Learning Chinese

Learning was the last thing on my mind! I thought I was done, but living in China is not easy without knowing the language. I know we have all heard that the Chinese are all learning English, some 300 million of them, but let me assure you it does not include EVERYONE.  There are about a BILLION that are not.  I constantly struggle at supermarkets, with taxi drivers, restaurants…basically for most things in everyday life. So learning the language, I thought would prove extremely useful for me. And I took inspiration from my Indian friends in Beijing who not only speak Chinese but can also read it!  They make me want to try at least.

I’m sure by now we all have that uncle or neighbour or distant relative who does business in China. And most of us have even heard that its one of the toughest languages in the world! I completely agree. I am usually good with languages. But Chinese, is a wholly different ping-pong game altogether.

The difficulty in learning the language has mostly been my inability to unlearn what I know about languages in general. A lot of it does not make any sense when translated. The grammar is very different and sometimes non-existent. And not to mention different tones to words that are spelt the same in pinyin.

Then of course there is the slight matter of learning the language in Pinyin: this is the name given to the method of transcribing the Chinese characters into acceptable phonetics for Western learners. This system of learning became popular in the late 1950’s and is now widely accepted as the first step to learning Chinese. In fact, it also helps Chinese children learn pronunciation and the phonetic way of transliterating the characters. So most Chinese people know the character as well as its pinyin.

In pinyin the alphabets are in English with the respective tones: there are four tones in Chinese thus increasing the complexity of the language. I just have to learn to pronounce correctly depending on the tones and voila I will know Chinese. But to me it all sounds the same! For example, yí in 1^st tone means aunt, yī in 2^nd tone means one, yǐ in 3^rd tone means chair and yì in 4^th tone means hundred million. 

However, unlike other languages this is slightly easier to grasp because the grammar is simple and uncomplicated. There is only one form of the verb, which is so unlike English where we have is, as was, there, were… In Mandarin one verb does the job!  And the local Chinese folk are also very patient, so if you get the word right (without the tone, that is) the locals try and understand what you are saying. 

What I get asked frequently by my non-Chinese friends when I say am learning Chinese is, ‘so have you learnt the alphabets?’ There are no such things as alphabets in Chinese. Each word has a character and the average Chinese person knows about three thousand characters. Which is not much. Back in the day you were considered a scholar only if you knew about ten thousand characters.  And your handwriting or calligraphy had to be very good!

And here I am struggling to learn a few thousand words. My biggest hurdle has been memorising the words and their meaning. Memorising was never my forte.  But that’s the only way to learn. And learning pinyin is far easier than learning the characters as you have to memorise the characters and there are about 1400 basic characters. Think about it this way: you have to memorise 1400 diagrams!

Here is what takes the cake though. The Chinese have their own words for everything from names of countries, their currencies and even some world famous personalities. So much so a Chinese friend of mine argued with me that the fastest man on the planet is some freak called You Sai En Bo Er Te. Turns out, that is Usain Bolt’s Chinese name. Well at least in India, America is just Amrika or AAmaereeka depending on which part of India you come from. So for the Chinese, I am Yindu ren, from Xin Deli and our currency is the Lubi!    

Bears, babies and Beijing

As a favour to a friend I decided to fill in for a kindergarten job. So while I was talked through the basics of teaching children, it seemed easy enough. My job was to teach them English and I was assigned the youngest class of the lot. I figured I love children, so how difficult could it get? I just had to sing and teach them a few basic English words. That can’t be hard.

Anyway, I was shown around and given my teaching material and told to go ahead and teach. And I’m like “I’m not sure what you teach kindergarten”. So they‘re like “oh don’t worry, just do some action songs and play with them”. That sounded like fun till I entered the class. I could hear a whole lot of wailing and I was so hoping it was not my class but I had no such luck. So here I am handed a class of three year olds wailing their heart out and all I wanted to do was run the other way. And I was left thinking how do I teach them anything when they are all just crying.

