Sunday, November 27, 2011

Interpersonal Conflicts

Not that it happens often, but I think that one of the ways that I have most often been upset or frustrated with other people (and vice versa) is by the mood and intention being different between two people in an interaction. Specifically, I mean that one person is trying to joke and have fun while the other person is trying to be serious. I have been on both sides of this issue, and I am surprised at how narrow minded and full of assumptions that I can be, thinking that the other person should just relax and laugh, or that the other person should sober up and see how serious this is.

I recall when I spent time on a WWOOF farm near Toledo, Spain for instance, when a man named Edua would regularly say very silly or illogical things which I suspect he intended as jokes. However, it would break up the flow of the discussion. For instance, he told me that I shouldn't be reading on my computer but rather I should be out by the swimming pool practicing my breakdance like he had seen me to previously. I responded to this by saying that I can't only strengthen my body, but I must also strengthen my mind. He responded by saying “look at how crazy and wild your hair is! You already have too much information in your head!”, which is great for a laugh, but which is terribly for trying to reach a serious understanding or progress in a debate. It could also be a cultural difference, in that I am familiar with some customs of intellectually debating a subject, but Edua and his family members never attended much school, and likely were never introduced to the specific cultural practices of debating.

Running with a thought from the previous paragraph, it was as if only physical exercise was valued, and things that made use of the mind but not the body were not seen as worthwhile. Physical act X (riding a bike/swinging on a swing/climbing a tree) without thinking new thoughts was more valuable than mental act Y (reading philosophy/history/fantasy) without moving my body. It seems that on the WWOOF farm, Edua valued mental/intellectual ability so little in relation to physical skill/ability that regardless of what I was doing on my computer (I doubt it would make a difference whether I told him I was playing Tetris or I was designing a poverty reduction program for rural India) he thought that I should go hang out by the swimming pool and lay in the sun instead. I think that we do this to children sometimes, (or at least it happened to me as a child) telling them to go ride a bike rather than watch a movie or read a book or play a video game. I think it is sometimes too easy to forget that doing mainly mental acts which are mostly physically motionless help a brain to grow and a person to develop in ways that are very different from physical activity. Although I know that I have a strong body now, I am sure that it is due mostly to the martial arts throughout my life, and not to riding a bike. In fact, I remember being miserably bored mentally at times when I was told to go outside and ride my bike, where as I was (of course not always, but sometimes) deeply engaged in a story while playing video games or watching a movie inside. I wonder if I will observe the same behavior in myself in respect to how I act towards children in the future? A false dichotomy, of course, but interesting to ponder nonetheless.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Translation: The Donkey's Skill is all Used Up

Here is a translation of the little story behind 黔驴技穷1, a chéngyǔ2. Just for the record, I have never actually heard or seen this chéngyǔ used anywhere, so it may be one of the less common ones.
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The Guizhou Donkey's Exhausted Skills
A long time ago, there were no donkeys in central Guizhou, but one day a meddelsome person brought a donkey into Guizhou by boat. After bringing it in, he realized what a useless creature the donkey was, so he decided to set it free at the foot of a mountain. A nearby tiger caught sight of the donkey, and saw that this was an enormous creature, so the tiger thought that the donkey must be the spirit of the mountain, and hid itself in the forest to watch the donkey.
The tiger slowly approached the donkey, being ever so careful, not knowing exactly what the donkey was. One day, the donkey called out like a bird, and the tiger was extremely frightened. The tiger fled far away, thinking that the donkey was going to bite him. It was very frightening. Still, the tiger came and went, watching the donkey from a distance, and it seemed to him that the donkey had no special or unique skills. The tiger slowly got used to the strange call of the donkey, and he again approached the donkey. But the whole time the tiger dared not start a fight with the donkey. Slowly, the tiger approached the donkey again, this time with a more relaxed attitude. He bumped into it gently, then brushed up against it, finally colliding into the donkey to provoke it. The donkey was very upset, and he kicked out at the tiger with his legs. This made the tiger very happy, and thinking to himself, he figured "the donkey's skill is nothing more than this!" So he jumped up, roared loudly, and ripped out the donkey's throat with his powerful bite. The tiger didn't leave until he has eaten all the meat on the donkey.
Later, everyone took this story of the tiger eating the donkey in Guizhou as the chengyu "the Guizhou donkey's skill is all used up." The meaning of this chengyu is that the little skill that people have is already used up and finished. So people say "the Guizhou donkey's skill is all used up."

