In the west we celebrate the ticking of the year in the deep dark. Here in the middle kingdom the hope and dreams for the new year are celebrated in the deepest cold of winter. Both are a kind of leap of faith.
New year is not so different here; family, food, and a festive feeling of lightness. Everywhere is the color red. The red characters of Abundance and Spring, poem written red waterfalls of paper frame doorways, and new red clothes are worn to welcome the first day of the year.
Like in the west, time stands still for a few days.
In Beijing it is against the rules to play with fireworks, but it is not against the law. For the past week explosions have echoed down the canyon of apartment complexes setting off dogs and car alarms. The subway is crowded with luggage totting “not-Beijinger’s” on their journey’s home. In between the flash and blast of fireworks the city takes on a quieter feel as cars thin from the streets and the city quiets into the arrival of the new year.
Guangzhou is a thousand miles due south of Beijing, and has a winter like that of Taipei, cold and damp. Today’s low in Beijing is 14°F, the high is 42. In Guangzhou it is 50 degrees, but we don’t have the heated interiors of cities north of the Yellow River. The thin pair of long underwear seemed like a good idea as Miss Wang and I were packing for points south, our final destination of this Spring Festival is Thailand. In a word, another wrong choice. The heat of Thailand is still five days away.
There is something distinctively different between the feel of northern cities and those of the south. Perhaps it is the white tile and palm trees, or that the streets tend toward narrow, or that businesses tend to spill their goods out onto the sidewalk. Perhaps it is the rounded sound of southern slurred Mandarin that lacks the rubble of Beijing “hua”. Regardless of reason, spending the new year in a place that reminds me of Taiwan gives me the feeling of having returned home.
It is a company that does not revolve its business or practices around the pivot of profitability. Incentive, excellence, even mediocrity are not to be found within its fossilized business structure.
It is an old style company
This is the excuse given for why no one will ever, never ever give a straight answer, speak a truth, break the lock step structure of who is above or below in the interest of efficiency or productivity.
It is an old style company
Which means it operates on a kind of human capital of connection that is terribly elusive to the western mind. Iron rice bowls dull any sense of incentive or innovation. Individual brilliance is suspect; there is safety in the rule of committee where no one can be blamed, nor can they bring forth anything with a spark of metamorphosis or ingenuity.
It is an old style company
Horizontal communication is absent. No one would dare to step outside the rigid structure of their duties. Anything that might streamline or pre-empt problems, anything that could smooth a process, or remove an obstacle is experienced as a threat. A problem is not a problem if it can be ignored, or passed onto someone else.
It is an old style company
Which means nothing gets done between the hours of 11am and 2pm, and if it is after 4pm you had better come back tomorrow.
It is an old style company
Which means there is far more pride in past proclamations of victory, than curiosity and drive to create something unique for the future. Stealing or copying past their pull date ideas is preferred to taking a shot at the moving target of the unknown.
It is an old style company
Popular books which students and practitioners clamor for are not printed or shipped, they must resort to purchasing pirated copies. At the same time, resources are spent on sketchy markets which are not likely to turn a profit. Foreigners are not consulted on what opportunties lay within our borders. The all seeing top-down fantasy of Chinese know more about Chinese medicine is like an iceburg waiting for a shipwreck. But, after all it is….
…an old style company
Beijing has changed a lot since I lived here in 2002-04. Most of the old “hutongs” the winding alleys where the “Old Beijingers” have lived for centuries have either been replaced with 35 story apartment buildings, or have been rehabbed into tourist districts where endless streams of tour groups are ridden through on ricksaw/bicycle like things. The once emblematic bicycle of Beijing has disappeared like frogs from the rain forest.
While China opened one door to the world with the summer Olympic games, they slam another shut with torturous new regulations and rules concerning the acquisition of work visas. After three months in China, three months of rat maze regulations and evil-clown house of mirrors human resource procedures I am either one step away from the paperwork that will force me out of the country yet one more time so I can receive the coveted Z visa, or even further a field as yet more obstacles loving appear to test my commitment.
I really did think I would just slip right back into an Asian life, but I’m finding that I’ve brought more “baggage” than those two suitcases. Time to burn some more karma. Life is a bitch when the the man in HR with the iron rice bowl is your new meditation teacher.
Love this Chinese from Micky D’s recent Ronni MacSpicy campaign-
I’m not afraid of spice;
Spice does scare me;
Not hot and spicy, now that’s scary!
熱鬧, in Chinese, it translates as “lively.” To the standardly tuned Western ear it would translate as a riptide of cacophony, chaos and volume. But, in the middle kingdom it means joy and excitement. Especially around Western holidays that generate gifts and gatherings, singing and funny hats, shared meals and an excuse to enjoy the company of those who light your life. Christmas in China, is anything but a silent night.
While it does not turn the wheel of commerce with a feeling of held breath at the end of the year. It does show up here as carols blaring over tired speakers that compete with the rapid-fire barking of instructions by the green army coated attendants that help the Chinese to navigate their cars in a direction completely foreign to Chinese thought and habit; reverse. There are red elf hats on every waiter and waitress, red Christmas cups at Starbucks, and grinning Santa’s hung like a revolutionary Mao next to the Chinese symbols for abundance and renewal.
