Why Chinese is So Damn Hard

I stole the title of this post from an excellent article on "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard" by David Moser. My favorite excerpt:

Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

I can confirm Moser's thesis: Chinese is damn hard. Personally, my spoken is far ahead of my written, which suits me. In business or foreign policy, I might often speak Chinese, sometimes read, but rarely type, and almost never hand-write characters. My Chinese friends likewise painstakingly learned the latter (they had class six-days-a-week from 6am-10pm during junior and high school), but they seldomly hand-write nowadays: my Luxembourgian friend Chloe corrected my Chinese language partner Anna on the character for monkey the other day.

Classroom instruction is traditionally Chinese. I lucked out and have all cheerful teachers. Duan Laoshi makes us sing if we come late; you all missed a soulful rendering of “A Whole New World,” by yours truly when I overslept one morning. Yet even my engaging teachers are constrained by the system: the teacher talks and the students cower, hoping not to be called upon. I even fell into that trap myself for a while, but snapped out of it and am now that obnoxius kid who talks all the time. Average class size is about 20 students. Desks are aligned facing the teacher, not in a circle like at Stanford. It's fine for reading and writing comprehension, but is no good for my spoken Chinese.

One textbook, used at the University of Leeds, offers an easy guide to the pronounciation of consonants:

It is an unaspirated voiceless bilabial plosive which is produced by pressing the lips together, keeping the breath in the mouth, and then opening the mouth to let the air out with a pop.

This is a voiceless labio-dental fricative which is produced by placing the lower lip against the upper teeth and releasing the breath with a friction.

Matt writes, “Simple really, even if some of these sound more complicated than yoga movements and could be mistaken for oral sex instructions.”

We all develop our coping strategies. Because of the tones, my friend Emily views it as a 3-d language when all we knew before was 2-d. At a 麻辣汤 (spicy soup) shop in Nanjing she once ordered a soup as "点点点点点 spicy," 点 being Chinese for "a little bit." In Chinese, however, this means "a little spice, a little more, a little more, a little more, and a little more... " Your mouth burns as you eat your spicy soup, you laugh it off, and try again. My friend Henrik has a rule: if it’s over 10 strokes, don’t bother. I personally, when out and about, routinely keep short lists in my mind of words to look up when I get back. One early list was "Hard Dark Guess," which is also what I will name my rock band when I’m reincarnated with rhythm one day. With English, German, Spanish, and Chinese, I don't intend to attempt anymore languages in my life. Maintenance alone will be a tall order.

A Chinese-American friend of mine jokes with her boyfriend, “If you want me to convert to Judaism, you have to learn Chinese.” That's committment--my father never even learned German.

Quirky China

The quirks that make China so frustrating at first, but endearing in the end:

Food in China
Like me, Chinese don’t eat to live; they live to eat. It’s easily the #1 topic of discussion in China.

Banquets
I was a bit fearful of the food upon first arriving, as most of my previous dining experience in China was with banquet food through FACES. I hate banquet food: you have no control over the dishes that appear and they try to impress with specialties, which are often bizarre bits of seafood or meat. One particular banquet featured ocean snails, Hakuna Matata-style grubs, roasted sparrows, tripe, and liver. Fortunately, simple food, like 鱼香茄子（fish-sauce eggplant, with ample MSG, of course) is much nicer. I still hate the breakfasts, but am contented with my daily oatmeal, yogurt, and banana.

A Personal Relationship
The Chinese are close to their food. Take this KFC ad: “Handsome Chinese youth stands in idyllic green pasture massaging a brown cow. In the next scene, he’s sitting in front of the pasture on a bale of hay, biting into a delicious beef-stuffed pancake, and grinning into the camera.” This would never fly in America! We try and distance meat as far away as possible from the animal—even our animal terms (cow, pig, etc.) are often distinct from meat terms (beef, pork, etc.), which is not the case in Chinese. A favorite Chinese eating tactic—which I have yet to become comfortable with—is to take a large piece of meat, fat, gristle, and bone into the mouth and suck the bone clean.

Chinglish
A classic Chinglish sign from my visit to Renmin University last fall: "The green grass is longing for your cherishing."

Chinese “English” Names
How on earth are they chosen? I personally know a “Yummie” and “Lucky.” My friend Wang Xiaobin from Xinjiang told me he was given the name “Randy” because it is an English name for tall, handsome people, which is news to me (I’d love to get a hold of the book used in schools for choosing English names). This video by "Sexy Beijing" sums it all up. Sexy Beijing now runs a regular feature called, “Ask Smacker.” Props to Andrew Miller for turning me on [to this].

Menus
Menus are littered with atrocious translations. The winner though? Oriental Restaurant in Hangzhou, China, which proudly promotes its delicious “Homos with meat” (see picture). I believe they were going for “Hummus with meat.” Yum.

At the Club
Nonsensical English lyrics in Chinese songs: “1, 2… fuck you… 3,4… we want more… 7,8… too late.”

Miscellaneous

Skyscrapers
Have no floor 13 (unlucky in the West) and 14 (unlucky in China because “4” sounds like death), but they do have floors 4 and 24 for some reason, which my Shanghainese friend also does not understand.

Chinese (In)directness
On some matters, the Chinese are shockingly direct. Taxi cab drivers will ask you your age, your salary, and whether you prefer Asian or Caucasian girls. You don’t have to answer, but they will ask. On other matters, they are famously indirect. Because they strive for a “harmonious society,” conflicts are kept in the closet: they will walk circles around core disagreements. I find friendships with Chinese are also difficult to gauge—do they want to hang out, discuss personal matters, etc.?

The Haier Logo
This charming interracial, boylove logo (see picture) is plastered on all sorts of electronics. Sadly, Haier Electronics, one of the first Chinese brands to make it in the West, elected not to feature the same logo there. My friend Stefan has more on the matter.

Conclusion
China (中国，zhōnggúo), literally translated, means middle kingdom and China’s historical position was “you come to us.” The first Western missions to China were frustrated when His British Majesty’s Representatives refused to kowtow (touch one’s head to the ground) to the Chinese Emperor, unless the Chinese agreed that a Chinese official of equal rank would do the same for His Majesty were they to visit Britain. So in some ways, the US and China are similar: huge, patriotic nations where few speak foreign languages.