Chinese stories

扭蛋  - those twist-open eggs you can buy from coin operated vending machines with little toys inside

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Yea, it may be interesting and you could get your name in a book, but there are a few things to be wary of when doing academic translation in China. The first is that academic bureaucracy is frustratingly slow (and this goes for academics anywhere), and that means lots of people are involved and the money is very slow in coming. I had mentioned in a previous post that I thought it was a good idea to let the author review the translation before publication: I still think this is a good idea in principle, but in practice it can be a real headache. It means the pace of the project is placed in the hands of the author or authors, and they may have more pressing matters to worry about, or some emergency might come up.  

The second is that in China (and elsewhere too), unfortunately some professors tend to have sticky fingers when it comes to money, and drag their feet when it comes to payday. This is especially the case when it comes to professors and their students (i.e. the students work for free), and foreigners who will be leaving the country soon (won’t be around to complain or do anything about it). It doesn’t matter what university it is, these people exist in the very top schools in China. This is probably also a byproduct of low teacher salaries and academic bureaucracy that means money must pass through many hands when it comes to large projects.

So I would suggest that you have a clear paper trail of all the agreements made (it’s best to sign a contract, but email agreements are ok as well), try to agree to a rigid timetable, and have a lot of patience. I would say try to get them to front a portion of the payment before you begin the project, but I think the chances of that happening in such an environment are slim. Luckily the person I was dealing with was upfront with me about all the politics going on behind the scenes, and it really helps to work with someone you can trust I think. At this point I’m just crossing my fingers that my name will appear somewhere in the book if it ever makes it to print…

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The Nintendo DS has a bunch of language games called My … Coach aimed at people who want an introduction to a language. I think the DS would make a great language learning tool, especially for Chinese, as it has the touch pad you can use to write characters with and also has a built-in mic that you can use to practice speaking.

Even though My Chinese Coach has some good aspects about it, I wouldn’t recommend buying it to learn Chinese.  The first problem is the placement test it gives you in the beginning. It asks 50 questions in 3 minutes, and depending on how many you get right, it places you in the right lesson. The problem is I answered all 50 right (the hardest questions were recognizing the days and months), and was placed into lesson 11 (out of like 100) where it started to teach me the words for ‘mother’ and ‘father’. That makes the game useless for anyone past 1st year Chinese, because the later lessons have to be unlocked one at a time by properly completing exercises and games. I think this is a great idea to help people progress and learn in different ways, but really limits who can use the game.

The second problem is that both pinyin and some other romanization system are both used. This other system reads like “zuh, tsuh, suh, jir, chir, shir, rih, wu, yi” and so on. Are you kidding me? And this is called pinyin in the game, which will really confuse people who won’t be able to distinguish it from genuine pinyin later.

What the game really needs is character recognition software (not sure if it would be too big for the DS format) so that students can practice writing characters on a blank background rather than tracing over the character as the game has you do.  The game does let you record words and play them back in comparison with native speakers, which is a great tool, as are some of the useful flash card games. But in the end I think the game will just end up confusing people more than helping.

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I saw two shows on TV yesterday that made me think of China. The first was Ni Hao, Kai-lan, which airs on Nick Jr. At first it looked just like another kids show, but then I did a double-take when the little girl said “wo lai le”. The characters speak in Chinese about 1/4 of the time, and their pronunciation is pretty darn good, too! It’s not just really simple stuff either, and they have sentences like “Yeye ba yuyi dai guolai le” (Grandpa brought us raincoats!) Nevertheless, I think the show is really effective, and our son really seemed to like it. The show’s website says:

“Ni Hao, Kai-lan is the next generation of preschool television programming that introduces the psychology of biculturalism. If Dora and Diego popularized bilingualism, Kai-lan will weave together being bilingual and bicultural. Ni Hao, Kai-lanreinforces the idea that being bicultural and bilingual is being American. The show will familiarize the viewing audience with elements of Chinese and Chinese American cultures to promote multicultural understanding in the next generation and goes beyond featuring “culture” as only ethnic food and festivals. Instead, it celebrates growing up in an intergenerational family, having friends from diverse backgrounds, and “habits of the heart” that are Chinese American.”

I guess there still is some hope for American TV after all.

The second show is Exiled, which plays on MTV.  There are only 2 episodes so far, and it basically takes spoiled girls from Beverly Hills and sends them to an African tribe or remote Southeast Asian village for a week or so so they can have a taste of life in the third world. The reason this made me think of Chinese TV is because Hunan TV has been doing this same show for a while now, called 变形记. Instead of sending the well-off Chinese kids to another country, however, they just send them from their comfy home in the city to remote Chinese villages in Guizhou or to the desert and have them live with the locals for a while. Exiled is definitely the funnier show, as you can see the girls freaking out in situations that aren’t really that bad I don’t think, and the tone is still a lighthearted one, while the Hunan TV show is a little more sombre as you can see the stark contrast within China itself–it hits a little more close to home I think.