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1 Although the term 贵州 (guì zhōu) is not mentioned at all in the original Chinese text from which I translated this story, the term (qián) is used, which means Guizhou province. Most provinces of China have a shorter name, similar to how states in the United States have abbreviations in addition to their full names (NY, CA, etc.), and are just as common, being used on cars' license plates, for instance. However, one difference is that the abbreviations of the States in the U.S. are often logical and easy to guess, but there is nothing in the nature of the shorter names for Chinese provinces that would allow a clever observer to guess the meaning without having some specialized background information, or without knowing the short name already. During my time of studying Chinese, I found some of these short names (not just for provinces, but for institutions and holidays as well) to be very confusing. Sometimes characters with no other meaning are used as the short names of provinces, but sometimes historical kingdoms located in the same area lend their names for this cause. An example of this is the nickname for Shangong Province, (lǔ), which was the name of a vassal state in the Zhou dynasty which existed from 1066-221 BC.
2 Chéngyǔ (成语), often translated as a set expression, proverb, or an idiom, is a phrase which consists of four characters, or of two sets of two characters. Chéngyǔ normally make reference to some story or legend, which serves to explain the meaning of the Chéngyǔ. Chéngyǔ serve a more important role in Chinese than equivalent set expressions do in English or in many other languages, and they are often used in normal communication in Chinese. An interesting side effect of the abundance and importance of chéngyǔ in Chinese is the assumption that such idioms are equally important in other languages, resulting in a large market for idiom dictionaries, collections of English idioms, and other reference material that claim to help language learners understand important English idioms. Similarly, chéngyǔ dictionaries, which list many chéngyǔ and their associated stories, are widely available to the student of Chinese. One of the most common idioms among English learners of Chinese is the phrase 马马虎虎 (mǎ ma hū hū) which literally means “horse horse tiger tiger,” but is used to mean not so bad or so-so. Many Chinese people, when asked how their English is will say that it is “Just so-so.”

Sunday, November 20, 2011

China and Spain Comparison: Sweet things

Something interesting I learned about the people on the WWOOF farm near Toledo: to them, if something is sweet it is pretty much always a desert. This is very different from China in which many popular main dishes are sweet. In fact, many of my favorite dishes are quite sweet. 糖醋里脊 (sweet and sour pork) remains one of my favorite dishes (of which I have many fond memories and which I hope to see again at some point in the future). But other gastronomic delights abound in Chinese cuisine as well: there is also a sweet corn dish, sweet pumpkin slices, and 鱼香肉丝 (yú xiāng ròu sī), all of which I think are fairly sweet and regularly serve as main dished rather than as dessert.


In fact, I don't really recall much of a concept of dessert in China. Is that something that I missed or have my other friends had similar impressions? However, when asking me about dessert in other cultures the WWOOFers here didn't care about dessert in China, but only in the United States. This was troubling to be, first on a level of their disinterest in a major world culture, but also because I am not sure about the status of sweet dishes in the United States. As I realized while spending some time with Nadia in Germany, I know more about China than I do about the United States, so I find it quite challenging when people ask me about certain things concerning the U.S.. I hope this doesn't turn out to be too much of a challenge in the future when I expect to be increasingly called upon to relate information about the United States, in a school environment and potentially in other environments as well. I am, after all, working in a Spanish school as kind of a 'cultural expert' on the United States.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Translation: If the Person I Loved Suddenly Turned into a Steamed Bun

This is a fairly strange, surreal post. It is someone hypothesizing what it would be like if his lover/girlfriend/wife turned into a mantou (a particular kind of steamed bun1). I think it is fairly strange, and I am not sure why it resonated with people, but it was shared on Renren2 four-four thousand times when I first saw it on October 25th, and it had been shared fifty-eight thousand times as of mid-day (Spain, time) on Thursday November 17, when I was preparing to post the translation to my own blog. It has also been posted on Baidu Forums, where it seems to have received much less attention, with only 12 responses as of Thursday November 17.
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Post Title: If the person I loved suddenly turned into a steamed bun.
(Such a painful topic...)
Suppose that one day, in the early morning as you awaken, I discover that the person laying next to me is a steamed bun.

Then the first thing I would want to do is to make sure if I would treat that person like a steamed bun, or if I would go on treating her like a person?

Due to my love from the past, I would continue to treat her like an individual who possesses independence, but whom just doesn't express anything like other people.

I would stand her up in an appropriate place; I absolutely can't put her in the kitchen, on the dinner table, or any place like that, lest someone mistakes her for food. At the same time I would want to notify all of my family that aside from her (my steamed bun girl) it would be forbidden to have any steamed buns in my house to prevent any chance of her being confused with other steamed buns. This is a sacrifice that must be made in order to protect her life.

Similarly important is this issue: if you leave a steamed bun out for a day or two it is no problem, but what about leaving it out for a long time? Because of this, I would want to buy her a fridge that had a good freezer compartment. Steamed buns can't be chilled, they can only be deep-frozen, otherwise they turn hard as rocks. So I would just have to freeze her and wait for special celebrations, vacations, and holidays to take her out for a while, warm her up with my hands until she is fresh and just like new. Naturally, from the moment we get it we can't put any other foodstuffs into this refrigerator, because we want to prevent her from polluting other food's flavor.

She loves being clean, so even if she turned into a steamed bun she would definitely want to be clean and sanitary. I would have to give her a little bath each day, use my best towel to slowly wash her, being careful not to damage her skin. Steamed buns are very fragile; the outside is very thin and a little layer of skin is her only barrier. Therefore I definitly want to protect her well. I would have to get rid of bugs and pests daily in my house in order to prevent her from getting bitten by bugs when I am not around.

As for her XiaoNei3 and TuDou4 accounts, I would continue to help her manage them, informing her friends that she went on vacation, and furthermore that she might not be able to come back for a while. I wouldn't let other people know that she had turned into a steamed bun, and every now and then I would post new vacation pictures online. I guess that she definitely wouldn't want her friends to know that she had turned into a steamed bun.

If she turned into a steamed bun, the I would of course be worried that she might get sad, but during times for vacation we would've already saved a lot of money. For example, the money that we could save on hotels: I would only need to rent a single bed in a youth hostel and place her with the utmost care in a soft spot in a little bag next to my pillow. She could still travel all over as she did before, and at scenic spots I could just ask a passerby to take a photo for us.

