Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Learning Chinese is a Piece of Cake…….

The alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago.  The alphabet teaches you the basic sounds of a language so you can apply them in reading, writing and speaking of a language.  Gaining knowledge by applying basic concepts is how we are taught in schools in America (western thought).  In Chinese there is no alphabet so you have to learn the language in a different way; lots repetition and memorization.  But how are adults from the western world supposed to do that?

The Chinese language is a very ancient language.  Its modern written language comes from pictographs that have evolved over thousands of years so there is no alphabet.  Having no alphabet makes learning Chinese one of the most difficult achievements in the world.  If you want to sit down and read a newspaper in Chinese, you have to know on average a minimum of two thousand four hundred different characters.  Now how does a person who has been educated using western thought learn that many characters when there is no alphabet?  Step one; learn how to learn Chinese.

If you think you can memorize several thousand characters with flash cards, be my guest because you can only get so far before the brain reaches its limits and then starts to forget.  Of course there are some basic characters that you have to memorize in the beginning (and it will be as familiar as a bunch of scribbles).  These basic characters are important for learning most of the rest of the characters.  Simple characters such as the character for wood for example.  When you look at it and use your imagination you can see a tree with roots (stick figure tree).  Even just training your mind to use your imagination allows it to organize and make sense of the basic characters.  When you have memorized the basic characters you can start to learn the more complex characters.  Now you are applying your western style of learning to a language that has no alphabet.

Learning the complex characters takes more time than the basic ones. Now you have to apply basic concepts that you learned but you also have to memorize quite a bit still.  Complex characters are composed of basic characters called radicals.  Like the character for chair has the radical for wood on the left side of the character.  This shows that wood has something to do with the character; when you picture a chair in your mind is it made of wood?  You can learn Chinese when you can make some sense of it.  Step two; find an outlet to learn Chinese from.

I have been studying Chinese for two and a half years now and still have a very difficult time finding an outlet of which to study Chinese at my skill level.  Here in Beibei the university has provided us with a Chinese teacher to teach us introductory Chinese.  I have learned introductory material in a classroom setting three times now (which does me no good).  I am at an intermediate level and need more than what that class provides.  I have thought of a few ideas; read children’s books and get tutored by some of my Chinese friends while I teach them English.  Also it helps being immersed in the language by living in China. 

Isn’t it amazing how you can distinguish how people learn knowledge based off of how they learn their language?  Whether it is applying basic concepts (western thought) or memorizing all concepts (Chinese).  We shall see how I progress as I continue to learn this language.  Every day I can read more on the restaurant menus and street signs and the people become more understandable.  Piece of cake right?

Monday, November 28, 2011

Burgers and Fries to Replace Stir-Fry and Rice

During the summer of 2010 my sister and I drove from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to our home in Ashland Wisconsin; I had just finished a summer internship at the University of Southern Mississippi.  During the long 20 hour drive we traveled through Mississippi, part of Tennessee and Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.  When we entered the state of Illinois, we set sail into the endless sea of corn fields.  It’s a pretty boring drive when all you see is corn on the side of the road.  But isn't it also amazing?  Corn is the crop that feeds our industrialized food system. 

During the Chinese National Holiday I traveled to Chengdu China by fast train and was able to see much of the Chongqing and Sichuan landscape along the way.  The first thing that struck me was that there was no endless sea of corn and there were no large scale farms.  The hilly and mountainous landscape was dotted with small farming plots which all seems to be taken car of by different people and had many different crops growing in them.  Seeing this gave me a good idea for a class lecture.  I wanted to know what my students thought about using the industrialized food system in China.

First I showed my students the documentary film Food Inc to give them a good all around view of the way food is made in an industrialized system (the movie certainly makes you think more about where your food came from).  Then in the class following the movie we discussed what answers they came up with to this question, “Should China ever adopt the industrialized food system so as to independently feed its large population?”   Over all the results were about half and half for adopting or rejecting the food system.  The main argument for adopting the food system was to help overcome feeding the large population independently even though the consequences were great.  The arguments rejecting the food system were many.  Students used arguments stating environmental problems, emigrational problems, cultural problems and health problems.  None argued for human or animal rights (kind of a touchy subject here in China).         

