Sunday, May 22, 2011
A story from Xiu Bar
Xiu bar is one of the nicest bars in Beijing. On the roof of the Park Hyatt, Xiu's clientelle is a mix of rich foreigners travelling for business and people wanting to take advantage of rich foreigners travelling for business. One of our friends is a boisterous foreigner who's been chatting with an attractive Chinese girl in a short skirt for the last few minutes. On this particular night, there was a cover band playing live music, so people are speaking really loud just to be heard. Then all of a sudden, there's one of these moments where the band is between songs, it gets suddenly quiet, and you can hear everyone again. My friend hasn't adjusted to the new sound level, and at that moment, you can hear him shouting, "You don't understand, girls normally pay me to sleep with them."
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The 5 Strangest Photos my Dad Took
I take my fair share of bad pictures - overexposed, bad framing, blurry shots, or turning on video accidentally. I think everyone does. But for most people, when they take a bad picture, they were at least trying to take a picture of something worth capturing. My Dad is different - he sometimes just takes pictures of things that leave me scratching my head. Here's five pictures he took on our most recent trip to Yunnan province:
1. A Wal-Mart
2. A plant in our hotel
3. A random couple taking wedding photos
4. A part of a sign describing rules for a tourist attraction
5. A dog eating left-over skewers
1. A Wal-Mart
2. A plant in our hotel
3. A random couple taking wedding photos
4. A part of a sign describing rules for a tourist attraction
5. A dog eating left-over skewers
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Learning Mandarin and Technology
I thought I would write down a few techniques I am using to help myself learn Mandarin in the hope that someone will let me know other useful techniques, or to perhaps help a fellow student. Today I’m just going to focus on a few of the programs I’ve been using recently.
I should say up front that no technique I’m using is a magic bullet. I think pouring time into learning Mandarin is the most important factor. As Mike Munie told me, “If I had to pick one thing that helped me learn Mandarin, it would be the five years I spent studying it.”
1. Dianhua Dictionary
My favorite program. This online dictionary also allows you to search for words and quickly bookmark them for study later. Every week, I create a new folder of words and add new words as I learn them into the folder. It syncs between my phone and the website. For example, I take my computer into lessons with my Chinese tutor so when I learn new words, I can enter them directly into the Dianhua website. Later I study these words on my phone whenever I have a minute.
2. Google Translate
An obvious important tool. Any Chinese I don’t understand can be thrown in here, especially with the iPhone app. Sometimes I get a text message and I wonder, “is this from a pretty girl?”
This program automatically translates highlighted Chinese characters. I use the CEDICT dictionary since it doesn’t need to access the internet to get its results (so it’s fast). I’ve only discovered how to use this program to translate individual words or phrases, not entire sentences. As a result, it's worse than Google Translate, but a lot easier to use since you just have to select some text. At the low level I know Chinese characters, translating word-by-word is still pretty useful for me.
And a final note
It’s now been over a year since I’ve been in Beijing. I’ve learned a lot of Mandarin, but I am definitely not fluent. My mood varies from being proud of the concentrated effort I’ve put into the language to extreme frustration. Sometimes, I’ll have a real conversation with words I just learned and tell some jokes, and it feels great. Other times, I ask someone what they did for the weekend, and they respond with something I haven’t learned yet and I feel right back to where I started.
I also realized that almost no matter what someone says about my Chinese level there’s a chance I’ll be frustrated. It sucks to be berated for not knowing Chinese better when I might have spent the day before studying after a long day at work. But it can be as frustrating when people compliment me over knowing extremely basic Chinese (like how to say hello), which I feel just cheapens any effort I’ve put in. Maybe I shouldn't let this bother me. But even though I know chocolate isn’t good for me, I eat it anyway since I’m human.
As much as I complain, though, learning Mandarin has been a fun challenge. I try to ruthlessly track down only the the most critical words I need to know (much to my tutor's dismay), and to find out why words are they way they are so I can better remember them ("aha! the word for "Train" is made up of "Fire" and "Car"). Mandarin is a language some say takes 4x the time for an English speaker to learn compared to more similar languages like French. I guess I couldn't have expected it to come easy.
