Cheese mad

In my Chinese text book, which dates from a different era (lots of reform and opening), I found an old phonetic rendering of the English word cheese 

我在美国吃过最臭的“气死”（干酪），洋人大多闻到就要掩着鼻子，不过对我来说其实没有什么，比臭豆腐差远了。

Perhaps the author is purposely using characters which have their own extreme meaning - above is what my Pleco dictionary says. 

This appears at the end of an account of the "five tastes" of Chinese food, wondering if there isn't perhaps a sixth, "stinky." The example is the "stinky tofu" whose aroma befouls many a Shanghai alley, and the author finds it similarly repellant, but is also proud of having managed to eat some.  I have eaten the smelliest "quisi" (cheese) in America. Western people cover their noses when they smell it but to me it was nothing - it doesn't come close to "stinky tofu." I have to agree!

多儿鼓励我们从不放弃学习

I'm back to daily conversations in Mandarin (with my teacher in Oslo (go figure!). This past year, with too many classes and too much back and forth between in-person and virtual life, it was on the back burner. I tried to give it the occasional stir with apps, including - inspired by a friend who had recovered his German with it - Duolingo. I raced through its Mandarin only to reach the limit: only four levels. 

Most frustrating, especially as I paid for a year's subscription. 怎么办？ I decided to try out the Spanish, just for fun. I've never properly studied that language, so it's a better test of the Duolingo method, too. So far so good, but I'm also envious. Not only are there, surely, many levels, but Duolingo Español is full of clever dialogues; Chinese has none.... And even if it did, would they be as worldly and witty?

This appears in "La Luna de Miel," in one of the first sets of stories.

年兽看到了！

While everyone was watching the Super Bowl (or at least Super Bowl ads) I watched a short Chinese New Year film produced by 苹果中国 - Apple China - patiently making my way through the subtitles. (My Mandarin listening comprehension is alas still pretty lousy.) It tells a sweet and sweetly predictable story about a little girl growing up in the mountains, warned against the niánshòu 年兽 (a wild beast) by her parents. She ignores them, of course, and becomes besties with the creature, even as her father keeps warning that it eats little children. She's unmoved when he explains (above) that he tried to make her believe those stories to protect her. 让你把故事当真，是为了保护你！

A few years pass, and one year the girl decides to take the beast with her to the village new year's festivities - fine until the fireworks send it running away in terror. (Many new year's traditions are about frightening off scary monsters with light and sound and even the color red.) She runs after it to assure it there's no danger but her parents drag her home. She sneaks out the window into the mountain as the mother starts to wonder if they've been wrong: are the fireworks really there to scare away monsters and not, in fact, to light up the places in the mountains we want to go? 真的是为了赶走那些怪物吗？还是为了照亮山那边，那些我们想去的地方。 What are you really trying to protect her from, she asks her husband. I'm afraid of her growing up, he says, that this house won't hold her. 我怕孩子长大了，这个家留不住她。 I'm afraid that one day we won't be by her side. The more fearless she gets, he says, the more afraid I become. 我怕总有一天，我们会不在她身边。他越是天不怕地不怕，我就越怕。

But something's opened up. Next thing we see the family together going into the mountains to find the nián, and with the closing credits we're treated to the inevitable Chinese New Year scene of a family eating together around a table in their home - including not only the nian but both of the actresses who played the daughter, as a little girl and older! What's this all about? Nián 年 shares a character with the word year (or new year), and every new year's story is a version of "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof: change is less frightening than we think - and in any case can't be stopped. But this is an advertisement for Apple (the Apple logo appears at the end as a cute monster face), though there's no electronic device in sight in this rustic village. Or is about Apple, the American company? Fear not!

