ZAO GAO

Something I’ve neglected to mention is that the four Yale fellows (Hayley, Alex, Gabe, and I) and most of the other American students on this program are all living with local Chinese students as our dorm roommates, so they can help us practice and learn about Chinese culture and things. So the other day Alex’s roommate Xin Tong asked me what my zhuan ye was, and I was extremely excited because I knew both that zhuan ye means college major AND how to answer in Chinese (I KNOW RIGHT). But when I responded with an oh-so-confident, “Yingwen,” his face fell. Because, as he managed to express to me, who spends their college career studying the language they were born knowing how to speak?? For God’s sake, didn’t I know it already?? In an attempt to salvage the situation, we frantically looked up the word for literature, and I hurled it at him in a panic—WENXUE WENXUE WENXUE—but the damage was done: Xin Tong thinks I’m a bit of an idiot.

I didn’t think this would be a problem, because I’m not an idiot, and I assumed that this would become clear in the ordinary course of things. But, um, I’ve spent now a good amount of time with Xin Tong (he is actually awesome and takes us all on outings), and, um, he still asks me to count things out loud. Like to count to nine. In English or Chinese. And this has forced me into a realization: If you were to start with the assumption that I am stupid, which Xin Tong unfortunately has, NOTHING I DO OR SAY IN THIS COUNTRY WOULD LEAD YOU TO CHANGE YOUR MIND. After all, here is how I spend my time:

1.     Studying words he knew as a toddler

2.     Mispronouncing words he knew as a toddler

3.     Misunderstanding words he knew as a toddler

4.     Doing stupid things as a result having a functional vocabulary smaller than that of a toddler

I contend that, except for that one time I didn’t lock the bathroom door right, all of the questionable situations I’ve gotten myself into have been a problem of language confusion (And even the bathroom thing would have been better if I had known Chinese and didn’t have resort to wordless yelling)(But that did work). And not all of these errors can be solved with Google Translate.

Take crossing the street, for example. I keep almost getting hit by cars, but I realize that it’s because I’m mistranslating the pedestrian signals. When I see the little green walking man, I think he means, “Traffic has stopped; proceed across the street.” But I’ve figured out that what the Beijing little green man means is “Now’s as good a time as any to risk life and limb; proceed across the street.” And I’ll tell you, in this context, the countdown feels somehow more ominous.

While we’re on the topic of traffic, something I haven’t figured out is where exactly cars and other vehicles are allowed. No matter where I am walking, there is always a a bike/scooter/sedan/16-wheeler creeping up behind me and then blasting its freaking horn in my ear. I AM SORRY I THOUGHT THIS WAS A SIDEWALK I HAVE MOVED ARE YOU HAPPY. Anyway, none of this is winning me many points with Xin Tong.

So now I have come to the question and answer I come to every post and every day of my life: What is the solution to all my problems? LEARN CHINESE. Last post I told you about tones and why they are standing between me and functional humanhood. Today I will tell you about Chinese characters.  Guess what: They are hard to learn.

In all the languages I’ve studied—Spanish, Italian, Latin, Korean (XIN TONG ARE YOU LISTENING)—once you know how to say a word you can also write it, because there is, you know, an alphabet. But with Chinese, you learn the pronunciation and tones and then this whole other category called characters!!! Which correspond to syllables, meaning a single word can be made up of two or three or four of them!!! With multiple strokes you are supposed to do in the right order!!!!! And the real zinger is that if you don’t know a word you see on the street or on a menu or in the doctor’s office, you can’t just sound it out—you have to write it into a fancy smart phone app (I don’t have one) or look it up in a Chinese dictionary (Difficult and time-consuming because of the no alphabet thing. Also I don’t have one) if you want to know how to say it. Ugh.

The one saving grace is that characters are made up in large part of different recognizable parts, called radicals. Radicals have their own independent meanings. For instance, here is the radical for “Water”:氵

Extremely helpfully, this radical appears in the characters for watery things like:

thirsty: 渴

sea: 海

shower: 洗澡

Before you get too excited, it also shows up in the characters for things absolutely unrelated to water like:

pretty: 漂亮

to not have: 没有

OK, if right now you are thinking, “Gee, I don’t know about absolutely unrelated, Liz-- Water is pretty and seems like an important thing not to not have,” do NOT talk back to me, but also GOOD GOOD YOU WIN. Finding ways to make radicals make sense in your mind, even when they don’t really, is Liz-Approved Method Number One For Learning Chinese Characters. The problem is, as we’re learning more and more characters, they are becoming less and less distinguishable. It’s no longer enough to remember that such and such character starts with that radical that looks like a backwards t because now we know ten that start with the backwards t!!! EESH!

Which brings us to Liz-Approved Method Number Two: make up elaborate stories. Take zao gao, which means What a mess! The characters are a little complicated, so I’ll make them nice and big:

糟糕

Confusing, right? Now think: “GRAB YOUR CHRISTMAS TREES AND YOUR SUITCASES AND RUN BECAUSE ALIENS ARE ABOUT TO ATTACK TOO LATE THERE’S ONE HOVERING OVER THE GRASS WHAT A MESS.” If you don’t see Christmas trees, suitcases or aliens (actually there’s just one alien), I promise you that if you find yourself trying to learn 35-50 new Chinese words a night, you will see crazier. And you will love it.

Bedtime now, because I have to get to class early tomorrow; I, um, accidentally slept through the first hour of class today due to an unfortunate alarm-setting error, 糟糕! 

Please don’t tell Xin Tong.