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I had given up long ago, but it appears there is still hope. Unlike the coasts, which I haven’t visited, but hear have some authentic stuff, we live in a culinary desert when it comes to the good ol’ zhongcan. Nine times out of ten you go into any place and you get the same generic ‘Chinese food’ menu, which offers variations on the following recipe:

1 can of ‘oriental vegetables’

8 oz of sliced meat

oil, sugar, salt, MSG, and brown sauce

stir fry and serve

charge customer $8.99 and give them a fortune cookie

Even making the trek out to Chicago’s Chinatown and visiting the ‘authentic’ Lao Szechuan was somewhat of a let-down. Especially the hot pot, which is either $15.00 per person for a set menu, or $10.00 for the soup base and $4-5 for each dish. We opted for the second and got a type of hot pot neither of us had seen in China and ended up paying more than we would have for the set menu for two.

Unfortunately there is no good way of finding a place with decent food other than going there, asking for a Chinese menu or a ’special menu’ (code word for edible food menu) and trying something out. It just so turns out that right here in Kalamazoo there is a restaraunt called Hunan Gardens (specializes in Sichuan food, run by Taiwanese it seems, and has nothing to do with Hunan, corner of Main and Drake) that has an authentic Sichuan chef, and some great stuff off of their ’special menu’ that even beats out Lao Szechuan in Chicago. There are also reports of a good place in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, and our map is starting to take shape. For some reason it seems that one third of the restaurants here have the word ‘Hunan’ in their title, even though none of them have anything close to resembling Hunan cuisine. How did Hunan food get to be so popular here without ever being eaten?

Another search that took us to several asian markets was for the elusive 花椒, the little round Sichuan seasoning that turns your mouth numb, and that I have seen translated as ‘Sichuan pepper’ and dried prickly ash. The local health food store sells a small bottle of it for $6, but it can be gotten in Chicago for a lot cheaper.

We had gone out to Chicago to visit family and to pick up our shipment. The furthest the moving company would send it was Chicago, and with a quote from local shippers of $750 to get it home we decided to go get it ourselves. That included stopping by the Dept. of Homeland Security by O’hare, filling out some forms and getting the Bill of Lading stamped, then renting a U-Haul and heading over to the warehouse where it was kept. After paying the unloading fee and a little extra for the guys there to help me unpack it from the pallet and into the van, I took it away to where we were staying in town. Apparently everything was shipped, but when we got home we found some things that weren’t ours, like 2 boxes full of women’s shoes and an ironing board and wooden rack apparently meant to go to Bangalore, India. I’ve emailed the shipping company, but I have the feeling that they won’t care. I still can’t believe how much useless crap we shipped… at least it all got here, though.

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The front page of the local paper that seems to be ever shrinking as newspapers seem to be cutting back more ane more nowadays featured a book by a local professor on the history of sports in China. Coming out at an opportune time, Xu Guoqi’s Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 supposedly looks at the questions of “Why did Mao Zedong choose competitive ping-pong to manipulate world politics? How did the two-China issue nearly kill the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games? And why do the 2008 Olympics present Beijing with unprecedented dangers and opportunities?” The first two questions seem interesting, the last one seems like it could read like a contemporary op-ed column if not handled the right way. I’ll have to check it out and let y’all know how it is later. For the moment I’m caught up with popular western accounts of China, as my uncle gave me a copy of 1421 and told me I had to read it, along with the China issue of National Geographic. It’s always interesting to take another look at how Americans view China, even if they don’t get everything right all the time.

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We left Beijing almost two weeks ago to move back to the US. I hadn’t been back home for two years, so I was long overdue for a visit. The move actually wasn’t caused by China’s new visa policies, surprisingly, but rather the incomprehensible US visa policies that essentially forced my wife to immigrate if she wanted to ever be able to visit my family here. (I’ll probably write another post about that soon) We also decided that we want to raise our son in the US, and the choice was pretty easy to make seeing how Beijing’s air is steadily worsening. I don’t care what they say, it is much worse than when I first arrived in Beijing six years ago, and no matter how great Beijing is, I can only imagine the effects the pollution has had on our son. Some days I would ride my bike home from work and once I got to the 5th floor of our apartment building I could not stop wheezing. The baby also had a moderate rash all winter because it was so dry. I really like Beijing, and wouldn’t mind living there at all otherwise … but I feel like China’s still having a lot of growing pains, and while it was fun and all when I was single, I don’t want to stick around for the “interesting times” now that I have other people to worry about.

