Chinese stories

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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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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For various reasons, the other day I set about trying to find a Nintendo DS in Beijing. Apparently it is officially sold in China as the iQue DS, and the official website lists places that are authorized to sell them, as well as a few of the games available in Chinese. I figured I might as well go to an official reseller so that I can be assured of getting good quality. Yea, right. First I stopped by Zhongguancun, because I was in the neighborhood, and wanted to check out what was available. On the second floor of the big electronics market there I found a “SONY” store that was also selling Nintendo Wiis and DSs. I asked about the DS, and they said “You just get the system and this little card, and we will show you how to download all of the games you want off the internet.” While the DS looked legit, there were not official games in sight, only the card.

The next day I went to the “official” reseller in Wangfujing, because it was near my work: the 4th floor of the Xin Zhongguo Toy Store. They had a tiny glass case full of game boys and what not, and a salesperson. I got the same story as in Zhongguancun—“Just get this card and the system, and we have a list of games you can choose from, and we’ll put them on the card for you.” I also found that I had to haggle at this place, and once I went low enough they had to get on the phone to who knows where to authorize allowing a certain price. Again, there were no official game cartridges for sale. Finally, after going there twice, they agreed on a price, and went to get the system for me. The salesperson disappeared for a good 10 minutes and came back with a “new” system. I turned it on and immediately noticed there were obvious scratches on the screen. “What are these scratches here?” “I don’t see any scratches.” “Here.” “Oh, that’s on the protective film.” “Well, if it’s protective film, it can be removed, right?” “No.” Give me a break. “Do you have any others?” “Let me check.” Disappears for another 10 minutes. “No.”

This is why I hate Wangfujing. I can recall another time going there into a prominently placed cell phone shop asking for a protective film for my phone. “Hold on, let us go get it.” 5 minutes later “that will be 50 yuan please.” 50 yuan?!? I got the one I have for 6 yuan in Haidian! If I wanted this kind of treatment I would go to the Silk Market.

A co-worker tipped me off about Gulou Dong Dajie. East of the Drum Tower in Beijing, it’s full of these little electronics and toy shops. The first one I went in only had little figurines. “Any DSs?” “No, keep going that way.” The next one was a gaming store painted all black inside with the Chinese equivalent of the Comic Book Guy: “Any DSs?” “No.” (keeps playing his video games on his computer) “Any in the shops nearby?” “Dunno.” Finally I found a little mom and pop shop called 酷玩e代  that also has a Taobao outlet. They immediately quoted me the price it took me 15 minutes to get to in Wangfujing. The lady kept chatting with online customers, while the husband got us the goods, no scratches, and the assistant expertly applied the protective covering to the screen. Finally a place with decent service, and that wasn’t trying to obscenely rip me off. I also noticed that they system they gave me was not the iQue, but the US version.

Now I know Nintendo is trying hard to fight piracy, as it says on its website, and have asked the US government to help address piracy problems. From the link:

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 14, 2008 – Nintendo of America Inc. has asked the U.S. Trade Representative to encourage specific governments around the world to take a more aggressive stance to combat piracy of Nintendo video games and systems. Nintendo filed its comments under a “Special 301” process, in which the U.S. Trade Representative solicits input from the public to underscore specific areas of concern.

While China remains the primary source of manufacturing pirated Nintendo DS and Wii games, Korea has emerged as the leader in distributing illegal game files via the Internet. Despite aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by Nintendo, Brazil and Mexico remain saturated with counterfeit Nintendo software. Meanwhile, Paraguay and Hong Kong continue to serve as major transshipment points for global distribution of illegal goods.
…

Below is a summary of Nintendo’s filing:

OVERALL: Nintendo recommends stronger laws in all countries against the circumvention of technological security measures. Video game pirates have developed DS game-copying devices and modification chips to target the security found in Nintendo’s hardware systems and allow the play of counterfeit software or games illegally downloaded via the Internet.