I should say up front that no technique I’m using is a magic bullet. I think pouring time into learning Mandarin is the most important factor. As Mike Munie told me, “If I had to pick one thing that helped me learn Mandarin, it would be the five years I spent studying it.”
1. Dianhua Dictionary
My favorite program. This online dictionary also allows you to search for words and quickly bookmark them for study later. Every week, I create a new folder of words and add new words as I learn them into the folder. It syncs between my phone and the website. For example, I take my computer into lessons with my Chinese tutor so when I learn new words, I can enter them directly into the Dianhua website. Later I study these words on my phone whenever I have a minute.
2. Google Translate
An obvious important tool. Any Chinese I don’t understand can be thrown in here, especially with the iPhone app. Sometimes I get a text message and I wonder, “is this from a pretty girl?”
 |
| The answer: No |
3. Google Pinyin
Google Pinyin is how everyone in China types. If you’re not familiar with Mandarin, Pinyin Romanization perfectly describes Chinese sounds, but that doesn’t mean you know what character to write. A sound can be related to a variety of characters.
Instead of selecting each character individually, Google Pinyin predicts which character you want to type based on context. Most people in my company setup their companies so they can switch between English and Chinese by hitting a rarely used hotkey like alt-shift. When they are in Chinese mode, they use Google Pinyin.
Google Pinyin is how everyone in China types. If you’re not familiar with Mandarin, Pinyin Romanization perfectly describes Chinese sounds, but that doesn’t mean you know what character to write. A sound can be related to a variety of characters.
 |
| Disclaimer: I'm not a linguist |
 |
| It kind of looks like this |
This program automatically translates highlighted Chinese characters. I use the CEDICT dictionary since it doesn’t need to access the internet to get its results (so it’s fast). I’ve only discovered how to use this program to translate individual words or phrases, not entire sentences. As a result, it's worse than Google Translate, but a lot easier to use since you just have to select some text. At the low level I know Chinese characters, translating word-by-word is still pretty useful for me.
And a final note
It’s now been over a year since I’ve been in Beijing. I’ve learned a lot of Mandarin, but I am definitely not fluent. My mood varies from being proud of the concentrated effort I’ve put into the language to extreme frustration. Sometimes, I’ll have a real conversation with words I just learned and tell some jokes, and it feels great. Other times, I ask someone what they did for the weekend, and they respond with something I haven’t learned yet and I feel right back to where I started.
I also realized that almost no matter what someone says about my Chinese level there’s a chance I’ll be frustrated. It sucks to be berated for not knowing Chinese better when I might have spent the day before studying after a long day at work. But it can be as frustrating when people compliment me over knowing extremely basic Chinese (like how to say hello), which I feel just cheapens any effort I’ve put in. Maybe I shouldn't let this bother me. But even though I know chocolate isn’t good for me, I eat it anyway since I’m human.
As much as I complain, though, learning Mandarin has been a fun challenge. I try to ruthlessly track down only the the most critical words I need to know (much to my tutor's dismay), and to find out why words are they way they are so I can better remember them ("aha! the word for "Train" is made up of "Fire" and "Car"). Mandarin is a language some say takes 4x the time for an English speaker to learn compared to more similar languages like French. I guess I couldn't have expected it to come easy.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Pingyao Celebrity
A few weeks ago, Jon, some friends, and I took a weekend trip to Pingyao, a well preserved city built apparently 900 years ago.
Pingyao was a 12 hour night train southwest from Beijing, so it is a bit out there. A side effect of this is that Jon, being a tall white male, was a minor celebrity wherever he went. This started right on the train when he walked into the dining compartment and random people started excitingly greeting him and trying out their English.
At Pingyao, his celebrity status only increased, so much so that random girls would go up to Jon and ask to take their picture with him.
