Freestyle Mandarin Learning
By Michael ‘Mickey’ Finn @WIEChina
I had just graduated university with a master’s degree
in Journalism and absolutely no job prospects, like many other people in my
situation. Since I’m Irish, I might as well keep up with tradition and emigrate
to a bigger country with more opportunities.
Most of my peers would venture to Canada, Australia or
England; places with very mild culture shock and slightly inferior butter, but
I didn’t want to have to land on the ground risking my money on the chance that
I might get a job.
Both of my older sisters have lived abroad, one in
Korea and the other in Spain, and taught there as ESL teachers. Having already
gotten my TEFL over the summer before graduation, I just needed to search
endlessly for positions in Asia that weren’t scams, eventually settling for
Guangzhou.
They both had an advantage in their respective
countries; one studied Spanish in school and the Korean Hangul system actually
makes sense, unlike Chinese which is just a bunch of squiggles thrown into a
giant bag and understood, for some reason, by two billion people.
I have never shown an interest in learning Chinese and
was cautiously optimistic about the move, since China is usually used as a
euphemism for; ‘a place far a away that does things differently’ (see, the
wrong way).
Naturally, I had to polish out the basics of the
language, so I got a dictionary and a beginner’s textbook. “Ni Hao, Wo Jiao
Mickey...... Okay, I just have to learn this pinyin first and worry about the
tones later. I can’t expect to recognise these characters, there’s millions of
them”.
In the weeks leading up to my departure, I knew I had
a long way to go, so hopefully manic gestures and loud shouting could bridge
the language divide. From my experience of traveling abroad, surely service
staff would have some level of English?
I arrived in Guangzhou, still unsure how to pronounce
the name of the city (Guang....Jew?) and was introduced to the office of my new
company. It was amazing to be in the middle of a city where every forth
building was taller than the tallest building in Ireland. This was the centre,
and aside from the massive population, the heat and the non-latin script on all
the signs, it felt like a normal city.
Until I got settled into my kindergarten, my Chinese
co-workers were sorting everything left right and centre. I could give the
learning a break, but picked up things passively. “So 入口 means ‘entrance’ and 出口 means ‘exit’”,
I noticed but didn’t know what the pronunciation meant.
My new kindergarten was in the peripheral Zengcheng
City, about two hours from all my new friends in Guangzhou by bus, and with me
as the resident laowai. Getting hollered at was an hourly occurrence once I
left my house, since I am white and bearded. Old people and children would
stare, and groups of teenagers would shout ‘HALLOU’ and ‘You are very handsome!’,
and there wasn’t much to do but soak it in. Back in Ireland, I’d get attacked
for no reason.
The city was a chaotic but organised, motorbikes with
a family of five and no helmets would risk death from the potential carnage
that is a normal Chinese road. Chickens would wander around my apartment
complex and elderly women would randomly point their grandchild’s arse like a
gun and let them go to the toilet on the street. The streets were alive most of
the night, unlike Ireland which can be calm, quiet and where most shops are
closed by 19:00, except for the pubs.
None of my co-workers spoke English, nor did the
motorbike taxis or the ‘mei nu’s at restaurants, so I was relying on WeChat too
much and being ripped off for my ignorance. I couldn’t approach this language
as a school subject, it was sink or swim.
From the other laowais I’ve met here, they seemed to
be able to put us into taxis and talk to the drivers with confidence, as well
as order food and booze. At the time, I thought they were amazing, but in
hindsight, they were just shouting out important words with absolutely
atrocious tones, but it’s better than nothing and I just needed to communicate.
“Food, right. This little thing here（鸡）means chicken, so I’ll have to just get that and hope
that all those other ‘sqiggles’ mean something that taste good”. Eventually
asking for a tai dan was second nature and I learned the words for all the main
meats, so if there were no pictures, I’d close my eyes and dive in. My new
favorite vegetable is eggplant, so I needed to ask about ‘Chay-zi’ (qiézi 茄子).
Eventually I was using the motorbike taxis so much I
was giving ‘zuo’, ‘you’ and ‘Bǐzhí zǒu’ (I even recognised the important
characters looked the same, 左 and 右.
Communication with the teachers was rough, and I often
felt lonely and isolated. But I eventually figured out how to ask for things
(wo yao.... Eeeeeh.... Scissors?) and for directions (eeeeeh.... Zhe ge.... Zai
na li?), but there was definitely a distance.
By the time I moved back into the city, I have been
picking off Chinese characters in road signage, classrooms, and other
resources. If I could pick off a character I recognised and learn through
context, I’d have a better vocabulary.
“I see that character, 公. I’ve
seen it in the word for park, which is GongYuan, 公园, like
the money, but with out that box thing around it, 元. There’s a district in Guangzhou called SanYuanLi, 三元里, so I’ve added Li to my vocabulary, I’ll figure out
what it means later”, just an example of some word association. I could go for
months recognising the use of a character, but never how to pronounce it.
