Pudding and Chopsticks

There is one thing I do not like. I have just recently found this out since I’ve been in China. I don’t like people laughing at me. At all.

Why do I bring this up, well, this morning I had another, yes another run in with this girl. She is a coworker, is high strung, can’t speak English and hounds me for paper work all the time. This paper work I have no idea that it is or where to get it. I recently became a manager of some sort and well, got thrown into the fire. Which is ok because I just do whatever I want anyway. But she keeps asking for paper work or something and yada yada yada. Beats me. But she speaks Chinese, and in my opinion it’s horrible. Terrible. It’s not standard Chinese. She has too much of her local dialect mixed in. So I don’t understand it. Then she speaks really fast. Acts like I’m stupid when she talked to me and then laughs. This time is was in the office with a bunch of people. They also started laughing.

As much as the are on saving face she doesn’t seem to care about mine. I told her to send me an email in Chinese and them I can translate it super quick and find out what the hell she is talking about. But it seems that it’s beyond her to actually do that.

So it seems that my intelligence is being based on my Chinese speaking ability. She can’t comprehend that I have only been here two years and have smoked most people who try to learn the language.

Anyway I turned and walked out of the office and slammed the door. It’s funny that the minute that I laugh at them for their English sucking or not being able to speak it at all they understand why I am angry, but the minute I can’t speak Chinese.. They laugh. Double standard. Oh, that’s a good expression. I’ll have to find a translation for that.

My throat is killing me. Well, not really killing me more like swollen and not the most awesome thing. The reason, well, I can only speculate because of what I ate yesterday. I went to a pizza place (Pizza Hut knock off) to eat and scope out a girl that I got the hots for. I ordered my Super Ached pizza and asked for hot sauce / peppers. The guy left and came back with, um, not Tabasco but a little dish full of peppers and oil. This is not uncommon, so I was like yeah awesome. I started eating the hotness. It was hot and it was good. Although when I finished the heaping table spoon I noticed something. That something was swollen. My mouth, and my throat started to get scratchy. Not good. This usually happens when I eat nuts. Yes, I am allergic to nuts. Darn. It wasn’t that bad and I had only eaten  little. I also wasn’t that worried because my Chinese is good enough to get me to the hospital. Haha. Well, that’s kinda true. So I held out and it started to go away. But this morning. Oh boy. It felt like my throat was the Gobi desert and needed water. It’s swollen and not feeling good. But anyway.

So I am sitting here at Starbucks again. More like a mobile office. All the power outlets are taken. I got here a little late from my usual time. So I decided to sit upstairs in the thick of it all. Where I can  hear everyone. Love me some eaves dropping. It reminded me of something that most foreigners that have never been to China don’t know. Everyone in China speaks two languages. Most anyway that where born after the proclamation of the current government in 1949.

China is basically a bunch of different places that are put together. Because it is hard to travel from place to place back in the day, and probably a bunch of other reasons. Every city and town mostly have their own language. But the current gov which started in 1949 the gov mandated that a standard Mandarin Chinese be taught in all schools. So kids learn Mandarin at school and their hometown language from their parents. I got reminded of this because there are a few lovely ladies have a massive conversation in the local dialect. Which I don’t understand at all. A few words will get through that I recognize. But for the most part, hell, they could be talking about how handsome I am and I can’t do anything about that.

This is also a good point to bring up because of business. Even if you speak Chinese your vendor, partner, whomever you are doing business with, can switch to their local language so long as who they are talking to speaks it. Shady, I know. That’s why you never let anyone know you can speak Chinese. Shady on my part, maybe, but you don’t thing they are doing something shady either. Please.

Anyway. This whole dialect thing is pretty similar to Texas. I mean really who the hell understands them.

Well, learning Chinese. My thoughts and ideas.

First let me tell one of the reasons I came to China was to learn a second language. I always wanted to speak something other than good ole English. So why not Chinese. If you going to go for totally crazy than yeah awesome.

My goals with learning Chinese are not unlike other goals I set for myself. Totally out there. I mean, I would like to be native. But really, I think the word native habors a little, well, born and raised aspect to it. But nontheless I would like to speak Chinese like a Chinese person. It’s going to take a bit but someday.