In any event, the original reason we went to Pingyao was that it is the place the movie Raise the Red Lantern was shot. In fact, before going on the trip, the six of us all watched the movie together. (If you haven't seen the movie, it is kind of like a season of Survivor where the contestants are four concubines, the prize is sleeping with a 60 year old man, and the punishment for being voted off is you get hanged.) So on Sunday we went over to Qiao's mansion, the site of the filming.
Sure enough, there was a ton of Raise the Red Lantern paraphernalia all around. You could see the actual set, check out pictures of the actors, and even dress up as the people there. This might be a good time to mention that Jon and I, in a situation I will call anti-Man Jose style, went with four girls to Pingyao. Hm... four girls, four concubines in Raise the Red Lantern, costumes... can you see where this is going?
Is the city or the people better looking?
Pingyao was a 12 hour night train southwest from Beijing, so it is a bit out there. A side effect of this is that Jon, being a tall white male, was a minor celebrity wherever he went. This started right on the train when he walked into the dining compartment and random people started excitingly greeting him and trying out their English.
At Pingyao, his celebrity status only increased, so much so that random girls would go up to Jon and ask to take their picture with him.
Jon is a minor celebrity. Meanwhile, I get charged 1 RMB less for bottled water.
In any event, the original reason we went to Pingyao was that it is the place the movie Raise the Red Lantern was shot. In fact, before going on the trip, the six of us all watched the movie together. (If you haven't seen the movie, it is kind of like a season of Survivor where the contestants are four concubines, the prize is sleeping with a 60 year old man, and the punishment for being voted off is you get hanged.) So on Sunday we went over to Qiao's mansion, the site of the filming.
Sure enough, there was a ton of Raise the Red Lantern paraphernalia all around. You could see the actual set, check out pictures of the actors, and even dress up as the people there. This might be a good time to mention that Jon and I, in a situation I will call anti-Man Jose style, went with four girls to Pingyao. Hm... four girls, four concubines in Raise the Red Lantern, costumes... can you see where this is going?
Bam!
Unfortunately, Jon and I got cajoled into dressing up also. We looked ridiculous, but perhaps because of this, Jon would walk around and people would ask for his picture every there of four minutes. This happened so often, he even told one girl that the picture would cost 3 bucks!
That will be sān kuài
And I could not resist getting a picture as well:
Looking very gangster
All in all, good trip!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Wángfǔjǐng
I recently spent some time at Wángfǔjǐng which is a road where there are a long strip of Chinese merchants selling street food. Here's an (overexposed) picture of myself there.
The spot is famous for selling a lot of strange food, including caterpillars, silk worm cocoons, and various internal organs. Merchants aggressively yelled at me as we weaved around tour groups. With the pushy sales and questionable food, I basically got a lot of practice saying "bú yaò!", which roughly translates into...
After ordering some boring food, I did go ahead and try some new things. I ate something called bee cocoon, a bit of snake meat, and a scorpion. The scorpion tasted surprisingly similar to soft shell crab - I guess anything deep friend and crunchy has some similarities. The bee cocoon was somewhat like the scorpion, but a little less crunchy. Snake meat, which was cooked, tasted a lot like raw squid you would find in a sushi place (I find both relatively tasteless and a bit chewy).
One merchant provided the most entertainment of the night, though I am not sure his pitch was sound business strategy (you'll see what I mean in a second). We approached his stand and started asking what various things were, per usual. In particular, there was one item that was not at any other stand, so we were very curious about it. The man first started grabbing his chest and flapping it around, so we thought it might be breast. But it really did not look like breast, so we asked again. He finally said it was "testicles." So naturally we asked, "Who's testicles?" By way of answering, he started jumping up and down, grabbed his own crotch, and yelled "Wǒ de! Wǒ de!" (It's mine! It's mine!).
Bú yaò!
The spot is famous for selling a lot of strange food, including caterpillars, silk worm cocoons, and various internal organs. Merchants aggressively yelled at me as we weaved around tour groups. With the pushy sales and questionable food, I basically got a lot of practice saying "bú yaò!", which roughly translates into...