I guess it didn’t help that I was brown skinned. I can’t blame them. They have probably not seen anyone darker than pale yellow! So the minute they saw me they wailed extra hard! And that did not buy me any brownie (no pun intended) points with the caretakers of that class.

If looks could kill, trust me between the caretakers and the children I sure would have been dead! I mean here they were trying to calm the kids down but the minute I walked anywhere near them they all just pointed fingers at me and cried. Yeah, I was the new female Gargamel in town! It was jus nine thirty and I was already looking forward to the end of the day. What made it even more difficult was the fact that I could not speak a word of Chinese. So how on God’s earth am I supposed to calm them? They didn’t like the way I looked and i couldn’t even soothe them in a language they understand. I understood helplessness to the fullest extent then! And the caretakers assigned to my class did not speak a word of English either. So there was no way of knowing if what I was doing was right or wrong.

My second class was slightly better, they were older children. So they were not wailing! I had a guide to take me through my first day and she taught me a song in the class and then I was expected to immediately memorize that and teach it to the kids. I just turned around and said “but I just heard you recite that to me like ten minutes back. I don’t even remember the words”. Not just teach, sing. Sing! Hmmm, nobody said nursery rhymes had to be melodious! And she turns around and says but don’t you know ‘one lil, two lil, three lil Indians’. (As an aside you could almost hear me say you bet I know a lot more than three Indians.) But I managed to keep a straight face. The last I was in a kindergarten was twenty-five years back! And for better or worse I was taught Jack and Jill went up the hill and twinkle twinkle little star.

There is a break at eleven. It’s lunch time for the children. And I watched the caretakers give them their lunch while the others were putting out their beds. I too just wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep. So after putting the children to bed, we went to have lunch during which I was taught a few more games for my afternoon classes.

I hate it when someone forces me to wake up, so imagine twenty, three year olds forced to wake up. Each one of them was crying for their mom! I could totally get it. I myself would have thrown a hissy fit. My sympathies were with them but how do you make them stop crying? I was at a total loss. This was definitely not my area of expertise. But give them some yoghurt and distract them and they were good to go.

While I am writing this bit, I need to mention my princess. She was the only one who gave me a chance. She watched me for a long time before she made her move. She had this air about her, a bit snooty, very well mannered. She sure was the boss in this class. As soon as she sized me up and decided it was better to be on my side the others felt slightly more comfortable. She would always stand right beside me no matter what and if I did not pay her any attention then she would demand it.  And her genetics were brilliant! She was so adorable, cute and gorgeous. Now I know why teachers back in school had pets. She had me floored. I was also allowed to give them English names. I had decided on Diana, yep after Princess Diana!

Of course I felt sorry for some of the children. They should not have been there from 9 -5. They were too young.  But what knocked my breath off was how everything was catered to their needs. Their toilets and wash basins hardly came up to my knee! I was so fascinated! You can’t blame me. I’ve never been inside a kindergarten in like two decades. Back in the day, it was not so cool!

So here are a few of my insights

1.       Kindergarten is a very expensive affair and so parents here are opting to have only one child even though that law has opened up enough to allow two single-child parents to have a second baby.

2.       The kids here have six people to spoil them silly and when they grow up they have six people to take care of.

3.       Most kids are picked up by their grand-parents/ aayis (ayahs) and they practise the 9-5 work week already and they are only three years old!

4.       They charge heavily claiming to be international schools who teach English but they have people from places like Albania teaching them. I mean the guy who hired me could hardly string one coherent sentence in English and he was teaching!

That said, I have heard some pretty scary tales of kindergartens where parents have been so mad at a teacher because one of the kids cut off a bit of hair of their child and the parent did not even realize until two days later. And when they did, they deemed it fit enough to throw hot water on the teacher’s face! There was also this parent who sent an unapproved driver to pick up the child from kindergarten and the teacher refused to send the child with that person. Later the parent came and went on an abusing spree till the teacher apologised! This in a country where kindergartens across were prone to killings last year.