据了解呢？

I've found a fun new Mandarin app. News stories are presented at various HSK levels (I'm at level 4), with an audio recording, grammar notes and a set of effective exercises on comprehension, vocabulary and sentence structure. They choose good stories, too! So far I've done:

长沙的一个矿井被改成了游乐园 

Pit converted into amusement park in Changsha

一艘货船撞上黄浦江西岸

Cargo ship crashes into west bank of Huangpu River in Shanghai

羊奶粉在中国越来越受欢迎

Goat milk infant formula rises in popularity in China

上海两家公司因小笼包商标都将对方告上法庭

Shanghai companies enter legal battle over xiaolongbao trademark

天津一个图书馆的猫陪伴孤独的读者

Cats accompany lonely readers at Tianjin library

and, since not all entertaining news happens in China,

德国野猪成网红，粉丝救了它的命

German wild boar became internet star, fans saved its life

I didn't of course know most of the topical vocabulary for all these, but the app helps you out seamlessly, and I was able to figure out what was going on in all of them without difficulty... reading, at least. (Which isn't to say I got all the comprehension questions right the first time.) Listening comprehension is still the biggest challenge for me, though it must do something to listen a few times in a daze, read through the vocabulary, listen again, and then start of make sense of things.

I'm learning some important new words, like 新冠疫情 (xīnguān yìqíng), COVID-19 epidemic situation, and newsy phrases like 据了解 (jù liǎojiě), which has cropped up several times, is unhelpfully rendered it's understood that in dictionaries, and must correspond, judging from its use in these stories, to "apparently" or “reports suggest" or perhaps "it would appear." 

Like all the Chinese language learning materials I've used, the site furnishes translations of none of its texts (just vocabulary and grammar), so I'm having to feel my way to understanding from the inside. These texts are just the right length and level for me to do a new one each day, so I think I'll soon get how "it's understood"!

(The image is unrelated, from our Saturday Central Park jaunt.)

再说一下

Hey, I'm back at studying Mandarin! After a shockingly long time of just fiddling with Mandarin language apps (which, however, seem to have been effective in what they do, but only kept my passive skills in shape) I'm back to more active learning! Two or three times a week I chat for a full hour with a teacher from Datong, a city in Shanxi I visited a few years ago! She's not actually in Datong - but she's not here either. 她住在奥斯陆 She lives in Oslo! We talk via Skype, through a service called iTalki. I was delighted (and more than a little astonished) to discover that after years of avoiding speaking I can still talk about all sorts of things - admittedly with a skilled and patient teacher who knows what learners are likely to know and understand. After we finish, I've taken to summarizing our discussions in written Chinese, at which point I avail myself of another online language helper - Google translate. When my intended meaning doesn't come through, I tweak until it does. 加油！

Crabby

I've reached my target - finished volume 4 of New Practical Chinese! How disappointing that its final chapter has such dorky readings. One is about the Chinese space program, another about text messages (from the days when sending 30 a month was a lot). But the kicker is this, 公蟹，母蟹和鸡爪: He-crabs, she-crabs and chicken feet. It proceeds from contrasting Chinese and American crab preferences - Americans apparently prefer the male, where Chinese prefer the female - to a rhapsody on win-win international comity, by way of Americans' selling male and female crabs at different prices and exporting chicken feet to a grateful China. 美国人赚了钱很高兴；中国人吃到便宜的鸡爪，也很该醒。既然是大家都高兴的事儿，为什么不多做呢？Americans are happy to make money, Chinese are happy to be able to eat chicken feet cheaply; since everyone's so happy why not have more of this kind of thing? 

Is that the best they can do? And what's with the picture of a dove of peace／friendship／development 和平／友好／发展 with faces looking more or less Arab, Indian, European and African? Where's the Chinese? For that matter, where are the dove's feet?!

Double vision

Wonder of wonders, my friend O, too, has a translation of Calvino's Invisible Cities! He even found a brief section of the Chinese translation which, with not too much handholding, I was able to (sort of) read!

“你是为了回到你的过去而旅行吗？”可汗要问他的话也可以换成：“你是为了找回你的未来而旅行吗？”
马可的回答则是：“别的地方是一块反面的镜子。旅行者能够看到他自己所拥有的是何等的少，而他所未曾拥有和永远不会拥有的是何等的多。”

Here's William Weaver's rendering of the same passage (it's the end of the first part of the second section, representative of the book's particular brand of melancholy):

"Journeys to relive your past?" was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: "Journeys to recover your future?"
And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have."

