people. A fast moving car.
The taxi driver today was much more relaxing.
The mandarin lessons are going very well. We have double periods, three times a week. Our teacher has been changing each week, which is sort of lame, but we're learning a good bit nonetheless. First week it was Mr. Shen (which I think I talked about earlier), then it was a nice new guy who just had one lesson with us. He was subbing for someone, so he couldn't match our schedule, or something. And then this week we had Ms. Gao (and I hope, and maybe it seems like we might have her as our teacher for the rest of our time here?), who has basically been our strongest contact to the school from day one. She picked us up at the airport (and now I remember that first car ride, where we could barely understand anything she said [in Mandarin, of course. She's an excellent English speaker]), and has been helping us with general stuff throughout our stay. One day she helped us order Baozi, because we didn't know what the sweet black bean filling stuff was called. We still sort of forget, because it's a solid 4 characters that we haven't learned, in a single phrase, but the Baozi lady is beginning to recognize us, so she has our orders down.
But so Gao Lao Shi is the best English teacher at the school, and is now teaching us Mandarin, which is going very well. Mr. Shen couldn't speak much English (even less than we can speak Mandarin, believe it or not!), and had to teach through a translator, even though he was very helpful. The New Guy (I forget his name) was nice, but was inexperienced, in general. Gao Lao Shi is basically excellent. She's sort of harsh to her class, (which we visited last week and to whom(s) we explained our school schedule, which caused a mild uprising [did I write about this? I don't think so… Will explain further below]), and compares them to each other all the time and things. She had us stand up in front of the class and told them that our Mandarin handwriting was better than theirs. And this was after we told them that our school schedule was basically infinitely less difficult than theirs.
This brings me to another point (although I sort of promise that I'll return to the very good Mandarin lesson we had today, and then to the "schedule presentation" we have given to some of the classes, which will continue to give to others). While I am thoroughly enjoying my trip here, I feel like I'm making many of the students feel crappy about their lives. Not me, on an individual level, I don't think. I do lay down some old-school playground embarrassment from all my ping-pong smackdowns, (Word doesn't like the phrase "smackdowns." Get with the times, Bill), the fallouts for which I take no responsibility (did I do that right?). But what I represent. I'm middle-class America, the lifestyle (or cultural equivalent) they will pursue most of their life. This, ultimately, is what all their schooling is for, whether they realize it or not. (Or if I'm making some unfounded assumptions, but I think this is a pretty safe assertion.) And I will probably have it easier throughout my life; through high school, through college (university, as they call it. Most adults with which I've had a long conversation will eventually ask me where I'm going, and I tend to preface my list of schools with "they're very small, so you may not have heard of them." Someone we met on the street today asked about Harvard), through my "employment years." And here I am, drinking their milk tea and wandering into their classrooms taking pictures and notes. Giving them long lectures on how my school life (for all intents and purposes the sum total of our respective lives, as of yet) is far easier than theirs. Which we tell them directly, every time we "teach" a class.
Anyway, we went to the Shanghai Museum today. There was just so much to see. I love the landscape paintings, but spent so much time looking at them, I had almost no time to see anything else. It's free and the public transportation is good, so I think I'm going to go back soon.
I'm fairly often stopped when we go through the turnstiles at the underground stations for a quick security check. They just pass one of those metal detector wands over my bag, which is no big deal, but I'm afraid for my computer. I've been screened 3 times, twice in the past two days, even though I'm clearly with some local students. It's sort of funny, the discrimination I'm experiencing. I don't really blame 'em; Shanghai is a lot less diverse than almost anywhere I've been. But it's also pretty sad, knowing that some people experience this wherever they go, and suffer through far more than a metal detector-wand prodding. I want to get the school's uniform (they didn't have any on hand so they're calling the factory to see what's up), so I look at least a little legitimate. (Note: since I wrote this, we've gotten our uniforms. We look even less legitimate, somehow.)
I found this the other day, and it's perhaps one of the better examples of why Mandarin is so difficult for English-speakers to learn (at least that's how I interpret it. Written for a different reason, but still very cool). If the formatting has gone to shit (which I fully expect it has), the original is here:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Lion-Eating Poet" Tongue-Twister Essay While tongue-twisters in all languages take advantage of similar sounding words and syllables to generate confusion, some Chinese tongue-twisters also take advantage of the fact that Chinese is a tonal language. Taken to the extreme, it is possible to create a tongue-twisters where all the words have the same sound but varying only in their tones. Zhao Yuanren (趙元任) (1892-1982), an accomplished Chinese linguist, created just such an essay. He did so to prove just how inadequate it would be to replace Chinese characters by a purely phonetic script as others were advocating at the time. The beauty of this essay is that although the romanized version is utterly ridiculous, its Chinese character version is perfectly clear and its content totally interesting. However, it is up to you to find out whether a native Chinese speaker hearing the essay for the first time could correctly parse it when read by another native Chinese speaker. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
That's awesome!!
ReplyDeletewhat else can I say,
Caitlin