Perhaps other people would have fear of turning into a madman. Regardless of where one goes, one would have to bring a steamed bun along. Even friends wouldn't want to pose for a photo with us during our travels -- and it might not even be allowed. Online would I make a name for myself at the "steamed bun man?" because of my having lots of vacation pictures with her? Nowadays she is a steamed bun in my pictures; I would hold her in my hand, or hug her close, and show my affection, treat her well even though she had already turned into a steamed bun. Other people would certainly think that I had gone mad from grieving for my wife, but in my heart I would know that the one I most loved was just this steamed bun. I could accept this as a normal thing.

But I wouldn't admit that she had changed from a person I loved into an object I loved. What I love most isn't a steamed bun, it is her. But she has now changed into a steamed bun, then I would just be in love with the steamed bun that she had turned into. And I wouldn't mind bearing the frustration of parents, since I have my own speech and thoughts, regardless of if she is a steamed bun or anything else, I would still be the same as her.

In this way, slowly, I would nurture the habit of caring for the steamed bun everyday, and of no longer eating any steamed buns. I hope that being the steamed bun by my side every day can show the concern and care that we never had before. Smelling the scent of steamed bun, I would give a big kiss. And whenever I felt her against my skin I would open my mouth for a little kiss. This way my broken-heartedness would slowly fade away and I would adapt to loving a steamed bun and a calm and traquil lifestyle.

I hope that I will be able to go out to take pictures with her and put them up all over our wall, although some will be with normal people and some will be with a steamed bun and scenery. This way I will feel calm and relieved, and it will make me feel that she will never go far, to help me to believe that she is always be happy. I want to use photographs to document her from every angle, to use a video camera to make precious memories of our moments together, and to use my computer to write down journal entries every day about caring of my steamed bun.

I will always believe that one day when I awaken I will find my wife sleeping beside me instead of a steamed bun beside me. I wouldn't be suprised in the least, but instead I would quietly pull the blanket up over her, walk quietly on tiptoe to get the camera, then return to bed to take a picture of her. I believe that eventually she will return.

At that time I will be able to tell her,
"All of the depression and the gloominess were fake,
I've only come to love you more."

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1The Chinese term 馒头(man tou) describes a fairly sepcific kind of bread, and although I feel that the term 'steamed bun' does not do it justice, I haven't been able to find a better translation. I would encourage any readers to do a quick image search on Google or Baidu to discover what a 馒头(man tou) is and looks like. For the ease of readers, I will use the term 'steamed bun' throughout this piece. Steamed buns are about as common in China as toast is in the United States, and it is not at all uncommon for people to eat a steamed bun everyday, or for poor college students to supplement their diet with this thick and filling bread, because it is so cheap.
2RenRen.com (人人网) is a popular social networking site in China. It is very similar in layout and appearance to Facebook, although there are some signifigant differences in how it is used by people and the place it has in Chinese society. English-language information cab be easily found by searching the internet for “What is Renren.”
3Xiaonei.com (校内网) was a previous version of Renren.com. The name changed to Renren in August of 2009.
4TuDou.com (土豆网), literally potatoe, is one of the largest video sharing websites in China.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Films this weekend

Much like Spring Festival this past year, I spend some time this weekend enjoying both Indian and Spanish movies.

Tensión Sexual no Rresuelta (Unresolved Sexual Tension) was a comedy, and like many of the Spanish films I've seen, sex played a big role in it. Even after being out of the U.S. for a while, I always find it very refreshing how sexuality isn't shyed away from, but rather is embraced whole-heartedly. Nudity as well; they aren't making a porno movie, but if it would make logical sense for a character to be without clothing in a certain scene, it isn't avoided. Tensión Sexual no Rresuelta focused mainly on the attempts of Juan José to win back his girl with the help of his "team," while simultaneously focusing on Celeste and "her team" manipulating various guys in order to get what they want, which is better sex. The word love is thrown around a lot, but it mostly just seemed like young people looking for excuses to manipulate each other. Despite the fact that if any of the characters were real people I would consider them to be pretty childish (the outrageousness of it is part of what makes it entertaining), I did enjoy the movie. It reminded me somewhat of El Otro Lado de la Cama (which was excellent), but without the musical nature and targeted at a younger audience. If I had seen the movie three or four years ago, I am sure that I would have enjoyed it even more. I recall how during my sophomore year of college I watched all of the American Pie movies, and this seemed to have quite a bit more style and sophistication than those, both in the machinations of the characters, the plot, and the general quality of cinematography on direction.

While the Spanish movie was a young, sexy, comedy, the Indian movie was nationalistic and inspiring. Mangal Pandey: The Rising takes place in British India, and focuses on the beginning of a rebellion against the British East India Company. It seemed similar to Lagaan (one of my favorites) in several ways. First, of course, the setting in India during the British colonial rule is a pretty simple similarity. I assume that there are a lot of movies set during this time, and it is a period of history that fascinates me, so I would like to learn more about it. Beyond the setting, both films star my favorite Indian actor, Amir Khan, and focus on a struggle against the British. The films both portray the British as primary villains, but they also both feature cross-racial romances and friendships, which I think is a very good thing: it helps to show that British are inherently evil. In fact, I think it is something that Chinese movies could really use to prevent (or at this point, reverse) an anti-foreign ideology. I can't recall the last time I saw a good foreigner who didn't fight against Chinese people portrayed in a Chinese movie. Aside from the broad label of "British India" I am not sure of the specific years in which Lagaan and Mangal Pandey take place, but the characters that Amir Khan portrays are quite different in each one. In Lagaan Amir Khan plays a peasant with a rebellious streak, while in Mangal Pandey he plays a company soldier of the British East Indian Company, and a Brahman. Mangal Pandey also related to Rang De Basanti in that both had characters die, initiating a wider struggle against authority. This seems to be quite a seem in Amir Khan's films, as his mega-hit 3 Idiots (again, one of my favorites) also has anti-authority seems. It also reminded me that I will have to learn hindi someday.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Translation: Chinese Women! Please don't go to bed with foreigners!