CHINA: China must pursue criminal prosecutions against people involved in large-scale piracy operations. Nintendo works with Chinese authorities, who seized more than 1 million fake Nintendo products in China during the past year. But not one counterfeiter has been prosecuted.

Apparently Nintendo entered the China market in 2003 selling the Gamecube in cooperation with iQue. But now it has been 5 years, and I still can’t buy official games and systems even in Wangfujing? For me if the legit things were available I would buy them, rather than trying to navigate the ROM websites which are likely to give my computer a virus, and when I don’t even know if they will work properly on my system. So I can sympathize with Nintendo for wanting to fight piracy, but I have to question their strategy: Asking the US to apply pressure and waiting around? Howabout making the real thing widely available and seeing if people will buy it? Not everyone is computer savvy enough to download the ROMs, install the programs, and whatnot, but if that’s the only option available, then people will learn real quick.

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Today’s Beijing News has an article on Yu Dan’s sequil to her Reflections on the Analects, called Revelations on the Analects, saying it has only sold at half of the rate of the first work in the two weeks it has been on the market. Now I read her first book after picking it up in a Wudaokou bookstore to see what all the fuss was about, and neither loved it nor disliked it. Even though it has the style I would expect of a Dr. Phil book on the subject, I thought it was refreshing that Chinese mainstream culture actually embraces scholarly topics, unlike the anti-intellectual mainstream American culture. I also like how the CCTV lecture programs on TV encourage people to learn about history and literature. I thought Yu Dan was helping to promote such interest, rather than trying to ride the wave of enthusiasm of the recent years. But a sequel? Give me a break.

I decided to check out Li Ling’s Stray Dog, a longer book on the Analects by a Beijing University professor. (Unlike Yu Dan’s book, this one wasn’t that easy to get ahold of.) Just from reading the introduction and a few pages of the body, I can tell that this book engages the Analects on a totally different level from Yu Dan’s book. The introduction was fascinating. First of all, Li Ling not only admits he never liked reading the Analects, unlike Yu Dan, who takes it as a given that the book has valuable lessons to offer us.

The intro also gives a brief account of the Analects’ reception in modern China, from the high enthusiasm of the early twentieth century, to the criticism of Confucius during the Cultural Revolution, to the current craze reemerging in China. He says that those who were the most ardent critics back in the day are the same people who are at the forefront of the craze nowadays. Probably not a dig a Yu Dan specifically, as he names other people, but one has to wonder…

Just by reading a few pages I could tell Li Ling did not just sit down to write a book on the Analects as Yu Dan seems to have done (even if it may have been published at an opportune time). Instead it is a result of a lifetime of scholarship, and you can tell the guy knows his stuff. It doesn’t make for as light reading, though, as he comments on every passage following the order of the original work. Li Ling says he aims his commentary at giving a non-political, non-religious, and non-moral interpretation, so most of it is explaining just what the heck the original means anyway. Its also refreshing that even though its written by an academic, it is readable and was actually a best-seller. There are very few philologists in the US that can make the same claim (if any?).

Even though my view of Yu Dan has changed, I was glad to see that her first book will be translated into English by Esther Tyldesley, because I’m for anything that would get folks interested in understanding China. The translation may not get the reception that the Yijing and Laozi usually get, but hopefully it will do well.

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After moving from the suburbs into the city, I was a little worried that there wouldn’t be as good a selection of bootleg DVDs as I had in Huilongguan. But there’s a store downstairs that has three boxes full that they keep out pretty much all of the time (one exception was during the 17th Party Congress). Normally its the usual mix of copies of Russian or Japanese versions of Hollywood or Chinese blockbusters or the ones shot in the back of the theater. Once in a while, though, there are older ones mixed in that I can’t help but wonder where they came from.

One was a copy of Les Chinois a Paris, a hilarious French film from 1974 in which the Chinese PLA invades France. The Chinese just march right into Paris, with no weapons or threat of violence whatsoever, and the French leadership flees in confusion. Supposedly a mockery of the Nazi invasion and those French who profited from the war, it also pokes fun at socialism and communism.

