Chinese, Kites and flying dogs

The lovely comment by Sheila (Read her “flash and sparkle” on http://sheila.nomadlife.org//) - certainly not exempt of a subliminal pinch of sarcasm - provides me with the opportunity to elaborate on the Chinese language in general and my experiences with it in specific:

(1) “The “oups, and what now”- feeling:

I expected to be lost at times (since I, once again, hit the road to live in a country while knowing about as much about its language as I know about Finnish..), and indeed was: One evening, it was my first night in Beijing, I hopped into a taxi and showed my precious scrap of paper showing my address spelled in Chinese characters to the driver (that's one way of communicating with taxi drivers that speak as little English as “W” speaks Arabic..) Well, the address was obviously misspelled or simply not precise enough.. I, consequently, found myself somewhere in the streets of Beijing not knowing were I was. I could neither make sense of any sign (as they are almost exclusively written in Chinese) nor would any of the people I bumped into (not that many since it was around 3am) understand any of the languages I would understand... (I might add that I was slightly "tipsy" (well, not that "slightly" actually.... ;). To cut the story short: I was totally lost. However, as I, since the very beginning of my China experience, expected myself to be confronted with such a situation one day, I could not help laughing at myself. I strolled around, whistling and singing, in the hope that I might get to a corner, house, etc looking familiar.. After a couple of minutes, however, when my nose and fingers started to turn blue, I decided to abandon my search and decided to ring up Sheila (which, was yet another extremely-logical manoeuvre of mine (as Sheila had never been to my place and, even though she really wanted (my assumption ;), could not possibly help (I won’t even try to defend myself by invoking my condition and the early hour…;) In the end I woke up Show, who, after laughing at me, told the Taxi driver number 2 where to dump me.... ;) Well, and that's where AIESEC comes in: It was beyond doubt partly thanks to the great people I know since the day of my arrival, that I actually felt like whistling and laughing in a situation like the one sketched out above.. How could, even an ignorant Swiss, ever feel lost surrounded by a network like this?? Cheers dear (even sarcastic) mates!

Well, in the meantime I boosted (what a presumptuous exaggeration...) my Chinese horizon so as to at least handle very basic situations (almost always) on my own. However, lots of hurdles still need to be taken:

(2) Small difference, big trouble

The most difficult thing about Chinese is the 5 tones, meaning the 5 different ways a syllable can be pronounced: high-pitch, mid-high-pitch, middle-pitch, mid-low-pitch, low-pitch.. First lesson to learn: Do care about these seemingly tiny, sometimes hardly distinguishable differences as other wise people will either not understand what you’re saying, feel insulted while you actually intended to compliment them on something or then you may run into somewhat more serious trouble. To give an example: ma (1^st tone: wipe; 2^nd tone: leash, 3^rd tone: horse, 4^th tone: affront, offend.. 5^th tone: ?? don’t know..). If you do not pay attention you may also “ma” (in its "4^th tone sense") people: While Mao spoken in the 4^th tone stands, among other, for Chairman Mao(4) ze(2) dong(1), Mao spoken in another tone means as much as brick / hick (now, while writing this post I start doubting about this anecdote my Chinese teacher told me. Let me check on this again; however, there’s plenty of such potentially embarrassing misunderstandings). So you better go on practicing your tones (Chinese lessons sometimes feel like singing lessons… ;)

(3) Regional differences

Chinese comes in probably about as many dialects as Swiss German. However, the only one that I can already make out is the Beijing dialect. Its specificity lies in the fact that it adds an “R” (pronounced somewhat like aaaaarrrrrrrrr (imagine a raucous bark)) to about every single word. But well, my attempts to pronounce the place where I live (Pan jia Yuan (becomes Pan Jia Yuaaaaarrrrrrr)) the “Beijing way” have yielded different results: Sometimes I seem to get it right, which consequently makes my counterpart think that I’m able to, and really good at speaking Chinese. He/ she would then start talking slang at an incredible pace while I would go “Hüüüüüüü?!?!?!”. Sometimes, however, I mess it up right from the beginning, meaning that both of us go “Hüüüüüüü?!?!?!”, he/she because he/she doesn’t understand and I because I do not understand what he/she is asking for… jolly times.. ;)

Even though my (too little) efforts to learn Chinese have not yielded a lot of results yet, I am nevertheless motivated enough to go on fighting the wind mill.. ;)

Oh boy, it's again 2am.. I guess I'll have to cover some other experiences at the help of pictures and short comments only:

We were kiting close to Tian'anmen square.

I love taking pictures of people taking pictures.. Look at the guard: yes, it is bloody cold in Beijing...

"Beijing bicycle": While cars are more and more frequent (worsening Beijing's somewhat scary environmental situation) bicycles are still very popular (especially among thieves.. (I decided to invest more money into a lock than the bicycle itself...)

Ice-skating the Chinese way. We are actually planning to participate in the "ice-bike challenge" on the frozen HuoHai lake (above) next Sunday..

A supplier (by bicycle) delivering (meaning actually throwing!) dog meat to a small butchery..

Receive a hug from Beijing, that still fascinates and challenges me.

Dom ;)

fun, chinese language, beijing, pictures