Maybe very awkward

Meanwhile, back in Chinese studies, I've been pulling my hair out over the translation in my textbook of 义务 as voluntary; duty, obligation and the phrase in a list of untranslated usages 也许非常别扭, which means something like perhaps extremely awkward. How can something be both voluntary and obligatory? How can something be perhaps very?

My teacher said that apparently contrary usages of 义务 happen in Chinese, too, but also offered that people perhaps do voluntary things out of a sense of duty - an ingenious, perhaps profound insight. (I remember when I was teaching English conversation in Japan and made up all sorts of things to answer people's questions, convinced that my suppositions didn't have to be correct, just to reassure my student that the English language made sense.) As for maybe very? It would only be in tension if someone were describing her own feeling, reporting that she was feeling perhaps extremely awkward (which would make it the kind of passive aggressive thing I thought it was). If it was one person trying to make sense of another's feelings - perhaps venturing a guess as to why someone was unusually subdued on some occasion - it makes perfect sense.

I'm only pretending to be annoyed. It's precisely where another language doesn't gloss easily in your own that you discover the differences between the languages and perhaps between the sensibilities of their users; disclosed, too, is the sublime artifice which is language itself. And if you've spent time with the later Wittgenstein, you expect insights of other kinds, too. Like just what voluntary means - no simple concept in English either! Or the slippery wonder which is maybe.

散文

Tried my hand at a brief essay in Chinese. My teacher S suggested a good many changes, but said it has the feel of sanwen, 散文. Here's it is, and what Bing Translate made of it:
三月了！

每年都一样，有天一下子就三月了。因为二月比其他的月短，三月总像来的太早似的。年年一样，我从来没都习惯。

今年也一样，三月突然就到了。可是今年是我的“中国的一年”所以我就惊了两次。第一次是“三月到了！不可能！”第二次是“三月了！我得快要 回国了！” 老实说，今年“三月了！” 有特别的意思。那特别的意思是 “我只有三个月就要离开！”

我“中国的一年”四分之三真的过去了吗？本来不就没有十二个月。我是去年九月初才到中国的，只收到了九十天的签证。所以我十二月就没在中国待了。一月五号回中国来的时候，有一百八十天的签证。三个月加六个月不是一年，只是九个月。六月我应该离开。

 这三个月怎么用好呢？ 我知道，六月的离开其实是“再见”，我将来一定会再回中国来见我的朋友们。 这三个月，我想最好的用法是一边总结过去的经验，一边体验新的东西， 一边为下次来中国做 准备。

In March! ［March already!]

As every year, one day it's March. Because February is shorter than other months, March always come too early. Year after year, I have never [gotten] used [to it].

This year too, the March arrived suddenly. But this is my "China year" so I was surprised twice. First is "March is coming! No way! "The second is" March! I was going back [must soon return] home! "To be honest, this year's" March! "Have a special meaning. That particular meaning is "I only have three months left! ”

My "China year" three-fourths really did in the past? Don't there is no [It never was] 12-months. I only to China in early September last year, has received only a 90-day visa. So I didn't stay in China in December. On January 5 when I come back to China, 180-day visa. Three months plus six months, not a year, just nine months. In June, I should [must] leave.

How to use the three months is good [well]? I know that June's departure was [is not] "Goodbye", in the future I will definitely come back to see my friends. In these three months, I think the best use is summing up past experience, while experiencing new things, while getting ready for the next time you come to China.

第一作品

My first letter in Chinese! My teacher Susan asked me to write a letter of job application modeled on one in our textbook where an American expresses interest in a position as 市场开发部经理 Manager of Market Development for a Chinese-Canadian joint venture. Remembering that she had told me she was thinking of opening a little boutique when she moves with her husband to the US later this year, I postdated my letter and proposed myself as 市场开发部经理 for her nascent boutique empire. She didn't have a Market Development section yet? I offered a perfect opportunity to imagine growth in many directions, perfectly poised with experience teaching English to Japanese junior high school students as well as a degree in religious studies!