As a smoker, I started smoking 中南海. Never knew how say the word, just pointed to the box
behind the counter, “zuo..... Eh, yi dian. Eeeeh bai (white). Dui dui dui. duōshǎo qián?”.
“中, that’s easy, it’s zhong.... Like
zhongguo, the word for China. It means middle because it’s like a stick
piercing a box, in the middle”. I always knew that Nan meant south, but never really
focused on the character until I looked at a map of China, which has always
helped me connect the dots.
“So Nanjing was the southern capital and Beijing is
the northern capital. Beijing is 北京, Nanjing
is 南京, great! I’ve internalised the Chinese compass.
I know the Shang (上) in Shanghai means up.... or something.
Oh, that 海 character looks familiar. Ah! 中南海 means zhong nan hai!”
To recall the numerous examples of learning phrases
and characters this way would take a whole novel. I learn from my students, I
learn from getting lost, and seeing two words combine to make another word
makes me appreciate just how amazingly intuitive this language is.
“So ‘Duo’ means ‘more, and shao means ‘less’? Duoshao
means ‘How much’ (多少). Just like how ‘DaXiao’ means ‘Size’, by
combining big and small, 大小”.
After months of frustration with the abysmal internet
in this country, I started watching some English language TV on Bilibili.tv,
which have English subtitles. I didn’t think I’d learn so much from it, but it
was very helpful: Any time Hank Hill said ‘That’s great’, i’d see a 太好了, I instantly recognise ‘hao’ as good, and the tai
means sun, or very. TaiHaoLe. When a character wants to confirm if everyone
knows what’s going on, I’d see 明白, Ming and Bai, Ming from MingTian （明天）which means ‘Tomorrow’, and Bai (白) means white, from the time I spent in the Baiyun (白云) district in Guangzhou.
After two years in China, I can now banter with the
Chinese teachers, and talk to them about my lesson plans without a translator,
but if the conversation gets to heavy on vocab, a simple ‘ting bu dong’（听不懂）will let me off the hook.
As for dating and making small talk with strangers, I
have held my own. In my position, you have to ‘fake it til you make it’, that
is what my new friends were doing when I first moved here when talking to the
taxi driver or when they ordered food. They sounded like idiots, but Chinese
people know they are trying, and anyone who tries to fit in deserves the
appropriate amount of respect.
Getting roped into a conversation with someone who has
no English is about picking up on the words you can recognise: “Ni bla
bla blab na li aaah”, I hear him say while he offers me a cigarette. I
understand ‘ni’ meaning ‘you’ and ‘na li’ means where. So I just reply; “Wo shi
AiErLan Ren”, meaning I come from Ireland. The other words I have to look out
for would be ‘gong zuo’ (工作) meaning ‘work’ and, as previously
mentioned, DuoShao.
The children I teach would constantly badger me in
Chinese, and the English they do know are mainly token phrases that they blurt
out; “Mickey Laoshi! I am a butterfly!” It really helps the learning process
for me when I reverse engineer my lessons to teach me the vocabulary in
Chinese. It also helped me learn that ‘Teacher Mickey’ sounds very similar to ‘Mickey
Mouse’ in Chinese, something all my students pick up on very quickly.
My relationship with coworkers in China has always
been a ‘fly on the wall’ look into this culture that I never thought I’d be so
immersed in. Teaching small children and teenagers from time to time lets me
see the level of micromanaging that goes into the upbringing of a Chinese
child. Free time is a curse for these parents, whereas if my parents ever
suggested I do some school work on a weekend or summer, I’d report them for
abuse! I learned guitar because it was my passion and could get women, and even
then I would never interrupt a weekend for lessons. To learn.
But I can’t complain about the very attitude that puts
rice in my belly.
This level of pigeon Chinese will have to make way for
some formal training at some stage, and I can’t rely on the Baidu Translate app
to fill in the blanks if I want to keep living here, thus becoming some bitter
and jaded expat who segregates himself from the natives like some factory owner
living in the Shanghai Concessions circa 1920.
Cultures have always picked up traits and values from
others, be it religion, politics, sexual hangups or linguistics. You don’t lose
a part of your own culture for embracing another, which is the depressing
attitude that is prevailing in many western countries, where people vote in
wealthy tyrants instilling xenophobia to scapegoat the failings of their
country.
Coming from Ireland, which has had its population
decimated by emigration and famine over 160 years ago, it has been amazing to
see the social landscape change as more foreigners assimilate into our country,
professional and unskilled alike, bringing their own slice of life into our
society. I hope China can experience the same, as it went from a poverty
stricken hermit state into one of the most influential countries in the world.
Living abroad, no matter how similar or different it
is from your homeland can have major benefits for your outlook. You learn more
about your own language when learning another, and your experience can help
improve aspects of the society that you came from.
No country is an island...... Not even the ones
surrounded by water and sharks.
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