The other one I found the other day as I was looking for some interesting things to watch over the short New Year’s break, which was a copy of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, a documentary filmed in 1972. I was really shocked to see the surgery scene right at the beginning, in which they show a complete cesarean performed using only acupuncture as anesthesia! They put some needles in the lady’s legs, and some longer ones in her stomach. Two especially long ones, maybe 6 or more inches long, are placed vertically along her stomach, and all of the needles are hooked up to electricity. Then the doctors make a vertical incision right between the two long needles.

I was also surprised, because I may have lived near the place where one of the scenes was shot. After the surgery they visit a family in a 4-story brick compound, where the residents work in a nearby cotton factory. The buildings reminded me of the neighborhood where I rented an apartment for 3 months in the summer of 2005, to the northeast of 慈云寺桥 in Beijing. I think the neighborhood was called 八里庄西里, and hidden behind the new supermarkets and high rises near 四惠 is a neighborhood of those old brick compounds. I think it is the same area, because there was a cotton factory (probably just an administration building rather than an actual factory now) nearby. I liked the atmosphere of the neighborhood, because people would walk around and hang out in the courtyards between the compounds in a way that is impossible in the new gated communities that are springing up everywhere. I knew the buildings dated from the 60s, because of the artwork painted on some of them showing socialist themes and slogans. Unfortunately they were slated to be torn down, as they were labeled 危房, and everyone was to be relocated, presumably into high-rises. I remember reading posters and letters written by residents upset that the compensation was not what they expected. I wonder if those buildings have been torn down by now. If so, it is too bad, because with the new residential buildings being thrown up everywhere, you don’t get that sense of community that those older buildings gave.

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I have watched Chinese TV for more than three years, and have never seen an ad that I liked. Most are as bad as the locally produced used car lot ads back home, and the worst are the 5 second ones they run 3 times in a row. I hate that guy who says “yi er san si wei bi zhi!” (一二三四胃必治). I have no idea why a group of young ladies happily chant “我们都用妇炎洁” (we all use Fuyanjie douche), and whenever I see Zeng Zhiwei I can only think of him saying “I’ve got the runs!” (拉肚子) over and over in my head. (I also hate it when they have the volume of the ads several settings higher than the regular programs. Do the advertisers pay for the extra loud settings?)

So I was really surprised when Snickers (士力架) came out with an ad that was actually not completely mindless! I found it on tudou, and it’s one of those you have to watch a few times to catch all that is going on:

http://www.tudou.com/player/player.swf?iid=11031248

I sent it to a friend in Japan who, to my surprise, pointed out that it probably took its inspiration from a ‘Matrix ping pong’ sketch on a Japanese game show:

Even if the idea was copied, they still did a good job with it.

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There’s a new show on TV here that I’ve been following recently called the Golden Marriage (金婚). It stars Zhang Guoli (as Tong Zhi, a homophone of ‘Comrade’) and Jiang Wenli (as Wenli) as husband and wife. The concept behind the show is one I haven’t seen before, as every episode takes place one year after the previous one. It goes from 1956-2005. Chinese TV is different from American TV, in that they already have the whole series filmed and play 3 hour-long episodes a night. That way you can watch the whole thing in about a month. It lets you get more into the story I think, than the US way of playing episodes once a week over 8 months (that is if the show doesn’t get cancelled). It also makes a TV series become related to a period in your life. When I had mono I had nothing else to do, but watch 五月槐花香 (can’t think of a good translation at the moment) every day, and I was thankful there was something to take my mind off being sick.