尊敬的Susan老板： 

您好！我听说贵公司正在考虑招聘市场开发部经理。贵公司是中美合资企业，现在已发展成为美国有名的精品店，在美国东部不少城市有业务。本人对贵公司的业务和市场开发部经理的职务很感兴趣，现在写这封信是向贵公司正式提出求职的申请。 

可能是本人不太了解贵公司究竟是不是在考虑招聘经理，那么，尊敬的Susan老板，这个市场开发部的主意可以成为对贵公司很好的机会。无论大小其他的公司越来越多发现它们没有市场开发部就不能继续成功和发展。要是我那么欣赏的贵公司被竞争淘汰了的话，我多不高兴。 

我叫罗马克，是美国人，毕业于英国的牛津大学。毕业以后，我在日本的初中学校工作，负责联系学生们的外语知识业务。在教学中，无论学生们有多没兴趣，我都想办法解决，努力开发他们对外语学习的兴趣。在很短的时间里，本校的学生们成为像双语言的国际人似的。我的负责的精神和热情的态度，也多次得到学生们父母方面的称赞。 

如果您担心本人的经验关于贵公司的市场开发没有关系，我会说不对！本人会把并不喜欢学习的学生变成英文的小读书人，对本人没有不可能的任务。如果贵公司想在美国各地开Susan精品店的连锁店，本人可以帮您成功。如果贵公司想开几家Susan精品超市，本人都可以作到。如果贵公司也想成为跨国公司，您可以放心。外太空发展也可以想想。为了想加深了解世界上一切的事儿，我辞去了日本中学校的工作，开始在美国布林斯顿大学进修宗教学，现在已经结业。 

我认为，如果贵公司决定开市场开发部和招聘那个部门的经理，本人最适合这项工作。我非常想参加贵公司的国内与国外发展，再说我很感兴趣的不只贵公司的地球内的市场开发还有地球外的无限制的发展。别的申请人能看到这样的前途吗？

附上本人的简历。如果有什么问题需要了解，请用电子邮件或打电话跟我联系。谢谢！ 

顺致，

Here's how the letter - with her suggested revisions - emerges from Bing translate. It's much better than Google translate but still a little off, so I take the liberty of indicating delicate points it misses, perhaps because I repurposed vocabulary from unrelated sections for Lego-style bricolage (well, what one does when one doesn't know that much of a language...!):

Dear Susan boss: 

How do you do! I hear that you are considering looking for market development manager. Your company is a Sino-US joint venture, has now developed into a United States famous boutiques, in the United States many cities have business in the East [Eastern United States]. I to your company's business and was interested in the position, market development manager, now writing this letter is a formal application for job seekers to you. 

May be I do not know if [I misunderstood that] your company is considering hiring managers, then, dear Susan boss, the Marketing Department's idea can be a good opportunity to your company. Regardless of the size of other companies increasingly find that [if] they have no marketing department cannot continue to be successful and develop. I so appreciated your company [If your company, which I so admire] was knocked out of competition, I was [would be most] unhappy. 

My name is Luo Make, are American, graduated from United Kingdom at Oxford University. After graduation, I was in Japan's junior high schools, responsible for contact with the students knowledge of a foreign language services. In teaching, no matter how the students are not interested, I'm trying to solve, and strive to develop their interest in foreign language learning. In a very short time, the students of this school to become as international man of dual language. The attitude of my sense of responsibility and enthusiasm, has repeatedly praised by the students parents. 

If you are concerned about my experience on [that my experience is irrelevant to] your company's marketing doesn't matter, I'd say no! I would not like to study small students into English-reader [I can turn students who don't like study into little English scholars, so], I have no mission impossible. If your company would like [to open] in the United States around Susan's Boutique chain stores, I can help you succeed. If your company would like to open several Susan boutique supermarkets, I can do. If your company would like to become multinational corporations, you can rest assured. Development of outer space to think about [is worth thinking about too]. In order to deepen the understanding of all things in the world, I left Japan in the school work, beginning in the United States, Lin Houston [Princeton] University study religion. 

In my opinion, if your company has decided to open the market development and the Manager of the hiring department, I am best suited to the job. I wish I could participate in your company's development at home and abroad, to say I'm not interested in your company's market development within the Earth are unrestrained development of extraterrestrial [indeed I'm interested not only in your company's market development on Earth but also its unlimited development extraterrestrially]. Applicants should be able to see the future [Can other applicants see such a future]? 