Will this benefit me, No. Kind of. Only in China. Maybe I could find a job outside of China where in I would need to speak Chinese but that would be rare. So I do plan on being here for a bit. If not to learn Chinese then to expand my perspective on life and all the philosophical Goobly gooby gook. All Chinese now have to study English in school and most suck at it. This means that really, English is going to take over.

These are from a blog I found a bit ago. The site is here.

Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time

1. Many Well Educated Chinese People Would Prefer to Speak to You in English – Even if your Mandarin is better than their English
2. Little Applicable Value Outside of China - Most mid to upper level Chinese managers speak okay to great English. The only people you typically need Mandarin to communicate effectively with in a business environment is low level management. If you aren’t stationed in China, then, knowing Chinese won’t help you much in communicating with most Chinese companies.
3. Possible Negative Market Value – To really be able to use your Mandarin, you’ll need to move to China, where you may have to take a large pay cut to get a job in which being fluent in Chinese would be an asset. This quote from the economist article linked above sums up things nicely:
   

   Within China companies can hire an expatriate who speaks Chinese. Or, more often, they take their pick from an abundant supply of local graduates in English who are happy to work for 2,000 yuan (£130) a month. “I took an 80% pay cut to come here because I wanted to learn the language,” says Ken Schulz, a software engineer from Silicon Valley who studied Chinese full-time for four years at Beijing’s University of Language and now works in the capital at WorkSoft, an outsourcing firm. “I’m the only foreigner in an office of 1,200 people, and I hardly get any opportunity to use my Chinese.”

4. Huge Opportunity Cost – To really learn Chinese well, including reading and writing, you need to spend years studying intensively. These are years in which you could learn several romance languages or another skill set or perhaps even a profession.
5. Non-Negligible Maintenance Costs - Even though I speak Mandarin when dealing with customers, read a Chinese magazine / newspaper daily, watch a bit of TV, and speak almost exclusively in Mandarin with my girlfriend (and some friends), my Chinese skills are slipping. It takes a lot of effort just to maintain, nonetheless improve, your Chinese.

Do I Regret Learning Chinese?

No, but from a practical standpoint there are many things I could have done with my time to get into a better job and develop a skill-set that is worth more on the job market. Learning Chinese was a good move for many other reasons, just not the ones that have to do with making money or getting a better job.

The author above states some good opinions.

1. Yes I agree. However we are talking about international companies that at global. Big companies in China that do not need to be international probably do not speak English. Factories and such. But there are people, I’ve met them that want to speak English to you whatever it takes. You start speaking Chinese to them, they speak English to you. They want to prove that they are just as smart or smarter then you for speaking English. It becomes a war. I hate it, but it comes with being in a foreign country.

2. True. Think about it. Where the H would you need Mandarin outside China. Not many places. You have effectively cut out a good percentage of the world. Or have you. Maybe not. Who knows, no one really. But odds are that you are not going to be able to use your killer Mandarin skill outside of China.

3. Yeah kind of. This dude that came here to learn Chinese. Well, he probably didn’t have a job while he was learning it. I do, I may learn it slower, but I guess that I’ll have a paycheck. After learning Chinese your market value could go up, at least in China.

4. You could be doing better things than say, studying, and living in China. It takes time to learn and master during which you could learn how to make rockets that go to the moon. Either way.

5. This is probably going to be me. However, I do get a kick out of talking to random people on the street.

All and I enjoy learning something new. I’ve found out that I need new things to keep awake in life. In Chinese there is something new everyday.

Recommendations.

If you want to drop everything and do something new, bail and get to China. Learn some Chinese.

If you want to really learn Chinese, you going to have to be here for a stint. 5 years, 8 years, who knows. But it’s going to be a bit. Long term commitment.

If you deal with China come here for a month then leave, and repeat. Yeah learn some Chinese. Basics. Bathroom, food, beer, hello, good morning, take off your clothes (kidding), daily things. I would spend the most time on studying the culture as a whole. The philosophy of Asians, China, and so fourth.

Being able to talk to a perspective business partner is important, but not as important as how he is screwing you because you haven’t read The Art of War, or know his negotiation tactics. In this case finding as much information on the thinking of the Chinese businessmen would be more important then studying about how to say you like his hair. Just my thoughts anyway.

Learn the customs, what not to say, do, gift giving, receiving, etc. Then after you got a handle on that, you can fill in with some more Chinese. Body language and actions are just as important as words. They will think you don’t know because you can’t speak Chinese. This could be an advantage.