I had considered starting a separate blog just to put up translations, but I have found that between work I just don't have the time to pursue all of my projects, much less to put enough time into this one to make is a high quality venture. Therefore I have decided that I will just post my translations here, both practicing my own language skills and providing my friends and family with a little glimpse of Chinese culture. This following article is fairly well-known in China, and can serve as a simple summary of the insecurity that bi-racial sexual relations cause the many Chinese people. It also does serve to illustrate the low quality of many foreigners in China, and the way in which they conduct themselves and (as a result) the way in which all foreigners are seen by Chinese people.
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Title: Chinese Women! Please don't go to bed with foreigners! (Original text found at: http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=1001175283)

If you ask a foreigner, why do you come to China?
He1 will most likely reply saying that it is because he likes China's long history, splendid culture, amazing landscapes, the high speed of development, or the great changes that China is going through.

But I will tell you, aside from a minority that are in China due to their government or those that are placed here by a company, being types that are held back by their own family, the great majority fall under the following two categories:
First, those that didn't do very well at home or just failed to make it;
Second, those that are looking for Chinese girls.

One day at lunchtime I was with a friend when a French girl came back out from eating. As she arrived at the company's entrance, far in the distance she saw and old geezer collecting garbage and pulling along a little cart. At this point the young French lady asked me, "Did you see?" "See what?" I said, confused. "Just right in front of you." I discovered that the old geezer across from me was a foreigner with a bent back, with only a few hairs left on his head, fat and unkempt. No wonder I shortsightedly thought that it was someone collecting garbage. The little cart that he was pushing didn't have other people's garbage, but it was a mixed-blood child. There was a young Chinese lady at his side. A young, pretty, tall Chinese lady.


The French girl laughingly said: "What are you Chinese girls thinking?" The reason why the French girl was laughing was because while we had just been eating we were talking about this problem. Actually, I had previously seen and heard stories about this kind of foreign man and Chinese women. I had never really taken it to heart before, but before my eyes the contrast between this couple was too intense-- A Chinese girl who was like a flower, like jade2 with an old, ugly, fat, short, bald, shriveled foreign man, and who had his child in the little push-cart.


Beside me, the French girl bent over with laughter (I don't know why she was laughing like that). At that moment, my self-respect as a Chinese person suffered greatly.


Several days later, I made three decisions: First, I would know about that kind of ugly foreign man and tell everyone the real facts. Second, because of this I would mobilize Chinese people to rise up and to prevent Chinese girls from latching onto foreign men. Third, and also most importantly, was that I would be a scholar of China, I decided to temporarily interrupt my regular job so that I could put all my heart into something that no one had yet researched. That is, to research foreign women's views of Chinese men, there by helping Chinese men to pursue foreign women.


My colleague and I first will go to interview some of the white women3 that live in China yet whom have never yet had a Chinese boyfriend to investigate the main reasons. Even more, we wanted to go interview white women whom had previously had Chinese boyfriends and married Chinese men to ask them to tell us about the merits and shortcomings of Chinese men. I know that this kind of foreigner is not numerous, but fortunately I have already ran into a few.


We also wanted to conduct a investigative questionnaire for foreign women living in China (all of them white people), utilizing scientific survey methods, in the end this drew out the image that foreign women hold of Chinese men. We also found the five most attractive things about Chinese men in the views of these foreign women. Therefore this research will be able to answer the following questions:


What are foreign women's feelings towards Chinese men? What do single foreign women in China for wish for from a Chinese man? How can Chinese men increase their attractiveness towards foreign women? Chinese men with what characteristics receive the most attention from foreign women? How does one get to know a foreign woman? How does one hit on a foreign women in common situations? When did China become a foreign man's heaven?


John is just this kind of example. Not long ago I ran into him on the street. A young Chinese lady half a head taller than him was holding his hand. As an introduction, he said that his Chinese girlfriend worked at a modeling company. In fact, if John hadn't called out to me that time I really wouldn't have recognized him, because there was a night and day difference from that last time that I had seen him.


John is an American, 42 years old, 1.67 meters tall4. He hasn't graduated from college, and in the United States he has never had a regular job. After hanging out in Africa for two years, he heard stories of Americans making money in China, so he came to Shanghai. When he first arrived in Shanghai everything was unfamiliar, so he just had to go to a small city's school in Jiangsu to be an English teacher.


John didn't resign himself to that; he lived in Jiangsu for several months and then returned to Shanghai to look for work, living in a 12-yuan-a-day hotel. That is when I met him. That day I went to look for a foreign friend of mine to eat lunch with and I saw them talking together. Since she knew John, I called out to her. Only afterward did I learn that they were strangers who had just met by chance and nothing more.