Enclose my curriculum vitae. Need to know if have any questions, please call or contact me by e-mail. Thank you!

Voices off

I fear this may remain an inside joke between my Chinese teacher S and me, but let me see if I can describe it to you. First, in Chinese!

昨天我们在上课呢，有个人打了电话给老师。一次，二次，老师看了她的手机可是没接。第三次，她把手机拿起，给那人说“我正在上课，不能聊天！” 然后她也给我说，“不好意思”。因为她把这个句子说得很快，我把她说的听成了”boys！”！咱们没意识到，“不好意思”和叹气地说“boys！”的发音差不多！再说一遍英文...

My teacher's cellphone rang three times during class yesterday. The first two times she ignored it, then she picked it up and in a low voice told whoever was calling that she was in class. Then, still in a low whisper, she said to me "buhaoyisi," an expression of apologetic embarrassment. But I heard something else: "Boys!" Indeed, if your "Boys!" is aspirated like a sigh with a sibilant final s, the two sound almost the same!

Shēngdiào

My Chinese teacher Susan (the one who laughs with me) has decided that I've made unexpected and sudden progress in my 声调 shengdiao, my tones. Not in recognizing them (that's often still like guessing in a cantron exam for me), but in pronouncing them. If I know what tone I'm pronouncing, I can apparently give it just the right spin! What did I do, she asked? I might have said: you asked me to practice telling a paragraph from a fairy tale, and exaggerated pronunciation seems less contrived here. What I said was: 因为我感冒了！yinwei wo ganmoa le (because I caught a cold). But the real reason, I think, isn't what I did

but what she's been doing. She's taken me systematically through all twelve different combinations of tones - you'll be as appalled as I was to learn that the tones change in combination - composing the materials herself. (Above is an example, third tone followed by second.) After we go through them she records them and sends me the sound files to imitate. I've still got miles to go but I'm in good hands! 多谢，老师！

369 days

Rats, I missed the anniversary of my starting Chinese! That happened January 14th last year. Who would have thought I'd come so far? Not that I'm that far. I've started volume 4 of New Practical Chinese, so am roughly where students in intensive college classes are at the start of their fourth semester. Not bad! But conversations remain halting at best. But there are starting to be some... Now, can I write that in pu tong hua?! Let's see.  

上星期四是我开始学习汉语的第一周年纪念，可是我忘记了！是去年一月十四号在纽约的China Institute的。我的进步真的不少。但汉语水平还没有太高。我现在读New Practical Chinese第四篇呢，跟美国很好大学里的第二年第二学期差不多。没不好！ 可是跟中国人说话的话我说得还不流利。重要是，那种说话越来越多！

Poetic view

I may be in Japan but that doesn't mean my Mandarin lessons have stopped! Through the wonder of Skype I've had lessons from non-Mandarin-speaking Hong Kong, Macau and now the Land of the Rising Sun! Today my teacher, who knows I like poetry, brought me two famous Tang dynasty poems. She says everyone in China learns them by heart, the first in elementary school, the rather darker one in high school. Here's the first one, by 李白 Li Bai (whom we've met before).

望庐山瀑布



日照香炉生紫烟，

遥看瀑布挂前川。

飞流直下三千尺，

疑是银河落九天。




My teacher let me puzzle my way through it - I know most of the words, it turns out, and there were notes to abbreviated place names, etc. Each line opened up like a delicious walnut. With her help, here's what it seems to me to say:

Seeing a waterfall from Mount Lu

On Xianglu's sunlit peak rises purple smoke

In the distance I see a waterfall hanging down toward Shan River

Flying-flowing straight down three thousand zhi (1 km)

Could it be the Milky Way falling from highest heaven

Not a great translation by any means, but a start! Only just checked online for proper translations, and there are all sorts. Here's Burton Watson's:

Viewing the Waterfall at Mount Lu

Sunlight streaming on Incense Stone kindles violet smoke;
far off I watch the waterfall plunge to the long river,
flying waters descending straight three thousand feet,
till I think the Milky Way has tumbled from the ninth height of Heaven

Multiple uses

On the advice of my new language school I've switched text - to the gold standard, used in many American universities. It's full of idioms, spirited exchanges, culturally interesting stories and - the most important thing of all - drills! The only way to understand a word or structure is through multiple uses. By the way did you notice: they've placed me in volume 3!