The move was hectic enough, and paying to have all of our stuff shipped back home made me realize that we had way too much stuff in our little 75 sqm apartment. I read an article about families that gave away all of their stuff and started living on the road, and I kind of envy them now that I realize we don’t really need it all. We’ve been living just fine while waiting for it all to get here.

The last week before we came a friend of mine visited and stayed in a great courtyard hotel (Double Happiness hotel) in Dongsi Sitiao, which I highly recommend.  I’d always wanted to stay in a traditional courtyard, but when I went to book a room at some other of the courtyard hotels around the Dongcheng district the staff were kind of aloof, unlike this one we went to. I also had to change our departure date, because the police told my employer that I had 10 days to leave the country from the date I resigned. “Beijing welcomes you” indeed.

The flight went as well as I could have wished, as the baby slept almost the whole flight. Immigration was a breeze too, as my wife could come with me and our son through the US citizens line, which I noticed was moving much faster and more efficiently than the Visitors line. I was particularly worried about this big ziplock bag of dried dandelion leaves that my mother-in-law had given us (when boiled the water cures the baby’s rash), which looks conspicuously like a big bag of another illegal substance. My wife only had to sign her name, give a fingerprint, and hand over the big packet of materials to the officer, then we put all of our bags through their big scanner machine thing, and I breathed a sigh of relief when they said we could take our things and go.

So now I’m back in southwest Michigan, still doing a bit of translating, and trying to enjoy the summer before winter and reality sets in. This state supposedly has one of the worst economies in the entire country, which is not too encouraging. I drove by the big company in town that had supported the community for decades, and all of the administration buildings had been closed down and were for sale. But a neighbor told me other companies were coming to town, so things aren’t all going downhill here. I’m really enjoying the faster, uninhibited internet, and the comforting thought that people here expect things to work right, not the other way around.

It’s also kind of sad going around seeing that everything in the stores is made in China (not that that is a surprise or anything), and realizing that we enjoy all of these things, but our environment and people don’t really have to pay the price of producing them all. But I also know from giving up all of our crap that we shipped home that we would get along just fine if us Americans had to give up all of our Chinese made things.

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Most people have probably heard of Empress Wu Zetian and the Emrpess Dowager Cixi, both known for their ruthlessness and cunning, but here is a lady fit to join their ranks. Empress Shulü was a Uighur who married Abaoji, the first emperor of the Liao dynasty (later known as Empress Dowager Yingtian). When Abaoji passed away she cut off her hand to show her devotion to him and took the reigns of power, as her sons were still too young to rule. Here is an account of her first days of office:

Shulü was a wise and enduring person. When Abaoji died she sent for the wives of the great generals and said, ‘I am now a widow, so how is it suitable that you all have husbands?’ She then killed the hundred or so generals and said, ‘they can go to their emperor.’ Those attendants who had wronged her were sent to Muye mountain and killed in Abaoji’s mausoleum. She said to them, ‘you can go see your emperor in the underworld.’ The great general Zhao Siwen was originally Chinese, and was greatly loved by Abaoji for his ability and courage. Shulü once became angry with him, and wanted him sent to Muye mountain, but Siwen was not willing to go. Shulü said, ‘you were the trusted follower of the former emperor, how could you not go to see him?’ Siwen replied, ‘I was not as close as the empress, why does she not go herself?’ Shulü said, ‘I originally wanted to follow the emperor to the underworld, but as my sons are still young, and there are many problems facing our nation, I could not go. Therefore I cut off my hand and sent it to him.’ Her attendants remonstrated, so she cut off Siwen’s hand and did not kill him.

述律为人多智而忍。阿保机死，悉召从行大将等妻，谓曰：“我今为寡妇矣，汝等岂宜有夫。”乃杀其大将百余人，曰：“可往从先帝。”左右有过者，多送木叶山，杀于阿保机墓隧中，曰：“为我见先帝于地下。”大将赵思温，本中国人也，以材勇为阿保机所宠，述律后以事怒之，使送木叶山，思温辞不肯行。述律曰：“尔，先帝亲信，安得不往见之？”思温对曰：“亲莫如后，后何不行？”述律曰：“我本欲从先帝于地下，以子幼，国中多故，未能也。然可断吾一臂以送之。”左右切谏之，乃断其一腕，而释思温不杀。

From 《新五代史·四夷附录》

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Well, it’s high time this blog lived up to its title, so, just in time for the national college entrance exams, here’s a story of how they used to cheat back in the old days. Nowadays it seems like this method wouldn’t work very well, although I have heard of people doing it with less stringent exams like the CET. Pretty soon, though, they’ll probably have DNA testing, or retina scanning, or something like that.