While order food, John ordered a fairly expensive dish. My friend used English to ask him "You've ordered a pretty expensive dish. Do you have the money to pay for that?" John immediately appeared like a small child who has done something wrong, hurriedly wanting to fade away into the background. Looking at his shrunken back appearance, I first used Chinese to tell me friend that it was nothing, then I used English to tell John that it was okay, and to keep ordering.

Afterward, because of work I had to go somewhere, and I quickly forgot about John. When I saw him this next time, he told me that he found work as an English teacher in a school in Shanghai. I hadn't spoken to John's girlfriend, but I could see that she already had a contemptuous view of Chinese people. My memory of her faded into the background; I couldn't bear to think of her. She certainly didn't know how at that time her American John was relying on other people to eat. This unavoidably resembled a story of gods: clearly of humankind's own manufacturing, and after one has created a god one goes to worship it.

Also, when I was on a public bus, I saw first hand a typical little American street huddle, (an American man) embracing a young Chinese woman, in broad daylight, putting his hand from beneath to stretch through her clothes to feel her chest. Furthermore , it was very obvious that the young Chinese woman really wanted to express the pleasure of having her chest groped by a foreigner. What a pity that her English was so poor that every time she spoke she could at most only two words.

A taxi driver told me that one time he picked up a black person on a famous bar street. He was embracing a Chinese girl with both hands. At first he thought that a girl from that area was doing a special kind of job5, and he didn't bother with it anymore. The driver had a big shock when the passengers had the taxi stop in front of the gates of a female graduate student dormitory of a well known university.

It is reported that there is a famous AIDS patient at a certain Beijing hospital. Just before dying, this American business man confessed that in the short nine weeks he had been in Beijing he has already had sexual relations with six Chinese women. An investigation discovered they were all high class intellectuals.

In China, groups of foreigners who live like this can't find work in their own countries and rely on foreigners' economic advantage in China's to easily make money, get drunk in public, and chase girls. Basically, their only spare-time hobby is just criticizing China. Furthermore, some diplomats use their position to wantonly trick and to fool around with Chinese women. Some people even publicly say "My signature can get any Chinese woman."

China, do you know? You have given foreigners far too much. Now many foreigners have come to look down upon you with contempt. Many foreigners themselves disapprove of this and call it white trash. Here I want to rightfully tell those foreigners not to be too pleased with themselves: you have only gotten Chinese women's physical bodies, not the soul's form.

Recently online a joke about a foreigner looking for marriage has been circulating: a 47 year old foreigner is looking for a partner in a marriage park in China.6 A long time passed with nobody making inquiries. And then one day, a great number of letters arrived from people looking for a partner. This foreigner was really surprised. Afterward he investigated, and found out that it was because the workers at the marriage park had inadvertently written his age incorrectly as 67.

One thing that investigating marriage with foreigners also confirms is that Chinese women primarily do not marry foreigners for love. Investigations discovered that Chinese women and foreign grooms on average have an age difference of 10.5 years, which includes 13% of the couples which are from two different generations with fully 20 years of age difference. It is reported that marriage between foreigners and Chinese, the record is currently a sensational couple with an age difference of 54 years. At the time of marriage, the American groom was already an old man of 82 years, while the Chinese bride was only 28.

As luck would have it, not long ago I saw a joke in an American magazine: an old man of more than 80 years accompanied his pregnant twenty something year old wife to the hospital for an examination. The doctor kindly inquired if perhaps there was some other possibility. The old man denied this, saying "No, I always creates miracles. Last time my wife and went hunting with her boyfriend I only had to take an umbrella in my hand and point it at a deer, then that deer was just struck dead by a bullet."7

Unknowingly that Chinese young woman not long after announced the news of her pregnancy, which made everyone truly appreciate the miracle between people. Perhaps you could obtain a bit of something, but on the other hand you would lose your most precious dignity.

It doesn't need to be said that the first party to do wrong with these ugly foreigners is the Chinese women. But most of these women have never gone abroad and their minds of brimming with fantasies. Therefore, today I want to use this opportunity to tell them about the real facts. If you have found true love then I congratulate you and wish you well. I believe that it only needs to be true love, then no matter how long lasting or how short it can all be worth going to pursue.

Despite this, I still want to warn you. First, Chinese women are mostly after a steady marriage. However, aside from an exceedingly small number of exceptions, the divorce rate of western developed countries is around 50%8, and the factors that contribute to instability in an international marriage are even more.

Next, I highly doubt that today's foreign men will give true love to Chinese women. On account of the prerequisite for true love being respect, while in the eyes of foreign men Chinese women's image has already begun to be greatly tarnished by a small minority, they have already turned into: the world's most open9, most bold, possessing of ulterior motives, simple minded, lacking in knowledge, foolish, easy girls. It is hard to imagine a man that would invest true love in this kind of woman. There is only one kind of exception, an American said, and that is the kind of foreigner that takes an Asian wife as a three-in-one deal: a cook, a slave, and a sex worker.

Perhaps you only do it for money. I can understand that, and I won't stop you. But before you make a big commitment I want to tell you to be sure of two things: first, be sure that this foreigner really has money, because I know that most of the foreigners in China actually don't have very much money. Second, be sure that he actually intends to marry you, because if you don't marry than you won't have any ties at all to his property.