After ordering some boring food, I did go ahead and try some new things. I ate something called bee cocoon, a bit of snake meat, and a scorpion. The scorpion tasted surprisingly similar to soft shell crab - I guess anything deep friend and crunchy has some similarities. The bee cocoon was somewhat like the scorpion, but a little less crunchy. Snake meat, which was cooked, tasted a lot like raw squid you would find in a sushi place (I find both relatively tasteless and a bit chewy).
(Yup, that's scorpion all right)
One merchant provided the most entertainment of the night, though I am not sure his pitch was sound business strategy (you'll see what I mean in a second). We approached his stand and started asking what various things were, per usual. In particular, there was one item that was not at any other stand, so we were very curious about it. The man first started grabbing his chest and flapping it around, so we thought it might be breast. But it really did not look like breast, so we asked again. He finally said it was "testicles." So naturally we asked, "Who's testicles?" By way of answering, he started jumping up and down, grabbed his own crotch, and yelled "Wǒ de! Wǒ de!" (It's mine! It's mine!).
Bú yaò!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Mandarin is Difficult
Let me outline just a few of the problems I've faced in trying to learn Mandarin:
1. Characters are totally non-phonetic
Chinese characters do not follow an alphabet, so you can't look at them and know how they sound like. The end result of this is it's possible that conversational Mandarin speakers have no idea how to read.
When I was getting set up here, Mo helped me purchase a wireless router at the electronics store. He adamantly tried to get me an English router, explaining to the store clerk that I could not speak Chinese. This led to a moment where the clerk asked Mo, "Well, can't you just read it for him?" Mo had to respond, "I am illiterate."
1. Characters are totally non-phonetic
Chinese characters do not follow an alphabet, so you can't look at them and know how they sound like. The end result of this is it's possible that conversational Mandarin speakers have no idea how to read.
When I was getting set up here, Mo helped me purchase a wireless router at the electronics store. He adamantly tried to get me an English router, explaining to the store clerk that I could not speak Chinese. This led to a moment where the clerk asked Mo, "Well, can't you just read it for him?" Mo had to respond, "I am illiterate."
(Here's a picture I took of a man writing Chinese characters using a brush and water in Bei Hai park.)
Since Mandarin is non-phonetic, it has been romanized with a system called Pinyin. This means when someone says something like "mǎi," I can look up "ai" and realize that should sound like "eye" in English. But much of the romanized alphabet has no equivalent in English. I tried looking up how to say "jiān" for example (a component of asking "Where is the bathroom"), starting with the J.
J - No equivalent in English. Like q, but unaspirated.
So I looked up "Q"
Q - No equivalent in English...
3. Four tones for each syllable
Mandarin has four tones for each syllable, which changes the meaning of the word. There is a high flat tone, a rising tone, a falling-then-rising tone, and a falling tone. For example, the syllable "ma" is represented in Pinyin this way to get four words: Mā (mother), má (hemp), Mǎ (horse), Mà (scold). While in principle, I can tell the difference between these four sounds, remembering a word and its tone is super tough for me to do in real time.
Mandarin has four tones for each syllable, which changes the meaning of the word. There is a high flat tone, a rising tone, a falling-then-rising tone, and a falling tone. For example, the syllable "ma" is represented in Pinyin this way to get four words: Mā (mother), má (hemp), Mǎ (horse), Mà (scold). While in principle, I can tell the difference between these four sounds, remembering a word and its tone is super tough for me to do in real time.
As you might expect, it is possible to construct ridiculous sentences with this system. The below apparently means, "A little girl who is herding a cow finds it stubborn and so she pinches it," but only involves three syllables and multiple tones.
4. Looking (and indeed being) Chinese
There are 20 million people living in Beijing, and probably only a few hundred thousand foreigners. Of those foreigners, many are not Chinese. So no matter how you slice it, an Asian looking person who does not speak Mandarin is exceedingly rare in Beijing.