Taken from Chapter 19 of The Scholars, or Rulin waishi, this was my favorite episode of the book:

One day Pan the Third came to Kuang Chaoren’s home and said, “My friend, I have not seen you for a long time, how about we go get a drink.”

Kuang locked his gate and went out with Pan into the street. They had only gone a few steps when a messenger from the Pan residence hurried up to them and said, “There are guests at home waiting to talk to Third Master.”

Pan said to Kuang, “Why don’t you come to my home, then?”

So they went together to Pan’s house, and Pan invited Kuang to sit in the seat of honor. Pan met with the visitor outside.

Pan said to him, “Li the Fourth, my brother, long time no see. What have you been up to?”

“I have been at the examination official’s place. There are a couple of things I would like to talk to you about, but I was afraid you wouldn’t be home. I have been worried sick.”

“What mess have you gotten yourself into this time? Whatever it is I don’t expect much out of you—you have always been tight fisted with your money, like someone who cuts vegetables in a spoon without spilling any water.”

“There’s money in it this time.”

“Ok, tell me, what is it?”

“The examination official is currently inspecting Shaoxing. There is this guy Jin Dongya who has been at the local government office for a few years, and who has made a nice pile of money for himself. Now he wants his son to take the examinations. His son is called Jin Yue, and is a complete imbecile. The examinations are coming, and Jin wants to find someone to take the test for his son. This examination official is very strict, so we will have to come up with a new way of pulling it off. This is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“How much is he willing to pay?”

A Shaoxing graduate is worth at least 1,000 ounces of silver. If he wants to take the easy road it will require 500 ounces. It’s just that now it’s hard to find a replacement for the exam, and even then, how will the replacement get in unnoticed? What will the payment be for the replacement tester? How much should the government office be bribed? And then, how will we split the money?”

“500 ounces total, and you still want to get a piece of it. Enough with this nonsense! You’re cut will be to get some of his thank-you gifts. there’s no need for you to worry about this!”

“Just as you say. Then, how will we do it?”

“Don’t you worry about that, I will find the replacement, and I will bribe the local office. You just tell him to get 500 ounces ready for me to keep in my shop as a deposit, and give me another 30 ounces to cover expenses. I will deliver him his graduate. If I don’t, I will not touch a penny of his 500 ounces. How about that?”

“Excellent.”

As the matter was settled, they agreed upon a date for the silver to be delivered.

Pan saw Li out. He came back in and said to Kuang, “I have something I could use your help with.”

“I heard you just now. The only thing I would be good for is to be the replacement. But will I be taking the exam on the outside and have it sent in, or actually go inside to take it? If you want me to go in, I’m afraid I don’t have the courage to do it.”

“Don’t worry, you can count on me! How could I let any harm come to you? You just go home and wait for the silver to arrive, and when the time comes, I will most certainly go to Shaoxing with you.”

That night Kuang left and returned home.

After a few days, Pan really did come with his luggage, ready to go. They passed the Qiantang river, and travelled all the way to Shaoxing prefecture. They found a place to stay down a secluded ally near the entrance to the examination official’s place. The next day Li the Fourth brought the boy in to meet them. Pan learned of the time of the exam, and early that morning he took Kuang to the examination hall, where he brought out a tall black cap, blue cloth gown, and a red belt. He had Kuang take off his clothes and put these on. He quietly reassured Kuang that if he did just as he told him to do, there wouldn’t be any trouble. He left Kuang at the gate to the hall, taking his clothes with him.

After five drumbeats and three cannon shots, the examination official entered the hall. Holding a stick, Kuang was called along with the other monitors inside to stand guard by the second gate. The examination official called out the candidates’ names, and when he got to the boy, Jin Yue, Kuang gave him a look. The boy knew the plan, and snuck off into the shadows. Kuang took a few steps backwards, and went to go find the boy. He crouched behind him, taking off his hat and gown, which he exchanged with the boy. The boy stood there holding his stick. Kuang took his test papers as assigned, and started writing the essays. He did not turn the papers in until the third or fourth beat of the clappers. He left, and not a soul knew of the switch. When the results were posted, Jin Yue passed with flying colors.

Pan accompanied Kuang back home, and gave him 200 ounces of silver as payment. Pan said, “Kuang, now don’t go and waste all of this ill-gotten money. Use it for something good.”

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My mother-in-law is staying with us for a few weeks, which means lots of good home cooking. It also means I can have home cooking for lunch, using a Chinese lunchbox:

It has three layers–the bottom is where the rice goes, and the top two are for different dishes. They can also hold soup. Even though there’s no place for a thermos, like in American lunchboxes, the food stays warm for a long time, and the soup can kind of substitute for a drink anyway.

And my wife brings it to me every day at work! She’s the best wife ever!

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