Perhaps your reason is to go out of the country. I won't prevent you from going after this, either. But, again, before you make a big commitment I want to tell you to keep in mind these two things: first, make sure that this foreigner really wants to return to his own country. Foreign countries, despite being richer than us, are by no means heaven. The frustrating thing is that many of the foreigners in China don't even want to return to their home country, because in their own country they can't find a good job, they can't even find any job. They also absolutely don't want to return to living such a petty, lonely life. Second, make sure that he intends to marry you. Because without marriage you will be unable to get permanent residence in his country.

A coworker's neighbor has a daughter that married a Japanese peasant from a mountainous region. The neighbor often jokingly says things like "Now I don't worry about money. 100 thousand, even 200 thousand is small change to me," in front of my coworker. However, Mr. Neighbor, do you know if your daughter is really happy in Japan? Chinese people desperately want face, so they will always report back about happiness and never tell anyone about hardship. A number of years ago a Chinese television station went to the villages in mountainous areas of Japan specifically to gather news on the Chinese brides there. From the great flourishing, bustling Shanghai to the lonely and remote mountain strongholds, I heard that the Chinese brides were disappointed, full of despair, and felt helpless.

Perhaps it is for the sex? There is a European lady Mrs. Shi who wrote an article saying, "I have a girlfriend who in China is considered quite open, a women with abundant sexual experience. However, the first time she slept with a western man, she got a big shock. She gave me an account of this over the telephone, and she suddenly thought that she should marry that western man. Counter to what one might expect, I calmly told her 'western men who are great in bed are everywhere. Out of every ten westerners, eight are great in bed and two are just okay. Of Chinese men, two out of ten are just okay, and the other eight are really terrible.'"

As Mrs. Shi's "two out of ten" article came out, there was immediately an explosion of response, and masses of Chinese men responded, defending themselves. This subject unexpectedly lasted for several months in the local newspapers. The heated argument even caught the attention of international media. It was easy to see that this subject was incredibly damaging to Chinese men.

Mrs. Shi's "two out of ten" is her own personal experience, or is it the overall feeling that many women have from their experiences? This is impossible to know. I undertook an investigation to see if Chinese men are competent or not in this respect.

I didn't investigate Chinese women that had married western men, but on the contrary, I investigated women who were married to Chinese men, or white women who had formerly had Chinese boyfriends. I asked them straightforwardly, how are Chinese men in bed? They also told me directly, "Very good. Some would even qualify as 'perfect.'" Some people heard me ask this question and their first response was "Chinese men don't show confidence in their own performance in bed?"

I should investigate still more. After the detailed research has finished I will make it all public.

I still want to tell everyone, the latest sexual research clearly indicates that a woman's degree of sexual satisfaction in bed does not depend on the man for the most part, but rather it depends on the women herself. This piece of research discovered that is females' sexuality is low, this is primarily due to her own deep psychological restrictions. If only a woman can sufficiently break away from these restrictions, they will be able to have the same intensity of responses that men have. Their physiological demands will even surpass those of men. On the basis of this piece of research, the reason that Mrs. Shi's friend felt such a shock in her first time sleeping with a western man in mainly due to how she was unconsciously throwing off her former psychological shackles.

The latest research has also revealed that the reaction that men and women have to sex is actually quite similar. For instance, previously it was always thought that men reacted more to visual stimulation, while mood, atmosphere, and the tone of the encounter caused the greatest reaction in women. This idea was also used to explain why men enjoyed watching pornography. However, recently British scientists have discovered that pornography is capable of arousing men and women equally. Many women can rely on nothing more than the visual stimulation of movies to reach a high level of sexual arousal.

Of course, Chinese men in this situation are not without responsibility. But I can tell everyone that the problem of Chinese men is not primarily physiological, but is rather mental. What is the biggest problem for Chinese men? Lack of sexual skill. The eight out of ten western men who are great in bed are supported from behind by marriage and sexual counseling, availability of health clinics, an open attitude toward sexuality, and the way in which they seek out expert advice when they have questions or problems. To bring up an inappropriate analogy, the cooking skill of an old lady that has been burning dished all her life will never match that of a young cook; we can easily see how important the specialized training is.