Awful languages

There's an essay every American student of German reads (or at least used to read), by Mark Twain, called, "The Awful German Language." Its most quoted words:

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. ... it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

I've just learned that there's a comparable essay for Chinese, not as old or quite as witty, but in its way as delightfully discouraging, David Moser's "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard." The author was a graduate student when he wrote it, 5-6 years into intensive study of the language, and found he still couldn't read even a paragraph of a newspaper article without significant dictionary assistance.
 
Those who undertake to study the language for any other reason than the sheer joy of it will always be frustrated by the abysmal ratio of effort to effect. Those who are actually attracted to the language precisely because of its daunting complexity and difficulty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves "Why in the world am I doing this?" Those who can still remember their original goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say "I've come this far - I can't stop now" will have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.

We'll see how I fare! Doggedness isn't one of my character traits, but I'm finding learning Chinese, at least for now, a pretty joyful experience. The absurdity of it, well described by Moser, is part of the pleasure... he persisted, too! These essays have, I imagine, two lives - for those who gave up the ridiculous language in a huff, and those who have embraced their inner ridiculousness for continuing with it.

语伴

Through a Facebook page maintained by UCSD's International Center, I've found a 语伴 yuban (language partner) just as my textbook introduces that term. We met for two hours of conversation today, first in Mandarin and then in English. I'd brought my textbook but we just explored common interests, which, while frustrating (I know so few words...!), is just what I need. My two-pronged self-education program through 成功之路 Road to Success and Pimsleur audio is teaching me how to negotiate dorm life at Beijing Foreign Languages University and how to manage business acquaintanceships in China (recently 我建议你改变一下学习习惯 and yiqi qu da baorinqiu haoba, respectively I suggest you change your study habits a little and how about going bowling together). Each of these will doubtless turn out to be helpful in unexpected ways, directly and indirectly! But learning the things I'd actually want to say (and how far I am from being able to say them) needs this kind of conversation.

My 语伴 turns out to be one of forty-seven professors from China at UCSD for a half-year program in bilingual education. Originally from Inner Mongolia and trained in law in Chongqing and Guangzhou, he now teaches medical and bioethics in Guizhou, but his real love seems to be 哲学 zhexue, philosophy! Now I know the words for definition (定义 dingyi) and concept (概念 gainian) and even what the Frankfurt School is called in China: 法兰克福学派 falankefu xuepai. I hadn't considered that every name gets sinicized, including the names of philosophers. Like Locke, for instance (who came up in my unsuccessful attempt to explain why many American scholars think the modern category of "religion" problematic): 洛克, pron. luoke.

So much to learn... ugh! (Learned how to say San Diego too: 圣地亚哥 shengdiyage.) But it's fun to have an interlocutor who knows why it might be worth learning. Hope I'll get to see him several more times before I head for Shanghai!

我叫马克

Auspiciously, a Mark (马克 make) has shown up in the Chinese textbook!

Look and think

I've embarked on the next volume of our Chinese language texts, 成功之路 Road to Success. It's the fourth, so I've arrived at... 顺利篇 Elementary! It's a long march, this language: this series has 20 volumes!
This level demands more than the volumes preparing for it. It dispenses with the training wheels of 拼音 pinyin - romanized pronunciation - in its texts and dialogues. (This series form the get-go offered no translations.) It demands interpretation of pictures (看图思考 Look and Think) and retellings of exchanges. Its listening exercises include lots of words and formulations not yet introduced. (There's a transcript at the end, but the point isn't to learn everything said but to glean what we need using what we already know, realize we can do that.) The series is designed for self-study as well as study in class with a teacher - we'll see how I do!

两个学生，两位老师

My sister's learning Mandarin, too! Her teacher's much younger than mine, and describes an entirely different China than the one I've heard about. The language is mostly the same, though, reassuringly!