 Yes the industrialized food system is great. We Americans are able to spend less of our annual budget on food than most people in other countries around the world.  Our grocery stores don’t have seasons anymore, and they have an average of forty thousand different products to choose from.  One of our major exports is food because we can produce so much of it so cheaply.  Other countries cannot compete with our food system.  For example, think about how widespread McDonalds is in the world.  McDonalds is everywhere (over 31,000 restaurants in 119 different countries world-wide).  Go America!  Right?  Also keep in mind many Americans don’t know how to cook, can’t afford to cook healthy food, don’t eat together as a family and have some sort of health problem related to their diet.  And don’t forget the large carbon footprint and all of the human and animal rights violations that are created by manufacturing this super cheap food.   
Personally it makes me feel disgusted when I see a McDonalds in the Forbidden City in Beijing or KFC in downtown Beibei.  American fast food restaurants don’t belong in China and frankly neither does the American industrialized food system.  Chinese food is a big part of Chinese culture; culture that comes from how the food is grown, processed, cooked and then eaten.   China is already losing a lot of its culture by being on the fast track to modernization.  Why should burgers and fries replace stir-fry and rice?  With an industrialized food system already in America, I wonder what food-related culture we Americans have lost (how food is grown, processed, cooked and eaten).              

Sunday, November 6, 2011

The Toilets in China are Different

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top.  You cannot not reach the higher levels of the pyramid without fulfilling the lower ones first.  The part of the pyramid that I am stressing here is the physiological part; more specifically excretion. 

In America we have public toilets everywhere so you don’t have to stress out or worry about what to do when nature calls.  Every public restroom will have privacy, have toilet paper and have a sink to wash your hands.  I don’t mean to put the American public restroom system on a pedestal; I have experienced my fair share of dirty, stinky and scary public restrooms in America.  But of all of the dirty, stinky, and scary public restrooms I have experienced in America, none have prepared me for public restrooms in China.

In China the idea of a toilet is completely different.  You don’t sit down and relax while you do your duty, you have to squat over a porcelain hole in the floor (the dreaded squatting toilet).  I don’t know about you but I find it very difficult to relax in that squatting position even if I am using facilities that have burning incents, calming tradition Chinese music playing in the background, and beautifully decorated stalls (my hips and knees are just not used to it).  Even becoming comfortable with using a squatter in a nice environment like the one that I just described, is difficult.  I used to have nightmares about using squatting toilets (not really, but I definitely avoided them like the plague) and that didn’t change until I brought myself to the brink of disaster.  Sometimes you eat something that your body just doesn’t agree with and your body will spring into action (out of the blue) and give you the five minute countdown to find a toilet or else……  I could be ten or fifteen (or longer) minutes away from home (my beloved western style toilet) and refuse myself to use a nearby squatting toilet and hike all the way back to my apartment (I would not suggest doing so).  Like I said, my fear of using a squatter took me to the brink of disaster before I finally gave it a try. 

Now even though you may have become comfortable with using squatting toilets doesn’t mean that you have gotten comfortable with public restrooms.  It is very important to remember which public restrooms are nice and which ones look like and smell like a sewage tank.  You don’t want to be forced to use a public restroom that smells like ammonia so bad that it burns your nostrils and makes you eyes water or one that doesn’t have flushing toilets.  Just the environment of a public restroom can give you nightmares that continue to scare you away from ever using squatters.  When learning to become accustomed to squatters, it is wise to purposely go to places that have very well kept restrooms (like at a nice café or restaurant). 

After becoming accustomed to using squatting toilets I have come to understand the reason of their design (I have allowed myself to rise to a higher region of Maslow’s pyramid!).  When you use a squatting toilet, you are not touching anything (except for your shoes on the ground) so it is cleaner.  Can you imagine using western style toilets in an over populated country like China (kind of gross if you ask me)?  Anyway, when you visit China, the sooner you can get over your fear of using a squatting toilet, the sooner you can start enjoying yourself by allowing yourself to rise past the bottom region of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Just have patience and an open mind and everything will be more enjoyable.