Translators Notes:
1Although both male and female foreigners are present in China, there is a general perception that there are more male foreigners than there are female foreigners. This article mentions both, but it is often implied that only males are the subject when the term “foreigner” is used.
2Jade is a culturally important substance in China, often representing beauty, grace and purity. Jade is commonly seen as more precious than gold.
3In the original Chinese text the term here used is 白人女性, which means white female. Although non-white foreigners exist in China, there is a view of white people being the most numerous. The standard image of a foreigner in China is often a white person. I, personally, do not know if statistically there are more white foreigners in China than non-white foreigners.
4Approximately five feet five inches. It is possible the author mentions John's height as an insult, or as a negative quality. Height is still considered to be a fairly important trait in dating in China, and while in Beijing I heard the phrase 高必衰重要, meaning “being tall is more important than being handsome.”
5Although illegal, prostitution is widely practiced in China, and many women earn either their primary money through prostitution or supplement their income with it. It is not unusual for white collar workers or college students to work at massage parlors or KTV parlors to earn extra money. I have even seen “part-time college students” specifically advertized on the business cards for call-out massage services. Foreigners in particular are often propositioned by prostitutes, due to the perception of foreigners as both rich and as having large amount of sexual energy.
6Single people wishing to find a marriage partner often make use of public spaces, often certain areas in parks or plazas, to put up advertisements about themselves in order to look for a marriage partner. These advertisements will include the basic statistics of a person, such as name, education, age, height, and income. This functions similarly to online dating sates except without the internet. The parents of the eligible individuals often spend time in these parks to act as an agent for the child, and it is not unusual for the parents to arrange meetings for the children through other parents who are present at the park.
7The joke was poorly translated into Chinese, which means that the re-translation into English, while true to the source document, is nonsensical. The English version of the joke goes something like this: An 86-year-old man went to his doctor for his quarterly check-up... The doctor asked him how he was feeling, and the 86-year-old said, “Things are great and I've never felt better. I now have a 20 year-old bride who is pregnant with my child. So what do you think about that Doc?" To which the doctor replies: “Let me tell you a story. A hunter in a hurry grabs an umbrella instead of the gun. He moves into the jungle, sees a lion, lifts the umbrella, pulls the handle and… BANG… The lion drops dead!” The old man responds, “That's impossible; someone else must have shot the lion,” at which point the doctor says, “MY POINT EXACTLY!”
8Although the divorce rate in the U.S. is commonly thought to be quite high, statistics for Canada, UK and other European countries vary widely, some higher and some lower than the U.S. figure. The author's claim could be taken as part of the general tendency to see the United States as representative of “the west.”
9While the concept of being open (such as open-minded) usually carries a positive meaning in English, in Chinese the phrase for open (开放) usually implies sexual openness, promiscuity, and generally loose sexual mores. It is open used in a negative sense when describing people.

Monday, November 7, 2011

My lastest project


Here is my latest project: language videos as a way of practicing. For those of you who didn't know, guess what: I am learning a little Russian before I tackle Portuguese.

After the simplicity and ease of learning Spanish, the grammatical complexity of the the Russian language ensures that I am only going to memorize some basic phrases, rather than really learn all the different forms, conjugations, and declinations. Still, it is nice to be able to say a few words in a new tongue. I am sure that this will make Portuguese, with it's Latin-based Alphabet and romance-language conjugations feel much easier.

A review of Sex, Syntax, and Semantics

Sex, Syntax, and Semantics is an 2003 article by Lera Boroditsky and Lauren A. Schmidt which is currently available via Google Scholar. I was recently referenced to Lera Boroditsky by the Beijing-based polymath David Moser, a former teacher of mine. This paper described two experiments which are broadly about psycholinguistics, and specifically about the effect of grammatical gender on the thoughts of individuals.

The first experiment is conducted with fifteen native English speakers who have no familiarity with either German or Spanish. The participants were presented with a range of items and animals that inherently had no biological gender, but in both German and Spanish shared a grammatical gender. Although the results were not overwhelming proof of a tight grammatical-gender relationship between the three languages, the results were definitely statistically significant. In the words of the authors, "these findings suggest that the grammatical genders assigned to animals may not have been entirely arbitrary, but rather may have reflected people’s perceptions of the particular animals as having stereotypically masculine or feminine properties." So although the relationship grammatical/percieved-biological gender may not be strict between these languages, the authors' hypothesis of grammatical gender not being entirely arbitrary seems to be supported. Just to dispel any doubt, I hereby declare to my dear readers (possibly just my dad), that linguistic grammar does have an affect on what I am calling the perceived biological grammar. One of the first studies on this was by Jackobson in 1966, in which speakers of Russian (a language with gendered nouns) were asked to personify nouns and "consistently personified the grammatically masculine days of the week (Mon-day, Tuesday, and Thursday) as males, and the grammati-cally feminine days of the week (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) as females, though they could not explicitly say why they did so." Also, in studies in which Spanish speakers were asked to label inanimate (meaning: without biological gender) objects as as either masculine or feminine, the labels consistently matched the objects grammatical gender in Spanish.
 

The second study described in this paper involved a number of native Spanish speakers and a number of native German speakers, doing an memory exercise in English. This experiment also included a group of native English speakers. Objects with opposite grammatical gender in Spanish and German. The objects were also matched randomly with names that were either masculine or feminine (such as Alexander or Alexandra). The participants were shown a series of these object-name pairs to remember, given a short distraction exercise, and then tested on their memory of the object-name pairs. The results for the English speakers suggested strong support of the authors' hypothesis,as their ability to recall "object-name pairs [was] better when the gender of the proper name was consistent with the object’s rated gender (86% correct) than when the two genders were inconsistent (78% correct), t=2.17, p<.05." This suggests that people do include gender in their conceptual representations of inanimate objects. Furthermore, the native Spanish and the native German speakers showed a linguistic bias in the recollection of the object-name pairs, suggests that people’s ideas about the genders of objects, or how their perceptions of biological gender in inanimate objects, are strongly influenced by the grammatical genders assigned to those objects in their native language. This does a good deal of work to further disprove the long-lasting fallacy that  "the assignment of grammatical gender to object names is semantically arbitrary, and has nothing to do with the conceptual properties of the referent." I vaguely recall hearing this in my high-school French class, and possibly in my college Spanish class as well. I have no doubt that this myth is written in many books, and here, as an aspiring linguist, I want to do my part to help dispel it.