There are a ton of sites out there to help. I like to pretend that I am smart and go to MIT. So there is a link to free Chinese course from MIT.  HERE

Me, I just go for it. Why not. So as they say in China, 加油 or add gas, in other terms my Grandma would say, Light a fire and get a move on.

Have fun.

Everyday I talk to Chinese people. Well, rather I chat online. I had an interesting conversation last night that I thought I would talk a little bit about. I was talking to someone I know when they said that they didn’t have to work and instead went to see the sun setting over the wall outside the city. Or something like that. Now I thought that well, they went to see the sunset. Hey, people do this. So I replied with something like, oh thats good, what color was the sunset? They didn’t understand. I began to get confused. You know the sunset, sun, setting, color, they were lost. I was lost, then it hit me. They had seen a move that the title was watching the sunset or something. Then it occurred to me. Well, it didn’t really just occur to me. My American friends and I often have this conversation. If a Chinese person has never heard the phrase that you just asked or told them. They won’t know what the hell you are talking about. It comes comes down to a way of thinking. In America, I’m guessing it’s not English related, if you make up a phrase and we have a little bit of context, we’ll get it. Here, you can’t make up anything. It’s all been said and that’s all you can say. Take for example, um, gee, the only phrase I can think of isn’t the most appropriate. Well, ok, how about the phrase “Dude, I just took a digger on my bike.” We know what that means. Well. At least I do. So, you on a bike when you took a digger, what does digger mean? Well what does dig mean, ok now a digger must be similar, oh it means that probably you where hot dogging around and the front end of the bike stopped and in a hole or something thus sending you over the bars. Ok. Chinese person. Um, you can’t dig with a bike…. See, no creativity. No outside thinking. That’s the way it is. Now of course there is slang here. Most of the younger people use it. But it’s not like American slang. You don’t compare two things or replace one with something. Don’t drop the soap or you’ll get a banana up the tail pipe. This might blow their mind. How does a car relate to bananas and dropping soap. See, they can’t wrap their mind around it.

Here is another one. You ever see a girl with a nice, we’ll say rear end. One might say, oh, looks like pigs in a blanket. Ok. So you got two pigs in a blanket rooting around. Looks like the girls rear when she walks. Get it? Not to hard to understand. To the Chinese person. Pigs don’t have blankets, nor could they be in her pants because pigs are big. See?

This relates to me messing up my Chinese typing. So each character means something, easier than English word that can mean tons of things. But get this, when I mess up the word order, it blows their minds. Or if I directly translate phrase I use in English. I want you have good day at work. Ok easy. Even if you don’t know what the phrase means you get it. If I try to say that in Chinese. No one understands. Why? There is a different phrase for saying have a good day at work. God forbid someone say it differently. So yeah. This makes Chinese harder. The lesson here. You can’t directly translate all your saying from English into Chinese. You must learn their saying. Hey, have fun. Nope. People will be like, what, I can’t have fun. It’s something you do. So you must say, play happy. 玩的开心。

Weird but whatever. So what do we English people who speak Chinese do. Well what anyone would do for fun. We translate our slang and speak it in Chinese… You can even use Chinese to make up things like you do in English. No one understands. It’s great.

Not doing much just sitting here in a cold dark room. My choice I suppose. I got a little MJ and just doing a little internet research while a noodle is getting it’s goodness ready. I had a few more thoughts I wanted to share. Or rather a few more posts.  So this one is going to be about what’s been happening on the Chinese language and girl front. Why, well, they kinda go hand in hand. In order to hangout with a girl, you must, well, hell, you have to learn Chinese, speak, read and write. If you don’t you’ll be going to the .. Never mind, let’s just say that you will be lonely.

The image below is a screen shot of my desktop with what I normally do everyday. I usually end up chatting it up with a few girls that I know or have been introduced to. As you can see, besides the photograph of my Grandmother and Grandfather’s wedding in 1955, I think it was 1955, is a bunch of Chinese. Weird huh?

We were talking about the weather or something. One thing that you learn is to get really fast on the dictionary draw. Which I am. This inevitably ends up blowing up in my face. Because when I end up seeing the girl, well, she thinks I speak fluent Chinese since I can reply fairly fast. Things blow up and I usually have to say that I suck at it and the usual. Good times.