I think the series Golden Marriage is important, because I have never seen a popular TV show here portray the pre-80s period (and I think this one is getting very high ratings). It also does not shy away from some of the serious issues from that time, and even pokes fun (in a very dry, Chinese way) at the social/political climate of the time without playing down the seriousness of the situations. Some of the funnier parts I can remember are when Tongzhi and his buddy do not know what it means to be a ‘rightist’, and when they joke about having to write criticisms of plays they have never seen. During the Cultural Revolution Wenli goes to have an abortion, and her mother-in-law goes to stop her because she thinks it will be a boy. She suceeds in stopping the doctors by threatening to write a big character poster denouncing them and parade it through the streets. There is also a few funny scenes when Tongzhi and a young lady converse by quoting lines from Mao Zedong back and forth at each other.

The names they want to give their children are funny, too. For their firstborn, if it was a boy, they wanted to name him Gesi (格斯) after Engles, but it was a girl, so they named her Yanni (燕妮) after Marx’s wife, who’s name was Jenny.

The series is also important because it shows the continuity in Chinese society that we don’t get to see from accounts of the turmoil of the 50s-70s period. I think it’s hard for us non-Chinese to imagine what it might have been like living during that time, and here is a completely plausible story of one family. In a lot of brief China histories from western news stories one gets the feeling that China did not really exist before 1980, or that it was this backward, chaotic place, but people really did live through that time. The series shows that even though many ideologies were thrown about, people still held on to old beliefs. For example, there was supposed to be equality between the sexes, but the family clearly favors having a baby boy over a girl.

There are some things in the series that would never fly in the US, like getting an abortion and parents slapping their children, though.

Another interesting thing about the series is that it does not shy away from the difference in sex education within the family between the generations. Wenli has no idea what to do on her wedding night, but her daughters are educated in school, and she feels foolish for trying to explain it to them.

Zhang Guoli is great in the series, too, and has really broken out of the Ji Xiaolan mold unlike his other co-stars from that series, Wang Gang (who always plays Heshen, or the not completely evil adversary willing to do anything to get ahead) and Zhang Tieling (who always plays the Emperor). Recently Zhang Guoli has been in another good TV series “Brothers” (亲兄热弟), and in his recent roles has played complex, flawed characters.

At one point in the series the couple’s daughter is going to get married, but doesn’t want a big, traditional Chinese wedding, because it would be too su (俗), which means something like common, conventional or vulgar. I found that interesting, because in the US people of the same generation may give the same reasons for not wanting a big church wedding.

In any case, I think this series will be a big hit. The only drawback about it is that there’s so much yelling and fighting between the husband and wife, and if you are in a bad mood it will only make things worse.

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We went to see Harry Potter 5 last night, because Tuesdays are half-off here. They have just finished remodelling the cinema lobby in the basement of New Oriental Plaza, and now there is a little press conference room off to the side. It is kind of neat, because you can peek through the cracks in the wall and watch the press conference that way. Yesterday there was a promotion for the upcoming movie Crazy Money and Funny Men (大话股神), which I guess is about the stock market. I only recognized two of the actors who were talking, Yu Entai (喻恩泰), who is in a popular sitcom about military cooks, and Li Qi (李琦), who is one of my favorite actors (usually plays the funny grandpa part, like in 东北一家人). Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to get an autograph.

One of the neat things about Beijing is that you see “famous people” once in a while. Of course the entertainment industry here seems small compared to other places, so being a star here doesn’t seem to mean as much, but my wife and I have spotted several “famous people” around Wangfujing, like Ai Hua, some anchor guy from BTV, and other random models/singers.  

Once we found our seats in the theater, the trailers started playing, and most seemed to be war movies for some reason. Two of them looked interesting. Feng Xiaogang’s (冯小刚) new war flick Assembly (集结号- IMDB plot summary: “A soldier fights to gain recognition for comrades who died during the Chinese Civil War”) caught my eye because the style reminded me of Saving Private Ryan, but the subject was China’s revolutionary war. Another was a cartoon war movie that I forget the name of, which also was about the revolutionary war I think, and combined styles of communist propaganda posters (red army soldiers striking poses) and more modern cartoon movies (some parts reminded me of Princess Mononoke in the way the characters moved). I thought it was interesting that the boring old war drama/propaganda genres are being remade, and incorporating some of these non-Chinese styles.

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