Boroditsky and Schmidt write that "These results suggest that grammatical gender may not be as arbitrary or as purely grammatical as was previously thought." However, rather than attributing this to a universal human propensity for seeing certain objects as male and others as female, I would propose that the results of this test might possibly indicate an older historical root between English, German, and Spanish. Although English and Spanish share a great deal, and English and German isn't too old, the root between Spanish and German must be traced back considerably farther. They are, however, both Indo-European languages. The Indo-European language family as a category is perhaps so large as to potentially dilute it's meaning (what significance can it hold when it contains English, Italian, Russian, Urdu, Bengali, German, Marati {90 million speakers and I've never heard of it either!}, plus hundreds more languages and dialects?). However, there has also been some cultural and historic similarities in which the languages evolved over the past 1000 plus years. I am, unfortunately, not terribly familiar with the pre-Roman linguistic history in Europe, so I cannot speak as the history of 2000 and more years ago. Therefore, perhaps similar studies involving a more diverse variety of languages would be the next step. I would, of course, love to see what the results of studies like these would be with native speakers of Mandarin. But for the sake a diversity, perhaps something involving languages native to the Americas, something from the Sino-Tibetan language family, and some Afroasiatic languages. I know very little of these languages, but that it the whole point: as human beings, especially those of us who are scientific researchers, we need to be intensely aware of our own lackings in knowledge, even when we possess PhDs and an excellent reputation among peers. Boroditsky seems to be a keen academic here, as she does not declare any definitive reason, but merely describes the results of her experiment. I am glad to see this, as I have read too many academic papers in which the hopes and expectations that the author(s) put in their conclusions far outstrip the facts displayed in the paper. So perhaps a wider range could disprove the idea that grammatical gender is slightly shared between English, Spanish, and German through history, and therefore give either a stronger indication towards or a strong strike against the possibility that the perceived biological gender of objects is a universally inherently human concept.

I would highly recommend this fascinating article to anyone interested in linguistics or psycholinguistics. It is a quick read, too: excluding the citations, title page, and index, it is just five pages of text to read. Being freely available via Google Scholar makes it incredibly accessible too.

As a bit of self-reflection, I have to say that with my multilingual, intercultural, international view of the world, I have to admit that I am somewhat amazed that such large numbers of English speakers who lack even a passing familiarity with Spanish or German are still found in large numbers. It speaks to my own self-centered view of the world that all the citizens of the United States do not realize and embrace the relevance of Latin America and learn at least a little bit of Spanish. It isn't like it is a hard language for a native English speaker: simple and standardized conjugations; no need to alter adjectives or nouns beyond an -s for plural or an -a for feminine; a standardized highly phonetic script with a simple and widely used alphabet; pronunciations that are very similar to English. Compare the grammar with Russian, or the writing system with Chinese. Having this kind of a view is awfully ethnocentric of me (can ethnocentrism refer to a subculture, even if it is quite small?), but it is telling as to how the past two years have affected me. From reading Polyglot: How I Learn Languages (I don't even remember how I first found it, but the author was one of the first simultaneous interpreters, and learned more than a dozen languages), through discovering Benny The Irish Polyglot (who learns new languages up to conversational proficiency in just three months), and up until just a few days ago when I discovered LaoShu on YouTube (who spends five hours a day learning languages, and currently speaks either 50 or 15 of them, variable depending on the sound quality you can get from youtube. I'm not sure), the past few years  of my life have been an explosion of linguistic possibility... and I am only just getting started.

Friday, November 4, 2011

A quick update

I just want to write something quick here to keep this blog alive. I have been busy, but I don´t want my blogging habit to fall by the wayside again. It feels like I´ve been working a lot: Mondays and Fridays only some days only three hours each, but Tuesday to Thursday I end up being out of my home for work from 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning until 9:30 at night, so these days are fairly tiring. I get between 1 and 1.5 hours of free time in the afternoon between classes during which I can be at home, and another 1.5 to 2 hours of free time in the evening between classes during which I can come home. Other than that I am out of my flat/apartment, either moving from one place to another, teaching an English class, or waiting for my next class to start. It can be exhausting, but I enjoy being busy. As long as I can find time for the things I prioritize (at the moment, mostly languages) I am quite happy with a busy schedule. I also am happy to know that I am earning enough to not only make regular payments on college debt, but enough to save for potential future travels or other expenses.

Over this past weekend when I got my computer back from the shop I decided to spend 30 minutes each day on reading Spanish, reviewing Spanish grammar, studying Russian, and doing Chinese-to-English translations. Although having four different languages bounce around on a daily basis is kind of fun, I don't think that I have the time or energy to stick to such a schedule, and attempting the impossible is a sure way to kill motivation and happiness. I think that I will put off my re-focusing on Chinese until I get my Russian to where I want it, and I will focus more on Russian than on Spanish for now. If I can commit the time to Russian, I should be finished with it in a few weeks, and then I can return my focus to Spanish and Chinese.

Although I have found LaoShu to be inspiring and some online language learning sites to be interesting, I am gaining the most results for the effort I put in from Pimsleur's and from Teach Yourself Russian. Listening to Pimsleur while I walk somewhere or cook something is a very low-stress way to get some words and phrases, and Teach Yourself Russian has surprisingly good grammar explanations (in the first few chapters, anyway, since I am a beginner). Naturally, Anki has also been great, especially since Gus's blog post finally convinced me to spend the money to get the app. Although at 15-20 US Dollars it is the most expensive app that I have ever bought, the ability to review the flashcards mobily and have the results synced back to my computer is a great study aid.

English class in 13 minutes. Thank goodness I live two blocks from the academy. Gotta go!