But all said and done teaching was not my cup of tea, never was, but it’s always good to experiment new ways of spending your time in a whole new city.  Gives me some perspective. Anyway the one person who had the most amount of fun in all this was my husband. He could not wipe the smirk off his face while I was practising

‘Teddy bear, teddy bear turn around

Teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground...’

Chingapore

My thoughts this month are inspired by our trip to Singapore and the Chinese I saw there and the similarities and stark differences with their mainland cousins. So we landed in Singapore and caught a  cab to go to our friend’s house. And my heart skipped a beat when the taxi guy spoke flawless English! On our way we engaged him in a conversation and I was secretly jumping for joy and tearing at the same time. Yeah, that’s how deprived I am for English speaking people in Beijing. And I am not exaggerating, trust me!

Half way through the ride we were caught in this downpour and this am told is very common in Singapore. But I had not seen rain like this in a while. So, the happiness was flowing. Reminded me of Kerala. But it started to get a little irritating, when the darn rain refused to ebb till 11 AM. Damn it. Here I was half way across the South China Sea and cooped at home. We bought our selves an umbrella and made our way to the metro station. Our only stop over was a breakfast place for DOSA!! This time I think my tummy was doing the victory dance! After seaweed, corn and conjee as breakfast options this sure was a welcome change.

And our Singapore exploration started with Little India. Did I forget to mention I was missing India? You must’ve figured it out by now. And the first place I went to was a parlour. I have renewed respect and love for our Indian parlour ladies. They kick ass! She made my caterpillar like eyebrows look gorgeous but not without asking why it looked the way it did. 



But here’s the thing, from all of what I saw and experienced of Little India, I think it should be called Little Chennai or Little Pondy bazaar. From Ilaiyaraja songs to malli poo( jasmine flowers) it was all there. The colour and the chaos. This was the only place, repeat, only place in Singapore where you could cross the road as you pleased and not get fined for jaywalking. Some habits do die hard.

 



But what I loved best was the fact that I could communicate with anybody on the street. And Singapore is 70% ethnically Chinese so you’re never too far away to miss the Mandarin. But the interesting bit about it was that they spoke like how the Indians speak their languages, by substituting English words in between most of their conversation

 

But by the second day, I was able to find uncountable similarities between the Sing Chinese and their PRC cousins. They all had difficulty in following what you would say if it had too many articles and prepositions. They all had the same haircuts! And, they’re all as I-phone obsessed as the mainlanders!



And you can easily tell the difference between an ethnic Chinese Singaporean and the newly arrived mainland Chinese when they start talking to each other. They don’t quite get each other’s accents. There was this instance in a bus I took in Singapore where the air-conditioning was not working and so this Chinese guy tried dissuading a lady from getting onto the bus by telling her in Chinese that the air-con was not working. But she did not understand a word of what he said and replied back in Chinese to that effect. By now, I catch bits and pieces of Chinese. But when the driver told her in English, she understood. Maybe it’s a bit like my Hindi, incomprehensible to anyone but the South-Indians!

 

And then you speak to the Singaporeans they will tell you that even the Chinese Singaporeans look down upon newly arrived Mainlanders.  And the complaints range from their loud behaviour and complete lack of self restraint when it comes to standing in a queue or just overall unruliness. Of course, there’s also their absolute lack of English language skills!



But to be fair it happens to most immigrants. The disowning by their own. Almost as if to feel distanced from what they too once were. Wonder what will happen to us? Global nomads.

 

This blog however seems incomplete if I don’t mention the reason for our trip to Singapore. We went to watch the Singapore Grand Prix. It should be on everybody’s list of things to do before you die! It doesn’t matter if you follow the sport or not. The sound of the cars whizzing by, the atmosphere, the concerts...all of it is to die for! And am told by the organisers that this is the best Grand Prix in all of Asia. A night race and a street race with lots of beer.  What more can u ask for?