The old Catholic church at Wangfujing, a relic from before the “liberation” hosts throngs of those born after Deng Xiaoping’s “opening” of China, who know nothing other than increasing material wealth and Christmas as a western import that allows them to gather with friends, light sparklers, eat ice cream and be happy. The original message of a young rabbi who preached a liberation theology; spoke of an inward turning that allowed a glimpse of heaven, is as lost on them as it is on much of our western world with its blind adherence to an outward worship of dogma and faith.
Still, I suspect that young rabbi just might have resonated with the “re nao” light generated in the dark of the year. Connected with the noise and heat that is generated from the connection of humans engaging each other with joy and happiness. Perhaps it is that which brings the sun back from the cold and dark for another spin around the seasons. We all benefit from a season of renewal.
It no doubt slid down from Siberia, across the plains of Mongolian, ripped across the Great Wall and then screamed into Beijing on 40mph winds. Like a dry cold typhoon, winter arrived on the night of solstice, it whistled through leaky windows, evaporated the remaining withered willow leaves and left in its wake a shimmering cold. The kind that is brittle and beautiful.
It starts in October, the first pair of long underwear. Those of us that work indoors get away with a thin pair and a feather coat. Those who make their living on the street go for the thicker woollier variety. As winter sets its teeth even those of us with desk jobs don’t brave the cold without two layers under our otherwise business attire.
Although biting cold, and when accompanied by wind it is like walking against a thousand knives, this sharp winter Beijing cold while it cuts to the bone, lacks the tortuous grip of Taipei’s dampness. Still the wise person will heavy the external to repair the intrinsic!
Ever seen the casual use of Chinese in the USA on clothing, hats, tattoos, or simply thrown in to some art to look cool. It probably sounds a lot like this.
Those who study Chinese know there are…..tones
We fear them like an attitudinal drill Sergeant, we know we are in for trouble. Fortunately, most of us don’t know just what kind of trouble until we are well into acquisition of the language. At which point there is no retreat.
Sinosplice is a great blog for those who have an interest in learning Mandarin or glimpses into the nuances of Chinese life. Its author John Pasden, of Chinesepod fame, recently wrote this great entry concerning the learning and use of tones in Chinese. Perhaps it helps that he has a degree in applied linguistics, but I suspect it is his love of language and interest in Chinese that pushes him into territories from which he brings back gems like this.
Anyone who has studied Chinese for any length of time knows that trying to fit the Chinese that comes out of our mouths into the directional arrows that point the directions of tone is at best a static approximation of a more slippery and organic process. In truth, anyone who has studied Chinese for any length of time knows that trying to fit the Chinese that comes out of our mouths into the directional arrows that point the directions of tone is at best a static approximation of a more slippery and organic process. Like navigating a black diamond ski slope, there are key moments when the edges grab and carve, the rest of the time it is float and fly.
This model introduced at Sinosplice suggests another approach to engaging tones.
Should you be working on your Chinese, keep it mind as you both listen and talk. I’ve found it makes a difference.
This morning in the elevator, oddly enough, I got most of the chitter-chatter gossip. Stepping out onto the grit ground concrete stairs the soap opera of who cussed out whose wife falls into my ears with startling clarity.
I don’t understand the Beijing accent that well.
But, today it is suddenly different. Instead of syllables disappearing into tongue curled “rrrrr” thin air, I hear them being swallowed in the throat.
It is like a Cockney accent; except it is Chinese.
There really is no word for “went,” “ate,” “drove,” “wrote.”
It all happens now; go, eat, drive, write .
Just like unmodified verbs always express the action occurring in the moment of here and now.
It makes the grammar of Chinese terribly simple. No verbs to conjugate. No agreements to facilitate between a noun and its ver-being. In English, we conjugate, but in Chinese we make use of these constructs called “resultive verb endings.”
They are like verbs with footnotes.
吃不下- eat, not go down (I’m stuffed)
走不動- walk, not move (too tired to take another step)
想不出- think, not come out (it’s on the tip of my tongue
)
看不起- look, not go up (look down on someone)
看得出來- look, as it is (it seems that)
吃得慣- eat, being accustomed to (used to eating something)
Simple? Yes! But, it drives us westerners, with our perchance for making nouns and verbs agree with each other, a bit crazy from time to time.
But, perhaps not as crazy as the Chinese (with their ever present linguistic focus on the present) must feel when trying to run their thoughts through the grammatical constructs of the English language.
They often 想不起來 (can not think it through) so, we end up with:
“The spasm was as serious as contraction, causing the eyes and mouth deviated and salivation in sleep.”
Recently, her menstruation was postdated and with distending pain in abdomen.
Now her complexion was dark, nose obstructed with thick and sticky discharge which was repeatedly onset when exposed to cold or without obvious reasons.Now his toothache better-and-worse made him unable to eat and unable to sleep.
…he felt obstructed in the ear, especially in raining days.Three times of acupuncture made her pain stopped.
Chinese medicine is already a foreign language even when it is in English. As is so often the case, the square pegs of one language, have a rough go at morphing into the round pegs of another. It would not be such challenge if it were only words and grammar that needed to be filtered; there is also the trapdoor of underlying cultural assumptions.
That, however, is a story for another time.