When I enter a restaurant, normally the waiters can quickly figure out that I don't speak much Mandarin. But I've learned how to say some simple things, like asking for ice water (Bīng shuǐ). Showing minimal competence tends to unleash a torrent of Mandarin, and waiters assault me with questions. The first time I asked for ice water, the fu wo yuen apparently asked me whether or not I wanted bottled water or not. I didn't know what she said, so I had to pass on getting water. I tried again at another restaurant, and the waiter asked me whether or not I wanted carbonated water, and if so, whether or not it should come in the big or small bottle. I didn't understand this at the time, but fortunately Mo was with me who could translate. Only on my third attempt was I able to successfully order water by myself.
In short, in my limited experience, I do think it's tougher to not speak Mandarin in Beijing when you look Asian.
("Let's Burger," which despite its name and clientèle, had waiters who spoke only Mandarin. The restaurant where I first successfully ordered ice water.)
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Our Great Wall Hike
Jon, Jon's coworkers, and I joined the "Wild Great Wall" tour to Jiankou this last Saturday (as Jon wrote about). While the trip ended up being quite beautiful and worth it, we did face several "character building" obstacles.
1. Our lack of preparation. Jon and I ended up on our bus to the wall with a couple of Egg McMuffins, jeans, tennis shoes, and a distinct lack of water. This was due to us being out late last night, and waking up with barely any time to spare. Once on the bus, I belated noticed everyone had boots, hiking sticks, and ski pants, and I felt like I was in a Chinese REI advertisement. Uh oh.2. The bus ride. I wouldn’t go into gory details, but let’s just say the 1.5 hour ride involved more than one person throwing up, due to the driver’s decision to relive Apollo Ohno’s races with his bus.
And here’s the one Jon took of me.
What the hell? The tree covers the wall, and you don't even get the top of the mountain? Can you frame this picture any worse???
4. The hike across. Anyway, Jon and I were wearing tennis shoes with barely any traction, so every icy segment seemed extremely dangerous. We had to hang on the tree branches, that stuck up across the wall.
3. The hike up. The hike itself was no joke, especially for people as fit as Jon and I. It involved walking up for about an hour from the base of the mountain to the Great Wall itself. Once we got up here, totally winded, I looked forward to taking a pretty awesome picture. Check out this one I took of Jon, which perfectly frames the scene:
And here’s the one Jon took of me.
What the hell? The tree covers the wall, and you don't even get the top of the mountain? Can you frame this picture any worse???
4. The hike across. Anyway, Jon and I were wearing tennis shoes with barely any traction, so every icy segment seemed extremely dangerous. We had to hang on the tree branches, that stuck up across the wall.
At one point, the branch Jon was holding cracked, causing him to tumble down a bit (maybe he was being punished for being such a bad photographer?). Least you think I am exaggerating, this might be a good time to introduce the email, verbatim, that Jon forwarded me to invite me on the trip.
Original Email:
"I am going to great wall with some hiking club.
Anyone interested in Hiking to the wild great wall-Jiankou on Saturday morning?"
First Response:
"Reminder: people die there regularly, so be prepared."
Original Email:
"I am going to great wall with some hiking club.
Anyone interested in Hiking to the wild great wall-Jiankou on Saturday morning?"
First Response:
"Reminder: people die there regularly, so be prepared."
5. The hike down. This segment was an extraordinarily narrow trail punctuated by pockets of horse manure.
Despite all of this, I have to say the hike was very worth it. Jiankou felt way out of the way of tourists, so we only really saw our small tour group. I was able to get some good photos, and met some nice people on the way. We also had lunch on the wall, and you can't really get much better scenery than that. So I recommend it!
But still, I got a massage the next day.
Despite all of this, I have to say the hike was very worth it. Jiankou felt way out of the way of tourists, so we only really saw our small tour group. I was able to get some good photos, and met some nice people on the way. We also had lunch on the wall, and you can't really get much better scenery than that. So I recommend it!
But still, I got a massage the next day.
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